August 7, 2013, Reading

Numbers 13:1-2, 25–14:1, 26-29, 34-35

1 Yahweh spoke to Moses and said,

2 ‘Send out men, one from each tribe, to reconnoitre the land of Canaan which I am giving the Israelites. Each of them is to be a leading man of the tribe.’

25 After forty days they returned from reconnoitring the country.

26 Making their way to Moses, Aaron and the whole community of Israel, in the desert of Paran, at Kadesh, they made their report to them and the whole community, and displayed the country’s produce.

27 This was the report they gave: ‘We made our way into the country where you sent us. It does indeed flow with milk and honey; here is what it produces.

28 At the same time, its inhabitants are a powerful people; the towns are fortified and very big; yes, and we saw the Anakim there.

29 The Amalekites occupy the Negeb area, the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites the highlands, and the Canaanites the sea coast and the banks of the Jordan.’

30 Caleb called the people round Moses to silence and then said, ‘We must march in immediately and take it; we are certainly able to conquer it.’

31 But the men who had been with him said, ‘We cannot attack these people; they are stronger than we are.’

32 And they began disparaging to the Israelites the country they had reconnoitred, saying, ‘The country we have been to reconnoitre is a country that devours its inhabitants. All the people we saw there were of enormous size.

33 We saw giants there too (the Anakim, descended from the Giants). We felt like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.’

1 The whole community then cried out in dismay, and the people wept all that night.

26 Yahweh then spoke to Moses and Aaron and said:

27 ‘How much longer am I to endure this perverse community muttering against me? I have heard what the Israelites mutter against me.

28 Say to them, “As I live, Yahweh declares, I shall do to you what I have heard you saying.

29 In this desert your dead bodies will fall, all you who were counted in the census, from the age of twenty years and over who have muttered against me.

34 For forty days you reconnoitred the country. Each day will count as a year: for forty years you will bear the consequences of your guilt and learn what it means to reject me.”

35 I, Yahweh, have spoken: this is how I swear to treat this entire perverse community united against me. In this desert, to the last man, they shall die.’