Parashah 37: Shlach L’kha (Send on your behalf) 13:1–15:41

13 Adonai said to Moshe, ² “Send men on your behalf to reconnoiter the land of Kena‘an, which I am giving to the people of Isra’el. From each ancestral tribe send someone who is a leader in his tribe.” ³ Moshe dispatched them from the Pa’ran Desert as Adonai had ordered; all of them were leading men among the people of Isra’el. ⁴ Here are their names:

¹⁶ These are the names of the men Moshe sent out to reconnoiter the land. Moshe gave to Hoshea the son of Nun the name Y’hoshua.

¹⁷ Moshe sent them to reconnoiter the land of Kena‘an, instructing them, “Go on up to the Negev and into the hills, ¹⁸ and see what the land is like. Notice the people living there, whether they are strong or weak, few or many; ¹⁹ and what kind of country they live in, whether it is good or bad; and what kind of cities they live in, open or fortified. ²⁰ See whether the land is fertile or unproductive and whether there is wood in it or not. Finally, be bold enough to bring back some of the fruit of the land.”

When they left it was the season for the first grapes to ripen. (ii) ²¹ They went up and reconnoitered the land from the Tzin Desert to Rechov near the entrance to Hamat. ²² They went up into the Negev and arrived at Hevron; Achiman, Sheshai and Talmai, the ‘Anakim, lived there. (Hevron was built seven years before Tzo‘an in Egypt.) ²³ They came to the Eshkol Valley; and there they cut off a branch bearing one cluster of grapes, which they carried on a pole between two of them; they also took pomegranates and figs. ²⁴ That place was called the Valley of Eshkol [cluster], because of the cluster which the people of Isra’el cut down there.

²⁵ Forty days later, they returned from reconnoitering the land ²⁶ and went to Moshe, Aharon and the entire community of the people of Isra’el at Kadesh in the Pa’ran Desert, where they brought back word to them and to the entire community and showed them the fruit of the land. ²⁷ What they told him was this: “We entered the land where you sent us, and indeed it does flow with milk and honey — here is its fruit! ²⁸ However the people living in the land are fierce, and the cities are fortified and very large. Moreover, we saw the ‘Anakim there. ²⁹ ‘Amalek lives in the area of the Negev; the Hitti, the Y’vusi and the Emori live in the hills; and the Kena‘ani live by the sea and alongside the Yarden.”

³⁰ Kalev silenced the people around Moshe and said, “We ought to go up immediately and take possession of it; there is no question that we can conquer it.” ³¹ But the men who had gone with him said, “We can’t attack those people, because they are stronger than we are”; ³² and they spread a negative report about the land they had reconnoitered for the people of Isra’el by saying, “The land we passed through in order to spy it out is a land that devours its inhabitants. All the people we saw there were giant! ³³ We saw the N’filim, the descendants of ‘Anak, who was from the N’filim; to ourselves we looked like grasshoppers by comparison, and we looked that way to them too!”