3. all of them men. Rashi, followed by several modern commentators, proposes that “men” has the connotation of men of stature. In the present context, that might mean military prowess—a trait that would make the fearful majority report of the scouts all the more shameful.

4. And these are their names. These names are entirely different from the names of the tribal chieftains previously reported. Most of the names, moreover, do not appear elsewhere in the Bible. This could be an authentic ancient list of tribal military leaders, distinct from the tribal political heads.

16. And Moses called Hosea the son of Nun Joshua. The names are phonetically closer in the Hebrew—Hosheʿa and Yehoshuʿa. The latter is the variant of the former that bears the theophoric prefix, with the meaning “God-saves.”

17. and you shall go up into the high country. After crossing the Negeb desert, the tribes would move into the mountainous region of Judah in eastern Canaan.

18. are they strong or slack. The formulation of the mission of the scouts in terms of these binary opposites leads into the divided opinion of the report. The majority of ten will focus on “strong” and “fortifications.”

19. in open settlements. The Hebrew is literally “encampments.” This nomad’s term was evidently extended to any settlement lacking fortified walls. Given the fact that Canaan comprised a variety of city-states and regional mini-kingdoms which were often in conflict with one another, the landscape abounded in fortified cities.

20. muster strength and take of the fruit of the land. The notion that strength is required to take a sample of the fruit of the land is the first hint that the fruit is preternaturally heavy, just as the inhabitants are preternaturally large. The hyperbolic—or legendary—indication in verse 23 is that a single cluster of grapes is so heavy that it requires two men to carry it.

22. offspring of the giant. The second Hebrew term here, ʿanaq, is understood by some modern translators to be an ethnic designation (“Anakites”). The words of the scouts, however, in verse 33, clearly place “offspring of the ʿanaq” in apposition with Nephilim, the legendary man-god hybrids mentioned in Genesis 6:1–4, and there is no indication elsewhere of an ethnic group called Anakites. (On the basis of this chapter, ʿanaq in all subsequent strata of Hebrew is the standard term for “giant.”) The legendary scale of the bounty of the land, its “fatness,” is matched by the legendary proportions of its inhabitants. It should be noted that this representation of Hebron inhabited by giants swerves from the depiction of Hebron in Genesis 25, where the local denizens are ordinary, and commercially shrewd, Hittites.

Zoan in Egypt. This city is usually identified as Tanis.

24. Wadi Eshcol. “Eshcol” is the Hebrew term for “grape cluster.”

25. at the end of forty days. The number is of course formulaic, but it is also a reasonably plausible time in which a contingent of men on foot might traverse the Negeb, from its southernmost region (the Wilderness of Paran), make their way to northern Canaan, and return.

27. they recounted to him. Although Aaron and the representatives of the community are present, and have been shown the spectacular samples of the fruit of the land, it is to Moses as leader that they address the words of their report.

it’s actually flowing with milk and honey. Moses, conveying the divine promise, has repeatedly used this phrase for the fruitfulness of the land. Now the eyewitnesses confirm that it is actually (gam) true.

29. the Canaanite dwells by the sea. This indication is historically accurate for the thirteenth century B.C.E. because the Philistines, who would very soon control most of the coastal area, had not yet arrived.

30. We will surely go up . . . we will surely prevail. Caleb’s vehement contradiction of the majority of the scouts does not deny the substance of their report but rather insists that even against such huge adversaries and such an array of fortified cities the Israelites will prevail. This martial resolution will be fulfilled in the biblical account a full generation later, under Joshua’s leadership.

32. a land that consumes those who dwell in it. As several medieval commentators observe, the scouts now raise the ante in their negative report. At first, they duly noted the extravagant fruitfulness of the land together with the fearful aspect of its inhabitants. Now, in their rejoinder to Caleb, they put forth an ill report (dibah) of the land itself, saying that it consumes its inhabitants. Jacob Milgrom plausibly proposes that this phrase refers to a state of repeated war in which the inhabitants of this land find themselves, at the geographical crossroads between the Near Eastern empires to the south, to the east, and to the north. The multiple ethnic groups, moreover, of the land itself, indicated in the scouts’ report, reflect armed conflict among the various natives. The land flowing with milk and honey, then, is seen in these words as a kind of death trap: even if the Israelites were to succeed in obtaining a foothold and themselves became dwellers of the land, it would “consume” them through internecine and international warfare.

men of huge measure. “Huge” is merely implied in the Hebrew.

33. and so we were in their eyes. This judgment has to be sheer fearful projection, for they would scarcely have spoken with the Canaanites.