So, I got my weeks confused, and accidentally wrote this post last week. With holidays and double parsha’s it’s a lot to keep straight. I wrote about how we’d been blessed with the most perfect humidity-free early summer days, and for Missouri, that’s a gift in of itself. All last week, we enjoyed morning coffees, lunches, popsicles, cocktails, and dinners outdoors, while the girls did their chicken business around us – it was absolutely magical ✨ And then this week, we had the most oppressive three-day heatwave, the humidity alone was enough to choke you. It’s interesting how quickly things can change. And more than that, how it takes a terrible heat-wave to make you truly appreciate humidity-free summer weather. You can’t have one, at least the appreciation, without the other. Similar to this weeks parsha: you can’t have faith without experiencing a little fear…
“And there we saw the Nephilim… and we were in our own eyes like grasshoppers, and so we were in their eyes.” (13:33)
This week’s parsha, Sh’lach, is the story of the spies. God tells Moses to send one representative from each tribe to scout the land of Israel. They go, they see, and they come back forty days later. There’s that magical number forty again. Upon the spies return, it’s not good news. At least from the mouths of ten of the twelve, where as the other two —Caleb and Joshua—come back full of faith.
Here’s what the 10/12 spies report back: Giants in the land. Impossible odds. A future that feels out of reach. And suddenly the whole story feels less about geography and giants, and more about perception. Because the problem isn’t only that the land feels impossible. It’s that they start to believe they are incapable of meeting it. Again, these people are demonstrating first hand a lack of faith in God. The same God who barely six months ago took them out of Egypt, who performed miracles for these people, again, against all the odds. So why wouldn’t the have faith that God would carry them through to the finish line?
Chicken or the Egg?
So which comes first, your fear or your faith? This week’s parsha is all about fear—the dread of the future, the looming obstacle, the seemingly insurmountable challenge on the horizon. How do you find the faith to overcome it? Do you look back and remember the difficulties you’ve already survived, using those past victories to strengthen your faith? Or do you cling to faith first, trusting that it will quiet your fears? It feels a bit like that age-old question: which comes first, the chicken or the egg?
By the way, moving forward, I’ve decided to use only chicken-related metaphors. Don’t let it ruffle your feathers.
Faith In God > Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
What gets me about this story is how quickly fear becomes identity. First they see giants. Then they describe themselves (grasshoppers). And once you say it out loud—“we were like grasshoppers”—it stops being observation and starts becoming destiny. Because they then immediately jump to conclusions, panic the entire community and it spirals downhill from here.
Rashi’s read makes it even sharper: even that line, the grasshopper line, wasn’t objective truth, but something filtered through overheard fear and interpretation. They didn’t just see a hard land. They became small inside of it.
And I think that’s the real tragedy of the parsha—not the giants in the land, but how easily we shrink ourselves before anything even has a chance to meet us. I think it’s part of our human condition. How we build something up in our heads, how we dread things, fear things, resent things before the actual thing arrives. And once it’s over, in the past, behind us, we realize that it wasn’t that bad. It was totally fine, doable, and wonder why we dreaded it. The lead up is almost always the worst part. So I can’t totally blame these spies for their thought process, but I don’t think they’re right for creating fear and panic and throwing gasoline on a fire.
Is God a Bit Sarcastic?
ANYWAY. The people grow scared. They are angry. Anger always comes next, doesn’t it? They question why Moses, Aaron, and essentially God, would bring them out of Egypt in the first place if only to let them perish in the wilderness. And it’s showing, yet again, their lack of faith in God. And it’s infuriating.
God is incredibly frustrated with these people, so much so that He cries out to Moses, declaring to disown them and strike them with pestilence. Interestingly, Moses replies, by reminding God of His own words, words He Himself reveled back in Exodus 34:5-9: “The Lord! Slow to anger and abounding in kindness; forgiving iniquity and transgression, yet not remitting all punishment, but visiting the iniquity of fathers upon children, upon the third and fourth generations.”
God hears this, God listens, and He concedes. Amazing. As a compromise though, God decides that not one soul (expect Caleb and Joshua) from this generation are to enter the Promised Land. My jaw drops, as God, in the most snarky of manners declares like a teenager, “OK, well, I’ll do as you say, “in this very wilderness shall your carcasses drop…. not one shall enter the land in which I swore to settle you (14:29-30).”” And also, their children and children’s children will suffer for their sins by wandering in the desert for forty years, one year for every day the spies sought out the Promised Land. Yiiiiiiikes. Oh, and God calls Israel a “wicked community.” Again. 😂 He’s not wrong… am I right?
A Fringe Reminder
Also, I didn’t know this, but there is also a blurb in this weeks Parsha on wearing tzitzi — I’m going to show my ignorance here, and let you know I did not know this was in the Torah. “And it shall be for you as tzitzit, and you shall look upon it and remember all the commandments of the Lord and do them; and you shall not stray after your heart and after your eyes, after which you go astray (15:39).” So, now I know!