Changing Joshua’a Name
Adapted from Rabbi Braun’s Sermon in 5769
The Story of the spies, the story of military reconnaissance of the land of Israel and the ability to withstand peer pressure and give an accurate Jewish portrayal of our relationship to the land has very obvious implications for us in the 21st century.
This year as I read through the Parsha with an eye toward that direction I noticed something new that I want to share with you this morning.
The Parsha opens with the command to send spies, one person per tribe. We are then given the names of those people and after that we read Moshe’s instructions to the spies. That is a very logical and reasonable sequence- the command to go, the people going and then the task those people must complete.
There is one problem, however. In between the listing of the names and the giving of the directions we are told “these are the names of the people who Moshe sent and Moshe called Hoshea Bin Nun, Joshua.
Where did that come from? What is it doing here? Did he really change his name smack in the middle of the story? And if so, then why?
Rashi, bothered by the same question, provides a startling answer:
רש”י במדבר פרק יג פסוק טז – התפלל עליו יה יושיעך מעצת מרגלים
Moshe adds the letter yud now to form yud heh, God’s name, so that Hashem should save Yehoshua from the advice or suggestion of the meraglim (spies). Moshe prophetically saw or intuited that the group would come back with a negative report and prayed that Hashem should save Joshua. It is fascinating, and it does answer the question but it suffers, I believe from one fatal flaw. If Moshe knows that they are going to fail, warn them or better yet, don’t send them! What kind of leader sends his people onto a doomed mission?
While I think that at some level I could salvage this Midrash quoted by Rashi, I will leave that for another time and offer an alternative approach, one in part spurred by an observation made by Rabbeinu Bechayai.
He points out that Hoshea is already referred to as Yeshoshua many times in the Torah before we read this pasuk detailing the name change. He suggests that Hoshea was sometimes called that and sometimes called Yehoshua and that here Moshe is sending him as Joshua and not Hoshea. It is thought provoking but I think it’s a difficult textual read.
Another possibility is that the name change took place earlier but is only recorded now. For some reason, which I will attempt to explain in a moment this is the correct place for the Torah to record the name change and it is integrally linked to the story of the spies.
To understand why this is the place you need to go back and look at the other name changes in the Torah. Avram and Sarai become Avraham and Sarah and Jacob becomes Israel. The question that I asked myself was, were their names changed as a result of a particular action or in anticipation of a future event?
The answer seems to be the latter- the name is changed with an eye to the future. Avraham and Sarah had their name changed without any connection to a previous event. Hashem appears to Avraham in chapter 17 and tells him your name will be Avraham and you will have a multitude of children and the land of Israel will be yours. That is the classic patriarchal blessing. In the very next paragraph Sarah receives her new name. The addition of God to the name is in conjunction with and in anticipation of the future of the people of Israel.
At first glance Jacob to Israel doesn’t follow the pattern as that is a direct result of the fight with the angel of Esav. A second glance disproves that theory and directly connects this change to the last one.
After the fight the angel tells Jacob that his name will become Israel. That happens in chapter 32. Hashem doesn’t actually change his name until chapter 35 after the encounter with Esav and the business with Dina and Shechem.
Then in chapter 35 with no connection to a previous encounter Hashem appears to Jacob and changes his name and at the same time gives him the patriarchal blessing- many children and the land of Israel.
Again, the name change is in preparation for the realization of the people of Israel inheriting the land of Israel.
Now it should be obvious why Hoshea’s name change occurs or is recorded during the meraglim episode. This is the first group since Jacob was buried to return to the land of Israel and maybe Moshe or the Torah is subtly letting us know that this return trip should be understood as a return of a people to their ancestral and biblical homeland that God has promised to them. It puts God’s name in the picture and reminds us of the other name changes that too were linked to the promise that this land would be ours. This was to shape the nature and character of the mission. That was the message and that was exactly what the spies had not understood. They could not see how they would win because God was not in their picture and Yehoshua and Caleb respond by bringing god back into the picture.
That very lesson needs to be taught and repeated today, over and over again. Israel is not ours because we suffered during the holocaust; Israel is ours because God promised it to our patriarchs and matriarchs and to us!
