Numbers 14:7

14:7 They said to the whole community of the Israelites, “The land we passed through to investigate is an exceedingly ¹  good land.

Numbers 13:32

13:32 Then they presented the Israelites with a discouraging ²  report of the land they had investigated, saying, “The land that we passed through ³  to investigate is a land that devours ⁴  its inhabitants. ⁵  All the people we saw there ⁶  are of great stature.

[14:7]  ¹ tn The repetition of the adverb מְאֹד (mÿ’od) is used to express this: “very, very [good].”

[13:32]  ² tn Or “an evil report,” i.e., one that was a defamation of the grace of God.

[13:32]  ³ 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]  ⁴ 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]  ⁵ 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]  ⁶ tn Heb “in its midst.”