37: Sh'lach
Parsha Sh'lach (Numbers 13:1-15:41)
TLDR:
God directs Moses to send 12 chieftains (one per tribe) to scout the land of Canaan. They explore Canaan for forty days, at one point finding a grape cluster so large it requires two men to carry it.
They return to the Israelite camp and share that the land “is actually flowing with milk and honey.” But, they explain that the people living there are strong and fortified.
Enough! Caleb silences them and proclaims that they will prevail. The scouts retort that they would be mere “grasshoppers” compared to giants in the land.
The Israelites complain again that they were brought out of Egypt solely to die. Joshua and Caleb, who were 2 of the 12 scouts, tell the people not to fear.
The Israelites aren’t buying it and are about to pelt Joshua and Caleb with stones when God descends to the camp and, seemingly in a rage, tells Moses that he will kill all the people by plague.
Moses challenges God, explaining that if God were to kill the people, other nations would claim that God couldn’t bring the people he saved from Egypt successfully to Canaan. Moses is God’s reputation manager.
God forgives the people, but swears that anyone 20 years and up will die in the wilderness and not be brought into the land, except for Caleb and Joshua. God tells them they “will bear their crimes for forty years.”
God kills the ten scouts who brought a bad report about the land by plague.
Contrite, some group of people (unclear who) rise the next morning prepared to go into the land, but Moses tells them that they will fail. They defiantly proceed and the Amalekites and Canaanites kill them.
The parsha ends with a detailed description of atonement sacrifices, an incident in which a man is pelted by stones for transgressing the sabbath, and the commandment to wear tsitsit, or fringes on your clothes, to remember God’s laws.
Question:
FEAR. Fear drives the decision-making throughout the episode of the twelve scouts (more popularly, spies). The people fear that they will die if they try to conquer the land, so complain to God. Just as suddenly, the people fear that they’ll have to live in the wilderness for forty years and conduct a senseless attack against the Amalekites and Canaanites. Specifically what doesn’t drive their decision-making is an imagination of what could be. They’re reactive and meandering. So God’s punishment — that the generation of slaves won’t be able to enter the land — makes sense if you think that mentality is engrained in them. Certain things should be feared; borrowing from Jim Koch (the founder of Sam Adams Brewery), there are things that are dangerous but not scary (walking across a snow field on a spring day) and things that are scary but not dangerous (public speaking). Going into Israel with God on your side is scary, but not dangerous! What are things you fear in your life that fall into the scary, but not dangerous camp?
Close reading question: Starting at Numbers 15;32 is the story of the man who carries wood on shabbat and dies. How is it connected to the story of the scouts? Why is the infraction punished so severely?