Jun 9/07 — Parashat Shelach

Commentary by Rabbi Alan Green

“And Caleb hushed the people before Moses and said, ‘We can do it! We can claim what’s ours. We have what it takes.’ But the men who had gone up with him said, ‘There’s no way we could ever go up against strength like theirs.’ Whereupon they began to circulate calumnies about the land they had just scouted, saying that it was a land that devoured its inhabitants, and that all the people whom they saw there were huge. ‘We saw the Nephilim--the descendants of Anak—giants! We felt like grasshoppers, and so we must have looked to them too.” Numbers 13:30-33

It’s time to do or die for the Israelites. They have walked out of Egypt, crossed the Red Sea, received the Torah at Mt. Sinai, built the sanctuary, and survived the rigors of life in the desert. Now, it’s time for the culmination of God’s plan: to take possession of the Land, where they may fulfill their destiny as “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

Ah, but nothing is that easy! To begin with, the Promised Land isn’t uninhabited. On the contrary, the land is filled by Canaanites with a highly advanced civilization. We can well imagine that the spies dispatched by Moses were amazed and frightened by what they saw: walled cities, horse-drawn chariots, armor, and the most advanced weaponry of the day.

It’s no wonder that the spies exaggerated the size and strength of the Canaanites, and “felt like grasshoppers” in their presence. In purely material terms, the Israelites were no match for the Canaanites. While the spiritual achievements of the Israelites were great, their achievements on the material plane were practically non-existent.

This is all in the nature of being a desert people. The desert rewards lightness, flexibility, and portability. City life punishes those qualities, and rewards their opposites. Thus, on a purely technical level, the Israelite skill set didn’t match the requirements demanded by the conquest of a foreign land. Therefore the spies were probably justified in feeling that God’s promise of the Promised Land was empty.

The other operant factor is that as difficult as it is to take the Israelite out of Egypt, it’s even more difficult to take Egypt out of the Israelite. Egypt exerted a lasting, powerful influence on the Jewish people. According to the Torah, the Israelites “descended” into Egypt as a family of 70, but emerged four centuries later as a full-blown nation with millions of citizens.

There was, therefore, both good and bad in the Egyptian experience. Certainly, the Israelites were a brutalized slave class. On the other hand, over the course of their time in Egypt, a group of rustic herdsmen were transformed by the most advanced civilization in the world. The Israelites became familiar with Egyptian culture, politics, and theology. Moses himself was a product of the highest and best that Egypt could offer any human being.

Therefore, Egypt must have been very much on the mind of the Israelites as they contemplated the conquest of Canaan. First, the Canaanites must have reminded the Israelites of their former masters. Were the Israelites really up to a military encounter with one of the most advanced civilizations of the day? Further, at only two years distance from a lifetime of slavery, could they shake the instinctive fear that every slave feels for an oppressor? Can a victim of bullying confront and defeat a bully?

We know the answer to these questions from the report of the spies, and the Israelites’ reaction to them. In a shocking case of regression, the Israelites are ready to overthrow Moses and Aaron, and choose someone to lead them back to Egypt. Of the twelve spies, only two--Joshua and Caleb--are able to master their fear, and maintain a more balanced perspective.

They embody the teaching of Rabban Gamliel who said, thirteen centuries after the fact, “Do God’s will as if it were your will, and He will do your will as if it were His will. Set aside your will before God’s will, and He will set aside the will of others before your will.” Joshua and Caleb understood that high city walls, and advanced weaponry are only details; that with God, the most powerful force in the universe, all things become possible.

God’s reaction to the Israelites’ denial of His whole program is also shocking. God is ready to destroy the Israelites, and start Jewish history all over again with Moses. Here, the greatness of Moses, the mediator between the absolute perfection of God, and the perfect weakness of humanity, emerges once again. Moses could easily have taken the attitude that God is God, and who am I to question His will? Instead, Moses assumes the role of attorney for the defense, and talks God out of destroying His people.

But God metes out a punishment appropriate to the Israelites’ lack of belief in both Him, and themselves. If there is to be a conquest of Canaan, the Israelites will need time—time to raise a generation in freedom--that will become hardy and hungry through a nomadic desert existence. This new generation—a combination of the best of Egyptian civilization, and the rough education of life in the desert—will become the force that takes its destiny in hand, and changes the destiny of all humankind, forever.

Shabbat Shalom