Take Yehoshua…place some of your majesty upon him, so that the entire assembly of the Bnei Yisrael will take heed.[2]
What would have been so terrible had Moshe placed “majesty” upon his protegee, rather than a pared-down “some of” his majesty? Was Moshe holding back in passing the baton of leadership?
Not a bit. Rashi, citing Chazal, explains what happened. The reduced majesty was inevitable. Moshe was like the sun in its brilliance; Yehoshua was, alas, only like the moon. (This was apparently inevitable, as we shall see.) The elders of the generation, examining this phenomenon, said, “Woe to this shame! Woe to this humiliation!”
The sudden decline in greatness from Moshe to Yehoshua was indeed a shocking transformation. It was received as a shameful blow to the community. But anyone could have noted it. Why was it specifically the elders who discerned the shame, and verbally expressed it?
I once heard a suggestion from the elderly son of the Ketzos Hachoshen. The gemara[3] explains why the names of the vast majority of the zekeinim who formed Moshe Rabbenu’s beis din where not identified by name. People in future generations might balk at submitting to the authority of a local rav. “Why should I? Is he of the caliber of Moshe? Or Aharon? Or Nadav? Or Avihu?” By leaving the bulk of Moshe’s court unnamed, we will be able to respond to them. “Not really. But he is as good as one of the lesser lights of the nameless members on Moshe’s beis din!” The Ketzos’ son said that it was those zekeinim who mourned most intensely when they saw the rapid decline of generations. They realized that they would be the ones to which future (relative) ignoramuses would be compared to! (True – he said it as a joke. It is not the real pshat. But I offer it because it affords me the opportunity to mention the name of the Ketzos!)
We could explain, based on how the Rav Yosef Albo[4] understands the sun-moon relationship of Moshe and Yehoshua. It’s not the brightness, per se, he says. It is in the fact that the moon does not have its own source of illumination. It only reflects what it receives from the sun. This was true of Yehoshua as well. All he had was from Moshe. He had nothing of his own. When the zekeinim applied this to themselves, they felt the humiliation of the collapse of their own self-worth reduced. They stood before their own gaze as lesser people than the day before.
We could take this to the next level. Not only does the moon lack its own light, what it does reflect is directly related to its position relative to the sun. When it faces the sun most directly, it reflects more light.
Similarly, reasoned the zekeinim, Yehoshua’s light depended at all times on his proximity to Moshe. They saw what this meant for the future. The further away Klal Yisrael would be removed from Moshe, the weaker would be its illumination. They gloomily pondered the consequences of a steady decline through the generations. What shame! What humiliation!
But why was it specifically the zekeinim who realized this? Because they, most of all, appreciated the true stature of Moshe Rabbenu. They, therefore, understood the precipitous drop-off in the transition to Yehoshua, and how that would be repeated countless times in future years.
- Adapted from Divrei Shaul, by Rav Yosef Shaul Nathanson zt”l, the Shoel U-Meshiv ↑
- Bamidbar 27:18,20 ↑
- Rosh Hashanah 25a ↑
- Sefer Ha-Ikarim 3:11 ↑