How Eight Spies Carried the Giant Grape Cluster of Eshkol

"And they cut down from there a branch" (Numbers 13:23), and so forth. This is the wood of the vine on which the cluster hangs; the grapes are the berries that hang upon the vine. "And they bore it upon a pole between two" — the weight of the cluster of grapes that the spies brought out, whom Moses sent, was five thousand four hundred and forty ratls. Another explanation: "And they bore it upon a pole." They took one pole and set the cluster in its middle, and they made out of it two poles, and on each pole two men, on each pole two men on each side. And there were two poles on this side and two poles on the other side. You find, then, that eight men carried the cluster, and one carried a pomegranate, and one carried a fig — for he was not able to carry two. But Joshua and Caleb carried nothing at all.