Big grapes, big cities, big people: the scouts came back to the Israelites with word of all things giant, and the people were terrified! But did the scouts really find the land of Canaan to be all that? In perhaps the most ancient game of telephone, reports of giant grapes and fortified cities quickly turned into whisperings of a country that devours people and rumors of the Nephilim (the fallen angels of the Noah story) spread like wildfire throughout the Israelite camp! According to the rumors, the scouts were like grasshoppers compared to these giants!
Taking a step back from the sheer and utter panic coming from the Israelite camp, I think there is a lesson to be learned about how we see ourselves versus how others see us and the power of the tension between perception and reality.
In some ways, I think the chutzpah of a small Chihuahua or the lap dog mentality of a Great Dane represent perfect opposites for the Israelite disposition. The Israelites saw themselves as small, weak, and perhaps still bent from oppression. There is, I believe, an important discussion to be had about how trauma can shape how a person or group of people see themselves. Perhaps, in some ways, the scouts were being tested by God. Their absence of faith or reverting to their mental slavery proved to God that the Exodus generation would never be able to take up the massive task of entering into the land, debilitated by their own baggage.
This raises an important question for us in 2023: must we let our trauma define us? Or can we find the fortitude of mind and spirit to be like Caleb and Joshua and find the strength to rise above the things that make us feel small, vulnerable, and weak?