Law and Narrative: Believing and Seeing
Parashat Shelaḥ begins with the story of the spies. It ends with the laws of tzitzit: the fringes with their cord of blue to be placed on the corners of garments so the people will “remember all the commands of the Lord and keep them” (Num. 15:39) – the passage that became, in Temple times and still today, the third paragraph of the Shema.
On the face of it there is no connection between the two whatsoever. They belong to different literary genres. One was a historical incident, the other a timeless law. One concerned the fate of the nation, the other has to do with individual dress. Their dissonance is part of what gives the fourth book of the Torah its uneven feel and its puzzling structure. Why interrupt a historical narrative with seemingly unrelated paragraphs of legislation? However, close reading reveals that the two are not unrelated at all. They are deeply connected. They are a key instance of “intertextuality” – the interrelationship between two texts that shed light on one another. Their juxtaposition is there to tell us something profound about both the narrative and the law.
How does the Torah signal intertextuality? Often it does so by using the same word or words in two passages. A classic example is the phrase haker na, “please recognise,” used in both Genesis 37 and 38 to link the story of Joseph’s brothers and the bloodstained cloak they show their father, with that of Tamar and her father-in-law Judah.1Gen. 37:32; 38:25. These are the only two places in Tanakh where the phrase appears. For the significance of the connection, see Genesis Rabba 84:19; David Daube, Studies in Biblical Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947); Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (London: George Allen and Unwin), 1981.
Biblical critics who regarded chapter 38 as a later interpolation into the story of Joseph were tone-deaf to this use of language to connect the two episodes so as to give us an insight into the moral growth of Judah’s character.
Something similar happens in the parasha of Shelaḥ. It begins with an account of what has become known traditionally as the story of the “spies.” However, the narrative never uses the standard Hebrew word, based on the root r-g-l, that means “spy.” When Joseph’s brothers came before him in Egypt to buy food and failed to recognise him, he accused them of being meraglim, spies (Gen. 42). The word appears seven times in that chapter – a significant number often used to indicate a keyword. When Moses, in Deuteronomy, recalls the episode, he too uses the verb leragel (Deut. 1:24). When Joshua sends spies to Jericho, the Bible calls them meraglim (Josh. 2:1). The other verb used to connote the act of spying is laḥpor, also meaning, “to explore,” “search out,” “look carefully at” (Deut. 1:22; Josh. 2:2–3).
We would expect one or other of these terms to be used in our passage. In fact, neither is. Instead the word used is latur, which means not “to spy” but rather “to see,” “explore.” In the main narrative (the description of the spies and their return) it is used seven times.2Num. 13:2, 16, 17, 21, 25, 32 (twice).
In the next chapter, which relates the punishment of those involved, it appears five times.3Num. 14:6, 7, 34, 36, 38.
These significant repetitions of a relatively rare verb are clearly intended to draw our attention to the word. It is precisely this verb that the Torah uses in the law of tzitzit to explain what the fringes are intended to prevent: “It shall be for you as a fringe, and you shall see it and remember all the commands of the Lord and keep them and not be led astray [velo taturu] after your heart and eyes, which have led you to immorality” (Num. 15:39).
The verbal connection is usually missed in translation, since “to spy” and “to be led astray” are (in English) two quite different things. In Hebrew, however, the echo is unmistakable – veyaturu in the case of the spies, velo taturu in the case of tzitzit. Bear in mind that the Torah was originally written to be read out loud in public. It still is. It is an auditory phenomenon. Listening to the text, one cannot but hear the echo of the narrative of the spies in the law of fringes, and this is not accidental but essential. The law was designed precisely to avoid the error that occurred in the case of the spies. The fringes on the corner of the garments are there so that in the future, people will not do what the spies did.
There is a second verbal connection. The word ure’item, “and you shall see,” appears only three times in the Torah, two of them in this parasha. The first occurs in Moses’ briefing of the spies: “And you shall see the land, what it is” (Num. 13:18). The second is in the command of the tzitzit: “And you shall see it and remember all of God’s commands” (15:39).
There is a third connection, the verb z-n-h, meaning “to commit fornication,” “to prostitute oneself.” This appears both in God’s description of the people after the report of the spies and in the reasoning behind the tzitzit. The King James translation preserves this better than modern versions that take refuge in circumlocution. About the generation of the spies, God says: “But as for you, your carcasses, they shall fall in this wilderness. And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcasses be wasted in the wilderness” (Num. 14:32–33). About the tzitzit, God says: “And it shall be for you as a fringe, that you may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the Lord, and do them; and that you seek not after your own heart and eyes, after which you use to go a-whoring” (Num. 15:39).
What the first two connections – t-u-r and ure’item – have in common is that they are verbs of seeing. What is at stake is visual perception, the testimony of our eyes.
Often in these essays I have pointed out how non-visual, even anti-visual, a culture ancient Israel was – not completely, to be sure, but far more so than any other ancient civilisation. This was because in Judaism God cannot be seen. He is beyond the universe. He is not visible. Making a visual representation of God is the paradigm case of idolatry. Judaism is radically aniconic. We do not see God; we hear Him. Knowing, in Judaism, is not modelled on the metaphor of sight but rather of sound. The supreme act of faith is Shema, meaning, “to listen,” “to hear.”
This is what the Torah wishes us to understand about the mission of the spies. It was fraught with danger because it was about seeing. The Torah is consistently sceptical about knowledge based on appearances.
One of the ways it signals this is its set of variations on the theme of clothes in Genesis. Almost always they are used to deceive. Jacob wears Esau’s clothes to take his blessing. Tamar dresses as a prostitute to deceive Judah. The brothers daub Joseph’s richly embroidered robe in blood to convince their father that he has been eaten by a wild animal. Potiphar’s wife uses Joseph’s abandoned cloak as evidence for a false charge of rape. Joseph, dressed in the robes of an Egyptian viceroy, is not recognised by his brothers. The first time clothes appear in the biblical narrative sets the tone for all the others. The first man and woman eat the forbidden fruit, realise that they are naked, feel ashamed, and make themselves coverings of fig leaves. It is thus with a shock of recognition that we discover that the Hebrew word for garment, beged, also means “betrayal.” Clothes deceive. People are not what they appear to be.
The assumption in all visually based cultures is that sight is the most reliable form of knowledge. If you are in doubt about something, go and see. However, one of the achievements of social psychology has been to show that seeing is not a cognitively neutral activity. It is not a simple matter of the impact of sense impressions on the tabula rasa of the brain as if the mind were a kind of camera. To the contrary, our impressions and perceptions are largely shaped by what we pay attention to and what we expect to see.
In one well-known test, students were given a description of a guest lecturer before he entered the room. One group was told that he was intelligent, skilful, industrious, warm, determined, practical, and cautious. A second group was given the same list of traits, with one difference: the word “cold” was substituted for the word “warm.” After the lecture, students were asked to give their impressions of the speaker. The “cold” group found him to be more unsociable, self-centred, irritable, humourless, and ruthless than did the “warm” group, despite the fact that they had heard the same talk from the same person.4H. H. Kelley, “The Warm-Cold Variable in First Impressions of Persons,” Journal of Personality 18 (1950): 431–439.
Likewise, we make judgements of character on the basis of physical appearance. One survey, for example, showed that tall college graduates (six-foot-two and over) received average starting salaries 12.4 per cent higher than those under six feet.5Robert Roy Britt, “Taller People Earn More Money,” Live Science, July 11, 2009.
The individuals elected as president of the United States during the twentieth century were almost invariably taller than their opponents.6Gregg R. Murray, “It’s Weird: Candidate Height Matters in Elections,” Psychology Today, October 30, 2012.
Three thousand years ago the Torah noted this fact and how misleading it can be. The first man chosen to be king of Israel, Saul, was “a head taller than anyone else” (I Sam. 9:2).
However, he proved to be a man of weak character – physically tall, morally small. When Saul failed and God sent Samuel to anoint a son of Jesse in his place, the prophet was impressed by Eliav, but God told him, “Take no account of it if he is handsome and tall; I reject him. The Lord does not see as man sees. Men judge by appearances, but the Lord judges by the heart” (I Sam. 16:6–7). Appearances mislead.
Psychologists also speak of a phenomenon known as confirmation bias, which means that we have a tendency to notice facts that confirm our pre-existing attitudes and disregard those that challenge or disconfirm them.7See, for example, Raymond Nickerson, “Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises,” Review of General Psychology 2, no. 2 (1998): 175–220.
Optimists and pessimists, radicals and reactionaries, religious believers and atheists tend to find that what happens, or what is discovered, proves that they were right all along. We select for attention the evidence that supports our prior convictions. We see what we expect to see. That is the central theme of the story of the spies.
Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk pointed out that the spies made a statement that was highly emotive but completely unwarranted. They said: “We were in our eyes like grasshoppers, and so we were in their eyes” (Num. 13:33). They were entitled to say the first half of the sentence. It accurately described how they felt. But they were not entitled to say the second half. They had no idea how they appeared in the eyes of the inhabitants of the land. They merely inferred it and they were wrong. They assumed that others saw them as they saw themselves. They projected their sense of inadequacy onto the external world, with the result that they misinterpreted what they saw. Instead of ordinary people, they saw giants. Instead of towns, they saw impregnable fortresses. They were afraid. The confirmation bias meant that they paid selective attention to phenomena that gave them reasons to be afraid. But their perception was not in the world but in the mind.
Long before the birth of psychology, the Torah signalled that there is no such thing as the “innocent eye.” We do not simply see what is there. We select and interpret what is there. We notice some things but not others. We make inferences on the basis of pre-judgements. But we are for the most part unaware of this. The result is that we believe what we see or what we think we see. In truth, however, we often see what we believe, that is, what we expect to see. The Torah conveys this with elegance and brevity – by using the one word, latur, that means both “to see” and “to be led astray.”
That is the logic behind the command of tzitzit. Tzitzit, with its cord of blue reminding us of heaven, and God, and faith, helps us liberate ourselves from our anxieties. It lets us see what is actually there, not what we fear is there. The law of tzitzit states, “You shall see it and remember all of God’s commands…and not be led astray [velo taturu] after your heart and eyes, which have led you to immorality.” The order of the nouns – first heart, then eyes – is strange. We would have expected the Torah to say, “after your eyes and heart.”8In actual fact, the New English Bible does just that, translating the verse, “And not go your own wanton ways, led astray by your own eyes and hearts.”
Indeed, as Rashi says in his commentary at this point, “The eye sees, the heart desires, and the body commits the sin.” It should by now be clear, however, that the Torah is making a different point. The heart determines what the eye sees. Those with faint hearts see a world filled with danger. Those with strong hearts see the same world, but it is not filled with danger. It contains risks, but that does not make them dismayed. That is what Joshua and Caleb said: “God is with us; do not be afraid of them” (Num. 14:9).
In the deepest sense, tzitzit is an antidote to the sin of the spies. They saw, but misinterpreted what they saw, because they doubted their ability to overcome their opponents. They attributed to objective reality what was in fact, subjective self-doubt. Had that been rare, the Torah would not have legislated against it. It is, however, one of the most common and fateful errors of humankind.
Tzitzit is more than an outward sign of Jewish identity. On the surface it is, as the Torah says, a way of remembering the commandments. It is a reminder to keep the law. But it is significantly more than this. It is a call from God to see the world through Jewish eyes. Faith is not seeing the world as we would like it to be. Nor is it a matter of blaming the world for not being as we would like it to be. Faith is the courage to see the world precisely as it is while refusing to be intimidated by it.
The spies were otherwise good people who failed to separate their perceptions from their fears. They carried with them a confirmation bias. They saw, but misinterpreted what they saw. That mistake cost an entire generation the chance to enter the Promised Land. Seeing is not always a form of knowing. Sometimes you have to listen, not just look. And sometimes, when looking, you need to remind yourself that you are not alone, or helpless, or friendless in the world.
That is the function of the tzitzit, with its thread of the blue of heaven. When we know that God is with us, we can face reality without self-deceit or self-defeat. Not by accident is the command of tzitzit, which is about seeing, the third paragraph of the prayer Shema which is about listening or hearing (“Hear O Israel”). The perennial lesson God taught after the episode of the spies is: first we must hear with our heart before we can learn to see with our eyes.