“We were like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and so we were in theirs.”
(Numbers 13:33)
These words, spoken by the spies upon their return from Canaan, are among the most psychologically revealing in all of Torah. More than just a report of external danger, this verse offers a diagnosis of a collective internal state—an existential fear that distorted perception, paralyzed leadership, and doomed an entire generation.
This essay explores the theological and psychological weight of the meraglim’s self-perception. Why did the spies—and by extension, the people—see themselves as insects? What does it mean to feel small in one’s own eyes, and how does that affect how others see us? And what happens when an entire people internalizes a sense of unworthiness so deeply that it cannot fulfill its divine mission?
I. The Gaze from Within
The spies’ declaration in Numbers 13:33 is tellingly self-reflective: “We were like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and so we were in theirs.” The order is crucial. The spies did not say, “They saw us as grasshoppers, and so we began to see ourselves that way.” Instead, the reverse: We saw ourselves as small—and therefore assumed they did too.
This is more than fear of giants. It’s an articulation of how internalized shame projects itself outward. The medieval commentator Rabbeinu Bechaye notes that the spies interpreted the fear they already felt as confirmation of how others must be perceiving them. It wasn’t the enemy that defeated them. It was the mirror.
Contemporary trauma psychology gives language to this phenomenon. Victims of long-term oppression often internalize the worldview of their oppressors. Frantz Fanon, in Black Skin, White Masks, describes how colonized people come to view themselves through the denigrating lens of the colonizer, developing what he calls a “double consciousness”—simultaneously being oneself and seeing oneself as the Other imagines them. The spies’ statement could easily be quoted in a postcolonial text: “We saw ourselves as inferior, and assumed everyone else did too.”
For the Israelites, centuries of slavery in Egypt had left a psychological scar. Though they had been physically freed at the Sea, the exodus from spiritual servitude was incomplete. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z”l puts it bluntly: “It was easier to take the Israelites out of Egypt than to take Egypt out of the Israelites.”
II. The Dignity to Stand Upright
If the sin of the spies was a failure of self-perception, then the antidote lies in spiritual dignity.
Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, in The Lonely Man of Faith, describes two aspects of the human self: Adam I, the majestic man who seeks to master the world, and Adam II, the humble man of faith who seeks relationship with God. Neither is complete on its own. The generation of the spies, it seems, had not yet claimed either aspect. They did not trust themselves to build a future, nor did they trust God to guide them there.
Soloveitchik writes that human dignity emerges from our capacity to say Hineni—“Here I am.” It is the posture of someone who believes their existence matters, someone who stands before God as a moral and spiritual subject. The spies—despite their leadership positions—could not say Hineni. They could not claim the authority to inherit the land because they did not feel worthy of it.
In contrast, Abraham Joshua Heschel insists that every human being must reclaim their divine image. In Who Is Man?, he writes: “Self-respect is the fruit of discipline, the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.” Dignity is not a given; it must be cultivated. Heschel would likely see in the spies not only fear, but a collapse of moral imagination—the inability to believe they were actors in God’s redemptive drama.
III. Faith, Fear, and the Burden of Chosenness
Why is this psychological failure so consequential? Why does God decree that an entire generation must die in the wilderness because of a fear-driven report?
Because this isn’t just about strategy—it’s about theology.
To enter the Land is to move from passive receivers of miracles to active builders of covenantal society. It is to go from being led by fire and cloud to taking responsibility for farming, governing, defending, and sustaining a nation. It is to transform from refugees of history into authors of it.
But to do that, one must first believe in one’s chosenness—not as superiority, but as responsibility.
The spies couldn’t handle that responsibility. They recoiled at the transition from divine dependence to divine partnership. They didn’t want to be giants. They preferred the desert, the status quo, the spiritual simplicity of manna and Moses.
In this way, the sin of the spies anticipates later forms of Jewish avoidance: theologies that over-spiritualize exile, that fear power, that doubt the legitimacy of a people taking up space in the world. The grasshopper complex—this deep spiritual shrinkage—has not vanished. It remains latent in parts of modern Jewish life: in fears of Jewish assertiveness, in discomfort with Jewish nationalism, in skepticism toward the Land itself.
IV. Healing the Inner Gaze
If the spies teach us about the dangers of internalized unworthiness, then what does healing look like?
First, we must note the exceptions: Caleb and Joshua. They saw the same land and the same giants, but their report was fundamentally different: “We can surely go up and possess it, for we are able.” (Num. 13:30). Caleb’s dissent is not just strategic—it is existential. He is the one who has “a different spirit within him” (14:24).
Rashi, quoting the Midrash, says that Caleb went alone to pray at the Cave of the Patriarchs, seeking strength from his ancestors. There’s a deep truth here: dignity requires lineage. One who knows they descend from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob does not see themselves as a grasshopper. To overcome fear, Caleb had to remember who he was.
Second, we must cultivate holy vision. Later in the parsha, God commands the wearing of tzitzit—fringes designed to help us “see” and “remember” the commandments. The same verb, ure’item (you shall see), reappears. It’s a quiet correction: learn to see differently. Where the spies saw threat, you must see covenant. Where they saw enemies, you must see promise.
And finally, we must reeducate our collective imagination. The generation that leaves Egypt cannot enter the Land, but the next one can. Faith is generational work. Identity repair takes time. The wilderness becomes a classroom in which a new people, born in freedom, can learn to see themselves not as grasshoppers, but as partners with God.
V. Conclusion: We Are Not Insects
In Night, Elie Wiesel recounts a moment in the concentration camps when a young boy is hanged. Someone cries out: Where is God? And the answer comes: He is there, hanging in the child.
The trauma of Jewish history—Egypt, Exile, Shoah—has left scars on the soul of our people. And yet, the Torah insists that despite all this, we are not grasshoppers. We are tzelem Elokim—images of God. We are not insects scrambling to survive, but a people called to live with purpose, to build a society of justice, memory, and hope.
Parashat Sh’lach demands of us a new vision: to refuse the shrinkage of spirit, to stand upright before history, and to see ourselves—as Caleb did—not through the eyes of giants, but through the eyes of God.