(7 of 8)
You may view the land from a distance, but you shall not enter it--the land that I am giving to the Israelite people.
It gradually becomes clear that the complaints of the Israelites are not subsiding. At one point they even whine that they are bored with manna. Ever more frequently, God culls their ungrateful ranks with fire or plague; and eventually he rules that they shall die of old age in the desert, and only their children, untainted by prior servitude, may attain the Promised Land.
But why deny Moses entry? In God's own words, "You disobeyed my command about the waters of Meribah." In a close replay of an earlier crisis, the people run out of water and "join against" their now 119-year-old leader. As before, God advises Moses, telling him to gather the people with his staff and "order the rock to yield its water." As he has done previously, Moses strikes the rock with his rod and out flows the water. His sin, as best as anyone can determine, is that he struck rather than spoke.
It seems the most hairsplitting of technicalities. In Moses: A Life, Kirsch writes, "Against the blow of a wooden staff upon a dry rock, a lifetime of struggle, hardship and faithful service counted for nothing." Some analysts think biblical editors expunged Moses' real sin, whatever it was. Others say his only sin is failure, his inability to ennoble the slave generation. Not so fast, argues Friedman: Moses has been edging toward usurping God's prerogatives for some time, "and now he steps over the line. He changes a miracle. Nobody had ever done that before."
But the saddest interpretation is that Moses is penalized for mourning his sister. Few figures in Exodus are as vividly drawn, if infrequently featured, as Miriam. It is she who, as a child, saw to it that Pharaoh's daughter temporarily returned Moses to his natural mother to be breast-fed; it is Miriam who danced for joy at the crossing of the Red Sea. She is one of only four women the Hebrew Bible describes as a prophetess. Moses clearly loves her. At one point, she and Aaron complain about Moses' marriage to a "Cushite," which some scholars believe meant a black woman. But when the siblings challenge their brother's prophetic authority, God punishes Miriam with leprosy. Moses, however, intercedes on her behalf.
The incident at Meribah begins with the stark announcement, "Miriam died there and was buried there." The next sentence is, "The community was without water, and they joined against Moses and Aaron." This abrupt shift has fascinated scholars, including Hebrew Union College's Cohen. "His need is mourning," Cohen points out. "And do the people gather to comfort him? No. To complain. The same song and dance." Distraught, Moses strikes. With the blows, "he takes out everything," says Cohen. "He takes it out on the people, maybe on God, because he's lost his sister." And the Lord punishes him.
You shall die on the mountain that you are about to ascend and shall be gathered to your kin, as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his kin.