Safety First?
Parashat Sh’lach L’cha, Numbers 13:1-15:41
Chaim Dauermann, Brooklyn, NY
Unbelief is a powerful thing. But its power is not always obvious. It does not usually announce itself as rebellion. Often it speaks in a quieter, more respectable voice. It can speak in the voice of caution or pragmatism. It can even sound like love.
I have a young son. Almost every day, we go to a playground near our home, and almost every time we go, he approaches the monkey bars. He sees older and stronger children make their way across them easily. But he is only three years old. He grasps the first bar, swings for a moment, and then drops his little feet back onto the platform and runs off to do something else.
It takes a lot of self control not to help him. It takes even more self control not to forbid him from trying.
When I was a little older than he is, I hurt myself on a set of monkey bars. I fell, hit my head, and needed stitches. So when I see his small hands grasp the bar, I remember the pain and embarrassment from that moment—feelings that somehow still feel close, even forty years later. But I say nothing each time he steps forward, clinging to the bar with his little hands, playfully kicking the air once or twice. I just let him swing.
I am trying not to confuse my reality with his. My fear is not prophetic, and my past injury has nothing to do with his present experience.
Parental caution is not unbelief. And there are times when our kids try to do something crazy and it’s essential to step in. But fear can also borrow the voice of wisdom. It can sound responsible, even as it quietly convinces us that our own anxieties are more trustworthy than God.
Such is the case for the Children of Israel in this week’s parasha. Moses has led them across the wilderness, and they are only one or two days’ journey from the promised land. Twelve spies are sent to scout out the land and bring back a report, but of the twelve, ten come back with bad news. The land is lush, fertile, generous—and also filled with dangers. The frightened spies take the land to be too fearsome for the Israelites to face: “The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature” (Num 13:32).
The children of Israel are whipped into a frenzy of grief and fear. “Why has the Lord brought us to this land to fall by the sword, that our wives and children should become victims? Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?” (Num 14:3).
It’s all too easy to gloss over the fact that this sounds like an utterly reasonable concern. If the land is full of dangers, naturally the welfare of one’s family would be a matter of first importance. It sounds commendable. But is it? Herein lies the problem. The issue here is not whether the danger was real, but that Israel was interpreting this danger as though God were not in the picture. They claim a desire for safety but at the heart is something less altruistic: Fear and lack of trust that God can continue to take care of them. Whether they are focused on their own welfare or that of their children, they are missing the point.
A focus on safety, in the absence of trust in God, can deceive. The Talmud records an interesting perspective on what was meant when the spies said that the land “devours its inhabitants.” The Sages view it this way: That the spies saw death wherever they went—mourning, funerals, things that gave them the impression that life there was difficult and dangerous. Sotah 35a records the words of Rava:
The Holy One, Blessed be He, said: I intended the land to appear to consume its inhabitants for their own good, but they considered this proof that the land was bad. I intended it for their good by causing many people to die there so that anywhere that the spies arrived, the most important of them died, so that the Canaanites would be preoccupied with mourning and would not inquire about them.
What the spies had seen as danger was actually an example of God’s provision, but because they had not viewed the land from the perspective of faith, they interpreted what was good as something bad.
When the Israelites feared for their wives and children, their concerns may have seemed justified and coming from a place of love. But when viewing the land from a position of unbelief, they were unable to interpret what God was doing. They were unable to make an informed decision based on trust and based on God’s own acts of provisions. All they had to go on were their own perceptions and fears, and they failed.
God sees through this, and the older generation bears the consequences of their faithlessness: “But your little ones, whom you said would be victims, I will bring in, and they shall know the land which you have despised. But as for you, your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness” (Num 14:31–32). The faithless Israelites would never live to see the land, while their children would prosper in the very place they had feared.
I’m reminded of an incident in the life of Yeshua. In Mark’s Besorah, we read of a time when the Lord beckoned his disciples to join him in a boat on the Galilee. He says to them, “Let us cross over to the other side.”
And a great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that it was already filling. But He was in the stern, asleep on a pillow. And they awoke Him and said to Him, “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?”
Then He arose and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace, be still!” And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. But He said to them, “Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith?” (Mark 4:37–40)
By this time, they had seen Yeshua cleanse lepers and heal cripples, but they perceived dangers; they thought of themselves rather than remembering his word that he would see them to the other side.
It is good to be concerned with our safety and the safety of those we love. But we cannot allow our concerns to impede our response to something God is trying to do or to show us. Indeed, sometimes God’s directives, when we view them without faith, might seem dangerous. This is why belief is so paramount. Without it, we may not be able to see things clearly at all.
Tomorrow, more than likely, I’ll be at the playground with my son yet again. And yet again, he will approach the monkey bars, grasp onto the first rung, and swing his legs out over the void. It’s more than likely that I’ll feel a familiar anxiety. But I’ll let him play. Not because there is no danger, and not because he will certainly not fall (he may one day) but because fear must not be allowed to become something I hand down to him.
The next generation does not need to inherit our unbelief, they need to learn how to see the world truthfully, and that can only come with faith.
All scripture quotations taken from the NKJV