If this name was given only after the scouts harvested some of its fruits, then why does the Torah write, “They came until Nachal Eshkol, and there they severed a branch...” – indicating that this had been its name even previously?
Parashat Shelach tells of the meragelim (scouts) who were sent to scout Eretz Yisrael and bring a report back to the rest of the nation. Among the places the scouts toured during their excursion was a place called Nachal Eshkol (“Eshkol Stream”). The Torah tells that the group took some fruits from Nachal Eshkol to bring back and show the people, and adds that the location was named “Nachal Eshkol” to commemorate the “eshkol” (cluster) of grapes which they took from a vine at that site (13:24).
A number of commentators addressed the question of why the Torah refers to this place by the name “Nachal Eshkol” even when it first speaks of the scouts’ arrival in this location (13:23). If this name was given only after the scouts harvested some of its fruits, then why does the Torah write, “They came until Nachal Eshkol, and there they severed a branch...” – indicating that this had been its name even previously?
The simplest answer, as Ibn Ezra explains, is that the Torah called the location “Nachal Eshkol” in retrospect, using the name that would eventually be assigned to this place.
A different theory, however, was proposed by Rav Chayim Paltiel (late 13th century), who claimed that the site had been called “Nachal Eshkol” even before the scouts’ excursion. Rav Chayim Paltiel noted that Nachal Eshkol is mentioned as the scouts’ first stop after arriving in the city of Chevron, perhaps suggesting that Nachal Eshkol is within relatively close proximity to Chevron. As we know from Sefer Bereishit (13:18), part of Chevron was called “Elonei Mamrei” (“Plains of Mamrei”), referring to a man named Mamrei who was a confidant of Avraham (Bereishit 14:13,23). Mamrei had two brothers named Aner and Eshkol (Bereishit 14:13), both of whom appeared to have been close allies of Avraham. Rav Chayim Paltiel speculates that Eshkol perhaps lived near his comrade Mamrei, and, just as Mamrei’s area became known as “Elonei Mamrei,” the stream or valley in Eshkol’s region similarly assumed the name “Nachal Eshkol.” Thus, the scouts came to a place that had already been named “Nachal Eshkol,” and after taking a cluster of grapes from the site they affirmed this name in commemoration of the “eshkol” that they had taken.
Rav Chayim Kanievsky, in his work Ta’ama De-kra, also proposes this theory, adding that the Torah spells the word Eshkol differently in the two verses. In recounting the scouts’ arrival in Nachal Eshkol, the Torah spells the word without the letter vav, whereas in recording the naming of the site Nachal Eshkol in commemoration of the scouts’ cluster, it spells it with the letter vav. This might indicate that these are two different names. The first refers to the individual Eshkol, while the second commemorates the cluster taken by the scouts.
Rav David Mandelbaum, in his Pardes Yosef He-chadash, suggests a different reason for why the Torah calls the place Nachal Eshkol even before it tells of the cluster taken by the spies. Possibly, there had been a stream in that area called Nachal Eshkol, and the scouts assigned this name also to the adjacent area in commemoration of the cluster of grapes they took from that site. According to this theory, then, the two verses that mention Nachal Eshkol refer to two different places: the stream that had originally born this name, and the location nearby from where the scouts took a cluster of grapes.
Courtesy of Yeshivat Har Etzion - www.etzion.org.il