So they brought to the people of Israel an evil report of the land which they had spied out, saying: An evil report may be rendered “a discrediting report” (Levine) or “a false report” (Good News Translation). For the Hebrew verb rendered had spied out, see the comments on verse 2. For this whole sentence New Century Version says “And those men gave the Israelites a bad report about the land they explored, saying,” and Contemporary English Version has simply “Then they started spreading rumors and saying.”

The land … is a land that devours its inhabitants renders the Hebrew clause here literally. This clause may refer to infertile land, which is how Good News Translation interprets it by saying “That land doesn’t even produce enough to feed the people who live there.” However, Good News Translation‘s interpretation is rather ironic, given the size of a single bunch of grapes (verse 23). It is more likely that this figurative expression refers to people dying because Canaan was insecure and in a state of repeated war. Canaan was surrounded by Near Eastern countries at war with each other, and its different ethnic groups waged war among themselves as well. If the personification of the land eating its people does not work in the target language, perhaps the following model is possible: “The peoples of that land devour themselves in war[fare]!” In any case, it is important for the translation to indicate that the spies are exaggerating the potential dangers of Canaan. They almost compare the land with the underworld, which swallows up the living (Isa 5.14).

Through which we have gone to spy it out may be rendered simply “that we explored” (New Century Version).

And all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature is another exaggeration. New International Readers Version says “All of the people we saw there are very big and tall.”

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 .