Fear and Arrogance: When We Fail the Test of Faith

Fear and Arrogance: When We Fail the Test of Faith
D’var Torah for Parashat Shelakh Lekha, Numbers 13:1—15:41
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

If last week’s Torah portion, Beha-alotecha, was all about “raising the light,” or elevating one’s existence to a state of holiness, this week’s portion, Shelakh Lekha, is about some of the ways in which we can fail to do so.

It’s always a good idea, before embarking on any endeavor, to check out all the possible outcomes. It isn’t so much fortune telling as it is about hedging one’s bets. Spying has always been associated with intelligent warfare—in fact, modern parlance uses that very word, “intelligence gathering” for something very ancient and very basic to human existence: Scouting out the land.

Shelakh Lekha is the command Moses receives to send out spies to scout the Promised Land. Twelve men, each a leader among his own tribe, are sent with specific instructions to gather information about the land—its topography, its nature, its yield—and about its inhabitants. Even though God had promised the Land of Israel to the People of Israel, how exactly is the handing-over going to take place? Would it be peaceful co-existence or—in greater likelihood—would it involve wars? And if so, what kind of resistance will the Israelites encounter?

Ultimately, Moses urges the spies to bring back proof of the Land’s fruitfulness. Was it worth the trouble to begin with?

After forty days, the scouts return. There’s no question about the worth of the land. The fruit they bring back—a single cluster of grapes so big it has to be carried on the shoulders of two of the men, as well as figs and pomegranates, life-giving symbols in their own right—are proof of the intense life force flowing within the Land itself.

However, the scouts claim to have seen giants in the land, fierce and evil, armed-to-the-teeth giants. “We seemed like grasshoppers before them,” the spies quake and wail, “and so must we have seemed to them.” What’s worse, eretz ochelet yosh-vei-ha hee, “the land consumes its own inhabitants!” (Num. 13:32).

Despite the minority opinion offered by two of the twelve spies—Caleb and Joshua—to the effect that “If Adonai is pleased with us, He will lead us into that land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and will give it to us” (Numbers 14:8), the effect the spies’ account has on the Israelites is complete demoralization. Losing all faith, hope and courage, the Israelites express their deep desire to return to Egypt, and they nearly stone Moses and Aaron to death. Only God’s intervention saves them.

Letting their fears take charge was the failure of the ten false spies. They forgot about the secret weapon of Israel—God. There are no giants in the land—only in our imagination. And though it is a tough land to keep and cultivate, the fault lies not in the land itself, a “land flowing with milk and honey,” but in the cruelty and greed of those who strive to possess and use it for their own ends only. In punishment for their loss of faith, God decrees that the Israelites be wanderers in the wilderness for forty years, one year for each day that the faithless spies had scouted the Land.

Following Moses’s and God’s chastisement, the Israelites have a sudden change of heart. They decide to storm the Promised Land and take it by force. Which would have been fine, except that they were warned by Moses not to do that. God would not be with them, and they would be decimated by the fierce inhabitants of Canaan. Headstrong, many of the Israelites go ahead and charge up the hill, only to be destroyed as God and Moses had predicted. Their failure this time? Complete and exclusive self-reliance, again forgetting where the source of Israel’s strength ultimately lies.

From a total lack of confidence, the Israelites rush forward to supreme arrogance, a complete 360° turn that nets the same result: annihilation.

Shelakh Lekha deals with the basic human need to understand where we are going in order that we be better prepared for what we find when we get there. Facing an indeterminate future, it is best that we strengthen ourselves as best as we can. Confidence, this Torah portion teaches us, doesn’t only result from our own abilities. Nor is it luck. It is about preparedness, certainly; but it also is about faith and belief. The understanding that our existence and longevity as a people depend on our faith in God is an intrinsic part of our people’s history.

As a small minority in the families of nations, the Jews could not always rely on their own physical prowess for survival. Dependence on one superpower or another always proved only an illusory prop. Empires are notoriously fickle and unstable. Our faith in God, however, has always served to sustain us, in light as in darkness, through good times as through bad.

So why send spies to begin with? Why does God not only sanction this foray into the future, but commands it? To remind us that our strength comes from many sources, not least from our own resourcefulness; but also to teach that for us as Jews, there is only one answer to the question of our existence. We are here because God has a mission for us, and so long as we feel bound to that purpose, our faith—sustained by belief, ritual and mitzvot—remains the source of our strength.


©2011 by Boaz D. Heilman