Vayaturu (מרגלים) Lo Taturu (שמע) mean the same (Postscript to Parshat Shelah)
In the past I have suggested that the episode of the meraglim, the spies whom Moshe sent at God’s behest to reconnoiter the Promised Land were being intentionally set up for failure. My reasoning was straightforward:
To begin with, there was no reason why such a mission was called for. If God had promised to deliver the Children of Israel victoriously into a land of milk and honey His word should have been sufficient. Nothing the spies might say could add to the veracity of God’s spoken word. Indeed, sending human spies could – at best – add nothing positive to the picture, and might conceivably trigger hesitation on the part of a nascent nation just recently released from centuries of bondage.
More significantly, if Moshe was hoping to further inspire 600,000 newly manumitted slaves, he clearly made the worst possible choice in assigning this mission to the tribal elders.
וַיִּשְׁלַ֨ח אֹתָ֥ם מֹשֶׁ֛ה מִמִּדְבַּ֥ר פָּארָ֖ן עַל־פִּ֣י יְהֹוָ֑ה כֻּלָּ֣ם אֲנָשִׁ֔ים רָאשֵׁ֥י בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל הֵֽמָּה׃
And Moshe, per God’s order, dispatched them from the wilderness of Paran—all of them men who were the leaders of the Israelites.
(Bamidbar/Numbers 13:13)
I doubt that in the history of espionage there was ever a competent leader who chose tribal elders to undertake a reconnaissance mission in order to assess the prospects of an imminent invasion. If anything, he would choose intrepid young warriors who would be most likely to return with an enthusiastically upbeat “can do” report.
Hence my thesis was/is that the intention of both God and Moshe was to set the stage for mission failure. They realized that the generation that had just emerged from Egypt was in no way ready to mount a successful war of conquest. A change of plan was needed. For this to happen, the blame had to be placed on the people themselves.
And that’s exactly how the spy story played itself out.
However, this past Shabbat, as we were once again reading Parshat Shelah (Bamidbar 13-15) I realized something astonishing, and yet so obvious, that I was ashamed that I hadn’t noticed it before.
At the beginning of the parsha, regarding the espionage episode, the Torah uses the word ויתורו (VAYATURU). At the end of the parsha, in the verses that are integral to the Shema prayer, its uses the identical word ולא תתורו (velo TATURU)
:ויעלו וַיָּתֻ֣רוּ אֶת־הָאָ֑רֶץ
They went up VAYATURU the land (3:21)
… וְלֹֽא־תָת֜וּרוּ אַחֲרֵ֤י לְבַבְכֶם֙ וְאַחֲרֵ֣י עֵֽינֵיכֶ֔ם אֲשֶׁר־אַתֶּ֥ם זֹנִ֖ים אַחֲרֵיהֶֽם׃
… and you shall not TATURU after you heart and after your eyes which lust after. them (15:39)
That VAYATURU and VELO TATURU are the same word is obvious. And yet they are consistently given different, unrelated meanings.
VAYATURU is conventionally understood to mean “scouted” i.e. and they scouted the land, while LO TATURU is said to mean “followed” i.e. you should not follow after your heart and eyes.
My instinct told me the word had to mean something less anodyne than either mere scouting or generic following. And that maybe the conventional understandings that we have of YATURU/TATURU miss the mark. And so, I looked at how Onkelos translated VAYATURU into Aramaic:
וּסְלִיקוּ וְאַלִּילוּ יָת אַרְעָאה (17)
וּשְׁלַח יָתְהוֹן משֶׁה לְאַלָּלָא יָת אַרְעָא (21):
He translates YATURU with an unusual word that even my more learned colleagues in the synagogue could not make heads or tails of. VEALILI/LEALELA.
As soon as Shabbat was over I decided to make use of AI in order to get to the bottom of Onkelos’s intent. And here is what I discovered:
המילה וְיַאֲלֵלוּ (או “ויאללון”) היא פועל בשפה הארמית. היא מופיעה בעיקר בתרגום התנ”ך לארמית (תרגום אונקלוס) ומגיעה מהשורש א-ל-ל או ו-ל-ל.
הנה הפירושים והשימושים המרכזיים שלה:
- לחפש, לסייר או לרגל (המשמעות העיקרית)
(emphasis mine) המילה מתארת פעולה של חיפוש יסודי, סיור במקום או ריגול.
Bottom line? The term means something much more intense than mere scouting or following. It means to scrutinize intensely.
Moshe’s clear instruction were for the spies to scrutinize the Land. And as we know, when we look too closely at something we lose sight of the big picture and come away noticing only the flaws. Familiarity breeds contempt. Look too closely and all you’ll bring back is bad news. WHICH IS PRECISELY WHAT MOSHE WAS HOPING FOR in order to change the plan from immediate accession of Eretz Israel to a 40 year delay so that the Exodus generation would be superseded by a hardier and better prepared next generation.
Which now brings us to our Shma, and what exactly does LO TATURU mean.
I would suggest it means the very same thing. When dealing with matters of the heart, namely our loved ones, we should desist from scrutinizing them too closely. Because this can only result in disappointment as every flaw and blemish becomes noticeable Familiarity does indeed breed contempt.
Regarding our eyes; when it comes to objects of our lust/greed/envy we should also not look to intensely because it can come to no good. The difference, of course, is that we scrutinize or loved ones under a microscope, while we scrutinize the objects of our fancy with a telescope.
We lose interest in the women we love because we see them up close with no cosmetics. We intensify interest in other women for precisely the opposite reason; we see them ONLY when they are fully painted and packaged. This either results in our ongoing frustration/lust/envy or our inevitable disappointment.
Hence we are instructed to not scrutinize (microscopically) those we love, nor scrutinize (telescopically) those we lust.
