Numbers 32:12

The Kenizite. He was Kaleiv’s stepfather, to whom Kaleiv’s mother bore Osniel.

except Kaleb bar Jephunneh the Kenezite, and Jehoshua bar Nun, for they have fully (walked) after the fear of the Lord.

בלתי כלב בן יפונה, “except for Caleb son of Yephune, etc.” this line is puzzling, seeing that Yair son of Menashe also entered the Holy Land as explained by the Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin folio 44 on Joshua 7,5: where the 36 men of Israel that are reported as having been slain by the men of Ai, (in the first assault) are understood by the Talmud as having been only one man, whose moral value was equivalent to that of a majority of the members of the Jewish Supreme Court which consisted of 71 elders. This man was Yair, son of Menashe. This occurred after the theft by Achan ben Karmi of the loot from the city of Jericho, which had not been brought to the attention of the court although his family members were aware of this. We may have to answer the above query by assuming that the decree that all the men who had left the land of Egypt who had been subject to the decree of dying in the desert as a result of the debacle with the spies did not include any who had been under twenty years at the time. [Since the Torah described Joseph as having held great-grandchildren on his knees before he died at the age of 110, and more than 86 years elapsed after the death of the last of Joseph’s brothers until the Exodus, many of whom died much older than he, it is hard to believe that Yair, at the time of the Exodus, had not reached the age of twenty. Ed.]