Lives of Scripture

Caleb was one of the twelve spies Moses sent into Canaan, representing the tribe of Judah (Numbers 13:6). While ten spies returned with a fearful report of giants and fortified cities, Caleb alone with Joshua urged Israel to trust God: "we should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we will surely overcome it" (13:30). The people believed the majority instead and were condemned to forty years of wandering until that generation died; only Caleb and Joshua, because they "followed the LORD fully," were promised entry into the land (14:24, 30-38). Caleb held onto that promise for the next forty-five years. At eighty-five, he came to Joshua and asked for the very hill country the spies had once feared -- Hebron, home of the giant Anakim -- and drove them out himself with God's help (Joshua 14:6-14). He gave his daughter Achsah in marriage to Othniel, who captured Kiriath-sepher, and Achsah boldly asked her father for springs of water to go with her dry southern land, which Caleb granted (Joshua 15:16-19). Caleb's life is Scripture's model of sustained, undivided faith: a man who believed God's promise at forty and was still acting on it, vigorously, at eighty-five.