Chapter Thirteen

The spies of the land of Canaan.

Numbers 13:4. And Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran, by the command of the Lord, and all of them were leaders among the sons of Israel. “Leaders,” that is, representatives of the most important and honorable families.

Numbers 13:17. These are the names of the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land. And Moses called Hoshea the son of Nun, Joshua. With the change of his name, Joshua assumes duties higher than those of a servant attending upon Moses (Exod 24:13), becoming his closest helper. Hoshea, Hosheva, or Hoshaya means “deliverance,” “salvation.” To this term Moses adds the name of Jehovah, Yah, predicting in Joshua God’s instrument for the salvation of Israel. In the Book of Nehem 6:17 the name Yahoshua is pronounced as Yeshua. Our reading “Joshua” is taken from the Greek translation of the LXX. According to the understanding of the holy fathers and teachers of the Church, the successor of Moses, who led Israel into the promised land, was a type of Jesus Christ, who opened to believers in him the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven (St. Justin the Philosopher, Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, chapters 34, 70, 76, 86, 100, 113; St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture X; Theodoret: Commentary on Numbers, question 25; Commentary on Deuteronomy, question 43; Commentary on Joshua, questions 1, 3, 4, 16).

Numbers 13:18. And Moses sent them [from the wilderness of Paran] to spy out the land of Canaan, and said to them, “Go up into the Negeb and go up into the hill country, “Into this southern country” of Canaan, the Negeb.

Numbers 13:22. So they went up and spied out the land from the wilderness of Zin to Rehob, near Lebo-hamath; “From the wilderness of Zin.” The wilderness of Zin (Cin) mentioned in this verse should not be confused with the wilderness of Zin on the western coast of the Sinai peninsula (Exod 16). The wilderness of Cin forms the northeastern part of the wilderness of Paran. On the wilderness of Paran, see the note to Num 10:12. Rehob (Josh 19:28; Judg 1:31) — a locality within the territory of the tribe of Asher, not far from Sidon. Hamath — a plain and mountain pass between the branches of the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, south of the city of Hamath, located in Coele-Syria, on the Orontes River.

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 back some pomegranates and figs; Enanak, son of the prince Arba, founder of the town of Kiriath-arba (Hebron) (Josh 15:13). “Sons of Anak” were distinguished by their height and strength. The remark: “Now Hebron was built seven years before Zoan, the city of Egypt,” — is very intelligible from the lips of people who had just been freed from the yoke of the Egyptians and were still full of memories of the country they had abandoned. The comparison with an ancient Canaanite city, not Memphis but Zoan, suggests the thought that the capital of the Pharaohs of the time of the exodus was indeed this latter city. According to Knobel’s opinion, the mention of Zoan alongside Hebron, after the names of Anak and his children, suggests that both this city and the other were founded by representatives of one and the same people. Zoan was built by the Hyksos; perhaps the Hyksos (to whose tribe Anak also belonged) also built Hebron (Vlastov, Sacred History).

Numbers 13:24. 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 back some pomegranates and figs; The valley of Eshcol was named so, in all probability, after its ancient owner, Abraham’s ally Eshcol (Gen 14:13). Van de Velde says that he saw a spring at the distance of a mile from Hebron, called “Ain-Eskali,” “the spring of Eshcol” (the Greek-Slavonic text understands “Eshcol” as an appellative: a valley of clusters, LXX: “Valley of the cluster”).

Numbers 13:27. And they went and came to Moses and Aaron and to the entire congregation of the sons of Israel in the wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh, and brought back word to them and to the entire congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land; Kadesh — a locality near the southern borders of Canaan. According to the opinion of very many commentators, it can be found in the valley of the Arabah, identifying it with the present Ain el-Weyba. In the list of Israelite camps (Num 33) after Hazeroth follows the camp at Rithmah. It is supposed that Kadesh was formerly called Rithmah and received the name Kadesh (kadosh — holy) later, due to the fact that the ark of the covenant stood there for a long time, and here also took place the terrible manifestation of God’s righteousness toward the disobedient people.

Numbers 13:33. And they brought to the sons of Israel an evil report of the land which 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 men of great stature; “A land that devours its inhabitants,” that is, a land in which constant wars occur, destructive to the population. The constant wars within Canaan can be explained both by its geographical and by its ethnographic-political situation. Geographically, Canaan represented a bridge connecting the chief territories of the ancient world. In an ethnographic-political sense, Canaan, or the kingdom of the Hittites, represented a network of small independent principalities, often hostile to one another.