The Hebrew Bible says Moses sent twelve spies into Canaan. The Targum Jonathan says he sent "keen-sighted men"—then reveals how spectacularly their vision failed them.
Moses dispatched one man from each tribe, "all of them acute men, who had been appointed heads over the sons of Israel." Their mission was straightforward: survey the land from the wilderness of Zin to "the roads by which you come unto Antiochia"—the Targum's name for Rehob, updating the geography for its Aramaic-speaking audience.
They reached Hebron, where they encountered Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, "sons of Anak the giant." The Targum adds a chronological note: "Hebron was built seven years before Tanis in Egypt." They cut a single cluster of grapes so large it required two men carrying it on a pole. The Targum adds that "wine was dropping from it like a stream"—a hyperbolic detail emphasizing the land's impossible fertility.
When Moses first saw Hoshea son of Nun's humility, he renamed him Joshua. The Targum implies the name change was a spiritual promotion earned by character, not a random decision.
After forty days the spies returned on the eighth of Av—a date the Targum specifies, linking their report to what would become one of the most tragic days in the Jewish calendar. Their report was devastating: "The country through which we have passed to explore it is a land that kills its inhabitants with diseases." The giants were "masters of evil ways." And the spies confessed: "We appeared to ourselves to be as locusts, and so we appeared to them."
Only Caleb pushed back, silencing the crowd: "Let us go up and possess it, for we are able to take it." But he was outvoted eleven to two. The Targum makes clear that their failure was not military analysis. It was theological collapse—a refusal to trust the God who had drowned Egypt's army.