Commentaria in Numeros
But this is more truly denied. For it is not likely that the Hebrews stayed so long in a single station, especially since Scripture says they wandered for 40 years in the desert, verse 33. Secondly, because in Numbers xx, 1, they are at last narrated to have come into Cades, the thirty-third station; therefore this chapter speaks of another station. Thirdly, because in Deuteronomy ii, 14, the Hebrews are said to have walked 38 years in the desert: therefore they did not stay in Cades. I say, therefore, that this station is different from that of which chap. xx and xxxiii speak, and consequently that this Cades is different from that Cades, as Ziegler, Wolfgang and Adrichomius teach in the Description of the Holy Land. If, however, you would have the same Cades in both places, as Cajetanus, Oleaster and Andreas Masius on Josue chap. xv hold, it must be said that the Hebrews came twice into Cades, namely first here, and second in Numbers xx, 1. For the Hebrews wandered, and were led about by God, especially after this murmuring of the spies, through a trackless wilderness in tangled windings and meanders. Whence it is no wonder that they returned again to the place whence they had departed, namely Cades. Hence the Chaldee also, for both Cades, renders Rekem, a name by which he is wont to call Petra, a noble city of Arabia, or certainly a place near that city. But the former is the truer, as I shall say on chap.
These spies, therefore, were sent from the fifteenth station, which was at Rethma, Numbers xxxiii, 18; and Rethma was near the city of Cades: whence the spies are here said to be in Cades, or, as is said in Josue, Cadesbarne.
Verse 28. “Which in very deed floweth with milk and honey,” as if to say: The land of Chanaan is most fertile; it is a hyperbole.
Verse 29. “Large and walled cities,” exceedingly, as the Hebrew, Chaldee, Greek and Rabanus add. In Deuteronomy i, 28, they are said to have been fortified, that is, walled, up to heaven, that is, to have had very high walls; it is a hyperbole. These walls terrified the faint-hearted Hebrews: for the magnanimous care not for walls, but for valiant warriors and defenders (1). Hence King Agesilaus, when asked why Sparta was not surrounded with walls, said: “These are the walls of Sparta,” pointing to the armed citizens. To another who inquired about this same thing he answered: “Cities ought to be fortified not with stones and timber, but by the virtue of their inhabitants.”
When someone showed him the very strong walls of a certain city, and asked whether he thought them handsome, he answered: “Yes indeed, but as for women to dwell within, not men.” So King Agis of the same Lacedemonians, walking round the walls of the Corinthians, when he had looked at them, lofty and strong, said: “What women dwell in this women’s quarters?” So Antalcidas used to say that the walls of Sparta were its young men, and its boundaries the points of its spears. So also Scipio Africanus, to a soldier who was taking up a palisade and said that he was greatly burdened by it, replied: “No wonder: for you trust this wood more than your sword.” The same, to a young man who was showing off a beautiful shield: “The shield, young man, is indeed beautiful, but it better becomes a Roman to place his confidence in his right hand than in his left.” Plutarch is witness in their Lives.
The cities seemed great to the spies, who were accustomed to dwell not in cities but in huts. In truth they were very small, and each had scarcely a thousand or two thousand inhabitants. Yet the spies seem also to have acted deceitfully, and to have called those cities very great with the design also of deterring their people from taking them.
Verse 30. “Amalec dwelleth in the south.” The spies say this not as though the land of the Amalecites belonged to the land promised to the Hebrews, but because it was near to it, so that the Amalecites could easily hinder the entrance of the Hebrews into it, and attack and harass the Hebrews with wars, as they had tried to do in Exodus xvii. For the spies here set before the people this difficulty of the most powerful enemies dwelling in the promised land and in its neighbourhood, to frighten them from entering Chanaan.
Verse 31. “In the mean time Caleb, to still the murmuring of the people.” While Josue was silent, Caleb alone opposed them all, and tried to quiet the murmuring: because Caleb was the bolder and full of zeal; whence God wonderfully praises him alone for this heroic act in the next chapter, verse 24, saying: “But my servant Caleb, who, being full of another spirit, hath followed me, I will bring into this land.” For the same cause God promised to him, by Moses, under oath, a certain particular part of the land of Chanaan, namely the mountain country of Hebron, where these giants were, which Caleb himself received from Josue.
“The murmuring which”—the Latin has murmur qui for murmur quod: it is an antiptosis.
Verse 32. “No, we are not able to go up to this people.” Hence it is plain that these spies sinned in their report to the people: first, by dissuading the people and turning them from entering Chanaan, and so resisting the promises and will of God, who wished to bring the Hebrews into it. They did this from pusillanimity and fear of wars with the Chanaanites, since they themselves preferred to lead a quiet, idle and luxurious life in Egypt, even under the yoke of Pharaoh; second, by lying, and that in many ways:
First, because they asserted that the Chanaanites were so powerful that the Hebrews could not prevail against them; for they say: “No, we are not able to go up to this people, because they are stronger than we.” Second, by laying false charges on the land of Chanaan, saying: “The land which we have viewed devoureth its inhabitants.” Third, by amplifying what they had seen beyond the truth, as when they say: “There we saw certain monsters of the sons of Enac, in comparison of whom we seemed like locusts.” Fourth, by asserting that all the Chanaanites everywhere are taller in stature than the Hebrews: “The people,” they say, “that we beheld are of a tall stature,” when yet the Chanaanites were not ordinarily taller than the Egyptians, Hebrews and other neighbouring peoples. Fifth, because they concealed the truth, as that they had seen only three giants in Chanaan, and many other things which could have raised the people to hope of obtaining Chanaan, and taken away or lessened their fear of the Chanaanites. So Abulensis.
“There we saw monsters.” In Hebrew, “there we saw giants,” nephilim, that is, giants, who are called nephilim, that is, falling, because they were so tall that those who saw them fell from terror; or because they made others fall, killing other men everywhere; for these giants were fierce men and cruel tyrants. Ridiculous, therefore, is what R. Salomon says, that these giants are called nephilim, that is, falling, because, he says, the giants were of the race of the two angels who fell from heaven, namely Aza and Azael.
Verse 33. “The land which we have viewed devoureth its inhabitants.” Some understand this of the goodness of the land, as if they said: The land of Chanaan is so fertile that all gape after it, and its possessors in turn expel and kill the inhabitants.
Others explain it thus, secondly: as if they said, The land of Chanaan is so good that no one desires to go out of it; whence all who are born in it wish to live and die in it, so that they are, as it were, devoured by their own land. But this would not have been a detraction, but rather a praise of the land.
Thirdly, and truly: I say, therefore, that “the land devours its inhabitants,” that is, the land of Chanaan, by the intemperance of the air, is unhealthy, noxious and pestilent, so that it breeds diseases and brings early death to its inhabitants. This they said perhaps because, going over the land, they found that a plague was then raging in it, and themselves ascribed it to the condition and bad quality of the land, whereas it should rather be ascribed to God, who in Leviticus xviii, 24–28, had promised the Hebrews that he would make the land itself vomit out the Chanaanites for their crimes. Whence some of the Hebrews, who are credible, relate that at that time there was so great a plague in Chanaan, and so many were dying, that the Chanaanites, occupied with the funerals of their own, although they saw these spies, did not seize them, nor examine them, nay, did not even heed them. Josephus adds, of his own, as it seems, by that paraphrastic genius and spirit with which he is wont to adorn and colour the affairs of his nation, that the spies said that the Hebrews could not overcome the Chanaanites furnished with wealth and arms, on account of their own poverty and want of arms and necessaries, and because they would first have to cross impassable rivers and insurmountable mountains. He adds further that the Hebrews were so excited to great murmuring by these words that they wanted to kill Moses and Aaron, and so return to Egypt.
“We seemed like locusts.” This is an excessive and lying hyperbole, to deter the people from entering.