Numbers 13

The AIT Bible

Spies Sent into Canaan

1And Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying,

2“Send for yourself men, that they may scout out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the sons of Israel. One man for each tribe of his fathers you shall send, every one of them a leader among them.”

3So Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran at the mouth of Yahweh; all of them were men who were heads of the sons of Israel.

4And these were their names: for the tribe of Reuben, Shammua son of Zaccur;

5for the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat son of Hori;

6for the tribe of Judah, Caleb son of Jephunneh;

7for the tribe of Issachar, Igal son of Joseph;

8for the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea son of Nun;

9for the tribe of Benjamin, Palti son of Raphu;

10for the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel son of Sodi;

11for the tribe of Joseph, for the tribe of Manasseh, Gaddi son of Susi;

12for the tribe of Dan, Ammiel son of Gemalli;

13for the tribe of Asher, Sethur son of Michael;

14for the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi son of Vophsi;

15for the tribe of Gad, Geuel son of Machi.

16These were the names of the men whom Moses sent to scout out the land. And Moses called Hoshea son of Nun ‘Joshua.’

17And Moses sent them to scout out the land of Canaan, and he said to them, “Go up here into the Negev, and go up into the hill country.

18And you shall see the land, what it is like, and the people who dwell in it—whether they are strong or weak, whether they are few or many;

19and what the land is like in which they dwell, whether it is good or bad; and what the cities are like in which they dwell, whether in open camps or in fortresses;

20and what the land is like, whether it is fertile or lean, whether there is a tree in it or not. And take courage, and take some of the fruit of the land.” Now the days were the days of the firstfruits of the grapes.

21So they went up and scouted out the land from the wilderness of Zin to Rehob, at Lebo-hamath.

22They went up into the Negev and came to Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, descendants of Anak, were. Now Hebron had been built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.

23And they came to the Valley of Eshcol, and there they cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes, and they carried it on a pole between two of them, along with some of the pomegranates and some of the figs.

24That place was called the Valley of Eshcol, on account of the cluster that the sons of Israel cut down from there.

25And they returned from scouting out the land at the end of forty days.

The Report of the Spies

26And they went and came to Moses and to Aaron and to all the congregation of the sons of Israel, to the wilderness of Paran, to Kadesh; and they brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and they showed them the fruit of the land.

27And they recounted to him and said, “We came to the land to which you sent us, and it indeed flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.

28However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very great, and moreover we saw there the descendants of Anak.

29Amalek dwells in the land of the Negev; and the Hittite, the Jebusite, and the Amorite dwell in the hill country; and the Canaanite dwells by the sea and along the Jordan.”

30But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “We should surely go up and take possession of it, for we are surely able to overcome it.”

31But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.”

32And they spread among the Israelites a bad report of the land that they had scouted, saying, “The land through which we passed to scout it is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in its midst are men of great stature.”

33And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak are from the Nephilim), and in our own eyes we were like grasshoppers, and so we were in their eyes.

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