Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Sh'lach, In a Nutshell
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IN A NUTSHELL Twelve men are sent by Moshe to check out the land of Israel before the people journey there. Ten of the men come back with a mixed report. They say that the land is very good, but the people are giants and their cities will be impossible to conquer. The other two men, Yehoshua and Kalev, say that with God’s help everything will be fine. But the people are scared by what they have learned and they beg to return to Egypt.
God becomes angry at the people’s lack of faith and threatens to destroy them (and to start again with Moshe). Moshe prays on behalf of the people and God relents. He decides instead that the people must spend forty years in the desert instead of entering the land immediately and directly. The entire generation will die naturally in the desert and only their children will enter the land.
The parasha also includes a list of laws about sacrifices, ḥalla, and forgiveness for sins committed by mistake. Then this list is interrupted with a short story about a man who breaks Shabbat on purpose. The parasha ends with the laws of tzitzit, the fringes on the corners of garments. These words become the third paragraph of the Shema, which we read every day and every night*.*
QUESTION TO PONDER
Why do you think Yehoshua and Kalev saw things differently from the other ten spies?