5779 — Devarim: Navigating Conflicting Narratives–What Really Happened in the Story of the Spies?

In this week’s parsha of Devarim, Moshe begins his parting words and speeches to the Jewish people, as they are poised to enter the Land of Israel. Interestingly, the first narrative he tells is the story of the spies, which resulted in the previous generation dying out in the desert and the new generation wandering for almost 39 years. When we examine this story in our Parsha, we see that it deviates, in a number of significant ways, from the way the account is given, in “real time,” in the book of Numbers. As we read the text very carefully and closely, we will examine the differences between the two narratives, try to understand what really happened, and attempt to provide an approach that might explain the discrepancies.