Subjugating Our Hearts to Hashem Through Nature
Bnei Yisrael wandered in the desert for forty years. Mann fell from Shamayim, and Miriam’s well quenched their thirst. Toward the end of their wanderings, they started complaining about the mann.
Rashi explains that they called the mann “lechem hakelokel” because all of it was absorbed by their limbs, and they were afraid something would happened to them as a result, for they wondered – how is it possible for a human being to ingest food without eliminating anything?
Their complaint is quite puzzling. If they had voiced this complaint when they first started eating the mann, we could understand their fear. But now, after almost forty years of having eaten the mann without suffering any side-effects, why were they complaining?
The explanation is that through all the years they spent in the desert, Bnei Yisrael felt that each day was bringing them closer to their longed-for goal of entering Eretz Yisrael. And now that the waters of the well stopped flowing and they feared that they wouldn’t survive without them, they claimed that everything they’d eaten until that point was for naught, because in the end it hadn’t brought them closer to their goal. This is what they meant by “taking in (ingesting) without letting out (eliminating)” – that they had done something but didn’t see the results.
This was their mistake. They should have understood that everything is from Hashem.
Therefore, the tikkun for their mistake in emunah was through the making of a snake that would be held up high, so that they would subjugate their hearts to their Father in Shamayim. But if the whole purpose was for them to subjugate their hearts, why were they not simply told explicitly, “subjugate your hearts to Hashem”? The message is that this subjugation needed to be connected to a natural thing – to a snake fashioned by a human being. It was necessary for them to subjugate their hearts to their Father in Shamayim specifically through a physical entity.
