The Story

At last God's people had come near to the promised land, the good land God had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob hundreds of years before. From the camp at Kadesh, God told Moses to choose one leader from each of the twelve tribes to go ahead and spy out the land — to see what the land was like, and what the people who lived in it were like.

The twelve men travelled through the whole land for forty days. They found it rich and good: in one valley they cut down a bunch of grapes so enormous that two men carried it hanging on a pole between them, and they gathered pomegranates and figs too. They came back to Moses and all the people and reported that "it floweth with milk and honey" — a land rich with everything good — and they showed everyone the fruit.

But then ten of the spies began to frighten the people. Yes, the land was good, they said, but the people there were strong, the cities had great high walls — and there were giants! They said, "we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight". The people listened, and cried all that night. They wished they had stayed in Egypt. They even talked of choosing a new leader and going back!

Only two of the twelve, Joshua and Caleb, trusted God. Caleb had spoken up right away: "Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it." Now Joshua and Caleb tore their clothes in sorrow and begged the people not to rebel against God and not to be afraid — the LORD was with them, and God is always stronger than giants. But the people would not listen; they even wanted to stone the two brave men.

God was grieved that His people would not trust Him after all He had done for them. The grown-ups who refused to believe would not enter the land; they would wander in the wilderness forty years, and their children would go in instead. But God spoke kindly about Caleb: "my servant Caleb, because he had another spirit with him, and hath followed me fully" — Caleb would surely enter the land, and his children after him. And so it happened: the ten fearful spies died, but Caleb and Joshua lived — and forty years later, Joshua led God's people into the very land he had trusted God for.