וילונו על משה ועל אהרן; who were G’d’s delegates charged with taking them out of Egypt and with saving them from fear of death in the desert; they claimed that all that Moses and Aaron had done was only in order to deliver the people into the hands of the Emorite.

ולמה ה' מביא אותנו, what sin did we commit against Him that He made the effort to bring us to this crisis by using you two as His instruments? They thought that these present troubles were all retribution for the abominable things they had been doing while in Egypt, or on account of some other cause they were not aware of which had caused G’d to hate them. We know that they had concluded that G’d must hate them from their own words in Deuteronomy 1,27: “because G’d hates us He took us out of Egypt in order to deliver us into the hands of the Emorite.”

ויפול משה ואהרן על פניהם, when they saw the truth of (Kohelet 1,15) Solomon’s famous proverb that מעוות לא יוכל לתקן, that “when something has been twisted out of shape it can not be straightened out again.” The Talmud Sanhedrin 19 illustrates this when relating that the entire Sanhedrin out of fear of the King Yannai, perverted Torah law and only Shimon ben Shetach had the courage to tell the king the truth about Torah law on the issue under discussion, which would have embarrassed the king. Shimon ben Shetach appealed to heaven to uphold the one who had interpreted correctly. Thereupon the angel Gavriel killed the entire Sanhedrin, except Shimon ben Shetach. However, in order for such a tragedy not to occur again, the ruling that the king must testify and must be judged by his peers was revoked for the future.

הארץ אשר עברנו בה לתור אותה, to investigate both the country and its inhabitants, in accordance with Moses’ instructions “you will take a look at the land what are its characteristics and the people who dwell on it” (13,18).

טובה הארץ, concerning what you have charged us to investigate the land, we testify that it is a good land, exceptionally good, without drawbacks. We do not agree with our colleagues who, although testifying that the land was good, added the reservation that the “land consumes its inhabitants.” Concerning what my colleagues have said: about the land “consuming its inhabitants, we can testify כי לחמנו הם, “they are our bread,” they will not even have the courage to frontally face us, the very opposite of our colleagues’ saying that they are a “tough people.”

'אם חפץ בנו ה, if the Lord has taken a liking to us. True, the goodness of the land depends in great measure on G’d taking a liking to us, as we know that this is a land which is constantly under G’d’s supervision so that disobedience to His laws will be promptly punished. All of this had been spelled out in Deuteronomy 11,12-13.

והביא אותנו אל הארץ הזאת, the very reverse of what our colleagues testified when they claimed “we cannot ascend against this people.” (13,31) The fact is that these people will not even offer us any resistance, as mentioned already in Exodus 15,16 “they will keep as silent as a stone until Your people o Lord have passed.” In fact, even forty years later when the people finally were poised on the borders of the land they did not encounter a single security fence of other defensive structures which these people had erected during the forty years that they had expected the Israelites to invade their land.

ונתנה לנו, we are certain of this because we have seen that not a single one of them has enough spirit left to confront us, they are only thinking of fleeing.

ארץ אשר היא זבת חלב ודבש, the land itself is productive without input by farmers”. The expression: “flowing with milk and honey” is applied to produce growing in the forest in Samuel I 14,25 וכל הארץ באו ביער ויהי דבש על פני השדה, “everybody came to the forest and the field was full of honey.” This would not have been possible if there had been anything inferior in that soil. [the author, of course, understands the word “honey” as hyperbole for excellent produce, in contrast to most commentators who understand it literally. Ed.]

אך בה' אל תמרודו, if you indeed want the soil of this land to correspond to your fond hopes of it, it is incumbent upon you not to rebel against G’d, something you have been told about repeatedly. (compare Deuteronomy 11,13-14 lines we recite at least twice daily.)

ואתם אל תיראו, if you do not rebel against the Lord He will bring you there and you will have no reason to be afraid of anything, for they are our bread, we have seen with our own eyes that they did not even dare to attack the 12 of us. 40 years later Rachav the innkeeper of Jericho testified that the people were still terribly afraid of the Israelites, none of them summoning enough spirit to go to war against this people. (Joshua 2,11) סר צלם מעליהם, we have seen that they have decided to abandon all armed resistance, reminiscent of what we read in Kings II 7,15 when the armies of Aram had abandoned all their equipment in headlong flight, when they had merely imagined that they were being attacked.

?עד אנה ינאצוני, “What is the limit of their spurning Me? How long am I supposed to tolerate the disdain with which they treat Me?

?ועד אנה לא יאמינו לי, How many more miracles must I perform for them until they will rely on My word?

אכנו בדבר, as we read in Deuteronomy 2,15 “and also the Lord’s hand came upon them until He had rooted them out from the camp to the last man.” (the generation of the people who had accepted the majority report of the spies)

ואורישנו, I will see to it that they have to leave what should have been their inheritance to others. This was similar to what Rashi (based on the Talmud Baba Batra) explained about the dead inheriting the living at the time when the land of Israel was parceled out to the various tribes. By means of the stratagem G’d fulfilled what He had promised in Exodus 6,8: “I will give to you the land as an ‘inheritance.’

ושמעו מצרים, Moses thought that when G’d had said: “I will smite them with pestilence” that He had in mind to strike all of them immediately, simultaneously. He therefore felt impelled to question what would this do to G’d’s great name? Surely, he argued, the Egyptians would ascribe this to G’d’s impotence in making good on His promise to this people, 'מבלתי יכולת ה' להביא את העם וגו, they would claim that G’d’s power did not include dealing with the Canaanites. Seeing that the Egyptians are aware of the effort You expended in liberating them from slavery in Egypt, and they are further aware that You have made the seat of Your residence on earth in their Tabernacle, the mere thought that You would now kill them on account of a sin would never occur to them

אשר עין בעין נראה, the entire verse illustrates graphically the visual experiences Israel had enjoyed in its relationship with G’d something that would make their committing the kind of sin on account of which their G’d would wipe them out unthinkable. [I paraphrased here. Ed.]

'יגדל נא כח ה, to suppress the demands of the attribute of Justice.

פוקד עון אבות על בנים, this may extend until the fourth generation, i.e. if the fourth generation of the original sinner will still continue in the wicked ways of their forbears that will make the measure of sin of those families in the third generation so full that it has become irreversible and G’d will take the appropriate action. If the sons and grandsons continued in the evil ways of their forbears but not until the fourth generation, G’d will suspend retribution to see how the fourth generation would conduct themselves before exacting retribution.

סלחתי כדברך. As you said when I mentioned smiting them all with pestilence. Even when I said this, I had not intended to smite them all simultaneously; I had intended to let them all die, little by little, in the desert, preventing them from crossing to the land of Canaan.

ואולם חי אני וימלא כבוד ה' את כל הארץ, “I swear that just as I am the G’d Wo Am alive and Whose glory fills the whole earth, etc.” כי כל האנשים, the ones who are twenty years and over אם יראו את הארץ, that they will not get to see the land. This is one of the examples where the word אם is not followed by a תנאי כפול, i.e. spelling out both what will happen if the conditions of an agreement are met and what will happen if the conditions are not met. Other examples are found in Genesis 14,23 when Avraham refuses to allow the King of Sodom to “give” him the victor any of the spoils of war. Samuel I 19,6 also has such an unaccompanied word אם, letting the reader arrive at his own conclusions.

וכל מנאצי לא יראוהו, also their sons who at this time had not reached the age of 20 but would be among those who disdain Me in the future, will also not be granted the privilege of seeing the Holy Land. Examples of this decree were the men who died during the uprising of Korach and had been under the age of 20 (at the time of the Exodus), as well as the people who died at Shittim 38 years later because of their involvement with the Moabite women, as well as the people who died before Moses could erect the copper snake. The people concerned had not been involved in rejecting the land of Israel at the time when the spies made their report as they were under age. (compare Numbers 21,6 and 25,9)

וזרעו יורישנה; Calev’s children will not only take possession of their share in the Holy Land, but will pass on their share to his descendants in future generations. This is different from the other members of the present adult generation who, though not taking possession of any part of the land themselves, assigned it to their children by reason of having become the “original” (potential) owners at the time they left Egypt. Their children “inherited” by a Divine decree only, as opposed to Calev’s children, etc. (compare verse 12)

?עד מתי לעדה הרעה הזאת, even though I have forgiven them in accordance with your own stipulation not to decree immediate death for them, instead of letting all of them die already now, I did not include the actual spies themselves in this partial forgiveness. אשר המה מלינים עלי, seeing they were the ones who orchestrated the people slandering Me. They are directly responsible for the sin committed by the multitude. They do not deserve any extension of their lives, I will punish them immediately; concerning them I utter an oath

חי אני נאם ה' אם לא וגו, whenever we find two successive negatives this is equivalent to a positive statement. [the word אם as well as the word לא are each understood as a negative. Ed.] כאשר דברתם באזני, a reference to verse 2 in which the people are reported as wishing that they had died already in Egypt and inverse 3 when they had prematurely bemoaned their wives and children as becoming part of the Canaanites booty in the war they anticipated losing. G’d also refers to what the spies themselves had said when they described the land of Canaan as “consuming its inhabitants” (13,32). G’d would see to it now that all these statements would become self-fulfilling prophecies.

כן אעשה לכם; not all at once but at intervals. This is what prompted the psalmist in Psalms 106,26 to say: “So He raised His hand in oath to make them fall the wilderness; to disperse their offspring among the nations and scatter them throughout the land.” Also the prophet Ezekiel sees in the present decree something that had repercussions throughout the ages when he said (Ezekiel 20,23) “also I raised My hand in an oath already in the desert, saying I will scatter them among the nations.” [our author sees in the punishment meted out at this time a parallel to that meted out at the time of the sin of the golden calf where G’d had reserved the right to spread the retribution throughout history in order not to have to wipe out the people then and there as they had deserved. Ed.]

ונשאו את זנותיכם, suffering for your faithlessness against me when you had said: “let us appoint a leader to take us back to Egypt ” (verse 4).

במספר הימים, we have a rule in halachah that שלוחו של אדם כמותו that when one appoints someone to act on one’s behalf the appointee is regarded as an extension of the one who appointed him. The spies had therefore not acted on their own, but as the people’s agents. Hence Moses, i.e. G’d, addresses the people as the instigators of this disaster. Their initial sin had consisted in wanting to find out if the land could be conquered.

יום לשנה, on a specific day each year, i.e. the ninth of Av, according to the sages in Taanit 30.

תנואתי; you will find out what it means to try and thwart My plans. (a reference to verse 43 when this “self-fulfilling “ prediction came true.).

והאנשים אשר שלח משה, who at the time had been considered as loyal by him but had in the meantime become disloyal,

become enemies by causing to make slanderers out of the whole elite of the nation (the word עדה is taken to refer to the members of the Supreme Court, Sanhedrin) and the leaders of the nation. They had stated that “the local inhabitants are stronger than we.” (13,31) they had intended to slander the land by this remark. They reasoned that during the time it would take the elders of the people to assimilate the information they had just received, they themselves would have time to speak to the ordinary people and to spread lies about the land of Canaan. They could not have gotten away with telling such lies to the elders who knew that these statements were lies.

וימותו האנשים מוציאי דבת הארץ רעה במגפה, from the type of pestilence which they claimed had caused the death of the people they had seen dying in the land of Canaan during their tour of exploration. (13,32) It was the kind of pollution in the air which kills almost instantly.

?למה זה עוברים את פי ה' והיא לא תצלח; by defying G’d in this manner you will not merely be guilty of a sin due to your trying to indulge your whims, but to the sin of deliberately trying to cause G’d to become angry. (the worst category of sin)

ויעפילו, they stiffened their attitude, similar to Exodus 6,13 where Pharaoh is reported as stiffening his attitude, and as a result not paying heed to Moses’ and Aaron’s warning.

וירד העמלקי, and did not give them a chance to climb the mountain.