Our Gemara on Amud Aleph tells us that the fact that the Jews cried and complained about the land of Israel during the sin of the spies caused that day to be, forevermore, a day of mourning. As FDR said, “A Date Which Will Live in Infamy.”  That day, was of course Tisha B’Av.

⁦And it is further written: “And all the congregation lifted up their voice and cried and the people wept that night” (Numbers 14:1). Rabba said that Rabbi Yoḥanan said: That night was the night of the Ninth of Av. The Holy One, Blessed be He, said to them: You wept needlessly that night, and I will therefore establish for you a true tragedy over which there will be weeping in future generations.

I am troubled by the Gemara’s formulation of events. Even though we are used to God being portrayed in an anthropomorphic fashion, but it has its limits. Here God appears, God forbid, as vengeful and spiteful. There is a principle, שאין הקב"ה בא בטרוניא עם בריותיו The Holy One, Blessed be He, does not deal tyrannically with His creations, (Avodah Zara 3a). This response, “you cried today for frivolous reasons, and I’ll make you cry for the generations”, seems to me to be just over the top in its vengefulness.

To explain this better we might consider the idea that there are latent energies within people and events, waiting to be channeled either for good or less than good purposes. Consider the Midrash found in Rashi Bereishis (32:23) in regard to the consequences of Yaakov hiding Dinah from Esav:

⁦ואת אחד עשר ילדיו AND HIS ELEVEN CHILDREN — But where was Dinah? He placed her in a chest and locked her in so that Esau should not set his fancy upon her (desire to marry her).  On this account Jacob was punished — because he had kept her away from his brother for she might have led him back to the right path; she therefore fell into the hands of Shechem (Genesis Rabbah 76:9).

This seems like an out of proportion and cruel punishment for a well-intentioned act. However, If you understand it more as a misdirection of potential energy, then it makes sense. That is, we may surmise, that Dinah providentially was given a special influential power that could’ve been used to bring Esav back to the right path. However, unwittingly, when Yaakov tried to over-control the situation, her outgoing nature and instincts were thwarted and therefore redirected toward Shechem. A psychic bullet that ricocheted and caused collateral damage.

Rav Tzaddok HaCohen MiLublin (Yehoshua 12) says the Meraglim sensed a darkness about the day and also sensed the exiles that would transpire. They however confused cause with effect. That is, they saw this as the beginning of all the trouble, and therefore had foreboding about going into Eretz Yisrael. But ironically, they actually were the ones that started the trouble. 

We can now understand that the generation of the spies sensed that this was a dark day but did not find a way to use its power appropriately. Had they not panicked, some other function for this sadness would have been found, and it would have played a part in the overall redemption.

This is an important psychological principle to keep in mind. At times, we are in possession of powerful energies that we are not sure how to direct and they are coming from deep places. We must be mindful to find the appropriate channel to express whatever our intuitions are agitating us about in such a way that it brings about a positive future instead of being the agent of catastrophe.  We will discuss this more in Psychology of the Daf Megilla 3.