Numbers 12–13

Chapter 12

The Murmuring of Miriam and Aaron

¹Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married (for he had married a ^aCushite woman);

^2aand they said, “Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has He not spoken through us as well?” And the Lord heard it.

³(Now the man Moses was ^avery humble, more than any man who was on the face of the earth.)

⁴Suddenly the Lord said to Moses and Aaron and to Miriam, “You three come out to the tent of meeting.” So the three of them came out.

^5aThen the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the doorway of the tent, and He called ¹Aaron and Miriam. When they had both come forward,

⁶He said,

“Hear now My words:

If there is a prophet among you,

I, the Lord, shall make Myself known to him in a ^avision.

I shall speak with him in a ^bdream.

⁷“Not so, with ^aMy servant Moses,

^bHe is faithful in all My household;

^8aWith him I speak mouth to mouth,

Even openly, and not in dark sayings,

And he beholds ^bthe form of the Lord.

Why then were you not afraid

To speak against My servant, against Moses?”

⁹So the anger of the Lord burned against them and ^aHe departed.

¹⁰But when the cloud had withdrawn from over the tent, behold, ^aMiriam was leprous, as ^bwhite as snow. As Aaron turned toward Miriam, behold, she was leprous.

¹¹Then Aaron said to Moses, “Oh, my lord, I beg you, ^ado not account this sin to us, in which we have acted foolishly and in which we have sinned.

¹²“Oh, do not let her be like one dead, whose flesh is half eaten away when he comes from his mother’s womb!”

¹³Moses cried out to the Lord, saying, “O God, ^aheal her, I pray!”

¹⁴But the Lord said to Moses, “If her father had but ^aspit in her face, would she not bear her shame for seven days? Let her be shut up for seven days ^boutside the camp, and afterward she may be received again.”

¹⁵So ^aMiriam was shut up outside the camp for seven days, and the people did not move on until Miriam was received again.

¹⁶Afterward, however, the people moved out from Hazeroth and camped in the wilderness of Paran.

Chapter 13

Spies View the Land

¹Then ^athe Lord spoke to Moses saying,

²“^aSend out for yourself men so that they may spy out the land of Canaan, which I am going to give to the sons of Israel; you shall send a man from each of their fathers’ tribes, every one a leader among them.”

³So Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran at the ¹command of the Lord, all of them men who were heads of the sons of Israel.

⁴These then were their names: from the tribe of Reuben, Shammua the son of Zaccur;

⁵from the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat the son of Hori;

⁶from the tribe of Judah, ^aCaleb the son of Jephunneh;

⁷from the tribe of Issachar, Igal the son of Joseph;

⁸from the tribe of Ephraim, ^aHoshea the son of Nun;

⁹from the tribe of Benjamin, Palti the son of Raphu;

¹⁰from the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel the son of Sodi;

¹¹from the tribe of Joseph, from the tribe of Manasseh, Gaddi the son of Susi;

¹²from the tribe of Dan, Ammiel the son of Gemalli;

¹³from the tribe of Asher, Sethur the son of Michael;

¹⁴from the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi the son of Vophsi;

¹⁵from the tribe of Gad, Geuel the son of Machi.

¹⁶These are the names of the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land; but Moses called ^aHoshea the son of Nun, Joshua.

¹⁷When Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan, he said to them, “Go up ¹there into ^athe ²Negev; then go up into the hill country.

¹⁸“See what the land is like, and whether the people who live in it are strong or weak, whether they are few or many.

¹⁹“How is the land in which they live, is it good or bad? And how are the cities in which they live, are they ¹like open camps or with fortifications?

²⁰“^aHow is the land, is it fat or lean? Are there trees in it or not? ¹Make an ^beffort then to get some of the fruit of the land.” Now the time was the time of the first ripe grapes.

²¹So they went up and spied out the land from ^athe wilderness of Zin as far as Rehob, ^1bat Lebo-hamath.

²²When they had gone up into ^athe Negev, ¹they came to Hebron where ^bAhiman, Sheshai and Talmai, the ²descendants of ^cAnak were. (Now Hebron was built seven years before ^dZoan in Egypt.)

²³Then they came to the ¹valley of ^2aEshcol and from there cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes; and they carried it on a pole between two men, with some of the pomegranates and the figs.

²⁴That place was called the valley of ¹Eshcol, because of the cluster which the sons of Israel cut down from there.

The Spies’ Reports

²⁵When they returned from spying out the land, at the end of forty days,

²⁶they proceeded to come to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the sons of Israel ¹in the wilderness of Paran, at ^aKadesh; and they brought back word to them and to all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land.

²⁷Thus they told him, and said, “We went in to the land where you sent us; and ^ait certainly does flow with milk and honey, and ^bthis is its fruit.

²⁸“Nevertheless, ^athe people who live in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large; and moreover, we saw ^bthe ¹descendants of Anak there.

²⁹“Amalek is living in the land of ^athe Negev and the Hittites and the Jebusites and ^bthe Amorites are living in the hill country, and ^cthe Canaanites are living by the sea and by the side of the Jordan.”

³⁰Then Caleb quieted the people ¹before Moses and said, “We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we will surely overcome it.”

³¹But the men who had gone up with him said, “^aWe are not able to go up against the people, for they are too strong for us.”

³²So they gave out to the sons of Israel ^aa bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through which we have gone, in spying it out, is ^ba land that devours its ¹inhabitants; and ^call the people whom we saw in it are men of great size.

³³“There also we saw the ^aNephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and ^bwe became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”