Year 2, Day 166 (A Revelation During Torah Study)

John and I arrived in South Bend, IN just as we ran out of hours for the day. He lives about 30 minutes away, in Michigan, so I allowed him to go home for the night. I must have been pretty wiped out from yesterday, since I didn't even hear my alarm go off this morning. Instead I awoke to the sound of John opening up the door. He climbed in, cheerily saying, "Good morning, sunshine!" I replied with a "Bah, humbug!" to which he handed me a Starbucks cup... that only makes for a tolerable morning. What would have made it a good morning is if that cup were being handed to me by my wife, Tikvah.

We left out around 0945 and continued heading west. I had us make a stop at the terminal outside of Gary, IN. I took a shower at the Pilot last night in South Bend... but they didn't have any laundry facilities (not good!). It worked out, kinda, because I did get my clothes washed at the Gary terminal, but the dryers: one was out of service, and the other was not far from it. So I did what any Marine would do - improvise, adapt, overcome.

On the way, I engaged in this week's Torah portion (Numbers 13:1 - 15:41) and the accompanying Haftarah (Joshua 2:1-24), to which the Spirit of The L-rd opened my eyes to a parallel between the two that was not brought up in the commentaries. In the Torah portion, you can see where The L-rd is preparing to lead the Children of Israel into the land that He promised them, at the original time. However, the Children of Israel wanted to sent in spies to check out the area beforehand, to which HaShem acquiesced. There were 12 leaders that were chosen: one from each of the tribes, except Levi (for that, there was one taken from Manasseh and one from Joseph). Of those 12, 10 of them gave their report from a negative standpoint, which lowered the morale of the rest of the nation. The two that gave a positive report were Caleb and Joshua. That's when the "40 years of wandering" began, because the nation chose to believe the negative reports. Then, 40 years later, when the Haftarah took place, the leader, Joshua (also the successor of Moses, and the same Joshua who gave the positive report), sent in spies. Though this time it was onlytwo - symbolic of the 2 spies that were obedient, and stood strong in their faith to the word of The L-rd.

I found that parallel to be quite interesting.