Numbers 13:17

Summary

The verse reports that Moses sent the men to scout the land of Canaan, and instructs them directly: go up through the Negev and continue upward into the hill country. The sentence combines a narrative report (sending) with direct speech (Moses' command).

Key words

• Tur ("to spy out", H8446) — qal infinitive with prefixed la ("to"), expressing the purpose of the sending: "in order to spy out."
• 'olu ("go up", H5927) — qal imperative, plural masculine, the first direct command given to the spies.
• zeh ("this", H2088) — demonstrative particle functioning here adverbially, pointing to a direction or route ("this way," "here").
• 'aliytem ("you will go up", H5927) — same root as 'olu, but in the sequential/waw-consecutive perfect form, showing continuation of the action: after going up through the Negev, they are to keep going up into the hill country.
• ha-Har ("the hill country", H2022) — noun with definite article, marking a specific geographic target distinct from the Negev already mentioned.

What the text says

The verse divides into two narrative-verb clauses joined by the narrative va ("and"): first, va-yishlach ("and he sent") reports Moses' action of sending the men, with the purpose clause la-Tur 'et-'Eretz Kena'an ("to spy out the land of Canaan") explaining why. The direct object marker 'et before both "them" and "land of Canaan" signals grammatically definite objects but carries no independent meaning in translation.

The second clause, va-yomer 'alehem ("and he said to them"), introduces direct speech. Within this speech, the grammar shifts from narrative report to command: 'olu is a bare imperative ("go up"), while va-'aliytem uses the sequential perfect form — a construction that continues the force of a preceding imperative as if it were a further command ("and you will go up," functioning as "and go up"). This verbal shift shows two stages of movement: first entering ba-Negev ("in the Negev", the southern region), then proceeding into ha-Har ("the hill country"), the two areas being treated as distinct waypoints in the same command sequence. The demonstrative zeh ("this") accompanying ba-Negev suggests a specific route or direction being indicated, though the referent itself is not spelled out in the text.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text of this verse (Moses' instructions to go through the Negev and into the hill country) has no matching content in the LXX and Vulgate excerpts provided here; those texts instead render material corresponding to the preceding verse, concerning the renaming of Hoshea as Joshua. No direct comparison of this verse's wording across Hebrew, LXX, and Vulgate is possible from the data given.