On the first day of the explorers’ return we read two or three speeches of theirs, in the same Num. ch. 13. And the first of them, contained in vv. 28, 29, and 30 [27–29] — after which the people’s murmuring at once followed — [Scripture] shows at v. 31 [30]. Yet whether Joshua ought to have opposed that speech, one may rightly seem able to doubt. For in it they reported only what was true, and what had been commanded them to explore. For mark the several [points]. First: “The land,” they say, “to which thou didst send us truly flows with milk and honey.” But this was true. For “to flow with milk and honey” was a proverb by which the highest goodness of the land was signified; and this is understood also from the very proof here added. For they bring not milk and honey as testimony, but the fruits of the land which they had carried [back]. For they add — “as can be understood from these fruits” — [and] go on: “But it has most strong tillers.” In the Hebrew it is only positive, “a strong people dwells in the land”; and likewise in the Greek θρασὺ ἔθνος [“a bold nation”]. And is not this true? It is clear from Deut. 7:1 and ch. 9:1 — whence our interpreter rightly saw that this positive could be rendered by a superlative. Third: “and cities great and walled.” In the Hebrew the sense [is] the same, but the order of words transposed: thus, “and cities fortified (or walled) and very great.” But [is it] not most true? At Jericho, Ai, Gibeon, and others [it] was afterward found [so], when [the army] had advanced into the land itself. And Moses too asserts [it] (Deut. ch. 9), where the order of words is that which [is] here; and there is added what—
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—is here set down in the 2nd or 3rd speech: “up to the heavens.” Fourth: “We saw the stock of Enac there” — this too Moses confirms in the cited place. Fifth: what they add about the seats of the Amalekites, Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites was not quite exactly so; but that all these things had been commanded them to explore, you will recognize by reading, in the same ch. 13, Num. vv. 19, 20, and 21. For therefore, where our interpreter says “truly,” in Hebrew it is גם [gam], that is, “even,” as if he said: “So the matter stands,” as had often been said — “It is, as Moses relates”: the very thing agrees with the words. What, then, was there for which Joshua could or ought to oppose them? For to gainsay those speaking the truth is to lie; and [to wish] that explorers be unwilling to tell, or [to] hinder [them from telling], what they had seen and explored, is to wish them unruly, faithless, and satisfying their office in nothing. But someone will say: since they knew the people [to be] timid, it was better for them to keep silent than to strike terror into them and give cause for murmuring. But how could they know that it would come to pass that the people would be so terrified? And granting they knew this very thing, or at least probably suspected it — ought they not to satisfy the office laid upon them? Or, because another is wicked, ought I not to be good? If there was a scandal, it was passive, not active, as the scholastics speak. For which reason there are, in Abulensis (q. 42), [those] who judge these explorers free of all fault — and therefore that they need not have been resisted by Joshua or any other. But Abulensis himself will have it that they did commit a sin; yet he proves this from the [explorers’] later speeches: in this first one he blames only the intention — that they said these things in order that whoever heard [them] might stir up the people. But since true things, and things commanded — that is, things that had absolutely to be said — were being said, how could this evil intention alone be known? If you answer [that it is known] from the penalty that followed, and so from the testimony of God Himself, who says (in the following chapter) that these were filled with “another spirit” than that with which Caleb was — it will indeed have to be granted; but this intention, how could it then be perceived by the people, how could it have such force as to kindle against them such great torches of angers and murmurings? I say, then, that not only in that first speech was there an evil intention, but also two other most vicious [things], which struck the people’s eyes and ears and so greatly inflamed them. The one was in the explorers’ countenance, eyes, [and] gesture, and in the very manner of pronouncing those words which some [of them] were true and consonant with what had been commanded. For who does not know that the same speech, pronounced one way and another, has one force and meaning or another? Pronounce this very first speech yourself, then, or have it pronounced by another, in such a way that the former [part] be uttered meanly, lightly, contemptuously, [and] all the rest slowly, with wonder, with face and voice astonished, exaggerating, quivering, at times even as if trembling and half-dead — and you will now feel how much one [manner of] speaking differs from [another in] speaking. The other was in these very words. For that adversative particle at v. 29 — “But” — has altogether great force; and still greater the exceptive [particle] in the Seventy, ἀλλ’ ἢ ὅτι; [and] greatest the Hebrew אפס כי [ephes ki], which is expressed now by “except that,” now by “nevertheless” — as the Targum nearly signifies when it renders [it] by ברם [beram] (2 Kings 12:14; Num. 22:35). And since פס [pas / ephes] sometimes signifies “nothing,” or the “end and consumption” of some thing, it is here rendered by Pagninus “except that,” so that the sense is: “That the land is fruitful, as was often promised us, is true; but of obtaining it we must despair. For it will withstand us, and [they] will rather all destroy us—”
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…[the land will] destroy and scatter [us] — the great force and strength of the inhabitants, the size of many cities, the fortification both by nature and by art, the giant vastness of the Anakim, and the very position of the hostile nations: since at once from the south meet [us] the Amalekites, who not long ago dared of their own accord to provoke us with a grievous war, and now prepare atrociously to avenge the memory of the defeat then received; then next toward the east, [as] a further [barrier] from the mountains which they [would] fall upon, the Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites shut [us] off; and toward the west, finally, are the greatest nations of the most ferocious Canaanites, who — even if we should take that other route by the Mediterranean Sea, or by the neighboring sands, [rather than] this [way] through our desert — would bar us from the borders of that land and drive us back. This above all was the sense in those explorers’ words; on these things they were fixed; these, indignant, wailing, and despairing, they flung out with voice, and much more with the whole composition of the body — whence arose in the people so great a trembling and dread, so great a murmuring and despair — exactly as we read to have happened in Caesar’s camp, in his own [words], bk. 1 On the Gallic War. It will not be beside the point, that a more fitting comparison may be set up, to transcribe his words here: “While Caesar,” he says, “tarries a few days at Vesontio for the sake of the corn-supply and provisions, from the inquiry of our men and the talk of the Gauls and traders — who declared the Germans to be of huge bodily size, of incredible valor and training in arms, [and said] that often, when they had met with them, they could not endure so much as their look and the keenness of their eyes — so sudden a terror seized the whole army that it disturbed the minds and spirits of all in no small measure. This first arose from the tribunes of the soldiers and the prefects and the rest, who, having followed Caesar from the City for friendship’s sake, had no great experience in military affairs; each of whom, alleging some cause which he said was necessary for his setting out, would ask that it be permitted him to depart with [Caesar’s] leave. Some, moved by shame, stayed, to avoid the suspicion of fear; [but] these could neither compose their countenance nor sometimes hold back their tears — hidden in their tents, they either bewailed their own fate, or lamented the common peril with their friends. Everywhere throughout the camp wills were being sealed. By the talk and fear of these, little by little even those who had great experience in the camp — soldiers, and centurions, and those who commanded the cavalry — were being disturbed. Those of them who wished to be thought less timid said they did not fear the enemy, but dreaded the narrows of the route and the vastness of the forests which lay between them and Ariovistus, or [feared] for the corn-supply, that it could not be conveniently brought up. Some even reported to Caesar that when he had ordered the camp to be moved and the standards borne forward, the soldiers would not be obedient to the command, nor for fear would they carry the standards.” Have you seen the Romans trembling and seeking flight? And yet what they had heard of [the Germans’] bodily size and warlike strength was not wholly empty. For the same Caesar (bk. 2), treating of the Aduatuci — Gauls who were sprung from the Cimbri and Teutones — says: “For the most part, to all the Gauls, on account of the size of their own bodies, our shortness is a matter of contempt”; and he says they marveled by what hands or strength, especially men of such small stature (the Romans), [could] set—
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—a tower of such weight against their walls. And (bk. 4): “The Suevi live not much on corn, but for the greatest part on milk and cattle, and are much in hunting. Which thing — both by the kind of food, and by daily exercise, and by the freedom of life, in that from boyhood, accustomed to no duty or discipline, they do nothing at all against their will — both nourishes their strength, and makes men of huge bodily size.” Wherefore it was right, and indeed altogether necessary, that — just as was done by Caesar — this first complaint and speech of those explorers be met; and that it be done by Joshua, who was so great before Moses and the people, and who had been present in all things, and perhaps in some way had been in charge, the matter seemed to demand.