Numbers 13 Common English Bible

Leaders explore the land of Canaan

13 The Lord spoke to Moses: ²Send out men to explore the land of Canaan, which I’m giving to the Israelites. Send one man from each ancestral tribe, each a chief among them. ³So Moses sent them out from the Paran desert according to the Lord’s command. All the men were leaders among the Israelites. ⁴These are their names:

from the tribe of Reuben, Shammua, Zaccur’s son;

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

⁶from the tribe of Judah, Caleb, Jephunneh’s son;

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

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

⁹from the tribe of Benjamin, Palti, Raphu’s son;

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

¹¹from the tribe of Joseph:

from the tribe of Manasseh, Gaddi, Susi’s son;

¹²from the tribe of Dan, Ammiel, Gemalli’s son;

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

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

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

¹⁶These are the names of the men whom Moses sent out to explore the land. Moses changed the name of Hoshea, Nun’s son, to Joshua.

¹⁷When Moses sent them out to explore the land of Canaan, he said to them, “Go up there into the arid southern plain and into the mountains. ¹⁸You must inspect the land. What is it like? Are the people who live in it strong or weak, few or many? ¹⁹Is the land in which they live good or bad? Are the towns in which they live camps or fortresses? ²⁰Is the land rich or poor? Are there trees in it or not? Be courageous and bring back the land’s fruit.” It was the season of the first ripe grapes.

²¹They went up and explored the land from the Zin desert to Rehob, near Lebo-hamath. ²²They went up into the arid southern plain and entered Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the descendants of the Anakites, lived. (Hebron was built seven years before Tanis^[a] in Egypt.) ²³Then they entered the Cluster^[b] ravine, cut down from there a branch with one cluster of grapes, and carried it on a pole between them. They also took pomegranates and figs. ²⁴That place was called the Cluster ravine because of the cluster of grapes that the Israelites cut down from there.

Report about the land of Canaan

²⁵They returned from exploring the land after forty days. ²⁶They went directly to Moses, Aaron, and the entire Israelite community in the Paran desert at Kadesh. They brought back a report to them and to the entire community and showed them the land’s fruit. ²⁷Then they gave their report: “We entered the land to which you sent us. It’s actually full of milk and honey, and this is its fruit. ²⁸There are, however, powerful people who live in the land. The cities have huge fortifications. And we even saw the descendants of the Anakites there. ²⁹The Amalekites live in the land of the arid southern plain; the Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the mountains; and the Canaanites live by the sea and along the Jordan.”

³⁰Now Caleb calmed the people before Moses and said, “We must go up and take possession of it, because we are more than able to do it.”

³¹But the men who went up with him said, “We can’t go up against the people because they are stronger than we.” ³²They started a rumor about the land that they had explored, telling the Israelites, “The land that we crossed over to explore is a land that devours its residents. All the people we saw in it are huge men. ³³We saw there the Nephilim (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We saw ourselves as grasshoppers, and that’s how we appeared to them.”