🔢WEB · Numbers 13:31
What does Numbers 13:31 mean?
"But the men who went up with him said, “We aren’t able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we.”"
— Numbers 13:31 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
However the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. Moreover, we saw the children of Anak there.
Amalek dwells in the land of the South. The Hittite, the Jebusite, and the Amorite dwell in the hill country. The Canaanite dwells by the sea, and along the side of the Jordan.”
Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, “Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it!”
But the men who went up with him said, “We aren’t able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we.”
They brought up an evil report of the land which they had spied out to the children of Israel, saying, “The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that eats up its inhabitants; and all the people who we saw in it are men of great stature.
There we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim. We were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.”
Explanation
Numbers 13:31 comes from the account of the twelve spies whom Moses sent to scout the land of Canaan before Israel's planned entry into it. This particular verse records the response of ten of the twelve spies after they returned from their forty-day reconnaissance mission. In plain language, they are saying: "We cannot conquer this land; the people living there are too powerful for us to defeat." This statement stands in direct contrast to the report given moments earlier by Caleb (and later joined by Joshua), who insisted that Israel should go up and take the land because God had promised it to them.
The context is essential to understanding the weight of this verse. Moses, acting under God's instruction, sent one leader from each of the twelve tribes to survey Canaan and report back on the land and its inhabitants. All twelve spies agreed on the facts: the land was fertile and good, but its cities were fortified and its people were large and strong, including the Nephilim's descendants, the Anakites. The disagreement was not about the facts but about the conclusion drawn from them. Ten spies looked at the size of the enemy and despaired; Caleb and Joshua looked at the same facts but remembered God's promise and power. This verse captures the moment the majority report tips from honest observation into outright unbelief and fear-driven rebellion.
Theologically, this verse illustrates the difference between natural sight and faith. The ten spies were not lying about the strength of the Canaanites — the land's defenses were genuinely form
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