Question: I was talking to a friend who claimed that the Jews were wandering in the desert because they were afraid to enter the promised land due to giants, and other things like that. I grew up believing that the Jewish people had to wait 40 years because they lost faith and they had to wait until the older generation died off. Which is true? My friend told me about the book of Aaron and Caleb, but I recently read that the idea of giants and such were a myth from Middle ages.

Answer: I’d say you’re both right (sort of). In Numbers, Chapters 13 and 14 relate the terrible incident of the spies which were sent by Moses to investigate the Land of Israel in anticipation of the arrival of the entire nation. Moses sent the twelve men, all leaders of the tribes, to get an accounting of the landscape, cities, and people of the land in order to ascertain HOW best to enter the land which G-d had promised to give to the Jewish people. Instead, with the exception of Joshua and Caleb, the report brought back was that in no way COULD the Jewish people ascend to the Land of Israel, despite G-d’s explicit promise that they would! They claimed that the land “devours its inhabitants” and that the inhabitants of the land were so huge that they were like grasshoppers compared to them. Despite the protests of Joshua and Caleb, the Jewish people became disheartened and lost faith in G-d’s ability to bring them into the Land of Israel. They even considered appointing a new leader to bring them back to Egypt! As a consequence, they were forced to wander in the desert for forty years until the entire generation which had lost faith had died, and the new generation, fortified with the faith of living under G-d’s divine protection for those forty years could enter and inherit the Land of Israel.

All the Best,
R’ Daniel Fleksher