A.
Our parasha tells the story of the m’ragglim, the ill-fated spies whom Moshe sent into Canaan on what he believed was the eve of the Israelite invasion. In evidence of the vast agricultural capacity of the Holy Land, they selected some prodigiously-sized fruits to bring home with them: ויכרתו משם זמורה ואשכול ענבים אחד וישאהו במוט בשנים ומן הרמנים ומן התאנים (“And they cut from there a branch and one eshkol [“bunch”] of grapes and they carried it on a pole with two [men], and [one] of the pomegranates and [one] of the figs”; XIII, 23).
Near the end of our parasha, we find: כי תבאו אל ארץ מושבתיכם אשר אני נתן לכם ועשיתם אשה לד' עלה כו' והקריב המקריב קרבנו לד' כו' ויין לנסך רביעית ההין תעשה על העלה וגו' (“For you will come to the land of your settlements which I am giving you. And you shall make a burnt offering to Ha-Shem, an ôla.... And the sacrificer will offer his sacrifice to Ha-Shem.... And wine for a libation, a quarter of a hin you shall make upon the ôla....”; XV, 2-5).
The Ramban, commenting on this passage, noted that the obligation to pour nesachim (“libations”) only became fully operational after Israel had actually entered the Holy Land, כי במדבר לא נתחייבו בנסכים לבד מתמיד שנאמר בו "ונסך רביעית ההין יין לכבש האחד" כי שם נאמר "פתח אהל מועד לפני ד' אשר אועד לכם שמה לדבר אליך" (“for in the wilderness they were not obligated in nesachim save for the Tamid, concerning which it is said ‘and a nesech, a quarter hin of wine for the one sheep’ [Exodus XXIX, 40], for it is [also] said there ‘[the Tamid will be offered at] the entrance to the Tent of Assembly before Ha-Shem, where I shall appear to you to speak to you [ibid., 42]’”). Since G-d spoke to Moshe in the Mishkan in the desert, it follows that nesachim were offered with the twice-daily Tamid sacrifice.
This arouses a question in the midrash (שיר השירים רבה פ"ד סי' כ"ו, עיי' מתנת כהונה שם), namely, where did all this wine come from?
Consider: A hin is a unit of volume, equivalent to 4,147 cc. This means that each and every day that the Mishkan existed, a half a hin or approximately 2,073 cc of wine were poured out. The Mishkan was first erected on 1 Nisan 2449, a bit less than a year after the Exodus (which took place on 14 Nisan 2448). The m’ragglim were sent out 29 Sivan of that year, and their disastrous report was delivered 40 days later on 9 Av (Numbers XIII, 25, תענית כ"ט.). Even if one suggests that the bnei Yisra’él presciently brought all of this wine with them from Egypt, neither they nor Moshe had any inkling at the time of the Exodus that they would spend a total of 40 years in the desert.
So where did all the wine come from? Answers the midrash, from that gigantic bunch of grapes which the m’ragglim brought from Canaan.
B.
To see how this could be, we begin with a Talmudic analysis of Numbers XIII, 23: "וישאהו במוט בשנים", ממשמע שנאמר "במוט" איני יודע שבשנים?! מה תלמוד לומר "בשנים"? בשני מוטות. אמר רבי יצחק, טורטני וטורטני דטורטני, הא כיצד? שמנה נשאו אשכל, אחד נשא רמון, ואחד נשא תאנה, יהושע וכלב לא נשאו כלום (“‘And they carried it on a pole with two’ -- from the meaning of what is said, ‘on a pole’, do I not know that it was with two?! What does ‘with two’ come to tell me? With two poles. Said Rabbi Yitzchaq, [There were] loads, and loads of loads, how? Eight [men] carried the eshkol, one carried the pomegranate, one carried the fig, and Yehoshua and Kalev carried nothing”; סוטה ל"ד.). Others say that Yehoshua and Kalev did participate in carrying the fruit ( למשל דעת רבי ישמעאל בירושלמי סוטה פ"ז ה"ה, וע"ע זוה"ק ח"ג דף ק"ס: לדעת אחרת).
A bit earlier on the same page, Rashi (דה"מ תילתא דטעמי' הוא) clarifies that each of the m’ragglim was independently capable of carrying a mass one third the size of what he could carry with the help of another, that is, as a “porter” whose helper helps him balance the load and tie it on. In such a way, each one was able to carry 120 se’a. Thus, an individual by himself could manage 40 se’a. Elsewhere, we learn that a se’a consists of two hinim ( בבא בתרא צ'. בראש הדף, עיי' ברשב"ם שם).
Next, we take note of a ruling of the Rambam: אין מתנסך לעכו"מ אלא מן הראוי להקריב על גבי המזבח כו' לפיכך יין מבושל של ישראל שנגע בו העכו"ם אינו אסור כו' אבל יין מזוג כו' אם נגע בו אסור (“Only wine fit to offer on the [holy] altar is used for nesachim to idols....Therefore, cooked wine of a Jew which has been touched by an idolator is not forbidden [since cooked wine cannot be offered on the altar in the Temple]...But yayin mazug [wine mixed with water]...if [the idolator] has touched it, is forbidden”; הל' מאכלות אסורות פי"א ה"ט). The Kesef Mishneh then goes on to demonstrate that the general definition of yayin mazug is a mixture of three parts water to one part raw wine.
Armed with the above information, let us do a little calculating.
C.
Eight men were involved in carrying the eshkol. The others, let us assume, were involved with their own loads, and hence unavailable to help. If this is so, then each of the seven was able to bear a load of 120 se’a, loaded and balanced with the help of one of his comrades (as Rashi noted above); the eighth “helper," with none to help him, carried 40 se’a. Thus, together, they bore a total of 880 se’a. Remembering that a se’a contains two hinim, this yields a total of 1,760 hin. 1,760 hin of raw wine, diluted with water to form yayin mazug, yields 7,040 hin of wine available for nesachim.
Now, as we have established, Israel spent an additional 38.5 years (approximately) in the desert; as we read in Joshua IV, 19, they crossed the Jordan and entered the Holy Land on 10 Nisan 2488. Since a year contains 365 days and a bit (עירובין נ"ו., רמב"ם הל' קדוש החדש פ"ט ה"א; we can use the modern approximation of 365.25 for this purpose), and two Tmidin were offered each day, accompanied by a quarter hin of wine, we arrive at a requirement of just under 183 hin of wine per year in the desert (the exact figure for 365.25 days is 182.625 hin). Over 38.5 years, that is just over 7,031 hin.
So the eshkol may have provided a slight surplus, even allowing for the wastage of grape pulp, skin, and seeds. Of course, if one of the others was available to help steady and tie on the load of the eighth man, there would have been another 80 se’a or 160 hin available as well, which doubtless would have been welcome for the arba’â kosoth at the séder at Pesach Gilgal, four days after crossing the Jordan.
So it seems that our midrash makes sense.
D.
This little exercise in desert economy affords us an object lesson in the ways in which, unobtrusively and behind the scenes, Divine Hashgacha, Providence, anticipates and fills our needs.
Moshe had charged the m’ragglim, inter alia, to determine ומה הארץ השמנה הוא אם רזה היש בה עץ אם אין (“and what [sort of] land it is, fat or thin, are there trees in it or not”; XIII, 20). It was in response to this instruction that the m’ragglim brought back samples of the hugely impressive fruits they found: Pomegranates, figs, and grapes.
But these are hardly the only fruits in the land of Israel. They did not have to happen upon Nachal Eshkol and bring back a monstrous bunch of grapes. The purpose could have easily been filled by olives, say, or dates, both growing on trees and plentiful in the Holy Land. But they found grapes....
As they shouldered their loads and came back, they had no idea that they would spend another 38.5 years in the desert; they thought that they were on the cusp of an invasion. Had they not succumbed to panic, and given the disastrous report they did, it might have been so. But when they heard the stern Divine decree that the generation born and raised in Egyptian bondage would have to perish in the desert, they squared their shoulders, accepted the judgment, and found suddenly available the wherewithal to make all those years’ worth of sacrifices and nesachim.
So we must never despair. Even if things look bleak, and we ourselves cannot imagine where our help is coming from, the little word problem above demonstrates that provision will always be made, perhaps in some wholly miraculous fashion, for us to survive, and be frum.
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