(25) At the end of forty days they returned from scouting the land. (26) They went straight to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the wilderness of Paran, and they made their report to them and to the whole community, as they showed them the fruit of the land. (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.” (1) The whole community broke into loud cries, and the people wept that night.
"The Israelites were plagued by what Dr. Aviva Zornberg calls a "grasshopper sense of self" (Bewilderments pp. xxii). Suddenly, they felt small and insignificant."
Rabbi Leah R. Berkowitz, "Patience, Grasshopper"
כְּשֶׁרָאוּ אוֹתָם מְרַגְּלִים נִתְיָרְאוּ. מִיָּד הָלְכוּ וְאָמְרוּ, כִּי חָזָק הוּא מִמֶּנּוּ. אָמַר רַבִּי שִׁמְעוֹן בֶּן לָקִישׁ, הִקִּישָׁן כְּלַפֵּי מַעְלָן, וּבְאוֹתוֹ הֶעָוֹן נִגְזַר עֲלֵיהֶם גְּזֵרוֹת קָשׁוֹת. ... אָמְרוּ, וַנְּהִי בְעֵינֵינוּ כַּחֲגָבִים. אָמַר הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא, וִתַּרְתִּי עָלֶיהָ. אֶלָּא, וְכֵן הָיִינוּ בְּעֵינֵיהֶם, מַקְפִּיד אֲנִי. וְכִי יוֹדְעִים הֱיִיתֶם מֶה עָשִׂיתִי אֶתְכֶם בְּעֵינֵיהֶם. מִי יֹאמַר לָכֶם, שֶׁלֹּא הֱיִיתֶם בְּעֵינֵיהֶם כְּמַלְאָכִים.
When the spies saw them they were afraid. Immediately they went and said (in vs. 31), “for they are stronger than we (which can also be read as, than [God]).” Resh Laqish said, “They compared them to the Above. Because of this transgression harsh decrees were issued against them.” ...
They said (in Numb. 13:33), “And in our own eyes we were like grasshoppers.” The Holy One, blessed be [God], said, “I forgave them for that [remark]; but I was exacting [when they said] (ibid., cont.), ‘And so we were in their eyes.’ Who would say that you were not like angels in their eyes? Do you know what I made you in their eyes?”
These, to me, are the challenges of Sh'lach L'cha: First, the challenge to perceive the world in all its nuanced complexity—and not reduce it to simplistic either/or, black/white categories. Second, and more central to the parashah, the challenge of really loving ourselves and trusting our instincts, the challenge of not making ourselves into anything less than we truly are (since this would diminish the One in whose image we are created)...
As long as we see ourselves merely as grasshoppers up against giants, we will set ourselves up for failure. If we want to create anything new and to enter into the Promised Land, then we have no choice but to leap into the unknown, to believe in ourselves, and to trust in God's faith in us. This voice of optimism and hope is what separates Joshua and Caleb from the other scouts. This is what—in spite of a long history filled with good reasons to see ourselves as grasshoppers and to give up—has enabled the Jewish people to continue and to thrive.
Cantor Josee Wolff, "Contemporary Reflection" in The Torah: A Women's Commentary, pgs. 888-889