Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:17:09 — 53.2MB)
Subscribe: RSS
When we read the account of the 10 spies in the Torah reading שלח Shelakh (“send,” Numbers 13–15), we read about the conclusions they reached in their observations in the Promised Land. Now, all 12 spies saw the same land, but 10 of the spies reached one conclusion and two reached a different conclusion.
The Torah tells us that a fact is established by the testimony of multiple witnesses (Numbers 35:30; Deuteronomy 19:15; Matthew 18:16; 2Corinthians 13:1). The 10 spies had the numbers on their side. The difference between the 10 spies who brought the “evil” report and the two spies who brought the righteous report is what worldview they had to filter and interpret what they saw and experienced.
Confirmation bias: The tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories.
New Oxford Dictionary of English
It is human nature to engage in confirmation bias. We have certain closely cherished beliefs and we will give more weight to facts that confirm those beliefs versus facts that contradict those beliefs. That’s human nature, all humans do it.
Another example of confirmation bias we read in the Torah is the account of how most of the descendants of Israel considered Egypt a better land, even though the Israelites were treated horribly for the majority of their time in sojourn there. Egypt had plenty of water from the Nile, while the desert had no water, except in little wadis.
God showed them with miracle after miracle how horrible the Egyptians were and how powerless they actually were. He liberated the children Israel from Egypt and prepared them to return to the land of Abraham, Issac and Jacob that He had promised them many years before. God told the Israelites that the Promised Land was a land that would support them and their children, yet the majority of Israelites didn’t want to believe God and preferred to believe their own bias.
The people were fixated on the idea that the Egypt of their memory was better than where they were living at the moment and also much better than where they were going. Egypt was always better. The fact that they had experienced years of slavery and genocide in Egypt didn’t matter at all. They still preferred the familiarity of Egypt to the uncertainty of where they were now.
The drama with the 10 spies proved to Moses and the Levites that the majority of Israelites were so fixated on the supremacy of Egypt over their current situation and over the Promised Land they were preparing to enter. The people feared God but they did not love or trust Him and God knew all of this before He sent them out to spy out the land.
When God called Moses at the Burning Bush, Moses didn’t really believe fully God either. Moses had his preconceived ideas of who the God of his ancestors was. Moses also had pre-conceived ideas of who he was. When God called him to lead the people of Israel, he tried to absolve himself of the assignment by claiming he wasn’t eloquent, that he would not be able to prove his credentials to the leadership of the Israelites, but God assured Moses that He would make him a “god to Pharaoh.”
So, Moses accepted God’s assignment and as Moses engaged with Pharaoh and engaged with God as well, Moses’ worldview changed and as Moses did become a “god” to Pharaoh. That experience also humbled Moses to the point that he is called “the most humble man” that ever.
Moses overcame his own confirmation biases as his faith in HaShem developed over the course of his life. But the majority of the Israelites clung to the same biases that they held while in Egypt and the experience of all the plagues, walking through the Red Sea and watching the entire Egyptian army drowned in it, did not change their biases at all. They were not going to change their worldview, their identity or their overall philosophy in life to accept the new paradigm they were now walking out in the wilderness.
Out of the 12 spies, Joshua and Caleb were the only ones who were able to accept their own fears yet overcome them because their faith in God and love for God was stronger than their own fear. When Joshua inherited leadership over the children of Israel, the main thing God told him was “Be strong and courageous.”
Fear is a good thing in its place, after all, it’s an emotion God placed in us. The question is what are you afraid of and how does that fear guide your actions? The 10 spies were afraid of death, afraid of dying in battle, yet they were already dying in the wilderness. The only righteous fear is fear of God. We are not to fear what men can do to us. Our focus should be on what God can do rather than what we can or can not do.
When we act in faith, we control what we can control and trust God to control those things we can not control. We trust that God will take care of those things beyond our reach, that we can’t see. He will take care of it. That’s a good thing.
In a democracy, majority rule is the norm. When you have 12 people given the same facts and 10 say one thing and two say something else, the opinion of the 10 will win the day.
The interesting thing is that the two spies did not contradict the 10 spies when they said that the people were large and their cities were fortified and powerful. Where the two spies disagreed with the ten spies is whether the people had the strength would overcome the current inhabitants of the land. All of them have the same facts.
At this point, they have been out of Egypt for about 1½ years. The spies were sent to the land to investigate the geography, agriculture, political structures, etc., but they were not called upon to make any decisions regarding whether the people were up to the task of taking the land. Instead of simply telling Moses and HaShem what they saw and leaving the decision to go to battle in their hands, they made their own decisions that the land and its people were superior to them and that their efforts to take the land for themselves would fail and they spread fear and dismay among the people.
As a consequence, God judged them and said that everyone over the age of 20, among the tribes, except the Levites, were sentenced to die in the wilderness.
After God called His sentenced on them, the people said they were sorry and they were willing to go into the land, but it was too late. This is because their sorrow was an expression of regret, not repentance.
When we repent, we admit our mistake and we accept the consequences of the mistake. If we say we are sorry but we do not accept the reasonable consequences of our action, then we have not repented. We have expressed regret but not repentance.
The people who followed the 10 spies realized they were wrong in listening to the their propaganda and manipulation, but the real mistake the people made was not the fact they were duped by the report of the 10 spies. Their true mistake was their lack of faith in God and they didn’t repent of that mistake. The sin was not the action right in front of them, which was refusing to go into the land. The real sin was their refusal to trust in God’s provision. They had been following God for about 1½ years up to this point, but at this crucial point, they refused to follow God.
They refused to accept the consequence of their actions, instead they thought they could make the consequence of their action just by expressing regret.
Joshua and Caleb accepted God’s judgement, even though they were the only spies who had faith in God. They could have said, since we are the only ones who believe that God wants us to have this land now, we’re moving in and we’ll see y’all in 40 years, but they accepted God’s judgement completely and continued to sojourn with the children of Israel as they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.
When you are a part of community, you pray for their peace and when they are at peace, so are you. When they are at war, so are you. I feel sorry for Moses, Aaron, the Levites, Joshua and Caleb because they had an appropriate fear of God. They had faith in God that He would bring them into the land, and yet they accepted God’s judgement on the community and loved them enough to stay with the rest of the community and remained a blessing to those who were forced to stay outside the land for 40 years until all those over 20 died off.
Once that generation had died off, including Moses and Aaron, Joshua and Caleb are preparing to enter the land. Joshua and Caleb had watched their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. die in the wilderness and all they have are those who were not old enough to have experienced all the miracles in Egypt in their full.
Rahab the righteous pagan (Joshua 2)
We contrast the lack of faith of that first generation to Rahab, who never experienced any of those miracles, yet she had more faith in God than that first generation had. She only heard about those miracles second hand, yet she had more faith than them. Nothing was promised to her at all, yet she had great, impressive faith. This is why she is listed in Hebrews as one of those who had great faith in God.
The only thing she asked for is that she and her family be allowed to live, but she received so much more than that. Rahab’s family were spared and they were allowed to attach themselves to Israel. She received an inheritance in the land, just as all of Israel received and she received that because of her immense faith.
‘Blessed are those who don’t see and still believe’ (Matthew 10)
Messiah said the same thing to apostle Thomas. Although it’s good that Thomas believed what he saw with his own eyes, those would believe only because of the testimony of the Apostles would have a greater blessing than Thomas.
The 10 spies had used their worldview to interpret the facts they received as they spied out the land. They had the benefit of having personally witnessed and experienced the plagues, the Red Sea, etc., and yet their worldview was skewed.
Rahab, on the other hand, only heard about those facts second hand and she was willing to discard the gods she had been raised to worship. She was also willing to go against the rules of the king of her city in protecting the spies of a people who she did not know because she knew that their God was more powerful than the gods her people worshiped.
The people of Israel in the first generation believed that they would die so God let them. We are called to not allow our fears to dictate our actions. We are to trust in God, not in our own power. We are to fear God, not people. When we fear people more than we fear God, the results of that misdirected fear will cause us to make horrible decisions.
After God struck the 10 spies down, the people regretted following them but they did not repent by accepting the punishment. They didn’t understand why they were easily lead astray by the 10 spies, and therefore, they were not able to fully repent of following them.
In Matthew 10, Messiah Yeshua (Christ Jesus) warned the Apostles that they would be persecuted for His sake. He told them not to fear those that could persecute them, torture or kill them. They should only fear God.
When the Messiah called the 12 Apostles to go two by two into ministry, he told them to visit the various cities of Israel. If the people in a particular town appreciated their message and welcomed them there, they were not going to change their viewpoint they’re going to change who they were and their philosophy in life, then the Apostles would rest in that town. But if the people in a particular town didn’t accept them, Messiah told the Apostles to simply leave and go to the next town. They weren’t called to be scared of the people, or to get angry about rejection, they were simply told to spread the message of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Summary: Tammy