13:1-20 A memorable and melancholy history is related in this and the following chapter, of the turning back of Israel from the borders of Canaan, and the sentencing them to wander and perish in the wilderness, for their unbelief and murmuring. It appears, De 1:22, that the motion to search out the land came from the people. They had a better opinion of their own policy than of God's wisdom. Thus we ruin ourselves by believing the reports and representations of sense rather than Divine revelation. We walk by sight not by faith. Moses gave the spies this charge, Be of good courage. It was not only a great undertaking they were put upon, which required good management and resolution; but a great trust was reposed in them, which required that they should be faithful. Courage in such circumstances can only spring from strong faith, which Caleb and Joshua alone possessed.

Verse 17. - Get you up this way southward. Rather, "get you up there (זֶה) in the Negeb." The Negeb, meaning literally "the dryness," was the south-western district of Canaan, which bordered upon the desert, and partook more or less of its character. Except where springs existed, and irrigation could be carried out, it was unfit for settled habitation. See Joshua 15:19; Judges 1:15, where the same word is used. Go up into the mountain. From the Negeb they were to make their way into the mountain or hill country which formed the back-bone of Southern Palestine, from the Wady Murreh on the south to the plain of Esdraelon on the north. In after ages it formed the permanent center of the Jewish race and Jewish power. Cf. Judges 1:9 where the three natural divisions of Southern Palestine are mentioned together: חָהָר (ἡ ὀρεινή), the mountain; הַגֶּגֶב (ὁ Νότος), the steppe; הַשְּׁפֵלָה (ἡ πεδινή), the maritime plain.

And Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan,.... He sent them from Kadeshbarnea, as Caleb affirms, Joshua 14:7,

and said unto them, go ye up this way southward; pointing as it were with his finger which way they should go, even up such a hill southward; and which, as Aben Ezra observes, was not the south of the camp, but the south of the land of Canaan; and who further observes, that it is well known that Egypt, from whence the Israelites now came, was to the south of the land of Israel, of which this is a demonstration; the latitude of Egypt is less than thirty degrees, and the latitude of Jerusalem is thirty three, and the wilderness of Paran was in the south of the land of Egypt: it should be rendered by "the south", as in Numbers 13:22; or from the "south" (p), since the Israelites must go northward, as a learned man (q) observes, to enter into the land of Canaan: now this south part of Canaan afterwards belonged to the tribe of Judah, and lying southward, and mountainous, was dry and barren, Joshua 15:1; and was, as Jarchi says, the dregs of the land of Israel; and here, as he observes, the same method was taken as merchants do, who, when they show their goods, show the worst first, and then the best:

and go up into the mountain; which was inhabited by the Amorites, Deuteronomy 1:44; and was afterwards called the mountainous or hill country of Judea, Luke 1:39.

(p) "per meridianam plagam", V. L. "hac meridiana plaga", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator. (q) Bishop Clayton's Chronology of the Hebrew Bible, p. 392.

17. Get you up this way … , and go up into the mountain—Mount Seir (De 1:2), which lay directly from Sinai across the wilderness of Paran, in a northeasterly direction into the southern parts of the promised land.

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