Eateth up its inhabitants Not so much by civil wars, for that was likely to make their conquest more easy; but rather by the unwholesomeness of the air and place, which they guessed from the many funerals which, as some Hebrew writers, not without probability, affirm they observed in their travels through it; though that came to pass from another cause, even from the singular providence of God, which, to facilitate the Israelites' conquest, cut off vast numbers of the Canaanites, either by a plague, or by the hornet sent before them, as is expressed Joshua 24:12. Le Clerc, indeed, explains this of their being liable to be destroyed, or eaten up, by the incursions of many neighbouring enemies, in which sense the same phrase is used Ezekiel 36:12. The Jews, however, take it to be meant of famine, by which the country was wont to consume its inhabitants, and which they suppose to have distressed it at that time.
But the spies had before acknowledged it to be a plentiful land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Many, therefore, understand the expression as denoting the number of the inhabitants, and would translate the original words, The land is meat for its inhabitants; that is, the inhabitants devour and eat up all the produce of the land.