Forty Years' Preparation for Exile

            Netziv [Deuteronomy 8:2] suggests that the purpose of Israel’s forty years of wandering in the wilderness was not only punishment for the generation which despised the Land, but  preparation for the nation’s exile from its Land, “by getting the nation used to wandering from place to place, as they did in the wilderness.”

            We may note two points concerning Israel’s journeys in the wilderness, which must influence the nation’s diaspora experience:

1) The destination of Israel’s forty-year trek was the Holy Land;

2) Throughout the forty years of wandering in the wilderness, Israel journeyed with the Tabernacle at its center, symbolizing the fact that the heart of the national experience and reality is Israel’s connection to God and His Torah.