Sh'lach

Twelve men, one leader from each tribe, are sent from the wilderness of Paran to scout the land — its people, cities, soil, and trees. For forty days they traverse it, cutting at the wadi Eshcol a cluster of grapes carried on a pole between two men. Their report divides: the land indeed flows with milk and honey — here is its fruit — but the people are strong, the cities fortified, and the Anakites are there. Caleb silences the people: "Let us go up at once, for we can surely do it." The ten answer that the land devours its inhabitants; "we were like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and so we were in theirs."

The congregation weeps all night and plots to choose a new head and return to Egypt. Joshua and Caleb tear their clothes — "the land is exceedingly good... only do not rebel" — and are nearly stoned. God speaks of destroying the nation and beginning again from Moses; Moses pleads Egypt's watching eyes and the divine name proclaimed at Sinai, slow to anger, abounding in kindness. God pardons — "but as I live," no man of that generation who saw the signs and tested Him ten times will see the land, save Caleb and Joshua. Forty years, a year for each day of the scouting; the ten spies die in a plague; and the next morning a chastened group climbs toward the hill country anyway, without the ark or Moses, and is beaten down at Hormah.

Laws follow for the day the land is entered: the grain, oil, and wine that accompany each offering; a portion of the first dough, challah, lifted out for the LORD; atonement for the congregation's unintentional error and the individual's — but the defiant hand, the one who despises the word of the LORD, is cut off. A man found gathering wood on the Sabbath is held in custody and stoned at God's word. The portion ends with tzitzit: fringes on the corners of garments with a thread of blue, "that you may look at it and remember all the commandments of the LORD and do them... and be holy to your God."