WE wonder whether our little picture at all represents Hebron as it was in the days of that grand old man Caleb! The surroundings of the city are no doubt very similar to what they were some thousands of years ago, so we can picture to ourselves the mountain side with its old city, and its giants, as Caleb saw them, and on which he set his heart for forty years!
Yes! for forty years ! Think of that, young friend, forty years of expectation, of determination, of faith in God, and of waiting for a promise to be fulfilled! What a fire was that like, think you, burning in his breast? A fire which neither the cowardice, nor the murmurings, nor the deaths of his comrades could put out. Some people let go their expectations and let slip their prayers after forty days of delay; would that we were all of us like Caleb.
The fourteenth chapter of Joshua is a favorite one for a lesson in courage. Caleb had trodden the mountain with the rest of the spies (ver. 9); his soul took in its glories and its charms; verily, to him, it was the land of promise; hence to him neither the walls of Hebron, nor the giants that manned them, were as anything; if God be for us, who can be against us? God had promised him Hebron, and Hebron should be his inheritance.
Murmuring, unbelieving Israel, had to work out their unbelief by treading the wilderness for forty years; they had to prove, step by step, the evil of their ways. Caleb all the while was looking onward, to the day when he might, step by step, win the promised inheritance for himself, and prove the faithfulness of his God. God had declared to him, through Moses, "Surely the land whereon thy feet have trodden shall be thine inheritance, and thy children's, for ever” (ver. 9), and now he was ready, old man of eighty-five, to prove the good word of God by his sword. “Hebron therefore became the inheritance of Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite unto this day, because he wholly followed the Lord God of Israel" (ver. 14.)
How small we seem as we stand beside old Caleb. But wherein lay his strength? He believed God. He was strong in faith. Faith in God makes a man strong, because God strengthens His believing people with power such as earth cannot bestow. What are forty years compared with a word of God? Caleb counted on God, and God's word can never fail. What he has promised He is able to perform. Shall we not believe He will be as good as His word?
The pertinacity of faith is here seen in great excellence. If the times were bad for Israel at large, Caleb reckoned on God and His goodness to himself, and there he stood like a true giant amongst the rebellious hosts of Israel.
We need not intellectual strength or superior ability to be Caleb’s; we need faith. And it seems to us that in our present day, faith evidenced by works is the best of answers to the scornful giants who make light of God's word, and to the disheartened people who credit the false report of the false spies.