Except Caleb

Deuteronomy 1:29–36 ““And so I said to you, ‘Do not be terrified, and do not fear them. Yahweh your God, who is going before you, will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and just as he did in the wilderness when you saw that Yahweh your God carried you, just as someone carries his son, all along the way that you traveled until you reached this place.’ But through all of this you did not trust in Yahweh your God, who goes before you on your way, seeking a place for your encampment, in fire at night and in a cloud by day, to show you the way that you should go. “Then Yahweh heard the sound of your words, and he was angry, and he swore, saying, ‘No one of these men of this evil generation will see the good land that I swore to give to your ancestors, except Caleb, the son of Jephunneh; he himself shall see it, and to him I will give the land upon which he has trodden and to his sons because he followed Yahweh unreservedly.’”

A little background: back in the book of Numbers, the Lord had commanded Moses to send 12 spies into the Promised Land, the land of Canaan to explore the land and bring back a report. They explored the land for forty days, and the number forty in the Bible typically is a number meant for testing. Well, 10 of the 12 spies failed the test, along with the rest of the people of Israel

Numbers 13:25–33 “They returned from exploring the land at the end of forty days. And they came to Moses and Aaron and to the entire community of the Israelites in the desert of Paran at Kadesh; they brought back word to them and to all the community, and they showed them the fruit of the land. And they told him, “We came to the land that you sent us, and it is flowing of milk and honey; this is its fruit. Yet the people who are inhabiting it are strong and the cities are fortified and very large; moreover, we saw the descendants of the Anakites there. The Amalekites are living in the land of the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites, and the Amorites are living in the hill country; and the Canaanites are living at the sea and on the banks of the Jordan.” And Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, “Surely, let us go up and let us take possession of it because surely we will be able to prevail over it.” And the men who went up with him said, “We are not able to go up to the people because they are stronger than us.” And they presented the report of the land that they explored to the Israelites, saying, “The land that we went through to explore is a land that eats its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in its midst are men of great size. There we saw the Nephilim (the descendants of Anak came from the Nephilim), and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their eyes.””

Except Caleb