1. in the land of Canaan. As the next two verses make clear, this phrase indicates the land west of the Jordan.

4. except for towns to dwell in. These towns were a practical concession to the Levites from the other tribes and not inalienable territory.

6. And the Judahites came forward. Although what is in question is the inheritance of Caleb, head of one of the clans of Judah, it is also regarded as a tribal issue because he is part of the tribe.

You yourself know. Caleb uses the emphatic form in which the personal pronoun is added before the conjugated verb, because Joshua was there with him, joining him in the positive minority report against the fearful assessment of the other ten spies.

7. brought him back word. This phrase is used in the spy narrative in Numbers 13:26.

just as I thought. That is, honestly. The literal sense is “as it was with my heart.”

8. made the people’s heart faint. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “made the people’s heart melt,” but in English that phrase unfortunately suggests gushing sentiment. The same idiom is used in the recapitulation of the story of the spies in Deuteronomy 1:28.

I followed after the LORD my God. The literal sense of the idiom is “I filled after.” The clear meaning is to carry out implicitly the will or command of someone. The same expression is used in the original story of the spies in Numbers 14:24.

10. I am eighty-five years old. The Talmudic sages, calculating that the incident of the spies took place two years into the forty years of Wilderness wandering, conclude from this that the conquest of the land took seven years.

11. As my vigor then is my vigor now, for battle and for command. The region around Hebron still requires conquering, as Caleb’s words in verse 12 show. The idiom rendered as “command” is literally “to go out and to come back,” and it means to lead troops in battle.

12. you yourself heard on that day that there were giants there. The narrative context makes clear that the Hebrew ʿanaqim is not in this instance a gentilic (“Anakites”) but means “giants,” the adversaries of daunting proportions before whom the ten fearful spies felt themselves to be like grasshoppers.

14. Therefore. As often elsewhere the Hebrew ʿal-ken introduces an etiological explanation.

15. Kiriath-Arba. The Hebrew name means “city of four”—perhaps, as many scholars have inferred, because it was divided into four neighborhoods. But here “Arba” is construed as a man’s name—the largest of the indigenous giants.