Maimonides and the Sin of Meribah
Maimonides, in the fourth chapter of his Eight Chapters, posits that a major endeavor of the individual is to gain moral perfection through the probing of one’s actions and psychology and consequently fixing the defects. “The moral man will constantly examine his characteristics, weigh his actions, and daily investigate his psychic condition… Likewise, he is bound to be mindful of his defects, and constantly endeavor to remedy them.” He goes on to say, quoting “the philosophers” as well as Scripture, that it is rare indeed to find a person who started off perfect, without need to perfect himself, and “it is impossible for any man to be free from all faults.”
This is the way he introduces the sin of Moses at the rock of Meribah. Maimonides states that Moses’ sin was one of anger, apparently an example of a moral defect.
All this (God said) although the sin of Moses was only that he departed from the moral mean of patience to the extreme of wrath when he exclaimed,"Hear now ye rebels" etc., yet for this God found fault with him that such a man as he should show anger in the presence of the entire community of Israel, where wrath is unbecoming. This was a profanation of God's name, because men imitated the words and conduct of Moses, hoping thereby to attain temporal and eternal happiness. How could he, then, allow his wrath free play, since it is a bad characteristic, arising,as we have shown, from an evil psychological condition?...
So, when Moses said or did anything, they subjected his words or actions to the most searching examination. Therefore, when they saw that he was becoming angry, they said, "He has no moral imperfection! He must know that God is angry with us for demanding water, and that we have stirred up the wrath of God, for otherwise he would not be angry with us". However, we do not find that when God spoke to Moses about this matter, He was angry, but on the contrary, said, "Take the staff . . . and give drink to the congregation and their cattle".
It seems to me that, according to Maimonides, while the sin of Moses certainly was his mistake in becoming angry, it was also the result of the anger, which was a public "profanation of God's name". This second problem is a strange one for Maimonides to mention. What do we care what the people thought, in terms of Moses’ own moral perfection or imperfection? As I noted above, the purpose of Maimonides bringing in the example of the sin of Moses is to show that even the greatest of prophets is not completely perfect, at least not at the time of the story of Meribah. One can suggest that he is just mentioning a secondary “sin”, a profanation of the name of God, in that it caused wrong opinions in the people, but not an immoral quality in Moses himself. More likely in my eyes, it is indeed another aspect of the problem of anger specifically in Moses, because someone who is considered worthy of a reflection of the divine can't make mistakes like that.
Nahmanides on Numbers 20 vehemently disagrees with the notion specifically that Moses’ sin was his excessive wrath, for several reasons, both within Scripture as well as logically based. He presents other places in the Torah where Moses stated something similar to “Hear now ye rebels”, see Deuteronomy 9:24. And a very different problem is that Aaron is mentioned as a sinner as well in this story, yet what did Aaron do wrong? Many other objections are noted there. His own understanding is that Moses implied that Moses and Aaron would be providing the water, by saying “we” instead of “God”, and the whole point was for the people to see the providence of God in this matter.
In addition, I would also note that Maimonides himself seems to contradict himself when it comes to anger. In Deot 1:4 he states that:
"The upright path is the middle path of all the qualities known to man... How does one do this? He should not be a person of rage who easily angers nor a corpse with no feelings. Rather, he should be in the middle: He should only anger over serious matters regarding which anger is appropriate -- so that the same offense will not be repeated."
So there are appropriate cases of anger. Yet in Deot 2:3, he states that:
“So too is anger an exceedingly bad quality; one from which it is proper that one distance himself to an extreme. A person should train himself not to anger even on a matter regarding which anger is appropriate. And if a person wants to instill awe upon his children -- or if he is an administrator and wants to anger at the community members in order that they mend their ways, he should only feign anger in their presence in order to castigate them, but his mind should be composed within. He should act as one impersonating an [angry] man while not being angry himself.”
Maimonides himself believes that the appearance of anger by an individual in order to correct the actions of others, such as to teach a student/child, so long as it is pretend. So, either, there is no problem with Moses being angry so long as he stays within the middle path. Or, we can at least assume that Moses was merely pretending to be angry, but wasn’t really as such. So what really was the problem of Moses’ anger in this case?
I would posit, then, that the real sin was not the anger itself, but the moral defect in a person who gets to a level where people conclude some truths from their actions. Aaron was also on this level, and was together with Moses at this time, and did not undo these mistaken notions in the people. Meaning, Moses moral level was so high that the people assumed that since he has no imperfection, he must be actually angry only because God was actually angry.
The question is whether the theological problem was that God was angry specifically about this complaint, or that God ever gets angry. We know that Maimonides denies that God would ever get angry, since he views it as a moral defect that could not be present in a perfect being. The Ritva, in defending Maimonides in his Sefer Zikaron, states that, “When Maimonides said that God did not get angry, he wasn't saying that there was no wrongdoing on Israel's part. God forbid. No, he was saying that they sinned, but for this particular sin, God was not angry with them.” So Ritva opines that it is the former problem. But it is unclear why that is a problem, for the people to believe that God was angry in a case where He was in fact not. So I think Ritva is probably wrong in that respect.
More likely, Maimonides saw in Moses’ action that he taught the people that God could get angry. Because otherwise, why did Moses get angry? “He has no moral imperfection!”, Maimonides puts into their mouths. What is Maimonides saying here? If they believed that Moses had no moral imperfection, why would they conclude that God had a moral imperfection? I think that to tie this into Maimonides introduction to this section, and to tie this into the theme as a whole, that the people did not conclude a theological wrong in God, that God gets angry. It goes further than that. They used the fact that Moses got angry and, consequently that means that God was angry, and given that both are perfectly moral beings, that anger is not a moral imperfection.
This is what, I believe, Maimonides meant to say Moses’ sin was. He accidentally taught the people that anger is not a moral defect, when according to Maimonides, it is one of the biggest moral defect, that one should avoid at all costs. His sin was demonstrating a moral defect, even if he himself did not feel anger, at a level where the people would make moral conclusions from it. This was a problem because then people could not perfect their own actions. As he stated above, a main endeavor is to fix one’s action. Yet, if one doesn’t believe anger is a moral defect (such that it would be absent in God or a divine man like Moses/Aaron), how could they ever remedy that situation?
“This was a profanation of God's name, because men imitated the words and conduct of Moses, hoping thereby to attain temporal and eternal happiness. How could he, then, allow his wrath free play, since it is a bad characteristic, arising,as we have shown, from an evil psychological condition?” In my reading of this, it was not in particular that he appeared angry. It was that he was not allowed to appear angry. Anger is always a moral defect, “arising… from an evil psychological condition.” He allowed himself to show anger, which had consequences as to the people’s understanding of anger’s status as a morally imperfect state. How can a man be expected, as a major human endeavor, to examine his faults, if he is unaware they are faults at all?
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