1 The LORD spoke to Moses, saying,
2 "Send out men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the children of Israel. Send one man from each of their fathers' tribes, each of them a chief among them."
3 So at the word of the LORD Moses sent them out from the wilderness of Paran, all of them men who were heads of the children of Israel.
4 Their names were these: for the tribe of Reuben, Shammua son of Zaccur;
5 for the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat son of Hori;
6 for the tribe of Judah, Caleb son of Jephunneh;
7 for the tribe of Issachar, Igal son of Joseph;
8 for the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea son of Nun;
9 for the tribe of Benjamin, Palti son of Raphu;
10 for the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel son of Sodi;
11 for the tribe of Joseph, namely the tribe of Manasseh, Gaddi son of Susi;
12 for the tribe of Dan, Ammiel son of Gemalli;
13 for the tribe of Asher, Sethur son of Michael;
14 for the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi son of Vophsi;
15 for the tribe of Gad, Geuel son of Machi.
16 Those are the names of the men Moses sent out to explore the land. Moses gave Hoshea son of Nun the name Joshua.
17 When Moses sent them to explore the land of Canaan, he told them, "Go up through the Negev here, and go on up into the hill country.
18 See what kind of land it is, and whether the people living in it are strong or weak, few or many;
19 whether the land they live in is good or bad; whether the towns they live in are open camps or fortified;
20 and whether the land is fertile or poor, wooded or not. Be bold, and bring back some of the fruit of the land." It was the season for the first ripe grapes.
21 They went up and explored the land from the wilderness of Zin to Rehob, toward Lebo-hamath.
22 Going up through the Negev, they came to Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the descendants of Anak, lived. (Hebron had been built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.)
23 When they reached the Valley of Eshcol, they cut off a branch bearing one cluster of grapes and carried it on a pole between two of them, along with some pomegranates and figs.
24 That place was named the Valley of Eshcol on account of the cluster the children of Israel cut there.
25 After forty days they came back from exploring the land.
26 They came to Moses, Aaron, and the whole congregation of the children of Israel at Kadesh in the wilderness of Paran, reported to them and to the whole congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land.
27 This is the account they gave him: "We went into the land you sent us to, and it really does flow with milk and honey; here is its fruit.
28 But the people living in the land are powerful, and the towns are fortified and very large. We even saw the descendants of Anak there.
29 Amalek lives in the land of the Negev; the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live by the sea and along the Jordan."
30 Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, "We must go up and take possession of it, for we can certainly prevail over it."
31 But the men who had gone up with him said, "We cannot go up against those people; they are too strong for us."
32 And they spread among the children of Israel an evil report about the land they had explored, saying, "The land we passed through to explore is a land that eats up those who live in it, and all the people we saw there are men of huge size.
33 We saw the Nephilim there—the sons of Anak are from the Nephilim—and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and that is how we looked to them."