In short
Numbers 13-14. God commands that 12 people from Israel go spy out the land they are to invade and bring back a report of the geography, people and resources. (It’s a recon mission.) What could go wrong?
Why it is important
The end result of all of this is that God punishes almost all of the 600,000* Israelites to die in the wilderness and never get to see the promised land. Only TWO people get to go into Canaan – and neither one is Moses.
What is in this story
- The LORD tells Moses to pick one man of every tribe to be spies (Num 13:2)
- They go and return from their mission and report:
- It’s wonderful, and the men are colossal (Num 13:27-29)
- Caleb (one of the 12) says, Yep, let’s do this! (We find out later that Joshua has his back.)
- The other spies say, Nope; we’re all gonna die!
- Their fellow countrymen – who never seem to need much convincing – respond with, I knew it! Let’s pack it up and go back to slavery.
- For their faith, only Caleb and Joshua get to enter Canaan (Num 14:30)
- For their disbelief, most of the rest of the nation* is cursed to die in the wilderness (Num 14:29) in the course of 40 years (Num 14:34)
- The children are exempt (Num 14:31)
Things that are not so well-known
- Joshua was originally Hoshea; Moses changed his name (Num 13:16)
- The huge grape clusters (Num 13:23 – OK, the teachers know this, but I didn’t)
- The literal giants (Num 13:32-33)
Theology and doctrine
We will cover this tomorrow when we expand on the grumbling of the Israelites.
Footnotes
* Num 14:29-30; the judgment seems to be specifically against the adult males, which numbered 600,000. Clearly children are NOT included in the punishment. I am not clear if women are included – if so, the number would be higher. But since it references the census, I would say it’s just the men.
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