Nehar Deah

Shelach Lecha

Spy Stories in the Bible

The focal point of the Torah portion of “Shelach Lecha” is the story of the twelve spies Moses sent from the wilderness in order “to spy out the land of Canaan” (Bamidbar 13:17) before its conquest and to investigate its inhabitants, its defenses and the quality of its produce. This story is repeated with significant changes in the book of Devarim (1:22-39), and in addition to it we find another few stories of spying campaigns. Joshua, Moses’ pupil and heir, sends spies to Jericho before its conquest by the children of Israel (Joshua chapter 2 - and this story also serves as the haphtarah, the additional reading, for this Torah portion), and also to the city of Ai (ibid, 7:2-5). The House of Joseph spies out the city of Beit-El before it falls into their hands (Judges 1:22-26) and the tribe of Dan, which searches for a new place for settlement, sends five people on an espionage mission before the battle over the city of Layish (ibid 18:2-10). Finally - King David , who flees from his son Avshalom, sends spies into the heart of the enemy camp in order to know what its intentions are (Samuel II 15:27-17:22).

The Bible, in general, dies not praise the bravery in the battlefield and does not see an army of soldiers as the main instrument to achieve national aims; on the contrary, it focuses on the greatness of God and His ability to save and protect. Why therefore does the Bible bring various stories of espionage while retelling the history of the nation of Israel? It seems that the answer to this question will become obvious when we compare the various stories of espionage according to the following seven principles.

(a) The nature of the mission. It is carried out - with the exception of the story of David’s spies - before the act of conquest: conquest of the land by the children of Israel under the leadership of Moses and Joshua or conquest of separate lands by one of the tribes.
(b) The initiator of the act of espionage. It is God who commands Moses, according to what is told in this Torah portion, to send spies (but when we return to the story in the book of Devarim [1:22 and onwards] the initiative is in the hands of the children of Israel themselves and maybe this is done due to the failure of the mission and out of the desire not to pin the failure on God). In the other stories the initiative for the mission comes from the leader.
(c) The identity of the spies. Moses sends important people, “the leaders of the children of Israel” (13:3) and the tribe of Dan sends its senior people, “people of valor” (Judges 18:2). Those sent by David are priests, who are among those of the highest status in the nation, while we do no know anything about those sent by Joshua to Jericho and Ai.
(d) Explanation of the mission to the spies. Moses briefs the spies in detail as to their mission and to the geographic, strategic and economic issues they must investigate. We do not find such detail in the other espionage stories.
(e) The fulfillment of the mission. In most of the stories the carrying out of the mission that has been entrusted to the spies, is described in relative detail. This fact is most obvious in the story of Moses’ spies, with respect to whom we can describe the route they walked and their actions. The situation is different with Joshua’s spies, in Jericho (where the mission is not carried out fully since at the outset of their travels the spies already reach the home of Rachav and their presence in the city is revealed to the king of Jericho) and in Ai.
(f) Reports of the mission. The detailed and pessimistic report of Moses’ spies causes panic among the children of Israel. The optimistic words of Caleb son of Yefuneh and Joshua son of Nun derive from their faith in God and in the ability of the children of Israel to conquer the land. The reports by the spies who went to Ai are positive, but do not have any basis: God will bring about the defeat of the nation of Israel and thereby punish it for the sin of Achan during the conquest of Jericho, when he took from the plunder of the city and transgressed the instruction to consecrate to God the city and all that was in it. The spies sent by the tribe of Dan also returned with positive reports, based on their faith that God would give them the land that they had chosen for themselves. The report given by Joshua’s spies is also optimistic, but it does not come from their own conclusions, but rather from the words of Rachav and her faith that God will give the land of Canaan to the children of Israel.
(g) The influence of the report. In the story of Moses’ spies it is known that the results of the spy’s words were destructive and harsh, similar to the results of the optimistic report by Joshua’s spies at Ai. In the rest of the stories the reports achieve their aims.

Comparing the stories to each other reveals that the military and practical components of acts of espionage in the bible underwent a change which has its roots in theology: a successful espionage mission performed by spies who are men of stature does not guarantee success; faith in God and walking in His ways is what guarantees victory. In this Torah portion God initiates the sending of the spies in order to test the children of Israel and see if they trust in him and will go out to conquer the ‘good land’, “a land flowing with milk and honey”, despite its fortified cities and the giants dwelling there, if they listen to the voices of Caleb and Joshua who trust in God and do not listen to the choir of spies trying to make them indecisive.

Joshua, in contrast, initiates the sending of spies to Jericho even though God promises him explicitly that “every place where the soles of your feel will step on I will give to you” (Joshua 1:3) and this story therefore tells of a lack of faith. Alas for that shame; the spies that Joshua sent - two unnamed and inexperienced youths - who go on their way without sufficient instruction, choose to go to the home of a prostitute instead of focusing on the espionage mission. And immediately after they arrive in the city the matter becomes known to the king of Jericho who sends people to apprehend them. And then Rachav teaches the spies of Joshua that the land will fall into their hands like a ripe fruit. The words of Rachav, “I knew that that God has given you the land and that the fear of you has fallen upon us and that the inhabitants of the land melt away before you” (ibid 2:9) are the words that are in the Song of the Sea: “All the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away, terror and fear fall upon them” (Shemot 15:15-16). Joshua should have remembered the words of the Song, to trust in God and not to send spies and the conclusion-punishment is that the prostitute from Jericho teaches him a lesson from the annals of history, in biblical song and in trusting God. Rachav, who does with the two passive spies as she wishes, even obtains a promise to safeguard all the members of her household and to save them and thereby the house of Rachav will live among Israel; “till this day”, a memento of the sin of a lack of faith in God.

However Joshua does not learn the required lesson and he sends his spies again and this time to Ai. He quickly learns an important lesson: even when the spies return with exact strategic information as to the size of the army required to conquer the city, his army is still soundly defeated due to of the sin of Achan. Flesh and blood spies can maybe determine the size of the enemy army and describe its weak points, but their human eyes cannot reveal the intentions of God whose roots lie in his righteous judgment.

Most of the espionage missions in the bible therefore indicate that faith is the most important thing and that espionage stands in direct contrast with complete faith in God and trust in His ability to save His nation.

Professor Yair Zakobitz
Bible Department

Nature of the Land - What is honey?

In this Torah portion the land of Israel is referred to as “a land … flowing with milk and honey” (14:8). This term appears in about twenty additional places in the Bible, both in the Torah (such as Shemot 3:8 or Devarim 11:9) and in the words of the prophets (such as Jeremiah 11:5 [“And the vow which I swore to your forefathers to give them a land flowing with milk and honey”] or Ezekiel 20:6). Almost always the term refers to the Land of Israel, except for one occasion, when the followers of Korach use it to refer to Egypt: “is it a small thing that you have brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey in order to kill us in the wilderness” (Bamidbar 16:13). The term is used to emphasize the wealth of produce of the land, but the exact nature of the “honey” mentioned in it needs further examination.

Among researchers there are those who explain “honey” as referring to the product of bees. From the Bible we know that ancient peoples commonly collected bee’s honey from their hives, which were often among rocks (compare: “He made him such honey from the rock” [Devarim 32:13]) or among the trees in the forest (as is told in Samuel I 14:25-27). Finding honey among the crevices of rocks and the flint is maybe also hinted to in the epithet in the book of Proverbs which speaks of maintaining appropriate proportions in everything: “You found honey - eat adequately, lest you be satiated and vomit it up” (25:16). Sometimes bees even found hiding places in the carcasses of animals, such as what is told of Shimon who collected honey from the carcass of the lion he killed (Judges 14:8), probably after the flesh was eaten by scavengers and the bones had dried out in the sun. The hot climate in Israel often melted the honeycombs and caused the sweet fluid to flow over the ground, a phenomenon which can be describes as “a land flowing with milk and honey”.

However, according to most researchers this verse refers to the sweet nectar which drips from fruit such as grapes, carobs, figs or dates. Therefore, for example, the date is mentioned among the seven species that the land of Israel is blessed with, in the following language: “a land of wheat and barley, grape and fig and pomegranate; a land of olive oil and honey” (Devarim 8:8). If the fruit is not harvested in time, its juices begin to drip out, thereby enabling the land to be seen as “flowing with honey”. A description of the future in the words of the prophet Joel (4:18), “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the mountains will drip with nectar and the hills will flow with milk”, teaches that prophet probably understood the previous phrase “flowing with milk and honey” as deal with the nectar of fruits.

In either case, honey is mentioned as one of the products of the land that was commonly sold in neighboring countries (Ezekiel 27:17), mainly as a delicacy, as is written in the book of Proverbs: “My son, eat honey, for it is good” (24:13). Honey was also frequently brought as a gift (as Joseph’s brothers do this when they come to him in Egypt [Bereishit 43:11] and also the wife of King Yeravam, whose son was dying, who went to the prophet Achiya in order to hear from him what would be the fate of her son [Kings I 14:3]) and therefore we have more evidence of the popularity of this sweet delicacy and its importance.

Literature of the Sages - When did the Spies Return from their Mission?

The Torah does not stipulate the dates upon which the spies went out on their mission or returned from it. It suffices with the assertion that they spied out the land for “forty days (Bamidbar 13:25) and that this happened at a time that was “the days of the first ripe grapes” (verse 20), meaning the summertime. These two facts are needed for the sake of the story itself, since as a result of the refusal of the nation to enter the land of Canaan due to the spies having spoken badly of the land, the nation of Israel is punished by having to wander in the wilderness for forty years, “for every day, a year” (14:34), while the mention of grapes comes to explain how the spies could bring with them to the camp “a single bunch of grapes”, which due to its weight had to be carried on a pole by two people (12:23) and why the place from which the grapes were taken was called “the brook of Eshcol [=bunch]” (verse 24).

Then we find that the Sages who often try to establish the exact dates for biblical events (such as the assertion that Moses’ birthday is on 7 Adar and the crossing of the Red Sea on 21 Nisan), determine the exact dates that the spies went out on their mission and even when they returned from it. Therefore we find in a work from the third century, called “”Seder Olam” [“The Order of the World”], wants to suggest dates for various events from the creation of the world until close to the Bar Kochba revolt. In this work, the assertion is made that the spies left on their journey on 29 Nisan and returned from it on the night of 9 Av.

It seems clear that the date for the outset of the espionage mission was calculated retroactively, out of a desire to connect between the day the spies were sent and Tisha Be’av (9 Av), a day that has special meaning in Jewish tradition. The Mishna lists five disasters which happened on 9 Av, some from the Bible and some from later periods: “Five things befell our ancestors … On the ninth of Av it was decreed against our ancestors that they would not enter the Land [on the day that the spies returned from their mission], and the Temple was destroyed the first time and the second time, and Beitar was captured, and the city was ploughed” (Ta’anit 4:6). As well as the decree of forty years of wandering and the death of all those who came out of Egypt in the wilderness, the Mishna mentions the destruction of the first Temple by the Babylonians (compare Kings II 25:8 and Jeremiah 52:12), the destruction of the second Temple by Titus and the Roman army, the fall of the city of Beitar to the Romans during the Bar Kochba revolt and an act of destruction whose nature is unclear that took place in Jerusalem after the destruction, when the city was completely razed in order to build another city and became like a ploughed field (the language is based the words of Jeremiah: Zion will be ploughed like a field” [26:18]). The day of the return of the spies is compared to other calamitous days of destruction and ruination.

This and more: when the children of Israel heard the words of the spies, “And the whole nation lifted up their voices and the nation cried on that night” (Bamidbar 14:1) and the Babylonian Talmud say on this verse: “That night was the ninth of Av. The Holy One, blessed be he, said to them, you cried for no valid reason - and I give you crying for all generations” (Ta’anit 29a). The first refusal to enter the land, says the Talmud, determined that for all generations the day of the ninth of Av would be for lamentations and weeping. Those who sinned and did not want to enter the land on that day, their descendants lost the Temple and the land on the same day because of their sin.