Article January 9, 1954 Issue

TRUE REPORTING

JEANNE ROE PRICE

In the book of Numbers in the Old Testament of the Holy Bible is recorded a most interesting and significant event. The children of Israel after their escape from Egypt, the land of their enslavement, and after years of wandering in strange places were encamped in the wilderness of Paran on the outskirts of the promised land of God's provision. Moses, their leader, called upon twelve men, one from each tribe, and sent them forth as scouts "to spy out the land" of promise (13:16): to see whether it was good or bad, and whether the people who dwelt there were powerful or weak, few or numerous, and whether the cities were walled or merely habitations of tents.

So the men set out to survey the land and its inhabitants. And after forty days of careful reconnoitering they returned. It is a good land, a land that "floweth with milk and honey," they reported. Nevertheless "the cities are walled, and very great." When Caleb urged an immediate advance, the fearful scouts argued that it was "a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof," and they said they had seen giants there, "and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight." Only Caleb and Joshua urged the Israelites to go forward and accept the fulfillment of God's bounty and care.

But the people listened only to the false reports of the unfaithful scouts. They urged that Caleb and Joshua be stoned, murmured against Moses, and even said. "Let us return into Egypt." So, many of them—because of their fear, their disbelief, their disobedience, and their stubbornness—did not live to enter the promised land when after forty years the children of Israel reached Canaan.

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