2026 03/08 Numbers 13; Faith or Fear?; Audio available at: http://www.ephraimbible.org/Sermons/20260308_numbers-13.mp3

God set his people free from their slavery to Egypt. He brought them through the sea and destroyed their enemies. He met their needs and brought them to Mount Sinai, where he entered into a covenant relationship with them, gave them the covenant contract, which they broke before it was even delivered, yet he forgave their sins and promised to dwell with them, to be their God and take them to be his own people. They built him a sanctuary to dwell in the middle of their camp. He had the fighting men numbered, arrayed around his tent, organized for the march to the promised land. Along the way they grumbled about their hardships, complained about his miraculous provision of food, even Moses’ own siblings spoke against his leadership.

But here they are in Hazeroth, in the wilderness of Paran, on the southern border of the promised land, poised to enter in and realize all the promises of God to them.

Numbers 13:1 The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the people of Israel. From each tribe of their fathers you shall send a man, every one a chief among them.” 3 So Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran, according to the command of the LORD, all of them men who were heads of the people of Israel.

God’s Promise of Land

Go, spy out the land which I am giving to you. This was the Lord’s purpose all the way back to Abraham. In Genesis 12, God called Abram to leave his homeland and go ‘to the land that I will show you’. Abraham journeyed to Canaan, to Shechem,

Genesis 12:7 Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him.

Then again in Genesis 13, east of Bethel,

Genesis 13:14 The LORD said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, 15 for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. 16 I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. 17 Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.” 18 So Abram moved his tent and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron, and there he built an altar to the LORD.

Here we are over 600 years later, the offspring of Abraham are numerous as the dust of the earth, camped at the border of the land the Lord promised to give to them. Like Abraham they are to go walk through and inspect the land the Lord is giving to them.

God Grants Their Request for Spies

In Deuteronomy 1, Moses writes of this in retrospect, and fills in some details he doesn’t give us here.

Deuteronomy 1:19 “Then we set out from Horeb and went through all that great and terrifying wilderness that you saw, on the way to the hill country of the Amorites, as the LORD our God commanded us. And we came to Kadesh-barnea. 20 And I said to you, ‘You have come to the hill country of the Amorites, which the LORD our God is giving us. 21 See, the LORD your God has set the land before you. Go up, take possession, as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has told you. Do not fear or be dismayed.’ 22 Then all of you came near me and said, ‘Let us send men before us, that they may explore the land for us and bring us word again of the way by which we must go up and the cities into which we shall come.’ 23 The thing seemed good to me, and I took twelve men from you, one man from each tribe.

In Deuteronomy Moses recalls that he charged the people to go up and take possession of the land that YHWH God is giving to us; but it was the peoples’ request to first send spies ahead to discover the best ways of approach. This seemed good to Moses, and the Lord granted this request and commanded them to send men to spy out the land.

Could this be another instance of the people postponing obedience and asking for something that was not good for them, and the Lord granting their request?

Here we have another list of names, this one different from the lists of the chiefs of the tribes in the earlier chapters; probably younger men were chosen for the rigorous task of a 40 day 500 mile journey to take inventory of the land.

Numbers 13:4 And these were their names: From the tribe of Reuben, Shammua the son of Zaccur; 5 from the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat the son of Hori; 6 from the tribe of Judah, Caleb the son of Jephunneh; 7 from the tribe of Issachar, Igal the son of Joseph; 8 from the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea the son of Nun; 9 from the tribe of Benjamin, Palti the son of Raphu; 10 from the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel the son of Sodi; 11 from the tribe of Joseph (that is, from the tribe of Manasseh), Gaddi the son of Susi; 12 from the tribe of Dan, Ammiel the son of Gemalli; 13 from the tribe of Asher, Sethur the son of Michael; 14 from the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi the son of Vophsi; 15 from the tribe of Gad, Geuel the son of Machi.

16 These were the names of the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land. And Moses called Hoshea the son of Nun Joshua.

‘Hoshea’ meant salvation; ‘Yehoshua’ (Joshua) meant YHWH saves; this Hebrew name translated into the Greek came across as Iesoun or Iesous (Neh.8:17); Jesus in English.

Walk the Land and Take Inventory

Moses gives this group of 12 men clear instructions on what they are to accomplish;

Numbers 13:17 Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan and said to them, “Go up into the Negeb and go up into the hill country, 18 and see what the land is, and whether the people who dwell in it are strong or weak, whether they are few or many, 19 and whether the land that they dwell in is good or bad, and whether the cities that they dwell in are camps or strongholds, 20 and whether the land is rich or poor, and whether there are trees in it or not. Be of good courage and bring some of the fruit of the land.” Now the time was the season of the first ripe grapes.

It is now late July; about 2 months after leaving Sinai; according to Deuteronomy 1, that’s an 11 day journey for a smaller group without delays. The Lord said in Exodus 3,

Exodus 3:8 and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

God promised a land flowing with milk and honey; fruit of the flocks and of fields; does the land measure up to God’s promise? God promised to drive out the inhabitants before them; are those inhabitants strong or weak, few or many, dwelling in fortresses or camps?

Hebron, Mamre, Macphela

Numbers 13:21 So they went up and spied out the land from the wilderness of Zin to Rehob, near Lebo-hamath. 22 They went up into the Negeb and came to Hebron. Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the descendants of Anak, were there. (Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.)

They walked the land from South to North. Hebron is specifically highlighted. As we just read from Genesis 13, after God’s promise to give the land to the descendants of Abraham, the Lord said:

Genesis 13:17 Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.” 18 So Abram moved his tent and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron, and there he built an altar to the LORD.

This picture is Abraham’s camping spot by the oaks of Mamre outside the city of Hebron, where he built an altar to YHWH. Hebron is where in Genesis 23, Abraham purchased a plot of land from Ephron the Hittitie to bury his wife Sarah in the cave of Macphela. This is where according to Genesis 49 Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Leah and Jacob were buried. Here is a picture of the monument built over this spot today.

Hebron is a foothold for Israel in the promised land. Hebron is legal Israelite property in the middle of Canaan. Hebron is a reminder of the faithfulness of God to the patriarchs who are buried there. But that’s not what is highlighted in this account. We would expect the narrative to read ‘we came to Hebron, to the plot of land where our forefathers are buried’. But instead three of the current inhabitants are named, sons of Anak; and the antiquity of the city, built before Zoan in Egypt is the focus of their attention. More on this in a bit.

Clusters of Eschol

Numbers 13:23 And they came to the Valley of Eshcol and cut down from there a branch with a single cluster of grapes, and they carried it on a pole between two of them; they also brought some pomegranates and figs. 24 That place was called the Valley of Eshcol, because of the cluster that the people of Israel cut down from there.

Like the poles that carried the ark of the covenant, or the carrying frames constructed for carrying the golden lampstand, two of the men carried a single cluster (Eschol means cluster) of grapes on a carrying frame.

Numbers 13:25 At the end of forty days they returned from spying out the land. 26 And they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the people of Israel in the wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh. They brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. 27 And they told him, “We came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.

Imagine having been slaves in Egypt 400 years eating leeks and garlic and fish; imagine a year in the wilderness where bread from heaven had to be supplied to meet their nutritional needs. Imagine after all this seeing luscious fruit, ripe figs, pomegranates, a cluster of grapes bound to a pole, carried by two men. But…

A Bad ‘But’

The Bible is full of good buts. Ephesians 2 paints our hopeless condition;

Ephesians 2:3 …we… were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved—

But… what comes next in this text is a bad but, a strong adversative; the land is indeed exceedingly good, flowing with milk and honey; it is all it was promised to be, but…

Numbers 13:28 However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. 29 The Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negeb. The Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the hill country. And the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and along the Jordan.”

None of this should have come as a surprise. This should not be a ‘but’; it should be an ‘and’. We read in Genesis 12 and 13 where God promised Abraham the land. In Genesis 15,

Genesis 15:18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, 19 the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, 20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.”

Exodus 3 also describes the promised land as the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. The Lord never suggested that he was giving them a vacant land, a land they wouldn’t have to fight to possess. Numbers begins with numbering the military aged men and organizing their marching and camping formations. In fact, he had told Abraham that it would not be until the fourth generation that his descendants would ‘come back here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete’ (Gen.15:16). God would dispossess these nations because of their abhorrent sins, and he warned his own people not to adopt those wicked practices, or they would fall under his condemnation as well.

Apparently this report created quite a stir.

Caleb’s Confidence

Numbers 13:30 But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.”

Caleb was one of the twelve men sent to spy out the land. All twelve of them saw the same things. They had the same data. Caleb didn’t dispute any of the information presented. But the way it was presented was intended to lead to a conclusion. The Lord commanded them to spy out the land ‘which I am giving to the people of Israel’, but when they returned, they said ‘We came to the land to which you sent us’; no mention of God’s promise to give it to them. Moses’ instructions started with the occupants; strong or weak, few or many, in camps or fortified cities, and ended with the land, rich or poor, trees and fruit. In their report they presented the evidence of the fruitfulness of the land first, but concluded with the strength, fortifications, and size of its inhabitants. The majority perspective was pessimistic. But Caleb was full of faith. “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.”

So far the ten had only framed the facts in a negative light. Now they come right out and say what they believe.

Numbers 13:31 Then the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are.” 32 So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. 33 And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”

Many commentators think everything the spies said here was exaggeration. I’m not so sure. According to Deuteronomy 2:10 the Anakim were also called Rephaim as listed in Genesis 15, and described as ‘a people great and many, tall’. Deuteronomy 3 mentions Og king of Bashan, who was of the remnant of the Rephaim, whose bed was 9 cubits (or 13.5 feet long). David killed Goliath who was over 9 feet tall (1Sam.17:4-7) and 2 Samuel 21:16-22 and 1 Chronicles 20:4-8 record David’s mighty men killing the four other giants of Gath (does that explain why David originally took five stones onto the battlefield?).

The difference was not in the facts; the difference was factoring God into the equation. Would they be driven by their own fear or by faith in God and his promises? Humanly speaking, it was an impossible task. They felt like grasshoppers, the smallest creature on the Israelite diet. They thought they would be swallowed whole by the giants. They described the land as a land that devours its inhabitants; The Lord said that the land would vomit out its wicked inhabitants because of their abhorrent sins (Lev.18:24-28; 20:22-24; cf. Deut.18:14). Caleb was not looking at military might alone; he was looking at God and his promises. David’s words sum it up well;

1 Samuel 17:45 Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.

What voices will you listen to? God has made even greater promises to us in Jesus; gospel promises. Forgiveness of sins to all who believe in Jesus’ name (Ac.10:43); ‘there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’ (Rom.8:1); we are delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of his beloved Son (Col.1:14); made alive with Christ (Col.2:13); sealed with the promised Holy Spirit (Eph.1:13); ‘more than conquerors through him who loved us’ (Rom.8:37).

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Pastor Rodney Zedicher ~ Ephraim Church of the Bible ~ www.ephraimbible.org