Last week we examined how our deeds and intentions determine how supernatural entities relate to us, whether to our advantage or, G-d forbid, in assailing us. In our parsha this week we encounter a very famous story of an avenging angel that is turned for and against us, and eventually compelled by the wisdom of Moshe and Aharon to withdraw from its campaign to destroy us. There are many layers to this fascinating episode, which is viewed by different Midrashic sources from various angles. We will approach it from the perspective we introduced last week – of understanding how our decisions affect our outcomes – even, and especially, in dealing with miraculous forces.
The Gemara (Shabbat 89a) relates, and Rashi cites in our parsha (Bamidbar 17:11), that the secret to stopping the Angel of Death by means of the ketoret was taught to Moshe by the Angel of Death himself. Midrash Tanchuma (Ki Tisa 20) presents a slightly different version of this account, with considerably more detail. According to Tanchuma, when Israel worshiped the Golden Calf, five avenging angels were unleashed that came into the world to destroy us. Moshe was able to quickly suppress three of them with the merit of our three Patriarchs, but he needed to employ his own spiritual arts and prayer to subdue the remaining two.
Rabbeinu Bachye teaches that one of these last two angels was reactivated by Israel in the aftermath of the rebellion of Korach, and this is what Aharon was called upon by Moshe to return to dormancy. According to this reading, paying close attention to the subtext we find the following sequence of events: Hashem creates malachim whose purpose is to wreak destruction in the world; Israel should be safe from their depredations because of our virtues and merits; Israel becomes corrupted and makes itself a suitable target for destruction, but Moshe intervenes and leverages his merit and the merit of the forefathers to restore the prior balance; Israel again rebels against Hashem and, according to Rabbeinu Bachye, the Divine attribute of judgment is awakened and the avenging angel associated with this attribute becomes active again in slaughtering the people of Israel.
It bears mentioning, tragically, that when judgment is rampant in the world and the “angel” has been unleashed for the purpose of destruction, it tends to consume the innocent alongside the guilty. We learn this most notably from the story of the Exodus when it was necessary to perform special rituals to protect the G-d-fearing households from the depredations of the destroyer. Through the mechanism of the ketoret, Aharon is somehow able to stand between the living and the dead (Bamidbar 17:13) and disrupt this process.
In his commentary on the aforementioned Gemara in Shabbat (Ein Aya, Shabbat 9:106), Rav Kook shares some insight into how Aharon is able to achieve this result, and why Moshe had the wisdom to deploy him. He explains that according to the plan of Creation, all the forces of nature are conducive to life, and sustain and promote it when good prevails and the evil inclination is kept in check. In such an ideal state, even the power of death is only a force for life and for good in the world. However, in our present state, spiritual and moral corruption are rampant and the circumstances exist for death and disease to poison our lives, to cause suffering, and to remove us from the world.
If an individual is so righteous that by virtue of his personal merits he can cancel out the power of judgment and of destruction around him, then he has the power to create something akin to a field of disruption around himself that can even cancel the power of death itself. We see this in legends of David and how the Angel of Death could not exercise power over him as long as he was composing Psalms (see. e.g., Ruth Raba). Aharon was a perfect tzaddik who, according to Pirkei Avot, was particularly well known for his passionate pursuit of the attribute of shalom – the preservation of the cosmic balance. Aharon had the power to interrupt death in his vicinity, but the sheer scale of the catastrophe that was afflicting Israel was beyond his capacity to disrupt on his own.
Rav Kook explains that Moshe understood that Aharon needed to wield the ketoret as an amplifier for this spiritual power in order to overwhelm the power of death that was embodied in the plague. The ketoret uses physical ingredients in a certain order and composition to instantiate spiritual balance and perfection in the material world. This is reflective of Aharon’s attributes and indeed it was uniquely commanded to him and his offspring to prepare, but the ketoret brings the power of the Torah itself into alliance with Aharon’s stand in defiance of death. Thus, the Torah describes how Aharon stands “between the living and the dead” (ibid.), and only later does he return to Moshe at the opening of the Tent of Meeting where the plague is arrested. Midrash Tanchuma explains that even with the ketoret, Aharon’s power was only sufficient to block the plague and to prevent it from crossing him to pass from the dead to the living and claim more victims.
During this standoff, Aharon was able to convince the Angel of Destruction to return to Moshe to accept his judgment as to whether he may continue on his divine mission of extermination. At last Moshe is able to neutralize the power of this Angel unleashed by Divine Judgment in response to the corruption of Israel, in much the same way he achieved this the first time around at the Golden Calf.
