The Story of the Spies in Bemidbar and Devarim/2

The Story of the Spies in Bemidbar and Devarim

Exegetical Approaches

Open Comparison Table

Purposeful Recasting

The differences are intentional changes made by Moshe so as to best get across his message to the new generation. Moshe purposefully presented the story in a way that would emphasize the guilt of the nation rather than the sin of the individual spies.

Sources:R. David Zvi HoffmannDevarim 1:22Devarim 1:26About R. David Zvi Hoffmann, N. Leibowitz¹

Moshe's message – N. Leibowitz explains that Moshe wanted to ensure that the nation learned to take full responsibility for their actions and understood why they had spent forty years in the wilderness. This agenda can account for many of the changes:

Initiator – Moshe highlights how the initial request came from the people, not Hashem, thereby preempting anyone from saying that they were just doing what God commanded.

Description of spies – In Devarim, the spies are not given names or titles to minimize their importance and the possibility of anyone attributing all blame to their leaders.

Positive or negative report? Moshe relays only the positive aspect of the spies' report, emphasizing instead the ensuing complaints of the nation.

Prayer – In Devarim, Moshe omits his prayer where he attempts to minimize the nation's sin and achieve forgiveness, since his goal is to highlight rather than hide the nation's mistakes.

Punishment – The spies' punishment is not mentioned in the retelling, thereby emphasizing instead the wrongdoing of the people themselves.

Moshe's encouragement – Instead of encouraging the nation by emphasizing the good of the land (as Yehoshua and Calev had), Moshe mentions Hashem's miracles, recognizing that the nation's current fear was unconnected to the quality of the land,² but to the imminent challenges of conquest.³  

Other omitted details – Moshe did not recount all the details of his original instructions nor the full route of the spying mission as these had no relevance to his message and his audience was familiar with the story regardless.

Two Perspectives

The changes in the two books can be explained by positing that each is telling the story from a different perspective, with Sefer Bemidbar focusing on one aspect of the mission and Sefer Devarim on another.

Sources:R. Yaacov Medan⁴

Dual mission – R. Medan suggests that the spies were sent on a dual mission: a military reconnaissance mission as well as a surveying mission to determine the tribal inheritances. Sefer Devarim tells of the former, while Sefer Bemidbar focuses on the latter. This difference in foucs can explain many of the differences:

Purpose: לתור או לרגל / לחפר? The distinction in meaning between these two sets of verbs forms the basis for this position.  RambanBemidbar 13:2Devarim 1:37About R. Moshe b. Nachman⁵ notes that "לתור", found twelve times in the account of Bemidbar, connotes appraisal and choosing, while "לחפר" / "לרגל", the verbs used in Devarim, refer to spying for military purposes.  The distinct verbs, thus, each point to a different aspect of the spies' mission: scouting vs. spying.

Initiator – Hashem is presented as the initiator in Bemidbar since it was He who commanded the "holy" scouting mission so that the princes could evaluate the land and allocate it among the tribes. Devarim, in contrast, focuses on the nation's request as it was the people themselves who initiated the spying mission in their desire to prepare for the conquest.

Who is sent? The scouting mission necessitated that the twelve princes of each tribe be chosen as representatives, while the military mission could have sufficed with anonymous men.

Moshe's instructions – In Bemidbar, Moshe tells the spies to appraise the quality of the land, its trees and agriculture, as the division of the land required such knowledge. In Devarim, he instead tells them to determine the route of conquest, crucial for their military strategy.

The scouted area – The survey required that the spies scout out the entire land as described in Bemidbar, while the military mission required them to spy only on the hilly region of Chevron, the original intended site of entry for the conquest.

Who is to blame? Moshe blames himself in Devarim because he realized that the mishap of the spies was largely due to his combining two missions which should have remained separate.⁶

Literary Variation

The differences between the two accounts are not fundamental, but simply the result of literary variation.

Local Harmonization

Many other commentators relate to each difference individually, without trying to account for all of the changes together.

¹ See N. Leibowitz, Iyyunim BeSefer Devarim (Jerusalem, 1995): 16-22.

² After forty years of wandering in the wilderness, the nation was likely not overly concerned that Israel would prove to have worse conditions. 

³ In addition, as Moshe had not recounted the spies negative report, there was no need to include Yehoshua and Calev's counter arguments.

⁴ See R. Yaacov Medan, "בכייה לשעה ובכייה לדורות"‎, Megadim 10 (1990): 21-37.

⁵ See also.later exegetes such as HaKetav VeHaKabbalahBemidbar 13:16Devarim 1:22About R. Yaakov Mecklenburg and MalbimBemidbar 13:2About R. Meir Leibush Weiser.

⁶ R. Medan suggests that had there been two separate delegations, with appropriate men chosen for each task and each traveling to the locations relevant to them, the spies would likely have returned with a very different report.