In this week’s Torah portion, we have the famous story of Moses sending twelve scouts to check out the Land of Israel and report back on the lay of the land of Israel. In his instructions to them, he asks them to bring back some samples of the “fruit of the land,” so that the Jews can see that it is a “blessed land.”
As the story goes on to tell us; ten of the spies turn out to be bad and try to convince the Jews to stay in the desert. While two of them, Joshua and Calev, try to persuade them to go on to the promised land. Reading in to the details, however we see that the “bad ten” actually “listen” to Moses and bring back the fruit of the land, while the “good guys” Joshua and Calev disobey the order and come back empty handed, without the fruit. Why didn’t they listen to Moses?
In Talmudic parlance we can argue that the command was not on each one of them to do themselves, as much as the job should get done, and since others were carrying the fruits they were exempt. However, after deeper analysis we most conclude that there is a reason why they did not want to participate in carrying the fruit.
In Judaism we often say that it is the action that counts. Yet the thought and speech that go into the action also matters. Actually, it matters a lot. To the point, that if we have the action with no intention, no thought, we are missing the point (though we still get credit for the action.) On the other hand, if we have the deepest concentration, meditate for hours, talk about our intentions but we don’t get to the action then we did nothing. Zero.
The mistake of the ten spies was that they thought that you can serve G-d with good intentions only. You can meditate on G-d’s greatness, you can serve him in a “desert” in a world void of action. Once we can make that mistake, Joshua and Calev were afraid that people can go to the opposite extreme and conclude that action itself is enough and we don’t need to think, “just carry the fruits as Moses commanded” that is why they specifically did not do so to demonstrate that intention is very important, knowing that the other ten spies had bad intentions.
If they carried the fruit, along with the others, than they would be showing that it didn’t matter what you thought as long as you acted according to the law. By not carrying with the others, they demonstrated that it is of outmost importance to have the right intention, yet at the same time it is the action that really counts.