Thursday, November 26, 2020

Numbers 13:21-33 comments: the scouts return with an 'evil report'

 

Numbers 13:21 ¶  So they went up, and searched the land from the wilderness of Zin unto Rehob, as men come to Hamath. 22  And they ascended by the south, and came unto Hebron; where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the children of Anak, were. (Now Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.) 23  And they came unto the brook of Eshcol, and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff; and they brought of the pomegranates, and of the figs. 24  The place was called the brook Eshcol, because of the cluster of grapes which the children of Israel cut down from thence. 25  And they returned from searching of the land after forty days.

 

Numbers 13:26 ¶  And they went and came to Moses, and to Aaron, and to all the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the wilderness of Paran, to Kadesh; and brought back word unto them, and unto all the congregation, and shewed them the fruit of the land. 27  And they told him, and said, We came unto the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey; and this is the fruit of it. 28  Nevertheless the people be strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled, and very great: and moreover we saw the children of Anak there. 29  The Amalekites dwell in the land of the south: and the Hittites, and the Jebusites, and the Amorites, dwell in the mountains: and the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and by the coast of Jordan. 30  And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it. 31  But the men that went up with him said, We be not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we. 32  And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature. 33  And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.

 

An evil report is a report that is negative, has some bad things to say about a subject. We first saw mention of it in the story of Joseph.

Genesis 37:2  These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren; and the lad was with the sons of Bilhah, and with the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives: and Joseph brought unto his father their evil report.

 

Another thing of note is that these scouts or spies saw giants. Remember what was said in the first part of Genesis.

Genesis 6:4  There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

 

Keep in mind that since Genesis 6:9 says that Noah was perfect in his generations it is possible there was no genetic taint of the fallen sons of God and human women so this genetic abnormality that produced giants would come through his wife to his sons. I want to repeat what I said in my comments on Genesis 6:4.

“The resultant offspring of these sons of God and human women were giants, famous as heroes in myth and legend. The mythologies of the world have brought us stories of these great men of renown with various names and in various forms. The phrase and also after that shows that this was an ongoing problem even after the Flood. I will not go into the many websites about and books written on findings of giant remains in graves and tombs as it is difficult to distinguish fact from fancy and outright fraud. Sticking with the Bible account, though, we have many references that would render some of the modern stories about archaeological finds understandable and believable. Here are a few examples of the many references to giants with the measurement given so that we see these were not just National Basketball Association (NBA) style large men.

Deuteronomy 3:11  For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man. [that is between

13 ½ to 18 feet long depending on the actual length of a cubit]

1Samuel 17:4  And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span. [Goliath was between around 9 feet plus and 12 feet tall]

Other references to show that there were places where such giants were common are;

Numbers 13:33  And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.

Deuteronomy 2:10  The Emims dwelt therein in times past, a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims; 11  Which also were accounted giants, as the Anakims; but the Moabites call them Emims.

Deuteronomy 3:13  And the rest of Gilead, and all Bashan, being the kingdom of Og, gave I unto the half tribe of Manasseh; all the region of Argob, with all Bashan, which was called the land of giants.

Joshua 15:8  And the border went up by the valley of the son of Hinnom unto the south side of the Jebusite; the same is Jerusalem: and the border went up to the top of the mountain that lieth before the valley of Hinnom westward, which is at the end of the valley of the giants northward:”

The conditions in Canaan at this point in time are vastly different than they were during the famine time of Joseph’s rule in Egypt. It was clearly going through a time of great agricultural abundance and plenty, ripe for the picking.

Ancient Canaan was at a strategic point between Europe, Asia, and Africa and while under Egyptian control up until the loss of the Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, they would have been militarily strong contending before and after that against each other and other conquerors as we saw in Genesis 14. These were walled towns, mini-kingdoms, with a history of warfare. Caleb recommended an immediate assault to overwhelm the Canaanites, probably not united at this point with their master Egypt not on the scene still harboring their petty jealousies and conflicts between each other. Now was the time.

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