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Numbers 13

05 Oct 2026 - Theology

Spying out the Land


Numbers 13:1-3 (NASB) - “Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Send out men for yourself to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am going to give the sons of Israel; you shall send a man from each of their fathers’ tribes, every one a leader among them.’ So Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran at the command of the Lord, all of them men who were heads of the sons of Israel.”

Here the text says that it was the Lord who told Moses to send the spies, but if we look in Deuteronomy, we see another story:

Deuteronomy 1:22 - “Then all of you approached me [Moses] and said, ‘Let us send men ahead of us, so that they may spy out the land for us, and bring back to us word of the way by which we should go up, and the cities which we should enter.’”

The Lord knew the land was perfect for the Israelites, but the Israelites did not trust the Lord completely - they needed to see for themselves. So the Lord commands, “Send… for yourself”, meaning “for your own sake”. (1)

There were a number of questions Moses had for the spies to see about the land:

Numbers 13:20 (NASB) - “…And show yourselves courageous and get some of the fruit of the land…”

So the spies traveled into the southern part of Canaan, as far as Hebron. They cut a single cluster of grapes that were so heavy that it had to be carried on a pole on the shoulders of two spies. (23)

When the spies returned they reported that Canaan was “a land flowing with milk and honey” (27). But they also reported that the people of Canaan were strong giants, living in fortified cities that could not be conquered by Israel (28,32).

Caleb (in agreement with Joshua) said:

Numbers 13:30 - “…Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it.”

But the other ten spies said:

Numbers 13:32 (NASB) - “We also saw the Nephilim there (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”

The Nephilim were a legendary people, first mentioned in Genesis:

Genesis 6:4 (NASB) - “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of mankind, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.”

The word nephilim means “fallen ones”, but the Greek Jews of Alexandria translated it as “giants”. The Anakites (sons of Anak) were giants, or “people of great stature” (32), and the Israelites comparatively seemed small like grasshoppers.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk pointed out that the spies made a statement that was highly emotive but completely unwarranted. They said: “we were in our eyes like grasshoppers, and so we were in their eyes” (33). They were entitled to say the first half of the sentence. It accurately described how they felt. But they were not entitled to say the second half. They had no idea how they appeared in the eyes of the inhabitants of the land. They merely inferred it and they were wrong. They assummed that others saw them as they saw themselves. They projected their sense of inadequacy onto the external world, with the result that they misinterpreted what they saw.

This is what the text wishes us to understand about the mission of the spies. It was fraught with danger because it was about seeing. The text is consistently sceptical about knowledge based on appearances. One of the ways it signals this is the focus on clothes in Genesis, almost always used to deceive:

One of the achievements of social psychology has been to show that seeing is not a cognitively neutral activity, as if the mind were a kind of camera, accurately capturing the world around us. To the contrary, our impressions and perceptions are largely shaped by what we pay attention to and what we expect to see. Psychologists also speak of the phenomenon known as confirmation bias, which means that we have a tendency to notice facts that confirm our pre-existing attitudes and disregard those that challenge or disconfirm them.

We select for attention the evidence that supports our prior convictions. We see what we expect to see. But appearances mislead, and clothes deceive. People are not what they appear to be. That is the central theme of the story of the spies.

Fear of Freedom

But how could ten of the spies come back with a defeatest report? They had seen with their own eyes how God had sent a series of plagues that brought Egypt, the strongest and longest-lived of all the empires of the ancient world, to its knees (see Exodus 7 - Exodus 12). They had seen the Egyptian army with its cutting-edge military technology, the horse-drawn chariot, drown in the sea while the Israelites passed through it on dry land (see Exodus 14). Egypt was far stronger than the Canaanites, Anakites, and other minor kingdoms that they would have to confront in conquering the land. Nor was this an ancient memory. It had happened not much more than a year before.

The Israelites of Moses’ day had already sun in the Song at the Sea (Exodus 15):

Exodus 15:14-16 (NIV) - “The nations will hear and tremble; anguish will grip the people of Philistia. The chiefs of Edom will be terrified, the leaders of Moab will be seized with trembling, the people of Canaan will melt away; terror and dread will fall on them. By the power of your arm they will be as still as a stone — until your people pass by, Lord, until the people you bought pass by.”

How was it that they forgot what, not long before, they knew?

What is more, the spies were not people plucked at random from among the population. The text states that they were “a man from each of their fathers’ tribes, every one a leader among them” (2). They were leaders. They were not people given lightly to fear.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson says, “The spies were not afraid of failure. They were afraid of success.”

What was their current situation? They were eating manna and drinking water provided by God. They were led by a pillar of cloud. They were camped around the Tabernacle and were in constant contact with God. Never before had a people lived so close to God.

What would be their situation if they entered the land? They would have to fight battles, maintain an army, create an economy, farm the land, and face all types of distractions that come from living in the world.

The spies were not afraid of failure. They were afraid of success. They wanted to spend their lives in the closest possible proximity with God, devoting all of their time to Him. What they did not understand is that God seeks to bring heaven down to earth, to operate within this world.

The spies did not doubt that Israel could win its battles with the inhabitants of the land. Their concern was not physical but spiritual. They did not want to become just another nation among the nations of the earth. They did not want to lose their unique relationship with God. Ultimately, the spies feared freedom and its responsibilities. Clearly this is not the plain sense of the narrative, but we should not dismiss it on that account. It is psychoanalytical reading of the unconscious mindset of the spies.

But the Bible is about the responsibilities of freedom. God chose the people of Israel to make His presence visible in the world. Therefore, we must live in the world, but not be of the world.

Jesus, praying about His disciples, said:

John 17:15-16 (NIV) - “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.”

“This, then, is the answer to the problem of civilization: not to flee from the realm of space; to work with things of space but to be in love with eternity.” 4

References

  1. The Hebrew - Greek Key Study Bible (KJV Version)
  2. Rabbi Seymour Rossel, The Torah Portion-by-Portion (2007)
  3. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant & Conversation - Numbers: The Wilderness Years (2017)
  4. Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath (1951)




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