(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.”
(1) שלח לך SEND THEE (more lit., for thyself) — i.e. according to your own judgement: I do not command you, but if you wish to do so send them. — God said this because the Israelites came to Moses and said. “We will send men before us etc.”, as it is said, (Deuteronomy 1:22): “And you approached me, all of you, [saying, We will send men, etc.]”, and Moses took counsel with the Shechinah...
NACHMANADIES:
Gird yourself with courage to take the fruit. Don't be afraid that if you take fruit from the land you might be exposed as spies
Rabbi Simai expounded: “When the People of Israel preceded “We will understand” by “We will do,” a Heavenly Voice was heard, saying, “Who revealed to my children this secret, which only the angels until now knew? as it is written in Psalm 203, ‘Praise Hashem, His Angels, Mighty in Strength, who Obey His Will, then Understand His Word’ – first obey, and afterwards, understand.”
The MAHARAL of Prague:
The primary reason to preform a Mitzvah is that G-d commanded it...
Nadav and Avihu, some of the holiest Jews of their time, had many lofty intention. Yet they did something they were not instructed to do.
Maimonidies:
Although the Torah's Chukim are super-rational it is appropriate to meditate upon them, and wherever possible, provide a meaning. The Sages say that King Shlomo was able to understand a perspective behind most Chukim in Torah
Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi
Understanding too is Hashem's will! G-d wants us to bind our minds and thoughts to him. We should be MINDFUL as we fulfill the Mitzvot. The degree of G-dliness we channel this way is much greater than a mindless fulfillment of his will utilizing only our actions and/or words
(13)
Because that people has approached [Me] with its mouth
And honored Me with its lips,
But has kept its heart far from Me,
And its worship of Me has been
A social obligation, learned by rote—
THERE ARE THREE CONDITIONS, though, for asking a Jewish question. The first is that we seek genuinely to learn – not to doubt, ridicule, dismiss, reject. That is what the ‘wicked son’ of the Haggadah does: ask not out of a desire to understand but as a prelude to walking away.
Second is that we accept limits to our understanding. Not everything is intelligible at any given moment. There were scientists at the beginning of the twentieth century who believed that virtually every major discovery had already been made—not suspecting that the next hundred years would give rise to Einstein’s relativity theory, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, Gödel’s theorem, proof of the ‘Big Bang’ origin of the universe, the discovery of DNA and the decoding of the human genome.
In relation to Torah, there were many German and American Jews in the nineteenth century who could not understand Jewish prayers for a return to Zion, and deleted them from the prayer book. These facts should induce in us a certain humility. Not every scientific orthodoxy survives the test of time. Not everything in Judaism that we do not understand is unintelligible. The very features of Jewish life one generation finds difficult, the next generation may find the most meaningful of all. Faith is not opposed to questions, but it is opposed to the shallow certainty that what we understand is all there is.
Third is that when it comes to Torah, we learn by living and understand by doing. We learn to understand music by listening to music. We learn to appreciate literature by reading literature. There is no way of understanding Shabbat without keeping Shabbat, no way of appreciating how Jewish laws of family purity enhance a marriage without observing them. Judaism, like music, is something that can only be understood from the inside, by immersing yourself in it. Given these caveats, Judaism is a faith that, more than any other, values the mind, encouraging questions and engaging us at the highest level of intellectual rigour. Every question asked in reverence is the start of a journey towards God,.
(1) וינחם ה' כי עשה AND THE LORD REGRETED THAT HE HAD MADE —
A gentile once asked Rabbi Joshua, the son of Korcha, saying to him, “Do you not admit that the Holy One, blessed be He, knows what is to happen in the future?” He replied, “Yes.” The gentile retorted, “But is it not written ‘and He was grieved in His heart’?” He answered: “Have you ever had a son born to you?” The reply was “Yes.” He asked (the gentile): “And what did you do?” He replied: “I rejoiced and I made others rejoice also.” The Rabbi asked him: “But did you not know that he must die?” The heathen replied: “At the time of joy, let there be joy, at the time of mourning let there be mourning”. The Rabbi then said: “Such, too, is the way of the Holy One, blessed be He: although it was clear to Him that in the end men would sin and would be destroyed, He did not refrain from creating them for the sake of the righteous men who were to issue from them” (Genesis Rabbah 27:4).
THE REBBE:
The heretic asks the questions in a heretical style: How can you believe that G-d knows the future if the passage states...
A Jew asks the same question but in the opposite manner. We are certain that the Torah is true and that G-d foresees the future. However, we seek to understand the meaning of "what causes change in G-d's mind"...
THE REBBE
This is the reason Hashem left the decision to send spies with "if you want to send, send"
G-d waned to enable the "we will listen/internalize" dimension of Judaism enabling the people to understand on their own how to best enter Israel. Therefore, the dispatch too, had to come from them, not because G-d instructed it...
G-d had already informed them it was a good and prosperous land but Hashem wanted the Jews to understand this on their own. This is why they were commanded to bring back the fruit so that all the Jews would be able to surmise the beauty of the land.
Moshe was elated at this new opportunity. Jews would now be empowered to serve Hashem because they chose to rather than because they felt compelled by G-d's instructions.