[In the picture: Why did Moses send twelve scouts, or 12 tribal leaders, to tour the Promised Land before entering it? Free Image - CC0 Creative Commons - Designed and Uploaded by Msporch to Pixabay]

[For articles on the “Sabbath of Shlach " in Hebrew, click here]

Updated on June 6, 2023

Rabbi Dr. Yossi Feintuch was born in Afula and holds a Ph.D. in American history from Emory University in Atlanta. He taught American history at Ben-Gurion University.

Author of the book US Policy on Jerusalem (JCCO).

He now serves as rabbi at the Jewish Center in central Oregon. (JCCO).

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Why did Moses send twelve scouts, or 12 tribal leaders, to tour the Promised Land before entering it?  Twelve is too large a number of folks who go on an espionage mission and must, therefore, stay covert.  Twelve scouts are too many, especially when they were publicly recognized as prominent politicians, not to mention the fact that they were not trained beforehand as ‘’Mossad operatives’’. 

[The image free - CC0 Creative Commons - designed and uploaded by Tumisu to Pixabay]

Moses chose, then, all twelve tribal chiefs from each tribe for this operation because he must have considered the possibility that it would bomb.  But by assigning a tribal leader from each tribe for the intel-gathering mission he wanted to ensure that no tribe would later be able to accuse only those tribes whose chiefs were sent off to scout the land if the mission happened to flop. Nor would anyone else be able to point fingers again at the non-Hebrew multitudes who had left Egypt with the Israelites, but were an easy scapegoat blamed for prior debacles (e.g., the Golden Calf, and the calamitous lust for meat that drove God to strike ‘’a very great blow against the people’’).  

The scouts bring with them samples of various fruits of the Promised Land, giant grapes, pomegranates and figs.  These populist politicians report to the people -- rather than to Moses alone who sent them -- by beginning to laud the produce from ''the land that is flowing with milk and honey, and here is its fruit'' (Numbers 13:27).  Interestingly, they bring back no milk-producing animals for the Israelites possessed many such livestock anyway since coming into Egypt centuries before. Rather, they use fruit to illustrate the land's copious milk. The Scouts' presentation of fruits as a source for milk may be employed nowadays to counter the demand of the dairy industry in North America and in Europe which attempts to ban the usage of the word ''milk'' to describe the products of plant-based beverages that are used as substitutes for dairy.... (This industry has no qualms, though, about using the word ''butter'' in combination with ''peanut'' ...).

[In the picture: Milk substitutes... Photo by Polina Tankilevitch from Pexels]

Yet, even as those ten leaders -- with Caleb of Judah and Joshua of Ephraim forming a minority of two -- opened up their report by praising the fruit of the Promised Land, they segued lickety-split into giving ''expertly'' bogus analyses that they derived from observing those formidable grand cities in Canaan about their dwellers' prowess. To be sure, these ten scouts were not commissioned to interpret their findings especially when they lacked military training; indeed, when people hide behind fortified walls they demonstrate not military strength, as the ten chiefs argued, but weakness and fright. 

[The image is free - CC0 Creative Commons - designed and uploaded by Tumisu to Pixabay]

While they began their report with a truth -- by showing off the good produce of the land -- thus acquiring the confidence of the people at large that they were not biased against the land -- these ten chiefs went on without missing a beat to denounce the ''land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of huge measure'' (Numbers 13:32). Indeed, this is the conventional praxis of bad-mouthers; they start with a factual comment but switch to factoid – (e.g., last month we came across statements that read like this: ‘’Being Jewish I can tell you that Israel is committing, not in my name, though -- an ethnic cleansing of Palestinians''... -- Or as Benjamin Franklin would have it: ''One half of the truth is generally a big lie.''     To be sure, the ten scouts did not lie but by offering their unsolicited and one-dimensional perspective they committed perfidy.  

Had they lied straight-out their effect on the people would have been limited at best.  Yes, they did see from a distance, as Rashi explains, numerous funerals. But that was because God caused many Canaanites to expire naturally during the scouts' mission in order ‘’to divert the population’s attention from the unwelcome’’ Israelite trespassers. Not knowing that, or lacking the faith to believe it, the scouts incited the people to head back to Egypt, especially after they were swept agog by their own drivel saying that ‘’all the people whom we saw… were of great size’’, even when moments earlier they merely said that they saw giants in the land, a far cry from asserting that all Canaanites were a prototype of Goliath... 

[In the picture: a far cry from asserting that all Canaanites were a prototype of Goliath... Free Image - CC0 Creative Commons - Designed and Uploaded by KELLEPICS to Pixabay]

 What the ten scouts did was engage in libellous speech, rather than deceit; they manipulated their findings in order to sway the people to return to Egypt. Indeed, neither Caleb nor Joshua denied the facts that they stated, but these two’s faithful conclusion was totally different from the ten's: ‘’We will surely go up and take hold of it, for we will surely prevail over it.’’   By and large, lashon ha-ra is a maligning speech that could be detected when the speaker states a truthful detail but continues with telling additional ones that reverse the trajectory of the initial words. By contrast, truth tellers might start on occasion with a negative comment or noting their shortcomings, but will quickly switch to reverse the initial effect with advocacy and praise.  As it is we, avid consumers of the media, are likely to form our disposition towards a story on the basis of the finale, how the teller ends up the story.  

How should we then distinguish between truth-telling politicians and those who maliciously mislead the people?  This Parasha gives us a mystical clue as the 12 tribal leaders are entitled ‘’nasi’’/''נשיא''  --  a president, a prince or a chieftain. This Hebrew word contains the letters that can form the word yesh, יש (''Yes!''), but it also contains the letters that can form the word Ein, אין  (''No!'' or Void).

When a leader considers himself as a no! (or void, e.g., aware of his unwholesome characteristics), then s/he is bound to become a Yes! (a positive! person). And by contrast, when leaders think of themselves as a Yes! (I have what it takes to be a true leader!), they are bound to become void of leadership, a No! The ten scouts, each being a ''prince'', nasi, proved to be the latter…

[For articles on the “Sabbath of Shlach " in Hebrew, click here]