Venatan meimav. The rock will give its waters. This is how God instructs Moshe to get water for the thirsty people, how He wants things to work in His world: The rock will give its waters. You just have to ask for them, to speak gently to the rock, and the rock will unlock its store and surrender its treasures. In the process, the people would then see and understand that God’s world has every single thing we need at all times, ready to be delivered to us just for the seeing and the asking and the trusting.
It is all there, ready to flow, if only we can go with the flow.
But Moshe, in this instance, is in an angry hard state. (We know from this.) His energy is not a go with the flow energy but a fighting energy. He speaks, but not with gentleness; he speaks harshly and sarcastically, with anger and rebuke and bite, both directed at the people — Listen up, you rebels — and also at the rock — are we really going to get water from this rock? Instead of using his rod as a tool for gathering the people, he uses it as a weapon. He raises up his hand in anger and strength and uses force to open up that rock, hitting it with the rod not once, but twice, with seemingly no pause between, twice in quick succession, getting out his anger and trying to force both rock and people into submission and to establish some control over an unmanageable situation. The rock doesn’t gently “give” its waters here. Moshe uses force, and the rock responds in kind — as if a wound has been opened — and copious water comes gushing out.
It works. The people do receive their water. And the truth is that force often does get the job done. The rock is forced to submit. People can be forced to do certain things, even against their will. The world can be forced to produce in an unnatural way. We can fight with ourselves and force ourselves to feel and act in a certain way.
But at what price? These are mei merivah — “fighting” waters. We know what those taste like. We live most of our lives in such waters, always forcing and trying to control the situation — the outcome or the feeling or the way someone will react. We desperately want to make sure it all works out well — or at least “well” as we see it — and so we take control and force things to go in a certain direction. The more resistance, the harder we push; if it doesn’t work with one hit, we hit again. This doesn’t feel great. We are in constant war, divided against ourselves and each other. Forcing is a fighting mentality. We get no peace this way.
What we don’t understand is that there is a natural, divine flow to this world we live in and if we surrendered to it and put our energies into going with the flow and allowing and encouraging the unfolding rather than fighting it, we would achieve the same, maybe better, results, and we would also have a measure of peace, a sense of being at one with God, ourselves and each other.
The rock really does want to give up its waters. What is required is for us to really really trust — that’s why God sees this as a failure in helping the people develop greater faith — that the universe holds us and that there is Someone in charge and that everything we need is right here, before our eyes, no lack, nothing missing in God’s universe. To trust is not to stop acting. Moshe still needs to gather the people and speak to the rock. We still have to act, but it is a different kind of act, gentler, subtler, more flowing and trusting, an act of allowing and encouraging the unfoldment that is all right here, just waiting for us to let go.
