Then the men who had gone up with him said: In verses 31-33 the report of spies who explored Canaan with Caleb contradicts what Caleb recommended, so this is a natural point to start a new paragraph with a contrastive conjunction such as “But” (so Good News Translation). What was initially only implied in the latter part of the spies’ report in verses 28-29 is now openly stated in direct contrast to Caleb’s preceding claim that they could conquer Canaan. The suspense builds. How will the people respond? This will only become clear in chapter 14. For the Hebrew verb rendered had gone up, which may be translated simply “had gone” (Good News Translation), see verse 17.

We are not able to go up against the people: Go up renders the same Hebrew verb as in the previous clause, but here it has the sense of “attack” (Good News Translation) as in the previous verse. In some languages it is necessary to render the people more specifically as “the people of that land.”

For they are stronger than we gives the reason why the spies think the Israelites cannot attack the people of Canaan. Good News Translation says “the people there are more powerful than we are.”

Quoted with permission from de Regt, Lénart J. and Wendland, Ernst R. A Handbook on Numbers. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .