Numbers 13:27

27 And they told him, "We came to the land that you sent us, and it [is] flowing of milk and honey; this [is] its fruit.

Numbers 13:27 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 13:27

And they told him
Moses, who was the chief ruler whom they addressed, and to whom they directed their speech:

and said, we came unto the land whither thou sentest us;
the land of Canaan, which they were sent by Moses to spy; this was said by ten of them or by one of them as their mouth; for Caleb and Joshua did not join with them in the following account, as appears from ( Numbers 13:30 ) ;

and surely it floweth with milk and honey;
they own that the land answered to the description which the Lord had given of it when it was promised them by him, ( Exodus 3:8 ) ;

and this [is] the fruit of it;
pointing to the bunch of grapes, the pomegranates and figs; not that these were a proof of its flowing with milk and honey, at least in a literal sense, but of the goodness and fruitfulness of the land: though the luxury of Bacchus, the god of wine, is by the poet ^F13 described, not only by a fountain of wine, but by rivers of milk and flows of honey.

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FOOTNOTES:

F13 "Vinique fontem" Horat. Carmin. l. 2. Ode 19.

Numbers 13:27 In-Context

25 They returned from exploring the land at the end of forty days.

26 And they came to Moses and Aaron and to the entire community of the {Israelites} in the desert of Paran at Kadesh; they brought back word to them and [to] all the community, and they showed them the fruit of the land.

27 And they told him, "We came to the land that you sent us, and it [is] flowing of milk and honey; this [is] its fruit.

28 Yet the people who are inhabiting [it are] strong and the cities [are] fortified and very large; moreover, we saw the descendants of the Anakites there.

29 [The] Amalekites [are] living in the land of the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites, and the Amorites [are] living in the hill country; and the Canaanites [are] living at the sea and on the banks of the Jordan."

Footnotes

• [a] Hebrew "they told him and said"