We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them. (N. 13:33)
Is this merely poetic license? Perhaps not! Grasshoppers are only mentioned one other time in the Torah:
But these you may eat among all the winged swarming things that walk on fours: all that have, above their feet, jointed legs to leap with on the ground…all varieties of grasshopper. (Lev. 11:21-22)
The word that is used for “to leap” is actually never used elsewhere in the Torah to mean “leap” or “jump” or any variant. It is instead to verb variant of the word used to describe a leftover or remainder: nater/nosar.
Could the Torah be making a deeper point? After all, the text is really saying that the grasshopper, by separating from the ground, makes himself into a leftover?
Is the grasshopper a metaphor for the Jewish people – and in a good way?
Does not the grasshopper leap up and away from the earth, striving to leave his past behind, to reach for elevation and a higher connection? And then… he falls back down again, like we all do. But as long as he lives, the grasshopper keeps trying!
Unlike the other kosher insects that have jointed legs, the grasshopper does not swarm (like locusts), and takes no refuge in numbers. Each grasshopper can be a loner, making its own solo impact on the world.
The grasshopper is also the smallest and most insignificant of any kosher animal. Yet its entire body serves as its voice, and pound for pound, it is far louder than any kosher mammal. We Jews certainly can make a racket! And are we not called by the Torah to be contradistinct from the earth? Every kosher animal has to have an incomplete connection to earth, to be symbolically capable of elevating?
Are Jews only powerful because, like the grasshopper, we refuse to stay down? We make our voices heard whether they are welcome or not. We make an impact.
The men who compared us to grasshoppers (and all of their generation), as a result of their lack of courage, were condemned to die in the wilderness. The only ones that survived to enter the land were the two who stood apart from the crowd, who refused to go along with the superior numbers. The Torah tells us:
“They shall die in the wilderness.” Not one of them survived, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. (Num. 26:65)
And the word for “survived”? The very same one that means “leftover”, that describes what it is that grasshoppers do over the earth. The joke is that their description had merit – but it was only applied to the true grasshoppers among them, the only two people there who were truly left over after the rest of the generation had died away.
Does G-d consider the leftovers to be quite special? After all, the flocks Jacob keeps are the nosar, the leftovers. The nosar of the korban pesach are given special attention. In the mikdash the priests either ate those leftovers, the things that G-d had not already taken (thus absorbing them into their own bodies), or invested fire into incinerating the last vestiges of the offering. (Ex. 29:34, Lev. 2:3, 2:10, 6:9, 7:17, 8:32, 19:6), eaten on the day you sacrifice it, or on the day following; but what is left by the third day must be consumed in fire) In the case of oil, it was the leftover oil that fulfilled the primary function of protecting the person bringing a guilt offering. (Lev. 14:16-17, 29).
Even people can be referred to as the leftovers, as remainders. Aharon loses two sons after they offer a strange fire, and that very day both the offering and his other sons are both referred to as remainders: Moses spoke to Aaron and to his remaining sons, Eleazar and Ithamar: Take the meal offering that is remaining from the LORD’s offerings by fire and eat it unleavened beside the altar, for it is most holy. (Lev.10:12, 16)
Aharon’s other sons are lumped together with the offering. They are what survive. They are most holy. Might it be because they are the future?
Were the spies right that we, the Jewish people, are indeed like grasshoppers? But then they missed the point that it is always the leftovers, the remainders, that G-d loves the most? That it is the remaining survivors who create the future?