Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Numbers · About this commentary
The Land Devours Its Inhabitants
Numbers 13:1-33
1 Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, · WEB
Twelve men see the same country and agree about the facts, and ten of them add a conclusion the facts do not carry.
Twelve men are sent, one from each tribe, and their brief is detailed reconnaissance — the people, the cities, the soil, the trees, be courageous, and bring some of the fruit of the land Numbers 13:20.
They are gone forty days, and the number will matter later Numbers 14:34.
The report begins accurately and generously. We came to the land where you sent us. Surely it flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit Numbers 13:27. They have the evidence in their hands — a cluster of grapes carried between two men on a pole Numbers 13:23.
Then: however Numbers 13:28.
What follows is also accurate. The people are strong, the cities are fortified, the Anakim are there, and the tribes are listed by region. Nothing in it is false, and none of it is new — Israel had been told from the start that the land was occupied by nations greater and mightier than you Deuteronomy 7:1.
Caleb's answer accepts every fact and draws a different conclusion: let's go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it! Numbers 13:30.
The disagreement is not about intelligence. Twelve men saw the same walls. What divides them is what they think the walls mean, and the ten state their premise plainly: we aren't able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we Numbers 13:31.
That sentence is true, and it is the whole error. It measures the enemy against Israel, and Israel is not the relevant quantity.
The report then stops being reconnaissance and becomes something else. The land... is a land that eats up its inhabitants Numbers 13:32 — which contradicts the milk and honey they had just described and the fruit they were carrying. The book calls it an evil report.
And the last line is the one that explains everything. We were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight Numbers 13:33.
The first half is a fact about themselves. The second half is a claim about what the Anakim thought, which they cannot possibly know — and they have projected it. Men who have decided they are insects assume everyone else has noticed.
settled What this mark means