TO SCOUT OUT, explore, reconnoitre — the governing verb of Numbers 13 (already on these pages), where it occurs seven times in one chapter (vv2, 16, 17, 21, 25, and twice in v32). ⚠ It is NOT the ordinary Hebrew word for spying. That is ragal, literally to go about on foot, the word used of the men Joshua sends to Jericho; and Deuteronomy uses a third, chafar, to DIG or search out. All three describe the same mission, and the difference is visible on these pages: Deuteronomy 1:22 has the people asking Moses to chafar the land — dig it out, survey it — and v24 reports that what they actually did was ragal it, spy it. Numbers uses neither, only tur, which elsewhere carries the sense of exploring or seeking something out. The modern Hebrew word for a tourist descends from it. This translation reads 'scout out' throughout so the one Hebrew verb stays visible as one word; most of the shelf alternates 'spy out' and 'search' within the same chapter. ⚠ And it has one more appearance, two chapters later, which is the reason the policy matters. After seven occurrences in Numbers 13 and five in Numbers 14 — twelve in two chapters, every one about the men sent to look at Canaan — the verb turns up once more at Numbers 15:39, negated, and no longer about a country: v'lo taturu acharei levavkhem v'acharei eineikhem, 'and you shall not go SCOUTING after your own heart and after your own eyes.' The tassels are commanded against the same verb that destroyed the generation. Not one version on either shelf prints it — KJV and Geneva 'seek not after', ASV 'follow not after', NIV 'chasing after the lusts of', NWT 1984 'go about following', RV60 'no miréis en pos de', TNM 'andar siguiendo' — so the connection is invisible in every English and Spanish Bible checked here, and visible in the Hebrew at a glance. ⭐ The prediction in this entry is paid at Numbers 21:32, which is the one verse in the whole book of Numbers that uses ragal after all: Moses sends men to SPY OUT Jazer, and they take its towns in the same sentence. Twelve occurrences of tur across chapters 13–15, every one of them tied to the reconnaissance that cost a generation the land — and then, at the moment a scouting mission finally succeeds, the book quietly uses the other verb. → first discussed at Num 13:2