יחזקאל, פרק כ׳, פסוק כ״ג

A profound historical paradox lies at the heart of the Israelites' journey through the desert: during their very formation as a nation, the seeds of their future exile and dispersion were already being planted. God swore an oath to the children of the generation that left Egypt, declaring that He would eventually scatter them among the nations [ביאור שטיינזלץ, מצודת ציון].

Interestingly, this divine oath of dispersion is not explicitly recorded in the earlier biblical accounts of the desert journey [רד״ק, אברבנאל]. To understand when this decree took place, commentators offer two distinct perspectives. One approach links the oath to immediate events that occurred while the Israelites were still in the wilderness. For example, during the battles against Amalek and the Canaanite King of Arad, some Israelites were taken captive, removed from their homes, and sold to various foreign nations [רד״ק].

The primary approach among commentators, however, understands this as a decree for the distant future, established in the aftermath of the sin of the spies. Because the people wept in despair on that night, which was the ninth of Av, God repaid their betrayal by declaring that this baseless crying would become a source of weeping for all generations. It was on that very night that the future destruction of the First and Second Temples was sealed, alongside the many expulsions and persecutions the nation would face throughout history [מצודת דוד, רד״ק, אברבנאל]. This harsh decree was not merely a punishment for the sin of the spies. Rather, God anticipated the failures of future generations who would continue the idolatrous practices of their ancestors [אברבנאל].

Ultimately, the promise to scatter the nation was designed to unfold at the proper time [רש״י, ביאור שטיינזלץ]. While God chose not to destroy the Israelites in the desert in order to protect His name from being dishonored among the nations, He recognized that the people were not yet spiritually repaired. Their nature still gravitated toward sin, meaning the redemption from Egypt could not remain permanent. Instead, the dispersion across foreign lands was meant to act as an ongoing process of purification. Like a smelting furnace, these cycles of exile and hardship were designed to cleanse the nation of its wrongdoings, step by step, until it could reach a state of complete spiritual restoration [מלבי״ם].