1The Lord said to Moses, 2Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites. From each ancestral tribe send one of its leaders.

17When Moses sent them to explore Canaan, he said, Go up through the Negev and on into the hill country.

27They gave Moses this account: We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. 28But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there. 29The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan. 30Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it. 31But the men who had gone up with him said, We can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are. 32And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. 33We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.

4The Nephilim were on the earth in those days-and also afterward-when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

36What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?