Sometimes role models are famous saints and heroes. Sometimes they are gritty, unknown and deeply flawed.

This week’s role models are exactly that: two unnamed spies and a woman called Rachav. They are worth spending time on because they represent something rarely celebrated in this literature (but heavily in fiction): professionals executing a narrow, dangerous mission without recognition, using a recruited human source inside enemy walls. You could make the case that what happens in Yehoshua 2 is the first documented instance of the modern spy and asset. They do not decide policy. They gather facts and come back with what they found rather than what they feared.

The parasha of Shelach centres on the catastrophic failure of the מְרַגּלִים, the spies sent by Moshe. They return frightened by what they saw and infect the people with that fear. The result is forty more years in the desert.

But in the Haftarah, Yehoshua sends spies very differently.

וַיִּשְׁלַח יְהוֹשֻׁוּע בִּן־נוּן שְׁנַיִם־אֲנָשִׁים מְרַגְּלִים חֶרֶשׁ “Joshua son of Nun secretly sent two men as spies.” Yehoshua 2:1

וַיִּשְׁלַח יְהוֹשֻׁוּע בִּן־נוּן שְׁנַיִם־אֲנָשִׁים מְרַגְּלִים חֶרֶשׁ “Joshua son of Nun secretly sent two men as spies.” Yehoshua 2:1

The famous medieval commentator, The Abarbanel, notes the difference immediately. Yehoshua does not send leaders or tribal princes with a broad mandate to assess the land, its people, its cities and its mood. That is precisely what Moshe’s spies were given, and that latitude is what destroyed them: men who were asked to form views came back having formed the wrong ones. Yehoshua gives his men no such latitude. Two anonymous professionals. One explicit instruction: go, see, return with facts.

Rashi adds that the mission was conducted quietly, during the shiva for Moshe. No ceremony. No announcement. The contrast with........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)