Eshcol

Two men carried one cluster of grapes between them on a pole. That is how the brook of Eshcol got its name: “The place was called the brook Eshcol, because of the cluster of grapes which the children of Israel cut down from thence.” Numbers 13 describes the men sent to look over the promised land, and the fruit they brought back, with pomegranates and figs. Later, Moses and the people look back on the valley as the place where they saw the land, and where they “discouraged the heart of the children of Israel.”

4 verses

Numbers

Numbers 13:23

And they came unto the brook of Eshcol, and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff; and they brought of the pomegranates, and of the figs.

Numbers 13:24

The place was called the brook Eshcol, because of the cluster of grapes which the children of Israel cut down from thence.

Numbers 32:9

For when they went up unto the valley of Eshcol, and saw the land, they discouraged the heart of the children of Israel, that they should not go into the land which the LORD had given them.

Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 1:24

And they turned and went up into the mountain, and came unto the valley of Eshcol, and searched it out.

From Easton's Bible Dictionary

Matthew George Easton, 1897

Bunch; brave. (1.) A young Amoritish chief who joined Abraham in the recovery of Lot from the hands of Chedorlaomer (Gen. 14:13, 24).

(2.) A valley in which the spies obtained a fine cluster of grapes (Num. 13:23, 24; “the brook Eshcol,” A.V.; “the valley of Eshcol,” R.V.), which they took back with them to the camp of Israel as a specimen of the fruits of the Promised Land. On their way back they explored the route which led into the south (the Negeb) by the western edge of the mountains at Telilat el-‘Anab, i.e., “grape-mounds”, near Beersheba. “In one of these extensive valleys, perhaps in Wady Hanein, where miles of grape-mounds even now meet the eye, they cut the gigantic clusters of grapes, and gathered the pomegranates and figs, to show how goodly was the land which the Lord had promised for their inheritance.”, Palmer’s Desert of the Exodus.

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From Smith's Bible Dictionary

William Smith, 1884

(cluster of grapes), brother of Mamre the Amorite and of Aner, and one of Abraham’s companions in his pursuit of the four kings who had carried off Lot. (Genesis 14:13,24) (B.C. 1912.).