25 At the end of forty days they returned from spying out the land. 26 And they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the Israelites in the wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh; they brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. 27 And they told him, “We came to the land to which you sent us; it flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.
***Once again, we seem to have cut off the reading before we got to the good part. Here’s the rest: ***
28 Yet the people who live in the land are strong, and the towns are fortified and very large; and besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. … 32 So they brought to the Israelites an unfavorable report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land that we have gone through as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people that we saw in it are of great size.
It's kind of meta, actually, that the lectionary truncates this reading in such a misleading spot. If you had stopped reading at verse 27, you would have thought that the Israelites would have been bounding in to the Promised Land, minds singularly focused on fruit. But that’s not the case at all. In fact, the scouting party brought an ‘unfavorable report’, saying that the huge cluster of grapes that they have to carry between two people is proportional to the size of the average inhabitant’s hand… and no amount of milk or honey or fruit is worth fighting a giant.
Um, guys, this is the Promised Land. The Land you are Promised. By God. God would not promise you a land that you couldn’t inhabit (in fact, the proper response is to be excited! This implies that God will let you conquer giants!) But the people did not respond properly. They rebelled… because of fake news.
I don’t know if the scouting party made up the giants or if they actually had reason to believe they were there. But they were definitely not just reporting the facts – they were tinging them, adding commentary, not giving the people a chance to make up their own minds by only offering pre-formed opinions, not neutral, factual building-blocks from which people could draw their own conclusions. Good thing that was the only time in recorded history something like that has ever occurred.
And this is where we get back to the lectionary. Why would it cut off at the grapes? Why would it stop at milk and honey? Why wouldn’t it go on to talk about the rebellion? I get that it’s a long reading, anyway, but why put it in at all if you’re not going to give the full picture?
I get it – it’s easier to focus on the Good News; that’s what keeps people coming through those welcoming red doors. But that doesn’t do it justice.
The Bible is hard. I just got done reading Isaiah and I understood about 4% of it (and that’s not even because I was reading the KJV – I’ve read it in the NRSV and got maybe 7%). We do need commentary and scholarship and explanation sometimes – but we always have the primary source to fact-check against. It’s our responsibility to read it – to read all of it – and to put what we hear from the pulpit in proper perspective.
— MeganPrestonMeyer
***Once again, we seem to have cut off the reading before we got to the good part. Here’s the rest: ***
28 Yet the people who live in the land are strong, and the towns are fortified and very large; and besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. … 32 So they brought to the Israelites an unfavorable report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land that we have gone through as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people that we saw in it are of great size.
It's kind of meta, actually, that the lectionary truncates this reading in such a misleading spot. If you had stopped reading at verse 27, you would have thought that the Israelites would have been bounding in to the Promised Land, minds singularly focused on fruit. But that’s not the case at all. In fact, the scouting party brought an ‘unfavorable report’, saying that the huge cluster of grapes that they have to carry between two people is proportional to the size of the average inhabitant’s hand… and no amount of milk or honey or fruit is worth fighting a giant.
Um, guys, this is the Promised Land. The Land you are Promised. By God. God would not promise you a land that you couldn’t inhabit (in fact, the proper response is to be excited! This implies that God will let you conquer giants!) But the people did not respond properly. They rebelled… because of fake news.
I don’t know if the scouting party made up the giants or if they actually had reason to believe they were there. But they were definitely not just reporting the facts – they were tinging them, adding commentary, not giving the people a chance to make up their own minds by only offering pre-formed opinions, not neutral, factual building-blocks from which people could draw their own conclusions. Good thing that was the only time in recorded history something like that has ever occurred.
And this is where we get back to the lectionary. Why would it cut off at the grapes? Why would it stop at milk and honey? Why wouldn’t it go on to talk about the rebellion? I get that it’s a long reading, anyway, but why put it in at all if you’re not going to give the full picture?
I get it – it’s easier to focus on the Good News; that’s what keeps people coming through those welcoming red doors. But that doesn’t do it justice.
The Bible is hard. I just got done reading Isaiah and I understood about 4% of it (and that’s not even because I was reading the KJV – I’ve read it in the NRSV and got maybe 7%). We do need commentary and scholarship and explanation sometimes – but we always have the primary source to fact-check against. It’s our responsibility to read it – to read all of it – and to put what we hear from the pulpit in proper perspective.
— MeganPrestonMeyer
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