In this parasha, Moses is addressing the Israelites, telling them the story of their experiences from the time they left Sinai. In the process, he provides a historical and a moral context both for their current situation and for the new laws he is about to propound. He reminds his listeners of their actions at each stage of the story: what they said, how they obeyed or disobeyed God’s commands, and how God responded. Particularly when he relates the incident of the spies, which was first and more fully
told in Parashat Shelach Lecha, we realise that, despite the frequent use of the second person pronoun ("you refused to go up (into the Land)", "you sulked in your tents", etc.), most of those who are listening to Moses’ account are not actually the subjects of the story. For the generation who "refused" and "sulked" were sentenced by God to wander in the wilderness for forty years and die off before their children would be able to take possession of the Promised Land. Such was their terrible punishment for their lack of faith in God’s protection. In fact, in the story as told in Shelach Lecha, the Israelites, disheartened by the spies’ report and fearful of going forward to take the Land as God commanded, exclaim to Moses: "If only we might die in this wilderness!" If ever there was a lesson to learn of the danger of careless talk, this must be it!
It was reading Moses’ summary in this week’s parasha that set me wondering: what must it be like to go through the horror of the plagues, the awesome Exodus from Egypt, the awe-inspiring miracle of the Red Sea and the terrifying grandeur of Sinai, only to be told: "You are unfit to fulfill the purpose of this journey, to enter the Land promised to your fathers; instead you will wander in the wilderness till you die!" How would one react to such a devastating divine verdict?
Indeed, reading how the people did react is truly painful. Having believed the spies’ report and adamantly refused to trust that God would protect them when they entered the Land, they now respond to the divine decree by denying it. They do an about-face and insist on heading up into the hills towards the Land. Certainly this is what God had commanded them earlier, but then was one reality and now is another reality.
God (through Moses) warns them: lo ta’alu v’lo tichalmu ki eineni b’kirbechem – do not go up and do not fight, as I am not in your midst (Deuteronomy 1:42). Then God would have been with them; now God is no longer with them. Then they would have prevailed in battle, now they will be defeated. Rashi, with his eye for linguistics, understands lo ta’alu as a statement of fact (rather than as an imperative). "You are not going to have a going up, but a coming down." And indeed that is what happens. The Israelites go up into the hills towards the Land only to be confronted by the Amorites who soundly defeat them.
It is true that on Yom Kippur we will declare repeatedly that teshuva will avert the harshness of the decree. But there was no real teshuva in the Israelites’ sudden and belated decision to do what God had commanded them before their sin. It was panic and defiance. Did the Israelite warriors really imagine that by doing what they should have done earlier, they would have the divine support to succeed? Denial is a not uncommon response to terrible news, such as the death of a loved one or the fact of one’s own impending death. It is a kind of blindness that leads one to believe that nothing has really changed.
But time and events do create new realities that change everything. Kohelet begins that famous passage with the words: "Everything has its season and there is a time for everything under Heaven." There was a time for the Israelites to march into the hills, as God would then have blessed their endeavours, but that time is no longer. How can we know when is – or is not – the time for our endeavours "under Heaven"? I think that at the very least, we need to face the truth, inner and outer, without illusion.
After our ancestors’ initial denial and defiance, leading on to their disastrous defeat at the hands of the Amorites, how did they cope with the ensuing years, knowing they’d never make it into the Land? Did they get themselves a heart of wisdom, face the truth of their sin and punishment, and make teshuva? That way, perhaps, they might just have averted the harshness of the decree. But we know that was not to be. Did they envy their children’s privilege to enter the Promised Land? Or did they rejoice in their children’s future? Did they continually rail against their fate, or did they mourn their lost future in the Promised Land and face that loss with resignation and acceptance?
These challenges to our ancestors have an echo in that stage of our individual lives known as the "mid-life crisis". There comes a point, usually somewhere between the ages of thirty-five and fifty, when we are confronted with the fact of our mortality. We can struggle to deny the ticking clock of our life-span, and live in continual frustration that we cannot achieve all we want to achieve. Or we can accept and mourn, and adjust ourselves to the new reality of our lives.
So my hope for the Israelites (as for each of us at a certain age) is that they moved beyond denial, frustration and envy, and enjoyed the new stage of their lives for what it was. Life is a mix of joy and pain and, although for many people there are truly happy times, any "Promised Land" we may be dreaming of is never quite reached. The generation of the spies had the possibility of gradually and successfully emerging from its crisis, by embracing the truth of its situation: that life is a journey without destination. If they were able to embrace that knowledge, then we can take pleasure in the thought that our ancestors focused their lives on the present, with all its joys and challenges, and not on the destination they would never reach.