 can't even hit a rock. That only works in Miriam's world, Miriam is gone now.
Moses Smote the Rock Without FaithGod was saying you can't artificially replicate a world in which Miriam was there when Miriam has gone, but you can learn what it is that she taught. She taught that when you can't figure out what to do, when all of the options that you know of don't work, God can introduce an option that you never dreamed about.
Moshe looks at the situation, none of the options work, how are you going to get water for 2.1 million people in the desert? Either the people have this extreme faith and put themselves in God's hands and say, please God give us the water, but they're not doing that. Or somehow Miriam can carry you on her back, and if Miriam was around and her well is here then Miriam can get you the water in her merit, but Miriam is gone. So that's it, there's no other possibilities.
God says, ah but there is another possibility, even without Miriam, even without the people's faith; I have something new up My sleeve, it will work out, I'll give you water. Just speak to the rock. It doesn't make any sense. Yeah, but it doesn't have to make sense, God says. Not to you, not just quite yet. It's the surprising option that you couldn't even have imagined. Have faith in Me. And this in the end is where Moshe failed. Ya'an asher loh he'amantem bi – in the end Moshe didn't have that faith.
The Meaning Behind the Story of Moses and the RockIn mourning we have a tendency to want desperately to re-create the old times when our loved one was still with us, but they can't be re-created. The harsh reality is they're gone. But you can take what that loved one taught you and move forward into the future. Miriam's well had one last lesson to teach, how to get water without her, and Moses in mourning over his sister did not allow himself to see it.
One of the themes we've been talking about in these last weeks' Parshiyot has been mourning. The aftermath of the sin of the spies seems to be bound up in some kind of excessive mourning. The same for the sin of Korach, and ironically, perhaps, the same even here from Moses himself.
Mourning inspires deeply felt feelings of loss, denial, anger, and those feelings are one thing, but somehow when we take irrevocable actions in the midst of heartbreak, danger indeed lurks there. It was true for the people after the sin of the spies, it was true for Korach, and in some subtle way it may have even been true for Moses himself in what became the great tragedy of a rock that was struck and a leader who could not enter the land.
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