Or HaChaim on Deuteronomy 1:37/אור החיים על דברים א׳:ל״ז

1 גם בי התאנף ה׳ בגללכם, "G'd was also angry at me on your account." This is difficult as we have no independent evidence of G'd having become angry at Moses on account of the sin of the spies. Nachmanides explains these words of Moses to mean: "you have continued doing evil until the result was that G'd became angry at me." I do not find this comment acceptable as Moses continued to speak about the subject of the spies even after this verse as is clear from verse 39 "and your children whom you claimed would become booty, will come there, etc." The subject is continued right until the end of this chapter. Why then would Moses interrupt in the middle of one subject to speak about an unrelated subject? As to Nachmanides' justification that Moses wanted to lump together all the reasons why the generation of the Exodus did not get to the Holy Land, I do not see what would be accomplished by this.

2I believe the correct meaning of these words must take into account what the Talmud in Taanit 29 said in connection with Numbers 14,1 that the people cried during that night. The Talmud says that because of their needless weeping on that night the Jewish people were condemned to weep on that date with good reason for many many years when they would mourn the destruction of both Temples which occurred on the anniversary of that fateful night. The Talmud Sotah 9 adds that if Moses had been allowed to enter the Holy Land the very first Temple would have been the final Temple, i.e. there never would have occurred a destruction of the Holy Temple. In this connection there is an interesting Midrash Tehillim on Psalm 79,1 where Assaph appears to have dedicated a hymn to the destruction of the Temple. The Midrash asks, predictably, that instead of dedicating a hymn to such an event Assaph should have written an elegy, a song of mourning! The answer is that Assaph composed the hymn in gratitude to G'd who had vented His wrath on buildings of wood and stone such as the Holy Temple and the city of Jersualem instead of on human beings. If we extrapolate on the reasoning of the Midrash and consider the fact that the Temple Moses would have built would have become indestructible, then every time the people sinned G'd would have had to pour out His wrath at the people themselves instead of at the Temple. In order to avoid such a thing from ever occurring, G'd decided to let Moses die on the East Bank of the Jordan. This is what Moses meant when he said that G'd's anger at him worked in Israel's favour, i.e. בגללכם, "for your sake." Had the sin of the spies not occurred, Moses would have entered the Holy land with the result we have just described. The word בגללכם is derived from גלגול, "revolving," or in the metaphysical sense "transmigration (of souls)." When G'd decreed death on Moses which would result in his ultimate reincarnation, He did the Israelites a great favour by venting His wrath at Moses at that time. Alternatively, the meaning of the words: "G'd was also angry at me on your account," may be that Moses implied that 'if you would not have become guilty of this sin and I would have been allowed to enter the Holy Land and to build the Holy Temple, there never would have arisen an occasion for G'd to become angry at you at all as you would have retained your level of righteousness permanently.' Had it not been for this sin, the power of evil would never have become as great. Now that this had happened, G'd realised that once the Israelites would enter the Holy land they would not be able to maintain their spiritual high. We can derive all this from a study of the song Moses composed in Parshat Haazinu.

3You may counter that this may be fine homiletics, but that the fact remains that Moses' death in Transjordan was caused due to his failure to speak to the rock at the waters of Merivah (Numbers chapter 20) not to the sin of the spies. The answer which I have mentioned already on that occasion is that had Moses spoken to the rock at that time the Israelites could have recovered the spiritually high level they possessed prior to the sin of the spies by means of watching that great display of G'd's power. In that event G'd would have cancelled His oath not to let Moses enter the Holy Land seeing that he had become the instrument of sanctifying the name of G'd on such a scale. As a result, Moses would have entered the Holy Land, would have built the Temple, and the Jewish people would have lived there permanently, trouble free. Israel's sin at this stage then had prevented all these scenarios from occurring.