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The Twelve Spies at Kadesh Barnea

Also called: Spies of Canaan, Grapes of Eshcol

A story told in religious scripture.

A story told in the Book of Numbers: of twelve spies sent from Kadesh Barnea into Canaan, ten came back afraid; the people rebelled, and God condemned Israel to forty years in the wilderness.

This is the story told in the Book of Numbers. Leaving Mount Sinai, the Israelites came to Kadesh Barnea in the wilderness of Paran. Moses chose twelve men, one from each tribe, to explore Canaan. After forty days they returned carrying a cluster of grapes from the valley of Eshcol on a pole between two of them — a land “flowing with milk and honey”.

But ten said its people were giants — “we seemed like grasshoppers” — and that they could not go in. Only Joshua and Caleb urged them on, while the people wept to go back to Egypt. God counted each of the forty days as a year: they would wander forty years in the wilderness, and no one over twenty but Joshua and Caleb would enter the land.

Kadesh Barnea is often identified with the oasis of Ein el-Qudeirat in northeastern Sinai, though the fortresses excavated there are far later, from the 10th–6th centuries BCE.

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The map in 1249 BC

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States at the time
New Kingdom of Egypt
Places
Kadesh Barnea

People

  • Moses

    key figure · Leader and prophet of Israel in the Hebrew Bible, who is said to have led the Israelites out of Egypt and received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai; he does not appear in records outside the Bible

  • Joshua

    participant · Moses’ aide and successor in the Hebrew Bible, who with Caleb brought back a good report from Canaan and, after Moses’ death, led the people across the Jordan

Before and after

Earlier
1250 BC The Ten Plagues and the Passover
Later
1210 BC Moses on Mount Nebo

Themes that include this event

  • The Exodus1279 BC – 1208 BC

    From slavery and the burning bush, the ten plagues and the parted sea, to the Ten Commandments at Sinai, forty years in the wilderness and Moses on Mount Nebo — the Exodus as the Hebrew Bible tells it, followed on the map alongside Ramesses II’s capital and the Merneptah Stele, the first record to name “Israel”