RABBI NAFTALI REICH (Torah.org)
He brought down the wrath of Heaven on Egypt until Pharaoh agreed to let the Jewish people go. He led them out to freedom. He parted the sea and led them through. He brought them to the foot of Mount Sinai to receive the Torah. He guided them through the desert for forty years. But at the last moment, when they stood poised on the threshold of the Promised Land, his leadership came to an end. Moshe passed away without stepping a foot into the Promised Land.
Why wasn’t Moshe granted the privilege of entering the Promised Land to which he had labored so diligently to bring the people?
We find the answer in this week’s Torah portion. After Miriam died, the miraculous well from which the people had slaked their thirst in the desert vanished, and they were left without water. They maligned Moshe for taking them from the gardens of Egypt into an arid wasteland. Hashem told Moshe to assemble the people and speak to the rock, which would then give forth water. Moshe called the people together. “Listen, you rebels,” he declared angrily. “Can water come out of this rock?” Then he struck the rock with his staff and water flowed. But Moshe had erred. Instead of speaking to the rock, he had struck it. And for this, Hashem decreed that Moshe would not enter the Promised Land.
Let us now look for a moment at the Torah reading of Devarim, where Moshe is reviewing the events of the previous forty years in his parting words to the Jewish people. He reminds them of how the people had responded to the slanders spread by the spies upon their return from the land of Canaan, and how
