Most people would attest that there are an awful lot of things in life that are hard to understand. There are the biggies, of course – the philosophical thrillers that leave us puzzling why good things happen to bad people and vice verse- but there are also the mundane things, like why Hashem created insects to be so annoying.
Parsha Chukas contains one of the most puzzling acts commanded in the Torah, the parah adumah (red hefer) and then waves a flag at its inexplicability by calling it out as a chok, a mitzvah for which there is no rational explanation. But, rather interestingly, Parshas Chukas contains several other items that leave one scratching one’s head and asking for more details, for an explanation.
One example of this could almost be framed as the ever-present question of someone “dying before their time.” That is the type of phrase one hears when a person passes away young or without having fulfilled a specific goal. Neither Aaron nor Moshe were young when they died, but Bnei Yisrael expected them to be with them when they entered the Promised Land. In Parshas Chukas, however, not only is Aaron’s death recorded, but this is where we read how Moshe hit the rock instead of talking to it and lost his right to enter the Land with the people. The Midrash and commentaries provide a multitude of explanations, but just reading about the incident leaves one mystified by the cause of such a strong consequence.
Another rather puzzling incident in Parshas Chukas is the punishment of the snakes. It appears that the “fiery serpents” were sent as a result of another round of complaining from the people, for the repetition of the same old litany of “Better we should have died in Egypt.” When the snake bites caused deaths, the people repented, and Hashem told Moshe to make a snake and set it on a pole and anyone who stared at it would live. That’s it. That is the whole section of the snakes, and it is only six verses long. And yet it leaves us with a vast list of why. Why were they even complaining? Why was this complaining different than the previous complaining? Why did Hashem have Moshe make a copper snake, and was this not a risk of seeming like Avodah Zarah?
It is interesting to note that this is the last round of kvetching in the Midbar that is recorded in the Torah. Perhaps, in some way, this is related to Hashem’s choice of serpents to dispense punishment and a serpent to provide the cure. Other than the staff turned into a serpent in Pharaoh’s court, the only other nachash (serpent) in the Torah is the serpent who offered Chavah the fruit of the Eitz Hadas, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The nachash introduced discontent to Chavah in the words he used to entice her toward the tree. By eating from the Eitz Hadas, Chava and Adam transformed the yetzer harah (the evil inclination) from an external to an internal force. Their descendants forevermore had to make decisions on right and wrong, and the complainers were making the wrong choice. Before the Eitz Hadas, in Gan Eden (the Garden of Eden), everything a person needed was provided. So too, in the Midbar, Hashem provided for all of the needs of Bnei Yisrael. Each time they chose to complain, and perhaps especially this time when the verses just before record their success in taking the cities of Arad and for which they should have felt empowered, they were choosing to follow the path set out by the nachash so many generations ago.
This, perhaps, speaks to the overall theme of Parshas Chukas. Human nature demands answers, seeks knowledge – but not all answers are for us to know. Why do the ashes of the Red Hefer purify those made impure by the dead but make impure the person who performs the act? Why did Moshe get punished for such a seemingly simple mistake? Why were Aaron and Moshe kept from entering the Promised Land? To every question the most basic answer is that Hashem knew why. Hashem sees the patterns and the far, far longer picture.
That Hashem knows everything does not mean that one cannot ask questions. Questions are important. Questions are active and involved. Most importantly, questions are very different from complaints. Complaints take away a person’s responsibility for their life and lay the blame of all things on the party to whom or about whom they are complaining. That here, in Parshas Chukas, Hashem sent serpents may be a reminder, for the people in the Midbar and for all of the generations to come, that complaining is a direct result of the sin of the Eitz Hadas. Bnei Yisrael are, ultimately, on a mission to rectify that sin, not repeat it.
In studying Torah, it is easy for us to see how Hashem provided for everything in the Midbar, but obviously the people were not able to see that. So too, in our own lives, Hashem provides us with what we need – with what we need to fulfill our role in the world which only He has a clear picture of. You can question that role or the fulfillment of those needs. You can even challenge the path your life is taking. That is one of the many reasons that we have prayer in our lives, that there is teshuva. But complaining is a declaration that one does not believe that Hashem is providing. It comes from that internalized yetzer harah that thinks that our eating from the Eitz Hadas gives us not only access, but the right to access, knowledge far beyond a person’s ability to understand the greater picture of the world.
Parshas Chukas begins with a law that seems a contradiction and that teaches us how we must accept that which we cannot understand. This, in truth, is all the laws of the Torah. Indeed, this is life in this world. Our job is to do the most with what we have and where we are, and to trust that Hashem knows what is best for each of us.
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