The People That Can't Do Anything Right

My, how the mighty have fallen.

Just a few months and weeks ago, we had received Torah and a good deal of the written laws, had constructed a gorgeous mobile mishkan, and anointed and inaugurated both our kohanim and Levi'im.  It was set to be a short and easy journey up to the land.

Until the episode of the spies, and episode which - and while this may seem controversial - seems so much worse than even the Golden Calf episode.  This one comes with a much more severe and both immediate and extended punishment (for the rabble-rousing spies and the people that believed them, respectively) - a year of wandering for every single day off the ill-fated exploration.

In this narration, you just get the feeling that the people have become totally out of sync, that they just can't do anything right.  The "spies"/scouts come back with huge bounties and proclaim that it is, indeed, a land flowing with milk and honey - but the people, over and against the express confidences of Calev and Yehoshua, the former of which makes a particularly moving speech about being unafraid and going on up, whip themselves into a hysteria and not only don't want to go up but in fact want to return to Egypt as well.  Then they are told their punishment and, like petulent children, mourn this loss.  Then, now against the express warning of both Moshe and, of course, H', say that they are now ready, go up to the mountain, and apparently don't even make it down before they are utterly decimated by the Amalekim and Canaanim.  Then, of course, the spies who whipped the people into a frenzy are obliterated in yet another plague.  It's an extremely unfortunate series of events.  

It's an extremely uncomfortable feeling to be out of sync, to be missing a connection.  I certainly don't mean to downplay whatsoever what B'nei Yisrael went through - including mass death - by merely stating that it was "uncomfortable."  But at the same time - it truly is - they have just totally lost sense of their connection with the Divine, who is so ever-present and so "right there," who is constantly speaking directly to them and their leadership.  How could they have possibly messed that up?

We could say the same for ourselves.  I wholeheartedly believe that G-d is constant whispering to us, giving us guidance, reassurance, and quite literally telling us what to do - or at least setting up the circumstances perfectly, encouraging us, and hoping against hope that we use our free will to make the right decision - if only we would listen, which we may sometimes but also hardly ever do.  How much more so for B'nei Yisrael, who were confronted so clearly with the Divine Presence but also found it so easy to ignore this Presence entirely.

Listen - listen closely.  The right path forward - the holy inheritance - is there to be taken, in a rough paraphrase of Calev's speech.  Take it and go on up or face the consequences.