²⁴ So Moses went out and reported the Lord’s words to the people. He gathered the seventy elders and stationed them around the Tabernacle.^{[a] 25} And the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to Moses. Then he gave the seventy elders the same Spirit that was upon Moses. And when the Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But this never happened again.

²⁶ Two men, Eldad and Medad, had stayed behind in the camp. They were listed among the elders, but they had not gone out to the Tabernacle. Yet the Spirit rested upon them as well, so they prophesied there in the camp. ²⁷ A young man ran and reported to Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp!”

²⁸ Joshua son of Nun, who had been Moses’ assistant since his youth, protested, “Moses, my master, make them stop!”

²⁹ But Moses replied, “Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his Spirit upon them all!” ³⁰ Then Moses returned to the camp with the elders of Israel.

The Lord Sends Quail

³¹ Now the Lord sent a wind that brought quail from the sea and let them fall all around the camp. For miles in every direction there were quail flying about three feet above the ground.^{[b] 32} So the people went out and caught quail all that day and throughout the night and all the next day, too. No one gathered less than fifty bushels^[c]! They spread the quail all around the camp to dry. ³³ But while they were gorging themselves on the meat—while it was still in their mouths—the anger of the Lord blazed against the people, and he struck them with a severe plague. ³⁴ So that place was called Kibroth-hattaavah (which means “graves of gluttony”) because there they buried the people who had craved meat from Egypt. ³⁵ From Kibroth-hattaavah the Israelites traveled to Hazeroth, where they stayed for some time.

The Complaints of Miriam and Aaron

12 While they were at Hazeroth, Miriam and Aaron criticized Moses because he had married a Cushite woman. ² They said, “Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Hasn’t he spoken through us, too?” But the Lord heard them. ³ (Now Moses was very humble—more humble than any other person on earth.)

⁴ So immediately the Lord called to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam and said, “Go out to the Tabernacle,^[d] all three of you!” So the three of them went to the Tabernacle. ⁵ Then the Lord descended in the pillar of cloud and stood at the entrance of the Tabernacle.^[e] “Aaron and Miriam!” he called, and they stepped forward. ⁶ And the Lord said to them, “Now listen to what I say:

⁹ The Lord was very angry with them, and he departed. ¹⁰ As the cloud moved from above the Tabernacle, there stood Miriam, her skin as white as snow from leprosy.^[f] When Aaron saw what had happened to her, ¹¹ he cried out to Moses, “Oh, my master! Please don’t punish us for this sin we have so foolishly committed. ¹² Don’t let her be like a stillborn baby, already decayed at birth.”

¹³ So Moses cried out to the Lord, “O God, I beg you, please heal her!”

¹⁴ But the Lord said to Moses, “If her father had done nothing more than spit in her face, wouldn’t she be defiled for seven days? So keep her outside the camp for seven days, and after that she may be accepted back.”

¹⁵ So Miriam was kept outside the camp for seven days, and the people waited until she was brought back before they traveled again. ¹⁶ Then they left Hazeroth and camped in the wilderness of Paran.

Twelve Scouts Explore Canaan

13 The Lord now said to Moses, ² “Send out men to explore the land of Canaan, the land I am giving to the Israelites. Send one leader from each of the twelve ancestral tribes.” ³ So Moses did as the Lord commanded him. He sent out twelve men, all tribal leaders of Israel, from their camp in the wilderness of Paran. ⁴ These were the tribes and the names of their leaders:

¹⁶ These are the names of the men Moses sent out to explore the land. (Moses called Hoshea son of Nun by the name Joshua.)

¹⁷ Moses gave the men these instructions as he sent them out to explore the land: “Go north through the Negev into the hill country. ¹⁸ See what the land is like, and find out whether the people living there are strong or weak, few or many. ¹⁹ See what kind of land they live in. Is it good or bad? Do their towns have walls, or are they unprotected like open camps? ²⁰ Is the soil fertile or poor? Are there many trees? Do your best to bring back samples of the crops you see.” (It happened to be the season for harvesting the first ripe grapes.)

²¹ So they went up and explored the land from the wilderness of Zin as far as Rehob, near Lebo-hamath. ²² Going north, they passed through the Negev and arrived at Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai—all descendants of Anak—lived. (The ancient town of Hebron was founded seven years before the Egyptian city of Zoan.) ²³ When they came to the valley of Eshcol, they cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes so large that it took two of them to carry it on a pole between them! They also brought back samples of the pomegranates and figs. ²⁴ That place was called the valley of Eshcol (which means “cluster”), because of the cluster of grapes the Israelite men cut there.

The Scouting Report

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^[g] and along the Jordan Valley.”

³⁰ But Caleb tried to quiet the people as they stood before Moses. “Let’s go at once to take the land,” he said. “We can certainly conquer it!”

³¹ But the other men who had explored the land with him disagreed. “We can’t go up against them! They are stronger than we are!” ³² So they spread this bad report about the land among the Israelites: “The land we traveled through and explored will devour anyone who goes to live there. All the people we saw were huge. ³³ We even saw giants^[h] there, the descendants of Anak. Next to them we felt like grasshoppers, and that’s what they thought, too!”