Numbers 13

My 9th grade geometry teacher had a dry, subtle sense of humor. One day, we were working with a nifty little graphing aid, a red contraption that had both reflective and translucent qualities. "It's called a Mira," my teacher explained. "And no, it's not the same thing as a mirror. I don't have a Boston accent." Another time, when we were learning about conic sections, one student, who was being either waggish or vapid, asked, "Doesn't 'hyperbola' mean 'exaggeration?'" To which the teacher gave a long-suffering look and the reply, "That's hyperboLE," followed by a quip that I have sadly forgotten. Hyperbole is rarely an admirable trait, as when you're talking about the supposed merits of, say, Man of Steel or Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Numbers 13 finds a group of Israelites partaking in exaggeration, which is literally the worst thing ever.

To start off the chapter, Moses sends a group of scouts to explore Canaan, giving them explicitly meticulous instructions (verses 18-20) to forestall any loopholes the scouts might have been tempted to take. Imagine if Moses had sent them off to reconnoiter for 40 days only to have them come back with the entirety of their report being, "How is the land? It's OK. Now what do you want us to do?" (To which Moses may have been tempted to reply, "Well, you can go dive off on Olympic-height diving board into an empty pool for starters.")

Anyway, the scouts reveal what they value above all else by bringing back "a branch bearing a single cluster of grapes" (verse 23). Plenty of opportunities for inebriation in the Promised Land! (I especially like how the end of verse 23 mentions pomegranates and figs almost as an afterthought. I mean, whatever the merits of Pom juice and Fig Newtons, they pale in comparison to the ineffable joys of a hangover.)

But while the scouts admit that the land is fecund, they tremble at the people who have already taken up residence there. Even if the Canaanites were like Norwegians and the Israelites were like the Japanese, haven't they already seen enough miraculous wonders to know that God is on their side? Don't they remember the pyrotechnic spectacular in chapter 11? But the scouts go even further than comparing their Danny DeVito statures to the Yao Ming heights of the Canaanites. They claim the Canaanites are the mysterious, Titan-like Nephilim from Genesis 6 and change their story about the fertility of the land (verses 32-33). All this elaborate embellishment and prevarication amounts to nothing more than an excuse so that the scouts won't have to do what they don't want to do--conquer the Canaanites.

Sometimes, I catch myself exaggerating to get out of performing tasks that inconvenience me or make me feel uncomfortable. To get back to math, although I made it all the way to AB Calculus AP, it was a struggle from 10th grade on--but it didn't have to be. I could have asked for help or seen the teacher during tutorial, but I let my social anxiety and shyness pull me back into my cozy little comfort zone. "If I ask the teacher for help, I'll stammer like a loon, withdraw from the room in disgrace, and finally die from an excess of shame," by hyperbolic brain would tell me. OK, that's a bit of a superficial, self-centered example, but know I should stop making excuses. After all, I have no excuse not to.