NUM136 … concern[ing] the ten spies sent by Moses to spy the land of Israel [e]ach of these people was the leader of his tribe and was called a "special" and distinguished person in the Torah (Numbers 13:2-3 with Rashi commentary on verse 3). How, then, did these men fall so quickly and bring back a bad report about the land of Israel, which caused the people to believe them and sin? The Torah gives us a clue to the answer. It was due to low self-esteem that they developed, despite their previous high position among the Jewish people. When telling over their exploits to the Jews, these spies describe the inhabitants of the land of Israel as "giants" of men. The verse says, "We were like insects in their eyes, and also in our own eyes" (Numbers 13:33). We can understand how these people imagined how the others pictured them, but how did they know for sure how they appeared and were evaluated? Rashi offers one explanation that the spies actually heard the inhabitants speaking about the spies as "ants" (Rashi commentary on Numbers 13:33). But other commentaries simply say that this was all in their imaginations. And later on, when the next generation actually fought and conquered these people in land of Israel, it does not say anywhere that all of the Canaanites were giants. Since they felt so humbled and imagined themselves to be so low, both physically and psychologically, the Torah ends with the words "and so we were in our own eyes." This experience turned these leaders into ants-In their own minds. They now had such low self-esteem, all imagined, that they could no longer say anything positive about their experience or about the land of Israel as a place that God would help them conquer. So it was low self-esteem that turned these experienced leaders into scared individuals. We can learn from this that only if the person feels himself or herself to be worthy will he or she indeed become that worthy person.