“They ascended and scouted the land from the wilderness of Tzin to Rehov, at the approach to Hamat” (Numbers 13:21). “They ascended and scouted the land.” How? They would enter a city and a plague would afflict the prominent among them.
The residents of the city would engage in their burial, and no person would see them. That is why they said: “The land, through which we passed [to scout, it is a land that devours its inhabitants]” (Numbers 13:32). Through the miracles that the Holy One blessed be He would perform for them, they would disseminate slander. “They ascended in the South, and they came until Hebron, and Aḥiman…were there” (Numbers 13:22), as they were exceedingly mighty, as it is stated: “That you knew and you heard: Who can stand before the children of giants?” (Deuteronomy 9:2).
“Hebron was built seven years [before Tzoan of Egypt]” (Numbers 13:22), to inform you of the praise of the Land of Israel, that its inferior area10Hebron is in the south of Israel. is exceedingly superior to the superior area of Egypt. When the sons of Noah went out and inherited the world after the Flood, they built cities first, not in the superior place, but in the inferior place of the Land of Israel.
Tzoan of Egypt is the best in the land of Egypt,11See Ketubot 112a. and this preceded it by seven years. If you say: The one who built this did not build that; it is the same generation and the same family. “The sons of Ḥam: Kush, and Mitzrayim, and Put, and Canaan” (Genesis 10:6), and they went and built this one before that one. “Hebron was built seven years before Tzoan of Egypt.”