Beha'aloscha

‎‎Our parsha contains a very interesting phenomena not found anywhere else in the Torah. A few seemingly misplaced pesukim are bracketed and separated from the pesukim before & after with upside-down letter Nuns. 

In an effort to explain this occurrence, Rashi states that the reason the Torah utilizes this unique configuration is to separate between two ‎troublesome episodes involving the Jews.

However, the Ramban questions this explanation since the section prior to these bracketed sentences does not seem to contain any misbehavior by the Jews while there are two instances of trouble afterwards: first, that they complained about the difficulty of the journey & second, that they complained about the manna, the special food created for them by Hashem. 

So the Ramban explains, based on a midrash, ‎that the sin that occurred prior to our section, was the  speed with which the Jews were anxious to leave Har Sinai, like schoolchildren running away from school. This desire stemmed from their belief that Hashem was going to give them more Mitzvos.  This is what the posuk means when it states 'ויסעו מהר ה, they traveled from the mountain of Hashem, their thoughts were to get away from there as fast as they could  because it was Hashem's mountain.  They wanted to run away before He had the chance to give them any more mitzvos. That was the sin of the Jews that occurred prior to our section, answering the difficulty with Rashi’s explanation.

Now, however, that the Torah wanted to separate between these two sins of the Jewish people, what is symbolic of the letter Nun and why inverted?

The gemara relates that when Dovid Hamelech wrote Ashrei, which is written acrostically with each sentence beginning with the next letter in the alphabet, the only letter of the Alepf Bais that's absent is the Nun. The gemara explains this omission by saying that the Nun represents נפילה, falling, or going down; Dovid Hamelech did not want to remind us of the failings of the Jewish people so he skipped the letter Nun. Therefore, in our parsha, when the Torah wants to separate the sins of the Jewish people it uses the letter Nun which symbolizes fall, to differentiate between and separate the sins. 

We are now left with one other unanswered question regarding our section:  why are the Nuns inverted? Reb Yonasan Eibeschuts explains with a midrash that compares Hashem to a deer. Just as a deer turns its head backwards when running away, so, too, Hashem, even when we sin & He's running away from us, He turns His head toward us.  Even in the time of our complaints and misbehavior, and Hashem is running away from us, He never, even for a moment, totally forgets about us. 

The inverted Nun, which is symbolic of falling, is used to teach us that,  just as the deer, Hashem looks back at us, ignores our flaws & and shortcomings and just focuses on the good in us. We have to apply this lesson to ourselves as well. Even when we want to run away from someone we consider unworthy, we shouldn't totally turn away. We should always look back‎.  Just as Hashem looks away from our flaws & sees our good, we should only see the good in everything too!