Numbers 13

1And the Lord told Moses,

2You must send people to go and look at the land of Canaan, the land that I gave to the Israelites. Send one person from each tribe, one of the leaders of the tribe.

3Moses obeyed the command of the Lord and then sent people from the Paran Desert. They were all leaders of Israel

4These are 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, Oshea 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 Manasseh (a tribe from Joseph), Gaddi son of Susi;

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

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

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

15From the tribe of Gad, Geuel son of Maki.

16These are the names of the men Moses sent to look at and study the land. (Moses called Hoshea son of Nun by another name. Moses called him Joshua.)

17When Moses was sending them out to explore Canaan, he said, Go to the south into the hill country.

18See what the land looks like. Learn about the people who live there. If they be strong or are they weak? Are they few or are they many?

19Learn about the land that they live in. Is it good land or bad land? What kind of towns do they live in? Or do they live in camps. Do the towns have walls protecting them?

20And learn other things about the land. Is the soil good for growing things, or is it poor soil? Are there trees on the land? Try to bring back some of the fruit from that land.” (This was during the time when the first grapes should be ripe.)

21So they went to explore the country. They explored the area from the desert of Zin to Rehob and Lebo Hamath.

22They entered the country through the south and went to Hebron. (The town of Hebron was built seven years before the town of Zoan in Egypt.) Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai lived there. These men were descendants of Anak.

23Then the men went to Eshcol Valley. There they cut off a branch from a grapevine that had a bunch of grapes on it. They put that branch on a pole, and two men carried it between them. They also carried some pomegranates and figs

24That place is called the Eshcol Valley, because there the men of Israel cut off the bunch of grapes

25The men explored that country for 40 days, and then they went back to the camp

26They came to Moses and Aaron and all the Israelites who came together at the town of Kadesh in the Paran Desert. The men told them what they had seen and showed them what the fruit of the land looked like.

27They said to Moses: We went to the land that you sent us to. This is a land with a lot of food, milk, and honey. Here is some of the fruit of the land.

28But there is a problem: The people who live in the land are strong. Their cities are very large and strongly defended. We even saw some Anakites there.

29The Amalekites live in the south. The Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the hill country. The Canaanites live near the sea and by the Jordan River.

30Caleb told the people near Moses to be quiet. Then Caleb said, we should go up and take that land for ourselves. We can easily take that land. Numbers 13: 31 But the men who had gone with him said, we cannot fight against these people! They are much stronger than we are.

32Then the other men said bad things to the Israelites about the land that they had seen. They said: we went through the land to look at everything. All the people that we saw there are very big. They will kill anyone who tries to attack them.

33We saw giants (The descendants of Anak.) We felt like little grasshoppers. Yes, we were like grasshoppers to them!