Parasha: Shelach · Aliyah: Second (Gevurah)

למקום ההוא קרא נחל אשכול, he called that place: "the valley of the cluster." The subject in the verse is G'd who had named this place in anticipation of its significance in the future. We know this because the Torah described the spies at arriving at נחל אשכול before any mention was made about their having cut off a cluster of grapes. [Besides, the word קרא as opposed to ויקרא shows that the place had already been known by that name. Ed.]

The Torah writes: אשר כרתו משם בני ישראל, "which the Israelites had cut from there." You may well ask that many people on many occasions have cut clusters of grapes in that valley. Why would the cluster the Israelites had cut there be singled out? The remarkable thing was that though only 12 Israelites had come there at the time, the Torah describes them as if they were the whole Jewish people, i.e. בני ישראל. Seeing that these 12 men were the representatives of the people the Torah describes them as the people, i.e. בני ישראל. We find something parallel in Exodus 12,6 where the Torah writes: ושחטו כל עדת ישראל "and the whole community of Israel will slaughter." As a rule the priest slaughtered the Passover; seeing he was the delegate of the people the act of slaughtering is attributed to the people themselves.

וילכו ויבאו, they went and they came, etc. Why did the Torah have to tell us that the spies "went" when we have already been informed of their going on their way in at least three verses? Our sages in Sotah 35 say that the Torah wanted to compare their return to their departure. Just as they returned with wicked advice their departure had already been marked by with evil intent." Why was the Torah interested in informing us of this detail? All that mattered was the advice they came back with!

We may understand the verse better when we keep in mind something we learned in Kidushin 39. The Talmud quotes Rabbi Yaakov as saying that when we find a מצוה written in the Torah and its reward is spelled out, the reward is paid only after the resurrection, i.e. a considerable period of time even after one's death. This explained the famous incident when a father ordered his son to climb a tree and take the young chicks and the son fell off the ladder and was killed. This occurred in spite of the fact that he had been in the process of fulfilling both the commandment of שלוח הקן and the commandment of honouring his father at one and the same time. In both instances the Torah promised long life for the fulfilment of this commandment (Deut. 5,16, Deut. 7,22) To the question of what happened to the fulfilment of the Torah's promise of longevity, Rabbi Yaakov answered that the Torah referred to a life which by itself was long, i.e. that the fulfilment of that commandment assured one that one would be resurrected in due course. The Talmud adds that Rabbi Yaakov was an eye witness to the occurrence mentioned. To the question that perhaps the son who climbed the ladder had sinful intentions at that moment, the answer given is that G'd does not punish someone for mere sinful intentions when these intentions have not yet been translated into practice. The Talmud then questions that idolatrous intentions are punishable even if they had not been carried out. The Talmud answers that Rabbi Yaakov also made the following statement: "should you believe that there is a reward in this life for מצות performed, then why did the fact that the son was involved on a sacred mission not at least protect him against this mishap? Do we not have a rule enunciated by Rabbi Eleazar that people engaged in the execution of a sacred duty do not suffer mishaps either on the way out or on the way home from such a מצוה?" The Talmud answers that the ladder in question was not stable and under conditions of obvious hazard Rabbi Eleazar's dictum does not apply. There is another difficulty here and that is that the Talmud in Sotah 21 comes to the conclusion that being involved in the performance of a מצוה does protect the person involved against a new hazard though it does not save him from an existing hazard which he had been aware of at that time. In view of all this, what proof does Rabbi Yaakov have to offer that the מצוה did not protect the son in the example he witnessed against idolatrous thoughts while he climbed the ladder The Talmud in Sotah quotes the opinion of Rav Yosef that the act of performing a מצוה protects that person against hazards as well as against becoming guilty of a culpable sin. His opinion is refuted by the example of Doeg and Achitofel whose immersion in Torah study did not protect them against the sin of bad-mouthing David so that they both became heretics in the end. Seeing that Rav Yosef's theory has been refuted, how can the Talmud in Kidushin 39 justify refuting the opinion of Rabbi Yaakov? [The author appears to mean: "what other alternative is there to explain the phenomenon Rabbi Yaakov had witnessed?" Ed.]

Some scholars make distinctions between the performance of different categories of מצות. According to these authorities the example in Sotah where the Talmud said that even being engaged in the performance of a מצוה does not protect one against the evil urge dealt with someone who did not perform the מצוה לשמה, for the sake of performing G'd's bidding but for an ulterior motive. When the Talmud asks why being engaged in the performance of a מצוה should not protect such a person against committing a sin (inadvertently) the question referred to someone who performs the מצוה לשמה, for the sake of Heaven. This distinction is nonsense. If there were some substance to that distinction the Talmud should have rejected the query arising from the boy who fell off the ladder by merely stating that he did not perform the commandments in question for the sake of Heaven. This would have been a far more plausible scenario than the forced explanation that he might have entertained idolatrous thoughts at that moment. Such an answer would also have forestalled the question why the deed did not at least protect the son against the wiles of the evil urge. Performance of a commandment for ulterior motives certainly could not be presumed to protect such a person against the evil urge.

I believe that the correct answer to our problem is that the eventual conclusion which the Talmud accepts is the viewpoint of Rav Yoseph that while a person is engaged in the performance of a מצוה it does both protect him against hazards as well as save him from giving in to his evil urge. This is the reason that Rabbi Yaakov raised the whole problem when he witnessed the death of the son who was engaged in the performance of not only one but two מצות at the time. This son was still engaged in the performance of the מצוה when he descended the ladder in order to bring the chicks to his father. Since we find that the Talmud in Sotah rejected the viewpoint of Rav Yoseph based on the fact that neither Doeg nor Achitophel were protected by their immense amount of Torah study against the wiles of the evi urge, this is not a satisfactory refutation of Rav Yoseph's approach to the subject. The Talmud in Chagigah 15 states that the Torah study of both Doeg and Achitophel had never been for the sake of Heaven. They had always entertained ulterior motives so that their Torah study had always been flawed. The fact that they fell victim to Satan's urgings therefore does nothing to undermine the theory that the performance of a מצוה protects the doer against hazards and saves him from the evil urge. According to Tossaphot both Achitophel and Doeg had been guilty of sins before they accumulated the merit of Torah study. Their Torah study was more important to them than their reverence for G'd the Lawgiver. No wonder that their מצות did not protect them against the evil urge.

Furthermore, even assuming that we would accept at face value the opinion which refutes Rav Yoseph's approach basing itself on the fate of Doeg and Achitophel, all this would prove is that the merit of תורה does not protect such a person at the time when he is not actively engaged in studying Torah. At the time Doeg and Achitophel fell victim to the evil urge they had not been engaged in Torah study. Rav Yoseph had only claimed that the protective powers of מצוה performance are in force at the time the person in danger is actively engaged in the performance of the מצוה. The Talmud never tried to refute this aspect of Rav Yoseph's theory as expounded by Rava. [Anyone studying the text in Sotah 21 will find that Rav Yoseph considers the protective powers of Torah study as superior to the protective powers of the performance of any other category of מצוה. Ed.] Although Rava is forced to reconcile a statement in the Baraitha by explaining that the difference between the protective power of the merit of Torah study-vis-a vis the merit of performing any of the other מצות is like the difference between נר מצוה ותורה אור, that a single מצוה is like a candle and can only protect against forthcoming hazards, whereas the Torah is like the source of light itself, his words are not compelling. We can safely say that an ordinary מצוה has the power both to ward off hazards as well as save one from the evil urge during the period the endangered person is actively engaged in performing the מצוה. When a person is not engaged in the performance of a מצוה, the protective powers of the last מצוה he did perform are non-existent. As far as the merit of Torah study is concerned, however, such merit protects both against hazards as well as against the evil urge while one is engaged in such Torah study. When one is not engaged actively in Torah study the merit of one's previous study provides protection against hazards but not against the evil urge. When the Talmud there discusses what kind of merit protects the wife suspected of infidelity against the lethal effects of the מים המאררים, the cursed waters, the merit of Torah is one such factor though women are under no obligation to study Torah. They are protected by the Torah study of their husbands in accordance with the view expressed in Sotah 21 by Ravina. When we follow this approach Rabbi Yaakov proved from the incident with the ladder that even being engaged in the performance of a מצוה does not protect the person performing it in this world.

Furthermore, when we examine the whole subject more profoundly we can even understand the Talmud in Kidushin according to the view expressed by Rava in Sota 21. We had a difficulty, namely that even if the person performing the מצוה had been guilty of harbouring idolatrous thoughts at the time, at least he should have been saved from physical danger even if his merit did not protect him against the evil urge, just as it does protect (for a limited period) the Sotah, the woman suspected of infidelity who drank the cursed waters. In that instance we speak about a woman who most certainly is guilty of a major misdemeanour and yet her merits provide protection for her even according to the viewpoint of Rava. In our instance (Rabbi Yaakov's witnessing the death of the son who was actively engaged in the performance of both honouring his father and sending away the mother bird before taking her young) the merit was immediate and yet it did not help. In order to answer how this could have happened to the son the only answer is that he was engaged in idolatrous thoughts at the time he carried out his father's bidding. Such thoughts made him the equivalent of a total heretic and stripped him of all protective merit he had ever accumulated. He had made himself equivalent to a Gentile in all respects so that no מצוה performed previously could act as a shield for him. Alternatively, we may say that when one is engaged in idolatrous thoughts the מצוה one proceeds to perform in such a state of mind does not confer any kind of protection. Rabbi Yaakov counters all questions by saying that if we would asssume that the promise of reward in the Torah applied to our lifetime, the promise of the Torah of longevity would indeed have protected the son against becoming guilty of a sin which brings disaster in its wake. Even Rava who holds that the merit of the מצוה protects against disaster, accepts that this includes protection against committing the kind of sin which brings disaster in its wake.

We have established that according to the view of Rav Yoseph a person is protected from the evil urge during the time he performs a מצוה. Rava also agrees that such a person is at least protected against the evil urge leading him into a sin which by itself leads to disaster for him in this life. This is why our verse here has to provide the answer to the question why the מצוה the spies were engaged in did not protect them against falling victim to the evil urge to commit a sin which would lead to immediate disaster? After all, the Torah has written explicitly that they went at the command of G'd through Moses. This fact should have protected them from the disaster that overtook them. In order to explain this the Torah wrote וילכו ויבאו, "they went and they came back," i.e. that their departure was not motivated by the desire to perform a מצוה, just as their return was not motivated by a desire to be שלוחי מצוה, men who had been delegated to perform a מצוה. On the contrary, their whole mission was one in which they they were engaged in being sinful. As a result the so-called מצוה the spies were engaged in by carrying out Moses' mission did not protect them against disaster.

Looking ot our verse from a moral/ethical point of view, the words וילכו ויבאו may be understood in connection with something we have learned in Sotah 3. Kabbalists interpret the statement in the Talmud that one does not commit a sin unless a רוח שטות, had taken possession of the prospective sinner first to mean that if an outstanding personality is faced with the temptation to commit a sin he does not fall victim to such temptation until after his soul has left him and has been replaced by an inferior soul called רוח שטות, a sense of folly or madness. Seeing that our verses bear testimony to the fact that the spies had been outstanding personalities, Princes of Israel, the Torah testifies that when they returned to Moses with an evil report הלכו, they had just departed, i.e. their former spirit had departed from them and been replaced by an inferior, foolish one, and it was in this new capacity that they "arrived," i.e. came back.

The word וילכו also hints that this trip the spies took to the land of Canaan was their only and final one. They would never again come to that land. It was what we call הליכות עולם, something final, absolute. The words ויבאו אל משה explain why they did not already die on the way seeing they had perverted their mission. G'd honoured Moses who had despatched these spies by allowing them to return to their commander-in-chief. Had they died on the way, Moses would have been accused of all kinds of things. Under the circumstances, the fact that the spies had been able to traverse the land for forty days without one of them coming to any harm was in itself proof that they had been under G'd's protection all the time. Their very safe return should have strengthened the people's faith in G'd's ability and willingness to help them defeat the powerful people inhabiting that land. The whole episode is a prime example of Hoseah 14,10: ישרים דרכי ה׳ צדיקים ילכו בם ופושעים יכשלו בם, "the paths of the Lord are smooth; the righteous can walk on them while the sinners will stumble on them."

אל מדבר פארן קדשה, to the desert Paran at Kadesh. Why did the Torah not mention the place קדש at the time when Moses despatched these spies? Perhaps the word קדשה is an allusion to the fact that the Israelites stayed there for a long period due to the negative report of the spies and its acceptance by the people. We are told in Deut. 1,46 that the people stayed at Kadesh a very long time (19 years according Rashi). It took another 19 years for the people to reach the borders of the land of Canaan after their departure from Kadesh. Seeing that we were told that Kadesh was near the border of the land of Canaan, the spies were responsible for the Israelites having to remain in that general area for 38 years.

וישיבו אותם דבר, and they brought back word to them (to Moses and Aaron). At this juncture the Torah glosses over the evil nature of their report and merely describes it as "a report." The Torah makes it a principle not to divulge the evil people perpetrated unless it became necessary to do so. One of the outstanding examples of that principle is the failure of the Torah to report that Chur was murdered on the day the people made the golden calf. Avodah Zarah 4 claims that even the sin of the golden calf itself was only recorded in detail to teach that if Israel were to sin again collectively, the memory of the sin of the golden calf would serve as proof that repentance would result in atonement of even such a severe sin. [the author's interpretation of that passage. In fact the Talmud says that the sin had only been committed in order to teach this lesson, Ed.] Similarly, in our instance; as long as the Israelites had not voiced a wish to return to Egypt (14,4) and had thereby rebelled against the Lord the Torah did not need to tell us what precisely had been the catalyst that prompted such a reaction by the people. Once the people voiced the wish to return to Egypt, however, the Torah had to reveal that the spies had slandered ארץ ישראל. The Torah had to tell us why the Jewish people had to remain in the desert for forty years.

ואת כל העדה, and to the whole community, etc. This means that the spies chose to report to Moses and Aaron when the latter were together with the whole community. They did not deliver their report in the privacy of Moses' office as would have been appropriate. Their intent was to embarass Moses in the eyes of the Jewish people.

Alternatively, the words וישיבו אותם דבר could have been meant to refer to the report the content of which the Torah is about to reveal. The Torah merely tells us that they first reported what they had to say to Moses. Immediately afterwards they told the people directly.

A third possibility is one which takes into consideration what we explained on verse one i.e. that the Israelites understood the spies' mission as having quite a different objective from what Moses intended the mission to be. The spies reported to Moses and Aaron according to their understanding of the mission; subsequently they reported to the people at large according to their understanding of the purpose of the mission.

ויספרו לו, They told him, etc. The Torah specifies: "to him" instead of to them, i.e. Moses and Aaron. The trick the spies played on Moses was that whereas ostensibly they addressed their words to Moses, they ensured that the whole community could hear them at the same time. The Torah teaches us this nuance by adding ויאמרו without the suffix "to him"; in this way we would understand that they made sure the people would hear what they had to say.

באנו אל הארץ, "we have come to the land, etc." They meant that they arrived there without mishap. They added the words: "to which you have sent us," to make dear that they attributed their safe return from the land of Canaan to the fact that they had carried out Moses' commandment faithfully. Alternatively, they may have referred to the fact that 40 days earlier Moses had accompanied them on the commencement of their mission. They now acknowledged that Moses' merit then had assisted them in traversing the land and returning safely. Perhaps the words ויספרו לו were a reference by the Torah to the spies acknowledging that Moses' merit had assisted them. When the Torah failed to use the word לו after ויאמרו, the reason is that what followed applied to the Israelites as a whole and not to Moses in particular.

וגם זבת חלב ודבש, "and it does indeed flow with milk and honey." The word וגם, "and also," is justified as it is a continuation of a previous comment the spies made, namely that they experienced G'd's protective hand while traversing the land. The goodness of the land was an additional positive element they were able to comment upon.

אפס כי עז העם, "However the people are tough, etc." Seeing that Moses had specifically asked them to determine if the people who inhabited that land were strong or weak, they now had to report that the people were indeed formidable. Not only that but they dwelled in heavily fortified towns. They concluded that part of their report by mentioning that they had observed giants in the land. They stated this so that the Israelites should not think that the fact that the towns were fortified revealed weakness and lack of self confidence by the inhabitants.

The words העם היושב עליה also mean that the people do not only dwell in towns but are scattered all over the land, i.e. they are not afraid of being attacked. You will find that Bamidbar Rabbah on verse 29 interprets the fact that the Amalekites dwelled in the South of the land as proof that they did not live in townships. The words היושב בה are a hint that only people of extraordinary physique are able to live on that land successfully.

ויהס כלב את העם, Caleb silenced the people, etc. Seeing that an ordinary individual is not capable of silencing a people numbering hundreds of thousands, the Torah adds the words אל משה, to tell us that he silenced them in order to make them listen to Moses, not to himself. We know from Deut. 33,5 that Moses' rank was equivalent to the rank of a king. Caleb invoked the awe and respect due to a king in order to silence the people. Having invoked Moses' authority, he said: "we most certainly are able to to go up and take possession of the land." He meant that in spite of the other spies' having said: "we cannot overcome this people," he felt that the Israelites would be able to prevail.

The spies retorted by bad-mouthing the land of Canaan saying that even supposing that the Israelites were able to overcome the local inhabitants, the land was not worth having as it consumed its inhabitants.

וכל העם אשר ראינו בתוכה, "and all the people we have seen within it, etc." This may either mean that the country devours its people in spite of their outstanding physical prowess, or it may mean that the only people who are able to survive in that country, i.e. בתוכה, are the אנשי מדות, the men of especially great stature.

ונהי בעינינו כחגבים, "we felt in our own estimation as if we were grasshoppers (by comparison to them), and so we appeared in their eyes." The spies revealed by this comment that they felt vastly inferior even to the people in that land that did not fit the description of being men of stature. They knew this when comparing their own physiques to that of the average person whom they had observed.

ותשא כל העדה…ויבכו העם, And the whole community raised their voice and the people wept. The Torah adds the word "and the people," and did not content itself with reporting those who raised their voices. This is to tell us that it was not the whole community which wept on that night. The entire nation raised their voice (against Caleb, etc.) after the spies had succeeded in inspiring fear in them, but only part of the people actually wept.

Another method of interpreting this verse is based on Sotah 35 and Taanit 29. According to the Talmud, G'd told the people that seeing they had wept without good reason on that night (the 9th of Av), G'd would give them adequate reason in the future to weep on that date (the annivesary of the destruction of the Holy Temple). The words: "the entire community raised its voice," is an allusion to the unwarranted raising of their collective voice which eventually resulted in the people who lived during the destruction of the Temple weeping over its loss. Had the Torah simply written: "the people wept on that night," we would have understood this as referring to the people who had raised their voice at the beginning of the verse.

וילונו על משה ואהרון, They murmured against Moses and Aaron, etc. The reason why the Torah repeats the fact that the entire people joined in that murmuring, once referring to them as "all the children of Israel," and once as "the entire community," is to make a distinction between the two requests the people voiced. The entire people of Israel were complaining; however the nature of the complaint was voiced against Moses by the people who represented the community. These people told Moses that their first choice of evil would have been to die in Egypt before the Exodus rather than be faced with death now after a futile march through the desert. Seeing that they did not have this choice having already left Egypt, the next worse fate they could wish for was to die a natural death in the desert. This was at least a viable option. They complained why G'd apparently had chosen to let them die an even worse death, i.e. at the hands of the Canaanites when they would attempt to dispossess them. In that event their wives would be taken prisoner, their children would become loot, etc. The words הלא טוב לנו mean: "would we not be better off to die in Egypt peacefully after G'd would bring us back there?" They would be prepared to return to Egypt in order not to die in battle and for their families to become prisoners? After all, it was possible that the Egyptians would not kill them when they returned there. At any rate, they did not mind that G'd would decree that they should die a normal death in the desert rather than that they would fall in battle for an objective they could not hope to achieve.

ויהושע בן נון וכלב בן יפנה מן התרים, and Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Yefuneh who had been part of the team that toured the land, etc. Who did not know that these two had been part of the team? Why did the Torah have to mention this? The reason is that the Torah wanted to justify that these two men rent their garments in grief over what their colleagues had done. Some of the Israelites might have seen such an action as something presumptuous seeing that none of the elders had seen fit to rend their clothing. The Torah therefore had to tell us that the reason that Joshua and Caleb rent their garments was not that they felt superior to the elders, etc., but that they had experienced the beauty of the land of Canaan, something even Moses had not seen with his own eyes. They had greater reason to mourn what they stood to lose than anybody else. They also hoped to lend emphasis to their feeling of disgust that their colleagues had despised the land of Canaan by publicly rending their garments in the sight of all the Israelites. This was the most potent protest against what the ten spies had said that they could think of.

ויאמרו…לאמור. They said…to say: What is the meaning of the word לאמור after the Torah has already told us to whom Joshua and Caleb addressed themselves? Perhaps Caleb and Joshua used this expression referring to the ten spies who had admitted that the land was indeed excellent, flowing with milk and honey. Whereas the ten spies described this excellent land as unattainable in order to justify their report, Joshua and Caleb used the excellence of the land as a reason to extol it. The word לאמור then means "to extol" much as in Deut. 26,27.

טובה הארץ מאד מאד, "the land is indeed very good." They wanted to contradict the claim that the land consumes its inhabitants. This is why they said twice מאד, to say its fruit was good and it was pleasant to live in that land. Concerning the number of impediments which the other spies had enumerated they said that with G'd's help none of these factors mattered. They interpreted what they had seen to mean that G'd had already given the land to them on a platter.