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13
Twelve Israeli men explored Canaan
1 Yahweh said to Moses/me, 2 “Send some men to Canaan land to explore it. That is the land that I will give to you Israelis. Send men who are leaders in their tribes.”
3 So Moses/I did what Yahweh commanded him/me. He/I sent out twelve Israeli men who were all leaders of their tribes. He/I sent them from their/our camp at Paran in the desert. 4 These are the names of the men and the tribes they belonged to:
Shammua, the son of Zaccur, from the tribe of Reuben;
5 Shaphat, the son of Hori, from the tribe of Simeon;
6 Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, from the tribe of Judah;
7 Igal, the son of Joseph, from the tribe of Issachar;
8 Hoshea, the son of Nun, from the tribe of Ephraim;
9 Palti, the son of Raphu, from the tribe of Benjamin;
10 Gaddiel, the son of Sodi, from the tribe of Zebulun;
11 Gaddi, the son of Susi, from the tribe of Manasseh;
12 Ammiel, the son of Gemalli, from the tribe of Dan;
13 Sethur, the son of Michael, from the tribe of Asher;
14 Nahbi, the son of Vophsi, from the tribe of Naphtali;
15 and Geuel, the son of Maki, from the tribe of Gad.
16 Those are the names of the men whom Moses/I sent out to explore Canaan. Before they left, Moses/I gave Hoshea a new name, Joshua, which means ‘Yahweh is the one who saves.’
17 Before Moses/I sent them to explore Canaan, he/I said to them, “Go through the southern part of Canaan, and then go north into the hilly area. 18 See what the land is like. See if the people who live there are strong or weak. See if there are many people or only a few people. 19 Find out what kind of land they live in [RHQ]. Is it good or bad? Find out about the towns in which they live [RHQ]. Do they have walls around them or not? 20 Find out about the soil [RHQ]. Is it ◄fertile/good for growing crops► or not? Find out if there are trees there [RHQ]. Try to bring back some of the fruit that grows in that land.” He/I said that because it was the beginning of the time to harvest grapes.
21 So those men went to Canaan. They went through the entire land, from the Zin desert in the south all the way to Rehob town near Lebo-Hamath in the north. 22 In the south, they went to Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, huge men descended from Anak, lived. Hebron was a city that was built seven years before Zoan city was built in Egypt. 23 In one valley, they cut from a grapevine one cluster of grapes. Because it was very large, they needed two men to carry it on a pole. They also picked some pomegranates and some figs to carry back to their camp. 24 They called that place Eshcol which means ‘cluster’ because they had cut that huge cluster of grapes there. 25 After they explored the land for 40 days, they returned to their camp.
The report about Canaan
26 They came to Aaron and Moses/me and the rest of the Israeli people in the desert at Paran. They reported to everyone what they had seen. They also showed them the fruit that they had brought back. 27 But this is what they reported to Moses/me: “We arrived in the land that you sent us to explore. It is truly a beautiful land, and it is very fertile [IDM]. Here is some of the fruit. 28 But the people who live there are very strong. Their cities are large and are surrounded by walls. We even saw some of the huge descendants of Anak there. 29 The descendants of Amalek live in the southern part of the land, and the descendants of Heth, Jebus, and Amor live in the hilly area to the north. The descendants of Canaan live along the coast of the Mediterranean sea and along the Jordan River.”
30 When they said that, the people were afraid and started to cry out very loudly. But Caleb told the people who were standing near Moses/me to be quiet. Then he said, “We should go there and take the land, because we are certainly able to conquer it!”
31 But the men who had gone with him said, “No, we cannot attack and defeat those people! They are much stronger than we are!” 32 So those men gave to the Israeli people a bad report about the land that they had explored. They said, “The land that we explored is very large; we cannot conquer it. And all the people whom we saw are very tall. 33 We even saw the descendants of Nephili there. The descendants of Anak whom we saw there are descended from the giant Nephili people. When we saw them, we felt as small as grasshoppers [SIM], and they thought that we looked like grasshoppers too!”

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© 2008-2017 Ellis W. Deibler, Jr.