Yaakov Hibbert Presents… The Bee Book

This week we start a new book, the last of the five Books of the Torah – “The Book of Devarim”, often referred to as Deuteronomy. Not being fluent in Latin or Greek [which ever one it is!] I have always felt that Deuteronomy was a bit of a mouthful. Well this year I’ve got great news, I’ve come across a new name for this book – “The Book of Bees”. The Medrash homiletically interprets the opening word of the book “devorim” – words, to mean “devoirim” – bees. The Medrash brings several comparisons between the words of Moshe to the Jewish Nation in this final Book and the way bees behave. Just as bees follow the leadership of their queen so do the Jews follow the leadership of their righteous ones and their prophets.

We know that in Hebrew the word describes the essence of the thing. What then is the connection between the two Hebrew words “devorim” and “devoirim”? What do bees and words have to do with each other?

In order to explain this, let’s go to another reference to bees in this week’s Parshah. After Moshe has recounted the story of the spies to the Jews he then goes on to rebuke them about the next episode. After Hashem had meted out the punishment of forty years in the desert, the chastised nation realised only too late its fault. After having wept over the thought of not being able to conquer the Land of Israel they then make a complete U-turn, “We have sinned to Hashem! We shall go up and do battle according to everything that Hashem, our G-d, has commanded us”. Defiantly they attempt to go against the word of Hashem and go into The Land of Israel on their own. We are told how the Jews were struck by the Amorite who pursued them like bees [Deuteronomy 1:42].

The commentators bring down many parallels between the attack of bees and that of the Amorites. Just as bees, die after they have stung, so too the Amorites died following the battle. Some see this as a description of how intense the hatred of the Amorites was. They were prepared to kill themselves to ensure that the Jews don’t take over the land, much like suicide bombers.

What still bothered me was the fact that we have a rule that the punishment always reveals what the essence of the crime was. What then does the fact that they got attacked like bees tell us regarding the root of the sin?

Let’s examine the bee. Bees we know form a complex society headed by a queen. Each bee on its own has no individual existence and only collectively as a hive does it survive. Various different bees fulfil different roles, one bee collects pollen, another produces honey, some look after the young, and some tend to every need of the queen feeding her and even cleaning up her waste! Working together in a structured kingdom, with the queen at the top, they accomplish their goal.

The wisest of all men, King Solomon said, “the king’s rule is with his word”. His word is the final word, and the whole kingdom is united, organized and focused through the kings instructions. Hashem’s rule over this world – the creation was again through words. As the first words we say every morning of “Boruch Sheomar” tell us, “Hashem spoke and the world came to be”. The word “dovor” itself is often translated as dominion and leadership [see Psalms 47:4]. Indeed the Gemora terms a leader a “dovor”.

How do you say “a thing” in Hebrew? “Dovor”.  This is because every item is ultimately just a word; the word of Hashem that wills it to be. It is the word of Hashem that tells electrons to continue spinning round their nucleus. If His word, His instructions were to stop then every “dovor”, every ‘thing’ would cease to exist. Mere matter would crumble to nothing.

It’s not surprising then that the bee is called a “devoira”. They are a most beautiful example of a kingdom. Each individual bee is a word of the kingdom. The instructions from their leader “dovor” is their very existence.

Indeed the bees themselves possess an incredibly sophisticated form of communication, a form of speech unparalleled in the animal world. Bees manage to relate to one another exactly where the pollen is located. Through a complex dance the bees can communicate the distances to the flower, and the direction relative to the sun (even in Manchester where cloud obscures the sun-rays the bee can determine where the sun is).

With this all in mind we can begin to understand why the punishment was to be attacked like bees. Their mistake was to go on a mission without the general. “Hashem said to me [Moshe] ‘tell them, do no ascend and do not do battle, for I am not among you’”. They tried to do their own job without The Word of The King instructing! They became a hive without a queen bee.

Perhaps with this we can better understand the Medrash that refers to the entire fifth book as “The Book of the Bees”. The entire book is our leader Moshe speaking to the nation. There are no accounts and stories like in the other parts of the Torah. It’s the last words of Moshe before he passes on the leadership to Yehoshua.

Good Shabbos, Yaakov.