Numbers 13

The LORD spoke to Moses and said, “Send men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites. Send one man from each ancestral tribe, each a leader among them.” Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran at the LORD's command. All the men were heads of the Israelites. These are their names: from the tribe of Reuben, Shammua son of Zaccur; from the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat son of Hori; from the tribe of Judah, Caleb son of Jephunneh; from the tribe of Issachar, Igal son of Joseph; from the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea son of Nun; from the tribe of Benjamin, Palti son of Raphu; from the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel son of Sodi; from the tribe of Joseph, from the tribe of Manasseh, Gaddi son of Susi; from the tribe of Dan, Ammiel son of Gemalli; from the tribe of Asher, Sethur son of Michael; from the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi son of Vophsi; from the tribe of Gad, Geuel son of Machi. These are the names of the men Moses sent to explore the land. Moses called Hoshea son of Nun Joshua. Moses sent them to explore the land of Canaan and said to them, “Go up through the Negev and go up into the hill country. See what the land is like, and the people who live in it: whether they are strong or weak, few or many; what the land they live in is like, whether good or bad; and what the cities they live in are like, whether camps or fortified places; and what the soil is like, whether rich or poor, whether there are trees in it or not. Take courage and bring some of the fruit of the land.” It was the season of the first ripe grapes. They went up and explored the land from the wilderness of Zin to Rehob, at the entrance to Hamath. They went up through the Negev, and Hebron was reached. Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, descendants of Anak, were there. Hebron had been built seven years before Zoan in Egypt. They came to the valley of Eshcol and cut from there a branch with a single cluster of grapes. Two of them carried it on a pole. They also took some pomegranates and figs. That place was called the valley of Eshcol because of the cluster the Israelites cut from there. They returned from exploring the land at the end of forty days. They went and came to Moses, Aaron, and the whole congregation of the Israelites at Kadesh in the wilderness of Paran. They brought back a report to them and the whole congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. They told him, “We came to the land to which you sent us. It does indeed flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. But the people living in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. We also saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites live in the land of the Negev; the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live by the sea and along the Jordan.” Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “Let us go up and take possession of it, for we are certainly able to prevail over it!” But the men who had gone up with him said, “We cannot go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are.” They spread a bad report among the Israelites about the land they had explored, saying, “The land we passed through to explore is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people we saw in it were men of great stature. There we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who are from the Nephilim. In our own eyes we were like grasshoppers, and so we were in their eyes.”

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