Musar for Sanhedrin 33:7

כיוצא בדבר אתה אומר (במדבר ג, מז) ולקחת חמשת חמשת שקלים לגולגולת אמר משה כיצד אעשה להן לישראל אם אומר לו תן לי פדיונך וצא יאמר לי כבר פדאני בן לוי

For when the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses, Gather unto me seventy of the elders of Israel,12 Moses said [to himself]: 'How shall I do it? If I choose six out of each tribe, there will be two more [than the required number]; if I select five, ten will then be wanting. If, on the other hand, I choose six out of one and five out of another, I shall cause jealousy among the tribes.' What did he do? — He selected six men [out of each tribe], and brought seventy-two slips, on seventy of which he wrote the word 'Elder', leaving the other two blank. He then mixed them all up, deposited them in an urn, and said to them, 'Come and draw your slips.' To each who drew a slip bearing the word 'Elder', he said, 'Heaven has already consecrated thee.' To him who drew a blank, he said: 'Heaven has rejected thee, what can I do?' Similarly, thou readest, Thou shalt take five shekels apiece by the poll.<span class="x" onmousemove="('comment',' Num. III, 47. After the completion of the Tabernacle, the Levites were called to replace the firstborns of all Israelites in the service of the Sanctuary, (cf. Ex. XXIV, 5; XIX, 24.) In order to effect this transfer of office, both the firstborn and the Levites were numbered. And when it was found that of the former there were twenty-two thousand two hundred and seventy-three; and of the latter, twenty-two thousand, the two hundred and seventy-three firstborns who were in excess of the Levites were redeemed at the rate of five shekels per head. (Five shekels is the legal sum for the redemption of a firstborn. v. Num. XVIII, 16). To solve the difficulty of deciding who was to be redeemed and who exchanged, the above scheme was adopted. ');">13

Shemirat HaLashon

Here, too, when they came to spy out the land, the yetzer intensified itself over them, causing them to say: "To defeat men so numerous and so strong requires great, awesome merit which we do not possess. For we have just made the golden calf and [eaten] flesh of lust. [(This, although they had already repented and had wept profusely (for their sin), as we find in Pirkei d'R. Eliezer, that on the last of the forty days of Moses' ascent to the mountain, when they knew that on the morrow he would descend from the mountain all of Israel spent the night fasting and went the next day to receive him, weeping profusely, and it was told them that the Holy One Blessed be He had forgiven them, so that [this day] was instituted for them for forgiveness for future generations)]. For this reason they said (Ibid. 27): "We came to the land to which you sent us, and it is, indeed, flowing with milk and honey, and these are its fruits (28): but the people are strong, who dwell in the land… and also the children of the giant did we see there (29): Amalek dwells in the lands of the south, etc." This, as if to say: "We need the merit of Moses our teacher, as of yore"; as if to say: "Who knows if he will live until then?" (For they had an intimation from the prophecy of Eldad and Medad (Sanhedrin 27a, 29a) [that he would die before then]). And, aside from this (Ibid.): "And the Chitti and the Yevussi, etc." That is, to defeat all of them before we come to Eretz Israel requires great merit. How much more so to come to the people in Eretz Israel and overcome them there!

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