Commentaria in Numeros
Chapter the Thirteenth. Synopsis of the Chapter
Moses sends twelve spies into Chanaan: they carry a cluster of grapes on a pole; but, telling of the strength of the cities and inhabitants, they frighten the Hebrews from it, Caleb protesting in vain.
1. And the people moved from Haseroth, and pitched their tents in the desert of Pharan. 2. And there the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 3. Send men to view the land of Chanaan, which I will give to the children of Israel, one of every tribe, of the rulers. 4. Moses did what the Lord had commanded, sending from the desert of Pharan principal men, whose names are these. 5. Of the tribe of Ruben, Sammua the son of Zechur. 6. Of the tribe of Simeon, Saphat the son of Huri. 7. Of the tribe of Juda, Caleb the son of Jephone. 8. Of the tribe of Issachar, Igal the son of Joseph. 9. Of the tribe of Ephraim, Osee the son of Nun. 10. Of the tribe of Benjamin, Phalti the son of Raphu. 11. Of the tribe of Zabulon, Geddiel the son of Sodi. 12. Of the tribe of Joseph, the sceptre of Manasses, Gaddi the son of Susi. 13. Of the tribe of Dan, Ammiel the son of Gemalli. 14. Of the tribe of Aser, Sthur the son of Michael. 15. Of the tribe of Nephthali, Nahabi the son of Vapsi. 16. Of the tribe of Gad, Guel the son of Machi. 17. These are the names of the men that Moses sent to view the land: and he called Osee the son of Nun, Josue. 18. So Moses sent them to view the land of Chanaan, and said to them: Go up by the south side. And when you shall come to the mountains, 19. view the land, of what sort it is: and the people that are the inhabitants thereof, whether they be strong or weak: few in number or many: 20. the land itself, whether it be good or bad: what manner of cities, walled or without walls: 21. the ground, fat or barren, woody or without trees. Be of good courage, and bring us of the fruits of the land. Now it was the time when the firstripe grapes are fit to be eaten. 22. And when they were gone up, they viewed the land from the desert of Sin, to Rohob, as you enter into Emath. 23. And they went up at the south side, and came to Hebron, where were Achiman, and Sisai, and Tholmai the sons of Enac. For Hebron was built seven years before Tanis, the city of Egypt. 24. And going forward as far as the torrent of the cluster of grapes, they cut off a vine branch with its cluster, which two men carried on a lever. They took also of the pomegranates, and of the figs of that place, 25. which was called Nehelescol, that is to say, the torrent of the cluster, because from thence the children of Israel had carried a cluster of grapes. 26. And they that went to view the land returned after forty days, having gone round all the country, 27. and came to Moses and Aaron, and to all the assembly of the children of Israel, to the desert of Pharan, which is in Cades. And speaking to them and to all the multitude, they shewed them the fruits of the land: 28. and they related, saying: We came into the land to which thou sentest us, which in very deed floweth with milk and honey, as may be known by these fruits: 29. but it hath very strong inhabitants, and large and walled cities. We saw there the race of Enac. 30. Amalec dwelleth in the south, the Hethite, and the Jebusite, and the Amorrhite in the mountains: but the Chanaanite abideth by the sea, and near the streams of Jordan. 31. In the mean time Caleb, to still the murmuring of the people that arose against Moses, said: Let us go up, and possess the land, for we shall be able to conquer it. 32. But the others that had been with him said: No, we are not able to go up to this people, because they are stronger than we. 33. And they spread abroad among the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had viewed, saying: The land which we have viewed devoureth its inhabitants: the people that we beheld are of a tall stature. 34. There we saw certain monsters of the sons of Enac, of the giant kind: in comparison of whom we seemed like locusts.
Verse 1. “And the people moved from Haseroth” (where was the fourteenth station of the Hebrews), “and pitched their tents in the desert of Pharan” (1): to pitch camp in that vast desert of Pharan; for in it were the following stations, as far as the thirty-third; and this fifteenth, to which they came next from Haseroth, was Rethma, as is plain from Numbers xxxiii, 18.
Verses 2 and 3. “And there the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Send men to view the land of Chanaan.” God said this after this people, distrusting the promises of God, had asked that spies be sent into Chanaan to report what the land was like, how fertile, and how fortified, as is plain from Deuteronomy i, 22. When the people asked this, Moses consulted the Lord, who assented to Moses, and bade him do the very thing the people asked, as is plain from this place. “For he is the best Commander,” says Chabrias, “who has the best knowledge of the enemy’s affairs”; for in wars secrecy avails most. Whence Metellus, being asked by a centurion what he was going to do, answered: “If I knew that my tunic was privy to my counsel, I would burn it at once,” says Plutarch.
Verse 3. “One of every tribe, of the rulers,” not the first and highest, namely those twelve of whom each presided over his whole tribe; for those were otherwise called, as is plain from chap. x, verse 14; but from others, lower, who were subordinate to those first; and perhaps from those who had been appointed by the counsel of Jethro, Exodus xviii, 25.
Verse 12. “Of the tribe of Joseph, the sceptre of Manasses,” in Hebrew, of the tribe of Joseph, the tribe of Manasses, or as to the tribe of Manasses. For the tribe of Joseph was double, namely Ephraim and Manasses: to designate, therefore, a certain tribe, he determines the tribe of Joseph by the tribe of Manasses.
Verse 17. “And he called Osee the son of Nun, Josue.” Note: For Nun, the Septuagint and generally the ancient writers who follow them read Nave, but corruptly; for the Hebrew, Chaldee and Latin have Nun, and the Greek letters could easily be depraved, so that for Nun (as the Septuagint seem to have rendered it) Naue crept in. Again, for Osee, or as it is in Hebrew, Hosee, the Septuagint render Ause, and so the ancients, following the Septuagint, often call Josue Ause. The Septuagint seem to have read the Hebrew name with other points than Josue’s, as if descending from the passive imperative niphal of the verb yasha, that is, he saved; namely hivvasha, that is, to save, be thou saved: whence by crasis the name Ause was made, which Moses changed into the active Jehoshua, that is, saviour, or he who will save; unless one suspect an old error, with St. Jerome, at the beginning of his Commentary, regarding a letter akin to it in character. For our Interpreter and the Chaldee and others everywhere render Osee, not Ause. Why did Moses change the name Hosee into Jehoshua, by adding and prefixing to the name Osee the letter yod? First, that he might promise Josue himself, and the people through him, more certain salvation and victory over the Chanaanites, which he was beginning with this first exploration: for Hosee signifies “save” (whence hosanna is the same as “save, I beseech thee”), but jehoshia, to which Jehoshua alludes, signifies “who will save”; second, that he might intimate that God would bestow many good things on him, to whose name he had added the first letter of his own four-lettered name, namely yod. To this St. Jerome seems to have looked in Aggeus, chap. 1, and Eusebius, Demonstration IV, last chapter, saying: Jehoshua is the same as Jaho shua, that is, the salvation of God, or saviour, that is, given by God for the salvation of the people; for he reads the four-lettered name with these points, so that it sounds Jaho; third and last, because Moses foresaw by prophetic spirit that Josue would bear an express type of Jesus Christ, as in name so in fact, and in the most happy leading of the chosen people into the promised land. Hence Eusebius, book IV of the Demonstration, 37, teaches that Aaron the pontiff was called Christ by Moses, because he was a type of the priesthood of Christ; and that Ausen (for in Eusebius Nausen is wrongly read) was called Josue by Moses, because he was to be a type of the sovereignty of Christ; so also Theodoret, Question 25, and Tertullian Against the Jews, and Clement of Alexandria, Pedagogue, book I, chap. vii, Justin Against Trypho, p. 84, Lactantius, book IV On True Wisdom, chap. xvii, Prosper, part 2, Predictions, chap. iv, Origen, homily 4 on Josue, Ambrose on Psalm 47, Jerome to Paulinus, Augustine, book XVI Against Faustus, chap. xvii. So Abram, who was to be the father of many peoples, was called Abraham by God. The forerunner of Christ, who was to be the first herald of the grace and Gospel of Christ, was named John, that is, gracious.
The desert of Sin was not different from the desert of Pharan, or was a part of it, as appears from this, that Cades is afterwards said to be in it.