According to the number of days that you spied out the land – forty days – a day for a year, a day for a year. You will bear your sin for forty years, and you will understand your having strayed from me.[2]
The formula seems straightforward. But it most definitely is not.
While the pasuk promises that each day of the scouting mission would result in one year of wandering in the wilderness, that didn’t happen. The meraglim indeed spent forty days on their ill-fated journey. But they did this in the second year after leaving Egypt, not the first. This means that the Bnei Yisrael were delayed from entering the Land for 39 years, not for forty! How did one year disappear from the accounting?
The disappearance of the final lap ought to sound familiar. The Torah[3] warns beis din not to flog the person it is punishing more than the number specified. “Forty you should smite him. Do not exceed.” In fact, states the gemara,[4] the standard number of lashes is thirty-nine, not forty. Once again, the fortieth item drops out of the picture.
The Mesorah[5] makes the connection even more compelling. It observes that there are two instances in which the word “forty” appears at the very beginning of a pasuk. One is our verse about the forty years in the wilderness; the other is the number of lashes to be meted out to the transgressor.
The Torah hints at an equivalence. Both verses reflect a single idea. That idea is hinted at even more explicitly by the Zohar:[6] “At the time that Hashem will bring about the revival of the dead, the end of the tribulations of Yisrael will be in the fortieth year, as it is written, ‘Forty you should smite him. Do not exceed.’ And the end of the punishment in the wilderness was also in the fortieth…”
Chazal state here that even when midas hadin is at the height of its power and strength, there is room for rachamim to lessen our pain. Hashem ordains, “Do not exceed;” the last year of the forty year gezerah of the wilderness is achieved by just entering that year, rather than let it run its course.
Another instance of this thinking is found in our pasuk. “A day for a year, a day for a year.” Why the repetition. And isn’t it backwards? It should have stated a year for a day! For each day that the spies spent in the Land, the people would wander a year. Rather, the Torah alludes to the fact that a single day can count as a full year. Moreover, in each year there is a single day that can satisfy the demands of din, and thereby bring forgiveness to the Jewish people.
The gemara[7] disparages the “foolish people who stand before a Sefer Torah, but not before a great sage. For the Torah writes that a person should be lashed forty times, and the Rabbis reduced this to thirty-nine.” Does missing this point make a person a fool?
Following our approach, indeed it does! The point is not about the practice of flogging. Rather, it demonstrates how Hashem leaves room for rachamim even when He is involved in punishing us. When they watch as the chachamim turn this into halachic policy and fail to grasp its significance, they are fools indeed.
- Adapted from Be’er Moshe, by the Ozharover Rebbe zt”l ↑
- Bamidbar 14:34 ↑
- Devarim 25:3 ↑
- Makos 24a ↑
- To Devarim 25:3 ↑
- Zohar, Toldos, 136b ↑
- Makos 22b ↑