Chapter 13
Twelve Scouts.[a] 1 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Send some men out to explore the land of Canaan that I am giving to the people of Israel. Send one of the leaders from each of the ancestral tribes.”
3 So Moses sent them out from the Desert of Paran by command of the Lord, each of them being one of the heads of the people of Israel. 4 These are their names:
from the tribe of Reuben there was Shammua, the son of Zaccur;
5 from the tribe of Simeon there was Shaphat, the son of Hori;
6 from the tribe of Judah there was Caleb, the son of Jephunneh;
7 from the tribe of Issachar there was Igal, the son of Joseph;
8 from the tribe of Ephraim there was Hoshea, the son of Nun;
9 from the tribe of Benjamin there was Palti, the son of Raphu;
10 from the tribe of Zebulun there was Gaddiel, the son of Sodi;
11 from the tribe of Joseph, that is, from the tribe of Manasseh, there was Gaddi, the son of Susi;
12 from the tribe of Dan there was Ammiel, the son of Gemalli;
13 from the tribe of Asher there was Sethur, the son of Michael;
14 from the tribe of Naphtali there was Nahbi, the son of Vophsi;
15 and from the tribe of Gad there was Geuel, the son of Machi.
16 These are the names of those whom Moses sent to explore the land. Moses gave Hoshea, the son of Nun, the name Joshua.
17 Moses sent them to explore the land of Canaan. He said to them, “Go up into the Negeb,[b] then go up into the hill country. 18 See what the land is like. Discover whether the people who live there are strong or weak, few or many. 19 How is the land upon which they are living, is it good or bad? How are the cities in which they dwell, are they open camps or fortified? 20 How is the land, is it fertile or poor? Are there trees or not? Try to bring back some of the fruit of the land” (for it was the season of the first ripe grapes).
21 So they went up and explored the land, from the Desert of Zin up to Rehob, near the entrance to Lebo-hamath.[c] 22 They went up into the Negeb and came to Hebron where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, descendants of Anak dwelt. (Now Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.) 23 Then they came to the Valley of Eshcol.[d] There they cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes. Two men carried it on a pole. They also brought along some pomegranates and figs. 24 That place was called the Valley of Eschol because of the cluster of grapes that the people of Israel cut there.
25 The Scouts’ Report. They returned from exploring the land at the end of forty days. 26 They left and went back to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly of the people of Israel that was camped in Kadesh in the Desert of Paran. They brought back a report to them and showed the whole assembly the fruit of the land.
27 Then they told Moses, “We went into the land into which you sent us, and it truly flows with milk and honey. This is its fruit. 28 However, a powerful people dwells in that land, and the cities are highly fortified. Furthermore, we even saw the descendants of Anak there. 29 The Amalekites live in the land of the Negeb, and the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites live in the hill country. The Canaanites live by the sea and along the banks of the Jordan.”
30 Then Caleb quieted the people who were standing before Moses and he said, “Let us go at once to take possession of it, for we shall surely conquer it.” 31 But the men who had gone up with him said, “We will not be able to go up against the people for they are surely stronger than we are.” 32 Thus, they brought a negative report of the land which they had explored for the people of Israel saying, “The land which we went through to explore is a land that devours its inhabitants. All the people we saw in it were immense. 33 We saw giants there, the descendants of Anak (the Anak come from the Nephilim). We felt as if we were only grasshoppers, and we seemed like that to them.”[e]
Footnotes
- Numbers 13:1 Using various ancient traditions (Jos 14:6; 15:13; Jdg 1:10), the author tells of how Moses attempts to enter Canaan from the south.
- Numbers 13:17 The Negeb is the region in southern Palestine.
- Numbers 13:21 Lebo-hamath was near Lebanon. The sacred writer sees the exploration as extending to the ideal border in the north; in fact, the places explored were far more limited.
- Numbers 13:23 The Valley of Eshcol is near Hebron in southern Canaan. Eshcol means “cluster.”
- Numbers 13:33 The spies’ false report transmits their own fear and distrust of the Lord and sets the scene for the community’s rebellion.