Numbers 13:29-33

13:29 The Amalekites live in the land of the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live by the sea and along the banks ¹  of the Jordan.” ² 

13:30 Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses, saying, “Let us go up ³  and occupy it, ⁴  for we are well able to conquer it.” ⁵  13:31 But the men ⁶  who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against these people, because they are stronger than we are!” 13:32 Then they presented the Israelites with a discouraging ⁷  report of the land they had investigated, saying, “The land that we passed through ⁸  to investigate is a land that devours ⁹  its inhabitants. ¹⁰  All the people we saw there ¹¹  are of great stature. 13:33 We even saw the Nephilim ¹²  there (the descendants of Anak came from the Nephilim), and we seemed liked grasshoppers both to ourselves ¹³  and to them.” ¹⁴ 

[13:29]  ¹ tn Heb “by the side [hand] of.”

[13:29]  ² sn For more discussion on these people groups, see D. J. Wiseman, ed., Peoples of Old Testament Times.

[13:30]  ³ tn The construction is emphatic, using the cohortative with the infinitive absolute to strengthen it: עָלֹה נַעֲלֶה (’aloh na’aleh, “let us go up”) with the sense of certainty and immediacy.

[13:30]  ⁴ tn The perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive brings the cohortative idea forward: “and let us possess it”; it may also be subordinated to form a purpose or result idea.

[13:30]  ⁵ tn Here again the confidence of Caleb is expressed with the infinitive absolute and the imperfect tense: יָכוֹל נוּכַל (yakhol nukhal), “we are fully able” to do this. The verb יָכַל (yakhal) followed by the preposition lamed means “to prevail over, to conquer.”

[13:31]  ⁵ tn The vav (ו) disjunctive on the noun at the beginning of the clause forms a strong adversative clause here.

[13:32]  ⁷ tn Or “an evil report,” i.e., one that was a defamation of the grace of God.

[13:32]  ⁸ 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.

[13:32]  ⁹ 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.

[13:32]  ¹⁰ 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.

[13:32]  ¹¹ tn Heb “in its midst.”

[13:33]  ⁹ tc The Greek version uses gigantes (“giants”) to translate “the Nephilim,” but it does not retain the clause “the sons of Anak are from the Nephilim.”

[13:33]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “in our eyes.”

[13:33]  ¹¹ tn Heb “in their eyes.”