Scouting North Canaan

Scouting report

Men scouting north Canaan in the Promised Land came back with a mixed report.

27Here’s the report they gave: “We went where you told us to go. This is certainly a land where milk and honey flow like rivers. We picked this fruit there. 28The people who live there have strong defenses and large cities protected behind walls. We saw some descendants of the giant Anak. 29Amalekite people live in the Negev. Further north, Jebusites and Amorites live in the central hill country. Along the seacoast is where some Canaanites live. Others live alongside the Jordan River"...

31Other scouts who had gone with him pushed back, “We can’t beat these people. They’re too strong for us.” 32These men gave a terrible report about what they saw. They told the Israelites, “The land we just explored is too big for us. If we tried to conquer all the people there, they would put us in the ground. These are huge people we’re talking about. 33That’s not all. We saw the giant Nephilim, ancestors of the giant Anak. Looking up at them, we felt like grasshoppers. And looking down at us, they felt we looked like grasshoppers, too." Numbers 13

Too frightened to obey God

Terrified, the people refused to go any further, God or no God.

So, God put them in timeout for a generation, 40 years. One year for every day the scouts had been gone.

The only adults from that generation who would get to step on the Promised Land where the only two scouts who advised going into the land and taking it from the people, Joshua and Caleb:

29"You’re going to die in the badlands. All the men in your armies—everyone age 20 and older who complained about me—dead. 30There’s no way I’m going to let you go into the land I promised you. The only exceptions are Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua, the son of Nun. 31I’ll bring your children there—the ones you said I’d let your enemies take for themselves. Your children will see the land you turned down. 32But you? You’re going to die in the desert badlands. "

Two-week walk in 40 years

It was 240 miles, 380 km, from Mount Sinai to Jerusalem, also known as Mount Zion. That's about a two-week walk through a lot of wasteland.

But it took Moses and the Israelite ancestors of today's Jewish people, 40 years.

They weren't that slow. They were that stubborn and stuck in their own heads. They had a habit of doing what they wanted instead of doing what God said. 

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