I also heard that the rebbes amount of connection to HKBH or the attachment to Torah is proportional with the rebbes need to impart Torah to his talmidim. So being a rebbe you get a gift of Torah bec it’s necessary to impart to your talmidim. The spies saw that moving from the midbar to EY would disrupt that and they would no longer be the spiritual leaders of their tribes and lose their connection.
In your example tho I see it more like when the Jewish people would go to war and there were something like 10000 warriors 10000 helpers and 10000 learning and davening for the warriors.
In that case the learners are doing their job similar to but of course less moser nefesh as compared to the warriors.