Shelach: Shadal’s Radical Take on the Forty Years in the Wilderness

What if I told you that Israel were not condemned to wander in the Wilderness for 40 years as a punishment for the Sin of the Spies? That's what Shadal holds! Here's my attempt to understand his view.

Jun 28, 2024

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The Torah content for this week has been sponsored by Meir Areman, l'zeicher nishmas Zelda bas Ziesel, his grandmother, whose yahrzeit is on the 21st of Sivan.

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Adobe Firefly 3.0’s response to the prompt: “impressionist painting of multitudes of Israelites wandering in the desert” (I didn’t try particularly hard with this one)

Shelach: Shadal’s Radical Take on the Forty Years in the Wilderness

Note: I could have written this as a two-page article by paraphrasing the lengthy excerpts. However, I opted for the lengthier version because I prefer to let the sources speak for themselves as much as possible. Additionally, although I’m fairly certain I’m reading Shadal correctly, I’m open to the possibility that I’ve misread him, so I’d like to share all the data I’m working with.

Why did the Israelites spend forty years in the Wilderness before entering the Land? The mainstream answer is, “because of the Cheit ha’Meraglim (Sin of the Spies).” This is clearly the pshat (plain meaning of the text):

In this Wilderness shall your carcasses drop; all of you who were counted in any of your numberings, from twenty years of age and above, whom you provoked against Me … And your young children of whom you said [that] they will be taken captive, I shall bring them; they shall know the Land that you have despised. But your carcasses shall drop in this Wilderness. Your children will roam in the Wilderness for forty years and bear your guilt, until the last of your carcasses in the Wilderness. Like the number of the days that you spied out the Land, forty days, a day for a year, a day for a year, shall you bear your iniquities – forty years – and you shall know My opposition. I, Hashem, have spoken – if I shall not do this to this entire evil assembly that gathers against Me! In this Wilderness shall they cease to be, and there shall they die! (Bamidbar 14:28-35)

Shadal offers a radically different view. He introduces his theory innocuously, responding to the classic question: Whose idea was it to send the spies? According to the pshat in Bamidbar (13:1-3), the spy mission was initiated and sanctioned by Hashem. However, in Devarim (1:22-23), the Israelites asked Moshe for permission to send spies. Shadal (Bamidbar 13:2) resolves this apparent contradiction, taking the stance that the version in Devarim is factually accurate and explaining why Bamidbar presents the facts differently:

In Deuteronomy 1:22, it is written that the Israelites said, “Permit us to send before us some men,” while here it says that God told Moses, “Send for yourself men.” Apparently, the people did in fact make the request, and God agreed to it and commanded Moses to do as they said. Here it does not mention that they made the request, so that it should not appear that they sinned in so requesting.

The first part of his answer echoes Rashi (ibid.) and Ibn Ezra (ibid.) and isn’t particularly controversial. The concluding sentence, however, introduces his revolutionary reading, which he now presents in full:

It seems that the whole [incident of the spies and the resulting 40-year period in the desert] was deliberately brought about by God, as Maimonides wrote (Guide for the Perplexed 3:32), except that he says: “It was the result of God's wisdom that the Israelites were led about in the Wilderness till they acquired courage. For it is a well-known fact that travelling in the wilderness, and privation of bodily enjoyments, such as bathing, produce courage, whilst the reverse is the source of faint-heartedness; besides, another generation rose during the wanderings that had not been accustomed to degradation and slavery.”
I say, however, that it was not God's intention that they should acquire courage, "for not by their own sword did they get the land in possession, neither did their own arm save them" [Ps. 44:4]. Rather, He brought it about that they would linger in the desert so that they would stay with Moses for a long period of time. If Moses had brought them to the land of Israel, they would have dispersed to their individual inherited portions of land, and Moses would not have been able to educate them, nor would they have had to be sustained in a miraculous manner, and faith in the Torah of Moses would not have been established in their hearts throughout the generations.
In contrast, this is what occurred as a result of their dwelling in the desert for forty years, with Moses leading them, sustaining them by means of signs and wonders, and teaching them the ways of God. It was this education, unparalleled anywhere the world – with two million souls dwelling near their teacher over the course of forty years, without being burdened with the need to seek out their means of nourishment – that reinforced faith in the hearts of the Israelites. While the rest of the world's inhabitants were straying after false gods, the students of Moses remained a unique people in the world, preserving the true faith, and from them it spread and will continue to spread for the benefit of the entire human race, so that the world will be filled with the knowledge of God.

According to Shadal, the forty-year delay in the Wilderness was not a punishment for the Cheit ha’Meraglim but was part of the Divine plan all along! Shadal first expresses this view in his commentary on Shemos 13:17:

God does not suddenly change people’s hearts; rather, He deals with each individual slowly according to the individual’s nature and characteristics. When Israel left the house of bondage, it was not possible for them to be strong and courageous (see Ibn Ezra on Exod. 14:13) and do battle immediately against the seven nations [of Canaan] and take possession of the land. Even if God had delivered their enemies into their hands amid signs and wonders, they would not have been in a proper condition to become an independent nation governing itself with wisdom and understanding. Slaves who are suddenly released from the heavy yoke of oppression will either remain fainthearted, or else will turn to the other extreme and sink into anarchy, unable to exercise the functions of government for lack of the power and wisdom that are necessary for the establishment of a free society.
For this reason, God did not wish to bring them immediately into the land and into warfare, for upon seeing war in their timid condition, they would have chosen slavery and gone back to Egypt. Instead, He guided them toward the desert so that they would remain there for some time and gradually gain training, acquiring the character traits they would need in order to govern themselves in their land. There was another reason for this as well: in the great desert, it would be possible for them to receive the Torah and the commandments as one people together, to become educated in the fear of God and the knowledge of His ways, and to learn to trust in God under His leadership and that of Moses His servant. If they had come immediately to take possession of the land, they would have dispersed, each one to his allotted territory, and it would have been impossible for them to be educated together as one.
Even if they had not been delayed in the desert for forty years on account of the spies, they would have stayed there for a few months until they received the Torah and the commandments while encamped around Mount Sinai, with manna to eat and without the burden of working the soil.

The recently redeemed nation of slaves desperately needed Moshe’s guidance and a strengthening of their trust in Hashem. Had they entered the Land immediately, this would have been impossible. For this reason, Hashem created a lengthy “retreat” in a hermetically sealed environment so that they could undergo a full detox from their Egyptian beliefs, values, and slave mentality while receiving the best education possible from the greatest teacher while strengthening their trust in Hashem.

Shadal argues that this training would have been necessary regardless of the Cheit ha’Meraglim. This makes sense on its own. However, his explanation raises two major questions: one on the micro level about the events in Parashas Shelach and the other on the macro level about Hashem and His Torah.

The micro question is: Does Shadal really maintain that the Cheit ha’Meraglim had nothing to do with the forty years in the Wilderness? That is the thrust of these excerpts – yet, in the first sentence of that final paragraph, he writes: “Even if they had not been delayed in the desert for forty years on account of the spies.” Which is it? And if he really does hold that God intended them to spend forty years in the Wilderness with Moshe from the get-go, how do we reconcile this with the words and tone of the pesukim which make it sound like the forty years of wandering were a punishment for the sending of the spies, midah kneged midah (measure for measure)?

The macro question is: If Shadal does hold what he seems to hold, and the apparent decree of Divine punishment was a Divine ruse, what does that imply about Hashem? Are we really supposed to believe that He lied to the Israelites, making them think they were guilty of a serious offense when they actually weren’t?

I consulted Dan Klein, a Shadal scholar and translator of the excerpts cited above. He directed me to another narrative which Shadal reads in a similar manner. Arguably, this is the most foundational narrative in the entire Torah: the sin of Adam and Chava in Gan Eden. Shadal (Bereishis 3:24) begins with a glaring problem in the story:

With regard to this story as a whole, every enlightened person can see how shameful it is, and what a denial of the perfection of the Creator, for one of His creatures to be corrupted in an hour and to become another man from the one He intended him to be, so that immediately after his creation, He would have to curse him with an everlasting curse, and to expel him from the home that He had prepared for him.

If Apple rolled out their “best product” and it experienced universal failure on launch day, it would be an embarrassment for the company. If a building collapsed soon after its completion, we’d question the qualifications of the architect. The same is true, argues Shadal, about Hashem’s creation of man: if Adam and Chava sinned and corrupted their nature so soon after their creation, what does that say about their Creator? Shadal continues:

So it was that some of the greatest sages interpreted this story metaphorically and mystically to suggest various concepts of wisdom and philosophy, without, however, denying the literal truth of the story … Those sages, however, interpreted this story to suggest philosophical concepts that are not only false per se but also fail to yield any intellectual benefit to the majority of the people. It is incomprehensible, for instance, why God would have wanted to bring about this event, and why He would have placed a curse upon the work of His hands to this very day, if His sole intention were to hint at the four elements, the spiritual powers of man and other such concepts.

Shadal criticizes his predecessors for attempting to “explain away” the aforementioned problem by layering a philosophical or mystical reading onto the plain pshat. He argues that there must be a reading of the narrative that is both accessible and sensible to the average reader which avoids this problem. He then states his theory:

To me, this episode is best comprehended in the following way. Man feels that he was born for trouble, that he is fated to undergo much more pain and suffering than any other creature, and he complains of this and begins to think ill of the principles of the Holy One, blessed is He. This is, however, untruthful and unjust, for God made man superior to all the creatures by creating him in His image, giving him mastery over all the forces, and endowing him with the wisdom to understand and to operate by free will, not by instinct – and this is all to his advantage. Yet by virtue of this additional knowledge and the sovereign power He granted him to operate by will, it follows inevitably that sometimes man chooses evil and injures himself; he broadens his desires and increases his pain; man’s own folly perverts his path, but he vents his rage upon God. Now man is ungrateful in complaining to God; he does not reflect and say, “Is it not a great and precious gift, the wisdom with which He favored me? How many great benefits do I derive from it! Why, then, should I be furious if I harm myself through it?” After all, if one were to ask a man, “Would you prefer to change into an animal?” there would be no doubt that he would not want to do this. If so, why should he rage over his suffering, which comes about only because he is a man of wisdom and not like an animal?
Now God wanted to make it appear to man that He, Who knew what the end of the matter would be, did not want man to eat from the tree of knowledge, for He knew that much suffering would result to him from it. He warned the man of this, but he did not heed and was enticed by the tempter, who told him that he would only derive great benefits from it. He ate of the tree’s fruit, his eyes at once were opened, and this caused him endless trouble, vexation, and pain, which in fact resulted from the very nature of creation. God, however, announced them to him by way of a curse, as if this were the punishment for his sin of eating from the tree of knowledge …
The moral of this story, then, is that man should not complain of his trouble, for it results only from his advantage and superiority of knowing good from evil and operating by will and not instinct. Man, moreover, desires this advantage and would not wish to exchange his glory with an herbivorous beast. Thus, it is as if he ate from the tree of knowledge out of his own free will. The benefit that follows clearly from all this is that man should realize that all his woes stem from the great good with which the Creator favored him – knowledge and understanding – and that he should be content with his lot, thanking God for good and for evil. This benefit, it seems to me, would not have been too hidden or far off from the understanding of the majority of the people in ancient times. They would think, “Our troubles result only from eating of the tree of knowledge, but if our ancestor had not eaten of that tree, then we, our children, and our children’s children would have been like animals, or like infants who even today do not know good from evil. Is it not good for us that he ate from the tree of knowledge? If so, we should not complain.”

There’s a story I like telling my students about one of the first times I saw my high school principal interact with my Rosh ha’Yeshiva in a Gemara shiur. My friends and I revered both rabbis for their brilliance and clarity, and we were eager to see how they related to each other in learning. The Rosh ha’Yeshiva raised several difficulties with the Gemara and proposed a sevara (halachic theory). My principal fired back with a slew of sharp objections. My Rosh ha’Yeshiva responded to all of them. After some more back and forth, my Rosh ha’Yeshiva pointed out that there was precedent for his sevara in an entirely unrelated halachic area. He presented the facts and problems in this second topic and showed how his sevara resolved all of them. My principal responded with a line I’ll never forget: “Great – now there are two things I don’t understand!”

That’s exactly how I felt when I read Shadal’s explanation of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil: “Great – now there are two things I don’t understand!” – Shadal on the Cheit ha’Meraglim and on the Cheit in Gan Eden.

Then I thought of a mashal (analogy). Imagine a 3-year-old child, who has never ridden a bicycle, telling his dad that he wants to ride a bicycle today without training wheels. His dad responds, “No. You may not ride a bicycle without training wheels or you’ll get hurt.” The child ignores his father, attempts to ride his older brother’s bicycle, and gets hurt. This mashal poses no problems. The child is not developmentally capable of riding a bike without getting hurt and is also not developmentally capable of grasping his own limitations. From the child’s perspective, the father is imposing a rule accompanied by a threat of punishment for violating it. From the father’s perspective, he’s just stating a reality – one which he knows the child will ignore. Nevertheless, he allows his child to “learn the hard way” because that will ultimately serve his developmental needs.

According to Shadal, the same is true for Adam and Chava in Gan Eden. Hashem fully intended to endow mankind with knowledge. He also knew that this knowledge was a double-edged sword and would be the cause of much pain and trouble. He informed them of this knowing that they would seize this knowledge, reaping its benefits and suffering its consequences. He told all of this to Adam and Chava. They perceived it as a command and a punishment when, in reality, He was describing their inevitable developmental trajectory.

Perhaps this is how Shadal reads the narrative of the meraglim. The Israelites were on a low developmental level and were not ready to enter the Land to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Shemos 19:6). It was inevitable that this national immaturity would express itself in some fashion – as inevitable as a 3-year-old trying and failing to ride a bike. When it did in the form of the Cheit ha’Meraglim, Hashem informed them that they needed to spend forty years in the Wilderness until they were ready to enter the Land. They might have perceived this as a punishment, and Hashem might have even presented it as such. However, in reality, this was an unavoidable (if painful) part of the nation’s development.

What do you think of Shadal’s theory? What do you think of my elucidation of his approach?

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