Musar к Бамидбар 13:18

1) The first question asked by all the commentators and foremost by Nachmanides, is what sin the spies actually committed since Moses had told them to examine the country, its people, whether they were strong or weak, numerous or sparse, whether they lived in open or fortified cities, etc. Surely their report had to include answers to all these questions! What was so serious about their saying: "however the people are a tough people?" (13,28). Did Moses send them on their mission in order for them to report untruthfully? We must not think that their sin was only that they described ארץ ישראל as a land that consumes its inhabitants (13,32), since they had quarreled with Caleb and Joshua already prior to that statement, and the Torah reports concerning them in Deut 1,28: "Our brothers have made our hearts melt saying that a great and mighty people live there in great cities fortified to the heavens, etc." Here the Torah reports all the Israelites as being afraid of death by the sword, that their wives and children would be taken prisoner (14,3). If that had been their sin, how was Moses able to describe the inhabitants of the land of Canaan in even more frightening terms, when he said to them in Deut. 9,1: "Hear O Israel, you are about to cross the Jordan to go in and conquer nations greater and more numerous than you; great cities with walls sky-high. A people great and tall, the Anakites of whom you have heard it said: "who can stand up to the children of Anak!" If the sin of the spies had been that they undermined Jewish morale, surely Moses had been guilty of the same thing in an even greater measure when he addressed the younger generation in similar fashion almost forty years later! This is the question raised by Nachmanides.