ספר במדבר

Numbers 13,16. “Moses renamed Hoshea son of Nun, ‎Yehoshua.” Rashi comments on this verse that this ‎means that Moses prayed that G’d should protect him against ‎being swayed by the evil advice offered by the majority of the ‎men who were part of this mission.‎This commentary is strange, as whence did Moses know ‎already that these men would turn out to be spies counseling ‎that the land was beyond their ability to conquer? Surely, if ‎Moses had been aware of the tragic outcome of this mission he ‎would never have allowed it to go forth? This is also why ‎‎Rashi says that at the time when this mission set out all the ‎members partaking in it were beyond suspicion of wanting it to ‎fail. If Rashi is correct, we must then ask what made Moses ‎pray for Joshua’s being protected against the “spies’” evil ‎influence?‎It appears that the answer to the above questions is that G’d ‎had told Moses to send out men to “tour” the land of Canaan, ‎whereas in Deuteronomy 1,22 when the whole incident is recalled ‎by Moses he describes the intiative for this to have been the ‎people, who had, however, demanded that the mission be one of ‎spying, i.e. ‎ויחפרו את הארץ לנו את הארץ‎ “who will spy out the land ‎for us.” the Midrash Kohelet Rabbah 1,9 in relating to this ‎request states that just as a human being has 248 bones and 365 ‎tendons, so the earth is similarly made up of as many constituent ‎parts. [The text there only speaks about man and the ‎earth having certain organs in common. Ed.] It elaborates ‎by saying that just as the Torah speaks of ‎ערות הארץ, לב הארץ, ‏טבור הארץ, עין הארץ‎, “the nakedness of the earth, the heart of the ‎earth, the navel of the earth, an the eye of the earth, etc.; these ‎are only a few examples of the earth possessing parts which serve ‎it in a manner similar to the way that the bones and tendons ‎serve the human being.It follows that when the Israelites perform G’d’s ‎commandments on this land, that the land itself will develop a ‎fondness for this people. We are entitled therefore to view in the ‎expression ‎לתור את הארץ‎, Moses’ way of instructing these men to ‎establish a personal relationship with this land based on Torah ‎‎(‎תור‎) observance. By doing so the Jewish people would assume the ‎role of dispensing spiritual largesse of their own to this land. The ‎land, seeing that it had become a recipient of largesse from the ‎Jewish people would also become indebted to them. This explains ‎Moses’ command to the subterranean waters in the part of the ‎land of Canaan already captured by the Jewish people to give ‎forth its waters, i.e. Numbers 21,17 ‎אז ישיר ישראל את השירה הזאת ‏עלי באר ענו-לה באר חפרוה שרים‎, “then Israel sang this song: ‘spring ‎up O well-sing to it-, the well which the princes dug.’ The word ‎חפרוה‎ is derived from ‎חפר‎ “to dig,” and is completely analogous to ‎the expression ‎ויחפרו את הארץ‎ in Deuteronomy 1,22 where we can ‎then translate it “in order to dig for us in the land.” The wish ‎expressed by the Israelites when singing this song was meant to ‎convince the earth of the land of Canaan (in this instance the east ‎bank of the Jordan) that complying with Israel’s request was for ‎its own benefit.‎