NUMBERS
CHAPTER 13
Moses sends twelve spies to search land of Canaan—Ten of them bring an evil report, telling only of the strength of its inhabitants.
2 Send thou men, [ 12 spies to search out the land of Canaan to see if it is a rich land that they might posess. ] that they may search the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel: of every tribe of their fathers shall ye send a man, [ One representative from each tribe. So they are not just chosen at random. ] every one a ruler among them.
[ This is symbolic as the rulers represent the people. They are not the ones that the Lord has called, or rulers by birthright but they are those who are elected by the people. ]
3 And Moses by the commandment of the LORD sent them from the wilderness of Paran: all those men were heads of the children of Israel.
6 Of the tribe of Judah, Caleb [ Important that Calab is from the tribe of Judah. He is one of two spies that return from being a spy and he does not say there is no chance for us to win at war. For which we we later see that God will bless him and the tribe that he represents later on. ] the son of Jephunneh.
8 Of the tribe of Ephraim, Oshea [ The lineage from Abraham to Joshua goes through Isaac, then Jacob (Israel), down to Joseph, then his son Ephraim, whose descendant was Nun, making Joshua (son of Nun) a direct descendant of Abraham. Oshea or Joshua is called to lead at the death of Moses (Josh 1:1). Joshua is one of two spies that return from being a spy and he does not say there is no chance for us to win at war. For which we we later see that God will bless him and the tribe that he represents later on. Joshua later leads the children of Israel to conquer Canaan by the sword around 1250 BC. Three hundred years after that, Israel apostatizes, and the righteous remnant flee from the northern kingdom to the southern kingdom around 925 BC.107 These righteous Josephite refugees bring with them the royal Josephite record, which eventually becomes the Brass Plates kept by Laban in 600 BC. When Nephi sneaks into Jerusalem on that fateful night, there's some kind of festival going on. Laban girds on his ceremonial armor and sword to meet with "elders of the Jews."(1 Ne. 4:22) Happily, Laban gets a little tipsy that night and is caught red-nosed and unconscious by Nephi. Using Laban's ceremonial sword, and echoing the brutal slaying of Nimrod, Nephi "took Laban by the hair of the head, and ... smote off his head with his own sword.
This isn't just any ordinary sword. Historian Don Bradley argues that the sword Laban carried was the same sword the Josephite chief Joshua had used in the conquest of Canaan. The sword was "caused to be made by Joseph, of old, in Egypt" and was "in the hand of Joshua when he led the house of Israel into the land of Canaan. ( Gladden, pp- 1-2) A contemporary account from Joseph Smith Jr. to Martin Harris to Francis Bishop describes the sword of Laban:
And after him it came down in the lineage of Joseph to Laban, from whom it was taken by Nephi, according to the account given in the Book of Mormon; and since the fall of the Nephites it has been preserved with the other sacred things, to come forth into the hand of a descendant of Joseph of old, in the line of Ephraim.!
Laban was wielding a sword that was over 1,000 years old. Joseph Smith Jr.
was looking at a sword that was almost 4,000. ] the son of Nun.
16 These are the names of the men which Moses sent to spy out the land. And Moses called Oshea the son of Nun Jehoshua.
[ Jehoshua is from Joseph he will stand with Moses against the people in Num 14:6. ]
17 ¶ And Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan, and said unto them, Get you up this way southward, and go up into the mountain:
18 And see the land, what it is; and the people that dwelleth therein, whether they be strong or weak, few or many;
19 And what the land is that they dwell in, whether it be good or bad; and what cities they be that they dwell in, whether in tents, or in strong holds;
20 And what the land is, whether it be fat or lean, whether there be wood therein, or not. And be ye of good courage, and bring of the fruit of the land. Now the time was the time of the firstripe grapes.
21 ¶ So they went up, and searched the land from the wilderness of Zin unto Rehob, as men come to Hamath.
22 And they ascended by the south, and came unto Hebron; where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the children of Anak, were. (Now Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.)
23 And they came unto the brook of Eshcol, and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, [ So they cut down one branch of grapes. ] and they bare it between two upon a staff; [ It was so bing and heavy that it took two men to carry it. ] and they brought of the pomegranates, and of the figs.
24 The place was called the brook Eshcol, because of the cluster of grapes which the children of Israel cut down from thence.
25 And they returned from searching of the land after forty days.
[ So the spies have been gone for forty days. ]
26 ¶ And they went and came to Moses, and to Aaron, and to all the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the wilderness of Paran, to Kadesh; and brought back word unto them, and unto all the congregation, and shewed them the fruit of the land.
27 And they told him, and said, We came unto the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey; [ So yes this is a place that is very inhabitable from the production of the ground.] and this is the fruit of it.
[ Here is an example of how productive it is. The example that was shown was the grape vine that took two men to carry verse 23. ]
28 Nevertheless the people be strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled, and very great: and moreover we saw the children of Anak there.
29 The Amalekites dwell in the land of the south: and the Hittites, and the Jebusites, and the Amorites, dwell in the mountains: and the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and by the coast of Jordan.
30 And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, [ Calab had confidence in the Lord tha he would provide a way for the people to win. ] and said, Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it.
31 But the men that went up with him said, We be not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we.
32 And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature.
[ All that is a pretty big percentage, everyone. So in essence these people are not like us they are large, very large. Remember they were sent there to see if they could go into the land of Canaan and take it over. So in essence they are saying that there is no way that is going to happen. ]
33 And there we saw the giants, [ So there is something really weird. These are a people of enormous stature. Goliath of Gall was one of these original Canaanites who was not killed in the great purge. Goliath was 10 feet tall, and King Og of Bashan was about 14 feet tall Deut 3:11. ] the sons of Anak, [ Some scholars suppose this mention of the "Nephilim" or the giants is wholly separate from the "Nephilim" encountered in Genesis 6. But notice the mysterious provenance of these "Nephilim"; they are here called the "sons of Anak."
Which according to the Hebrew and Aramaic lexicon of the Old Testament, the
"sons of Anak" or "anakim" are linked to another mysterious group, the
"Rephaim.”(Duet. 2:11) Etymologically, Anakim could mean something like "neck chain" people, while "Rephaim" shares a root with the words for "shade or "spirits of the dead." None of this makes sense to a reader bound by traditional canon, but when we consider that the spirits of the "Nephili were bound in Sheol with "eternal chains," it starts to make sense. The "Sons, of Anak" are the heirs of the antediluvian abominations; they are the mini-Nephilim on this side of the Flood.
So a thousand years later, here again we meet a second round the
"Nephilim," the "mighty," "fallen" "aborters." Notice that Joshua's scouts don't mention any women or children, but instead say that "all the we saw in it are men..." The only woman recorded in Canaan enslaved prostitute, who, coincidentally, has no children. Joshua 2:9-13
This changes the narrative of the Israelites slaughtering if there had been a systematic sterilization of the mothers then there would of coarse have been no children to slaughter, so there is no need to mention that they should be killed as well. ] which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight. [ The point here is that these ruler spies who return after they know what they Lord has done in delivering them from Egypt, they come and tell Moses that it is impossible for them to take the land of Canaan, to win a war with them. ]