Numbers 13:32

Summary

The verse reports that the scouts spread a negative account (dibbah, H1681) about the land to the Israelites, describing it as a land that "devours" its inhabitants and inhabited by people of great "stature" (middot, H4060A). The report is framed as direct speech introduced by lemor ("saying", H0559).

Key words

• dibbah ("bad report / slander", H1681) — feminine singular construct noun; the head noun of the phrase "dibbah of the land," setting the negative tone of the whole report.
• tarnu / ra'inu ("we spied out" / "we saw", H8446 / H7200G) — qal perfect forms marking completed actions; both are first-person plural, showing the scouts speaking as eyewitnesses.
• 'okhelet ("devouring", H0398) — qal active participle, feminine singular, agreeing with 'erets ("land," H0776G); a participle expresses ongoing or characteristic action, so the land is presented as continually consuming, not as a one-time event.
• yoshvei ("inhabitants of", H3427) — qal participle, masculine plural construct, functioning as the object devoured by the land; grammatically dependent on 'okhelet.
• 'anshei middot ("men of stature(s)", H0582 + H4060A) — construct chain with a plural abstract noun middot ("measurements/statures"), literally "men of measurements," describing physical size through a construct relation rather than an adjective.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the narrative verb yotzi'u ("they brought out," H3318H, hiphil), a causative form indicating that the scouts actively produced or circulated the dibbah — not simply "told" it but "brought it forth" among the people. This dibbah is grammatically bound to "the land" through a construct chain (dibbah ha'arets, "the report of the land"), and that land is further specified by a relative clause, 'asher taru 'otah ("which they had scouted it"), using a resumptive pronominal suffix (-ha) after the direct object marker, a common Hebrew construction where the object is marked twice for clarity.

The reported speech that follows is built on two verbless or participial predications rather than finite verbs: 'erets 'okhelet yoshveiha hi' ("a land, devouring its inhabitants, it [is]") places the participle 'okhelet as a predicate adjective-like description, with the pronoun hi' ("she/it") functioning as a copula linking subject and description. The second half, 'anshei middot, likewise has no verb "to be" — the construct noun phrase itself functions as the predicate, a typical feature of Hebrew nominal clauses that translations must supply with "were" or "are."

Differences between versions

The Greek (LXXSWETE) and Latin (VULCLEM) texts supplied for this verse describe a different scene: men who went up with someone declaring they cannot ascend against a stronger nation, with no mention of dibbah, "devouring," or "stature." This content corresponds to material found at Numbers 13:31 in the Hebrew versification, not to the wording of the Hebrew text given here for 13:32. The Spanish translations (RV1909, SBLIBRE) and BSB align closely with the Hebrew content translated above, rendering dibbah as "vituperated" / "mal informe" ("bad report") and 'anshei middot as "hombres de grande estatura" / "great in stature."