Summary of the Parasha
The parasha opens with the law of the red heifer (Parah adumah): its ashes, mixed with living water, purify one who has touched a corpse, yet make impure the one who prepares them. It is the very model of a chok, a decree whose reason is beyond us; even King Solomon, says the Midrash, admitted he did not understand it.
Forty years have passed. Miriam dies at Kadesh; at once the water runs out, because Miriam’s well, which accompanied the people, disappears (Rashi). A tradition holds that this well circulates at the close of Shabbat, which is why some have the custom of drawing water at that time. The people complain; God tells Moses to speak to the rock, but Moses, in anger, strikes it twice. Water gushes out, but God tells Moses and Aaron: “You will not bring this congregation into the land”. The place is called Mei Merivah.
Moses asks the king of Edom to let Israel pass through his land, recalling the brotherhood of Esau and Jacob; Edom refuses and comes out armed. At Mount Hor, Aaron dies; Moses removes his garments and dresses his son Elazar in them. All Israel mourns him thirty days, for Aaron “loved peace and pursued peace” (Avot 1:12). The Canaanite king of Arad attacks and is defeated.
The people complain again about the manna; God sends fiery serpents (seraphim). Moses prays and makes a copper serpent on a pole: whoever looks at it is healed. Next come the stages of the journey and the Song of the Well: “Then Israel sang: Spring up, O well!” Israel asks Sichon, king of the Amorites, for passage; he refuses and attacks, and Israel conquers his land. Then Og, king of Bashan, the giant, is defeated in turn.
Summary of the Haftara
“V’Yiftach HaGiladi” (“And Jephthah the Gileadite”)
Text in Judges 11:1–33
Jephthah, son of a foreign woman, has been driven out by his half-brothers and lives on the margins with a band of men. When the Ammonites attack, the elders of Gilead come to beg him to lead them. Jephthah first tries diplomacy: he sends the king of Ammon a long message retelling the story of our parasha, how Israel asked Edom and Moab for passage, went around their land, then conquered the territory of Sichon, who had attacked it, three hundred years earlier. The king refuses; Jephthah makes a vow and wins the battle.
Parasha-Haftara Connection
Jephthah recites almost word for word the episodes of our parasha: Edom’s refusal, the detour, the war against Sichon. Three hundred years later, the history told in the Torah serves as Israel’s title deed to its land before the nations.