Numbers 13

¹The Lord said to Moses, ²“Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I give to the people of Israel; from each tribe of their fathers shall you send a man, every one a leader among them.” ³So Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran, according to the command of the Lord, all of them men who were heads of the people of Israel. ⁴And these were their names: From the tribe of Reuben, Shamʹmu-a the son of Zaccur; ⁵from the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat the son of Hori; ⁶from the tribe of Judah, Caleb the son of Jephunʹneh; ⁷from the tribe of Isʹsachar, Igal the son of Joseph; ⁸from the tribe of Eʹphraim, Hosheʹa the son of Nun; ⁹from the tribe of Benjamin, Palti the son of Raphu; ¹⁰from the tribe of Zebʹulun, Gadʹdiel the son of Sodi; ¹¹from the tribe of Joseph (that is from the tribe of Manasʹseh), Gaddi the son of Susi; ¹²from the tribe of Dan, Amʹmiel the son of Gemalʹli; ¹³from the tribe of Asher, Sethur the son of Michael; ¹⁴from the tribe of Naphʹtali, Nahbi the son of Vophsi; ¹⁵from the tribe of Gad, Geuʹel the son of Machi. ¹⁶These were the names of the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land. And Moses called Hosheʹa the son of Nun Joshua.

¹⁷Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan, and said to them, “Go up into the Negeb yonder, and go up into the hill country, ¹⁸and see what the land is, and whether the people who dwell in it are strong or weak, whether they are few or many, ¹⁹and whether the land that they dwell in is good or bad, and whether the cities that they dwell in are camps or strongholds, ²⁰and whether the land is rich or poor, and whether there is wood in it or not. Be of good courage, and bring some of the fruit of the land.” Now the time was the season of the first ripe grapes.

²¹So they went up and spied out the land from the wilderness of Zin to Rehob, near the entrance of Hamath. ²²They went up into the Negeb, and came to Hebron; and Ahiʹman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the descendants of Anak, were there. (Hebron was built seven years before Zoʹan in Egypt.) ²³And they came to the Valley of Eshcol, and cut down from there a branch with a single cluster of grapes, and they carried it on a pole between two of them; they brought also some pomegranates and figs. ²⁴That place was called the Valley of Eshcol, because of the cluster which the men of Israel cut down from there.

²⁵At the end of forty days they returned from spying out the land. ²⁶And they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the people of Israel in the wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh; they brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. ²⁷And they told him, “We came to the land to which you sent us; it flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. ²⁸Yet the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large; and besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. ²⁹The Amalʹekites dwell in the land of the Negeb; the Hittites, the Jebʹusites, and the Amorites dwell in the hill country; and the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and along the Jordan.”

³⁰But Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, “Let us go up at once, and occupy it; for we are well able to overcome it.” ³¹Then 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.” ³²So they brought to the people of Israel an evil report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature. ³³And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim); and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”