February 22 Daily Devotional

Numbers 13–14

The children of Israel entered the wilderness of Paran. They camped at Kadesh, not far from the promised land. Just a few days’ journey, and they would have been in Canaan. Here God told Moses to choose twelve men, one man from each of the twelve tribes, and to send them to search the land carefully. These, men were called spies, because they were sent to spy out the land of Canaan. One of these was Joshua, the helper of Moses in caring for the people, and another was Caleb.

These twelve men went out and came to the land of Canaan. They looked at the cities and saw the fields. In one place, before they came back to the camp, they cut off a cluster of ripe grapes which was so large that two men carried it between them, hanging from a staff. After forty days they came back to the camp. They reported: “We came unto the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey;” but strong people dwell in it, and the cities are walled and very great. “We be not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we”; moreover we saw giants there, and we were in their sight as grasshoppers.

When the people heard this report they began to weep and all through the night the weeping was heard in the camp. They forgot that God had led them out of Egypt, that he had given them water out of the rock, bread from heaven, and his law from the mountain. They turned against Moses and Aaron and said, “Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! or would God we had died in this wilderness!” And they said one to another, “Let us make a captain, and let us return to Egypt.” It was awful for Moses and Aaron. They fell upon their faces before all the assembly of the congregation.

At this moment Caleb and Joshua came forth. They had a special report. They rent their clothes and called, The land is a very good land. “If the Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into this land … only rebel not against the Lord.” Instead of listening to Caleb and Joshua, the people wanted to throw stones at them and kill them. Then the glory of the Lord appeared. And the Lord said to Moses, “How long will this people provoke me? and how long will it be ere they believe me? As truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord. Because all those men which have seen my glory and my signs in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have tempted me these ten times, and have not hearkened unto my voice, shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, from twenty years and upward, save Caleb and Joshua. But your little ones I will bring in. And you shall be wanderers in the wilderness forty years, after the number of the days in which ye spied out the land. I, the Lord, have spoken, surely this will I do.”