The Book of B’midbar is such appropriate summer reading;
it’s filled with roller-coaster ups and downs.
The Children of Israel complain about the living conditions of the
wilderness of Sinai, Moses tries to address their complaints, God gets
impatient and threatens the people, the people repent, God forgives and the
cycle begins again.
This week’s parasha, Sh’lach Lecha (B’midbar (Numbers) 13:1-15:41) describes the turning point events
of the 12 representatives sent to scout out Canaan, the promised land. At the beginning of the narrative, the
expectation is that the Children of Israel will soon take possession of their
inheritance, that they are getting close.
There was likely a sense among the people that their suffering in the
wilderness was near an end, the Manna, of which after just a few months they
were already tiring, was a short term problem.
Moses gives specific instructions to his scouts (13:17-20)
that are both of a military and a domestic nature:
Go up there into the Negev and on into the
hill country, and see what kind of country it is. Are the people who dwell in in strong or
weak, few or many? Is the country in
which they dwell good or bad? Are the
towns they live in open or fortified? Is
the soil rich or poor, Is it wooded or not?
And take pains to bring back some of the fruit of the land.
Moses needs some military information, how strong are the
people and are their cities defended? He
also needs to know about the living conditions; agriculture, building materials
and soil quality. All of this is worthwhile
information to acquire. Moses, as
leader, wants the confidence knowledge will give him in order to lead the
people into the land.
The scouts, to their credit, follow the instructions they
are given. The tension begins with the
way they deliver their report and in the public way (were there intelligence
leaks?) their report gets to the people.
The scouts indeed find a land flowing (or some translations say oozing)
with milk and honey as promised. They
return with a cluster of grapes so large it takes two men to carry it (the
symbol today for Israel’s Ministry of Tourism).
So what is the problem? The
problem is one of perspective, and probably confidence.
The people in the land seemed large to the scouts; some of
the cities were indeed fortified.
Probably neither of these facts should have been particularly unexpected
since indeed Moses contemplated these possibilities in the delivery of his
instructions. The problem is in the
people’s reaction to these reports. They
go right back to their perspective of victimization, to their complaining of
how much better a life of servitude to Egypt would be (what they knew) to lives
of freedom that might involve some conflict and challenge (what they didn’t
know). The reaction of the people
(14:1-4) is what God finds so vexing.
Caleb and Joshua do an admirable job giving perspective to
the report, telling the people to have faith in God, and that the task is
achievable, but the people are ready to pelt Joshua and Caleb with stones. As Professor Burton Visotsky, in his book on
Midrash, Reading the Book details, God is shown here to be the most tragic
figure in Tanach; “How long will this people spurn me, and how long will they
have no faith in me despite all the signs that I have performed in their midst?” (14:11).
God threatens to destroy the people and start all over with Moses. Moses, the original spin doctor, tells God
how it will look to have made this big show of taking the people out of Egypt,
only to destroy them in the wilderness, and God relents – as we repeat on Yom
Kippur, God replies “Salachti ki’dvarecha” (I will pardon them as you have
asked (14:20)).
There is a consequence.
The punishment extends to the non-trusting generation of the exodus, and
except for Joshua and Caleb, the conquest of the land will wait for the next
generation – none of the complaining generation will get into the land of
Canaan. The 39 years of nation-building
in the wilderness is the sentence for this offense of lost of trust in God.
Questions to consider:
1. Does the
punishment fit the crime? Why do you
think the people need a 39 year time out?
2. How hard is it to be Moses? He has to deal with the people’s
disappointment and God’s disappointment.
Do you know anyone who could do that job?
3. How would you make
the best of a bad situation, knowing that the rest of your life was going to be
a 39 year camping trip?
Steve Kerbel is the
Director of Education of Congregation B’nai Tzedek in Potomac, MD. He is the current chair of the Education
Directors Council of Greater Washington and a national vice president of the
Jewish Educators Assembly.
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