Klal Yisrael had witnessed the destruction of the mightiest armies. Egypt was like nothing in the hands of Hashem. Likewise, Amalek went down into the dung heap of history, putty in the hands of the Almighty. Why is it that the nation that had been sustained by Hashem through the travails of wilderness journey for forty years was in deathly fear of a handful of small, scattered Canaanite kingdoms? Indeed, as noted in an earlier pasuk (27), Klal Yisrael suggested that Hashem must hate them to put them in such a terrifying situation.
The Bostoner Rebbe, zl, notes that fear reflects our perception of reality more than it reflects reality itself. The Sifri applies the well-known proverb, “What you feel about your friend, you imagine he feels about you,” to explain the debacle of the meraglim, spies. Our fears of the outside world are often projections and externalizations of what we feel within. Indeed, we create the world around us by our thoughts and our beliefs. Thus, an angry person lives in an angry world; a happy person lives in a happy world. We do not see things as they are; rather, we see them through our sometimes distorted, often myopic, vision.
In Sichos HaRan (83) Horav Nachman Breslover, zl, teaches that people desire what cannot help them and fear what cannot harm them, for their desires and fears originate within their subconscious selves. Fear is always part illusion. Thus, by listening to the Torah to put fear aside, we are able to concentrate on the reality that is, the real-life challenges that we face. Sometimes, the greatest fear is an illusion which have we conjured up in our mind.
