The central focus of this week's reading is an episode that, without a single death or other outward loss, is nevertheless interpreted in Jewish tradition as one of the arch-tragedies of the Bible. 

It begins with God's instruction to Moses: "Send forth men to scout out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Children of Israel" (Numbers 13:2).  Moses dispatches a leader from each of the twelve tribes on a forty-day expedition, to investigate the quality of the land and the mettle of its inhabitants. They return with a report so disheartening that it moves the Israelites to tears. The Talmud dates this incident to the tragic 9th of Av, thus establishing it as a portentous "weeping for the generations" (b'khiyah l'dorot), a lachrymose precedent for three millennia of Jewish history. 

But what was the true purpose of the enterprise, and how did it go so woefully awry?

The incident is conventionally regarded as a spy expedition to obtain military intelligence. But both the text and the context belie that assumption. The Hebrew word for "spies" (m'raglim) is conspicuously absent.  Instead, the text refers to "scouts" (tarim).  Only one of the several issues Moses asks the scouts to investigate—whether the towns are open or fortified—is explicitly military in nature; the rest are demographic and agricultural.

Moreover, beginning with the exodus, the whole experience in the wilderness has significantly lacked a military dimension.  The Israelites' liberation from Egypt was miraculous; the theophany at Sinai was supernatural; and sustenance literally fell from heaven.  Each stage had its opponents and tribulations, but none would be most profitably viewed through the lens of soldiery.  Why would it be otherwise for the entry into the Promised Land? 

In his essay, "The Singularity of the Land of Israel," Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik wrote that the scouts were not on a reconnaissance mission at all.  Rather, their purpose was to acquaint themselves with the land as their prospective spiritual partner, as a man and woman would before marriage.  Soloveitchik observes that the Talmud obliges a man to make the personal acquaintance of a woman before betrothing her. Hence, though Rebecca was selected from far away to be a wife for Isaac, the patriarch had to meet her himself before they could marry.  According to Soloveitchik, this tells us about the nature of marriage: 

Marriage is not a utilitarian transaction, a partnership agreement, a casual relationship. It is an existential commitment, a uniting of two lonely, incomplete souls to share a common destiny with its joys and sorrows . . . . Such a commitment, if it is to be wholehearted, without reservations, and for all time, can only be derived from first-hand knowledge.

The people of Israel were not just entering the land; they were being wedded to it.  As Soloveitchik continues, "despite Divine assurances of its quality, they had to experience it through their princes before the commitment could be deeply rooted and irrevocably assumed." 

This, then, explains the offense committed by the scouts when they return from their mission to slander the land as one that "devours its settlers."  Rashi (France, 1040-1105) compares this to Miriam's slander of Moses at the end of last week's reading.  Both the land of Israel and the prophet of Israel are described as unique. For Soloveitchik, these singularities are bound up in each other.  The devotion of Jews to the land of Israel is born not merely from identification, but from a "fusion of identities." Like Miriam's, the scouts' sin is not their lack of faith—it is their lack of  appreciation for the special relationship that land, people, and prophet all share.

Moshe Sokolow, professor of Jewish education at the Azrieli Graduate School of Yeshiva University, is the author of Studies in the Weekly Parashah Based on the Lessons of Nehama Leibowitz (2008).