The Complete Jewish Bible CJB
The Bible in Basic English BBE
1 ADONAI said to Moshe,
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And the Lord said to Moses,
2 "Send men on your behalf to reconnoiter the land of Kena'an, which I am giving to the people of Isra'el. From each ancestral tribe send someone who is a leader in his tribe."
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Send men to get knowledge about the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the children of Israel; from every tribe of their fathers you are to send a man, every one a chief among them.
3 Moshe dispatched them from the Pa'ran Desert as ADONAI had ordered; all of them were leading men among the people of Isra'el.
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And Moses sent them from the waste land of Paran as the Lord gave orders, all of them men who were heads of the children of Israel.
4 Here are their names: from the tribe of Re'uven, Shamua the son of Zakur;
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And these were their names: of the tribe of Reuben, Shammua, the son of Zaccur.
5 from the tribe of Shim'on, Shafat the son of Hori;
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Of the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat, the son of Hori.
6 from the tribe of Y'hudah, Kalev the son of Y'funeh;
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Of the tribe of Judah, Caleb, the son of Jephunneh.
7 from the tribe of Yissakhar, Yig'al the son of Yosef;
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Of the tribe of Issachar, Igal, the son of Joseph.
8 from the tribe of Efrayim, Hoshea the son of Nun;
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Of the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea, the son of Nun.
9 from the tribe of Binyamin, Palti the son of Rafu;
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Of the tribe of Benjamin, Palti, the son of Raphu.
10 from the tribe of Z'vulun, Gadi'el the son of Sodi;
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Of the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel, the son of Sodi.
11 from the tribe of Yosef, that is, from the tribe of M'nasheh, Gadi the son of Susi;
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Of the tribe of Joseph, that is of the family of Manasseh, Gaddi, the son of Susi.
12 from the tribe of Dan, 'Ammi'el the son of G'malli;
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Of the tribe of Dan, Ammiel, the son of Gemalli.
13 from the tribe of Asher, S'tur the son of Mikha'el;
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Of the tribe of Asher, Sethur, the son of Michael
14 from the tribe of Naftali, Nachbi the son of Vofsi; and
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Of the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi, the son of Vophsi.
15 from the tribe of Gad, Ge'u'el the son of Makhi.
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Of the tribe of Gad, Gevel, the son of Machi.
16 These are the names of the men Moshe sent out to reconnoiter the land. Moshe gave to Hoshea the son of Nun the name Y'hoshua.
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These are the names of the men whom Moses sent to get knowledge about the land. And Moses gave to Hoshea, the son of Nun, the name of Joshua.
17 Moshe sent them to reconnoiter the land of Kena'an, instructing them, "Go on up to the Negev and into the hills,
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So Moses sent them to have a look at the land of Canaan, and said to them, Go up into the South and into the hill-country;
18 and see what the land is like. Notice the people living there, whether they are strong or weak, few or many;
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And see what the land is like; and if the people living in it are strong or feeble, small or great in number;
19 and what kind of country they live in, whether it is good or bad; and what kind of cities they live in, open or fortified.
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And what sort of land they are living in, if it is good or bad; and what their living-places are, tent-circles or walled towns;
20 See whether the land is fertile or unproductive and whether there is wood in it or not. Finally, be bold enough to bring back some of the fruit of the land." When they left it was the season for the first grapes to ripen.
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And if the land is fertile or poor, and if there is wood in it or not. And be of good heart, and come back with some of the produce of the land. Now it was the time when the first grapes were ready.
21 They went up and reconnoitered the land from the Tzin Desert to Rechov near the entrance to Hamat.
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So they went up and got a view of the land, from the waste land of Zin to Rehob, on the way to Hamath.
22 They went up into the Negev and arrived at Hevron; Achiman, Sheshai and Talmai, the 'Anakim, lived there. (Hevron was built seven years before Tzo'an in Egypt.)
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They went up into the South and came to Hebron; and Ahiman and Sheshai and Talmai, the children of Anak, were living there. (Now the building of Hebron took place seven years before that of Zoan in Egypt.)
23 They came to the Eshkol Valley; and there they cut off a branch bearing one cluster of grapes, which they carried on a pole between two of them; they also took pomegranates and figs.
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And they came to the valley of Eshcol, and cutting down a vine-branch with its grapes, two of them took it on a rod between them; and they took some pomegranates and figs.
24 That place was called the Valley of Eshkol [cluster], because of the cluster which the people of Isra'el cut down there.
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That place was named the valley of Eshcol because of the grapes which the children of Israel took from there.
25 Forty days later, they returned from reconnoitering the land
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At the end of forty days they came back from viewing the land.
26 and went to Moshe, Aharon and the entire community of the people of Isra'el at Kadesh in the Pa'ran Desert, where they brought back word to them and to the entire community and showed them the fruit of the land.
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And they came back to Moses and Aaron and all the children of Israel, to Kadesh in the waste land of Paran; and gave an account to them and to all the people and let them see the produce of the land.
27 What they told him was this: "We entered the land where you sent us, and indeed it does flow with milk and honey - here is its fruit!
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And they said, We came to the land where you sent us, and truly it is flowing with milk and honey: and here is some of the produce of it.
28 However the people living in the land are fierce, and the cities are fortified and very large. Moreover, we saw the 'Anakim there.
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But the people living in the land are strong, and the towns are walled and very great; further, we saw the children of Anak there.
29 'Amalek lives in the area of the Negev; the Hitti, the Y'vusi and the Emori live in the hills; and the Kena'ani live by the sea and alongside the Yarden."
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And the Amalekites are in the South; and the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites are living in the hill-country; and the Canaanites by the sea and by the side of Jordan.
30 Kalev silenced the people around Moshe and said, "We ought to go up immediately and take possession of it; there is no question that we can conquer it."
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Then Caleb made signs to the people to keep quiet, and said to Moses, Let us go up straight away and take this land; for we are well able to overcome it.
31 But the men who had gone with him said, "We can't attack those people, because they are stronger than we are";
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But the men who had gone up with him said, We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.
32 and they spread a negative report about the land they had reconnoitered for the people of Isra'el by saying, "The land we passed through in order to spy it out is a land that devours its inhabitants. All the people we saw there were giant!
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And they gave the children of Israel a bad account of the land they had been to see, saying, This land through which we went is a land causing destruction to those living in it; and all the people we saw there are men of more than common size.
33 We saw the N'filim, the descendants of 'Anak, who was from the N'filim; to ourselves we looked like grasshoppers by comparison, and we looked that way to them too!"
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There we saw those great men, the sons of Anak, offspring of the Nephilim: and we seemed to ourselves no more than insects, and so we seemed to them.
Complete Jewish Bible Copyright 1998 by David H. Stern. Published by Jewish New Testament Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
The Bible in Basic English is in the public domain.