This sheet on Numbers 15 was written by Beth Kissileff for 929 and can also be found here
People experience the same events differently. How else can we explain why 12 individuals are sent to gather information about the Land, and ten are afraid while two, Caleb and Joshua, are not?
What is the difference between them?
They are told to see whether the people are strong or weak, whether the land is good or bad, the towns in encampments or fortified and whether the soil is rich or poor (13:18-20). Finally, they are told to bring fruit back.
They bring back clusters of grapes so large that two of the spies had to carry them (13: 23) and report that the land does flow with milk and honey, the people are strong and the cities fortified. The final and most telling detail of the account is that “we looked like grasshoppers in our eyes and so we looked in their eyes” (13: 33). How did they know what they looked like in the eyes of the inhabitants of the land? They didn’t; they assumed that others must see them as they see themselves.
The Talmud in Sotah 35a addresses this matter of perspective directly. Rava taught that God planned for the land to appear to consume its inhabitants as a good sign for the Israelites getting ready to conquer it, since people in the land dying would be a distraction from invaders. The Israelites misinterpreted this as a negative sign.
And the grasshoppers? Likewise, as the Canaanites were eating their meal of mourning for their dead brethren underneath cedar trees, the spies climbed the trees to hide. When the Canaanites glanced upwards, seeing people in the trees they said, “We see people who look like grasshoppers in the trees.”
The difference in the two groups is their perspective: do they see from above or from below? Do they perceive themselves as grasshoppers waiting to be squashed by giants, or as those free to go up to observe all that is below?
The real question posed by the differing reports is: how best to proceed?
A modern corollary about perspective can be found in the words of Torah teacher Rabbanit Rachelle Sprecher Frankel, director of the Hilchata program at Matan and mother of Naftali Frankel who was murdered along with two other boys in June 2014. Frankel told me that one can “closely focus on the wounded self” and make that “all you see” or one can use a “wider lens” and pull back and see “so many other blessings and expectations and successes and failures. When you work with a wide lens there is so much blessing there.” Even terrible tragedies need to be put in perspective.
In this week’s portion of Shelach the Israelites learn that their lack of perspective will mean they need to spend forty years, one for each day of the scouting trip of the spies (14: 34) so that none of those living in this generation of excessive complainers (14: 27) will enter the land.
What is the difference between them?
They are told to see whether the people are strong or weak, whether the land is good or bad, the towns in encampments or fortified and whether the soil is rich or poor (13:18-20). Finally, they are told to bring fruit back.
They bring back clusters of grapes so large that two of the spies had to carry them (13: 23) and report that the land does flow with milk and honey, the people are strong and the cities fortified. The final and most telling detail of the account is that “we looked like grasshoppers in our eyes and so we looked in their eyes” (13: 33). How did they know what they looked like in the eyes of the inhabitants of the land? They didn’t; they assumed that others must see them as they see themselves.
The Talmud in Sotah 35a addresses this matter of perspective directly. Rava taught that God planned for the land to appear to consume its inhabitants as a good sign for the Israelites getting ready to conquer it, since people in the land dying would be a distraction from invaders. The Israelites misinterpreted this as a negative sign.
And the grasshoppers? Likewise, as the Canaanites were eating their meal of mourning for their dead brethren underneath cedar trees, the spies climbed the trees to hide. When the Canaanites glanced upwards, seeing people in the trees they said, “We see people who look like grasshoppers in the trees.”
The difference in the two groups is their perspective: do they see from above or from below? Do they perceive themselves as grasshoppers waiting to be squashed by giants, or as those free to go up to observe all that is below?
The real question posed by the differing reports is: how best to proceed?
A modern corollary about perspective can be found in the words of Torah teacher Rabbanit Rachelle Sprecher Frankel, director of the Hilchata program at Matan and mother of Naftali Frankel who was murdered along with two other boys in June 2014. Frankel told me that one can “closely focus on the wounded self” and make that “all you see” or one can use a “wider lens” and pull back and see “so many other blessings and expectations and successes and failures. When you work with a wide lens there is so much blessing there.” Even terrible tragedies need to be put in perspective.
In this week’s portion of Shelach the Israelites learn that their lack of perspective will mean they need to spend forty years, one for each day of the scouting trip of the spies (14: 34) so that none of those living in this generation of excessive complainers (14: 27) will enter the land.
(ב) דַּבֵּר֙ אֶל־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל וְאָמַרְתָּ֖ אֲלֵהֶ֑ם כִּ֣י תָבֹ֗אוּ אֶל־אֶ֙רֶץ֙ מוֹשְׁבֹ֣תֵיכֶ֔ם אֲשֶׁ֥ר אֲנִ֖י נֹתֵ֥ן לָכֶֽם׃
(2) Speak to the Israelite people and say to them: When you enter the land that I am giving you to settle in,
Beth Kissileff is the editor of the anthology Reading Genesis (Bloomsbury/ T and T Clark, 2016) , a journalist and teacher.
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