Numbers 13
One Cluster Carried Between Two on a Pole
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Commissioning of the Scouts
13:1The Lord spoke to Moses, saying,
13:2“Send men for yourself, and let them inspect the land of the Canaanites, which I am giving the Israelites as a possession. You shall send one man from each tribe, according to the groups of their ancestral families, each a leader among them.”
13:3Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran through the Lord’s voice. All these men were leaders of the Israelites.
13:4These were their names: from the tribe of Reuben, Salamiel son of Zaccur;
13:5from the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat son of Souri;
13:6from the tribe of Judah, Caleb son of Jephunneh;
13:7from the tribe of Issachar, Igal son of Joseph;
13:8from the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea son of Nun;
13:9from the tribe of Benjamin, Palti son of Raphu;
13:10from the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel son of Sodi;
13:11from the tribe of Joseph, of the sons of Manasseh, Gaddi son of Susi;
13:12from the tribe of Dan, Ammiel son of Gemalli;
13:13from the tribe of Asher, Sethur son of Michael;
13:14from the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi son of Iabi;
13:15from the tribe of Gad, Gaddiel son of Machi.
13:16These were the names of the men Moses sent to explore the land. Moses named Hoshea son of Nun Joshua.
The Instructions of Moses
13:17Moses sent them to inspect the land of Canaan and said to them, “Go up by this wilderness, and you shall go up into the hill country.
13:18See what the land is like, and whether the people settled on it are stronger or weak, few or many.
13:19Is the land on which they are settled good or bad? What are the towns in which they live—walled or unwalled?
13:20Is the land rich or neglected? Are there trees in it or not? Persevere and take some of the land’s fruit.” The days were spring days, forerunners of the grape harvest.
The Forty-Day Expedition
13:21They went up and inspected the land from the wilderness of Sin to Raab, as one enters Ephaath.
13:22They went up through the wilderness and came as far as Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, families of Anak, were. Hebron had been built seven years before Tanis in Egypt.
13:23They came as far as the Ravine of the Cluster and inspected it. They cut from there a branch with one cluster of grapes upon it and carried it on carrying poles, with some pomegranates and figs.
13:24They named that place Ravine of the Cluster because of the cluster the Israelites cut from there.
13:25They returned from there after inspecting the land for forty days.
The Divided Report
13:26They came to Moses, Aaron, and the whole congregation of Israelites in the wilderness of Paran, Kadesh. They gave a report to them and the whole congregation and showed the land’s fruit.
13:27They told him, “We came to the land to which you sent us, a land flowing with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.
13:28But the nation living on it is bold, and the cities are strongly fortified with walls and very large. We saw the family of Anak there.
13:29Amalek lives in the land toward the south. The Hittites, Hivites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the hill country; the Canaanites live beside the sea and beside the River Jordan.”
13:30Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said to him, “No! We shall certainly go up and inherit it, for we shall surely prevail against them.”
13:31But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not going up, for we shall certainly not be able to go up against the nation, because it is much stronger than we are.”
13:32They brought dismay about the land they had inspected to the Israelites, saying, “The land through which we passed to inspect it is a land that devours its inhabitants. All the people we saw in it are exceedingly tall men.
13:33There we saw the giants. We were like grasshoppers before them, and indeed so we were before them.”
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Saints Translation · Liturgical reading edition · V1 · working draft awaiting specialist review.