21 Preface يا قَومِ ادخُلُوا الأَرضَ المُقَدَّسَةَ الَّتي كَتَبَ اللَّهُ لَكُم وَلا تَرتَدّوا عَلىٰ أَدبارِكُم فَتَنقَلِبوا خاسِرينَYusuf Ali“O my people! Enter1 the holy land which God hath assigned unto you, and turn not back ignominiously, for then will ye be overthrown, to your own ruin.”We now come to the events detailed in the 13th and 14th chapters of the Book of Numbers in the Old Testament. Read these as a Commentary, and examine a good map of the Sinai Peninsula, showing its connections with Egypt on the west, Northwest Arabia on the east, and Palestine on the northeast. We may suppose that Israel crossed from Egypt into the Peninsula somewhere near the northern extremity of the Gulf of Suez. Moses organised and numbered the people, and instituted the Priesthood. They went south about 200 miles to Mount Sinai where the Law was received. Then, perhaps a hundred and fifty miles north, was the desert of Paran, close to the southern borders of Canaan. From the camp there, twelve men were sent to spy out the land, and they penetrated as far as Hebron, say about 150 miles north of their camp, about 20 miles south of the future Jerusalem. They saw a rich country, and brought from it pomegranates and figs and a bunch of grapes so heavy that it had to be carried by two men on a staff. They came back and reported that the land was rich, but the men there were too strong for them. The people of Israel had no courage and no faith, and Moses remonstrated with them.