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Deuteronomy 2:8 | Jamieson, Fausset & Brown
And when we passed by from our brethren the children of Esau, which dwelt in Seir, through the way of the plain from Elath, and from Eziongaber, we turned and passed by the way of the wilderness of Moab. — Deuteronomy 2:8
Source Coverage: Deuteronomy 2:8-12
we passed . . . through the way of the plain--the Arabah or great valley, from Elath ("trees") (the Ailah of the Greeks and Romans). The site of it is marked by extensive mounds of rubbish.
Ezion-geber--now Akaba, both were within the territory of Edom; and after making a circuit of its southeastern boundary, the Israelites reached the border of Moab on the southeast of the Salt Sea. They had been forbidden by divine command to molest the Moabites in any way; and this special honor was conferred on that people not on their own account, for they were very wicked, but in virtue of their descent from Lot. (See on Deu 23:3). Their territory comprised the fine country on the south, and partly on the north of the Arnon. They had won it by their arms from the original inhabitants, the Emims, a race, terrible, as their name imports, for physical power and stature (Gen 14:5), in like manner as the Edomites had obtained their settlement by the overthrow of the original occupiers of Seir, the Horims (Gen 14:6), who were troglodytes, or dwellers in caves. Moses alluded to these circumstances to encourage his countrymen to believe that God would much more enable them to expel the wicked and accursed Canaanites. At that time, however, the Moabites, having lost the greater part of their possessions through the usurpations of Sihon, were reduced to the small but fertile region between the Zered and the Arnon.
Source Coverage: Deuteronomy 2:8
And when we passed by from our brethren the children of Esau, which dwelt in Self,.... Along their coasts, by the borders of their country:
through the way of the plain; the wilderness of Zin, where Kadesh was:
from Elath and Eziongeber; the two ports on the shore of the Red sea in the land of Edom; it was from the latter they came to Kadesh; see Numbers 33:35. Elath was ten miles from Petra, the metropolis of Edom, to the east of it, as Jerom says (z); it is by Josephus (a) called Aelana, and by the Septuagint here Ailon; from whence the Elanitic bay has its name; he speaks of it as not far from Eziongeber, which he says was then called Berenice:
we turned and passed by the way of the wilderness of Moab; the wilderness which is before Moab, towards the sun rising or the east, Numbers 21:11.
(z) De loc. Heb. fol. 91. E. (a) Antiqu. l. 8. c. 6. sect. 4.
Source Coverage: Deuteronomy 2:1-23
March from Kadesh to the Frontier of the Amorites. - Deu 2:1. After a long stay in Kadesh, they commenced their return into the desert. The words, "We departed...by the way to the Red Sea," point back to Num 14:25. This departure is expressly designated as an act of obedience to the divine command recorded there, by the expression "as Jehovah spake to me." Consequently Moses is not speaking here of the second departure of the congregation from Kadesh to go to Mount Hor (Num 20:22), but of the first departure after the condemnation of the generation that came out of Egypt. "And we went round Mount Seir many days." This going round Mount Seir includes the thirty-eight years' wanderings, though we are not therefore to picture it as "going backwards and forwards, and then entering the Arabah again" (Schultz). Just as Moses passed over the reassembling of the congregation at Kadesh (Num 20:1), so he also overlooked the going to and fro in the desert, and fixed his eye more closely upon the last journey from Kadesh to Mount Hor, that he might recall to the memory of the congregation how the Lord had led them to the end of all their wandering.
Deu 2:2-6
When they had gone through the Arabah to the southern extremity, the Lord commanded them to turn northwards, i.e., to go round the southern end of Mount Seir, and proceed northwards on the eastern side of it (see at Num 21:10), without going to war with the Edomites (התגּרה, to stir oneself up against a person to conflict, מלחמה), as He would not give them a foot-breadth of their land; for He had given Esau (the Edomites) Mount Seir for a possession. For this reason they were to buy victuals and water of them for money (כּרה, to dig, to dig water, i.e., procure water, as it was often necessary to dig wells, and not merely to draw it, Gen 26:25. The verb כּרה does not signify to buy).
Deu 2:7
And this they were able to do, because the Lord had blessed them in all the work of their hand, i.e., not merely in the rearing of flocks and herds, which they had carried on in the desert (Exo 19:13; Exo 34:3; Num 20:19; Num 32:1.), but in all that they did for a living; whether, for example, when stopping for a long time in the same place of encampment, they sowed in suitable spots and reaped, or whether they sold the produce of their toil and skill to the Arabs of the desert. "He hath observed thy going through this great desert" (ידע, to know, then to trouble oneself, Gen 39:6; to observe carefully, Pro 27:23; Psa 1:6); and He has not suffered thee to want anything for forty years, but as often as want has occurred, He has miraculously provided for every necessity.
Deu 2:8-10
In accordance with this divine command, they went past the Edomites by the side of their mountains, "from the way of the Arabah, from Elath (see at Gen 14:6) and Eziongeber" (see at Num 33:35), sc., into the steppes of Moab, where they were encamped at that time.
God commanded them to behave in the same manner towards the Moabites, when they approached their frontier (Deu 2:9). They were not to touch their land, because the Lord had given Ar to the descendants of Lot for a possession. In Deu 2:9 the Moabites are mentioned, and in Deu 2:19 the Amorites also. The Moabites are designated as "sons of Lot," for the same reason for which the Edomites are called "brethren of Israel" in Deu 2:4. The Israelites were to uphold the bond of blood-relationship with these tribes in the most sacred manner. Ar, the capital of Moabitis (see at Num 21:15), is used here for the land itself, which was named after the capital, and governed by it.
Deu 2:11-12
To confirm the fact that the Moabites and also the Edomites had received from God the land which they inhabited as a possession, Moses interpolates into the words of Jehovah certain ethnographical notices concerning the earlier inhabitants of these lands, from which it is obvious that Edom and Moab had not destroyed them by their own power, but that Jehovah had destroyed them before them, as is expressly stated in Deu 2:21, Deu 2:22. "The Emim dwelt formerly therein," sc., in Ar and its territory, in Moabitis, "a high (i.e., strong) and numerous people, of gigantic stature, which were also reckoned among the Rephaites, like the Enakites (Anakim)." Emim, i.e., frightful, terrible, was the name given to them by the Moabites. Whether this earlier or original population of Moabitis was of Hamitic or Semitic descent cannot be determined, any more than the connection between the Emim and the Rephaim can be ascertained. On the Rephaim; and on the Anakites, at Num 13:22.
Deu 2:12
The origin of the Horites (i.e., the dwellers in caves) of Mount Seir, who were driven out of their possessions by the descendants of Esau, and completely exterminated (see at Gen 14:6, and Gen 36:20), is altogether involved in obscurity. The words, "as Israel has done to the land of his possession, which Jehovah has given them," do not presuppose the conquest of the land of Canaan or a post-Mosaic authorship; but "the land of his possession" is the land to the east of the Jordan (Gilead and Bashan), which was conquered by the Israelites under Moses, and divided among the two tribes and a half, and which is also described in Deu 3:20 as the "possession" which Jehovah had given to these tribes.
Deu 2:13-15
For this reason Israel was to remove from the desert of Moab (i.e., the desert which bounded Moabitis on the east), and to cross over the brook Zered, to advance against the country of the Amorites (see at Num 21:12-13). This occurred thirty-eight years after the condemnation of the people at Kadesh (Num 14:23, Num 14:29), when the generation rejected by God had entirely died out (תּמם, to be all gone, to disappear), so that not one of them saw the promised land. They did not all die a natural death, however, but "the hand of the Lord was against them to destroy them" (המם, lit., to throw into confusion, then used with special reference to the terrors with which Jehovah destroyed His enemies; Exo 14:24; Exo 23:27, etc.), sc., by extraordinary judgments (as in Num 16:35; Num 18:1; Num 21:6; Num 25:9).
Deu 2:16-22
When this generation had quite died out, the Lord made known to Moses, and through him to the people, that they were to cross over the boundary of Moab (i.e., the Arnon, Deu 2:24; see at Num 21:13), the land of Ar (see at Deu 2:9), "to come nigh over against the children of Ammon," i.e., to advance into the neighbourhood of the Ammonites, who lived to the east of Moab; but they were not to meddle with these descendants of Lot, because He would give them nothing of the land that was given them for a possession (Deu 2:19, as at Deu 2:5 and Deu 2:9). - To confirm this, ethnographical notices are introduced again in Deu 2:20-22 into the words of God (as in Deu 2:10, Deu 2:11), concerning the earlier population of the country of the Ammonites. Ammonitis was also regarded as a land of the Rephaites, because Rephaites dwelt therein, whom the Ammonites called Zamzummim. "Zamzummim," from זמם, to hum, then to muse, equivalent to the humming or roaring people, probably the same people as the Zuzim mentioned in Gen 14:5. This giant tribe Jehovah had destroyed before the Ammonites (Deu 2:22), just as He had done for the sons of Esau dwelling upon Mount Seir, namely, destroyed the Horites before them, so that the Edomites "dwelt in their stead, even unto this day."
Deu 2:23
As the Horites had been exterminated by the Edomites, so were the Avvaeans (Avvim), who dwelt in farms (villages) at the south-west corner of Canaan, as far as Gaza, driven out of their possessions and exterminated by the Caphtorites, who sprang from Caphtor (see at Gen 10:14), although, according to Jos 13:3, some remnants of them were to be found among the Philistines even at that time. This notice appears to be attached to the foregoing remarks simply on account of the substantial analogy between them, without there being any intention to imply that the Israelites were to assume the same attitude towards the Caphtorites, who afterwards rose up in the persons of the Philistines, as towards the descendants of Esau and Lot.
Source Coverage: Deuteronomy 2:8-23
It is observable here that Moses, speaking of the Edomites (Deu 2:8), calls them, "our brethren, the children of Esau." Though they had been unkind to Israel, in refusing them a peaceable passage through their country, yet he calls them brethren. For, though our relations fail in their duty to us, we must retain a sense of the relation, and not be wanting in our duty to them, as there is occasion. Now in these verses we have,
I. The account which Moses gives of the origin of the nations of which he had here occasion to speak, the Moabites, Edomites, and Ammonites. We know very well, from other parts of his history, whose posterity they were; but here he tells us how they came to those countries in which Israel found them; they were not the aborigines, or first planters. But, 1. The Moabites dwelt in a country which had belonged to a numerous race of giants, called Emim (that is, terrible ones), as tall as the Anakim, and perhaps more fierce, Deu 2:10, Deu 2:11. 2. The Edomites in like manner dispossessed the Horim from Mount Seir, and took their country (Deu 2:12. and again Deu 2:22), of which we read, Gen 36:20. 3. The Ammonites likewise got possession of a country that had formerly been inhabited by giants, called Zamzummim, crafty men, or wicked men (Deu 2:20, Deu 2:21), probably the same that are called Zuzim, Gen 14:5. He illustrates these remarks by an instance older than any of these; the Caphtorim (who were akin to the Philistines, Gen 10:14) drove the Avim out of their country, and took possession of it, Deu 2:23. The learned bishop Patrick supposes these Avites, being expelled hence, to have settled in Assyria, and to be the same people we read of under that name, Kg2 17:31. Now these revolutions are recorded, (1.) To show how soon the world was peopled after the flood, so well peopled that, when a family grew numerous, they could not find a place to settle in, at least in that part of the world, but they must drive out those that were already settled. (2.) To show that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. Giants were expelled by those of ordinary stature; for probably these giants, like those before the flood (Gen 6:4), were notorious for impiety and oppression, which brought the judgments of God upon them, against which their great strength would be on defence. (3.) To show what uncertain things worldly possessions are, and how often they change their owners; it was so of old, and ever will be so. Families decline, and from them estates are transferred to families that increase; so little constancy or continuance is there in these things. (4.) To encourage the children of Israel, who were now going to take possession of Canaan, against the difficulties they would meet with, and to show the unbelief of those that were afraid of the sons of Anak, to whom the giants, here said to be conquered, are compared, Deu 2:11, Deu 2:21. If the providence of God had done this for the Moabites and Ammonites, much more would his promise do it for Israel his peculiar people.
II. The advances which Israel made towards Canaan. They passed by the way of the wilderness of Moab (Deu 2:8), and then went over the brook or vale of Zered (Deu 2:13), and there Moses takes notice of the fulfilling of the word which God had spoken concerning them, that none of those that were numbered at Mount Sinai should see the land that God had promised, Num 14:23. According to that sentence, now that they began to set their faces towards Canaan, and to have it in their eye, notice is taken of their being all destroyed and consumed, and not a man of them left, Deu 2:14. Common providence, we may observe, in about thirty-eight years, ordinarily raises a new generation, so that in that time few remain of the old one; but here it was entirely new, and none at all remained but Caleb and Joshua: for indeed the hand of the Lord was against them, v. 15. Those cannot but waste, until they were consumed, who have the hand of God against them. Observe, Israel is not called to engage with the Canaanites till all the men of war, the veteran regiments, that had been used to hardship, and had learned the art of war from the Egyptians, were consumed and dead from among the people (v. 16), that the conquest of Canaan, being effected by a host of new-raised men, trained up in a wilderness, the excellency of the power might the more plainly appear to be of God and not of men.
III. The caution given them not to meddle with the Moabites or Ammonites, whom they must not disseize, nor so much as disturb in their possessions: Distress them not, nor contend with them, v. 9. Though the Moabites aimed to ruin Israel (Num 22:6), yet Israel must not aim to ruin them. If others design us a mischief, this will not justify us in designing them a mischief. But why must not the Moabites and Ammonites be meddled with? 1. Because they were the children of Lot (v. 9, 19), righteous Lot, who kept his integrity in Sodom. Note, Children often fare the better in this world for the piety of their ancestors: the seed of the upright, though they degenerate, yet are blessed with temporal good things. 2. Because the land they were possessed of was what God had given them, and he did not design it for Israel. Even wicked men have a right to their worldly possessions, and must not be wronged. The tares are allowed their place in the field, and must not be rooted out until the harvest. God gives and preserves outward blessings to wicked men, to show that these are not the best things, but he has better in store for his own children.
Source Coverage: Deuteronomy 2:8
2:8 our relatives: Isaac had two sons, Esau, the firstborn, and Jacob, who obtained Esau’s birthright and blessing as the firstborn (Gen 25:27-34; 27:1-36). The result was intense hostility between Esau and Jacob and between their descendants. Israel still recognized and honored the kinship, however; out of fraternal good faith, if not affection, Israel bypassed Edom and did not engage the Edomites in battle (see Num 20:14-21). • Arabah Valley: See study note on Deut 1:1. • Elath and Ezion-geber were twin port cities on the Red Sea. They later harbored the merchant ships of Solomon (1 Kgs 9:26), Jehoshaphat (1 Kgs 22:48), and Uzziah (2 Kgs 14:22).
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we passed . . . through the way of the plain--the Arabah or great valley, from Elath ("trees") (the Ailah of the Greeks and Romans). The site of it is marked by extensive mounds of rubbish.
Ezion-geber--now Akaba, both were within the territory of Edom; and after making a circuit of its southeastern boundary, the Israelites reached the border of Moab on the southeast of the Salt Sea. They had been forbidden by divine command to molest the Moabites in any way; and this special honor was conferred on that people not on their own account, for they were very wicked, but in virtue of their descent from Lot. (See on Deu 23:3). Their territory comprised the fine country on the south, and partly on the north of the Arnon. They had won it by their arms from the original inhabitants, the Emims, a race, terrible, as their name imports, for physical power and stature (Gen 14:5), in like manner as the Edomites had obtained their settlement by the overthrow of the original occupiers of Seir, the Horims (Gen 14:6), who were troglodytes, or dwellers in caves. Moses alluded to these circumstances to encourage his countrymen to believe that God would much more enable them to expel the wicked and accursed Canaanites. At that time, however, the Moabites, having lost the greater part of their possessions through the usurpations of Sihon, were reduced to the small but fertile region between the Zered and the Arnon.
And when we passed by from our brethren the children of Esau, which dwelt in Self,.... Along their coasts, by the borders of their country:
through the way of the plain; the wilderness of Zin, where Kadesh was:
from Elath and Eziongeber; the two ports on the shore of the Red sea in the land of Edom; it was from the latter they came to Kadesh; see Numbers 33:35. Elath was ten miles from Petra, the metropolis of Edom, to the east of it, as Jerom says (z); it is by Josephus (a) called Aelana, and by the Septuagint here Ailon; from whence the Elanitic bay has its name; he speaks of it as not far from Eziongeber, which he says was then called Berenice:
we turned and passed by the way of the wilderness of Moab; the wilderness which is before Moab, towards the sun rising or the east, Numbers 21:11.
(z) De loc. Heb. fol. 91. E. (a) Antiqu. l. 8. c. 6. sect. 4.
March from Kadesh to the Frontier of the Amorites. - Deu 2:1. After a long stay in Kadesh, they commenced their return into the desert. The words, "We departed...by the way to the Red Sea," point back to Num 14:25. This departure is expressly designated as an act of obedience to the divine command recorded there, by the expression "as Jehovah spake to me." Consequently Moses is not speaking here of the second departure of the congregation from Kadesh to go to Mount Hor (Num 20:22), but of the first departure after the condemnation of the generation that came out of Egypt. "And we went round Mount Seir many days." This going round Mount Seir includes the thirty-eight years' wanderings, though we are not therefore to picture it as "going backwards and forwards, and then entering the Arabah again" (Schultz). Just as Moses passed over the reassembling of the congregation at Kadesh (Num 20:1), so he also overlooked the going to and fro in the desert, and fixed his eye more closely upon the last journey from Kadesh to Mount Hor, that he might recall to the memory of the congregation how the Lord had led them to the end of all their wandering.
Deu 2:2-6
When they had gone through the Arabah to the southern extremity, the Lord commanded them to turn northwards, i.e., to go round the southern end of Mount Seir, and proceed northwards on the eastern side of it (see at Num 21:10), without going to war with the Edomites (התגּרה, to stir oneself up against a person to conflict, מלחמה), as He would not give them a foot-breadth of their land; for He had given Esau (the Edomites) Mount Seir for a possession. For this reason they were to buy victuals and water of them for money (כּרה, to dig, to dig water, i.e., procure water, as it was often necessary to dig wells, and not merely to draw it, Gen 26:25. The verb כּרה does not signify to buy).
Deu 2:7
And this they were able to do, because the Lord had blessed them in all the work of their hand, i.e., not merely in the rearing of flocks and herds, which they had carried on in the desert (Exo 19:13; Exo 34:3; Num 20:19; Num 32:1.), but in all that they did for a living; whether, for example, when stopping for a long time in the same place of encampment, they sowed in suitable spots and reaped, or whether they sold the produce of their toil and skill to the Arabs of the desert. "He hath observed thy going through this great desert" (ידע, to know, then to trouble oneself, Gen 39:6; to observe carefully, Pro 27:23; Psa 1:6); and He has not suffered thee to want anything for forty years, but as often as want has occurred, He has miraculously provided for every necessity.
Deu 2:8-10
In accordance with this divine command, they went past the Edomites by the side of their mountains, "from the way of the Arabah, from Elath (see at Gen 14:6) and Eziongeber" (see at Num 33:35), sc., into the steppes of Moab, where they were encamped at that time.
God commanded them to behave in the same manner towards the Moabites, when they approached their frontier (Deu 2:9). They were not to touch their land, because the Lord had given Ar to the descendants of Lot for a possession. In Deu 2:9 the Moabites are mentioned, and in Deu 2:19 the Amorites also. The Moabites are designated as "sons of Lot," for the same reason for which the Edomites are called "brethren of Israel" in Deu 2:4. The Israelites were to uphold the bond of blood-relationship with these tribes in the most sacred manner. Ar, the capital of Moabitis (see at Num 21:15), is used here for the land itself, which was named after the capital, and governed by it.
Deu 2:11-12
To confirm the fact that the Moabites and also the Edomites had received from God the land which they inhabited as a possession, Moses interpolates into the words of Jehovah certain ethnographical notices concerning the earlier inhabitants of these lands, from which it is obvious that Edom and Moab had not destroyed them by their own power, but that Jehovah had destroyed them before them, as is expressly stated in Deu 2:21, Deu 2:22. "The Emim dwelt formerly therein," sc., in Ar and its territory, in Moabitis, "a high (i.e., strong) and numerous people, of gigantic stature, which were also reckoned among the Rephaites, like the Enakites (Anakim)." Emim, i.e., frightful, terrible, was the name given to them by the Moabites. Whether this earlier or original population of Moabitis was of Hamitic or Semitic descent cannot be determined, any more than the connection between the Emim and the Rephaim can be ascertained. On the Rephaim; and on the Anakites, at Num 13:22.
Deu 2:12
The origin of the Horites (i.e., the dwellers in caves) of Mount Seir, who were driven out of their possessions by the descendants of Esau, and completely exterminated (see at Gen 14:6, and Gen 36:20), is altogether involved in obscurity. The words, "as Israel has done to the land of his possession, which Jehovah has given them," do not presuppose the conquest of the land of Canaan or a post-Mosaic authorship; but "the land of his possession" is the land to the east of the Jordan (Gilead and Bashan), which was conquered by the Israelites under Moses, and divided among the two tribes and a half, and which is also described in Deu 3:20 as the "possession" which Jehovah had given to these tribes.
Deu 2:13-15
For this reason Israel was to remove from the desert of Moab (i.e., the desert which bounded Moabitis on the east), and to cross over the brook Zered, to advance against the country of the Amorites (see at Num 21:12-13). This occurred thirty-eight years after the condemnation of the people at Kadesh (Num 14:23, Num 14:29), when the generation rejected by God had entirely died out (תּמם, to be all gone, to disappear), so that not one of them saw the promised land. They did not all die a natural death, however, but "the hand of the Lord was against them to destroy them" (המם, lit., to throw into confusion, then used with special reference to the terrors with which Jehovah destroyed His enemies; Exo 14:24; Exo 23:27, etc.), sc., by extraordinary judgments (as in Num 16:35; Num 18:1; Num 21:6; Num 25:9).
Deu 2:16-22
When this generation had quite died out, the Lord made known to Moses, and through him to the people, that they were to cross over the boundary of Moab (i.e., the Arnon, Deu 2:24; see at Num 21:13), the land of Ar (see at Deu 2:9), "to come nigh over against the children of Ammon," i.e., to advance into the neighbourhood of the Ammonites, who lived to the east of Moab; but they were not to meddle with these descendants of Lot, because He would give them nothing of the land that was given them for a possession (Deu 2:19, as at Deu 2:5 and Deu 2:9). - To confirm this, ethnographical notices are introduced again in Deu 2:20-22 into the words of God (as in Deu 2:10, Deu 2:11), concerning the earlier population of the country of the Ammonites. Ammonitis was also regarded as a land of the Rephaites, because Rephaites dwelt therein, whom the Ammonites called Zamzummim. "Zamzummim," from זמם, to hum, then to muse, equivalent to the humming or roaring people, probably the same people as the Zuzim mentioned in Gen 14:5. This giant tribe Jehovah had destroyed before the Ammonites (Deu 2:22), just as He had done for the sons of Esau dwelling upon Mount Seir, namely, destroyed the Horites before them, so that the Edomites "dwelt in their stead, even unto this day."
Deu 2:23
As the Horites had been exterminated by the Edomites, so were the Avvaeans (Avvim), who dwelt in farms (villages) at the south-west corner of Canaan, as far as Gaza, driven out of their possessions and exterminated by the Caphtorites, who sprang from Caphtor (see at Gen 10:14), although, according to Jos 13:3, some remnants of them were to be found among the Philistines even at that time. This notice appears to be attached to the foregoing remarks simply on account of the substantial analogy between them, without there being any intention to imply that the Israelites were to assume the same attitude towards the Caphtorites, who afterwards rose up in the persons of the Philistines, as towards the descendants of Esau and Lot.
It is observable here that Moses, speaking of the Edomites (Deu 2:8), calls them, "our brethren, the children of Esau." Though they had been unkind to Israel, in refusing them a peaceable passage through their country, yet he calls them brethren. For, though our relations fail in their duty to us, we must retain a sense of the relation, and not be wanting in our duty to them, as there is occasion. Now in these verses we have,
I. The account which Moses gives of the origin of the nations of which he had here occasion to speak, the Moabites, Edomites, and Ammonites. We know very well, from other parts of his history, whose posterity they were; but here he tells us how they came to those countries in which Israel found them; they were not the aborigines, or first planters. But, 1. The Moabites dwelt in a country which had belonged to a numerous race of giants, called Emim (that is, terrible ones), as tall as the Anakim, and perhaps more fierce, Deu 2:10, Deu 2:11. 2. The Edomites in like manner dispossessed the Horim from Mount Seir, and took their country (Deu 2:12. and again Deu 2:22), of which we read, Gen 36:20. 3. The Ammonites likewise got possession of a country that had formerly been inhabited by giants, called Zamzummim, crafty men, or wicked men (Deu 2:20, Deu 2:21), probably the same that are called Zuzim, Gen 14:5. He illustrates these remarks by an instance older than any of these; the Caphtorim (who were akin to the Philistines, Gen 10:14) drove the Avim out of their country, and took possession of it, Deu 2:23. The learned bishop Patrick supposes these Avites, being expelled hence, to have settled in Assyria, and to be the same people we read of under that name, Kg2 17:31. Now these revolutions are recorded, (1.) To show how soon the world was peopled after the flood, so well peopled that, when a family grew numerous, they could not find a place to settle in, at least in that part of the world, but they must drive out those that were already settled. (2.) To show that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. Giants were expelled by those of ordinary stature; for probably these giants, like those before the flood (Gen 6:4), were notorious for impiety and oppression, which brought the judgments of God upon them, against which their great strength would be on defence. (3.) To show what uncertain things worldly possessions are, and how often they change their owners; it was so of old, and ever will be so. Families decline, and from them estates are transferred to families that increase; so little constancy or continuance is there in these things. (4.) To encourage the children of Israel, who were now going to take possession of Canaan, against the difficulties they would meet with, and to show the unbelief of those that were afraid of the sons of Anak, to whom the giants, here said to be conquered, are compared, Deu 2:11, Deu 2:21. If the providence of God had done this for the Moabites and Ammonites, much more would his promise do it for Israel his peculiar people.
II. The advances which Israel made towards Canaan. They passed by the way of the wilderness of Moab (Deu 2:8), and then went over the brook or vale of Zered (Deu 2:13), and there Moses takes notice of the fulfilling of the word which God had spoken concerning them, that none of those that were numbered at Mount Sinai should see the land that God had promised, Num 14:23. According to that sentence, now that they began to set their faces towards Canaan, and to have it in their eye, notice is taken of their being all destroyed and consumed, and not a man of them left, Deu 2:14. Common providence, we may observe, in about thirty-eight years, ordinarily raises a new generation, so that in that time few remain of the old one; but here it was entirely new, and none at all remained but Caleb and Joshua: for indeed the hand of the Lord was against them, v. 15. Those cannot but waste, until they were consumed, who have the hand of God against them. Observe, Israel is not called to engage with the Canaanites till all the men of war, the veteran regiments, that had been used to hardship, and had learned the art of war from the Egyptians, were consumed and dead from among the people (v. 16), that the conquest of Canaan, being effected by a host of new-raised men, trained up in a wilderness, the excellency of the power might the more plainly appear to be of God and not of men.
III. The caution given them not to meddle with the Moabites or Ammonites, whom they must not disseize, nor so much as disturb in their possessions: Distress them not, nor contend with them, v. 9. Though the Moabites aimed to ruin Israel (Num 22:6), yet Israel must not aim to ruin them. If others design us a mischief, this will not justify us in designing them a mischief. But why must not the Moabites and Ammonites be meddled with? 1. Because they were the children of Lot (v. 9, 19), righteous Lot, who kept his integrity in Sodom. Note, Children often fare the better in this world for the piety of their ancestors: the seed of the upright, though they degenerate, yet are blessed with temporal good things. 2. Because the land they were possessed of was what God had given them, and he did not design it for Israel. Even wicked men have a right to their worldly possessions, and must not be wronged. The tares are allowed their place in the field, and must not be rooted out until the harvest. God gives and preserves outward blessings to wicked men, to show that these are not the best things, but he has better in store for his own children.
2:8 our relatives: Isaac had two sons, Esau, the firstborn, and Jacob, who obtained Esau’s birthright and blessing as the firstborn (Gen 25:27-34; 27:1-36). The result was intense hostility between Esau and Jacob and between their descendants. Israel still recognized and honored the kinship, however; out of fraternal good faith, if not affection, Israel bypassed Edom and did not engage the Edomites in battle (see Num 20:14-21). • Arabah Valley: See study note on Deut 1:1. • Elath and Ezion-geber were twin port cities on the Red Sea. They later harbored the merchant ships of Solomon (1 Kgs 9:26), Jehoshaphat (1 Kgs 22:48), and Uzziah (2 Kgs 14:22).
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