I don’t know if it’s just because I’m becoming more focused during this project, but I am fascinated by the minutiae in this chapter. But to be fair, after months of Sabbaths and Levitical codes and purity laws, a spy incursion into Canaan is pretty thrilling.
When Moses sent the spies into Canaan though, he gave them a few instructions: See what it’s like, see how many people are there, check out the cities, and see if the land is “lean” or not. In other words, is it worth it?
Moses then explicitly tells the spies to bring back some of the fruit, most likely so that he can show the people what kind of world it is they’re venturing into. If they were obsessed with the cucumbers and vegetables from Egypt, check out the fruit of Canaan!
The image of the two spies carrying a pole full of fruit has always stuck with me—probably because I mistakenly believed that the fruit itself was huge. In truth, it was the quantity of the fruit that was so large.
The Text even specifies what kind of fruit it is: grapes. Then, it tells us that it was the “time of the first ripe grapes.”
That note is significant because it gives us a ballpark of when this incursion actually took place. In Canaan, grapes are gathered during for the first time in August, again in September, then a third time in October.
If that timeline is correct, and the spies went into the land during the time of the “first ripe grapes,” and they stayed for a total of forty days, then that means they came back sometime between the second and third “time” for grapes. Or, in other words, probably sometime in late September or early October.
That’s when they would’ve presented this fruit to the nation of Israel. Temperatures in Jerusalem during October average in the 70’s, but rapidly go downhill starting in November.
That period of time is a horrible part of the year to launch a military campaign. Hitler famously tried to take Moscow during Operation Barbarossa in World War 2 during this same time period, and his army was nearly annihilated in the process. Napoleon tried something similar and was met with similar results.
I’m not arguing that Israel was either of those two countries, but I can understand why, when the nation stands at the brink of Canaan right at the beginning of the snowy season, they balked in taking the land. From a military standpoint, it didn’t make sense (ref. Also 2 Samuel 11:1).
But the visual of the grapes would’ve been hard to ignore. The road most likely would’ve been tough, but can you imagine enjoying a spring harvest in your newly conquered land with fruit that looks like that?
It could have been theirs. All they needed was a little bit of faith.
