Ziv: Parashat Shelah Lekha

The land of milk and honey...

The title of this parasha gives us a key for reading the events that are described before us: it is said, literally : “send for you men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites” (Numbers 13:2) and not simply “send men”... According to a tradition, the visit of the land of Canaan is the initiative of the people who came to seek Moses out in order to ask for this verification of the land, and not a commandment from above. The land has no need to be “spied out”, it has already been, in a certain sense, visited by its creator. A midrash explains that after this demand by the people, Moses went to seek counsel with God: “this is what the people are asking of me, this thing or that thing.” God answered him: “this is not the first time, they were already mocked in Egypt” (Hosea 2:7). I know them and therefore have no need to test them, as it is written: “the One who reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what is in the darkness, and light dwells with him” (Daniel 2:22). And God said: “Moses, I know what is in them, but since they ask it of you, send them yourself” (Numbers Rabbah 16:28).

The commandment of God, according to these commentaries, comes from the weakness of the people, on the cusp of abandoning the crossing of the desert… And we might think that Moses, who seeks to reassure the people, also acts out of lack of faith and of confidence. In the eyes of tradition, this “sending-out” constitutes a sin as grievous as the golden calf, and indeed this exploration by the spies ends in catastrophe: the spies criticize the land, and commit the sin of malediction, and even of calumny. One commentary (of the Rabbi of Kotsk) says that in fact, the facts that were reported by the spies were precise, but this does not mean that they were true… Truth is found also in the interpretation of these facts, in their true reading, and it was here that the spies sinned. They did not believe the promise.
In consequence, the children of Israel have to wander for forty years in the wilderness, and no man from this generation shall enter the land of milk and honey.

A commentary by Maimonides explains that it was very difficult for these men to pass from servitude to freedom… They had contracted a mentality of slaves who are incapable of taking responsibility, incapable of entering into the struggles of liberty. The wilderness and its trials serve as a furnace for forging a new generation, which did not know slavery. The forty years in the wilderness were a kind of preparation for the school of liberty.

We read that after having sent the spies, Moses changes the name of Joshua (Numbers 13:16). He adds a “yod” to his name, a letter of the divine name. This is because Joshua, in his turn, at the moment of entering the land of the promise, shall also send two spies (Joshua 2:1), and this is the story that is read with this parasha. The “yod” added shall serve as protection for him, to prevent the story of doubt and lack of faith repeating itself. Shabbat Shalom.