Bemidbar 13:2 and Devarim 1:22,23 - Whose idea was it to send the spies?

Devarim 1:19-45 records Moshe’s recollection of the sending of the spies 38 years earlier. It has long been noted that there are several differences between the account of the spies in Bemidbar 13,14 and Moshe's retelling of the incident in Devarim 1. Perhaps the most obvious difference in Moshe's retelling of the sending of the spies is that Devarim 1:22 records that Moshe stated that it was the people who requested for the spies to be sent, while Bemidbar 13:2 records that G-d told Moshe to send the spies.

Rashi (on Bemidbar 13:2, and for a more recent versions see Samet 2002) explains that the people first requested from Moshe to send spies, and then Moshe asked and received G-d's permission to send the spies. Yet, if both G-d and the people desired for the spies to be sent, why did Bemidbar 13 only refer to G-d's authorization and not the people's request while in Devarim, Moshe only referred to the people's request and not G-d's authorization? N. Leibowitz (1980a, pp. 16-25) explains, based on the Ramban's comments on Bemidbar 13:2, that in Bemidbar the Torah did not record the people's request for the spies since it was "natural and understood" while in Devarim, Moshe only referred to the people's request for the spies since he wanted to emphasize the people's responsibility for their sin.

I doubt that the people had the gumption to take the initiative and propose to send spies. Prior to the incident of the spies, we read how the people were crying for meat, Bemidbar 11:4, and their re-action to the report of the spies show that they had not lost their slave mentality. If the people really initiated the sending of the spies, then this fact should have been recorded in Bemidbar. In addition, my understanding is that the sending of the spies was a test to see if the people were ready to enter the land of Israel, had they lost slave mentality or not, see our discussion on Bemidbar 13:1,2 "A test," http://www.lobashamayim.blogspot.co.il/2009/06/bemidbar-131-20-shelah-test.html. Accordingly, I believe that it was G-d who initiated the sending of the spies, as recorded in Bemidbar 13:2.

How then can we explain Moshe's statement in Devarim 1:22? My guess is that after Moshe heard the command from G-d to send the spies he told this to the Jewish people, and their response is recorded in Devarim 1:22. The people were "agreeing" to the idea to send the spies, though the spies would have been sent even if they had not "agreed." In addition, the people proposed their own reason why to send the spies. G-d had not given a reason why the spies were to be sent, and the people on their own said, 1:22, "that the spies should explore which is the best road to travel on…" Moshe was very happy with the people's response, Devarim 1:23, since this was an indication that maybe the people were ready to enter the land of Israel, but, alas, they were not.

In Bemidbar 13, the Torah did not record that the people had "agreed" to send the spies since the sending of the spies was not due to the initiative of the people as even had they not "agreed," Moshe would still have sent the spies. Thus, their "agreement" was not important to the historical record of the sending of the spies, and in Bemidbar 13 the stress is on the historical account of the events. Most likely there were other conversations between Moshe and the people about the spies that were not recorded in the Torah. In addition, coupled with the people's statement to send spies was their rationale for the spies, and had this rationale been recorded in Bemidbar 13, then readers of the Torah would have assumed that the reason for the spies was the people's rationale, to find the best way to travel, but really the sending of the spies was to test whether the people had lost their slave mentality or not.

In Devarim the people's "agreement" to the sending the spies and not G-d's command to send the spies was mentioned for two possible reasons. One, as explained by N. Leibowitz, the goal was to emphasize the people's responsibility for the sin of the spies. Two, it is possible that some of the people had become bitter about the incident of the spies. After spending forty years in the desert, the people might have wondered why did G-d tell them to send the spies? Did G-d not know that the people of Canaan would scare the spies? Thus, in Devarim Moshe did not want to mention that G-d had commanded Moshe to send the spies, and instead he recalled that the people had "agreed" to send the spies. Hence, the people cannot blame G-d for entrapment, but instead they were to understand that they had failed by accepting the report of the spies. Also, as the people were about to enter the land of Israel, Moshe wanted them to know that it was permitted to send spies to explore the land so he recorded here how they wanted to send the spies to explore the land and that he was happy with the offer.