13:26 records that apparently immediately upon the return of the 12 spies, they gave their report to Moshe, Aharon and the entire nation. In this report, the spies showed the fruit of the land of Israel and testified that the land was flowing with milk and honey, the inhabitants of the land were strong, and the cities were fortified, 13:26-29. This report seems to have agitated the people, since 13:30 records that Calev (one of the spies) had to quiet the people down, and he urged the people to go to Israel. The other spies, excluding Yehoshua, then stated that the people would not be able to conquer the land, 13:31, and then they defamed the land by stating that it “eats its inhabitants,” 13:32. The spies concluded that the land was filled with giants, 13:33. The people responded by crying, and complaining to Moshe that they wanted to return to Egypt since they thought they would die if they went to the land of Israel, 14:1-4.
Ramban (on 14:3) notes that the people did not mention the defamatory report on the land only that they were afraid of dying. Ramban suggests that this was because the people knew that Moshe could easily have disproved this claim. While this is possible, the question of the quality of the land was irrelevant once the people had become convinced that they were going to die if they attempted to enter the land. G-d then punished the people by decreeing that they would have to stay in the desert for 40 years and the ten bad spies were killed immediately.
Ramban (on 13:2) asks what was the sin of the spies, as they reported what they saw? Were the spies sent to lie? Furthermore, Moshe 40 years later, prior to the entrance of the people to the land, told the people that the inhabitants of the land of Israel were very strong. Moshe even mentioned, that it was said of the inhabitants “who could stand before them?” Devarim 9:1,2. If Moshe could mention the strength of the inhabitants of the land, why could the spies not do the same?
Ramban claims that the ten spies committed two sins. One, (on 13:27) in the first report of the spies, 13:27-29, they gave a truthful report but they also added the word, efes, nevertheless, after describing the fruits of the land and before their description of the strengths of the people living the land. This word implied that it would be difficult for the people to enjoy the fruits of the land. The people understood this and started grumbling and this is why Calev had to quiet them down. To counter Calev’s advice, the other spies presented their advice, 13:31, where they stated explicitly what they had hinted to beforehand that they did not think that the land of Israel could be conquered. This was the first sin of the spies, as they task was to report information and not to advise the people to desist from going to the land of Israel. However, the spies did not stop with their bad advice, and they defamed the land of Israel. This was their second sin and Ramban (on 13:32) explains that this second sin was why they were killed immediately, as the Torah uses the same word, debat, both in 13:32 and in 14:37 when referring to their punishment.
I am not sure if the people understood from the spies’ first report that the spies were implying that the people should not go to Israel. However, maybe the report itself was a shock to the people. The people might have assumed that conquering Israel was going to be a trivial event, and once they were told that the inhabitants of the land were so strong, they realized their assumption was not necessarily correct, and this caused their agitation.
Why would the 10 spies commit these two sins? The second sin, of defaming the land, seems understandable once they had committed the first sin, as the defamation of the land was to bolster their initial claim that the people should not attempt to conquer the land. Yet, how could the spies think the people could not succeed in conquering the land? The spies had witnessed the 10 plagues, the splitting of Yam Suf, the cloud of G-d and they had heard G-d’s promise to give the land of Israel to the Jewish people. Even if they really believed that the inhabitants of the land of Israel were giants, how could they doubt G-d’s ability or desire to give the people the land of Israel?
There seems to be two possibilities, either they really doubted or they did not. If they did not doubt, then we have to postulate some conspiracy theory that the ten spies lied in order for the people to stay in the desert. Nachshoni (1987) quotes from Hasidic sources, that the ten spies really had pious intentions, as they thought it was more proper for a religious person to stay in the sheltered life of the desert than to enter the real life in the land of Israel. A slightly less apologetic approach could be that they thought the people were not ready for the real life, so they wanted the people to remain with the miraculous existence of the desert. Or, one could impart sinister reasons to the conspiracy theory. Yissakhar Teichtal (2000, p.259) quotes from the Zohar that the spies feared that they would only be princes in the desert, but they would lose their power if the people entered the land of Israel. Or one could claim the spies were just evil people who wanted to harm the people, but then it is hard to understand why Moshe chose them. Yet, notwithstanding the current popularity with conspiracy theories, they are hard to prove, and I doubt the case here involves a conspiracy. Thus one has to explain the spies doubting of G-d’s power.
It seems to me there are two possibilities why the spies doubted G-d's power. One, maybe the spies thought that G-d meant for the people to capture the land through normal means as otherwise why bother sending spies? Thus, their advice that the people could not conquer the land of Israel was made without any assumption of divine help. Clearly there is some truth to the idea that the people would have to live normal lives without daily miracles once they reached the land of Israel, but still as G-d had promised the people the land, the spies should have calculated G-d’s assistance into their analysis.
Thus, the more likely rationale for their advice is that when they had spent the time traveling in the land of Israel, they had forgotten the miracles of G-d. According to this idea, even when the spies returned to the camp and would have seen the divine cloud, they had become so fixated on their thoughts in the 40 days that they were gone, that they were unable to change their mind. Thus, they gave their report immediately upon their return. Their actions would then show a lack of perspective that they could not discern or critique information, which, in retrospect, made then unfit to be spies.
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