Come and study the Holy Scriptures with us as Father Stephen DeYoung teaches verse by verse on the podcast, The Whole Council of God.

Father Stephen holds a Ph.D. in biblical studies, and it's an Orthodox priest serving at Archangel Gabriel Orthodox Church in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Chapter 13. Now, the Lord spoke to Moses saying,

send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the children of Israel. From each tribe of their fathers, you shall send a man every one a ruler among them so remember we've

we got the list we've gotten it a couple of times actually so we got it once in the census

and then we got it again when they came and brought their sacrifices at the sort of dedication

of the tabernacle the list of sort of the leaders of the

12 tribes. So each of the 12 tribes has several clans within it. There's a head of each clan,

and then there's a guy who's sort of recognized as one of those clan heads is recognized

as sort of the leading man, the elder of that particular tribe.

And so God is saying from those, 12, get one from each tribe, get one of those leaders.

Now they're going to have a mission.

So this probably isn't going to be the very, very head guy.

Because the very, very head guy is probably the oldest man.

Right?

The tribe.

And this mission does not necessarily require an octogenarian to do, but you want a leading man, but one who's going to be able to fulfill the mission we're going to see.

And so, you know, the word spy is always used here, which, you know, this isn't James Bond.

They're not on a secret mission.

They don't have a license to kill.

It's not even Andor.

It's not even... Spy has these other connotations for us now.

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