ספר במדבר

Numbers 16,28. “none of it was of my own ‎devising.” These words of Moses help us understand 17,8 ‎where the survivors accuse Moses and Aaron as having ‎engineered the death of “G’d’s people.” We have a rule that the ‎‎tzaddik, by means of his prayers, can bring about events ‎that had not previously been decreed by G’d to happen. On the ‎other hand, perhaps more frequently, the tzaddik’s prayer ‎is the catalyst that sets in motion the execution of a Divine ‎decree whose time had not previously been ripe for execution. In ‎this instance, the Israelites who had watched Korach and the ‎other rebels descend to their death, suspected Moses of having ‎been the instigators of the death of these people through their ‎prayers. In our verse, Moses wants to make clear that what is ‎going to happen is not something that he had either instigated or ‎hoped for. G’d Himself, without any contribution by himself or ‎Aaron, had both decreed and executed it.‎