Numbers 12–13

Miriam and Aaron Speak Against Moses

12Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife (he had married a Cushite). ²They said, “Is Moses the only one the Lord speaks through? Doesn’t he also speak through us?” And the Lord heard this.

³(Now Moses was very humble. He was the least proud person on earth.)

⁴So the Lord suddenly spoke to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam and said, “All three of you come to the Meeting Tent.” So they went. ⁵The Lord came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the entrance to the Tent. He called to Aaron and Miriam, and they both came near. ⁶He said, “Listen to my words:

When prophets are among you,

I, the Lord, will show myself to them in visions;

I will speak to them in dreams.

⁷But this is not true with my servant Moses.

I trust him to lead all my people.

⁸I speak face to face with him—

clearly, not with hidden meanings.

He has even seen the form of the Lord.

You should be afraid

to speak against my servant Moses.”

⁹The Lord was very angry with them, and he left.

¹⁰When the cloud lifted from the Tent and Aaron turned toward Miriam, she was as white as snow; she had a skin disease. ¹¹Aaron said to Moses, “Please, my master, forgive us for our foolish sin. ¹²Don’t let her be like a baby who is born dead. (Sometimes a baby is born with half of its flesh eaten away.)”

¹³So Moses cried out to the Lord, “God, please heal her!”

¹⁴The Lord answered Moses, “If her father had spit in her face, she would have been shamed for seven days, so put her outside the camp for seven days. After that, she may come back.” ¹⁵So Miriam was put outside of the camp for seven days, and the people did not move on until she came back.

¹⁶After that, the people left Hazeroth and camped in the Desert of Paran.

The Spies Explore Canaan

13The Lord said to Moses, ²“Send men to explore the land of Canaan, which I will give to the Israelites. Send one leader from each tribe.”

³So Moses obeyed the Lord’s command and sent the Israelite leaders out from the Desert of Paran. ⁴These are their names: from the tribe of Reuben, Shammua son of Zaccur; ⁵from the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat son of Hori; ⁶from the tribe of Judah, Caleb son of Jephunneh; ⁷from the tribe of Issachar, Igal son of Joseph; ⁸from the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea son of Nun; ⁹from the tribe of Benjamin, Palti son of Raphu; ¹⁰from the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel son of Sodi; ¹¹from the tribe of Manasseh (a tribe of Joseph), Gaddi son of Susi; ¹²from the tribe of Dan, Ammiel son of Gemalli; ¹³from the tribe of Asher, Sethur son of Michael; ¹⁴from the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi son of Vophsi; ¹⁵from the tribe of Gad, Geuel son of Maki.

¹⁶These are the names of the men Moses sent to explore the land. (Moses gave Hoshea son of Nun the new name Joshua.)

¹⁷Moses sent them to explore Canaan and said, “Go through southern Canaan and then into the mountains. ¹⁸See what the land looks like. Are the people who live there strong or weak? Are there a few or many? ¹⁹What kind of land do they live in? Is it good or bad? What about the towns they live in—are they open like camps, or do they have walls? ²⁰What about the soil? Is it fertile or poor? Are there trees there? Try to bring back some of the fruit from that land.” (It was the season for the first grapes.)

²¹So they went up and explored the land, from the Desert of Zin all the way to Rehob by Lebo Hamath. ²²They went through the southern area to Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the descendants of Anak lived. (The city of Hebron had been built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.) ²³In the Valley of Eshcol, they cut off a branch of a grapevine that had one bunch of grapes on it and carried that branch on a pole between two of them. They also got some pomegranates and figs. ²⁴That place was called the Valley of Eshcol, ⁿ because the Israelites cut off the bunch of grapes there. ²⁵After forty days of exploring the land, the men returned to the camp.

²⁶They came back to Moses and Aaron and all the Israelites at Kadesh, in the Desert of Paran. The men reported to them and showed everybody the fruit from the land. ²⁷They told Moses, “We went to the land where you sent us, and it is a fertile land! Here is some of its fruit. ²⁸But the people who live there are strong. Their cities are walled and very large. We even saw some Anakites there. ²⁹The Amalekites live in the southern area; the Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the mountains; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan River.”

³⁰Then Caleb told the people near Moses to be quiet, and he said, “We should certainly go up and take the land for ourselves. We can certainly do it.”

³¹But the men who had gone with him said, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.” ³²And those men gave the Israelites a bad report about the land they explored, saying, “The land that we explored is too large to conquer. All the people we saw are very tall. ³³We saw the Nephilim people there. (The Anakites come from the Nephilim people.) We felt like grasshoppers, and we looked like grasshoppers to them.”