Then athe LORD spoke to Moses, saying,Deut 1:22, 23 2 “aSend men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am going to give to the sons of Israel. From each of their fathers’ tribes you shall send a man, every one a leader among them.”Deut 1:22; 9:23 3 So Moses sent spies from the Wilderness of Paran at the command of the LORD, all of them men who were heads of the Israelites. 4 These were their names: from the tribe of Reuben, Shammua the son of Zaccur; 5 from the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat the son of Hori; 6 from the tribe of Judah, aCaleb the son of Jephunneh;Num 14:6, 30; Josh 14:6 7 from the tribe of Issachar, Igal the son of Joseph; 8 from the tribe of Ephraim, aHoshea that is, Joshua the son of Nun;Num 13:16; Deut 32:44 9 from the tribe of Benjamin, Palti the son of Raphu; 10 from the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel the son of Sodi; 11 from the tribe of Joseph, that is, of the tribe of Manasseh, Gaddi the son of Susi; 12 from the tribe of Dan, Ammiel the son of Gemalli; 13 from the tribe of Asher, Sethur the son of Michael; 14 from the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi the son of Vophsi; 15 from the tribe of Gad, Geuel the son of Machi. 16 These are the names of the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land; but Moses called aHoshea the son of Nun, Joshua .Num 13:8; Deut 32:44
17 Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan, and said to them, “Go up this way into athe Negev ; then go up into the hill country.Gen 12:9; 13:1, 3 18 See what the land is like and whether the people who live there are strong or weak, few or many, 19 and whether the land in which they live is good or bad, and whether the cities in which they live are open camps or fortifications, 20 and awhat the land is, whether it is fat or lean, whether there is timber on it or not. Make an beffort to get some of the fruit of the land.” Now the time was the time of the first ripe grapes.Deut 1:24, 25Deut 31:6, 23
21 So they went up and spied out the land from athe Wilderness of Zin to Rehob a town in Lebanon, at bLebo-hamath in the far north.Num 20:1; 27:14; 33:36Josh 13:5 22 When they had gone up into athe Negev , they came to Hebron; and bAhiman, Sheshai, and Talmai the descendants of cAnak were there. (Now Hebron was built seven years before dZoan in Egypt.)Num 13:17Josh 15:14Num 13:28, 33Ps 78:12, 43
23 Then they came to the Valley of aEshcol , and from there cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes; and they carried it on a pole between two of them, with some of pomegranates and the figs.Gen 14:13; Num 13:24; 32:9; Deut 1:24 24 That place was called the Valley of Eshcol because of the cluster of grapes which the sons of Israel cut down there.
25 When they returned from spying out the land, at the end of forty days, 26 they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the sons of Israel in the Wilderness of Paran at aKadesh, and brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the land’s fruit.Num 20:1, 14; 32:8 27 They reported to Moses and said, “We went in to the land where you sent us; and ait certainly does 1flow with milk and honey, and bthis is its fruit.This phrase referred to the abundant fertility of the land of Canaan. Milk (typically that of goats and sheep) was associated with abundance; “honey” referred mainly to syrups made from dates or grapes and was the epitome of sweetness. Bees’ honey was very rare and was considered the choicest of foods.Ex 3:8, 17; 13:5Deut 1:25 28 But athe people who live in the land are strong, and the cities are 1fortified and very large; moreover, we saw there bthe descendants of Anak people of great stature and courage.The spies probably had not seen walled cities before, having lived their childhood in Goshen in Egypt. Those who forgot God’s power to help them naturally found the situation formidable.Deut 1:28; 9:1, 2Num 13:33 29 The people descended from Amalek live in the land of athe Negev ; the Hittite, the Jebusite, and bthe Amorite live in the hill country; and cthe Canaanites live by the Dead Sea and along the side of the Jordan.”Num 13:17; 14:25, 45Josh 10:6Num 14:43, 45
30 Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, “Let us go up at once and take possession of it; for we will certainly conquer it.” 31 But the men who had gone up with him said, “aWe are not able to go up against the people of Canaan, for they are too strong for us.”Deut 1:28; 9:1-3 32 So they gave the Israelites aa bad report about the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through which we went, in spying it out, is ba land that devours its inhabitants. And call the people that we saw in it are men of great stature.Num 14:36, 37; Ps 106:24Ezek 36:13, 14Amos 2:9 33 There we saw the aNephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and bwe were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”Gen 6:4Deut 1:28; 9:2; Josh 11:21