The following is a drasha that occured to me over shabbat during kriat hatorah. I've been entirely too busy to blog it until now:

In Parshat Shelach, Hashem permits Moshe to send spies to Eretz Yisrael to spy it out. Moshe selects 12 spies, one from each tribe, including his foremost talmid, Yehoshua bin Nun. Before this spy mission, Yehoshua's name was Hoshea, but Moshe Rabbeinu prayed for him that he not fall victim to the conspiracy of the 10 spies who would speak badly about the land. This implies that Moshe Rabbenu knew (or at least expected) that the 10 spies would speak badly about the land. If this is so, why did Moshe choose these spies? And why would he pray for only one?

I saw in the Abarbanel an understanding of this situation which changes the question. The Abarbanel suggests (and then rejects) the following interpretation:

The Jews in the desert tested Hashem's hashgacha repeatedly, Marah, at Midbar Sin, at Masah u'Meribah. The most recent and most pointed test was at Kivrot-Hata'avah (in Parshat Beha'alotecha), after leaving Sinai. It is the Abarbanel's suggestion that because of this test, the Jews were already not on the level to inherit the land, and this was simply intended as a way for them to fall and prove that fact. The Abarbanel does not like this explanation, since he finds it inconcievable that Hashem would give them a test they could not overcome, and since really did want the Jews to inherit the land, and since the generation that left Egypt was the forth generation, which would inherit the land, as promised by Hashem to Avraham in Parshat Lech L'cha (Bereshit 15:16).

Nevertheless, it appears to me that this explanation can be saved with slight modification. It is not necessary to assume that Hashem gave them a test they could not pass, rather we can say he gave them a test to determine their merit and repair the lacking they demonstrated at Kivrot-Hata'avah. In this vein, the Gemara in Sotah (14b) explains that the names of the spies allude to the ways in which they denigrated the land. Here too, we can say not that they would inevitably do so, but that this was their test in life and it was reflected in their names. Thus Moshe Rabbeinu knew that these men were to be tested in this way, and they were the men to send. To address the Abarvanel's last problem with this peshat, we can see Rashi in Parshat Lech Lecha, who is forced to interpret the promise of 4 generations in accordance with what actually happened when the Jews failed to enter the land immediately. These 4 generations are Yehuda, Peretz ben Yehuda, Chetzron ben Peretz, and Kalev ben Chetzron (who finally entered the land).

A new question on Parshat Shelach, for which I do not yet have an answer: on the sixth day of creation, Hashem described the world as טוב מאד (very good, Bereshit 1:31). In Parshat Shelach, Calev and Yehoshua describe the Eretz Yisrael, saying טובה הארץ מאד מאד (Bemidbar 14:7). What madrega does the phrase טוב מאד imply in Bereshit, and what additional madrega is implied by the second מאד in Bemidbar?