The Shuvah Project

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Listen to Me, house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been sustained from the womb, carried along since birth. I will be the same until your old age, and I will bear you up when you turn gray. I have made you, and I will carry you; I will bear and save you.

-Isaiah 46:3-4

Section One (Parsha Debrief):

This week’s Parsha (Numbers 13:1-15:41) contained: the story of the spies, repercussions for the sin of the spies, laws about offerings, a man being stoned to death for collecting wood on the sabbath, and instructions for tsîy tsith.

The story of the spies takes up two chapters, so that’s where we’ll spend our time.

Answer me this… who wanted to spy the land? 
God, right? 

The first verse says as much… “The Lord spoke to Moses: ‘Send men to scout out the land of Canaan…(Numbers 13:1-2a).” But, if it is God’s idea, what’s God’s rationale? What’s there to scout? Doesn’t God already know who’s in the land and what the land provides? 

The spies are told to report on whether the people are strong or weak, few or many, if the cities have encampments or fortifications, if the land is good or bad, if it is fertile or unproductive, and if there are trees or not.

Yet, when the spies gave that report there were repercussions—drastic ones—like threats of being destroyed by a plague (Footnote #1). In fact, God strikes down 10 of the 12 spies because they “spread a bad report about the land (Numbers 14:36b-37).”

It’s this inconsistency that has Rabbi David Fohrman asking if this whole thing was a setup. 

Would the whole community have been dismayed and discouraged from entering the promised land if God hadn’t asked them to send spies in the first place? Seems a bit unfair to punish people for doing what was asked.

Moreover, does the punishment even fit the action?

But, maybe it wasn’t God’s idea to spy. Then who?

Rabbi Fohrman provides a path through these inconsistencies. He says we cannot understand the sin of the spies—the thing that doomed an entire generation (~600,000 people) to wander and die in the wilderness—without understanding Jethro’s judges (Footnote #2).

If you recall, the chronological order of Jethro’s appearance as compared to Israel’s revelation at Mt. Sinai was under debate. Through that debate, we learned that establishing intermediaries created more distance between God and His people. We shared this,

Interestingly, much later in Torah, in his recount of this dialogue with Jethro, Moses says the intermediaries were his idea. Wait, what? Clearly, that is not the way Exodus 18:19-23 depicts it. Here, the intermediaries are 100% Jethro’s idea.

Is Moses being arrogant in his recount? 

Moses’ recount is actually tied to what he believes to be the reason he is not allowed into the promised land. Whoops. Forgot the spoiler alert. I doubt Moses would falsely take credit for an idea that bars him from entering the promised land.

– The Space Between Us

While we aren’t at that ‘much later part in Torah’ yet, we are going to jump there to make the case for how Jethro’s judges in Exodus 18 help us understand what’s going on with the spies.

In Moses’ monologue about their journey from Sinai to the promised land—one that should have taken 11 days, but lasted 40 years—we hear his understanding of why God says, “You will not enter either (Deuteronomy 1:37).” This reflection in Deuteronomy 1 is inspired by 40 years of hindsight.

Of all the stories to recount Moses chose to juxtapose the judges and the spies (Table 1). When comparing the two, Rabbi Fohrman, and others, hear Moses saying what happened with the judges laid the precedent for the sin of the spies. So, what did happen with the judges?

Moses says he asked for intermediaries who had no business being there (Deuteronomy 1:12-13). And then, based on Moses’ recount of the spies, it was the people—not God—who asked for the spies as intermediaries (Deuteronomy 1:22)!

The people were scared after hearing the spies’ account of the land. So, Moses’ appeal was for the people to look at their own experience, what God did before their very eyes back in Egypt (Deuteronomy 1:30), and how God carried them in the desert like a father carries his son (1:31). Yet, somehow they still did not have faith in God.

It’s in the somehow that Moses realizes the people learned from him they couldn’t rely on someone to carry them. He said, “I cannot bear you on my own. (Deuteronomy 1:9)”—he put them down!

As a result, the people no longer trust.

God was going to lead the people into the land directly (Deuteronomy 1:8, 21), but just as Moses asked for judges, the people asked for spies—essentially creating distance between them and God.

As laid out in the Exodus 18 post, it seems like the desert really was about creating closeness between God and His people (Footnote #3). Moses seems to recognize this and holds himself accountable for seeding the distance between God and His people.

Section Two (Connection to NT + haftarah):

In Numbers, we hear the spies are chief among the Israelites. Much like in Luke we hear Jesus sent the twelve, seemingly chief among those listening to Jesus’ teachings—He gave them power and authority. Several more connections directly link the story of the spies to Jesus commissioning the twelve (as my Text puts it).

The Luke Text even comes back to say the apostles return and report. Much like the spies return after forty days with a report.

Seems like there’s a parallel between the spies and the twelve. What is it?

The spies were headed to the promised land. In the Mission of God post we unpacked Abram’s call—to be a blessing to all nations. Tied to that calling is the promise of offspring and land. At this point in the narrative, only the promise of offspring has been realized. The nation is waiting on the land (Footnote #4). That waiting turns to discouragement and refusal to enter.

Jesus sends His twelve men of power and authority to wander the same land as the spies. They are to proclaim the kingdom of God—which as we’ve discussed isn’t really a proclamation as much as it is being a blessing—just like the original mission God started way back in Genesis 12.

But, Jesus’ instructions differ from Moses’. Jesus, maybe gleaning from Moses’ forty years of hindsight, prepares His twelve for the journey.

How? How do Jesus’ three verses prepare them?

I think He understands two things: 1) how easily power and authority can become conceit and 2) how easily possessions can burden the mission.

Rabbis like Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook, and those who come later like Rabbi Haim Sabato, suggest that a person who attains humility can settle in the Eretz Yisrael (i.e. the land of Isreal). Furthermore, they point to the psalmists’ words as proof, “But the humble will inherit the land (Psalm 37:11).”

If it’s true the Divine presence departs from one who is haughty and the Eretz Yisrael is only appropriate for the humble, as Rabbi Sabato suggests (Footnote #5) then it seems like Jesus would ensure the status He just bestowed upon the disciples would not lead them into having an excessively high opinion of themselves.

Instead, like Joshua, whose humility separated him from the other spies and allowed him to settle in the land, Jesus seems to humble His disciples before their journey. He has them stay and leave from the house they enter—no upgrading.

Section Three (missing the mark):

Carrying is hard. Burnout is real.

So, pastors build a team around them. They delegate—or so it seems. But, often, what doesn’t get delegated is the spotlight. Something is alluring about the stage—so, the production of church gets bigger, and the stress and burnout mount instead of subsiding.

Jesus instructed the twelve to take nothing—He humbled them and likely showed them that carrying people is more important than carrying possessions. They managed to proclaim the kingdom without possessions.

How much less would a pastor have to carry if teaching and worship got stripped down the way the disciples did? Better yet, how many more people could pastors carry if they let the production of church go?

Carry people, not things. Carry people, not fame.

Section Four (real-world applications):

We’re thirty-nine posts into the Project. It should come as no surprise that we challenge church leadership pretty directly in section three. This week was no different.

Yet, I think what we learn from our Parsha Text is to see pass precedent and look beyond the pastor.

Church hurt is real. It’s not to be diminished. Power gets abused. Authority becomes authoritative.
But, those figures aren’t God.

God is God.

Look at your own experience. Remember what God did before your very eyes. The Divine light is inside of you.

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Next Week’s Readings: Numbers 16:1-18:32; Luke 9:10-17

1. Moses, true to his character, almost thwarted the punishments entirely. He confronts God and intercedes on behalf of the people (Numbers 14:13-19). He seems to know God’s character (Numbers 14:18-19). Which is a thread I invite you to explore… is God really an angry God?
2. These connections are discussed in Aleph Beta’s What Did Moses Do Wrong? Series.
3. In How Can We Relate To Such A Vengeful God?, Rabbi David Block unpacks the parallels between the punishment for Egypt and the spies, and builds a theory about their sins being similar. He shows that while God was creating distance in Egypt to show that He is God, not Pharaoh… the desert was filled with miracles to create closeness.
4. We’ve discussed Abram’s unwillingness to displace people in pursuit of fulfilling the mission in Worth Imitating—so the land remains unclaimed.
5. In Rest for the Dove parsha companion, Rabbi Sabato discusses how humility is key to Joshua being spared.