Walking in Front

Moses's Prayer for a Successor

On a mountain in Moab, God tells Moses to climb higher so that he can die there. Moses is 120. Ascend the heights of Abarim, God says, look out over the land I am giving Israel, spread green and forbidden below you, then go the way your brother Aaron went when he climbed another mountain a few chapters ago and never came down (Numbers 27:12-14).

Moshe has led this nation for forty years across a wilderness that swallowed almost everyone who set out with him. He has argued God down from wrath, absorbed rebellion after rebellion, buried an entire generation in the sand. Now God hands him the view and the verdict in a single breath. He answers with a request that has nothing to do with himself.

וַיְדַבֵּ֣ר מֹשֶׁ֔ה אֶל־יְהֹוָ֖ה לֵאמֹֽר׃ יִפְקֹ֣ד יְהֹוָ֔ה אֱלֹהֵ֥י הָרוּחֹ֖ת לְכׇל־בָּשָׂ֑ר אִ֖ישׁ עַל־הָעֵדָֽה׃

Moses spoke to the LORD, saying: “Let the LORD, God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint a man over the community, who shall go out before them and come in before them, who shall take them out and bring them in, so that the LORD’s community may not be like sheep that have no shepherd.” (Numbers 27:15-17)

Two striking details sit inside Moshe’s request. Moshe reaches for a title of God almost no one uses: אֱלֹהֵ֥י הָרוּחֹ֖ת לְכׇל־בָּשָׂ֑ר, “God of the spirits of all flesh.” Not the God of hosts, not the God of Israel. The God of spirits, plural, one for each body. And in the same breath he names the thing he fears: כַּצֹּ֕אן אֲשֶׁ֥ר אֵין־לָהֶ֖ם רֹעֶֽה, a flock that scatters because no one walks in front of it.

Moshe invokes two seemingly opposite vectors in the same sentence. A God who counts the many by their plurality, by their many spirits, and a single shepherd who keeps the many from smearing across a hillside and losing its character, shape, purpose. The prayer holds the whole problem of leadership in the tension between those two images, the need for a national frame and the recognition of diversity; the need for a plurality of ways to fulfill the covenant and the need for strong leadership that can move everyone in the same direction.

אֱלֹהֵ֥י הָרוּחֹ֖ת לְכׇל־בָּשָׂ֑ר appears one other time in the Torah, and Moshe is on his face when he says it there too. He and Aaron cry it out at the height of Korach’s rebellion, when the ground is about to open and the fire is about to fall:

וַיִּפְּל֤וּ עַל־פְּנֵיהֶם֙ וַיֹּ֣אמְר֔וּ אֵ֕ל אֱלֹהֵ֥י הָרוּחֹ֖ת לְכׇל־בָּשָׂ֑ר הָאִ֤ישׁ אֶחָד֙ יֶחֱטָ֔א וְעַ֥ל כׇּל־הָעֵדָ֖ה תִּקְצֹֽף׃

They fell on their faces and said, “O God, God of the spirits of all flesh! When one man sins, will You be wrathful with the whole community?” (Numbers 16:22)

The same rare name for God, aimed at the opposite fear. In Korach the terror is that God will treat the congregation as one guilty body, charging a faction’s sin to everyone, punishing the many as one. Rashi hears the whole force of God’s rare name in Moshe’s plea:

יוֹדֵעַ מַחֲשָׁבוֹת... מֶלֶךְ בָּשָׂר וָדָם שֶׁסָּרְחָה עָלָיו מִקְצָת מְדִינָה, אֵינוֹ יוֹדֵעַ מִי הַחוֹטֵא, לְפִיכָךְ כְּשֶׁהוּא כוֹעֵס נִפְרָע מִכֻּלָּם, אֲבָל אַתָּה, לְפָנֶיךָ גְלוּיוֹת כָּל הַמַּחֲשָׁבוֹת וְיוֹדֵעַ אַתָּה מִי הַחוֹטֵא.

“You know the thoughts of every person. A human king, when part of a province rebels against him, does not know who sinned; so when he is angry he punishes them all. But before You all thoughts are revealed, and You know who sinned.” (Rashi on Numbers 16:22)

Rashi is sketching a theory of the crowd. Elias Canetti in Crowds and Power describes the crowd as a state that relieves a person of the burden of being distinct, where the distances between people collapse and the mass swallows each one into itself. A mob is the many collapsed into one. The deepest form of that collapse is the punishment that cannot tell the guilty from the innocent, the human king who burns down a whole province because he lacks the eyes to find the one arsonist. Against that king stands the God of the spirits of all flesh, the one authority in the universe who never loses the individual inside the crowd, who reaches into a rebellion of thousands and knows exactly whose thought moved first.

Now Moshe carries that same title up the mountain in our parashah and turns it toward the mirror-image fear. In Korach the danger ran one way: the crowd swallows the person, and a faction’s guilt spreads to all. On the heights of Mount Abarim the danger runs the other way: the one leader goes missing, and the many come apart into a flock on the hills with no one at the head. Moshe invokes the God who refuses to blur individuals into a mass, and he asks that God to solve the opposite failure. Ibn Ezra glosses:

שהוא יודע הרוחות איזה רוח ראוי

“He knows the spirits; He knows which spirit is fitting.” (Ibn Ezra on Numbers 27:16)

The same faculty solves both problems. The God who picks the one guilty spirit out of a crowd is the God who picks the one fitting spirit to stand over it. In Korach, אֱלֹהֵ֥י הָרוּחֹ֖ת means God will not flatten the people into a single guilty mass. In Pinchas, the same title means God must find a leader who will not flatten them into a single obedient mass.

So God answers

וַיֹּ֨אמֶר יְהֹוָ֜ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֗ה קַח־לְךָ֙ אֶת־יְהוֹשֻׁ֣עַ בִּן־נ֔וּן אִ֖ישׁ אֲשֶׁר־ר֣וּחַ בּ֑וֹ

“The LORD answered Moses: Take Joshua son of Nun, a man in whom there is spirit, and lay your hand upon him.” (Numbers 27:18)

Follow the leitmotif, a single Hebrew word. God is אֱלֹהֵ֥י הָרוּחֹ֖ת, God of the spirits, plural, the many. Moshe asked for an אִ֖ישׁ עַל־הָעֵדָֽה, one man over the congregation, the one. God gives him an אִ֖ישׁ אֲשֶׁר־ר֣וּחַ בּ֑וֹ, a man with spirit in him, singular. The one man’s single ר֣וּחַ must meet the people’s many רוּחֹת. Rashi, citing the Sifrei, tells us which spirit qualifies a person to stand over spirits:

כַּאֲשֶׁר שָׁאַלְתָּ, שֶׁיּוּכַל לַהֲלֹךְ כְּנֶגֶד רוּחוֹ שֶׁל כָּל אֶחָד וְאֶחָד

“In whom there is spirit: as you requested, one who can go according to the spirit of each and every person.” (Rashi on Numbers 27:18)

The spirit that fits a leader is the one supple enough to turn toward the spirit of every separate person and walk beside it. A spirit that overpowers a room disqualifies its owner. The shepherd becomes, for a moment, like each of the many.

Moshe asked the God of the many spirits for one man, and God gave him the one man whose spirit opens toward many. Sforno adds a second direction under Rashi’s:

מוכן לקבל אור פני מלך חיים

“Ready to receive the light of the face of the living King.” (Sforno on Numbers 27:18)

Two directions of one openness. Rashi’s leader opens sideways, taking in the character of each person he leads. Sforno’s leader opens upward, taking in the light that comes from above him. A spirit is a place where something can enter. In both readings the disqualifying trait is the sealed self, the ruler so full of himself that no other spirit can get in, neither the person in front of him nor the God above him.

Rashi notices that Moshe’s prayer follows immediately on the ruling that gave Zelophehad’s daughters their father’s land, and he hears a private thought behind the public request:

כֵּיוָן שֶׁשָּׁמַע מֹשֶׁה שֶׁאָמַר לוֹ הַמָּקוֹם תֵּן נַחֲלַת צְלָפְחָד לִבְנוֹתָיו, אָמַר הִגִּיעַ שָׁעָה שֶׁאֶתְבַּע צָרְכִּי, שֶׁיִּירְשׁוּ בָּנַי אֶת גְּדֻלָּתִי. אָמַר לוֹ הַקָּבָּ”ה לֹא כָךְ עָלְתָה בְמַחֲשָׁבָה לְפָנַי, כְּדַאי הוּא יְהוֹשֻׁעַ לִטֹּל שְׂכַר שִׁמּוּשׁוֹ שֶׁלֹּא מָשׁ מִתּוֹךְ הָאֹהֶל.

“When Moses heard the Omnipresent say, ‘Give Zelophehad’s inheritance to his daughters,’ he said, ‘The time has come to ask for my own need, that my sons inherit my greatness.’ The Holy One said to him: ‘That is not what has arisen in My thought. Joshua deserves the reward of his service, for he never departed from the tent.’” (Rashi on Numbers 27:16)

The Torah sets the two rulings side by side so we can tell them apart. Land is inheritance; it descends through blood, and a man may rightly want his daughters to hold his field. But the community is not a field; leadership is not a right. No one hands leadership over the עֵדָה down like property, because the people are not the leader’s estate to bequeath. The reward passes to the one who guarded the tent, not to the one who carries the leader’s name. Joshua earns the flock by serving it, and Moshe’s own sons vanish from the story.

Then Moshe asks for the physical posture of the shepherd. The man over the congregation must go out before them and come in before them, אֲשֶׁר־יֵצֵ֣א לִפְנֵיהֶ֗ם וַאֲשֶׁ֤ר יָבֹא֙ לִפְנֵיהֶ֔ם. Rashi adds:

לֹא כְדֶרֶךְ מַלְכֵי הָאֻמּוֹת שֶׁיּוֹשְׁבִים בְּבָתֵּיהֶם וּמְשַׁלְּחִין אֶת חַיָּלוֹתֵיהֶם לַמִּלְחָמָה, אֶלָּא כְּמוֹ שֶׁעָשִׂיתִי אֲנִי... יוֹצֵא בָּרֹאשׁ וְנִכְנָס בָּרֹאשׁ.

“Not like the kings of the nations, who sit in their houses and send their armies out to war, but as I did. He goes out at the head and comes in at the head.” (Rashi on Numbers 27:17)

Sforno gives the plain floor beneath it: בענין המלחמה, “in the matter of war” (Sforno on Numbers 27:17). The leader walks first into the danger. And once the phrase לָצֵ֣את וְלָב֑וֹא, to go out and come in, sits in your ear, you start hearing it everywhere the Tanakh weighs who may lead.

Moshe uses it about himself, weeks later, as a confession of mortality: בֶּן־מֵאָה֩ וְעֶשְׂרִ֨ים שָׁנָ֤ה אָנֹכִי֙ הַיּ֔וֹם לֹא־אוּכַ֥ל ע֖וֹד לָצֵ֣את וְלָב֑וֹא, “I am a hundred and twenty years old today; I can no longer go out and come in” (Deuteronomy 31:2). King Solomon (Shlomo Hamelech) uses the same phrase to confess inadequacy at the threshold of his reign: וְאָ֣נֹכִי֙ נַ֣עַר קָטֹ֔ן לֹ֥א אֵדַ֖ע צֵ֥את וָבֹֽא, “I am a young lad; I do not know how to go out and come in” (I Kings 3:7). Kingship in Israel begins, in its best moment, with a king admitting he does not yet know how to lead. And David masters the posture. The whole nation says of him the very sentence Rashi quoted, כִּי־ה֛וּא יוֹצֵ֥א וָבָ֖א לִפְנֵיהֶֽם, “for he went out and came in before them,” and therefore וְכׇל־יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ וִֽיהוּדָ֔ה אֹהֵ֖ב אֶת־דָּוִ֑ד, “all Israel and Judah loved David” (I Samuel 18:16). They loved him because he walked in front of them.

Turn the prayer over now and look at its underside, the picture Moshe is worried about. Like the divine title, כַּצֹּ֕אן אֲשֶׁ֥ר אֵין־לָהֶ֖ם רֹעֶֽה is a rare phrase, and where it surfaces again it arrives as a nightmare come true. Centuries after Moab, on a threshing floor by the gate of Samaria, two kings sit enthroned in their robes while four hundred court prophets shout that the army will win. Guards drag one prophet out of prison to disagree. Micah opens his mouth and describes a vision:

רָאִ֤יתִי אֶת־כׇּל־יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ נְפֹצִ֣ים אֶל־הֶהָרִ֔ים כַּצֹּ֕אן אֲשֶׁ֥ר אֵין־לָהֶ֖ם רֹעֶ֑ה וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהֹוָה֙ לֹֽא־אֲדֹנִ֣ים לָאֵ֔לֶּה יָשׁ֥וּבוּ אִישׁ־לְבֵית֖וֹ בְּשָׁלֽוֹם׃

“I saw all Israel scattered over the hills like sheep that have no shepherd; and the LORD said, ‘These have no master; let each of them go home in peace.’” (I Kings 22:17)

Moshe’s exact words, now a prophecy of ruin. King Ahab is the anti-Joshua. He holds an army, a palace, and four hundred prophets, and under him Israel becomes the flock Moshe feared, scattering across the ridges with no real leader at the head. A leader can command every instrument of power and still fail to mobilize the people to a common end, because the scattering never turned on the absence of a throne. It turns on the absence of a spirit that goes out in front and knows each sheep.

Ezekiel, in exile by the rivers of Babylon, hears God turn on the shepherds of Israel:

ה֤וֹי רֹעֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ אֲשֶׁ֤ר הָיוּ֙ רֹעִ֣ים אוֹתָ֔ם... אֶת־הַחֵ֤לֶב תֹּאכֵ֙לוּ֙ וְאֶת־הַצֶּ֣מֶר תִּלְבָּ֔שׁוּ הַבְּרִיאָ֖ה תִּזְבָּ֑חוּ הַצֹּ֖אן לֹ֥א תִרְעֽוּ׃ אֶֽת־הַנַּחְלוֹת֩ לֹ֨א חִזַּקְתֶּ֜ם וְאֶת־הַחוֹלָ֣ה לֹֽא־רִפֵּאתֶ֗ם... וְלַנִּשְׁבֶּ֙רֶת֙ לֹ֣א חֲבַשְׁתֶּ֔ם וְאֶת־הַנִּדַּ֙חַת֙ לֹ֣א הֲשֵׁבֹתֶ֔ם וְאֶת־הָאֹבֶ֖דֶת לֹ֣א בִקַּשְׁתֶּ֑ם... וַתְּפוּצֶ֖ינָה מִבְּלִ֣י רֹעֶ֑ה׃

“Woe, shepherds of Israel who have been tending themselves. You eat the fat and clothe yourselves in the wool and slaughter the fatlings, but the flock you do not tend. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought. And they were scattered, for want of a shepherd.” (Ezekiel 34:2-5)

Malbim explains that good shepherds tend the flock for the flock’s sake; even a hired one, who takes the wool and the milk as wages, still owes the sheep his care in return. The shepherds Ezekiel condemns have inverted the arrangement:

ולא רעו הצאן לתועלתם רק לרעתם... בעבור אכול את בשרם ולא להנהיגם בהשגחה ובחמלה.

“They did not tend the flock for its benefit, only to its harm, in order to eat its flesh and not to guide it with care and compassion.” (Malbim on Ezekiel 34:2)

The corrupt shepherd lives off the flock instead of for it. Jeremiah says the same with a curse and a promise in one breath: ה֣וֹי רֹעִ֗ים מְאַבְּדִ֧ים וּמְפִצִ֛ים אֶת־צֹ֥אן מַרְעִיתִ֖י, “Woe, shepherds who destroy and scatter the flock of My pasture,” and then וַהֲקִמֹתִ֧י עֲלֵיהֶ֛ם רֹעִ֖ים וְרָע֑וּם, “I will raise up shepherds over them who will tend them, and they shall no longer fear or be dismayed, and none shall be missing” (Jeremiah 23:1, 23:4). Rashi connects the shepherd to the king: הוי רועים, “Woe, shepherds,” means מלכי יהודה, the kings of Judah (Rashi on Jeremiah 23:1). The shepherd is the Torah’s way of describing the leader.

Against all of it stands the one king the tradition holds up as the answer to Moshe’s prayer, and he arrives smelling of sheep. The Psalmist tells his whole story in three verses:

וַ֭יִּבְחַר בְּדָוִ֣ד עַבְדּ֑וֹ וַ֝יִּקָּחֵ֗הוּ מִֽמִּכְלְאֹ֥ת צֹֽאן׃ מֵאַחַ֥ר עָל֗וֹת הֱבִ֫יא֥וֹ לִ֭רְעוֹת בְּיַֽעֲקֹ֣ב עַמּ֑וֹ... וַ֭יִּרְעֵם כְּתֹ֣ם לְבָב֑וֹ וּבִתְבוּנ֖וֹת כַּפָּ֣יו יַנְחֵֽם׃

“He chose David His servant and took him from the sheepfolds; from tending the nursing ewes He brought him to shepherd Jacob His people. And he tended them with the integrity of his heart, and led them with the skill of his hands.” (Psalms 78:70-72)

God does not take David from a throne or an academy. God takes him from behind the ewes, from the one job that teaches you to count a flock by knowing each animal in it, and God promotes him to do the same thing on a national scale. When Israel finally comes to crown him, they say it in Moshe’s own vocabulary, welding the two phrases of the prayer into one sentence: אַתָּ֗ה הָיִ֛יתָ הַמּוֹצִ֥יא וְהַמֵּבִ֖י אֶת־יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל, “it was you who took Israel out and brought them in,” and therefore אַתָּ֨ה תִרְעֶ֤ה אֶת־עַמִּי֙, “you shall shepherd My people Israel” (II Samuel 5:2).

Which returns us to the mountain, and to the one act Moshe still has to perform. God knowing that Joshua’s spirit fits does not finish the job. The people have to see it. So Moshe stages the appointment as a public event:

וְהַֽעֲמַדְתָּ֣ אֹת֗וֹ לִפְנֵי֙ אֶלְעָזָ֣ר הַכֹּהֵ֔ן וְלִפְנֵ֖י כׇּל־הָעֵדָ֑ה וְצִוִּיתָ֥ה אֹת֖וֹ לְעֵינֵיהֶֽם׃ וְנָתַתָּ֥ה מֵהֽוֹדְךָ֖ עָלָ֑יו לְמַ֣עַן יִשְׁמְע֔וּ כׇּל־עֲדַ֖ת בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃

“Have him stand before Eleazar the priest and before the whole community, and commission him in their sight. Invest him with some of your authority, so that the whole community of Israel will obey.” (Numbers 27:19-20)

Chizkuni insists that Moshe transfers no top-down authority here, but only stages s a recognition. תכבדהו בפניהם כדי שיכבדוהו הם וישמעו אליו, “honor him in their presence so that they will honor him and listen to him” (Chizkuni on Numbers 27:20). Legitimacy has to become legible to the crowd. The scene reaches its completion years later at the edge of the Jordan, when God tells Joshua הַיּ֣וֹם הַזֶּ֗ה אָחֵל֙ גַּדֶּלְךָ֔ בְּעֵינֵ֖י כׇּל־יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל, “This day I will begin to make you great in the eyes of all Israel, that they may know I am with you as I was with Moses” (Joshua 3:7). Leadership is earned over time, not simply bestowed as a credential.

God commands Moshe וְסָמַכְתָּ֥ אֶת־יָדְךָ֖ עָלָֽיו, “lay your hand upon him.” This is the origin of semicha, the term we now use to denote rabbinic ordination. Rashi adds color:

בְּעַיִן יָפָה, יוֹתֵר וְיוֹתֵר מִמַּה שֶּׁנִּצְטַוָּה... וְהוּא עָשָׂה בִּשְׁתֵּי יָדָיו, וַעֲשָׂאוֹ כִכְלִי מָלֵא וְגָדוּשׁ, וּמִלְּאוֹ חָכְמָתוֹ בְּעַיִן יָפָה.

“Generously, far more than he was commanded. The Holy One had said, ‘Lay your hand,’ and he did it with both hands, making him like a vessel full and heaped over, and filling him with his wisdom generously.” (Rashi on Numbers 27:23)

The dying leader empties himself into his successor with both hands and no jealousy. But the same Rashi keeps the transfer from turning sentimental. When God says וְצִוִּיתָה אֹתוֹ, “give him a charge,” Rashi supplies the fine print Moshe must speak to Joshua about the flock he inherits:

דַּע שֶׁטַּרְחָנִין הֵם, סַרְבָנִים הֵם, עַל מְנָת שֶׁתְּקַבֵּל עָלֶיךָ.

“Know that they are troublesome, they are stubborn; accept the office on that condition.” (Rashi on Numbers 27:19)

One lays hands on a sacrifice, too. And perhaps this is the connection: the leader must become a sacrifice to accept the burden of dealing with a stubborn flock.

There is the price of leading many spirits. Conflict and internal politics are structural and inevitable. A flock of separate wills exhausts whoever leads it precisely because it will not resolve into a single obedient body. The leader who can go according to the spirit of each and every one has signed on for the friction of every one of them. That leader will, in a sense, feel the strife of the community.

What is this ר֣וּחַ, in the end, that a leader has to grow capacious enough to meet? Reading the verse from Zechariah that speaks of God as וְיֹצֵ֥ר רֽוּחַ־אָדָ֖ם בְּקִרְבּֽוֹ, the One who “forms the spirit of man within him,” the Zohar treats a person’s spirit as something God shapes individually, on the inside, the way God shapes heaven and earth (Zohar, Miketz 6:1). A spirit runs deeper than personality. It is a divine act of forming, one per person, and God works it in secret.

Rabbi Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin explains: Every single Jew, he writes, is דגול ומנושא, distinguished and lifted up in some one thing in which no one else in all Israel equals him, because the root of each soul is a different letter of the same Torah. That is why the sages ordained a blessing over a great crowd, בָּרוּךְ חֲכַם הָרָזִים, “Blessed is the Knower of secrets,” because שאין דעתם דומה זה לזה, no two of their minds run alike (Pri Tzadik, Parashat Shekalim 1:2, citing Berakhot 58a). You bless the God who does not see a multitude even in a large crowd. God sees the secret at the root of each human soul.

So the God of the spirits of all flesh and the man in whom there is spirit turn out to be one idea, held at the two ends of a single prayer. The whole danger of Korach was a world that sees the many as one. The whole danger on the mountain in Moab is the mirror of it, a world where the one leader goes missing and the many come apart into a flock on the hills with no one at the head.

Between those two failures the Torah sets a single figure who can see both the individual and the collective.

Shabbat Shalom,
Zohar Etz Hasadeh

P.S. - I asked Yochai for some follow-up questions and challenges to my dvar. You can go here to carry on the conversation.