[Avodah] Vayikra Moshe l'Hoshea bin Nun Yehoshua

[Marty Bluke]

R"n Elzufon wrote:
> I happened to see a Meshech Chochma on this. IIRC, he says that since
> Yehoshua was the leader of the army in the battle with Amalek, the people
> would give special weight to his words. They would say: If Yehoshua - who
> fought Amalek and won - says we cannot conquer the land, then he must
> certainly be right. Thus, for Yehoshua to fall into the eitzah of the other
> meraglim would have meant certain catastrophe.
>

This to me seems very difficult. If Moshe was worried why not daven
for everyone? Was Moshe doing a cost/benefit analysis of his tefila?
Did Moshe have a limiuted quota of who he could daven for?

The Keren Ora (Sota 34a) answers both questions as follows:

Moshe did not know that the Meraglim would sin. Rather he knew that
the mission would be a serious challenge and the that yetzer hara
would try very hard to entrap them and cause them to sin. Therefore he
davened that they should succeed.

If so why did Moshe only daven for Yehoshua? He answers based on the
Arizal as follows. Each Nasi represented a shevet and therefore the
neshama of the progenitor of the shevet was with the Nasi on the trip.
Moshe thought that would protect them and therefore he did not see the
need to daven for them. However, Yehoshua was from Efraim and
therefore had no progenitor to protect him (you can still ask why
didn't Efraim's neshama come?) as the pasuk puts Menashe and Yosef
together so Yosef went with Gadi ben Susi from Menashe and not
Yehoshua. Therefore Moshe davened specifically for Yehoshua so that he
would have different protection.