Numbers 13:27–14:4

²⁷And they reported to him and said, “We came to the land to which you sent us; it flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.^{* 28}Yet the people who live in the land are strong, and the towns are fortified and very large, and besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there.^{* 29}The Amalekites live in the land of the Negeb; the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites live in the hill country, and the Canaanites live by the sea and along the Jordan.”^*

³⁰But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.”^{* 31}Then the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against this people, for they are stronger than we.”^{* 32}So they brought to the Israelites an unfavorable report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land that we have gone through as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great size.^{* 33}There we saw the Nephilim (the Anakites come from the Nephilim), and to ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”^*

The People Rebel

¹⁴Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night. ²And all the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron; the whole congregation said to them, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness!^{* 3}Why is the Lord bringing us into this land to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become plunder; would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?” ⁴So they said to one another, “Let us choose a captain and go back to Egypt.”