Numbers 13:27

27 This was their report to Moses: “We entered the land you sent us to explore, and it is indeed a bountiful country—a land flowing with milk and honey. Here is the kind of fruit it produces.

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 After exploring the land for forty days, the men returned

26 to Moses, Aaron, and the whole community of Israel at Kadesh in the wilderness of Paran. They reported to the whole community what they had seen and showed them the fruit they had taken from the land.

27 This was their report to Moses: “We entered the land you sent us to explore, and it is indeed a bountiful country—a land flowing with milk and honey. Here is the kind of fruit it produces.

28 But the people living there are powerful, and their towns are large and fortified. We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak!

29 The Amalekites live in the Negev, and the Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the hill country. The Canaanites live along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and along the Jordan Valley.”