In response to Moses’ request not to bear the burden of the people by himself, God tells him to gather seventy elders to assist him. Since seventy does not divide evenly by twelve, an equal number of elders from each tribe could not be appointed. In order to spare Moses the unpleasantness of slighting any of the tribes, God instructed him to choose seventy-two elders (six from each tribe) and then cast a lot to determine which two would not be included in the final count. When two of the elders, Eldad and Medad, voluntarily opted out of the lottery in favor of the others, God’s spirit rested upon them and they began to prophesy. Joshua pleaded with Moses to stop them, but Moses responded: “Are you zealous for my sake? Would it be that all the people of God could be prophets, if God would place His spirit on them” (Numbers 11:29).
Although the Talmud (Sanhedrin 17a) presents a number of different versions of Eldad and Medad’s prophecy, Rashi chooses to cite the tradition from Sifrei that they prophesied Moses’ death in the desert and Joshua’s leading the children of Israel into the Promised Land. This tradition, which sheds light both on Joshua’s and Moses’ reactions, highlights Joshua’s humility and extraordinary love for his mentor and Moses’ lack of concern for his own fate. Indeed, as the Torah reports, Moses instinctive reaction was selfless: would that all the people were close enough to God to merit His spirit resting upon them.
Yet Moses’ words allude to an even deeper principle at work: the Talmudic assertion that whatever a great person says ultimately comes to fruition on some level. The classic example of this is Rachel’s tragic death in childbirth as a result of Jacob’s hasty vow to Laban that whoever was found guilty of stealing Laban’s idols would be put to death. Although the idols were not discovered and Jacob did not know that Rachel had in fact stolen them, his words, once spoken, ultimately sealed her fate.
Moses was also swept away by emotion when he pleaded with God to forgive the people after the sin of the Golden Calf: “And now if You would forgive their sin, and if not, erase me please from Your book that You have written” (Exodus 32:32). God did in fact forgive the people, but He also fulfilled Moses’ words on some level. Moses’ name appears in every single Torah portion from his birth at the beginning of Exodus to his death at the end of Deuteronomy, except for Tetzaveh, the portion preceding the sin of the Golden Calf. Since he is referred to in the portion’s first phrase and other times as well by the pronoun “you” – “And you command” – the Sages explain in a derash that God symbolically “erased” Moses’ name from this portion.
Just as the utterances of a great person have negative repercussions, they can also have positive ones. When Moses spontaneously prayed that all of God’s people should be prophets, he was basing this hope on each and every Jew’s innate potential to experience prophecy on some level. Although the prophetic era officially ended during the Second Temple period, even today individual Jews can have prophetic insights and experience Divine inspiration (ruach hakodesh).
Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato (the Ramchal) explains in his classic book Derech Hashem that although God may choose to speak with a certain individual directly or help a certain individual reach an elevated level of consciousness in order to communicate a particular message to his or her generation, prophecy can be defined more broadly than this. Ramchal teaches that, for the most part, the prophetic experience does not necessarily entail a direct and specific message transmitted by God to an individual; rather, prophecy in its more general manifestation is a state of elevated consciousness in which one comes very close to God and senses His immediate presence. In this sense, to have a prophetic experience is to attain a much higher level of Divine consciousness wherein one becomes intensely aware of God’s unequivocal Presence.
Although the Talmud establishes that there were forty-eight male prophets and seven female prophetesses, it explicitly states that this accounting only includes those prophets or prophetesses whose words or actions were deemed worthy of preservation in the Tanach because of their eternal nature (Berachot 57b). In fact, according to the Talmud there were more than a million Jewish prophets during the biblical period (Megillah 14a)! These prophets were people who strove with their entire being to come nearer to God by learning the various techniques handed down through the ages for attaining higher levels of consciousness. These prophets attended “schools” where the mystical Jewish tradition was taught and the more established prophets were surrounded by “sons of the prophets,” those who sought to learn and advance spiritually until they attained a genuine and unmistakable closeness to God, referred to as prophecy.
After the prophetic era ended, the Sages still found remnants of prophecy in dreams, which are considered 1/60th of prophecy, and in the words of children and those who seem to be mentally imbalanced (Berachot 57b; Bava Batra 12b). One tradition claims that when the Messianic era arrives, it will be accompanied by a renewal of prophecy (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Melachim 12:2). This is symbolized by Elijah the prophet returning to herald the coming of Mashiach. At a certain point prophecy will truly become a natural state of consciousness for all humanity. It is at this time that Moses’ words will be most fully actualized in a positive fashion.
