Numbers 13:33

33 We saw there the Nephilim (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We saw ourselves as grasshoppers, and that's how we appeared to them."

Numbers 13:33 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 13:33

And there we saw the giants
Not throughout the land, and yet it is so expressed, and in such connection with what goes before, that it might be so understood, and as they might choose it should; that as there were men everywhere of an uncommon size, and were generally so, there were some larger than they in all places, of a prodigious size, of a gigantic stature; and yet this was only in Hebron where they saw them;

the sons of Anak;
whose names are given, ( Numbers 13:22 ) ; and there were but three of them:

[which came] of the giants;
they, were of the race of giants; for not only Anak their father, but Arba their grandfather was one; ( Joshua 14:15 ) ( Joshua 15:13 ) ;

and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers;
little diminutive creatures in comparison of them; an hyperbolical exaggeration of the greatness of the giants, and of their own littleness:

and so we were in their sight;
but this they could not be so certain of, and could only make conjectures by their neglect or supercilious treatment of them. Jarchi makes them to speak of them more diminutively still, as that they heard those giants saying one to another,

``there are ants in the vineyards like men.''

Numbers 13:33 In-Context

31 But the men who went up with him said, "We can't go up against the people because they are stronger than we."

32 They started a rumor about the land that they had explored, telling the Israelites, "The land that we crossed over to explore is a land that devours its residents. All the people we saw in it are huge men.

33 We saw there the Nephilim (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We saw ourselves as grasshoppers, and that's how we appeared to them."