They brought up, Heb. brought forth, to wit, out of their mouths; they uttered a reproach, or reproachful words. Of the land i.e. against it, or concerning the land. It is the genitive case of the object, as Matthew 10:1; Matthew 14:1. Eateth up the inhabitants; not so much by civil wars, as most think, for that was likely to make their conquest more easy; nor by the barrenness of the soil, which consumed the people with the excessive pains it required to make it fruitful, as others think, for they confessed the excellency of the land, Numbers 13:27; 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, or some other way.
Related Commentaries of Numbers 13:32
Numbers 13:32
32 And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are menc of a great stature.