[Avodah] Shelach

[Yitzhak Grossman]

On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 07:11:55 -0400
Zev Sero <zev at sero.name> wrote:

...

> people forgot what their job was.  Malbim points out that the name
> we give these people, "meraglim", is a misnomer.  Nowhere in the Torah
> are they called that.  And it's not as if this was a word that didn't
> exist at the time; Yosef accused his brothers of being "meraglim",
> Moshe sent people "leragel et Ya`azer", and Yehoshua sent "meraglei
> cheresh".  It's not an accident these people are called "tarim" and
> not "meraglim", because they were *not* spies, they were tourists.

You and Malbim may feel that "meraglim" is a misnomer in this context,
but Hazal don't seem to have agreed; at least in the Bavli, they refer
to them numerous times as "meraglim", and never as "tarim".

Yitzhak
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