“Your punishment will be according to the number of days that you scouted out the land, 40 days, a day for each year, a day for each year; you will bear your iniquities for 40 years. Thus you will come to know the extent of your alienation from Me.” Bamidbar 14:34

No, the reason the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years wasn’t because they were lost. The generation was punished after the infamous incident with the scouts sent to spy out the land of Israel (aka, the meraglim.) Twelve meraglim spent forty days exploring the land and ten of them brought back a report maligning the land which resulted in the Israelites rebelling in despair. For this, Hashem condemns them to wander the wilderness until all the men of the generation die out. And the day the meraglim returned (the 9th of Av) would be regarded as the source of Jewish tragedies throughout history.

The reason given for the 40 years is alluded to in the verse above, that because the meraglim scouted the land for 40 days, the Israelites would pay a year for each day, hence 40 years. But there’s a puzzling thing about this decree. The Israelites didn’t choose to take 40 days for the excursion. The meraglim did. The Israelites were simply waiting. Why would the extent of the Israelites’ punishment be measured by the meraglim’s decision?

“A day for the year, a day for the year,” would be the literal translation of the decree. But two things should stand out, first the repetition, and second it should say “a year for each day.” If you’re buying produce, it’s a dollar for each onion. Not an “onion for each dollar.” That would imply you’re getting as many onions as you have dollars in your wallet. Well, perhaps what’s really being said is that the cost of waiting a day was a year of their life. And it just so happened that all they could afford was 40 years because that’s all the life they had left to live.

There is a lot that supports this interpretation. The decree was that all the men age 20-60 would die in the desert. But according to Rashi, none of the men would die before they reached the age of 60. According to him, that’s the real reason why the decree was 40 years, so the youngest (20 year olds) would reach the age of 60. That would mean that the decree wasn’t to wander for 40 years and the men will die. But the men will live what life they have left and then the rest can enter Israel. The primary focus was the life of the men, not the wandering.

Another idea is that the journey should have taken the meraglim far longer than 40 days to accomplish the mission. Some commentators say it should have taken 80 days, some say 160. But because of Hashem’s compassion, He miraculously made their expedition shorter, sparing the Israelites longer punishment. If all they had was 40 years to live, then 40 days was the only duration they could afford. The spies couldn’t take longer—even their failure was governed by mercy.

Finally we have the doubling of the language. In Hebrew, one of the ways of emphasizing an idea is to repeat words or phrases, such as in the 2nd paragraph of Shema where it says “v’haya eim shamoah tishmau.” Shamoah tishmau is essentially the word for “hear” said twice, so it’s translated as “continually listen.” Doubling “a day for the year,” is an emphasis, possibly to imply the severity of the final years of the men.

But if the duration of the trip didn’t dictate how many years the men had left, where did 40 come from? Why would every man of Israel only have 40 years of life left to spend? Perhaps, this decree didn’t only come from the sin of the meraglim. When else did the Israelites screw up after waiting 40 days?

The sin of the golden calf.

The two biggest sins in the Torah are clearly connected. Both events involve the sin of idol worship; the golden calf is obvious. Here, the rabbis of the Talmud cite the outcry “Let us appoint a head and we will return to Egypt” (Bamidbar 14:4) as a desire to worship the idols of their former home. In both situations, Hashem desires to destroy the nation and start over again with Moses as the new progenitor. Also both situations come from misinformation regarding bad news (during the golden calf, they thought Moses had died, here they thought the land was bad.) And there are several others. But Rashi makes a comment that they don’t just have commonalities, they are two sides of the same coin. In Bamidbar 14:33 he says ,”from the time that they made the golden calf, the plan for this decree was formulated, but [Hashem] waited until the measure of sin was filled.” Meaning that though they had already committed a sin grave enough to warrant barring the entering of Israel, Hashem continued to give them chances to rectify their mistake.

So what does Hashem do? He designs a circumstance extremely similar to the one before so they can perform the highest level of repentance known as teshuvah gemurah. In order for someone to complete teshuvah gemurah they must be placed in an almost identical situation to the first time they sinned, but then make the correct choice. This is the whole reason Joseph puts his brothers through an elaborate deception with Benjamin. Joseph wanted to recreate the elements of his sale so his brothers could do teshuvah gemurah. So too here, the Israelites had to wait in a difficult situation and keep a calm head in the face of bad news.

So in more ways than one, they were waiting for their lives.

Ultimately, the real issue is that the nation couldn’t see Hashem’s hand in the situation. Which is tragically ironic because they were living an existence of constant miracles. The mana, the clouds of glory, the plagues of Egypt. But if they crossed into the land of Israel, Hashem’s hand would become even more hidden as they would be responsible for their food and shelter. So in many ways, the punishment was actually a kindness, allowing them to live out their days in the comfort of His miracles. For us, when we feel stuck and are tired of waiting for life to progress, we have to ask ourselves, can we see the same traps we’re falling into over and over again? Are we willing to make the hard choice and do a teshuvah gemurah? Or are we maybe more comfortable with the status quo than we’re willing to admit?