Acentral lesson that emerges from the episode of the Meraglim is that people choose to view situations from vastly different perspectives depending on the pre-existing mindset they bring to the endeavor. On their mission to scout out Eretz Yisrael the spies encountered inhabitants they saw as fearsome and invincible but only because they had already lost their bitachon in Hashem’s ability to give them the Land.
Once the conclusion was reached that Hashem could not be relied upon rendering the attempt to take Eretz Yisrael suicidal all data was processed through that narrow distorted lens. The funerals the Meraglim had witnessed taking place all over the Land were marshaled as only further evidence of its lethal nature rather than being seen as a Divine kindness intended to keep the locals distracted and unaware of the Meraglim’s presence.
The Midrash observes that although the pesukim in Eichah proceed alphabetically the pasuk beginning with the letter pei precedes that beginning with ayin rather than following it. This inversion conveys the idea that the Meraglim — whose actions precipitated the Churban that Eichah laments — employed their “peh” before their “ayin.”
Rav Moshe Shapiro shlita explains that the tragedy was not merely that they spoke of things their eyes had not seen — i. e. falsehoods. Were that the case Eichah would have omitted the “peh” entirely. Instead the placement of the peh ahead of the ayin conveys that they allowed the narrative they had crafted based on their pre-existing biases to determine what it was they would thereafter see. The narrative was that this was a “land that devours its inhabitants ” and they took the funerals they witnessed as substantiation of that rather than as confirmation of precisely the opposite conclusion — that Hashem would do anything necessary to ensure their safety and success.
