Commento su Numeri 13:30

ויהס כלב AND CALEB STILLED [THE PEOPLE] — he caused all of them to be silent.

ויהס כלב את העם, he silenced the people who had begun to raise their voices, as they did afterwards when the Torah reports in 14,1 “all the people raised their voices and the cried the whole night.”

ויהס כלב את העם, Caleb silenced the people, etc. Seeing that an ordinary individual is not capable of silencing a people numbering hundreds of thousands, the Torah adds the words אל משה, to tell us that he silenced them in order to make them listen to Moses, not to himself. We know from Deut. 33,5 that Moses' rank was equivalent to the rank of a king. Caleb invoked the awe and respect due to a king in order to silence the people. Having invoked Moses' authority, he said: "we most certainly are able to to go up and take possession of the land." He meant that in spite of the other spies' having said: "we cannot overcome this people," he felt that the Israelites would be able to prevail.

ויהס, he silenced them by using his psychological insights.

ויהס כלב את העם, “Calev silenced the people.” He did so by proclaiming loudly:

Them all. Even though the verse explicitly says “the people,” [so why does Rashi mention it]? There is another difficulty: The verse does not mention that the people spoke up! The answer is that Rashi refers to the spies, meaning that he silenced all the spies, so that they would not speak at all, in order that the people would hear what Caleiv would say about Moshe.

V. 30. ויהם, Hifil von הסה, lautverwandt mit חשה schweigen. הסה bezeichnet immer ein unterdrücktes Lautwerden. So Habakuk 2, 20; Secharja 2, 17 und sonst. Kaleb versuchte das Volk zum Schweigen gegen Mosche zu bringen. Sofort nach dem Bericht der Botschafter war der Unwille des Volkes gegen Mosche ausgebrochen. Wir begreifen, dass, da es sich hier gleichzeitig um eine Verteidigung Mosche handelte, nicht Josua, sondern Kaleb hervortrat. Bei der engen Beziehung Josuas zu Mosche wären dessen Versicherungen von wenigem Gewichte bei dem Volke gewesen.

Caleiv silenced. The Sages said that Yehoshua did not speak because as he started to speak the people silenced him by saying: Shall this cut-off head speak? The commentaries explain: Their accusation was that since Yehoshua had no son he was not concerned about the generation being annihilated. However, it seems to me that they suspected that Yehoshua wanted to enter the Land of Israel so he would be the generation’s leader, while as long as they were in the Wilderness he was only the head of a tribe. This is the meaning of “cut-off head.” However, when Caleiv spoke everyone understood that he was not speaking for his own benefit. Rather, he spoke “to Moshe” — in that Moshe was their leader, and not for the benefit of Yehoshua or himself.

ויהס כלב את העם אל משה, “Caleb silenced the people toward Moses;” From this line you can glean what must have been left out here, i.e. that Moses was trying unsuccessfully to interrupt the report of the spies, until Caleb succeeded to silence them, even if only briefly. 38 years later in Deuteronomy 1,29, Moses reminds the people that he had tried to give them encouragement to proceed with carrying out G-d’s command to mount an attack against the inhabitants of that land.

אל משה means he silenced them that they should hear what he was going to say about Moses. He cried aloud saying: “Is this the only thing the son of Amram has done to us?!" — One who heard him thus speaking believed that he was about to speak to his disparagement, and because they had something in their mind against Moses through the spies’ statements, all of them kept silent to hear his disparagement. He, however, said: “Did he not divide the Red Sea for us, and bring down the Manna for us, and collect the quails for us?!” (Sotah 35a).

אל משה, so that Moses would have a chance to reply. Perhaps Moses replied with the words he referred to in Deuteronomy 1,29: “I told you not to be scared and not to be afraid of the inhabitants of that land, etc.”

עלה נעלה וירשנו אותה כי יכול נוכל בה, “We shall surely ascend and conquer it, for we can surely do it.” Calev did not contradict the facts his colleagues had cited, but he contradicted the conclusions they had drawn from these facts. This is why he used the pronoun לה, which referred to the cities of these people. When his colleagues heard this they became more outspoken, contradicting Calev outright by stating:

The listener. Since it is written “because he possessed in him a different spirit” (Bamidbar 14:24), it implies that there were two spirits, one in his mouth and one in his heart. To the spies he said “I am with you in your plan” but in his heart he said the truth. Consequently he was able to silence them. However Re’m explains that it was because Caleiv called Moshe “son of Amram” rather than calling him by name that they thought he was with them. He referred to Moshe in this way so that they would err and think that his intention was to slander.

עלה נעלה WE CAN INDEED GO UP — even to heaven, if he were to say “Make ladders and go up there”, we should listen to him because we would be successful in all his words (in all he bids us do) (Sotah 35a).

Calev reinforced Moses’ words by saying: עלה נעלה, it is appropriate for us to ascend for they will not be able to stand up against us to prevent us from progressing;

Even to heaven. For if not so, Scripture should have said “נעלה וירשנו” (we can go up and we shall possess it), why did it need to add the word עלה (using the repetitive phrase “עלה נעלה” lit. we can go up, go up). Rather this means that we can go up to anywhere, even to heaven. (Gur Aryeh) You might ask: Why did they speak about overcoming them, surely they were not in heaven? The answer is that this is what they were saying: Even if they have in heaven a great celestial power supporting them, such that we would not be able to expel them, we can still go up. Because celestial powers do not affect Israel, for they override the celestial powers. Thus we can surely go up and overcome their celestial powers.

ויהס is an expression denoting silence. Similar is, (Zechariah 2:17) “Be silent, (הס) O all flesh”; (Amos 6:10) “Be silent (הס): for we may not mention [the name of the Lord]”. So is the manner of people: he who wishes to silence a group of men says “sst” (This sibilant sound is therefore used to command silence).

וירשנו אותו כי יכול נוכל לו, for as soon as we shall ascend in that direction they will flee from us seeing that these inhabitants of Canaan have already a defeatist attitude toward us.