Slander, Exile and Redemption – Lessons from the Episode of the Spies
Background: The Punishment(s) for the Sin of the Spies
The tragic episode in our parsha known as the sin of the spies, only began with the spies. However, it quickly developed and became the sin of the people, in believing the slanderous reports of the spies about the nature of the land and their inability to conquer it. As we know, the punishment received by the people was for that generation to wander in the wilderness for forty years, where they would die out and not be able to enter the land. According to the Sages, there was another element of punishment which would reverberate much later on in history. The Gemara in Maseches Taanis[1] relates:
אותו לילה ליל תשעה באב היה, אמר להם הקב"ה: אתם בכיתם בכיה של חנם, ואני קובע לכם בכיה לדורות
That night was the night of the Ninth of Av. Said the Holy One, blessed be He, to them: You have cried (on this night) for nothing, I will establish for you (on it) a crying for future generations.
Passing Through with Honors
The commentators note that, in the course of their slander, the spies in fact said things which were untrue. They proclaimed, for example that “אֶרֶץ אֹכֶלֶת יוֹשְׁבֶיהָ הִוא – the Land consumes its inhabitants.”[2] Is this assessment based on anything that they saw? The answer is yes — and no. The Gemara[3] explains the background to their statement:
Said the Holy One, Blessed is He, “I intended this for their benefit. Every place they passed through the most important official died, in order to make the population preoccupied with their mourning so that they wouldn’t inquire regarding the spies. They interpreted it negatively and said the land consumes its inhabitants.”
It turns out that the statement of the spies was indeed based on something they saw, but it was nonetheless the opposite of the truth. Are the spies to be faulted for not interpreting correctly? After all, they did in fact see funerals wherever they went!
Upon reflection, we will see that there is no meaningful way the funerals could have led them to their conclusion. First, all of the funerals were attended by everyone in town. That itself should have served as an indication that these deaths were an unusual event. If it was indeed the nature of the land to kill its inhabitants, then this would have been an everyday occurrence, and would not have caused such a disruption to the town.[4] Moreover, if the death rate of the country was so alarmingly high, then how were there so many people living in it?
Clearly, they misinterpreted what they saw. The land did not devour its inhabitants. Yet if the correct interpretation of what the spies saw was so obvious, what led them to draw the opposite conclusions? The answer is that, for various reasons, the spies did not want the people to enter the land. The Zohar explains that each of these spies had a position of authority in the desert. They were concerned, on some level, that when the Jewish people would enter the Land of Israel there would be a reshuffle and new appointments would be made. Therefore, they preferred to stay in the desert.
This comment is most disturbing. Amongst all the other factors which must have been involved in the spies’ decision to stay in the desert was a desire for honor, which affected the way they looked at everything they saw. We do not know how conscious the spies were of this motivation. All we know are the results.
The Original Exile
The book which describes the calamities surrounding the destruction of the Temple on the ninth of Av is named after its opening word, “Eichah,” which may be translated as “alas,” a word which bemoans calamity. According to the Midrash,[5] the origins of this terrible word are in the sin of Adam and Eve. After he has eaten from the tree of Knowledge, Hashem appears to Adam and opens with a startling question, “אַיֶּכָּה — Where are you?”[6] The Hebrew letters which form the word ayeka are identical to the letters of the word eichah.
These words of the Midrash need to be pondered. Although it is true that the letters of the two words are the same, nonetheless they remain two very different words with completely different meanings! The word איכה comes from the word “איך” which means “how”, while the word “אַיֶּכָּה” relates to the word “איה - where”, with the letter kaf simply denoting someone being addressed in the second person! How does “where” become “how” or “alas”?
To understand the intent of the Midrash, we must first consider the more basic question of what exactly Hashem was doing by asking Adam where he is, when Hashem clearly knows. In asking Adam this question, Hashem is communicating a message to him regarding what he had done what has happened. The question of “where are you” means as follows: “I placed you in a garden where all the trees are of benefit to you with one exception, which is very harmful. By the time you came to eat from that tree, your vision of your surroundings shifted and you saw yourself as being in a garden where only one of the trees was of any benefit to you, and all the others were of no use whatsoever! That is a very different place than the one where you started. Where is that place? It is certainly not where I put you!”
Subsequent to this rebuke, Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden. On a certain level, in altering their vision of their surroundings as a prelude to them eating from the tree of knowledge, they had already left.
Setting the Scene for Future Exile
Thus, the shift in mindset represented by the question “Ayeka — Where are you?” is the root of the “eichah” lament over the exile from the Land of Israel, which was rooted in the sin of the spies. The description of the land that they brought back in no way matched that of the land itself. In superimposing their negative interpretation of events they were effectively describing a different place than the one they were in. In effect, we could say that this was the full measure of the tragedy with the spies: They set out to inspect the land of Israel, but they never got there!
In this way, the spies were sowing the seeds of exile. In future generations, the Jewish people may forfeit their right to dwell in Hashem’s Land if they are not really “living there” in the meaningful sense of the word. For the idea of “exile of the mind” can pertain to any individual in any setting. This idea is communicated concisely in a Mishnah in Pirkei Avos[7], which states:
הקנאה התאוה והכבוד מוציאים את האדם מן העולם
Jealousy, desire and honor remove a person from this world.
At first glance, this Mishnah seems rather extreme. Do these things really physically “remove one from the world”? In truth, or course, they are capable of doing exactly that. The news on any given day will likely contain a story of someone who left — or was removed from — the world due to jealousy, desire or honor. That said, for most people who are not actually physically killed on account of these things, how do we understand the message of the Mishnah? How can a living person leave the world, and if he can, where does he go?
The answer is, anyone who is chronically affected by one or more of these traits will indeed be removed from the world, for he exists in his own world, one which has only a marginal semblance of the world as it really is. If this disposition should take hold of the nation as a whole, the process of exile has been initiated.
Redeeming Vision
The redemption from our exile, for which we are waiting, has many aspects to it. If the first step of exile takes place in the mind, then redemption likewise involves us being prepared to leave our own world behind and rejoin the world of Hashem – wherever we are, seeing to it that we are present in every place that we are found. May we soon merit the full return of the Jewish people to their land – in every sense of the word, and may we hear only besoros tovos, yeshuos ve’nechamos!
[1] 29b.
[4] Bircas Peretz (R’ Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky, the Steipler Gaon), Parshas Shelach.
[7] 4:28.