13:17 When Moses sent 5 them to investigate the land of Canaan, he told them, “Go up through the Negev, 6 and then go up into the hill country
13:21 So they went up and investigated the land from the wilderness of Zin to Rehob, 7 at the entrance of Hamath. 8
1 tn The imperfect tense with the conjunction is here subordinated to the preceding imperative to form the purpose clause. It can thus be translated “send…to investigate.”
2 tn The participle here should be given a future interpretation, meaning “which I am about to give” or “which I am going to give.”
3 tn Heb “one man one man of the tribe of his fathers.”
4 sn The difference in the names is slight, a change from “he saves” to “the
5 tn The preterite with vav (ו) consecutive is here subordinated to the next verb of the same formation to express a temporal clause.
6 tn The instructions had them first go up into the southern desert of the land, and after passing through that, into the hill country of the Canaanites. The text could be rendered “into the Negev” as well as “through the Negev.”
7 sn Zin is on the southern edge of the land, but Rehob is far north, near Mount Hermon. The spies covered all the land.
8 tn The idiom uses the infinitive construct: “to enter Hamath,” meaning, “on the way that people go to Hamath.”
9 tn Or “an evil report,” i.e., one that was a defamation of the grace of God.
10 tn Heb “which we passed over in it”; the pronoun on the preposition serves as a resumptive pronoun for the relative, and need not be translated literally.
11 tn The verb is the feminine singular participle from אָכַל (’akhal); it modifies the land as a “devouring land,” a bold figure for the difficulty of living in the place.
12 sn The expression has been interpreted in a number of ways by commentators, such as that the land was infertile, that the Canaanites were cannibals, that it was a land filled with warlike dissensions, or that it denotes a land geared for battle. It may be that they intended the land to seem infertile and insecure.
13 tn Heb “in its midst.”