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Parashat Shlach
Iyunim - Weekly insights on the Parasha with commentaries by Nehama
Leibovitz, za"l
Had
God Changed his Mind?
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In this chapter we shall deal with the end of the section on the spies
- with the last verse. Their punishment had already been explained to
them and been given added force by being worded in the form of an oath:
As I live, saith the Lord, surely as you have spoken in My ears, so will
I do to you. (14,28)
They had "begged": "Would that we had died in the land of Egypt, or would
that we had died in this wilderness". Accordingly:
Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness from twenty years old and
upward, you that have murmured against Me. (14, 29)
And your children shall be wanderers in the wilderness forty years and
shall bear the brunt of your strayings until your carcasses be consumed
in the wilderness. After the number of days in which you spied out of
land, shall you bear your iniquities, even forty years, and you shall
know My displeasure. (14, 33-34)
The punishment was immediately felt when death overtook the evil congregation
of the ten spies (14, 37):
And these men that brought an evil report of the land died by the plague,
before the Lord.
After all this the people mourned. On the morrow (14, 40):
They rose up early in the morning and went up to the top of the mountain
saying, Lo we are here and we will go up to the place which the Lord has
promised; for we have sinned.
The reaction to this was (vv. 41-43):
Why do you now transgress the commandment of the Lord seeing it shall
not prosper? Go not up for the Lord is not among you. ...But they insisted
on going up to the top of the mountain; nevertheless the ark of the covenant
of the Lord and Moses did not budge from the camp.
The result of this behaviour of theirs (14, 45):
The Amalekite and the Canaanite who dwelt in that hill country descended
and fell upon them and crushed them even to Hormah.
Our commentators have been puzzled by this. Arama thus words the difficulty
in his Akedat Yizhak:
After they had presumed to go up to the top of the mountain, Why did
not the ark of the Lord and Moses move from the camp and why were the
gates of repentance shut against them? Does not this story violate the
golden rule that he who acknowledges his sin and forsakes it shall find
grace? Was it not the Lord’s desire that they should overcome their fear,
that they should not be afraid of the people of the land and go up and
fight? Were they not bidden: "Go up! Be not afraid, neither be dismayed".
Was not their action in ascending the mountain what was expected of them?
Or had the Lord changed his mind?
We find a similar problem in the messages of two great Hebrew prophets.
Isaiah called on his brothers:
Keep calm and be tranquil; fear not nor let your heart be faint. (Isaiah
7, 4)
He demanded resistance to the enemy had promised that salvation would
come. But when Jeremiah saw his king rising up and the people enthusiastic
for rebellion, he prophesied catastrophe and destruction, demanded immediate
surrender and acceptance of the overlordship of the king of Babylon, even
himself bearing the yoke on his own neck as a symbol of the humbling that
had been ordained. Had God changed His mind? This is not the case. Not
the God who defends His city unconditionally, who does not allow the stranger
and enemy to enter its gates is the living God in whom we are to put our
trust. Nor is God who destroys and overturns, the God of retribution,
the living God in whom we are to believe. Buber thus explained it in his
work on The Teaching of the Prophets :
It is immaterial whether the prophecy involves salvation or catastrophe.
What matters is that the prophecy, irrespective of its content, should
fit in with the Divine demand at that particular historic moment. In times
of unjustified complacency, a message of shattering catastrophe is called
for, the finger pointing at impending destruction in history. On the other
hand, in times of great tribulation, from which deliverance is still possible,
in times of remorse and repentance an encouraging message of salvation
is in keeping.
When Jeremiah called for surrender and acceptance of the yoke of the
king of Babylon, he knew that the people could no longer be purified and
restored to the true path except through arduous sufferings involving
the destruction of the temple and the yoke of exile. It was no longer
possible "to build and to plant" without fulfilling the message of "to
root out and pull down, to destroy and overthrow".
The work of rebuilding could not be contemplated before the process of
destruction and uprooting had been endured. The same applies to our subject.
Their inability to go and occupy the land became clearly manifest in the
statement: "Let us appoint a leader and let us return to Egypt", in that
weeping that they wept on that night. Now matters could not be remedied
without them accepting what had been imposed on them. Their words: "Lo
we are here and we will go up" constituted no repentance unless they accepted
their sentence, humbled themselves and bore their punishment. Divine punishment
is itself the cure for their ills, the path of repentance. So Maimonides
explains the purpose of their wanderings in the wilderness:
Man cannot be expected suddenly to leave the state of slavery and toiling
in bricks and straw and the like, wash his soiled hands at the spur of
the moment and fight with giants... It was therefore part of the Divine
wisdom to make them wander around the wilderness until they had become
schooled in courage. For, as is well know, a nomadic existence under spartan
conditions breeds courage, and the reverse, cravenness. In addition a
new generation of people grew up who had known no humiliation and bondage.
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