Commentary for Numbers 14:36

וישבו וילינו עליו [AND THE MEN WHOM MOSES SENT TO SEARCH THE LAND] RETURNED AND MADE THE WHOLE CONGREGATION MURMUR AGAINST HIM — This meant: “the men whom Moses sent and who, when they returned (וישבו) from searching the Land, made the whole congregation murmur against him by making them utter an evil report, — those men died. Wherever the phrase הוציא דבה occurs it denotes instructing to speak — that people teach their way of speaking to a person that he may speak it (cf. Rashi on 23:31). Similar is, (Song 7:10) “causing the lips of those who are asleep to speak." (דובב) There may be one (a דבה, “an utterance”) for good, or there may be one for evil: and it is for this reason that it states here, “[even those men] that made the people utter evil speech about the Land”, because, as I have stated, there is a דבה which may be termed good.

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

והאנשים אשר שלח משה, And the men whom Moses had despatched, etc. This entire verse seems superfluous. We already know that Moses had despatched the spies and what the spies had done. Perhaps this verse wanted to inform us that although under normal circumstances G'd extends His patience also to sinners -as we explained on verse 18- in this instance G'd punished these men immediately. The Torah repeats the nature of their sin in order to explain why they did not deserve G'd's patience.

והאנשים אשר שלח משה, and who had in the meantime returned from the land of Israel, וישובו וילינו and had upon their return incited the people to voice their complaints, וימותו, they died forthwith.

רעה מוציאי דבת-הארץ, “spreading slanderous report about the land,” Nachmanides says that the “slander” mentioned here was their claim that the land consumes its inhabitants. This was an outright lie, as not only was the land full of people, but the spies themselves during the forty days they had spent in the land had not experienced any problems with their health. We have a record of Joshua describing the Land of Canaan as densely populated in Joshua The precise wording is עם רב כחול הים אשר על שפת הים לרוב, “a people as numerous as the sand on the beaches of the sea.” Rashi explains the words מוציאי דבת הארץ as causing people to speak fluently, i.e. in this case as harping on the negative aspects. On occasions, the same expression is used to describe someone constantly underlining the positive aspects of something. This is why the Torah had to add the word רעה when referring to דבת הארץ. Nachmanides counters that we have a statement in Pessachim 3 containing the word דבה, where it is clearly referring to negative comments without the word רעה being added. According to Nachmanides the reason the Torah did add the word רעה here although it had already been implied by the use of the word דבה, is to tell us of how much the spies overemphasized the negative aspects of what they claimed to have seen.

V. 36. וילינו וגו׳ להוציא וגו׳, sie haben die Volksgemeine zur Empörung gegen Gott dadurch gebracht, dass sie Verleumdung über das Land ausgebracht.

והאנשים אשר שלח משה, “and the men that Moses had sent forth;” the spies, G-d did not let them live out their lives but killed them at once by a plague.

דבה is parlerie in O. F.; (Engl = utterance).

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.

דבה, the word is related to דובב, as in Song of Songs 7,10 דובב שפתי ישנים, “He makes the lips of those who sleep (in their graves) move and articulate words.” [The author quotes more verses, i.e. Proverbs 11,10 Job 20,5, but I confess that I do not understand how they relate to דבה. Ed.]

There are five different circumstances which cause G'd to exact retribution without extending patience towards the sinner. 1) The sinner in question is a person of exceptional stature. When such a person rebels against G'd, He does not want to forgive him. After all, such a person should have known better and cannot expect to be judged by the same standards as an average person who commits a sin. 2) A person who has moved in a Torah-observant society and has abandoned this society to pursue a sinful conduct. 3) If someone experiences a strong urge not to commit a certain sin and he makes every effort to resist that urge and sins regardless of his primordial urge not to sin. The Talmud Menachot 44 illustrates this with the example of someone deliberately ignoring the warning by his ציציות not to go through with his intention to sleep with a certain harlot. 4) If the person involved not only sinned but caused others to sin. 5) If the nature of the sin is greater than normal; the Talmud in Sanhedrin 103 describes Amon the son of King Menashe as committing such a sin when he slept with his mother against her will. When his mother tried to dissuade him claiming he could not possibly derive any gratification from entering an area of her body which he had come out of at birth and which was unclean, he countered that his objective was not gratification but causing G'd to be angry.

וישובו וילינו, “made all the congregation murmur against him.” Once was not enough, but they repeated their negative attitude to conquering the land of the Canaanites.

In our situation the Torah informed us that G'd did not extend His customary patience to the ten spies in question as they had been guilty of all the five factors we just enumerated. The Torah described the spies as והאנשים, to remind us that these men used to be looked up to as models of Torah-observance. Bamidbar Rabbah on our verse states that the term אנשים throughout Scripture means that such people were knwon for their exemplary conduct. 2) They were described as leaders of thousands, i.e. people looked up to them. They were despatched by a society, i.e. Moses and the children of Israel, all of whom were known to be a healthy Torah-observant environment. 3) Although they were exposed to great dangers in their mission as spies, they had themselves acknowledged that they only returned safely because they had experienced G'd's personal protection. In spite of this they had committed such an ugly sin. 4) The Torah tells us that they not only sinned themselves but caused the whole community to sin, i.e. וילינו עליו את כל העדה, "They caused the whole congregation to murmur against G'd." 5) By slandering the nature of ארץ ישראל they angered G'd although they could not possibly derive any gratification from their sin. It is hardly surprising then that G'd did not extend His patience to such men.