Jacob Chanikuzhy

Honey traps are used to black mail respectable or successful people and extort money or other gains from them. Even intelligence wing of governments uses honey traps to obtain secret information from foreign officials. Although most of the times these traps work, sometimes they fail too. Once, KGB (Russian security and intelligence agency) arranged a honey trap for the former Indonesian President Suharto during his visit to Moscow. Cute Russian girls were assigned the job of acting as air hostesses with the task of seducing the President. President Suharto who was notorious for his passion for girls naturally invited them to his hotel room where his orgy with these girls was recorded by the KGB. Later KGB showed him this video thinking that the video would make the President extremely ashamed and frightened and that they would be able to coerce him to sign certain contracts. In contrast, President Suharto appeared greatly amused by the video and asked for more copies of it. He explained to the flabbergasted KGB personnel that the Indonesian people would be proud of their president if they see him getting naughty with the Russian cuties!

Human agents, spy satellites, drones, artificial flies and fish, spy cameras or recording devices concealed in ashtrays, pens, shoe lases, lenses, buttons or room furniture etc. include a swarm of methods and devices used to spy on others. A modern predicament is that many of the pages and sites we surf and the applications we use in our computers and mobile phones keep spying on us that it is almost impossible for us to keep privacy. Our most personal gadgets betray us most! Apart from the states, even private persons employ spies to collect intelligence about the strength, weaknesses, plans and strategies of their rivals. Spying has a recorded history even from the time of the Babylonian King Hammurabi (ca. 1810 – ca. 1750 B.C). The Bible also tells stories of espionage, the spying on the land of Canaan one of the prominent among them (Deuteronomy 1, 22ff., Numbers 13). According to Deuteronomy, Moses sent twelve spies to the land of Canaan to enquire about the fertility and prosperity of the land, and the feasibility of conquering it. The action of Moses is baffling because, God himself had already guaranteed the goodness of the land of Canaan as he called it “the land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3,8). He had also promised that Israel would possess the land. Was then, Moses counterchecking the Lord’s assessment and promise of land of Canaan? If so, was it not an act of distrust in the word of God?

We may say that the idea of espionage did not come originally from Moses. It was the plan of the people. Moses simply complied with their proposal. Maybe he thought that the Israelites would be better motivated to enter an unknown land if they had favourable reports from the first-hand witnesses. Hence, it was not to convince himself but the people that he sent the spies. But, by this decision, was he not encouraging the people to “verify” the practicality of God’s command before obeying it? Was he giving more weight to the human intelligence than to the divine ordinance?

It seems that Moses cannot be blamed alone, for, according to the report in Numbers, it was God who asked Moses to send the spies. Why did God allow the spies to make a report of the land of Canaan? Was God trying the people? Was it his intention to see whether the people would obey his command to possess the land despite the negative reports of the spies regarding the insurmountable hurdles on the way of possessing the land? If so, the people failed in their test. As the story unfolds, the people gave more importance to the words of their spies than to the promise of God. Although the people had advanced to the boarders of the Promised Land, they were dissuaded by the spies from entering the Promised Land. The story warns us that listening to the words of the so-called well-wishers can turn our life and goals upside down if we do not listen to the word of God, no matter how far we have advanced in our journey towards our goals.