In Parashat Behaalotecha, we read about the seventy prophets who were appointed to help Moshe Rabbenu. Two of those prophets, named Eldad Medad, gave a certain prophecy, and when Yehoshua – Moshe Rabbenu’s assistant – heard about it, he was very upset. He exclaimed, אדוני משה, כלאם – “My master, Moshe, put them in jail!”
The Midrash explains that Eldad and Medad gave a prophecy that Moshe would die in the desert, and it would be Yehoshua who would lead Beneh Yisrael into the land (which is, of course, what eventually happened). Yehoshua was very disturbed by this, and he urged Moshe to punish them. Moshe, in his great humility, assured his student that everything was ok. He said:
המקנא אתה לי? ומי יתן כל עם ה' נביאים, כי יתן ה' את רוחו עליהם!
Are you zealous for me?! If only the entire nation of Hashem would be prophets, that Hashem would place His spirit [of prophecy] upon them!
There is a word which the Torah uses in this story which at first seems unnecessary. When the Torah tells us of Yehoshua’s response to Eldad and Medad’s prophecy, it says that Yehoshua was מבחוריו – “one of his young ones,” one of the young men whom Moshe taught and who assisted Moshe. Why do we need to know that Yehoshua was a בחור, a young man? Why is this important? How is Yehoshua’s young age relevant to the story?
The Gemara states in Masechet Nedarim (40a):
אם יאמרו לך ילדים בנה וזקנים סתור שמע לזקנים ואל תשמע לילדים שבנין ילדים סתירה וסתירת זקנים בנין.
If youths tell you to build, and elders tell you to destroy, listen to the elders and do not listen to the youths – because the building of youths is destruction, and the destruction of elders is building.
There is a tendency among youngsters to make a big deal out of something which isn’t a big deal. They see some problem, something that isn’t quite right, and they right away want to “build,” to do something drastic. One of the things we learn as we grow older is the patience and the wisdom to know when not to “build,” when rushing to “build” will actually be destructive, when it’s better to just accept a situation without panicking and without responding with drastic measures.
This might be why the Torah emphasizes Yehoshua’s youthfulness in this story.
Of course, Yehoshua was a truly outstanding young man, who ended up succeeding Moshe Rabbenu as leader of the nation. But in his youthfulness, he rushed to a drastic conclusion – that Eldad and Medad needed to be punished. Moshe, who was older and wiser, told Yehoshua that this wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t something to get excited about. To the contrary, Am Yisrael would be better off with more prophets.
This lesson is relevant to many different areas of life, one of them being family relationships. All families, virtually without exception, go through difficult periods. Even Moshe Rabbenu had problems in the family. The pesukim at the end of Parashat Behaalotecha tell that Miriam and Aharon – Moshe’s sister and brother – spoke critically about him, and Hashem was angry about them for their inappropriate speech about Moshe. All families go through difficult periods. When it happens, it is important to stay calm, and not to make a tense situation more tense by getting all upset about it and resorting to drastic measures.
The same is true about marriage. All marriages have ups and downs. In a healthy marriage, the couple doesn’t fall apart when they hit a rough patch. They get over it, and they try to learn from it. We need to know when not to make a big deal out of something which isn’t a big deal, to recognize that things can be imperfect without being a major crisis. By keeping calm and not turning the problem into something bigger than it is, we can grow from the experience and make things much better going forward.