Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 12 · January 12
In Their Sight
“And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.”
Somebody has quoted this line at you to tell you your fear was imaginary: we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, produced as though the trouble were a self-image. They were wrong to. The giants were real. The scouts did not invent the Anakim, the cities were walled, and very great, and Deuteronomy still calls them a people great and tall years afterwards. Being told a wall is a matter of perspective ends a conversation without helping anyone.
Be exact, then, about what the ten got wrong, because it is one clause rather than the whole report. We were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight. The second half is the fault. They are reporting what was inside the giants' heads, and there is no way for them to have it; they were scouting the country, not talking to it. They measured themselves, arrived at a figure, and filed it as intelligence about the enemy. Scripture gives the speech a heading: they brought up an evil report of the land.
Caleb walked the same forty days, past the same cities and under the same walls, and says let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it. The next day he and Joshua give their ground: their defence is departed from them, and the LORD is with us.
So where does the line fall between an honest survey and an evil report? Both parties walked the same ground and both told the truth about the size of the problem. Numbers never prints the rule, and anybody who says it comes down to attitude has not read the chapter, because ten men with an accurate list of facts got the country wrong and took a nation into the desert on the strength of it.
It does not get settled here. What is left is the second clause, the one nobody sent them to gather: and so we were in their sight. Not one Canaanite is quoted anywhere in the chapter. That is a report on a report, and so is most of what you believe about how you are seen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 12 is All Things (Philippians 4:13).