Give Me This Mountain

The Story

Forty-five years earlier, Moses had sent twelve spies to explore the Promised Land. Ten came back terrified. The cities were walled, they said, and the people were giants. We looked like grasshoppers next to them.

Only two spies disagreed: Joshua and Caleb. We can do this, Caleb said. God is with us. But the people listened to the ten, and the whole nation wandered in the wilderness for forty years. A whole generation died there. Only Joshua and Caleb lived to enter the land.

Now Israel was dividing up the land, and Caleb came to Joshua with a request.

I was forty years old when Moses sent me to spy out the land, he said. I followed the Lord wholeheartedly. And Moses promised me that the land my feet walked on would be mine. Now I’m eighty-five years old. “As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me.”

Then he made his request. “Now therefore give me this mountain.” He meant Hebron, the hill country where the giants lived, the very place that had frightened the other spies.

Joshua blessed him and gave him Hebron. And Caleb drove out the giants, just as the Lord had said.

Reflection