Jewish academic and Hebrew scholar Irene Lancaster reflects on the spies who were sent out to explore the Promised Land and what we will learn from them today.
We have recently studied the Sedra of Shelach (Numbers 13-15) which accommodates the story of the famous ‘spies’ who’re sent out to explore the Land of Israel upfront of the entry of the Jewish people.
This was the Torah reading on Sunday. But we also studied it as a bunch with the rabbi beforehand and a few amazing latest insights were gleaned from that communal learning session.
This is one in all my favourite Sedras of the Torah. In June 2007 I used to be asked to provide a chat on this very Sedra at a Jerusalem synagogue. Naturally I used to be apprehensive – for one thing I had to provide the talk in Hebrew to a congregation of very learned scholars. What on earth could I impart that was latest?
However, I attempted my best, and only needed to speak for five minutes max, so not an extended talk. In the event, the congregation were very kind and inspiring.
However, one thing had struck me on the time. The Hebrew word for ‘explore’ was tor, which to me sounded very like Torah, or Jewish teaching. In addition, in modern Hebrew we now have the concept of ‘toranut’, which implies ‘rota duty’, i.e. carrying out your work or activities in an orderly fashion and taking your turn.
Tor also means queue – not that there may be much of 1 in Israeli society. But the impact of toranut in Israeli society is nevertheless very strong indeed. So why is tor often translated as ‘spy out’, ‘scout’, ‘reconnoitre’, or similar? After all, the trendy Hebrew word for tourism can be link to the Hebrew tor.
As way of explanation, there may be a second version of this spy story, related in Deuteronomy chapter 1:22. There, Moses summarizes the events depicted in Numbers, but adds the phrase ‘Then all of you approached me and said: ‘Let’s send men ahead of us to dig out the land for us and produce back word on the route we’ll ascend and the cities we’ll enter.”
There are two points here. In this telling, the initiative to send out a bunch upfront lay with the community itself, and this explains the choice taken in Numbers to send out the lads. Secondly though, the word tor utilized in Numbers for ‘explore’ is exchanged in Deuteronomy for one more word, hapor, also intending to explore, but whose root indicates ‘digging’, and even ‘excavating’.
Sadly, in lots of translations from Hebrew, these two words with different connotations are each translated as ‘spy out’ or ‘reconnoitre’. However, the meaning of tor in Numbers is to go searching and see things in an orderly fashion, in addition to in a positive way. In the Deuteronomy version, against this, we now have the connotation of hapor, digging under the surface of things, as if there may be an actual problem. This is to go further than sticking to the unique plan, which was simply to tour across the Land to collect factual information to be able to facilitate entry.
Tragically nevertheless, by ‘digging around’ the spies convey fear somewhat than confidence, and are overly concerned about what others might imagine of them. They regard themselves as ‘grasshoppers in our own eyes‘ (Numbers 13:33). Therefore that can be how others see them – not the qualities needed within the leaders of a people at the beginning of their latest lives in a latest Land!
The great 11th-century French Bible scholar, Rashi, has a really interesting comment on Deuteronomy 1, which exchanges the word hapor, dig, for tor, dutiful exploration. In contrast to the best way the heads of the tribes and the elders approached G-d in Deuteronomy 5:20-21, with kids showing respect to elders, and elders to the heads of the tribes, here in Deuteronomy 1 ‘you approached me, all of you, in a crowd, the young disregarding the elders, the elders disregarding the heads of the tribes.’
In Hebrew the word for ‘push’ is dahaf. This is the word utilized by Rashi for the unruly way through which the people conducted themselves to be able to obtain permission to spy out the Land. This explanation appears to have solved a mystery first encountered during an Ulpan lesson in 1984.
Our Jerusalem Ulpan teacher told us that modern concepts posed challenges galore for the intrepid individuals who reintroduced Hebrew as a spoken language for the primary time within the late 19th and 20th centuries – something that’s after all ongoing well into the 21st century.
One example cited of remarkable out-of-the-box considering by translators into modern Hebrew was the word for ‘bulldozer’. What on earth is a bulldozer, you may ask? The teacher explained that the bulldozer is a mixture of pushing and digging, and thus the brand new word, dahpor was born in Israel. Dahpor is a mixture of dahaf, push, and hapor, dig. Put together, they produce a latest concept of pushing and digging at one time – hence bulldozer.
I explained this week to the group led by the rabbi in our synagogue that I used to be quite sure that this wasn’t a coincidence. On the contrary, the early Hebrew language translator would have known his Bible and Rashi thoroughly indeed. Therefore, it is very plausible that this very passage we’re currently studying on the spies, with the twin concepts of digging and pushing as examples of an unruly attitude to exploration, might well have sown a seed within the minds of a few of these geniuses, who put two and two together to coin a latest word for the trendy State of Israel.
This idea was greeted very positively by the group.
But to get back to the primary positive teaching of the Sedra of Shelach. Shelach is translated as ‘send out’. Sending people out to find what’s there may bring back unexpected results. Much will rely on one’s prior attitude. In the Wilderness, the kids of Israel had been infantilized, depending on miracles, with Moses to guide them. In the Promised Land, they’d should fend for themselves and cope with the weather, in addition to construct up communities, engage in agriculture, fight wars, organize a welfare system (very much including equal treatment of the ger, which appears in Numbers 15) and usually come to terms with living in the actual world.
However, if we now have confidence, then we encourage. The word confidence means ‘having faith together’. Rather than preaching self-fulfilling prophecies of doom, we must always somewhat take responsibility and look as much as the heavens above (because it so beautifully states in Psalm 121). Maybe the spies even feared success. Maybe they preferred to stay cocooned in their very own little bubble. However, because the Jewish people have demonstrated time and time again, G-d wants us to live as much as what is predicted of us, in a restrained and disciplined way, never resorting to panic, but preparing for all outcomes through thick and thin.
Even the most effective known prophets of doom, Amos and Jeremiah, offered hope to the Jewish people. It is rarely too late. As long as we pay scant attention to what others think, remain strong in community, pray, learn and construct, then we still have a hopeful future.
For because the 13th-century Spanish Bible scholar and communal leader, Ramban, states on Numbers 15:28, ‘no ifs or buts’. As I stated in 2007, if only the present-day ‘spies’ to Israel grow to be ‘pilgrims’ as a substitute, the same word in Hebrew, then that’s the most effective approach to enter the Promised Land, whether hundreds of years ago, or today. Bulldozers definitely have their place, but only after the Land has been successfully entered in the primary place. First enter the Land, then begin to work it.
