Parashat Shlach L’Cha – The sin of the Spies

This week, we read one of the most tragic portions in the Torah. The Jews are standing at the border of Israel, about to enter and fulfill G-d’s promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but instead of entering, they decide to send in “spies” to scout out the land.

The spies return with a huge bunch of grapes and say, "You all see the size of these grapes? You should see the size of the people who eat them. They are giants! No way we can beat them. We may as well go back to Egypt." The people let out a great cry at their misfortune.

Moses is absolutely horrified and God is very angry. As punishment, G-d decrees that the Jews shall wander the desert for 40 years and all adult males will die off before they will be allowed to enter Israel. G-d tells the Jews that because they cried on this day for no good reason, they will cry on this day throughout history for some very good reasons.

The date that this happened was the 9th of Av, Tisha b’Av. This is a major fast day in the Jewish calendar. Virtually every major disaster in Jewish history is going to be connected to the Ninth of Av. The destruction of the first and second temples, the expulsion from Spain, the start of World War I (which led to the Holocaust) and many other tragic events all happened on that day.

The question is, if G-d knew the result of sending the spies would be so horrendous, why did he tell Moses to do it? The answer is that G-d didn’t tell Moses to send spies. If we read the passage carefully, and the passage in Deuteronomy that recounts this event, along with the commentary, we see that what actually happened is that G-d told Moses to go into the land, the people said to Moses, before we go into the land, we should send scouts, Moses asked G-d if he should do that, and G-d said “If you want to do it, the do it.” G-d knew it would turn out badly, but it’s a matter of free will, if Moses wanted to send scouts, then he should do it.

So the question now becomes, why did Moses want to send spies, didn’t he trust G-d? The answer, again, is that he didn’t send spies. The people he send ended up spying, but that was not Moses’ intention.

The Talmud tells us that a man is not allowed to marry a woman before he meets her. The idea being, you need to meet first to start the process of falling in love, which then seeds the relationship of marriage. This is what Moses wanted, for the scouts (not spies) to bring back stories of the beauty of the land so that the people would start to fall in love.

Moses’ view was that G-d was giving us the land, and we should start to fall in love. The people’s view was that the taking of the land was a military conquest and they needed to send spies to develop a military strategy.

I think there is a lesson to be learned here about marriage. A marriage is ordained by G-d, and if you both go into it with your trust in G-d, then the relationship will bloom like the land of Israel. If you go in looking at it as a conquest, you’re destined to wanted for 40 years.

Shabbat Shalom.