Bamidbar 20:7-12
Speak to the Rock
Six verses in which Moshe loses the land, and the commentators cannot agree on what exactly he did wrong.
For children, teens and adults
This is the passage that seals Moshe’s fate, and the Torah never says plainly what he did wrong. The charge is three words, lo he’emantem bi, you did not trust Me, and then the sentence. Forty years of leading a complaining nation through a desert, and he loses the land over six verses at a rock. Every generation of commentators has tried to name the offence and they contradict each other flatly. That is not a hole in the tradition. It is a real argument about what a leader’s failure actually consists of: the act, the temper or the impression left in everybody else’s head.
וַיְדַבֵּר ה׳ אֶל־מֹשֶׁה לֵּאמֹר׃
Bamidbar 20:7
Vayedaber Hashem el Moshe lemor.
Hashem spoke to Moshe, saying: