The Journey from Submission to Identification 

The midrash in Bereishit Rabbah states: 

R. Simon said: 'Light' is written five times [in this paragraph], corresponding to the Books of His Torah. 

Now God said: Let there be light corresponds to Genesis, in which is recorded that the Holy One, blessed be He, engaged in the creation of His world;

And there was light, to Exodus, in which it is told how the Israelites went forth from Egypt, out of darkness into light; […]

And God divided the light, to Numbers, which divides between those who departed from Egypt and those who entered the [holy] land…

The Book of Numbers, Bamidbar, is the story of the transition of the Israelites from the slavery of Egypt to living as free people serving God in the Land of Israel. The transition is multi-layered. One layer is political: The Ibn Ezra claims that the generation that left Egypt were unable to conquer the Land because of their inbred slave mentality. Thus a new generation must carry on. Yet this midrash points to a deeper layer. The light of creation shifts in Bamidbar. How so? The answer lies in understanding Moshe's transgression of God's command in the narrative of the "Waters of Contention."

The story is familiar. When the people thirst for water, God commands Moshe to speak to the rock in order to extract water from it. Instead, defying God's word, Moshe strikes the rock with his staff. The story becomes a bit more complex when we realize two points. First, that back in the Book of Exodus, in an analogous situation God actually commands Moshe to strike the rock in order to draw water. Second, in the narrative of the Waters of Contention we read,

The Lord said to Moshe, “Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink.”

Why should God command Moshe to take the staff (as in the Exodus narrative) and not strike with it?

The relationship between Moshe and the rock is an analogy for the relationship between God and Israel. Smiting the rock in order to extract water is akin to the God demanding servile submission to His uncompromising will. Talking to the rock corresponds to a model in which human behavior is an expression of internal awareness and identification with God. 

This is the spiritual movement which must take place in the journey from Egypt to Canaan. The new reality of the generation of those who will enter the Land needed to be demonstrated. That is why God commands Moshe to take the staff. He was supposed to take the staff and demonstrate the religious transition by actually NOT striking the rock. Moshe's failure to understand this is the reason he is no longer the appropriate one to lead the people. 

The Talmud Shabbat 138b states:

Rav said, The Torah is destined to be forgotten from Israel.

R. Mordechai Yosef of Ishbitz explains this to refer not to the content of the Torah but rather how the people relate to the Torah. In the future time God will hide and thereby enable the people of Israel to fulfill the Torah from a place of deep conviction rather than as a response to exterior command.

Thus, the narrative of the shifting light of creation, the path from submission before exterior authority to interior identification with God, which distinguishes between those who left Egypt and those who entered Canaan, is a blueprint of spiritual maturity for the individual and becomes an essential characteristic of the age of redemption.