Giants, Grasshoppers, And God

The mother, amused but obviously skeptical at this account, asked, “Are you certain that’s the way your teacher told the story?”

The little fellow cast his eyes downward and replied solemnly, “No, Mom, but if I told you what the teacher said, you wouldn’t believe it.” That’s the way we might have written the story; but it wouldn’t be accurate.

This is how the Psalmist related the story of God’s mercy and grace.

“Yet [the LORD] saved them for his name’s sake,

that he might make known his mighty power.

He rebuked the Red Sea, and it became dry,

and he led them through the deep as through a desert.

So he saved them from the hand of the foe

and redeemed them from the power of the enemy.

And the waters covered their adversaries;

not one of them was left.”

[PSALM 106:8-11]

You would think that such mighty demonstrations of God’s power displayed for His people would convince them that He would provide!

God fed His people and provided all that they required. The LORD gave them water in a desert land, and He sent them meat when they craved meat. He sent quail—so many quail that the people could never have eaten what was provided! The Living God did this so that they would know that He was well able to provide whatever they needed. He marched them right up to the edge of the land He had promised to give them. There, Moses prepared a spy team to search out the land in order to bring back a report.

This is the account as it is given in an early chapter in this Book of Numbers. “The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the people of Israel. From each tribe of their fathers you shall send a man, every one a chief among them.’ So Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran, according to the command of the LORD, all of them men who were heads of the people of Israel… Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan and said to them, ‘Go up into the Negeb and go up into the hill country, and see what the land is, and whether the people who dwell in it are strong or weak, whether they are few or many, and whether the land that they dwell in is good or bad, and whether the cities that they dwell in are camps or strongholds, and whether the land is rich or poor, and whether there are trees in it or not. Be of good courage and bring some of the fruit of the land.’ Now the time was the season of the first ripe grapes.” The account of sending out the spies concludes with the statement, “So they went up and spied out the land” [NUMBERS 13:1-3, 17-21].

Traversing the land, they discovered that it was truly a land of milk and honey. They travelled throughout the land, coming at last to the Valley of Eschol. There, we read that they “Cut down from there a branch with a single cluster of grapes, and they carried it on a pole between two of them; they also brought some pomegranates and figs. That place was called the Valley of Eshcol, because of the cluster that the people of Israel cut down from there” [NUMBERS 13:23-24]. These spies named the valley, which they had never seen before their transit throughout the land, the Valley of Clusters. The Hebrew term for “cluster” that is found in the TWENTY-FOURTH VERSE is “eschol,” hence, the name given to the valley in which the fruit was found. After forty days, the spies returned to the camp where they would deliver their report.