²²Then all of you came to me. You said, “Let’s send some men ahead of us. They can check out the land for us and bring back a report. They can suggest to us which way to go. They can tell us about the towns we’ll come to.”

²³That seemed like a good idea to me. So I chose 12 of you. I picked one man from each tribe. ²⁴They left and went up into the hill country. There they came to the Valley of Eshcol. They checked it out. ²⁵They got some of the fruit of that land. They brought it down to us and gave us their report. They said, “The Lord our God is giving us a good land.”

Israel Refuses to Obey the Lord

²⁶But you wouldn’t go up. You refused to obey the command of the Lord your God. ²⁷You spoke against him in your tents. You said, “The Lord hates us. That’s why he brought us out of Egypt to hand us over to the Amorites. He wanted to destroy us. ²⁸Where can we go? The men who checked out the land have made us lose hope. They say, ‘The people are stronger and taller than we are. The cities are large. They have walls that reach up to the sky. We even saw the Anakites there.’ ”

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