At the beginning of this week’s parsha, Rashi repeats the question of the Midrash Tanchuma: Why does the story of the spies follow the episode of Miriam speaking lashon hara about Moshe and getting tzara’at?
The Maharal in Gur Arye finds the question to be problematic at first. Although the Torah does not always relate events in chronological order, Rashi doesn’t often interrogate the reasons for the order in which they occur. Previously, when the bracketed section describing the traveling of the Aron appeared, Rashi explained that the Torah wanted to refrain from relating unfortunate events back-to-back. But anyway, the story of Miriam is preceded by the story of those who complained about the mann, so it seems now that the Torah is just stacking misfortune upon misfortune. Or more to the point, relating the series of events where Israel made more and more problems for themselves.
In Rashi’s answer to the question, the Maharal finds a broader and more detailed answer to the whole series of events and the conduct of the participants. Rashi says that by prefacing the story of the spies with the punishment of Miriam, the Torah is underscoring the fact that the spies failed to take counsel after witnessing the costs of speaking lashon hara. The Maharal says that the episodes are in fact out of chronological order but that the Torah has brought them together in order to draw attention to this particular point.
Hashem could have indulged the unvoiced desire of the people and given the command to send spies at any point in the initial journey across the Sinai. In fact, the trip was short and should have been direct had it not been for the crime of the spies. The Maharal says that Hashem deliberately waited until after Miriam was punished for speaking lashon hara so that the spies would be given an opportunity to take to heart what befell that tzadeket and to draw the proper conclusions for their own conduct. Unfortunately for themselves and for all Israel, the spies did not apply the teaching to their own experience. Instead, they participated in the grave offense of speaking lashon hara about the land – and about Moshe who was leading us to the land – setting in motion a series of terribly unfortunate events.
The Maharal also draws attention to the specific offense of the spies and whether Moshe was culpable for sending them in the first place. He compares the text in our parsha to the text in Devarim when Moshe is recounting these events at the end of his life – because there Moshe implies that he agreed with the idea of sending the spies and Hashem did not. But on the surface, the sending of spies in and of itself is not a forbidden act. In fact, forty years later, Yehoshua would do it again with better results. It is natural, the Maharal points out, for a people entering a new land with the intent of conquering it to want to know the basic geography and the ways and roads by means of which it is navigated. It was appropriate for Israel to want to have a better understanding of what they would find upon entering the land.
The initial problem with the spies was that they were sent with the purpose of determining how best to mount the invasion and where the enemy was most vulnerable. Hashem had already promised to give the land to Israel – the best way to invade it was to follow His commands as expressed by Moshe. Any effort to prepare a military strategy was a reflection of lack of faith in Hashem’s power to deliver the victory. Unfortunately, this critical lack of faith led to the discrediting of the very idea that the land could be conquered, causing Israel’s faith in Hashem to be undermined and resulting in calls to return to Mitzrayim. The relatively simple lack of faith in the face of considerable odds in the material world eventually brought about the collapse of the faith of the entire nation and the loss of a generation in the desert.
We in our generation are confronted with a similar set of challenges. Faced with daunting odds, we also want to rely upon our own power to protect ourselves, and to a certain extent this is an appropriate use of the resources we have been granted. However, our only guarantee of security in our land – indeed the only force that can be relied upon to preserve us into the future – is our covenant with Hashem and the promise He made to our forefathers that He would restore us there and will redeem us. We rely upon this promise by the One who has never broken a promise, and thus we should neither lionize nor demonize our leaders because the outcome was never in their hands.
