22. Then all of you came to me. You said, “Let’s send men before us to spy out the land. They can come back and tell us the way we should go. They can tell us about the cities we will find.”
23. I thought that was a good idea. So I chose 12 of your men, 1 for each tribe.
24. They left and went up to the mountains. They came to the Valley of Eshcol and explored it.
25. They took some of the fruit from that land. And they brought it down to us. They said, “It is a good land that the Lord our God is giving us.”
26. But you refused to go. You would not obey the command of the Lord your God.
27. You grumbled in your tents. You said, “The Lord hates us. He brought us out of Egypt just to give us to the Amorites. They will destroy us.
28. Where can we go now? The spies we sent have made us afraid. They said, ‘The people there are bigger and taller than we are. The cities are big. They have walls up to the sky. And we saw the Anakites there!’”
29. Then I said to you, “Don’t be frightened. Don’t be afraid of those people.
30. The Lord your God will go ahead of you. He will fight for you as he did in Egypt. You saw him do it.