One of the things the ten spies report back is that in comparison to the giants of eretz yisrael ‘we were like grasshoppers in our eyes and so we were in their eyes’ (13;32). What is the meaning of this double expression? 2 answers..
1)The Kotzke Rav notes that this was one of the sins of the spies. The fact that they saw themselves as being small as grasshoppers (the 1st part of the pasuk) was natural. But the sin was the second part; that ‘so we were in their eyes.’ The sin was that the spies should not have cared about how they looked in the eyes of others.
2) Rav Yechezkal Abramski answers that this shows a huge point about self-perception in life; the way you look at yourself is the way that people will look at you. Thus, it was precisely BECAUSE the spies saw themselves as grasshoppers in comparison to the inhabitants of the land that the giants did indeed look down on them like grasshoppers.
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