Where Did The Spies Really Go Wrong?

In Parshat Devarim, as Moses begins his grand farewell speech, he reminds the people of many of the events that happened in the desert, including the story of the spies. He talks about the sin where the spies brought back a negative report and disheartened the nation, about God’s anger, about the decree that they would wander for 40 years and die in the desert. Only their children, the next generation, would get to enter the land. 

Then, Moses says something that might make you do a double take. Moses describes those children using some very peculiar language:

בְנֵיכֶם אֲשֶׁר לֹא יָדְעוּ הַיּוֹם טוֹב וָרָע הֵמָּה יָבֹאוּ שָׁמָּה

Your children—who today have no knowledge of good and evil—they shall go there.

 (Dev. 1:39)

Those words—‘knowledge’, ‘good’, ‘evil’—are they giving you déjà vu? There is only one other place in the entire Five Books of Moses where we read about knowledge of good and evil. It’s the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden.

Why would the Torah evoke the Garden of Eden here in the story of the spies? What does that sin of the spies have to do with the Tree of Knowledge?

The Sin of The Spies and The Tree of Knowledge

Well, in both of these stories people commit terrible sins against God, and if we think about the consequences of these sins, they are actually remarkably similar. The sin of the Tree of Knowledge had two consequences:

1. Before Adam and Eve even sinned, when God was originally giving Adam instructions not to eat from this one tree, God told him that if he ate from the tree he would die.

וּמֵעֵץ הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע לֹא תֹאכַל מִמֶּנּוּ כִּי בְּיוֹם אֲכׇלְךָ מִמֶּנּוּ מוֹת תָּמוּת

Of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil you shall not eat — for on the day that you eat from it, you will surely die. 

(Gen. 2:17)

Of course, later it becomes clear that this didn’t mean Adan and Eve would drop dead on the spot. But it did mean that they would no longer live forever, but would (eventually) die.

1. After they eat from the Tree of Knowledge God banishes Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.

 וַיְשַׁלְּחֵהוּ יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהִים מִגַּן…  וַיְגָרֶשׁ אֶת הָאָדָם

And God sent him out from the Garden of Eden… He banished the man. 

(Gen. 3:23-24)

These were the two consequences of Adam and Eve’s sin. What were the consequences of the sin of the spies? When God punished the Israelites, back in the original account of this story in Parshat Shelach, the Israelites are told: 

בַּמִּדְבָּר הַזֶּה יִפְּלוּ פִגְרֵיכֶם

Your corpses will fall in this wilderness.

 (Num. 14:29)

Ie. they will (eventually) die there of old age. Sound familiar?

Of course, in the case of the Israelites, their mortality is nothing new. Unlike Adam and Eve, they were always destined to die eventually. The real punishment is what God says in the next verse.

 אִם אַתֶּם תָּבֹאוּ אֶל הָאָרֶץ

Surely you shall not come into the land.

(Num. 14:30)

They would die outside of the Land of Israel, this special land they dreamed of seeing. 

Who else was punished by having to live out their days outside of a special land? Adam and Eve!

Was There Something Similar About The Actual Sins?

If Moses seems to be drawing a link between these two sins, and they resulted in nearly identical punishments, could there be something similar about the sins themselves?

On the surface, giving a bad report on the Land of Israel seems to have little to do with eating from a forbidden fruit, but Beth Lesch argues that, at their very core, these were exactly the same sin. In doing so, Beth reveals a whole new dimension on the sin of the spies. See what she says in this video.