Numbers 13:33

33 We 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.”

Numbers 13:33 in Other Translations

KJV
33 And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.
ESV
33 And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them."
NLT
33 We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak. Next to them we felt like grasshoppers, and that’s what they thought, too!”
MSG
33 Why, we even saw the Nephilim giants (the Anak giants come from the Nephilim). Alongside them we felt like grasshoppers. And they looked down on us as if we were grasshoppers."
CSB
33 We even saw the Nephilim there." (The offspring of Anak were descended from the Nephilim.) "To ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and we must have seemed the same to them."

Numbers 13:33 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 13:33

And there we saw the giants
Not throughout the land, and yet it is so expressed, and in such connection with what goes before, that it might be so understood, and as they might choose it should; that as there were men everywhere of an uncommon size, and were generally so, there were some larger than they in all places, of a prodigious size, of a gigantic stature; and yet this was only in Hebron where they saw them;

the sons of Anak;
whose names are given, ( Numbers 13:22 ) ; and there were but three of them:

[which came] of the giants;
they, were of the race of giants; for not only Anak their father, but Arba their grandfather was one; ( Joshua 14:15 ) ( Joshua 15:13 ) ;

and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers;
little diminutive creatures in comparison of them; an hyperbolical exaggeration of the greatness of the giants, and of their own littleness:

and so we were in their sight;
but this they could not be so certain of, and could only make conjectures by their neglect or supercilious treatment of them. Jarchi makes them to speak of them more diminutively still, as that they heard those giants saying one to another,

``there are ants in the vineyards like men.''

Numbers 13:33 In-Context

31 But the men who had gone up with him said, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.”
32 And 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.
33 We 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.”

Cross References 3

  • 1. Genesis 6:4
  • 2. ver 28; Deuteronomy 1:28; Joshua 11:22; Joshua 14:12
  • 3. Ecclesiastes 12:5; Isaiah 40:22
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