Deuteronomy 2

After the wasted wilderness years, God turns Israel north and walks them around the lands of Edom, Moab and Ammon. These relatives of Israel are not to be attacked, because God gave them their land too. When Sihon of Heshbon refuses peace, God gives Israel the first victory east of the Jordan. The chapter shows a God who keeps borders, keeps promises and keeps his people moving.

Deuteronomy 2:1

After the failure at Kadesh, Israel turned back into the desert toward the Red Sea and circled the hill country of Seir for a long time. Moses recalls this as obedience to the LORD’s instruction, even though it felt like going nowhere.

BSA: wilderness (“a place of testing”): The desert was more than empty land. It was where God tested and taught his people.

See also: Numbers 14:25.

Deuteronomy 2:2-3

The LORD ends the wandering with one short word: you have gone around this hill country long enough. God does not leave his people circling forever. When the appointed time comes, he turns them north and gives them a direction again.

BSA: wandering (“journeying, compassing”): The picture is of going around and around the same mountain, getting nowhere.

Deuteronomy 2:4

Israel will pass through the land of Edom, the descendants of Esau, who are called their brothers. Esau was Jacob’s twin. The Edomites will be afraid, but Israel is told to be very careful. Being strong is no excuse for being rough with family.

BSA: brothers (“relatives, kin”): Israel is reminded that Edom is family, so family ties shape how they treat them.

See also: Genesis 25:30.

Deuteronomy 2:5

Israel must not provoke Edom, because God gave Mount Seir to Esau as his own inheritance. Not even a foot’s width belongs to Israel. God’s gifts to others are as secure as his gifts to Israel, and he expects his people to honor them.

BSA: footprint (“the treading of the sole of a foot”): Not even the ground a single foot could stand on was Israel’s to take.

See also: Joshua 24:4.

Deuteronomy 2:6

Israel must buy food and water from Edom and pay in silver. They are not to take it by force or live off the land. They pass through as honest travelers who pay their way and take nothing from their neighbors for free.

BSA: silver (“silver or money”): Honest payment was the rule. Israel’s strength gave it no right to take.

Deuteronomy 2:7

Moses reminds the people of their forty years. God blessed their work, watched over every step, stayed with them, and they lacked nothing. Even the discipline years were years of provision. God can be at work in us while we are still being corrected.

BSA: watched over (“known and protected”): God’s care was personal. He knew their path, and he guarded it. lacked (“been without or needed”): Not one real need went unmet in all those years.

Hebrew: יָדַע (yāda‘, H3045) — “to know.” The Hebrew says God ‘knew’ their walking through the wilderness. His care came from close, personal knowledge of them, not from watching at a distance.

See also: Nehemiah 9:21; Psalm 23:1.

Deuteronomy 2:8

Israel moved on past Edom and turned away from the road that runs north from the Red Sea ports of Elath and Ezion-geber. They took the road toward the Wilderness of Moab. They kept to the way God marked out for them, and they did not take over Edom’s land.

BSA: passed by (“avoided, turned away from”): Israel deliberately steered clear of Edom and did not push into it.

Deuteronomy 2:9

The same rule applies to Moab. Israel is not to harass them or stir up war, because God gave Ar to the descendants of Lot. Lot was Abraham’s nephew, and God remembered Abraham’s family when he assigned these lands.

BSA: possession (“a permanent inheritance, a gift”): Moab’s land was a gift from God, so taking it would mean taking something God had given.

See also: Genesis 19:36-37.

Deuteronomy 2:10-12

Moses adds a side note about the earlier peoples of these lands. The Emites were tall and many, like the Anakites, and were counted among the Rephaim. The Horites lived in Seir until Esau’s family replaced them. The point is that God had settled other nations before Israel.

BSA: Anakites (“descendants of Anak, giant people”): They were the feared tall people who had terrified Israel’s spies, so Israel knew what such a people looked like.

See also: Numbers 13:33.

Deuteronomy 2:13

God now says to rise and cross the Brook of Zered, and they cross it. It is a small stream, but it marks the end of an era. Crossing it means leaving the long years of waiting behind.

BSA: cross over (“to pass, transition”): It marks a real change from one season of life to another.

Deuteronomy 2:14-15

From Kadesh to Zered took thirty-eight years, until the whole generation of fighting men had died, as God had sworn. His hand was against them. This is a sober reminder that unbelief has a cost. Even so, God still carried the nation forward.

BSA: hand (“an open hand; strength, a side or share”): The ‘hand’ of God stands for his active power, here at work in judgment. sworn (“made a promise, vowed”): God keeps his word, whether it is a promise of blessing or a warning.

See also: Numbers 14:29-33.

Deuteronomy 2:16-19

When the last of those fighting men had died, God spoke again. Israel was to cross Moab’s border at Ar. When they neared Ammon, another family descended from Lot, they were once more to leave them alone. God had assigned that land as well.

BSA: harass (“vex, distress”): Israel was not even to trouble these neighbors, let alone fight them.

Deuteronomy 2:20-23

Moses explains again that these lands once belonged to tall peoples, whom Ammon called Zamzummites. God destroyed them before the Ammonites, as he had done for Esau’s family. Even the Caphtorites settled the coast by displacing the Avvim. God directs the movements of all nations, not only Israel.

BSA: destroyed (“to annihilate, desolate”): The earlier peoples were wiped out, which shows God’s rule over every nation’s history.

See also: Acts 17:26; Amos 9:7.

Deuteronomy 2:24

Now the command changes from leaving alone to taking. Israel is to cross the Arnon and fight Sihon, the Amorite king of Heshbon. God says he has already delivered Sihon into their hand. They must begin the work and trust that the outcome is already given.

BSA: delivered (“given, placed”): God speaks of the victory as a gift already handed over, before the first blow.

Hebrew: נָתַתִּי (nātattî, H5414) — “I have given.” God uses the past tense for something still to be won. In his mind it is already done, and Israel only has to step out and take it.

See also: Numbers 21:21-24.

Deuteronomy 2:25

God promises to begin putting dread of Israel on the nations around. They will hear the reports and tremble. Their fear was prepared ahead of time, so Israel would not have to face the surrounding peoples alone.

BSA: dread (“fear, terror”): This fear was something God placed in the nations himself, not Israel’s own doing.

See also: Joshua 2:9-11.

Deuteronomy 2:26-29

Even though God had promised victory, Moses first sent messengers with words of peace. He asked to pass along the main road, buying food and water, and cited how Edom and Moab had treated them. The offer was gentle and fair, and Israel meant no harm.

BSA: peace (“shalom, completeness and wellness”): Israel offered more than a truce. It offered a settled, wholesome agreement between the two peoples.

Hebrew: בַּדֶּרֶךְ בַּדֶּרֶךְ (baddérekh baddérekh, H1870) — “by the road, by the road.” The Hebrew repeats the word ‘road,’ like saying ‘on the road, only on the road.’ It is a firm promise to stay on the path and stay out of the fields.

Deuteronomy 2:30

Sihon would not let Israel through. The text says the LORD made his spirit stubborn and his heart obstinate, so that he would fall into Israel’s hands. Sihon was offered peace and refused it. The passage joins God’s rule over events with a man’s own hard choice.

BSA: stubborn (“hard, unyielding”): Sihon’s refusal was a hardening of his will, which was exactly how he answered the offer of peace. heart (“innermost part, mind and will”): In Hebrew thought the heart is where decisions are made, so the hardening reached his core choices.

Hebrew: הִקְשָׁה (hiqshāh, H7185) — “made hard.” This is the same kind of word used for Pharaoh’s hardening. It describes a heart set so firm that it will not bend.

See also: Exodus 4:21.

Deuteronomy 2:31

The LORD tells Moses that he has begun to give Sihon and his land to Israel. Israel must now begin to take possession. God starts the work, and his people join it by stepping forward in obedience.

BSA: begun (“initiated, started”): God had already started handing over the land, and Israel’s part was to follow through.

Deuteronomy 2:32-33

Sihon came out with his whole army to fight at Jahaz. The LORD delivered him to Israel, and they defeated him, his sons and his army. The victory is credited to God from the start, as he had promised.

BSA: delivered (“to give, put, or set something”): The victory is described as God handing Sihon over, not as Israel’s own achievement.

See also: Numbers 21:23-24.

Deuteronomy 2:34

Israel captured Sihon’s cities and devoted their people to destruction. This was a hard, once-for-all judgment on a people God had long said would be removed for their sin. Christians have long wrestled with such passages and see in them the seriousness of God’s justice.

BSA: devoted to destruction (“set apart, utterly destroyed”): The thing was set apart for God and placed completely under his judgment, with nothing kept.

Hebrew: חֵרֶם (ḥērem, H2763) — “devoted to destruction.” The word means something placed wholly under God’s ban. It was handed over to him and not kept for personal gain.

See also: Genesis 15:16; Deuteronomy 9:4.

Deuteronomy 2:35

Israel took for itself only the livestock and the plunder. The people were under the ban, but the animals and goods could be used. This was provision for the long road ahead, given by God from a conquered land.

BSA: plunder (“spoils, booty”): God supplied his people from what the defeated cities left behind.

Deuteronomy 2:36

From Aroer on the Arnon all the way to Gilead, no city was too strongly walled for Israel. Forty years earlier the spies feared such walls, but now God gave them all. Strong walls do not matter when God has given the city.

BSA: walls (“lofty, strong”): These were serious fortifications, yet they did not stand against what God had decided.

See also: Deuteronomy 1:28.

Deuteronomy 2:37

Moses closes by noting what Israel did not do. They stayed away from Ammon’s land, the Jabbok bank and the hill cities, as the LORD had forbidden. Their obedience covered both the fights they were told to take and the places they were told to leave alone.

BSA: forbidden (“commanded not to go, prohibited”): Some of God’s commands are boundaries, and keeping them matters as much as winning battles.