Numbers 13: Minority Report

"Twelve men went to spy out Canaan, ten were bad and two were good.
What do you think they saw in Canaan?  Ten were bad and two were good.
Some saw giants, big and tall.  Some saw grapes in clusters fall.
Some saw God was in it all.  Ten were bad and two were good."

Thank you to my Sunday School teachers from the 1970s for teaching me this (and many other) Bible songs!

This little ditty accurately sums up the thirteenth chapter of the Book of Numbers.  Sometimes people scoff at God for dragging the people through the wilderness for forty years after the Exodus, as if He didn't have a good follow-up plan for the plagues.  But Numbers makes clear that here, just a little more than a year after the first Passover, the people are on the verge of taking over the Promised Land.  No wandering required!

God directs Moses to appoint 12 men (one from each tribe) to go and spy out the land of Canaan (vs. 1-2).  Moses gives them instructions to report back on the land, its produce, its people and their cities.  They are gone for 40 days (funny how that number keeps popping up!)

Upon their return, here is what all 12 can agree upon:
1. The land is good.  It flows with milk and honey.  The fact-finding team even brought back a cluster of grapes that they had to carry on a pole between them it was so large.
2. There are strong and tall people living in the land in fortified cities.

Here is where the agreement ends.  Caleb (along with Joshua in chapter 14) contend that the time is at hand for the people to go and take the land.  They trust that God will surely give it into their hands.  Unfortunately, theirs is the minority report.

The other ten spies (who are bad, according to the song) doubt that God will deliver the land to them.  They maintain that the Israelites are too weak to prevail in battle against the strong people in the fortified cities.  As is often the case, they begin exaggerating the problem, now claiming that the people are so huge that the spies seemed as grasshoppers to them (vs. 33).

Don't automatically believe the majority!  Sometimes the minority has it right!