Shelach
Send — שלח
Regular readings above are often interrupted with special readings on Jewish holidays, special Sabbaths, and Rosh Chodesh. Refer to the current Torah Portion Schedule for all these variations, and special portions.
Portion Summary
The thirty-seventh reading from the Torah is called Shelach (שלח), an imperative verb that means "send out." The portion is so named from the first few words of the second verse: "Send out for yourself men so that they may spy out the land of Canaan" (Numbers 13:2). The Torah reading tells the tragic story of how the spies returned with a bad report about the Land of Promise and influenced the congregation of Israel to rebel against the LORD. Thus God consigned the generation of Moses to wander in the wilderness for forty years.
Portion Outline
- Torah
- Numbers 13:1 | Spies Sent into Canaan
- Numbers 13:25 | The Report of the Spies
- Numbers 14:1 | The People Rebel
- Numbers 14:13 | Moses Intercedes for the People
- Numbers 14:26 | An Attempted Invasion is Repulsed
- Numbers 15:1 | Various Offerings
- Numbers 15:32 | Penalty for Violating the Sabbath
- Numbers 15:37 | Fringes on Garments
- Prophets
- Joshua 2:1 | Spies Sent to Jericho
The Complainer and the Atheist
Do you talk like an atheist? The Talmud comments on the ten spies and their evil report by saying, “One who spreads evil reports almost denies the existence of God.”
(Images © Bigstock/YuriyZhuravov; Concept ©
FFOZ)
The spies returned from Canaan with a giant cluster of grapes. The grapes should have encouraged the Israelites. The land was indeed a good land full of bounty, just as God had promised. The ten spies, however, interpreted the giant grapes differently. They used them as evidence that the land was inhabited by unconquerable giants. "What would you expect from the vineyards of giants?" Isn't it strange how two people can look at the same thing—such as a cluster of grapes—and come to opposite conclusions? To Joshua and Caleb, giant grapes were a good thing. To the other spies, the giant grapes were a sign of despair.
God said He heard the grumbling and the complaints of the children of Israel. He hears our complaints too. The sin of grumbling is related to the sin of gossip. Both are forms of evil speech; both result from a critical spirit.
Gossip destroys others, breaks up friendships and severs relationships. Grumbling destroys your quality of life and that of those around you.
Imagine going to the zoo with a cranky and undisciplined five-year-old. You take the child to see the lions, but he is sulking because you did not buy him candy. You take him to see the zebras, but he is angry because he does not want to hold your hand in the crowd. You take him to see the monkeys, but he is having a fit because he wanted French fries. You buy him French fries, but he leaves them uneaten because he complains that they are soggy. At the end of the day, he did not see lions, zebras, and monkeys, nor did he eat French fries. He has had a miserable day, and so have you. The child transformed what could have been a wonderful experience into a horrible one for no good reason.
As an adult, it is easy to look at a situation like that and realize how foolish the unruly child is being. It's harder to realize that our own complaints, grumbling and murmuring is just as petty. Adults are usually sophisticated enough to disguise their childish tantrums and inner discontentment. We disguise them as serious adult issues, concerns and complaints. On closer investigation, many of those issues tend to be no more than sulking over soggy French fries. The worst part is that this is not a trip to the zoo. This is your life. If you spend it fussing and sulking, you will never enjoy the good things God is continually doing for you. You will never even notice them.
The Torah teaches that God hears all of our complaints and negativity. That's why the sages teach that the complainer is tantamount to an atheist. His complaints deny the existence of God as if there is no God to hear his bitter words.
One Law and the Gentiles
There is only one law for both Jews and Gentiles, but that one law has many commandments, and not all of the commandments apply to everyone equally.
A Torah scroll wrapped up. (Image: © Bigstock)
The Torah says there is to be only one law for both Jews and aliens sojourning with the Jewish people. On the surface, this appears to be a simple statement, but when we dig deeper into biblical studies and interpretations, it becomes a complicated issue.
Most Gentile Christians do not keep the Torah’s ritual laws: Sabbaths, festivals, dietary laws, and ritual symbols like wearing tassels, phylacteries, or putting up a mezuzah scroll on the doorpost. This does not mean that Gentile Christians are godless or even lawless. Jewish believers are certainly bound to keep the whole Torah, but Gentile believers have never felt bound to the Torah’s external signs in the way that Jews are.
But does the Torah really make different laws for Jews and Gentiles? According to Numbers 15:15-16, there is to be only one law for both Jews and Gentiles:
As for the assembly, there shall be one statute for you and for the alien who sojourns with you, a perpetual statute throughout your generations; as you are, so shall the alien be before the LORD. There is to be one Torah and one ordinance for you and for the alien who sojourns with you. (Numbers 15:15-16)
This seems simple enough. According to these verses, there is one law for both Jews and Gentiles. Therefore, Gentile believers should keep the whole Torah.
But wait. It’s not that clear.
First of all, the context deals not with the application of Torah as a whole, but specifically with the sacrifices. In other words, if an alien wanted to offer a sacrifice in the Temple he needed to follow the same Torah guidelines as the Israelite. The passage is not saying that all the laws of Torah apply equally to Jews and Gentiles.
Second, by the time of the apostles, the word translated as “alien” (ger, גר) was no longer understood as just a Gentile non-Jew. The Hebrew word had shifted its semantic value to refer specifically to a Gentile who had gone through a full, legal conversion to become Jewish, i.e., a proselyte. That conversion process included circumcision, immersion, and a sacrifice. That’s how the Greek version of the Torah (lxx) translates the word too. That’s probably how the apostles would have understood it. They would have interpreted Numbers 15:15-16 to read as follows:
As for the assembly, there shall be one statute for Jews and for the proselyte, a perpetual statute throughout your generations; as a Jew is, so shall the proselyte be before the LORD. There is to be one Torah and one ordinance for Jews and for the proselyte who sojourns with you. (Numbers 15:15-16, my paraphrase)
That reading makes it clear that both Jews and proselytes to Judaism are obligated to the same laws of Torah, but it does not help clear up the question of Gentile believers who have not become legally Jewish through a conversion. One might suppose that the Gentile believers who were fellowshipping in the apostolic communities should fit into the category of “the alien who sojourns with you,” but when the apostles considered this question in Acts 15, they left the matter open. They gave the Gentile believers four minimum standards for fellowship within the Jewish synagogue communities, but they did not issue a mandate clarifying Gentile obligation to the whole Torah.
The same open posture of Acts 15 seems to be reflected in the Didache. The Didache is allegedly a collection of apostolic instructions for Gentile believers.10 When discussing the question of how much Torah a Gentile is obligated to keep, the Didache recommends keeping all of it, but leaves the matter up to an individual’s capacity:
If you are able to bear all the yoke of the Lord [i.e., Torah], you will be perfect; but if you are not able, do as much as you are able to do. (Didache 6:2)
The Didache agrees with Numbers 15:15-16. There is not supposed to be a different Torah for Gentile believers. The Gentile believers are not supposed to have a different type of worship or religion. There is only one Torah for God’s people. The only question left open is to what extent the Gentile believer is obligated. Most of the laws of the Torah apply equally to Jewish and Gentile disciples of Yeshua.
On the other hand, Gentile believers are not obligated to keep all of the ceremonial laws as the Jewish believers such as circumcision and other distinct markers of Jewish identity like the calendar, the holy days, the dietary laws, and so forth. Despite that, the Bible does not create alternative Gentile versions of these institutions.
In the days of the apostles, the Gentile believers kept most of those things along with the Jewish believers as part of their participation in their shared religion.
A Different Spirit
Is the cup half full, or is it half empty? Do you see dark clouds or silver linings? The life of faith has no room for pessimism and cynicism.
Concept image of someone who assesses life in
terms of their own reality. (Image © Bigstock)
The LORD spared the children of Israel, but He punished them by consigning them to forty years of wandering in the wilderness. He declared that they would never see the Promised Land that they had rejected. Instead their bodies would be buried in the wilderness. Their children, however, would be privileged to enter the land.
Even Moses, Miriam and Aaron were included in the doom. Only Joshua and Caleb were given permission to enter the land. The LORD said that Caleb would be allowed to enter the land because he had "a different spirit" (Numbers 14:24).
The different spirit of Caleb is evident from his report about the land. He and Joshua had seen the same Canaanites, the same fortifications and the same difficulties as the other spies but had come to a completely different conclusion. The other spies saw those things as obstacles. Caleb and Joshua saw them as opportunities for God to demonstrate His glory.
You may have heard someone say, "I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist." The inference is that an optimistic person is not realistic. Accordingly, the only honest and correct way to view the world is to point out the deficiencies, difficulties and inevitable failures. For the "realist," that is the real world.
There is nothing special about having a realist-attitude. Anyone can point out problems. Everyone can criticize. It takes no talent to be a naysayer. Maybe you know someone who is a rigid realist. Such a person is usually not very realistic at all. Instead a person like that demonstrates a marked tendency to emphasize the negative, ignore the positive and disregard miracles. To that person, answers to prayer are mere coincidences. Words of encouragement are irritating. Behind the veneer of cynicism is a life of dark self-absorption and self-pity.
The ten spies were just such realists. They assessed the situation in terms of their own reality—a faithless reality. From that perspective, things looked pretty dismal. A quick march back to Egypt was probably the best solution.
Caleb and Joshua were a different kind of realist though. To them, reality was not as big as God. They assessed the situation in terms of a reality that encompassed faith. The difference between Caleb's spirit and the spirit of the ten spies is the difference between seeing life through the eyes of faith or faithlessness.
The optimist says the cup if half full. The pessimist says the cup is half empty. The man of faith gives thanks that the cup is half full, and he marvels that God will either make the half cup sufficient to meet the need or miraculously refill the whole cup.
People say, "Every cloud has its silver lining." The pessimist sees the cloud. The optimist sees the silver lining. The man of faith sees the cloud and the silver lining both. He gives thanks to God who made the cloud, provides the rain, and clears the sky.
Caleb's different spirit is something we should all strive to attain. To be a person of faith is something extraordinary.
The Sabbath, the Land and the World to Come
Utterly disheartened by the spies’ evil report, the Children of Israel fell into despair, rebelled against Moses and refused to enter Canaan. Their rebellion and their failure to enter the land is the subject of the midrash in Hebrews 3:7-4:11 which quotes from Psalm 95.
Unfortunately, the Hebrews passage is often pointed to as evidence that the literal seventh day Sabbath rest has been replaced by a ‘spiritual Sabbath’ for the People of God. This interpretation is far a field from the actual intent of the passage.
The writer of Hebrews warns the believers reading his epistle that just as God did not spare the generation of the wilderness, neither would He spare the current generation. He compares entering the land to entering faith in Messiah. Both Messiah and the entrance into the land came as the culmination of the covenant promises. Both Messiah and the entrance into the land require faith and obedience. “Those who disobeyed…were not able to enter because of unbelief,” (Hebrews 3:19) the writer of Hebrews says. “We who have believed enter that rest, just as He has said, ‘As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter My rest,’” (Hebrews 4:3 quoting Psalm 95)
But what is the ‘rest’ which they were not able to enter? The writer of Hebrews points out that God’s rest began on the Sabbath following creation, but it has never ceased. He did not go back to work creating on Sunday. Therefore the Sabbath rest of God is an eternal Sabbath rest. It is the rest of the World to Come.
There remains a Sabbath rest for God’s people, and it is something more than merely the seventh-day Sabbath, and it is something more than merely the Promised Land.
The generation in the wilderness is used midrashically as an example. The writer of Hebrews says, “Indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.” (Hebrews 4:2) From the perspective of the writer of Hebrews (a First Century Jewish believer writing to other First Century Jewish believers) the situation is analogous to that of the generation about to enter the land.
The entrance into the Promised Land and the message of Messiah are similar because, just like the Promised Land, Messiah is the culmination of the whole Torah. Everything’s been leading up to this point. Just like being poised on the edge of the Promised Land, the believers he was writing to were poised on the edge of the World to Come in Messiah. “[It is] the World to Come of which we speak.” (Hebrews 2:5)
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