The Fruit of the Promised Land

Many of the persons, places, and events in the history of the Israelites, as they wandered in the Sinai for forty years, prefigured persons, places, and events in the Gospels.  The wandering itself is a figure for the life of the Christian here on earth, making slow and painful progress to the promised land of heaven.  Rabanus Maurus here sees what is prefigured in a significant event that occurs in Numbers 13, 24-30:

"The twelve scouts sent to explore the rich land terrified the people lest they believed that they could receive the Promised Land from The Lord, and in this they prefigured the scribes and Pharisees.  Just as they were sent by Moses to carefully investigate the fruitfulness of the land, so these were commanded by the law and the prophets to look for the coming of The Lord through the searching of the Scriptures, in which 'land', that is, 'holy land', they could receive the abundance of spiritual fruits and eternal life.  But just as the scouts terrified the people out of despair lest they trust in the promise of God, so also did the scribes and the Pharisees persuade the people of the Jews to long to return to the Egypt of this world, lest they believe in Christ, rejecting the 'manna' of faith, seeking the 'fleshpots' of sin, the 'rotten onions' of blasphemy, and growing weak due to the corruption of vice and lust.  Two porters carried bunches of fruit on a wooden pole from the Promised Land.  The fruit hung from the wood even as Christ, the One promised to the nations from the 'land' of his Mother Mary, hung from the wood of a tree."