Shabbat Parashat Shelach - 5785

Shabbat Parashat Shelach - 5785

Rabbi Hal Miller

  See the land, what is it, and the people that dwells in it, is it strong or weak, is it few or numerous and how is the land in which it dwells, is it good or bad, and how are the cities in which it dwells, is it in open cities or in fortified cities? [Bamidbar 13:18-19]

We know that the spies returned from their mission with a report designed to convince the people that they could not conquer the promised land. Did Moshe by his instructions contribute to this failure? Our verses are sometimes read as meaning Moshe directed them to scout out the enemy to see whether the Jews would be able to conquer them, but this makes no sense since God directed them to conquer the land and told the people that He would ensure their success. But this is how the spies seemed to take it when they said in [13:28], "But the people that dwells in the land is powerful, the cities are very fortified and large and we also saw there the offspring of the giant" which Rav Hirsch explains means that the spies were saying that Israel could not succeed. So what was Moshe's intent?

Perhaps we are misled by the statement of Bamidbar Rabbah [17:12] as cited by Rashi. "There are lands that rear strong men and there are lands that rear weaklings. Some lands breed large armies and some breed small armies." And it continues, "How can you tell their strength? If they dwell in camps they are strong for they rely on their own strength. If they dwell in strongholds they are feeble and their hearts are timid." At first glance this would seem to say that Moshe asked for an analysis of enemy fighting capability. If Moshe wanted such a report, he would presumably have clearly specified that the spies should come up with the best battle tactics.

Rav Hirsch stresses that Moshe was not asking whether Israel was able to conquer the land, knowing that God had already promised success. Rather Moshe was following the hishtadlut concept, that even with knowledge that God will perform the fighting, it falls to us to do our part, thus in fact Moshe did direct the spies to look for the best way to carry out the attack. Rashbam agrees with the hishtadlut, saying that "the people were convinced that God would give them the land of Canaan but they anticipated that this would not be without efforts on their part" thus Moshe was asking for a plan for how to begin the campaign. Gur Aryeh says that if all the Canaanites lived in the open, it would indicate that they felt strong, but that if some were in fortified cities, it meant that they were afraid of attack, and since all the Canaanites could be classed together, it meant that Israel could succeed against all of them.

Malbim replies that this is not so, that "Moshe told his agents explicity that their task was to tour the land and to scout out its goodness, not to spy it out militarily." Rav Soloveitchik also says that Moshe did not ask for a military prognosis, only a description of the land, and that the failure of the spies was to give a flawed prognosis in addition to an accurate description. Or HaChayim follows Malbim, that the strength of the Canaanites was well-known and Moshe did not have to send spies to determine that. Rather Moshe's questions were only about the land. Any information from the spies about the strength of the people was only "to emphasize the miracle God would perform." If the people were strong, it meant the land was strong, and if the people were weak, it implied that the land was weak, so Moshe wanted details about the land to know how to prepare for the agrarian society he was going to build.