The Sin of the Spies: Human Error or Divine Plan? Rottenberg Memorial Teaching in Memory of Murray Rottenberg z"l

(1) ה׳ spoke to Moses, saying, (2) “Send agents to scout the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelite people; send one participant from each of their ancestral tribes, each one a chieftain among them.” (3) So Moses, by ה's command, sent them out from the wilderness of Paran, all of them being men of consequence, leaders of the Israelites.

(19) Is the country in which they dwell good or bad? Are the towns they live in open or fortified?

(20) Is the soil rich or poor? Is it wooded or not? And take pains to bring back some of the fruit of the land.”—Now it happened to be the season of the first ripe grapes.

(27) This is what they told him: “We came to the land you sent us to; it does indeed flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. (28) However, the people who inhabit the country are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large; moreover, we saw the Anakites there. (29) Amalekites dwell in the Negeb region; Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites inhabit the hill country; and Canaanites dwell by the Sea and along the Jordan.” (30) Caleb hushed the people before Moses and said, “Let us by all means go up, and we shall gain possession of it, for we shall surely overcome it.” (31) But the other men who had gone up with him said, “We cannot attack that people, for it is stronger than we.” (32) Thus they spread calumnies among the Israelites about the land they had scouted, saying, “The country that we traversed and scouted is one that devours its settlers. All the people that we saw in it are of great size;

(33) we saw the Nephilim there—the Anakites are part of the Nephilim—and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.”

(22) Then all of you came to me and said, “Let us send agents ahead to reconnoiter the land for us and bring back word on the route we shall follow and the cities we shall come to.” (23) I approved of the plan, and so I selected from among you twelve participants, one representative from each tribe. (24) They made for the hill country, came to the wadi Eshcol, and spied it out. (25) They took some of the fruit of the land with them and brought it down to us. And they gave us this report: “It is a good land that our God ה׳ is giving to us.” (26) Yet you refused to go up, and flouted the command of your God ה׳. (27) You sulked in your tents and said, “It is out of hatred for us that ה׳ brought us out of the land of Egypt, to hand us over to the Amorites to wipe us out. (28) What kind of place are we going to? Our brothers have taken the heart out of us, saying, ‘We saw there a people stronger and taller than we, large cities with walls sky-high, and even Anakites.’”

(1) The whole community broke into loud cries, and the people wept that night. (2) All the Israelites railed against Moses and Aaron. “If only we had died in the land of Egypt,” the whole community shouted at them, “or if only we might die in this wilderness!” (3) “Why is ה׳ taking us to that land to fall by the sword?” “Our wives and children will be carried off!” “It would be better for us to go back to Egypt!” (4) And they said to one another, “Let us head back for Egypt.” (5) Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembled congregation of Israelites. (6) And Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh, of those who had scouted the land, rent their clothes (7) and exhorted the whole Israelite community: “The land that we traversed and scouted is an exceedingly good land. (8) If pleased with us, ה׳ will bring us into that land, a land that flows with milk and honey, and give it to us; (9) only you must not rebel against ה׳. Have no fear then of the people of the country, for they are our prey: their protection has departed from them, but ה׳ is with us. Have no fear of them!” (10) As the whole community threatened to pelt them with stones, the Presence of ה׳ appeared in the Tent of Meeting to all the Israelites. (11) And ה׳ said to Moses, “How long will this people spurn Me, and how long will they have no faith in Me despite all the signs that I have performed in their midst? (12) I will strike them with pestilence and disown them, and I will make of you a nation far more numerous than they!” (13) But Moses said to ה׳, “When the Egyptians, from whose midst You brought up this people in Your might, hear the news, (14) they will tell it to the inhabitants of that land. Now they have heard that You, ה׳, are in the midst of this people; that You, ה׳, appear in plain sight when Your cloud rests over them and when You go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night. (15) If then You slay this people wholesale, the nations who have heard Your fame will say, (16) ‘It must be because ה׳ was powerless to bring that people into the land promised them on oath that [that god] slaughtered them in the wilderness.’ (17) Therefore, I pray, let my Lord’s forbearance be great, as You have declared, saying, (18) ‘יהוה ! slow to anger and abounding in kindness; forgiving iniquity and transgression; yet not remitting all punishment, but visiting the iniquity of parents upon children, upon the third and fourth generations.’ (19) Pardon, I pray, the iniquity of this people according to Your great kindness, as You have forgiven this people ever since Egypt.” (20) And ה׳ said, “I pardon, as you have asked. (21) Nevertheless, as I live and as ה׳’s Presence fills the whole world, (22) none of those involved—who have seen My Presence and the signs that I have performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, and who have tried Me these many times and have disobeyed Me— (23) shall see the land that I promised on oath to their fathers; none of those who spurn Me shall see it. (24) But My servant Caleb, because he was imbued with a different spirit and remained loyal to Me—him will I bring into the land that he entered, and his offspring shall hold it as a possession. (25) Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites occupy the valleys. Start out, then, tomorrow and march into the wilderness by way of the Sea of Reeds.” (26) ה׳ spoke further to Moses and Aaron, (27) “How much longer shall that wicked community keep muttering against Me? Very well, I have heeded the incessant muttering of the Israelites against Me.

(28) Say to them: ‘As I live,’ says ה׳, ‘I will do to you just as you have urged Me. (29) In this very wilderness shall your carcasses drop. Of all of you [men] who were recorded in your various lists from the age of twenty years up, you who have muttered against Me, (30) not one shall enter the land in which I swore to settle you—save Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. (31) Your children who, you said, would be carried off—these will I allow to enter; they shall know the land that you have rejected. (32) But your carcasses shall drop in this wilderness, (33) while your children roam the wilderness for forty years, suffering for your faithlessness, until the last of your carcasses is down in the wilderness. (34) You shall bear your punishment for forty years, corresponding to the number of days—forty days—that you scouted the land: a year for each day. Thus you shall know what it means to thwart Me.

There occurs in the Law a passage which contains...the following: "When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter." For God said, “If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.” So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Reed Sea," etc. (Exod. 13:17). Here God led the people about, away from the direct road which God originally intended because God feared they might meet on that way with hardships too great for their ordinary strength; God took them by another road in order to obtain thereby God's original object. In the same manner, God refrained from prescribing what the people by their natural disposition would be incapable of obeying and gave the above-mentioned commandments as a means of securing God's chief object, namely, to spread knowledge of God [among the people], and to cause them to reject idolatry. It is contrary to a person's nature that they should suddenly abandon all the different kinds of Divine service and the different customs in which he has been brought up, and which have been so general, that they were considered as a matter of course; it would be just as if a person trained to work as a slave with mortar and bricks, or similar things, should interrupt his work, clean his hands, and at once fight with real giants. It was the result of God's wisdom that the Israelites were led about in the wilderness till they acquired courage. For it is a well-known fact that traveling in the wilderness, and privation of bodily enjoyments, such as bathing, produce courage, whilst the reverse is the source of faint-heartedness: besides, another generation rose during the wanderings that had not been accustomed to degradation and slavery. All the travelling in the wilderness was regulated by Divine commands through Moses."

(37) ה׳ said to Moses as follows: (38) Speak to the Israelite people and instruct them to make for themselves fringes on the corners of their garments throughout the ages; let them attach a cord of blue to the fringe at each corner. (39) That shall be your fringe; look at it and recall all the commandments of ה׳ and observe them, so that you do not follow your heart and eyes in your lustful urge. (40) Thus you shall be reminded to observe all My commandments and to be holy to your God.