Parsha “Chukat” (Numbers chapters 19 through 22:1) is, in at least one way, the second parsha in a sequence that arguably has to do with “rebellion.” Although in a very different way.

And virtually every element of this one, from the ‘chuq’ of the ‘red heiffer’ – which even King Solomon was believed to have found enigmatic – to aspects of the story responsible for Moses being forbidden from entering the Promised Land, are at least “confusing.”

The lessons are vital regardless, and perhaps even especially.

The Erev Shabbat reading:

The Sabbath Day midrash is all about that confusion.

The perplexing Red Heiffer is something of a ‘spiritual Inverter’ – it makes clean things UN-clean, while making those unclean clean again. And its death somehow helps restore from death.

Moses’ anger, however, is certainly a bit easier for us to understand. He’s heard the same ‘whining’ before. And he’s also the only man who, as we were just told, spoke to YHVH Himself, mouth-to-mouth. And the instruction he received here, at least in hindsight, certainly seem clear.

No doubt he was held to a “higher standard.” But the real key to what MIGHT seem like a harsh punishment is linked to words that are at the very heart of this story!

He called people, “you REBELS!” – Hebrew root word, “mara” – in his fury. And is the very same word that YHVH turned on him in pointed rebuke for what marked his greatest failure. But there seems to be even more to the ‘rest of the story.’

The combined two-part teaching is here: