Commento su Numeri 12:15

והעם לא נסע AND THE PEOPLE JOURNEYED NOT [TILL MIRIAM WAS BROUGHT IN] — This honour the Omnipresent showed her as a reward for the single hour she tarried for Moses’ sake when he was thrown into the river, as it is said, (Exodus 2:4) “And his sister placed herself afar off (i. e. she waited) [to know what would be done to him]” (Sotah 9b).

והעם לא נסע, even though the cloud had lifted off the encampment and the Tabernacle. The Torah writes: ובהעלות הענן מעל המשכן יסעו בני ישראל בכל מסעיהם, “when the cloud would lift from above the Tabernacle the Children of Israel would begin all their respective journeys.” They did not journey on this occasion as they realised that the reason why the cloud had lifted was in order to distance itself from the tzoraat.

והעם לא נסע, And the people had not travelled, etc. The Torah makes the people the principals in this decision. This is why the Torah did not write ולא נסע העם, but mentioned the people first. The people had expressed their willingness to delay their departure. Although, normally, the people's breaking camp was determined by the movement of the cloud, the Torah wanted to inform us that the people were willing to inconvenience themselves on account of Miriam's many merits. Had the people been aware that their entire water supply was due to Miriam's merit (compare Taanit 9) they would most certainly have chosen to remain near their source of water.

והעם לא נסע, ”And the people did not journey.” The reason was that the cloud had not risen. It was a great compliment for Miriam that both the cloud and the people waited for seven days until Miriam was cured. Our sages in Sotah 8 state that a person is “measured,” i.e. treated, in accordance with the way he treats others. Shimshon was in the habit of judging matters based on what his eyes saw, as we know from Judges 9,2 where he told his parents that he insisted that they arrange for his marriage to a Philistine girl seeing “she seems right in my eyes.” As a result of the yardsticks he applied, the Philistines in due course gouged out these very eyes which had misled him (Judges 14,3). Avshalom was very proud of his hair. As a result, when he was punished for rebelling against his father David and sleeping with 10 of his father’s concubines he was hung up by his hair (Samuel II 18,15). The same “measure for measure” principle works also in reverse, i.e. positive character traits displayed by individuals usually are rewarded by G’d in kind. Joseph who had taken a great deal of trouble to bring his father’s bones to burial in the Holy Land, was rewarded in Moses securing his casket and the people taking it with them to the Holy Land during their 40 year trek through the desert (compare Genesis 50,7 and Exodus 13,19). The most illustrious Israelite ever personally looked after keeping the promise made to Joseph by his brothers in this regard. Seeing Moses had taken so much trouble, he was rewarded by G’d Himself burying him (compare Deut. 34,6). We must not be surprised therefore that Miriam experienced the same kind of treatment. When her brother Moses had been lying in a basket in the reeds alongside the river Nile, she had kept watch from a distance in order to see what would develop (Exodus 2,4). Having kept watch for an hour or so at the time, she was now rewarded by the entire Jewish people waiting for seven days with their journey until she could rejoin the main body of the nation. In this connection our sages in Sotah 8 have said that although in practice the four kinds of death penalty in the Torah can no longer be applied seeing we do not have a Temple and our judges do not have that authority while we are in exile, the principle of such kinds of deaths has not been abrogated. When certain people die violent deaths this may reflect the fact that had there been a chance to convict them of the death penalty they would have been executed by a method parallel to that which caused their death. This is an ongoing miracle proving that what we call השגחה פרטית, “G’d’s individual supervision of each of our fates” is still very much in evidence. This is the meaning of Isaiah 30,18: ”for the Lord is a G’d of Justice; happy are all who wait for Him.”

The one hour. One may explain that this is because the attribute of goodness is five hundred times greater than the attribute of punishment. Thus Miriam, who waited for Moshe for a third of an hour was repaid with five hundred thirds of an hour — equaling seven days. They waited with her day and night for twenty four hours — and seven days and nights equal one hundred and sixty eight hours. This divided into thirds equals five hundred thirds. Though there are an extra four thirds in excess of the five hundred — the seven days — nonetheless, since it was not a complete day, only one and a third hours, this is insignificant. Furthermore it is also possible that in reward for going to call Moshe’s mother, another four thirds of an hour were added on for her. When Rashi says “one hour” he did not literally mean a whole hour, one out of the twenty-four hours in the day, rather “a period of time” meaning a third of an hour.

מחוץ למחנה שבעת ימים, “seven days outside the camp.” Not seven whole days, but the seventh day would be accounted as a whole day as our author had already explained once on Leviticus 13,5.