Transcript
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10 of the greatest men in Jewish history
committed one of the greatest sins
in Jewish history now how could such a
thing happen that's what I want to talk
about because I think that there's one
seemingly small detail which contains
within it the secret of how such great
men could possibly have fallen so low
and that seemingly small detail is the
order in which their names were listed
because while that may seem sort of
irrelevant
it would only be irrelevant if the Torah
was written by a person God forbid but
being that it was written by the by
Hashem with the uppermost Divine wisdom
imaginable something like the order of
the names has profound meaning to it and
looking within that for uh for
understanding that well that's a
worthwhile Endeavor because we see that
their names were not listed in order of
the ages of the tribes nor was it based
on their positions in the camp or
anything clear to us and by the way
these you know emissaries turn spies
we're not the Naseem they were not the
princes I used to think that they were
actually the princes because I wasn't
reading carefully but it wasn't the
princes of the tribes as we would have
expected the names listed were the names
of the greatest spiritual leaders the
greatest spiritual luminaries in each
tribe and they were listed in order of
their spiritual greatness with the
greatest obviously being shamua son of
zahur of the tribe of uvane which is
listed first so this is like the dream
team of spiritual greats among the
nation of Israel and where did Caleb and
Joshua rank
you ready for this you can just look in
the text and see it yourselves they were
not ranked numbers one and two as we
would have thought no Caleb ranked third
and Joshua was was ranked fifth that's
right Caleb was number three and
Joshua's number five and I spent a lot
of Shabbat reflecting on exactly that
and discussed it with Jeremy a lot if
they were not the greatest spiritually
of this group
then what was it about them that made
them who they were what was it about
them that allowed them to pass this test
with flying colors and Merit to be the
only ones that are able to enter the
Holy Land
because again if it's not about
spiritual standing then what is it all
about so rev biederman brings a teaching
that the distinguishing factor that
differentiated Caleb and Joshua from the
other 10 emissaries turned spies
was the their degree of humility
or they were the most aware that no
matter how spiritually evolved they may
be
without hashem's help
and without praying to Hashem and asking
for that help they will fail
the other spies they may have been
humble I'm sure that they were but I
think they got confused they they knew
their greatness and they were dishonest
about that part of humility is being
able to see your strengths and your
greatness and they knew their greatness
and they must have determined that this
test was a test that they could pass on
their own right that they didn't need to
turn to Hashem for this one but Joshua
and Caleb knew that without turning to
Hashem they had no chance
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