You are to send people. It was revealed and known before him that the Holy One, blessed be He, was not complete in his decision that they should be sent [therefore he emphasized שלח לך].

תשלחו כל נשיא בהם, “send them, each one of these men being a prince in his own right.” Each prince sent one man from his tribe.

כלם אנשים, “all of them distinguished personalities;” according to Rashi, at the time when they were charged with their mission they were all deserving of having been chosen for this task. They underwent a change of heart only after having been selected. Rashi points this out when commenting on the words: וילכו ויבאו, “they went forth they arrived,” in verse 26.

ראשי בני ישראל, “heads of the Children of Israel.” Each one of them was at least a head of a thousand Israelites. [There were 600 like that Ed]

כלב בן יפונה, “Caleb son of Yefuneh.” He is identical with Caleb son of Chetzron, and the reason he is here called the son of Yefuneh, is because he turned aside (פנה) from all but one of the other spies. [Chetzron had been a grandson of Yehudah, Genesis 46,12, compare also Chronicles I 2,18. Ed.]

למטה יוסף, למטה מנשה, “of the tribe of Joseph, i.e. the tribe of Menashe.” Even though on numerous occasions the tribe of Joseph is equated with the tribe of Ephrayim (seeing that Yaakov had told Joseph that he outranked Menashe the older), here Joseph and Menashe are paired, seeing that both had become guilty of slander. Joseph had slandered his brothers to his father, and the prince of Menashe had slandered the land of Israel. There are several instances where Joseph and Menashe are equated precisely because the context of the story supports that interpretation. (Compare Numbers 34,23, Joshua 17,1) In Joshua 17, the subject is the distribution of the land to the various tribes, and it was these lands that the prince of Menashe had slandered in joining the majority report of the spies.

אלה שמות האנשים. “the following are the names of these 12 men: no representative of the tribe of Levi had been included amongst the spies, as the members of that tribe were not going to get fields to work as ancestral lands.

ויקרא משה להושע בן נון יהושע, “Moses renamed Hoshea bin Nun as Joshua. The Torah does not mean that Moses renamed Hoshea at this time; we have to understand this verse as follows: Moses had renamed Hoshea from the time he had appointed him as his personal valet. The Torah merely wishes to tell us that the Joshua whom Moses has appointed as one of the spies, was the one whom he had renamed at the time of his previous appointment as Moses’ personal servant, seeing that at that time already he had found favour in his eyes, and he wanted to express this by adding a letter to his name. We know that G-d had renamed Avram after he had found favour in his eyes by adding a letter to his name, just as He had changed a letter in Sarai’s name for a similar reason. Both Yaakov and Joseph experienced name changes, as did Daniel and the last King of Yehudah, Matnaya, whom Nebuchadnezzar renamed Tzedekiah. Also Nechemyah, underwent such a name change as we know from Nechemyah 8,9.

עלו זה בנגב, “ascend from this point in the south!” Kadesh was at the southernmost part of the land of Israel. (Ibn Ezra)

ועליתם את ההר, “and climb up into the mountains.” Once you have seen the land from the mountains, it will be easier to conquer its lowlands. (B’chor shor)

אם רעה, “or if it is bad;” if the land is pleasant (climatewise). or if its waters are bad and cause bereavement. In reply to these questions the spies upon returning, answered Moses that the land devoured its inhabitants. (verse 32).

והתחזקתם, “be of good courage.” They needed to be on their guard, seeing that it was the beginning of the harvest season and the farmers would watch their crops against thieves.

ממדבר צין עד רחוב לבא חמת, “from the desert of Tzin in the south, as far north as the approaches to Chamat.” They crossed the country diagonally from south to North, and from North to South. The verses that we read in Parshat Massey confirms this.

ויבא עד חברון, “he came as far as Chevron;” we have a sudden switch from the plural mode to the singular mode, which raises the question of who it was that the Torah speaks of in this verse. Our sages understand this to be a reference to Caleb whom they credit with the urge to pay his respects to the graves of the patriarchs and his desire to get moral support against the negative attitude of most of his companions. This is Rashi’s interpretation. He felt the need to do this as Moses had not prayed for him especially, as he had done for his colleague Joshua. An alternate interpretation of the line: “he came to Chevron:” it is customary for the Torah to apply the singular mode even when speaking about a number of spies or members of an ambush, as we know from Joshua 8,19 where we read: והאורב קם ממקומו, “and the ambush (the men comprising it) arose from where it had been hiding.”

ושם אחימן, the Torah mentions this giant by name as the spies later on in their report refer to descendants of a race of giants whom they had encountered, i.e. in verse 28, where we read: “we also saw a race of giants there.” The Torah wanted us to know where precisely the spies had come face to face with such people. (B’chor shor)[All this is part of the peculiar fact that although the spies reported faithfully what they had seen and where, they drew the wrong conclusions from their observations. Ed.]

וחברון שבע שנים נבנתה לפני צוען מצרים, “and the town Chevron had been built seven years earlier than the capital of Egypt, Tzoan.” The race of giants had not yet died out, as they had survived from earlier generations. The reason why this is of importance is to tell us that the conclusion drawn by the spies that the land of Canaan “consumes its inhabitants,” (verse 32) was contradicted by what they themselves reported as having seen.

לפני צוען מצרים, “prior to Tzoan in Egypt.” The Torah reminds you of the importance of the land of Canaan, compared to the land of Egypt before they had emigrated from it. The spies had been aware of these historical facts, [and they should have concluded from this that the land of Canaan certainly does not “consume its inhabitants.” Ed.].

ויכרתו משם זמורה ואשכול, “they cut from there a branch with a cluster of grapes.” From this little detail we are to learn two lessons, (i.e. from the letter ו at the beginning of the word אשכול). From the branch they made a pole to carry the cluster by.

וישאוהו במוט בשנים, “they bore it on a pole between the two of them. The pomegranates and the cluster of grapes were carried separately by different men.

מקץ ארבעים יום, “at the end of forty days;” they had commenced their mission on the 29th day of Sivan, and concluded it on the 8th day of the month of Av close to evening. The month of Tammuz in that year had thirty days. (Talmud, tractate Taanit folio 29)

אל מדבר פארן קדשה, to the desert of Paran, toward Kadesh.” The desert of Paran, the desert of Tzin, Kadesh Barnea, and Ritma, were all very near one another. All this is clear from Numbers 33,18, as well as verse 36 there. Compare also Numbers 32,8.

אפס כי עז העם היושב בארץ והערים בצורות גדולותת however “the people are very fierce, and the cities are fortified and great;” they described two major drawbacks to the assumptions that these people were easy to dislodge. In addition to this, they spoke of the giants they had seen, וגם ילידי ענק ראינו שם, “and we have also seen the children of Anak (a giant) there.” We have read in Deuteronomy 9,2, that Moses reminded the new generation of Israelites that they had heard about the awesome reputation of these giants already from their parents who had described them as invincible

עמלק יושב בארץ הנגב, “the Amalekites reside in the southern region of that land.” The spies implied that before asking about the fierceness of the inhabitants of that land further north, they should first ask about the Amalekites who live near the southern border, the area slated for invasion first. This was the same Amalek whom their fathers had not been able to completely defeat when they had just come out of Egypt.

והאמורי יושב בהר, “and the Emorites dwell in the mountainous regions. The Canaanites dwell along the shores of the Sea, as well as along the river Jordan. They meant that there was no unpopulated region through which to enter this land.

ויהס כלב את העם אל משה, “Caleb silenced the people toward Moses;” From this line you can glean what must have been left out here, i.e. that Moses was trying unsuccessfully to interrupt the report of the spies, until Caleb succeeded to silence them, even if only briefly. 38 years later in Deuteronomy 1,29, Moses reminds the people that he had tried to give them encouragement to proceed with carrying out G-d’s command to mount an attack against the inhabitants of that land.

ושם ראינו את הנפילים, “and there we have seen the Nephilim; some commentators believe that these people were very tall people who had fallen out of the sky, as in Job 14,18 הר נופל יבול, “mountains collapse and crumble,” where the words describe a great height.

בני ענק, according to one opinion cited by Rashi, the necks of these people reached almost to the sun. (Exaggeration, of course).

The spies, referring to themselves add that they therefore felt as if they were as small as grasshoppers by comparison. This is not the only example where small creatures are compared to grasshoppers. Compare Isaiah 40,22.