devarim

This weeks parsha thought is dedicated
לזכר נשמת לייבוש בן יעקוב שמעון ע"ה

When Moshe is rebuking Klal Yisrael for the sin of the מרגלים, he says גם בי התאנף ה' בגללכם לאמר גם אתה לא תבוא שםAlso at me was 'ה angry because of you,to say, you too will not come there. יהושע בן נון העומד לפניך הוא יבוא שמה - Yehoshua who stands before you, he will come there.
If you look carefully at the pesukim, you'll notice that when it says Moshe won't go in, it says גם אתה לא תבוא שם, but when it talks about Yehoshua leading the people in, it says יהושע בן נון העומד לפניך הוא יבוא שמה. Why the difference in language? By Moshe it says שם and by Yehoshua it says שמה, in the very next posuk, talking about the same place.
The שמן אפרסמון says the difference is Moshe would have been happy just to go in for a minute to see it & then to go back to the Midbar to die, so it says שם, meaning not even for a minute will he go in. As for Yehoshua, who was going to bring them in and stay in, it uses a loshon of שמה, meaning that's he's going to stay there & lead Klal Yisrael.
How could we understand that? Why would Moshe have been happy just to go in to see the land? Didn't he want to lead the people in and build the בית המקדש? Not only that, the gemara says that had Moshe brought the Jews in & built the בית המקדש, it could never have been destroyed. So how could he have been happy just to see it?'אור החיים הק asks on the beginning of the posuk, where it says that 'ה got angry at Moshe too because of the sin of the מרגלים, that we don't see anywhere that 'ה got angry at Moshe for that sin. Not only that, but any time it mentions Moshe's death it sticks in his sin of hitting the rock, so we shouldn't think he is getting punished for the sin of the מרגלים. So why does he say that he too got punished for the sin of the מרגלים?
The night the Jews cried over the report of the spies was tisha b'av, when 'ה said now you're crying for nothing, I'll give you something to cry about for generations to come. Tisha B'av is the night the בית המקדש was destroyed, the cause of all our troubles.
The reason the chapter of Tehillim that talks about the destruction of the בית המקדש starts off מזמור לאסף, a song, instead of קינה לאסף, a lamentation, is because we're happy that 'ה took his anger out on wood & stones - the building of the בית המקדש, & not on the people themselves.
Had Moshe taken the jews into the land & built the בית המקדש, it never could have been destroyed, & when the jews sinned they would have been destroyed instead.
Therefore explains 'אור החיים הק, when the מרגלים sinned & all the people followed them, 'ה saw that the people were not going to retain their exalted status, but would sin. Therefore He decreed at that time that Moshe wouldn't bring them in & he would die in the midbar. When Moshe says that because of them he is also being punished, it's because their sin showed that they wouldn't be able to keep away from sin, & necessitated Moshe being punished in order to ensure the survival of the jewish people.
Maybe with this we could understand why Moshe would have been happy just to see the land & go back because Moshe didn't care about going into the land for himself, he only wanted what was best for the people. If by him going in there was a chance that the nation could one day be destroyed, he didn't want to go in. We could learn from him to be aware of how our actions could affect others, and if by doing something you could hurt someone else, even if its good for you, don't do it!