Why send the spies at all?
The story of the spies in Parshat Shelach is one of the most perplexing in all of the Torah.
G-d promises the Jewish people a land flowing with milk and honey. He takes them out of Egypt with signs and wonders, splits the sea, provides them with manna from Heaven, and brings them to the very edge of entering the Land. Then, suddenly, everything falls apart.
The people ask to send spies. Twelve distinguished leaders are chosen. Ten return with a devastating report. The nation loses faith, the generation is condemned to wander in the desert for forty years, and entry into the Land is delayed.
Yet one question has always lingered beneath the surface of the story: Why send spies at all?
If G-d already knew what the spies would say, why agree to the mission? More fundamentally, if the Land had already been promised, what purpose could such a mission possibly serve?
The Ma’or Va-Shemesh addresses this question through a careful reading of the text itself.
Rereading the text
Rashi famously explains the words “שלח לך” as “לדעתך” — “for yourself.” G-d was not commanding Moshe to send spies; if he wished to send them, he could.
But this is difficult to understand. The Torah seems to say exactly the opposite. G-d says, “שלח לך אנשים,” and only a few verses later we read that Moshe sent them “על פי ה’.” It sounds very much like a Divine command.
Rather than simply reconciling the contradiction, the Ma’or Va-Shemesh begins looking closely at the language of the verses themselves. Why does the Torah use the word anashim, which can denote the minimum plural of two? Why the unusual phrase “איש אחד איש אחד”? Why does Moshe later emphasize in Sefer Devarim that it was the people who requested that spies be sent? And why, when Yehoshua eventually sends spies into the Land, does he send precisely two?
Taken together, these details lead him to a striking conclusion: G-d didn’t want to send twelve spies. He wanted to send two.
According to the Ma’or Va-Shemesh, Yehoshua and Kalev were the only spies meant to be sent. The other ten were added only after the people insisted on expanding the mission, as Moshe later recalls in Sefer Devarim.
This transforms the entire story.
A mistreatment of God’s will
We generally understand the episode through Rashi’s famous comment that G-d acquiesced to the people’s request, allowing Moshe to send spies if he wished. The Ma’or Va-Shemesh agrees, but adds a crucial layer. G-d did authorize a mission, but only the mission represented by Yehoshua and Kalev. The expansion from two spies to twelve came not from G-d’s instruction, but from the people’s demand.
The tragedy of the spies therefore did not begin when ten of them returned with a negative report. It began much earlier. It began when a mission intended to prepare the people for entering the Land became a mission intended to determine whether they should enter it at all.
For the people, the spies were meant to answer the question, “Should we go?”
For Yehoshua and Kalev, the spies were meant to answer the question, “How should we go?”
According to the Ma’or Va-Shemesh, that distinction lies at the heart of the entire episode.
It is a remarkable reading, one that emerges not from a homiletical flourish, but from a close reading of the verses in Shelach, Moshe’s retelling of the episode in Sefer Devarim, and Yehoshua’s own decision years later to send precisely two spies.
Shabbat Shalom.
Use this source sheet, complete with footnoted sources for PArshat Shlach and a concise, footnoted bio of R. Kalonymus Kalman Epstein (Ma’or Va-Shemesh) to enjoy this teaching at your own pace, perfect for self-learners.
Prepared by Rabbi Shalom (Saul) Orbach
The Ma’or Va-Shemesh is a classic Hasidic commentary on the weekly portions and festivals by R. Kalonymus Kalman Epstein of Kraków (1751-1823). A foremost later disciple, and for years the Shamash, of R. Elimelech of Lizhensk, he emerged after his rebbe’s passing as a leading figure in the fourth generation of Chassidut and of Polish Hasidism. His Torah blends close reading of the Psukim with mystical depth, emphasizing Dvekut, heartfelt prayer, joy, and sanctifying the everyday, with a hallmark leadership ethic: the tzaddik sweetens judgment into mercy and draws people close.