Ten Scared Spies and Two Who Believed

The cloud lifted from the tent of meeting at last. God's people rolled up their tents, left the mountain where they had camped for nearly a year, and followed the cloud north to the edge of the land God had promised them.

"Send men to explore it," God told Moses. So Moses chose twelve leaders. One was Caleb. Another was Joshua, the young man who had led the army against Amalek. (His parents had named him Hoshea. Moses was the one who called him Joshua.)

"See if the land is good," Moses said. "And bring back some fruit!"

For forty days the twelve crept through the land. Then they came home with one bunch of grapes hanging from a pole between two men.
"It flows with milk and honey," the spies said. "But..."

That "but" grew and grew. "The cities have walls up to the sky. And we saw giants!"

Caleb hushed the crowd. "We should go up and take the land. We can certainly do it!"

"No, we can't!" said the other ten. "Next to those giants we felt like grasshoppers, and that is how we looked to them too." (Nobody asked how they knew what the giants were thinking.)

All night the camp cried. In the morning they shouted at Moses. "If only we had died in Egypt! Or out here in this wilderness! Why is the LORD bringing us here to be killed? Our children will be carried off! Let's choose a new leader and go back to Egypt!"

Joshua and Caleb tore their clothes. "The land is very, very good," they said. "If the LORD is pleased with us, he will lead us in. Don't be afraid of those people. The LORD is with us!"

The crowd picked up stones to throw at them.

Then the glory of the LORD shone out over the tent of meeting, and every hand went still.

"How long will these people refuse to believe in me," God said to Moses, "after all the signs I have done among them?"

Moses begged God to forgive them.

"I have forgiven them, as you asked," God said. "But not one of these grown-ups will see the land. They wished they had died in this wilderness, and they will, after forty years of wandering, one for each day the spies explored. Only Caleb and Joshua will go in, because they followed me with all their hearts. And the children they said would be carried off? I will bring them in."

The ten frightened spies died of a sickness sent by the LORD. Next morning the people tried to march in anyway, without God, and their enemies chased them off. So they turned into the wilderness, and over forty years that whole grown-up generation died there, everyone except Joshua and Caleb.

Joshua did lead their children across the river at last, with old Caleb beside him. But Joshua grew old and died, and the people's hearts went wandering again. The rest he gave them did not last.

So God's people waited, through judges and kings and prophets, for a rest that would hold.

Then another scout came, braver than Caleb and Joshua put together. He spent forty days in the wilderness and trusted God on every one of them. He faced the biggest giant there is, death itself. He died, and on the third day he rose. "I am going to get a place ready for you," Jesus had told his friends, "and I will come back." He has gone into the good land first, and he will bring his people in after him.