Spies: They wear cloaks and daggers, use periscopes to peer around corners and telescopes to observe enemies, and can tell where you are from by the way you hold a fork. Very different from us ordinary folk. Or so Hollywood would like us to think.

This week’s Torah portion, Shelach, tells us about another kind of spy. On the brink of entering the Promised Land, Moses dispatched twelve men to check out the Land of Canaan, soon to be the Land of Israel. He told them to take note of the land, its cities and its people. The spies did their due diligence and reported on the land and its people, but then added, “We are unable to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.” Disheartened, the people were filled with dread of the mighty Canaanites, and because of this G‑d decreed that they wander in the desert for forty years.

What did the spies do wrong? Were they not asked to report on the land and its people?

The answer is that Moses had asked them to tell what Canaan looked like—not to decide whether it was conquerable. They were charged with a fact-finding mission—not asked for their expert assessment. This is because, if G‑d had promised to take them into the land, there was nothing to worry about. The job of these spies job was to report facts, not to formulate opinions.

We are all spies in our own lives. There are challenges that come our way. Like spies, we must open our eyes wide and know what lies ahead of us. And like spies, it is not our job to despair of succeeding. If G‑d believes in us, so should we.

Menachem Posner,
on behalf of the Chabad.org Editorial Team