“Hashem spoke to Moshe saying: “Take the staff and gather together the assembly . . .  and speak to the rock before their eyes that it give its waters . . . Moshe took the staff from before Hashem. . . . raised his arm and struck the rock with his staff twice; abundant water came forth  . . . [Then]Hashem said to Moshe and Aahron, ‘Because you did not believe in Me to sanctify Me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you will not bring this congregation to the land that I have given them….”.(Chukas: 20:7-).

               Let us ask what can we possibly learn from this episode that we can apply to our lives today, especially because about forty years earlier Moshe was actually asked to hit the stone as it is written: “I (Hashem) shall stand before you by the rock in Horeb; you shall strike the rock and water will come forth from it and the people will drink.”  (Beshalach 17:6)?

               The following moshal will hopefully address this question at one level: When a child runs out into the street without looking to see if it is safe, the proper and loving course of action is to hit his child just hard enough so that he will remember not to do such a dangerous thing in the future.

                However if an adult who is capable of understanding “cause and effect” relationships, jumps out into the street without looking, a more effective approach would be to speak to him rationally pointing out the potential deleterious consequences of such actions.

                   Perhaps, we can therefore learn from these two similar events a very profound lesson: What was appropriate for our fledgling nation to see and experience, at the beginning of their forty year spiritual metamorphosis, was Moshe’s hitting the stone with his staff in order to bring forth of water. This course of action, although still clearly a miracle, at least had the trappings of a physical “cause and effect” relationship of the hitting the stone causing the water to flow from it.

                 However after nearly forty years of spiritual “education” our nation had reached the exalted level to well realize the spoken word alone, especially words of Torah and tefillah, have power to override natural cause and effect, as in this case of bringing out water from a rock through the power of the spoken word.

                    Also there is to wonder why a stone was specifically chosen to facilitate the miracle rather than some other entity like a tree? Perhaps from here we can learn that if a rock which has no perceivable life force can bring forth a wellspring of water, how much more so can any person even if they appear to have a “heart of stone” can become a “wellspring” that brings forth for effervescent mitzvos and good deeds.