The Land I Will Show You, sec. 7, chapter 8
The Binding of Yitzchak and the Mission of the Spies
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8: The Binding of Yitzchak and the Mission of the Spies
Another source from which we can learn the nature of the mitzvah of Eretz Yisrael is the story of the Binding of Yitzchak (the Akedah). Through examining it, we will reach another layer of understanding the essence of the Land and the mitzvah of seeing it, understand the nature of the sin of the spies, and be able to contemplate how to atone and correct that root sin.
Our father Abraham was twice commanded “Lech Lecha” (“Go forth”). The first time he was commanded to go to the land of Canaan (Genesis 12:1), and the second time to the land of Moriah (ibid, 22:2). There are two levels in the holiness of the land of Israel, as per the Mishnah: “All may compel to ascend to the land of Israel... All may compel to ascend to Jerusalem”1; Abraham progressed gradually and entered deeper into the holiness of the Land. This implies that the second journey complements the inheritance of the land and has something to teach about it.
Therefore, we must ask: Did the Akedah succeed in completing the acquisition of the Land? Or, in other words, did our father Abraham truly make the spiritual virtue of “the land I will show you” into a reality?
We shall see that the Akedah did not fully succeed in completing the acquisition of the Land at its time; that our father Abraham did not completely make the mitzvah of “I will show you” into a reality; and that the purpose of sending the spies was to determine whether it was possible to continue the holy mission that Abraham began but did not finish. Let us walk in Abraham’s footsteps, step by holy step.
The Akedah was not entirely successful. As is known, Satan was very active in the story of the Akedah, both before and after it. Abraham was tested at the initiative of Satan, who demanded an examination of human righteousness, as Chazal said:
After the words of Satan, as it is written: “The child grew and was weaned” (Genesis 21:8). Satan said before Hashem: “Master of the Universe, You have graced this old man with a child of his own at the age of one hundred. Did he offer You even one dove or young pigeon at any feast he made?!” He said to him: “Did he do anything but for his son? If I were to tell him, ‘Sacrifice your son before Me,’ he would immediately sacrifice him!”2
Satan is also the evil inclination that strives to tempt man into sin,3 and he was active in this role as well:
Samael (Satan) came to Abraham our father, saying to him: “Old man, old man – have you lost your mind?! The son given to you at the age of one hundred, are you going to slaughter him?!”4
Abraham did not heed him, and he withstood the trial. But even afterwards, Satan did not rest and did not stay quiet. He intervened for the last time, now in his third role, as the angel of death:
When Abraham came from Mount Moriah, Satan’s anger burned, seeing that his desire to nullify Abraham’s offering had not succeeded. What did he do? He went and said to Sarah: “Oy Sarah! Have you not heard what has happened in the world?” She said to him: “No.” He said to her: “Your old husband took the young Yitzchak and offered him as a burnt offering, and the boy was weeping and lamenting, unable to save himself.” Immediately, she started weeping and lamenting. She wept three cries... and her soul departed, and she died. Abraham our father came and found her dead.5
In other words, the story of the Akedah is a story of struggle with Satan in his various guises. The next chapter will explain the depth of this matter; for now, we will only note that the Akedah – that is, the struggle with Satan – was not fully successful, for the angel of death prevailed over our mother Sarah, implying that the mitzvah of “I will show you,” which the Akedah was supposed to complete, was not fully realized.
From the episode of buying Sarah’s burial field, the Cave of Machpelah, we can also learn that the Akedah was not entirely successful. This narrative will lead us to its continuation – the narrative of the spies. For after the second “Lech Lecha” commandment, Abraham’s journeys ended, and it would be expected that he would take possession of the land. The traveling patriarch traveled and arrived, and it would be fitting that he would then take actual control of the land. And so it was – Abraham purchased a portion in the land of Israel, but the acquisition was a wondrous and strange one. Instead of buying Mount Moriah, the center of the holiness of the land to which Abraham had come, the place he designated as Hashem’s holy site, he left Hashem’s mountain and bought a burial field. Mount Moriah itself was forgotten, its purchase deferred until the days of King David, who only acquired it after undergoing a new “Akedah” and performing a new act of self-sacrifice. Just as our father Yitzchak was bound in place of a sheep, so did David offer his life in place of “sheep,” after he sinned by counting the people and brought a plague upon them, as it is written:
David’s heart struck him after he had counted the people… and Hashem sent a plague upon Israel… and the angel stretched out his hand towards Jerusalem to destroy it, and Hashem relented from the calamity and said to the angel who was destroying the people, “Enough; now withdraw your hand”... And David said to Hashem when he saw the angel who was striking the people, and he said, “Behold, I have sinned, and I have acted wickedly, but these sheep, what have they done? Let Your hand be against me and against my father’s house.” (2 Samuel 24:10–17)
Only afterward did David purchase the Temple Mount from Araunah the Jebusite, as described in the Book of Samuel. The King of Israel needed to buy the Temple Mount, the heart of the land of Israel, from a foreigner. The reason for this, as explained by the Sages, is because our father Abraham had promised it to the Canaanites in exchange for the Cave of Machpelah:
He said to the sons of Jebus to buy the Cave of Machpelah from them with a good sale and with gold and a perpetual deed for an everlasting burial place. Were they Jebusites, and were they not Hittites? Rather, they were called Jebusites after the city of Jebus. And the men did not accept. He began to bow and prostrate himself before them… They said to him: “We know that Hashem will give you and your descendants all these lands – make a covenant with us that the children of Israel will not inherit the city of Jebus except with the consent of the sons of Jebus”… When Israel came to the land, they wanted to enter the city of the Jebusite but could not enter because of the oath of Abraham’s covenant… David saw and turned back… and later bought the city of the Jebusite for Israel with a perpetual deed for an everlasting possession… “And David gave to Ornan [for the place six hundred shekels of gold by weight]” (1 Chronicles 21:25).6
This teaches us that the purchase of Mount Moriah, the place of sacrifices, is the natural outcome of the Akedah – the initiation of the practice of sacrificing a ram in place of a man – except that the Akedah was not entirely successful, and the purchase of its location was deferred until the Akedah was repeated by David.
The question of the Akedah is the arena of struggle with Satan. If the struggle had ended in absolute success, the angel of death would have been defeated. The Akedah leads to preserving human life through the sacrifice of an animal in his stead; if Satan caused Sarah’s death, this means the Akedah did not do what it was supposed to do – ensure life. Accordingly, instead of acquiring the place of sacrifices that preserve human life, a place of death was purchased, a burial field. Along came Ephron, owner of the dust,7 and said to Abraham: “A land of four hundred shekels of silver, what is it between me and you?” (Genesis 23:15), and this is the deep meaning of this expression: Ephron was reproving Abraham our father about the impossibility of realizing the dream of “I will show you,” the dream of a holy land. “What is it between me and you?” – in the face of death, we are all equal. Everything returns to the dust, Ephron argued, while securing the promise that Abraham would not buy the holy mountain, the mountain of life, from him.8
Why the Akedah was not entirely successful and what is the place of our mother Sarah in this – these are deep questions the place of which is not here. For our purposes, it is enough to know that the Akedah did not fulfill its role in sanctifying the land, so that the owner of the dust declared and said: “The land… what is it between me and you?”
Abraham’s great vision was not realized. Can it truly be realized, or does its failure prove that humans will never succeed in sanctifying the land, in fully realizing the mitzvah of “the land I will show you”? Perhaps the land is irredeemably profane, merely dust.
This doubt was what the spies were commanded to clarify: “And you shall see the land, what is it” (Numbers 13:18). That question raised by Ephron – “what is it?” – reemerges. Who is right? Abraham or Ephron? Indeed, what is the land? This is a serious and great question, the question of all questions.
The right to inherit the land comes by virtue of Abraham. When the time for inheritance in fact arrived, the children of Israel began from the place where Abraham ended, to see again what the land is. Thus, the spies went up through the Negev and came to Hebron, the place of the root doubt, the place of the culmination of Abraham’s journeys, to clarify that very doubt: Perhaps the great vision is not practical. For Abraham reached the place of the Temple and turned back. He did not consecrate it, but acquired only a place of death, Hebron. Perhaps that is a sign that the dream of “I will show you” will not be realized, that indeed there is no sanctified land; or perhaps Abraham’s journey is a beginning stage, the burial of the righteous woman in Hebron a first step towards fully sanctifying the land.9 Caleb, the righteous spy, went to Hebron and prayed at the graves of his forefathers;10 that is, he understood the virtue of the forefathers and their holiness even in their death.
The mission of the spies continues the deeds of Abraham and revisits the old question of the achievement of the Akedah: whether it is possible to realize what the Akedah was supposed to realize, or not; in other words, whether it is possible to win the struggle against Satan. In the next chapter, we will explain the meaning of this struggle, how a victory against Satan would look, and what this teaches about the essence of the land of Israel and the mitzvah of “I will show you”.
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Bava Basra 16a: "Satan, the evil inclination, and the angel of death are one and the same."
עפרון = עפר. ‘aphar means dust.
This entire matter, briefly explained here, is elaborated upon in Oros Yaakov, Essay Abraham and David (A), section 1, and there (B).
The depth of this question will be explained precisely in chapter 12.
Was there a fundamental disagreement between the spy perspective and Caleb’s view about death and the land? If the land eats the inhabitants is there nothing left to pray at? Is that the same as the "dust" argument or different?