Numbers 13 – Study

For those who may wish to ‘study’ this chapter, the following simple resources are provided for you. Each passage has a four-Part approach to help you take in and think further about what you have read.

Passage: Numbers 13:1-25

1 The Lord said to Moses, 2 ‘Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites. From each ancestral tribe send one of its leaders.’ 3 So at the Lord’s command Moses sent them out from the Desert of Paran. All of them were leaders of the Israelites.

17 When Moses sent them to explore Canaan, he said, ‘Go up through the Negev and on into the hill country. 18 See what the land is like and whether the people who live there are strong or weak, few or many. 19 What kind of land do they live in? Is it good or bad? What kind of towns do they live in? Are they unwalled or fortified? 20 How is the soil? Is it fertile or poor? Are there trees in it or not? Do your best to bring back some of the fruit of the land.’ (It was the season for the first ripe grapes.)

21 So they went up and explored the land from the Desert of Zin as far as Rehob, towards Lebo Hamath. 22 They went up through the Negev and came to Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai, the descendants of Anak, lived. (Hebron had been built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.) 23 When they reached the Valley of Eshkol, they cut off a branch bearing a single cluster of grapes. Two of them carried it on a pole between them, along with some pomegranates and figs. 24 That place was called the Valley of Eshkol because of the cluster of grapes the Israelites cut off there. 25 At the end of forty days they returned from exploring the land.

A. Find Out:

1. What did the Lord tell Moses to do? v.1,2
2. Who were the men? v.2,3
3. What things did Moses tell them to find out? v.18-20
4. What did they bring back? v.23
5. How long did they take exploring the land? v.25

B. Think:

1. How does the Lord describe the land?
2. Why, therefore, did He want them to do this?
3. Was anyone harmed on this expedition?

C. Comment:

      We now come to a rather intriguing episode in Israel ‘s life with God, for it is the Lord who tells Moses to send men to check out the land He is giving them.  Now that is a crucial point: it is the land He IS giving them.  It is God’s decreed will that they have this land.  By now they should have realized that God is all-powerful so if He says the Land will be theirs, it will be theirs!  Yet, as we’ll see shortly, they failed to enter the land.  Surely the Lord must have known that would happen?  So why get them to go and look at the land?  Surely it must be for them to see how good the land is; that is the point of bringing back some of the fruit. The purpose of looking at the land before entering it, must surely be to confront the difficulties of it and take them to the Lord for His help.

      If a situation confronting us looks difficult, we’re allowed to see its difficulties and not to run away, but the take them to the Lord and ask for His wisdom, grace and strength to deal with them. This, therefore, was to be an exercise that resulted in Israel marveling at the wonder of God’s provision for them, and then in bringing the potential difficulties to the Lord for Him to encourage them and tell them how to overcome. That is what should happen – after all the men who are going into the land are all leaders. These should be men of courage, vision and hope. When they come back, if they are to live up to their role, they should come back full of faith at God’s love for them. Should!

D. Application:

1. God shows up the potential blessings to raise our faith level.
2. God shows us the difficulties that we may seek His grace for them.

Passage: Numbers 13:26-33

26 They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the Desert of Paran. There they reported to them and to the whole assembly and showed them the fruit of the land. 27 They gave Moses this account: ‘We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. 28 But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there. 29 The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan.’

30 Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, ‘We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.’

31 But the men who had gone up with him said, ‘We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.’ 32 And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, ‘The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. 33 We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.’

A. Find Out:

1. What did they report about the Land? v.27
2. What did they say about the people of the Land? v.28,29
3. What was Caleb’s assessment of the situation? v.30
4. But what did the others say? v.31
5. Why did they think that? v.32,33

B. Think:

1. What was the problem in the minds of the leaders?
2. What were they forgetting?
3. So how did they come to a wrong conclusion?

C. Comment:

     There are times in life when we face difficulties and, as Christians, we have two choices: either to focus on the problem or on the Lord! The situation here was that the Lord had said He was giving this land to His people. That really should be enough. The leaders, however, have allowed the vision of the people of the land to fill their minds and make them forget their experience with the Lord. If the Lord can deliver them from Pharaoh, then He can certainly give them this land!

     Scripture gives us various similar illustrations. David was confronted with Goliath, a giant many times bigger than him, but he simply remembered what the Lord had already done for him, and so transferred that past experience into the present, and defeated Goliath! Jesus’ disciples were led into a similar situation by Jesus when he suggested they feed the four thousand. They forgot the previous experience of feeding the five thousand and focused on the size of the problem (see Mt 15:33) and concluded they couldn’t handle it.

     Thus it is now with these leaders who have returned. Apart from Caleb& Joshua, they each agree that this is a situation beyond them. Well that much is true – but they have the Lord with them and it’s not too much for Him! It’s to the Lord that they should have turned but they hadn’t learned that lesson yet and so conclude they can’t enter. Actually, that is rejecting God, because He has said they will. Bad news!

D. Application:

1. Situations may be beyond us – but they’re not beyond God.
2. Focus on the Lord, not on the size of the problem.