11 Exploring Canaan [Numbers 13:1—14:12]
The Bible passage: [Numbers 13:1—14:12]
The Story:
God told Moses to send men to scout out the land of Canaan. This is the land that God had promised to Abraham many years before.
Moses was instructed to choose one man from each of the twelve ancestral tribes. The ancestral tribes were named for the twelve sons of Jacob (also called Israel).
God assigned the descendants of Levi to be priests for his people, so they were not considered to be an ancestral tribe. Joseph’s descendants were divided into two tribes; named after his two sons (Manasseh and Ephraim).
So, the twelve ancestral tribes were named Reuben, Simeon, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Manasseh, Ephraim, and Benjamin.
Moses instructed the twelve “spies” to, “See what the land is like. Are the people there strong or weak? Are there just a few of them or many? Is the land good or bad? Do they live in villages or forts? Are there trees or not? Bring back some fruit from the land.”
They went up and scouted out the land. While there, they cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes. The cluster was so large that it had to be carried on a pole by two men. They also took some figs and pomegranates.
After 40 days of scouting the land, they returned to the people in the encampment.
They reported to Moses and the people: “We went into the land where we were sent. It is a land flowing with milk and honey. You can see here that we brought back some of its fruit. However, the people are very strong. The cities are large and fortified. Some of the people we saw there are giants.”
One of the men, Caleb, quieted the people and said, “We must go and take the land. We can certainly conquer it!”
The other men who had gone with him responded, “We can’t go against those people. They are so much stronger than we are!”
The whole community cried loudly and wept all night.
The next day they complained to Moses, “If only we had died in Egypt or in the wilderness! Why were we brought here to die in battle? Our wives and children will become plunder. We need to go back to Egypt.”
Moses and Aaron (his brother) didn’t know how to stand up to the crowd. Caleb and Joshua, another of the spies, stood strong and told the entire Israelite community, “The land we explored is an extremely good land. If God is pleased with us, He will give us the land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Just don’t rebel against the Lord, and don’t be afraid of the people of the land. We will devour them. God is with us. Don’t be afraid of those people!”
While the whole community threatened to stone them, God appeared before them at the tent of meeting.
God said to Moses, “How long will these people despise Me? They refuse to trust Me despite all the miracles that I have performed for them! I will strike them with a plague and destroy them. Then I will make you into a larger and mightier nation than they are.”
Moses pointed out that people would then say that he wasn’t a great God if He brought the people out of slavery in Egypt only to die in the wilderness.
God chose not to destroy the people.
Even though Joshua and Caleb told the people that they should trust God to give them the land that He had promised, the people chose not to go. They used the safety of their children as an excuse. God told them that they would wander in the wilderness for 40 years, that they would all die during that 40 years of wandering, and their children would take the land.
The Lessons:
- God had promised the land of Canaan to the people of Israel. He performed many miracles in getting them out of Egypt. Still, when they got to Canaan, ten of the spies that were sent in to check out the land said, “The people are too strong. We can’t do it.” With all they had seen, they still didn’t trust God to take care of them.
- Joshua and Caleb did trust God and believed that the people could take the land. Because of their faith, they were allowed to go into the Promised Land 40 years later. In fact, Joshua became the leader of Israel for that time.
- I love the irony at the end of this story. The people used their children as an excuse, saying the land wouldn’t be safe for them. So, God told them that the adults would all die in the wilderness and their children would be given the land.
- We have an interesting and difficult situation to understand. Does God change His mind? It appears that Moses changes God’s mind about destroying the people of Israel and starting over with Moses’ family. That’s difficult to understand because the Bible tells us that God never changes (fancy word is “immutable“). We are also told that He knows everything (that word is “omniscient“). Since God knew all along what the people would do, and since God knew what Moses would say about the situation, God knew His final decision all along. I’ll offer a few thoughts.
- [1 Samuel 15:29] says, “Furthermore, the Eternal One of Israel does not lie or change His mind, for He is not man who changes his mind.” (CSB)
- Most of the time, God would give the people instructions and then told them what the consequences would be for disobeying. Perhaps in this case He skipped straight to stating the consequences because they had already turned their back on Him.
- When we disobey God, we face the consequences of our actions. If we repent of our sin, God forgives us. He often withholds the consequences, but not always. Moses asked God to give the people another chance, in effect voicing their repentance for them. Repentance is more than just being sorry for what you are doing, it’s making a complete turn around and going in the opposite direction.
- I believe that God didn’t change His mind; He let Moses talk it through and learn from the situation.
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