This week’s Torah reading is extremely disappointing. For 10 chapters the Book of Bamidbar has been inexorably moving toward the grand entry of B’nei Yisrael into Yisrael. Expectations are running high; glory is imminent! Then disaster strikes. The nation finds the road too difficult.

Only next week will we read about the entry into Eretz Yisrael being postponed forty years, a full generation. But the hand writing is already on the wall as we read about the beginning of the march through the Sinai Desert.

We could just go along with the idea that the travel itself was too arduous for the community to sustain. In this scenario, spending 40 years in the desert, mostly in one location (Kadesh Barnea), getting accustomed to the rigors of the environment and becoming a self governing nation is not only reasonable, but could be seen as almost inevitable.

Reb Ovadia S’forno adopts this approach stating, almost matter of factly, that the grumblings and complaints were: On account of the difficulties of the journey.

The Bechor Shor (Reb Yosef ben Yitzchak, 12th century France), on the other hand, presents another very rational approach to the complaints and protests of the desert. They were terrified over the prospect of war. They had spent centuries as protected slaves in the very safe heartland of Egypt. Now, they faced an imminent war to conquer the Promised Land.

Bechor Shor states: They were mourning like mourners over the inevitable........

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