Let's Learn Wood

Parashat B’shelach, Exodus 13:17–17:16

David Friedman, UMJC rabbi, Jerusalem

Some years back in a closed study session, I was happy to study four verses from today’s parasha with my close friend, lecturer and author Ariel Berkowitz, and Eldon Clem, a scholar, rabbi, and world-class Aramaic expert. All three of us had been curious as to the meaning of four verses in our parasha. We read them every year in the parasha cycle, but it was never clear to us what these verses meant.

So with a holy drive, we sat down, rolled up our sleeves, brought out our Torahs, our Septuagints, our Targums, and our commentaries, and sat down, hungry to solve the mystery. Here are the verses:

Then Moshe brought Israel from the Red Sea, and they went to the Wilderness of Shur; so they went three days into that wilderness, and they found no water. Then, they traveled toward Marah, and they weren’t all to drink water from Marah, because they were bitter. So they named the place “bitterness.” Then the people complained about Moshe, saying, “What will we drink?” Then he cried to Adonai, and Adonai taught him wood, which he tossed in the water, and the waters were sweetened there. So there he gave them statutes and judgments. (Exodus 15:22–25)

The text reads strangely in the original Hebrew, and is a bit awkward in English as well. It literally states, “Adonai taught him (Moshe) wood.” Are we being told that Adonai taught Moshe about wood, making this a biology lesson? Perhaps he was teaching him which tree branches or leaves, when put into stagnant or polluted waters, purify the water, like a Steripen or chlorine? One Aramaic translation reads this phrase as, “Adonai trained Moshe wood.” Another Aramaic translation words it, “So he prayed before Adonai and Adonai taught him a tree.” But we have the same issue: what does that mean?

Rashi explains that verse 25 means that the Torah was involved in this incident at Marah. I like Rashi’s insight here: the contents of the Torah were somehow part of making the dead, stagnant, polluted water come to life. In the Garden of Eden, there was a tree called the Tree of Life, Etz Hayim in Hebrew. “In the middle of the garden, were the Tree of Life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Gen 2:9).

Again in Revelation 2:2, it is written, “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life; on each side of the river stood the Tree of Life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”

And again, in Proverbs 3:16–18: “Long life is in her right hand, in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are pleasant ways and all her paths are peace. She is a Tree of Life to those who embrace her; those who lay hold of her will be blessed.”

What is being talked about here? Wisdom, in this context. And where is Adonai’s wisdom found for us? Where do we learn about it, and study about it? In the Torah, in the Scriptures. The words and instructions of God are his wisdom. They are the Tree of Life that sweetens poisoned waters. They are life-giving words in the midst of human existence.

After an entire day of study, my two friends and I reached the conclusion that “teaching wood” was an idiom in ancient Hebrew, meaning “teaching the Torah.” The people of Israel in the book of Exodus would have been familiar with the image of the Tree of Life, the Etz Hayim. By teaching Torah to the people (as in 15:26), Moshe was truly presenting them with life and with real drinking water (as our holy Messiah himself stated, “He who comes to me shall have fresh water flowing from his belly,” John 7:38). Similarly, the wood cast into the water symbolizes how learning and applying the Torah to our lives leads to blessing, to life, to the Messiah, and to goodness. After all, fresh water was a necessary and life-giving item in the ancient Middle East then, and still is today.

If Exodus 15:22–25 means that Adonai was teaching them principles of the Torah, we might ask, which ones? Verse 26 already begins to answer: “If you will listen carefully to the voice of Adonai your God, and do what is right in his eyes; if you pay attention to his commands, and keep all his judgments . . .” So, listening to God and obeying him are the bottom lines to this lesson. And how do we know how to obey him? It is written for us in the Torah. It’s not a hidden mystery. What are God’s instructions and judgments? They are all found in the Torah.

In Exodus 15:25, the symbolic tossing of the wood or Tree of Life into the stagnant water was done to teach a truth to the people: If they will obey God’s instructions to them, they will have life. God’s instructions, when obeyed, produce life! Exodus15:26 summarizes that truth:

If you listen carefully to the voice of Adonai your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am Adonai, who heals you.

And then comes Exodus 15.27: “They came to Eilim, where there were twelve springs and seventy palm trees, and camped there by the water.” God led them to quite the oasis. Twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees. There was a lot of shade and water. I spent time in the Sinai Peninsula, that same place where Moshe led the people at this point in our verses. The elements there, the sun, the sand, the wind, and the darkness at night, are all very present. At night, we could feel the darkness, almost as if you could reach out and touch it. I can imagine that to people used to living in Goshen, being in the Sinai would throw them for a loop. It was scary and uncomfortable. So God spoke right into this situation, and taught them “wood.” That is, he taught them that if they would obey his instructions, his Torah, this would produce life, even in a wilderness that was full of difficult and fear-producing natural elements.

This incident of 15:22–26 is one where God showed his way to the entire people. The wood being thrown into the water was a symbolic act that summarized everything that God was teaching them, the bottom line, the crucial lesson that they had to learn to do well on their journey. He taught them “wood,” an idiom for, “He taught them the bottom line of the Torah”—hear and obey. It is the same lesson that we find in Deuteronomy 6:4: Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheynu Adonai Echad. Hear and act upon what you hear, Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is One.

Now, the text does indeed say that when the wood hit the water, it transformed the stagnant water into drinking water. But this miracle has its meaning, to me, in that a larger lesson was learned.

And what relevance do these verses have for us?

Quite a bit, I would think. The prophet Malachi wrote: “I am Adonai; I do not change. And so you, Jacob’s sons, you are not destroyed” (3:6). If, 3400 years ago, God emphasized that the people needed to learn the Torah and to keep it, he would have the same message today to you and to me. Let’s remember that it is written: “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide, we might have hope” (Rom 15:4).

Scripture citations are translated by the author.