Thoughts on the parsha
Parshas Shelach
Parshas Shelach
What's
the Real Story?
By:
Daniel Listhaus
וַיֹּצִיאוּ
דִּבַּת הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר תָּרוּ אֹתָהּ
אֶל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לֵאמֹר הָאָרֶץ
אֲשֶׁר עָבַרְנוּ בָהּ לָתוּר אֹתָהּ
אֶרֶץ אֹכֶלֶת יוֹשְׁבֶיהָ הִוא וְכָל
הָעָם אֲשֶׁר רָאִינוּ בְתוֹכָהּ אַנְשֵׁי
מִדּוֹת
“They
brought forth to the B'nei
Yisroel an
evil report on the land that they had spied out, saying, 'The land
through which we have passed, to spy it out, is a land which devours
its inhabitants! All the people that we saw in it were men of
measures!'”
-Shelach
13:32
Rashi1
tells us that the B'nei
Yisroel approached
Moshe and said that they wanted to send spies out before them to
check out Eretz
Yisroel.
Hashem was obviously not happy with this request because if He said
that He would bring us to a great land, what further need is there to
check it out? Nontheless, Hashem did not stop Moshe from sending the
meraglim
(spies).2
The
Torah describes that Eretz
Yisroel was
a land filled with beracha
(blessings).
Eight meraglim
were
needed to carry one cluster of grapes!3
Additionally, even the people who lived in the land were giants.
Also, as promised, it was indeed a land of flowing milk and honey, a
land bursting with potential anxiously awaiting B'nei
Yisroel's arrival.
However, when the meraglim
returned
from their mission, they focused on all the negatives that they saw
during their visit in Eretz
Yisroel.
If
one pays attention to the parts of the meraglim's
reports,
the report seems to consist of two basic complaints. The first is
that they found everything in Eretz
Yisroel to
be humongous. As they mentioned, this was problematic for two reasons
– one, that gigantic people would surely be impossible to conquer
and, two, that huge fortified cities would definitely prove to be
impenetrable. The second argument of the meraglim
was
that Eretz
Yisroel was
a land that devours its own inhabitants.
Let
us think through these two complaints one at a time. The first one is
hard for us to imagine why this would even be a problem that would
register on the B'nei
Yisroel's radar.
After all, the B'nei
Yisroel were
not foreign to experiencing tremendous miracles and overcoming
impossible obstacles. No slave ever escaped Mitzrayim,
yet the entire Jewish population was rescued. They crossed the Yam
Suf which
split in front of their eyes. They were supported for months in the
desert where they were not affected by the elements at all. Their
clothes did not wear out, they always had food to eat and water to
drink, and walked in the constant shade of the annanei
hakavod (Cloud
of Hashem). Yet, the meraglim
had
the audacity to use this argument and told the people that for some
unexplainable reason this time would be different and they would not
find the strength to conquer Eretz
Yisroel.
The
meraglim's
error
in this part of the report is blatantly obvious, though, when we
think about who they were. Although the Torah testifies that they
were originally tremendous tzaddikim
(righteous
people),4
which is undoubtedly why they were chosen by Moshe to scout Eretz
Yisroel,
they were negatively affected by the mission itself, which was
instigated by the katnei
emunah (those
with little trust in Hashem). They were coming from the perspective
that even though Hashem had guaranteed a beautiful land to them, that
they still must check it out and see if it will indeed be
conquerable. As much as their perspective was twisted and misguided,
we could at least understand the position of the meraglim
who
came back complaining about the size of their opponents in Eretz
Yisroel and
the defense of the cities there, and why they said what they said.
The
second aspect of the meraglim's
report,
however, is much more difficult to understand. They went through
Eretz
Yisroel and
personally witnessed the blessed atmosphere - the fruits were big,
and the people were strong and healthy. This information was not
something that the meraglim
left
out, rather, as just mentioned, they used this information to
complain how hard they suspected it to be to later conquer Eretz
Yisroel.
If so, how did they turn around in the same breath and argue that
Eretz
Yisroel is
a land which swallows its inhabitants?
Rashi5
writes that indeed while the meraglim
were
spying in Eretz
Yisroel,
they passed by many funeral processions. Seeing this they came to the
conclusion that Eretz
Yisroel was
a bad place to live. The meraglim
failed
to realize, though, that Hashem was killing the Cana'anim
in
order to distract them from noticing the meraglim.
Instead, as the Ramban
and
S'forno
explain, they attributed the rampant deaths to other things.
The
S'forno6
explains
that the meraglim
argued
that the fact that the people living in Eretz
Yisroel
were large, strong, and healthy was not because of the good qualities
of Eretz
Yisroel,
but rather just the opposite. They claimed that the air, water, and
everything about Eretz
Yisroel was
all detrimental to people's health and the only reason that there
were giants left is because everyone else had died who could not
withstand the environment.
The
Ramban7
explains slightly differently that the meraglim
complained
that the land of Eretz
Yisroel was
too good and only those born with exceptional characteristics had the
capacity to survive. The meraglim
claimed
that anyone lacking the extra fitness and strength did not stand a
chance in the land of Eretz
Yisroel –
which favored those with exceptional health.
This
was the second category of complaint that the meraglim
declared.
Either that the explanation as to why there were giants dwelling in
Eretz
Yisroel was
because everyone else had died due to the poor air quality and
environment or that the reason was because Eretz
Yisroel was
so great that only the fittest could survive.
Reading
the Torah from an omniscient point of view with an insight as to what
was really going on, the flaws of this second argument of the
meraglim
become
obvious as well. Hashem orchestrated the citizens of Eretz
Yisroel to
die out in order to distract the giants in a natural way so that the
spies would be able to complete their mission without any trouble.
Yet, the meraglim
chose
to look at the situation in a twisted way to fit with their mindset.
According to the S'forno,
they fell into the the trap of the post-hoc fallacy. The post-hoc
fallacy refers to one who irrationally sees to juxtaposed events as
ones of automatic cause and effect. Such a person hears the crow of
the rooster and then sees the sun rise and thinks to himself that the
rooster's crow is the cause of the sun going up each morning. There
is no need to further describe how ridiculous this is. The meraglim,
however, did just this. They had in their minds that Eretz
Yisroel had
issues. Therefore, when they saw people dying, they automatically
associated it with the bad air quality of the land, instead of
thinking rationally – as people who were expected to be ones who
trusted in Hashem.
According
to the Ramban,
they literally invented the Theory of Evolution long before Charles
Darwin came along. The meraglim
were not interested in attributing the fact that Eretz
Yisroel was
a land of giants based on it being a great atmosphere to live in.
Instead they thought of the idea of evolution to explain why only the
giants were able to survive in the exceptional land, but anyone more
feeble than the strong giants would not stand a chance.
Obviously
hindsight is twenty-twenty vision and it is easy to discredit the
meraglim
knowing
what we know from the Torah's perspective. The lesson we must take
out from here though is to realize that these are things we fall for
every day and, just like the meraglim,
we come up with what we think are rational conclusions. For example,
we may see something happen to someone and then see that he totally
over reacts and therefore we subsequently conclude that that specific
cause that we witnessed must be the reason for his over reaction, in
which case he must be crazy. What we may fail to realize though is
that there may be a completely different event that we are not aware
of which is really the underlying cause.
Additionally,
we look for ways to rationalize things that occur to us or that we
hear about to be completely natural. We like to think everything is
normal. Weird temperatures are normal – caused by global warming;
earthquakes are normal – caused by global warming; tornadoes are
normal – caused by global warming; animals are normal – because
of evolution. We feel comfortable with being able to put a finger on
an explanation that sits well in our own minds and that does not
interfere with our personal ideologies. Such a mentality though is
extremely dangerous and causes a three way disruption: It plays with
one's emunah
in
Hashem, it disturbs our ability to fully care about and understand
others, and it allows us to keep feeding ourselves with false ideas
as long as we are comfortable with them.
The
cheit
ha'meraglim (sin
of the spies) was one fundamentally of lack of emunah
in
Hashem. They went in with an attitude that they were vulnerable and
consequently became unable to see the situation in any other way.
Everything they witnessed became skewed to be explainable within the
premise that they set off to prove.
May
Hashem help us think according to His da'as
so
that we could get a better understanding of the ourselves and others,
and save us from falling for the same traps that brought about the
cheit
ha'meraglim.
1Bamidbar
13:2
2See
Rashi Bamidbar 13:3
3See
Rashi Bamidbar 13:23
4Rashi
Bamidbar 13:15
5Bamidbar
13:32
6Ibid.
