Free Will and G-D's Guidance

This week's Parsha is quite incredible. G-D tells us to send spies to the land and scout it out with Leaders of the tribes, supposedly great men. Then, when they fail and bring the rest of Bnei Yisroel to sin G-D tells Moshe, "I am going to wipe them out and just start all over with you." We were only saved because Moshe prayed for us, had anyone else been the leader we would have surely perished. However, if we take a closer look at this debacle we will be able to understand a much deeper lesson than that of the mistakes of our ancestores.

In Bamidbar (13:2) it says:

ב. שְׁלַח לְךָ אֲנָשִׁים וְיָתֻרוּ אֶת אֶרֶץ כְּנַעַן אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי נֹתֵן לִבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אִישׁ אֶחָד אִישׁ אֶחָד לְמַטֵּה אֲבֹתָיו תִּשְׁלָחוּ כֹּל נָשִׂיא בָהֶם:
2. "Send out for yourself men who will scout the Land of Canaan, which I am giving to the children of Israel. You shall send one man each for his father's tribe; each one shall be a chieftain in their midst."


I know that almost everyone has been told that Shelach Licha (send for yourself) means that when Bnei Yisroel heard they were going into Israel they asked G-D if they could send people first before entering the land. However, I think this reveals an amazing gift from G-D to man. The gift: free will to do what we please. Think about it, G-D just performed all of these miracles to bring us out of Egypt and He gave us food and water through clear miracles and the Jewish people still ask Him if they can send people to scout out the land before entering?!?! Are they serious? And if they didn't like the land what were they gonna do? Nonetheless, G-D does not force anything upon man so He allowed them to scout out the land before entering it.

However, G-D knows the essence of man, He understands our nature. G-D knew that just letting the Jewish people decide on their own who they were going to send and how they were going to scout out the land would definitely lead to disaster. Therefore, G-D told Moshe, "If you are going to send anyone they must be the most righteous and humble among you." In this way G-D allowed the Jewish people to have their free will, but tried to guide them towards the proper path without hindering their free will.

This can also explain a very perplexing statement made in the very next verse (ibid:3):

ג. וַיִּשְׁלַח אֹתָם מֹשֶׁה מִמִּדְבַּר פָּארָן עַל פִּי יְ־הֹוָ־ה כֻּלָּם אֲנָשִׁים רָאשֵׁי בְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל הֵמָּה:
3. So Moses sent them from the desert of Paran by the word of the Lord. All of them were men of distinction; they were the heads of the children of Israel.

In case you missed that, this verse says that Moshe sent out the scouts BY THE WORD OF THE LORD. What??? If it was the word of the Lord why does it say in Devarim (1:22):

כב. וַתִּקְרְבוּן אֵלַי כֻּלְּכֶם וַתֹּאמְרוּ נִשְׁלְחָה אֲנָשִׁים לְפָנֵינוּ וְיַחְפְּרוּ לָנוּ אֶת הָאָרֶץ וְיָשִׁבוּ אֹתָנוּ דָּבָר אֶת הַדֶּרֶךְ אֲשֶׁר נַעֲלֶה בָּהּ וְאֵת הֶעָרִים אֲשֶׁר נָבֹא אֲלֵיהֶן:
22. And all of you approached me and said, "Let us send men ahead of us so that they will search out the land for us and bring us back word by which route we shall go up, and to which cities we shall come."

Also, all the Medrashim and commentators say this as well, that the Jewish people requested that these scouts go. How, then, could Moshe have sent the scouts by the word of G-D?

So, using what was explained above, that G-D gives guidance to man's free will, will help us explain this predicament. G-D allows man to have free choice, but once the Jewish people chose to send people as scouts, He was not allowing just anyone to go and they could not choose any path they wanted. They had to see the best of the land and, as we said before, only the most righteous among them were allowed on this scouting trip. Thereby, G-D gave the Jewish people the best possible chance to succeed. However, it was all for naught. Even these great men and even this path that showed the best that Israel had to offer could not overcome their desires.

The question remains, what was their desire? Well, I will put it this way, they were living in the desert where all of their needs were taken care of by G-D, they did not have to work or do anything for that matter. All of this right after being slaves where the labor was back breaking and when they entered the land they knew that life would go back to normal. People would have to plow their fields and they would have to fight the armies of Canaan. Gosh, why would they WANT to enter Israel? They thought they knew better than G-D. They thought their lives would be better in the desert than in the land of Israel and that is why they did not want to enter. Only once they heard that G-D's wrath would come down upon them and their comfortable lives would be altered did they then desire to go up and enter the land, but at that point it was too late.

Today, we are no better than the Jews of the desert. We are always looking for a way to avoid work. Toil is something that we despise and we are always looking for the easy way out. If I was living in a situation where all of my needs were taken care of and then I was told I had to start working again, I would try my hardest to stay where I was.

The most important thing that, I think, we can take away from this is that although we have free will G-D tries to guide us in the proper direction. He did not just allow the Jews to fall without fighting for them, that is probably why He was so angry with them to the extent that He "wanted" to destroy them. Today, we are guided by G-D through the Torah and mitzvos. They teach us that we must make our decisions with free will, but when we make those choices the Torah is there to guide us on how best to avoid temptations that lead to our downfall. People will look at the Torah as prohibitive, but I see it as an enhancer of life. Does the person who eats 50 steaks and throws up enjoy his steaks more, or does the person who has his steak with wine and spices enjoy it more? True, the person who has only one has less, but as the saying goes "sometimes less is more."

Shelach- Do Not Ask for Tests

In this week's parsha of Shelach we find that Moshe is told by G-D to "Shelach Licha Anashim (Shemos 13:2)." This means that you (The Jewish People) should send forth for yourself men. Rashi takes this interesting phrase and explains that it means that G-D did not command Moshe to send the spies, but rather He allowed the Jewish people to send them. The question here is why would the Jewish people be allowed to send the spies? If G-D wanted the Jewish people to inherit the land then He should have told them there is no need to spy out the land. However, if G-D wanted to cause the Jewish people to wander in the desert for another 39 years then He should have done that. Why did He allow the Jewish people to go through all the trouble of sending spies if the only outcome that sending spies would change would be to prevent the Jewish people from entering the land? Think about it, if the spies said the land was good, G-D would say that He already told us the land was good. However, if the spies said the land was bad, then G-D would keep us in the desert for 39 more years. In light of this, what was the point of sending spies?

There is an interesting Gemorah in Sanhedrin 107A. It talks about how King David was reading the Shemonah Esrei and saw that it said G-D of Avraham, G-D of Yitzchak and G-D of Yaakov, however it did not mention the G-D of David. This caused King David to say, "G-D, why does it not also say the G-D of David?" G-D answered him, "Because, I tested them and in their merit of passing those tests the Jewish people will forever mention their names to help me (G-D) accept their prayers." In response to this David said, "So test me too." G-D said, "I will test you, but you will fail." Then the incident with Bat Sheva happened as described in the eleventh chapter of Shmuel 2.

Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz explains why it is that King David is told by G-D that he is going to fail. Rav Shmuelevitz says that every time we are tested by our evil inclination G-D helps us overcome our evil desires and hence we are able to succeed in our task. However, we are only able to succeed because G-D helps us overcome our base desires. If we were to request a test then G-D does not help us overcome these base desires, because who are we to request tests? We should never put ourselves into a dangerous situation where we are subjecting ourselves to the evil inclination willfully.

I would like to suggest that this is what happened by the sin of the spies. The Jewish people believed in G-D. They had seen Him on Mount Sinai and they had witnessed all of His miracles in Egypt and at the Red Sea. It was impossible that they did not revere and love G-D with all of their hearts and all of their their souls. However, they made a big mistake. Just like King David asked for a test and failed because of the fact that he asked for a test, so too the Jewish people failed merely because they asked for the test. King David revered G-D and loved Him, however, since David requested the test he was unable to overcome the temptation of sin. So too by the Jewish people, they requested the test of sending spies into Israel. They wanted to show that they were worthy of the land by proving to G-D that they would love it even more if they saw it than if they relied on G-D's words alone. However, this was their undoing, they should have just relied on G-D's words alone even if they thought they would love the land more had they seen it with their own eyes. It was because of their zealousness that they became doomed to wander in the desert for another 39 years.

This idea just shows that, sometimes, being over zealous is dangerous and costly. This is why the Rambam tells us that the middle path is always the best. A person should never try to be overly righteous because sometimes that can get them into trouble. King David and the Jewish people in the desert meant well. As Rashi tells us in the beginning of the parsha, the spies were originally very righteous. However, testing yourself to prove your righteousness backfires and ends up proving that even the righteous are not perfect.