After the laws of vows and oaths, the Torah brings Israel’s war against Midian. Note this: at times the Torah makes small changes, and through them it asks us to study and grasp what it truly wants to teach us.

At the end of Balak, when Bilaam fails to curse, he gives Balak “advice”: the God of Israel hates immorality. The daughters of Midian enter the camp — “the people began to stray” — and as a result twenty-four thousand died in the plague. Therefore: avenge.

Hashem says “the vengeance of the children of Israel.” Yet Moshe conveys it to the people with a change:

The tribes of Gad and Reuven and half of Menashe ask for an inheritance east of the Jordan, saying:

First — pens for the flock and the property; only afterward — cities for the children.

Where did Moshe learn this? From Yaakov Avinu, as he parted from Esav:

A house is stable and permanent: there are the children, the wife, education, the Shabbat table. A booth (sukkah) is temporary. For the livestock — booths. How is money called in the language of the Gemara? Zuzim — from the root “zaz,” that which moves and shifts, here today and gone tomorrow.

Why does the Torah count all the journeys? To recall the shame of the desert generation — and the very engagement with it scours and atones for the sin.

Moshe Rabbenu does not enter the land, and is buried across the Jordan — by choice. “I brought them out of Egypt; the responsibility is mine to bring them into the land as well.”