By Rabbi Dovid Markel
One of the many themes of this week’s parsha are two verses that do not seem to fit into the narrative of the portion.
Before the Torah tells us of the Israelites’ complaints and their desire for meat, the verse (Bamidbar 10:35) states: “So it was, whenever the ark set out, Moshe would say, Arise, O Lord, may Your enemies be scattered and may those who hate You flee from You.”
Because the verse is out of place and merely serves “to make a break between one punishment and the next,” as the Talmud (Shabbos 116a) explains, there is a marker in the Torah indicating that it is distinct from the rest of the verses.
Indeed, the Talmud (ibid) goes so far as to say that these two verse actually make up an entirely separate book of the Torah!
Understood therefore, is that there must be an idea of paramount importance that is expressed in these two verses, which justifies having an entire book dedicated to them.
The holy Rebbe, Rabbi Mordechai Leiner, explains that the lesson being conveyed in the above verses is that before a person goes on a journey, they must beseech G-d for Divine assistance. Moshe did not rely on his own abilities in confronting the vast desert, but instead implored G-d for his intervention.
The Ba-al Shem Tov explains (Degel Machane Ephraim, Bamidbar 33:1) in regard to the Israelites’ journeys throughout the desert, that in each person’s life they travel through the same forty-two voyages that the Israelites sojourned.
It is understood therefore, that our personal travails must be akin to that of our forefathers and that we are to take lesson from them.
Possibly then, the critical life lesson that we are to learn in regard to our sojourn in this journey that we call life, is that we cannot rely solely on our own efforts.
In order to overcome the spiritual “enemies” in the vast desert of our lives, we must beseech G-d for Divine assistance. Only when we realize that it is not our own toil that helps us overcome life’s challenges, but the degree of which we attach ourselves to G-d-can we hope to make it through this treacherous voyage unscathed.
Furthermore, when we do cling to G-d and cry to him for help, the Holy Ark scatters our “enemies” to the point that it is if they never were.
