The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Send men to scout the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelite people; send one man from each of their ancestral tribes, each one a chieftain among them.” So Moses, by the Lord’s command, sent them out from the wilderness of Paran, all the men being leaders of the Israelites. And these were their names:
From the tribe of Reuben, Shammua son of Zaccur.
From the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat son of Hori.
From the tribe of Judah, Caleb son of Jephunneh.
From the tribe of Issachar, Igal son of Joseph.
From the tribe of Ephraim, Hosea son of Nun.
From the tribe of Benjamin, Palti son of Rafu.
From the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel son of Sodi.
From the tribe of Joseph, namely, the tribe of Manasseh, Gaddi son of Susi.
From the tribe of Dan, Ammiel son of Gemalli.
From the tribe of Asher, Sethur son of Michael.
From the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi son of Vophsi.
From the tribe of Gad, Geuel son of Machi.
Those were the names of the men whom Moses sent to scout the land; but Moses changed the name of Hosea son of Nun to Joshua.
When Moses sent them to scout the land of Canaan, he said to them, “Go up there into the Negeb and on into the hill country, and see what kind of country it is. Are the people who dwell in it strong or weak, few or many? Is the country in which they dwell good or bad? Are the towns they live in open or fortified? Is the soil rich or poor? Is it wooded or not? And take pains to bring back some of the fruit of the land.”–Now it happened to be the season of the first ripe grapes.
From Parshat Shelakh. From THE TANAKH: The New JPS Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text. Copyright 1985 by the Jewish Publication Society. Used by permission.