February 16, 2026|כ"ט שבט ה' אלפים תשפ"ו Little by Little: The Miracle of Slow Growth By Rabbi Jonathan Muskat

Can you imagine the scene? Bnei Yisrael are standing in the wilderness, fresh off Har Sinai, still echoing with the sound of the aseret ha-dibrot. They’re waiting for marching orders. They are not doing anything without a green light from God.  And maybe behind the scenes, God sends his angel Steve Witkoff to negotiate with the seven nations, sworn enemies of the Jewish people. He will probably tell the foreign minister of the seven nations that they have to give up their nuclear capability and their ballistic missile program and stop sponsorship of sin and sinful nations; otherwise, the outcome will be very traumatic. Then He summons Moshe for a private meeting in this week’s parsha and He tells Moshe what’s really going to happen. He tells Moshe that he will send His malach, His angel, to bring the Bnei Yisrael to the Promised Land. He will send eimah — dread — into the hearts of the enemy, and He will send tzirah, interpreted by some as hornets, by others as tzara’at, by others as the plague, to drive out the enemy. This will clearly be a miraculous conquest. And yet, in the very middle of describing these miracles, God adds a surprising limitation:

לֹ֧א אֲגָרְשֶׁ֛נּוּ מִפָּנֶ֖יךָ בְּשָׁנָ֣ה אֶחָ֑ת

I will not drive your enemies out in one year.

פֶּן־תִּהְיֶ֤ה הָאָ֙רֶץ֙ שְׁמָמָ֔ה וְרַבָּ֥ה עָלֶ֖יךָ חַיַּ֥ת הַשָּׂדֶֽה

Lest the land become desolate and the wild animal of the field increase.

מְעַ֥ט מְעַ֛ט אֲגָרְשֶׁ֖נּוּ מִפָּנֶ֑יךָ עַ֚ד אֲשֶׁ֣ר תִּפְרֶ֔ה וְנָחַלְתָּ֖ אֶת־הָאָֽרֶץ

Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you multiply and inherit the land.

Essentially, God predicts that the conquest will be slow — not because of weakness, but for deeply practical reasons. If the inhabitants were removed too quickly, the land would not be immediately occupied and tended. It would revert to wilderness. Wild animals would multiply. The pace of victory must match the pace of growth. Even the miracles are calibrated to reality. God promises to send panic and tzirah to aid in this gradual displacement, ensuring that Bnei Yisrael take possession securely — but only at the speed they are capable of sustaining.

And this raises a theological tension. Is the conquest miraculous or not? It clearly is. God is sending His angel. He is sending dread and plague. And yet He deliberately limits His own miracle. If the problem is wild animals occupying abandoned cities, couldn’t God simply perform another miracle and hold nature in suspension until Bnei Yisrael move in? Why impose struggle at all? Why not instant redemption?

If I were sitting in the heavenly war cabinet with the Heavenly Secretary of Defense and the head of the Heavenly Pentagon, I might be tempted to say: Ribbono Shel Olam, You are already rewriting nature — just add one more line to the miracle. But God refuses that suggestion. He builds resistance into the miracle. He embeds friction into redemption. The Sifri cites Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah, who suggests the slow conquest was a punishment. He senses the tension we feel. But the text itself does not read like rebuke. It reads like design.

There are miracles, and then there are miracles. There are open miracles that shatter nature, and there are hidden miracles that flow through nature. God’s prediction here is not of an overt supernatural takeover. It is a promise embedded in process. When God first forms Bnei Yisrael, He trains them through spectacle — plagues, a split sea, bread from heaven, water from a rock. But spectacle is not the destination. The goal is ordinary life infused with awareness. The ultimate spiritual achievement is not to live above nature, but to live within nature and still recognize the hand of God.

The conquest of Eretz Yisrael will look like history. There will be strategy, weapons, setbacks, effort. And yet God tells them in advance: there is a plan. Panic and pestilence will hint at God’s presence. Progress will be slow, but it will be steady. The challenge is faith not in fireworks, but in trajectory.

In 1963, the writer Amos Oz visited the first Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion in his Tel Aviv office. Under the glass on Ben-Gurion’s desk were the words: “מעט מעט אגרשנו מפניך.” When Oz asked why, Ben-Gurion answered: Jewish history has not yet spoken its final word; the borders of Israel are the borders of this generation. Pressed to explain, he listed prerequisites to expanding the borders of Israel: population growth, settlement of the Negev and Galilee, economic independence, and a rare international opportunity. History later supplied that opportunity in what we call the Six-Day War. In fact, in 1970, Ben Gurion wrote, “We will make a terrible and catastrophic mistake if we do not settle Hebron – neighbor and predecessor of Jerusalem – with a large and growing Jewish community as quickly as possible.

Whether one agrees with his politics or not, the instinct mirrors the Torah’s principle: land without people is vulnerability, not redemption. Promise without patience collapses under its own weight. You inherit the land only עד אשר תפרה — only when you have grown enough to hold it.

But the Torah is doing more than teaching geopolitics. It is cultivating a middah that our generation finds painfully difficult: patience. We live in an age of instant everything. Instant communication, instant delivery, instant answers. We want life to load as fast as an internet site. I teach high school seniors and I would like to express my deepest sympathy for them at this point in time. Anyone who teaches them knows the emotional truth of the desire for instant. By second semester they are done. Twelve years of schooling behind them, and they are itching for the exit. Every assignment feels like an obstacle between them and freedom. And the teacher says: not yet. Patience. There is still growth happening here.

That is precisely God’s message: מְעַט מְעַט. Not because He lacks power, but because we need formation. Patience is not a delay in the plan — patience is the plan. We build endurance by moving through time, not skipping it. We learn faith not only by witnessing miracles, but by trusting process. Sometimes we stumble along the way. Sometimes progress feels invisible. And yet the Torah insists: even the slowness is guided.

Think about the architecture of a life. Children grow little by little. Savings accumulate little by little. Marriages deepen little by little. Careers form through thousands of unglamorous days. Health, friendships, wisdom, character — none of them arrive in a lightning strike. They rise like dawn. Even decline happens this way; clutter in the attic, distance in relationships, habits of neglect — all built incrementally. Human existence itself is structured around gradualism. The Torah is aligning our expectations with reality.

God teaches us to go slow because speed without readiness is collapse. Growth requires space to stabilize. Spiritual maturity, emotional resilience, communal strength — these cannot be microwaved. We beg God for dramatic intervention, for instant transformation. But more often His kindness appears as the steady sunrise, not the thunderbolt.

The Hebrew word for patience is סבלנות. It shares a root with סבל, suffering, and סבלות, burdens. Patience can feel heavy. Waiting stretches us and exposes our illusion that we are absolute masters of our fate. Effort matters, but patience reframes effort as partnership with a larger plan. It is not only psychological endurance — it is theological humility.

מְעַט מְעַט is not a concession. It is a promise. Slow progress is still progress. Hidden miracles are still miracles. A path that unfolds gradually can still lead exactly where it is meant to go. If we learn to walk that path with trust, every small step becomes charged with meaning. We stop waiting for life to begin in some dramatic future moment and recognize that redemption is already arriving — quietly, faithfully, little by little — and that the ordinary pace of our days is the very rhythm through which holiness enters the world.