Parashat Korah – A land flowing with milk and honey

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“Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”, so was announced by Tolstoy. Indeed, through the examination of Korach, Datan and Aviram’s complaints, we can see that they are not all identical: Korach calls for equality, and defies the status granted to Moshe and Aharon - “Why then do you raise yourselves above Hashem’s congregation?”. On the other hand, Datan and Aviram complain that they did not receive the estate that was promised to them:

Is it not enough that you brought us from a land flowing with milk and honey to have us die in the wilderness, that you would also lord it over us?

Even if you had brought us to a land flowing with milk and honey, and given us possession of fields and vineyards, should you gouge out those men’s eyes? We will not come!”

(Bamidbar 16:13-14)

According to them, Moshe took them out of ‘a land flowing with milk and honey’ - that obviously making reference to Egypt, and his promise to bring them to another ‘land flowing with milk and honey’ - he did not complete. Indeed, God had promised many times to bring Israel to a land flowing with milk and honey. Thus, for example, at the first meeting between God and Moshe we are told:

And the LORD continued, “I have marked well the plight of My people in Egypt […] I have come down to rescue them from the Egyptians and to bring them out of that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the region of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

(Shemot3:7-8)

It seems, then, that the expression ‘a land flowing with milk and honey’ uniquely represents the Land of Israel, it being a prosperous and wide land in a manner contrary to the poverty of Egypt. Datan and Aviram’s declaration is twofold: Moshe did not fulfil his promise and did not bring the people to the Promised Land, while at the same time, depriving them of the favourable land of Egypt, which is also described in their words as “a land flowing with milk and honey”. Their intent is clear: “Let us head back for Egypt”. (Bamidbar 14:4)

In his speech in Devarim, the act of Datan and Aviram, together with the promise to come to ‘the land flowing with milk and honey’, are mentioned again by Moshe Rabbeinu at the end of the forty years of wandering in the desert. Moshe turns to the people and mentions the various signs they saw along the way - the signs in Egypt and at the Red Sea come to testify for the greatness of the Hashem.

From the many signs in the wilderness, Moshe chooses to mention specifically Datan and Aviram:

what He did for you in the wilderness before you arrived in this place; and what He did to Datan and Aviram, sons of Eliav son of Reuven, when the earth opened her mouth and swallowed them, along with their households, their tents, and every living thing in their train, from amidst all Israel— but that it was you who saw with your own eyes all the marvellous deeds that the LORD performed.

(Devarim 11:5-7)

Remembering the signs is supposed to lead to observing the commandments, which will bring the people to the Promised  Land - ‘the land flowing with milk and honey’:

Keep, therefore, all the Instruction that I enjoin upon you today, so that you may have the strength to enter and take possession of the land that you are about to cross into and possess, and that you may long endure upon the soil that Hashem swore to your fathers to assign to them and to their heirs, a land flowing with milk and honey.

(Ibid. 8-9)

In his speech, however, Moshe continues to deal directly with the claims of Datan and Aviram, where he explicitly distinguishes between the land of Egypt and the land of Israel:

For the land that you are about to enter and possess is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come. There the grain you sowed had to be watered by your own labors, like a vegetable garden; but the land you are about to cross into and possess, a land of hills and valleys, soaks up its water from the rains of heaven.

(Ibid. 10-11)

The reading of this speech in the context of Datan and Aviram clarifies the emphasis of Moshe Rabbeinu’s words: Although the land of Egypt is indeed a fertile land, there is a profound difference between the land of Egypt and the future land of Israel. While Egypt is nourished by the Nile, and its agriculture is based on the constant tide of the Nile - the land of Israel is a land of mountains and hills, nourished by the rains of heaven.

The spiritual meaning of this is clarified in the following verse:

It is a land which Hashem your God looks after, on which Hashem your God always keeps His eye, from year’s beginning to year’s end.

(Ibid. 12)

The climatic state of dependence on heavenly rains creates a constant connection between the earth and God. The description of the extreme abundance of the Land of Israel, ‘a land flowing with milk and honey’, is at the same time a description of a tense interim situation, which is regularly sentenced. At the end of Moshe Rabbeinu’s speech, in the parasha of “והיה אם שמוע - If, then, you obey the commandments”, we learn that the purpose of the heavenly rains in the Land of Israel depends on the observance of the commandments and is an immediate expression of the spiritual state of the Jewish people.

In contrast to Datan and Aviram, who are swallowed up in their desire for the stable earth, Moshe demands to keep the gaze towards the sky - to the eyes of God who look from above and affirms the existence of the Land of Israel. The abundance of the Land of Israel is supposed to enhance the connection between man and God, and not to become, God forbid, a spiritual barrier. Those who live in the Land of Israel are to be more spiritually alert due to the fear and soul-searching the conditioned abundance brings.

Chaza”l, through various midrashim, discussed the relationship between the Korach matter and the conclusion of the previous parasha, Parashat Shelach, dealing with the commandment of Tzitzit. Following our reading of the dispute between Moshe and Datan and Aviram, we can propose an additional layer to the connection between the parashiyot. The tzitzit tied to the garment can also be construed as an expression of an open and alert existence to the sky - the threads hanging from the edges of the garment seem to unravel its closed, square existence, inviting the observer to remember, to be careful not to look after the outer dimension of earth and the mundane but instead to look up.