Numbers 13:23
Numbers 13:2323When they came to the Valley of Eshcol, they cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes, which they carried on a pole between two men. They also took some pomegranates and figs.
receives no specific JW apologetic engagement. The verse is a narrative detail in the Israelite spies' report on the land of Canaan — the cluster of grapes from the Valley of Eshcol carried on a pole between two men. The Hebrew word zemorah ("branch, vine-shoot") is what makes this verse apologetically relevant: it appears in ("the branch to their nose") in a passage the rs book treats as evidence that the cross was a phallic pagan symbol.
is one of the standard counter-references to the rs book's claim that 's "branch" (zemorah) is evidence of phallic sun-worship and that the cross is therefore a pagan phallic symbol. The Hebrew zemorah here in Numbers 13 describes a literal vine-branch holding a cluster of grapes, carried by Israelite spies on a wooden pole. There is no conceivable phallic association — the word is being used in its ordinary horticultural sense. The same word appears in and — also without sexual overtones. H. Cutner's 1940 A Short History of Sex-Worship, the Rationalist-Press freethought pamphlet on which the rs book's phallic-cross argument depends, has no standing in modern Semitics. The phallic reading of is Hislop-style parallel-hunting that real scholarship retired long ago.