They Cried That Night - The Sin of the Spies

The whole community broke into loud cries, and the people wept that night.

A long time after that, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites were groaning under the bondage and cried out; and their cry for help from the bondage rose up to God.

And it is further written: “And all the congregation lifted up their voice and cried and the people wept that night” (Numbers 14:1). Rabba said that Rabbi Yoḥanan said: That night was the night of the Ninth of Av. The Holy One, Blessed be He, said to them: You wept needlessly that night, and I will therefore establish for you a true tragedy over which there will be weeping in future generations.

ותשא כל העדה ויתנו את קולם, “The entire assembly raised its voice,“ According to the plain meaning of these words the people commenced crying in the evening and kept crying all night long. We know that the spies had returned close to nightfall bringing with them a special kind of darkness, similar to the one we experience on the night of the ninth of Av when we mourn the destruction of the Temple. The prophet Jeremiah (Lamentations 1,2) refers to the repeated crying of the Jewish people on that night. Midrash Eicha Rabbati (1,28) points out that the dates when the people cried mentioned by Jeremiah coincided with the date they cried on this occasion.
How is the date of this occurrence arrived at? According to Taanit 29 Moses constructed the Tabernacle during the first year of the Exodus and put it together during the second year when he also sent out the spies. The cloud lifted off the Tabernacle on the twentieth of the second month in that year. The month of Iyar is always only 29 days long. The Torah testifies (10,11) that the people commenced their journey away from Mount Sinai on the twentieth of that month and that they traveled for three days in the first instance. The first of these three days does not count in the calendar as it was identical with the day on which the cloud had lifted. According to Rabbi Chama in the name of Rabbi Chanina this (the third) was the day on which the people already departed from their obedience to G’d, as the Torah mentions in Numbers 11,4 that the rabble among them lusted after various cravings, which in turn caused even the elite (בני ישראל) to commence crying from discontent. This occurred on the 22nd day of Iyar. The meat provided by G’d as a result of this rebellion lasted for 30 days (11,20) which brings us to the 22nd day of Sivan. The Torah then mentions that further travel was delayed while Miriam was isolated for seven days (12,15) which brings us to the 29th day of Sivan. This is the day when Moses dispatched the spies who returned after 40 days, i.e. the 9th day of the month of Av. The month of Sivan had thirty days whereas the month of Tammuz had 29 days. This would mean that the spies actually stayed away only thirty nine days if they returned on the ninth of Av. The Talmud raises this point. The answer given is that during that particular year the month of Tammuz had thirty days so that the ninth of Av occurred on the fortieth day of the spies’ departure. The scriptural reference to this unusual length of the month of Tammuz is provided by Lamentations 1,15: “He proclaimed a set time against me to crush my young men.” This “time” was the thirtieth day of Tammuz which caused the spies’ return to occur on the fateful ninth of Av.
When the Torah wrote in our verse that the entire congregation raised their collective voice in weeping, the reference is to the calendar date, the ninth day of Av. Rabbi Yochanan quotes G’d as saying that seeing that on the occasion of the spies’ report the people spent the night weeping without cause, He would give them cause to weep on a future occasion on that same date, i.e. the night of the destruction of the Temple. Starting from that night, the people would have many occasions to weep; this accounts for the repetition of the words בכה תבכה,“you will weep repeatedly, in Lamentations 1,2.
Our sages in that connection also understand the repetition of these two words as referring to the weeping for the destruction of the first Temple as well as the weeping for the destruction of the second Temple. Midrash Eicha Rabbati 1,24 also comments that the repetition refers to weeping for the destruction of the Northern Kingdom (10 tribes which preceded the destruction of the Kingdom of Yehudah) and that for the destruction of the latter kingdom. Similarly, the words refer to separate weeping for Jerusalem and Zion respectively, i.e. the loss of our physical and our spiritual capital respectively. We have evidence that the destruction of the first Temple occurred at night as this is mentioned explicitly in Jeremiah 39,4: “When King Tzidkiyahu of Yehudah saw them, he and all the soldiers fled. They left the city at night through the gate between the double walls.” Jeremiah had already prophesied (Jeremiah 6,5) “up, let us attack by night, and wreck her fortress!” The destruction of the second Temple also occurred at night as the Talmud Taanit 29 interprets Jeremiah 6,4: “alas for us! For the day is declining, the shadows of the evening grow long,” as a reference to the destruction of the second Temple. When the wicked Titus destroyed Jerusalem and set it ablaze the Jews fled to the camp of Titus’ army and were exiled from their city. There were a number of Arabs in that army and they kidnapped 400 Jewish children and carried them to the sea at night and shipped them to their homeland as prisoners. (Gittin 57). The children debated among themselves if to commit suicide by jumping ship. They were afraid to lose their share in the world to come if they would commit suicide. To this argument other boys replied that there is a verse (Psalms 68,23):”The Lord said: ‘I will retrieve from Bashan, I will retrieve from the depth of the sea.’” [They meant that their share in the world to come would not be forfeited. Ed.] When the girls heard this they immediately jumped overboard drowning themselves. When the boys observed this they said to themselves that if even the girls who are no strangers to being sexually abused prefer death to being violated, they, the boys, who are not usually exposed to sodomy [an Arab specialty, Ed.] must certainly prefer death to such indignities being perpetrated upon them.
All these tragic events occurred at night as a punishment for the weeping of the children of Israel on the night after the return of the spies. Even the eventual destruction of the Temples and the dispersion of the Jewish people was decreed on the night mentioned in our verse. This is the meaning of Psalms 106,25-27: “they grumbled in their tents and disobeyed the Lord. So He raised His hand in oath to make them fall in the wilderness. To disperse their offspring among the nations and scatter them through the lands.” The prophet Ezekiel also refers to this when he says in Ezekiel 20,23: “However, I swore to them in the wilderness that I would scatter them among the nations and disperse them through the lands.” So you have clear proof from all three parts of the Bible that this night was predetermined to become a night of weeping for the Jewish people throughout the generations.