— Shelach, Numbers 13: 32-33
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...So they brought to the people of Israel an evil report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land, through which we have gone, to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim); and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.” Then all the congregation raised a loud cry; and the people wept that night… “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! Why does the Lord bring us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey; would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?” | |
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— Shelach, Numbers 13: 32-33 |
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 result
of the insurrection described here, the Israelites wandered in the desert
for forty years, which is a terrible punishment for what seems merely
an expression of basic human fear. The explanation in the Commentaries that the forty desert years were necessary as a way to wait out the life of the generation that came from Egypt, with its jittery slave mentality that in moments of danger became nostalgic for the stick of its master, makes the penalty seem especially heartless. The story of this uprising against God is taught (as are all the uprisings, including the golden calf and the story of Korach) as a grave transgression deserving the sentence. It's the way I understood it. Years later, after some experience in emigration and rebellion, the forty-year delay doesn't seem to me a punishment as much as a cure. Consider immigrants to this country: their experience is one of mostly hardship and little reward, usually because they simply aren't prepared or educated enough to benefit from what the new country has to offer. This was true also of the first generation of Israelites, who, without the confidence of a great nation, couldn't have inherited the land as promised. According to the commentary of S. R. Hirsch, the forty years provided the opportunity for the second and third generations to attain a Torah education, and to mature as a free people and strong nation. But in imitation of sloppy life, the strategy of waiting out the first generation wasn't entirely successful. From the books that follow the first five in the canon, Judges, Kings, and Chronicles, it's easy to see that it didn't take long for the new generations of Israelites, the settlers in the land of Canaan, to behave much as their ancestors had with their lust for foreign Gods, and the pattern — unheeded warnings, exile, suffering, repentance, and return — was in place. The orthodox belief (the state of Israel notwithstanding) that we're still ensnared in this cycle suggests that although we became a people of the book, we are also still that rebel band, questioners and over-throwers, perennial adolescents with growing pains. On the surface, all
of this, including sending twelve men to spy out the land and its people,
seems at odds with the notion of an omnipotent God capable of everything,
even making certain that the will of His people conforms to His own. But
the bible's attachment to natural phenomena, even when it turns
to the miraculous, its attendance to the logic and tragedy of lived life,
is precisely what distinguishes it from a merely religious text with a
harsh God, oversensitive to every slight. And this is why after so many
years we continue to read it. In the words of D. H. Lawrence, it's
“the book of life.”
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GROWING
PAINS |
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