Notwithstanding the two delays in the previous parashah—one lasting a month and the other a week— this parashah opens with the people ready to enter the Land of Israel. As the final preparation before embarking on the conquest, the Israelites send their most distinguished and refined leaders to scout out the land. But as a result of this mission, the people suffer their third and most serious setback, causing their whole generation to die in the desert and delaying entry into the Promised Land for another 39 years.

The bulk of this parashah is devoted to the details of this dramatic and tragic story. The latter part of the parashah, however, abruptly departs from the historical narrative and discusses a number of laws and events that seemingly have no connection with each other or with the events recounted in the beginning of the parashah:

  • the requirement to bring grain and wine offerings with animal sacrifices,
  • the requirement to give part of every batch of dough (challah) to the priests,
  • the laws pertaining to offerings that atone for the sin of idolatry,
  • the incident of the man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath, and
  • the commandment to affix tassels (tzitzit) to the corners of garments.

The laws would seem to belong in the Book of Leviticus, and the incident of the stick gatherer—which took place shortly after the giving of the Torah—would seem to belong in the Book of Exodus. Why are these placed here, and how are they connected to the name of the parashah, Shelach, which simply means "send"?

To understand this, let us recall once again that the purpose of the soul's descent into the body, the creation of the Jewish people, the exile in Egypt and the Exodus, the giving of the Torah, and the entry and conquest of the Land of Israel are all in order to make this world into a home for God, which means to disseminate Divine consciousness to the entire world.

In other words, we are all—both individually and collectively—emissaries of God to accomplish His purpose on earth. It is therefore quite fitting that on the eve of the entry into the land where this purpose is to be consummated, God tells Moses to send representatives of the people on a mission. This assignment encapsulated the essence of what the entry into the Land of Israel is all about: fulfilling our Divine mission as God's emissaries in this world.

There are many explanations why the scouts failed in this mission, some of which we will see in our exposition of the narrative. But the underlying thrust of their tragic mistake was they thought the emissaries (i.e., the Israelites) were not capable of fulfilling their mission, that the Sender somehow overestimated the abilities of His agents or underestimated the difficulties they would face.

The generation of the Exodus attained the highest level of Divine consciousness of any generation in history. God sustained them with the heavenly manna, which taught them daily the lesson of His constant involvement in even the mundane facets of life. This made them the ideal recipients for the Torah.1 They had witnessed God's absolute control over the "immutable" laws of nature and His ability to suspend them for His people. And finally, they had witnessed the Divine revelation of the Giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. How, then, could such people, exposed daily to God's miracles, suddenly turn into frightened skeptics? And how could their spiritual elite fall so low as to question God's omnipotence?

The answer is that it was specifically their heightened spiritual orientation that led them astray. They wished to experience life and pursue Godliness unencumbered by the distractions of materiality. In the desert, they were protected by the clouds of glory, sustained by the manna and the well of Miriam, and all their physical needs were fully attended to. All of their time was spent in Torah study, meditation, and prayer. They were repulsed by the notion of entering the real world, where bread must be wrested from the earth and life cannot be a heavenly paradise.2

Thus, the scouts described the land as one that "consumes its inhabitants," fearing that once they entered the land they would fall prey to its earthliness and no longer be spiritual beings. Their sentiments were echoed centuries later in the words of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, who said: "If a person plows when it is time to plough, sows when it is time to sow, reaps when it is time to reap, threshes when it is time to thresh, and winnows when it is time to winnow, what will become of the Torah?"3 Indeed, this aspiration has inspired us to yearn throughout the ages for the messianic era, when the materiality of the world will no longer distort our spiritual focus.4

It is indeed commendable to yearn for such a time, but this yearning must be balanced with humble submission to God's plan for creation. The purpose of life is to live within mundane reality and reveal the Godliness concealed within it. The spies and their generation were not willing to carrying out the mandate given at Sinai—to bring heaven to earth and earth to heaven—because they did not recognize the advantage of entering the material world, where God's essence can be found through fulfilling His commandments on the physical plane, and because they were afraid of the pitfalls accompanying this task.

It was precisely this misconception that had to be proven wrong once and for all before the entry into the land. It is very easy, when we consider the wide range of the Torah's demands on our life and the effort we have to expend to fulfill them properly, to fall into the trap of thinking that God is asking too much of us. After all, the Torah seeks to govern every aspect of our life, in all its myriad details. Even learning the Torah per se seems impossible, for "its measure is longer than the earth, and it is wider than the sea."5 And on top of this, the Torah requires us to vanquish our inborn animal instincts and resist the pervasive pull of society and its norms. How can the faint voice of the few that are faithful to God be heard over the din of those who ignore Him?

Strong arguments, to be sure, but upon even momentary reflection, they crumble. For even a human dispatcher, if he has any sense, will not give an emissary a charge too difficult for him to accomplish. And while a human dispatcher can err in the estimation of an emissary's capabilities, God knows us better than we know ourselves: as our Creator, He is fully aware of both our strengths and weaknesses. It is therefore inconceivable that He could or would assign us a task that we cannot fulfill.

By failing in their mission, the spies ironically succeeded in a much more profound way. Their failure allowed the very value they disregarded—God's purpose of making the world into His home—to be accomplished more fully than their success ever could have.

The ultimate way of making the world into God's home is by revealing our own Divine natures and thereby making God's perspective, goals, and desires our own. When we do this, we follow God's will not only because we are told to, but also because our own minds and hearts impel us to.

The problem is that remaking ourselves over this way is a process of self-refinement, which is long, hard work. It is much simpler and quicker to submit carte blanche to God's will than to gradually refine our intellect and emotions by training them constantly to see through the world's materiality. But this is exactly what the spies' sin enabled us to do in a straightforward manner.

First of all, the spies succeeded in exciting the Jewish people about entering the Land of Israel.6 Thanks to them, the people heard from eyewitnesses that the land flowed with milk and honey, and they did not have to take God's promises on mere faith. Once they were shaken from their momentary doubt, they were swept up with the desire to enter the land. Their children carried this knowledge of the land's virtues when they joyously entered it with Joshua. The spies that Joshua sent were only for strategic purposes, since the people did not need another report of the land's beauty and beneficial properties.

Secondly, the very fact that the spies—as Jewish leaders—walked through the land prepared it spiritually for the eventual entrance of the people as a whole. The spies' mission thus had the immediate effect of beginning the conquest of the land and paving the way for the actual conquest.7

Thirdly, had the spies and their generation not sinned, the people would have indeed entered the land headed by Moses and would have been led to a miraculous victory by God's cloud of glory and pillar of fire. But then, the victory and the conquest would have been God's alone, rather than the people's, aided by His constant support. Because of the spies' sin, the land now had to be won by military prowess, but the ensuing victory would be the result of the people's efforts. And because they would fight for it, they would value it more than they would have had they received it only as God's gift.

And finally, the spies' error taught us the invaluable lesson that we can all indeed fulfill God's mission, that we should never make the mistake of thinking that we do not measure up to His calling.

Thus, in this light, it was crucial that the spies should "sin": it was the only way the objective of making the world into God's home could be accomplished, the only way the historical process could proceed in exactly the best manner possible. Their real fault was not in what they did but in the fact that they focused on only one side of the coin.

Perhaps they can be forgiven for this; this was the first time a generation was called upon to live out this paradox of yearning for heaven while toiling on earth, of acknowledging the importance of the self while abrogating it in raw obedience—and as our sages say, "all beginnings are difficult."

In any case, the lesson we must learn from the spies is the importance of both ardently aspiring to the spiritual life and humbly submitting to God's desire to make this world into His home, and attaining the proper balance between them. Both acting as a self-interested agent and operating on blind obedience have their drawbacks: Blind obedience has its place as the bedrock of our commitment to God, but a life based solely upon it does not involve the entire person; acting in our own interests allows God's perspective to permeate our whole being, but doing so exposes us to the risk of letting our egos lead us astray.

The goal is to remain aware of our supra-rational and unconditional commitment to God even while making His reality our own. When we undertake the quest to manifest our Divine dimension as God's mandate rather than an exercise in furthering our self-interests, our mission is guaranteed to succeed.8