Numbers 13

1And Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying,

2Send for yourself men, and let them scout out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the sons of Israel. You shall send one man from each tribe of his fathers, every one a leader among them.

3So Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran at the command of Yahweh. All of them were men, heads of the sons of Israel.

4And these were their names: from the tribe of Reuben, Shammua son of Zaccur.

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

6from the tribe of Judah, Caleb son of Jephunneh.

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

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

9from the tribe of Benjamin, Palti son of Raphu.

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

11from the tribe of Joseph, from the tribe of Manasseh: Gaddi son of Susi.

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

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

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

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

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

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

18See what the land is like, and whether the people who dwell in it are strong or weak, whether they are few or many.

19And what is the land like in which he lives? Is it good or bad? And what are the cities like in which he lives? Are they in camps or in fortifications?

20And whether the land is fertile or lean, whether there are trees in it or not. And be strong, and take some of the fruit of the land.” Now the days were the days of the first-ripe grapes.

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

22They went up into the Negev, and he came as far as Hebron. Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the descendants of Anak, were there. Hebron had been built seven years before Zoan of Egypt.

23They came to the Valley of Eshcol, and from there they cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes, and two of them carried it on a pole; they also took some of the pomegranates and some of the figs.

24That place was called the Valley of Eshcol because of the cluster that the sons of Israel cut from there.

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

26They went and came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the sons 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.

27They reported to him and said, “We came into the land to which you sent us. It truly 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 large; and we also saw the descendants of Anak there.

29Amalek lives in the land of the Negev, and the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites live in the hill country, and the Canaanites live by the sea and along the Jordan.

30Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “Let us surely go up and take possession of it, for we are certainly able to do it.”

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

32So they brought out to the sons of Israel a bad report about the land that they had explored, saying, “The land through which we passed to explore it is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great size.”

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