Parshas Chukas - Bolok 5762 The Copperhead    
By Rabbi Joshua ( brazenly known as The Hoffer) Hoffman


  In parshas Chukas, after the death of Aharon and a military campaign against the king of Arad, the people of Israel continue their journey, and become short - tempered. They proceed to complain against God and Moshe, asking why they were brought out of Egypt to die in the wilderness. They went on to say that they had no bread and water, and that they were at their limit with the manna, which they called   'insubstantial bread.'  As a punishment, God sends burning snakes against the people, and many are killed. The people then go to Moshe and acknowledge that they sinned against God and against him, and ask Moshe to pray to God for help. Moshe prays, and God tells him to construct a saraf, a burning creature, and place it on a pole, and anyone who had been bitten would be cured when he looked at it the creature. Moshe conformed and made a copper snake and placed it on a pole. The Torah then relates that whoever had been bitten by a snake would be cured when he gazed upon it (Bamidbar 21 : 4 - 10). 

  The Mishnah in Rosh Hashanah, 3 : 8, asks the question, did the copper snake really have the ability to kill or keep alive ? Rather, it answers, when the Israelites would look upward and subject their hearts to God, they would be cured.  Thus, the incident of the snakes serves as a paradigm for repentance. This is very appropriate because the Torah tells us that the people admitted their sin, and asked Moshe to pray for them. Thus, their repentance is spelled out clearly in the text of the Torah, something we do not encounter very often. The Ohr HaChaim, in fact, enumerates seven aspects of repentance that we can derive from this episode.  I would like to focus on some of these aspects, and elaborate on them from other sources, as well. 

  One major lesson that can be derived from our episode is from the nature of the punishment that the people received. The rabbis tell us that they were punished with snakes because they spoke leshon hora, evil talk, against God and Moshe, and it was the primeval serpent who first spoke against God, in connection with the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Moreover, the snake, who attacks with the tongue, is symbolic of the potential for evil inherent in the tongue, an instrument of speech.  By punishing through this principle of 'midah keneged midah,' or measure for measure, God educates the sinner to correct his ways and repent. Moreover, as the Mishnah tells us, when they looked at the copper snake they were really focusing their attention on God and subjecting their hearts to him. Thus, the image of the snake, that God had just used as an instrument of punishment, was now converted into a means of repentance. This process seems to be symbolic of the fact that when one repents out of love, his sins are converted into good deeds. The idea behind this is that through this kind of repentance, one reassesses his past actions and understands how they ultimately brought him back to a love of God. Rav Sholom Noach Berzovsky of Slonim, in his Nesivos Sholom, writes that the Torah's placement of the sin of the people's complaining shortly after the death of Aharon indicates that the people were now missing Aharon's character trait of promoting love among all Jews, and this eventually led them to complain against Moshe and God. Following this approach, we can understand that when the people did repent, they did so out of love, thus restoring the trait of Aharon that they had lost.  

  The Ohr Ha Chaim also points out that in relating the process for the people's punishment, the Torah says, "and so it was that if the snake bit a man, he would stare at the copper snake and live" (Bamidbar 21:10).  The word employed for "and so it was" is 'vehoyo,' which, as the Talmud (Megillah 10b)  tells us, always connotes simcha, or joy. The Ohr HaChaim himself says that the people, ultimately, derived joy from the very fact of being bitten, because of the benefits it brought them. However, I believe the joy here can be explained somewhat differently, based on the writings of Rav Avrohom Yitzchok HaKohein Kook and Rav Chaim of Volozhin.

  Rav Kook, in a letter about repentance which can be found in the introduction to his work Oros HaTeshuvah, wrote that at the foundation of repentance one must have a feeling of trust and joy. As far as trust is concerned, Rav Chaim Volozhin, in a note to his Nefesh HaChaim, writes that trust in God consists of taking into consideration the actual danger one is in, and, with that in mind, turning one's heart trustingly to God. He writes that we can see this from the episode of the snakes. Only through looking at the image of the snake and knowing the danger they were in, were the people then able to reach trust in God. This is one aspect of repentance that Rav Kook mentions in his letter. The other aspect he mentions, joy, is connoted, as the Ohr HaChaim says, in the word 'vehoyo,' as pointed out by the Ohr HaChaim. This joy, Rav Kook explains, comes from a sense of coming back to oneself through repentance. Our connection to God is part of our very essence. Through sin, we lose that connection and descend into a state of despair. By repenting, we renew our relationship with God, and thereby attain true joy, which, as Rav Yosef Albo explains in his Sefer HaIkkarim, is a result of getting in touch with our true inner nature. It was this kind of joy, then, that the people attained by gazing at the copper snake and directing their attention to God, thereby repenting of their sins.