Dedicated to the memory of Louis Levine z”l, Baruch Aryeh ben Avraham Halevi on his fifth Yahrzeit, 19th Sivan
Many similarities and differences can be found in the
stories of the spies in Parshat Shlach and the Haftara in Yehoshua 2:1-24.
Parshat Shlach, Bamidbar 13:1-3 begins with the words: “God
spoke to Moshe saying: Send forth men , if you please and let them spy out the
Land of C’naan that I give to B’nai Yisrael, one man each from his father’s
tribe shall you send, every one a leader among them. Moshe sent them forth from
the wilderness of Paran at God’s command, they were all distinguished men,
heads of B’nai Yisrael.”
The Haftara states: “Yehoshua bin Nun dispatched from
Shittim two men, spies, secretly saying, go observe the Land and
Out of the twelve “distinguished men” in Parshat Shlach,
only two ended up reporting on the land in a “distinguished manner”, the rest
of the men spoke negatively about the Land. Yehoshua who had been one of the
“good” spies on the original mission must have learned from experience and only
sent two men this time.
The fact that the names of all of the spies are listed in
Bamidbar 13:4-16 may have made the whole mission too public and given these men
too much honor which they did not end up deserving. In Yehoshua the mission is
done secretly and the Navi never even tells us the names of the spies although
Rashi suggests that they were Calev (the only spy aside from Yehoshua on the
previous mission who brought back a good report) and Pinchas.
Radak explains that Yehoshua did not want to scare B’nai
Yirael and therefore the spies were sent secretly as he knew that there was
nothing to worry about.
Moshe’s spies were asked to report on the entire Land, their
mission took forty days. Yehoshua’s spies were told to observe the Land and
to
were able to get a sense of what was going on in the Land and their mission
only lasted for a few days.
In Bamidbar Raba 15 we learn that
is the key to the
the whole land is captured.
When the spies that Moshe sent returned they spoke to all of
B’nai Yisrael and started with some positive reports and continued with
negative reports. Yehoshua’s spies reported directly to him and explained: (Yehoshua
2:24) “For God has given all the Land into our hands; also, all of the
inhabitants of the Land have melted before us.”
Since Yehoshua had
been on the first mission and saw everything that went wrong, he was able to
learn from the mistakes of the past and tailor the second mission to his own
needs without having to get too many people involved.
Rav Yisachar Yaakovson points out that the results were very
different as well. Because of the sin in Parshat Shlach, B’nai Yisrael received
the punishment of the entire generation having to die in the wilderness. The
success of the mission in Yehoshua opened up the doors to the successful
conquest and settlement of the
