Rock n' Roll: Parshat Hukkat

(10) At the time he raised the staff he struck it twice in succession followed by saying :did you really think that we would produce water from this rock?” Moses said this because he harboured doubt; seeing that G’d had instructed him to take the staff with him (verse 8) he did not think that speaking to the rock was meant to result in the rock yielding up its water, but that striking it may be required, just as he had done at Refidim.
As to the fact that G’d had specifically instructed him to “speak” to the rock, he thought that speaking to a rock, i.e. communicating one’s thoughts to it, consisted of striking the rock. In the absence of certainty about which course to follow, Moses decided to speak to the rock in addition to striking it, but G’d had already indicated that He accepted Moses’ striking the rock by making all that water come forth.
In spite of G’d’s apparent approval of what Moses had done he was punished, seeing that G’d employs more stringent rules in dealing with the righteous such as Moses than He applies to ordinary mortals. This is what He meant when he said in verse 12 “because you did not demonstrate faith in Me to use this opportunity to sanctify Me by means of first having spoken to the rock.”
“Seeing that I, the commentator, am aware that Moses was quite incapable of deliberately countermanding G’d’s instructions, I had to explain the episode as resulting from an error Moses made.”

(12) יען לא האמנתם בי BECAUSE YE BELIEVED ME NOT — Scripture discloses the fact that but for this sin alone, they would have entered the land of Canaan, in order that people should not say of them, “Even as the sin of the generation of the Wilderness (a term used of those who left Egypt) on whom it was decreed that they should not enter the Land was the sin of Moses and Aaron” (cf. Rashi on Numbers 27:13). But was not the doubting question (cf. Rashi on Numbers 11:22), “shall the sheep and oxen be slaughtered for them?” a more grievous lack of faith in God than this? But because that had been said in private (no Israelites being present and therefore it could have no evil influence upon them), Scripture (God) spared him (and did not make his lack of faith public by pronouncing punishment for it), but here, where all Israel were standing by, Scripture does not spare him because of the Hallowing of the Divine Name (cf. Tanchuma).

(12) להקדישני TO SANCTIFY ME — For had you spoken to the rock and it had brought forth water I would have been sanctified before the whole congregation, for they would have said: What is the case with this rock which cannot speak and cannot hear and needs no maintenance? It fulfils the bidding of the Omnipresent God! How much more should we do so?