A very, very good land

(Numbers 14:7)

Sivan 25, 5778/June 8, 2018

The need to "send out for yourself men who will scout the Land of Canaan, which I am giving to the children of Israel" (Numbers 13:2) is shrouded in mystery and immersed in speculation to this day. In fact, it would appear that from the very inception of the idea it was beset by question marks. It sounds like a command from G-d, yet our sages inform us that the initiative originated with the people, and that G-d's instructions to Moshe were simply an expression of His acquiescence to the will of the people. This is a tragedy that nobody wants to own, but own it we do, to this day, and its devastating repercussions have been felt in every generation to this very day.

Why, in fact, would a land promised by G-d and described by G-d as being a land "flowing with milk and honey" need to be verified by the eye-witness account of a few spies? Isn't G-d's word proof enough? Isn't G-d's word proof that the nation of Israel can and will, enter and conquer the land? Were the people questioning this, or was their desire to send a delegation of tribal notables into the land simply an expression of nervous and excited anticipation, a sneak peek, if you will?

The 'commandment' by G-d to "send out for yourself" in Hebrew, "shelach lecha," sounds tantalizingly close to G-d's original commandment to Avraham "to go for yourself to the land of Canaan," in Hebrew "lech lecha." The close phonetic similarity, however, bears witness to the vast gulf which separates the two commandments. Avraham, himself, is commanded to enter the land, whereas Moshe is commanded to send in others to do the job on his behalf. Curiously, the time spent by the spies in Canaan, forty days, is identical to the time Moshe spent on Mount Sinai when receiving the Torah from G-d. Could it be that G-d, (or the people), feared sending in Moshe himself, lest a second golden calf like disaster result? Surely, had Moshe performed the task of searching out the land himself the result would have been vastly different. But again, this is mere speculation.

What is not speculation, however, is that fact that the twelve spies were given very specific instructions. Moshe told them to observe and report on an explicit and detailed list. And this they did successfully. What they were not instructed to do, however, was to add their own commentary on what they saw. Yet this they did, and it was the source of all the sorrow which ensued. What were they thinking? How did they imagine that this was included in their purview? And why they drew the desperately negative conclusions that they did, when all the observations that they reported seemed to unequivocally point otherwise, is again, food for speculation. Did they conspire to sabotage Israel's imminent entry into the land out of fear for losing their own elevated status as chiefs of the twelve tribes? Did they fear losing the intimacy with G-d with which the entire encampment of Israel was blessed in their journey through the wilderness? Oddly, the people had just raised a pitiable protest over their daily diet of manna. Wouldn't entry into the land, where the manna would cease and the people would revert back to their earthly sustenance, be just the remedy?

Of the twelve spies only ten were infected with the maddening fear of entering the land. Two, Yehoshua bin Nun, and Calev ben Yefuneh, stood their ground, and exhorted the people to rise above their crippling fears and prepare themselves to take the land by storm. One, Yehoshua bin Nun, was Moshe'sright hand man, and certainly would not have succumbed to the doubt which overcame the other spies. But so great was Moshe's own ambivalence about the end result of the ambitious and ambiguous mission that he changed Yehoshua's name upon appointing him to the twelve man delegation, as Torah states: "Moshe called Hoshea the son of Nun, Yehoshua," (ibid 13:16) adding to his name the letter yod, which, with two of the other letters contained in Yehoshua's name, spells out the ineffable name of G-d, a powerful inoculation against unwarranted fear and trembling.

The second spy of valor, Calev ben Yefuneh, on the other hand, was a dark horse. Other than the fact that he was from the tribe of Yehudah, we know nothing about him. Yet it is Calev ben Yefuneh who most dramatically and outspokenly contends with the evil report of the spies, calling upon the people to maintain their faith: "If HaShem desires us, He will bring us to this land and give it to us, a land flowing with milk and honey." (ibid 14:8) From where did Calev derive his strength and conviction? G-d Himself provides the answer, after condemning the entire generation of vacillators to die in the desert, save for Yehoshua and "My servant Calev, since he was possessed by another spirit, and he followed Me, I will bring him to the land to which he came, and his descendants will drive its inhabitants out." (ibid 14:24) What was this "other spirit," in Hebrew, "ru'ach acher?" Was this extra measure of spiritual strength something that Calev possessed a priori to his appointment to the mission, or was this ru'ach acher something he acquired from the land itself? How many among us, upon first setting foot in the land of Israel, have not been possessed by a ru'ach acher, an intangible sense of knowledge and destiny that Israel is, indeed, the land that G-d promised and has bequeathed to the children of Israel?

Or perhaps G-d was most smitten by the boldness of the joint proclamation earlier uttered by both Calev ben Yefuneh and Yehoshua bin Nun, that "The land we passed through to scout is a very, very good land." (ibid 14:7) This statement, with its double utterance of the word "very" in describing the goodness of the land, is a breathtakingly bold addition to G-d's own appraisal of His work, upon completing creation on the sixth day: "And G-d saw all that He had made, and behold it was very good, and it was evening and it was morning, the sixth day." (Genesis 1:31) How G-d must have delighted then, and today, when He witnesses the profound love His children have for the land of Israel, a "very, very good land," the crown of His creation!

-The Temple Institute