Deuteronomychapter 2
37 verses · Moses, by tradition · 15th to 13th century BC · The Law
Key verse
Indeed, the LORD your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He has watched over your journey through this vast wilderness. The LORD your God has been with you these forty years, and you have lacked nothing.
It stands in Skirting Edom, the sons of Esau, verses 1 to 8.
The chapter
Chapter summary
The wilderness journey continued. The march around Mount Seir: ‘ye have compassed this mountain long enough’. The command not to meddle with Esau (Edom), with Moab, or with Ammon. Their land is not Israel's portion. The long list of peoples who succeeded one another in those lands shows that God disposes the nations. The crossing of the brook Zered forty-eight days after Kadesh closed the first generation's dying. Then Sihon king of Heshbon refuses passage; the LORD hardens his spirit; Israel takes his cities. The whole chapter is a retelling with theological emphasis: every step was under divine appointment; every withheld hand was a withheld hand.
Context
Law · Moses · Deuteronomy overview
The world behind this chapter
Deuteronomy 2The history
Moses is still the speaker, and the chapter is his own account of marches he led. The years it covers are the years of the sentence passed at Kadesh, and verse 14 is the one place the book counts them.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
The country east of the Jordan was held. Edom held the highlands of Seir south of the Dead Sea, Moab the plateau between the Zered and the Arnon, and Ammon the rolling country further north and east. Israel is told to buy food and water from all three and to take no ground from any of them.
Buying water makes sense once the country is known. On a desert plateau the wells and cisterns were owned property, cut and maintained at cost, and a group large enough to drain one was a threat. John Wesley records that private persons dug pits there for their own use.
The chapter pauses twice to name the peoples who held that land before, the Emim, the Zamzummim, the Horites and the Avvim, all of them reckoned Rephaim. Adam Clarke records that Rephaim is the name of a people rather than a word for size, and that the Emim, the Anakim and the Rephaim were probably one stock under different names.
The Arnon gorge is a real barrier, a canyon cutting west to the Dead Sea. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown measure the stream at its mouth at eighty two feet wide and four feet deep, running between cliffs of sandstone. North of it lay Heshbon under Sihon the Amorite.
The message sent to Sihon was the standard request of the road, to pass along the highway without turning into field or vineyard, paying for food and water. The site's published exposition records that the offer of peace becomes a written rule at 20:10.
What it meant to them
The first hearers were the children of people who had died in the desert for fear of one army. This chapter gives them the arithmetic. God held them back from three nations and handed them a fourth, and the difference was whose land it was.
It also settled a question Israel would face for centuries, why Edom, Moab and Ammon were closed to them. Kinship and God's own grant protected those nations, so the conquest had borders drawn by the one who ordered it.
Sources cited
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament , 1765, on Deuteronomy 2:6
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible , 1832, on Deuteronomy 2:11
- Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible , 1871, on Deuteronomy 2:24 to 36
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament , 2000
Where the chapter sits
Deuteronomy 2 falls in First sermon, retrospective (chapters 1–4). Moses rehearses the wilderness: Horeb, the spies, the forty years, the defeat of Sihon and Og. ‘Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves.’
After it: Second sermon, the law restated, chapters 5–26.
The whole shape of Deuteronomy→The structure of this chapter
People2
Places2
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
A. Skirting Edom, the sons of Esau
1. (vv. 1-3)
Deuteronomy 2:1
“They appear to have followed northward nearly the same route, which is now taken by the Syrian hadji, along the western skirts of this great desert, near the mountains of Edom [ROBINSON]. It was on entering these plains they received the command, "Ye have compassed this mountain (this hilly tract, now Jebel Shera) long enough, turn ye northward" [De 2:3].”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Deuteronomy 2:2
“And the Lord spake unto me,.... While about Mount Seir: saying; as follows.”
Deuteronomy 2:3
“Turn you northward - From Mount Seir, in order to get to Canaan. This was not the way they went before, viz., by Kadesh-barnea, but they were to proceed between Edom on the one hand, and Moab and Ammon on the other, so as to enter into Canaan through the land of the Amorites.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
The order at verse 3 repeats the form of the order at 1:6, where the word at Horeb was that they had dwelt long enough in that mount. Verse 1 covers the years between Kadesh and this turn in half a sentence, and the count of thirty and eight years does not arrive until verse 14. Barnes reads verse 1 as a summary of the whole wandering and verses 2 and 3 as the command that ended it, sending them around the southern end of Edom.
2. (vv. 4-6)
Deuteronomy 2:4
“Compare the marginal reference. Though the Edomites resisted the passage through the midst of their land, they did not, and probably could not, oppose the “passing through the coast” or along their eastern frontier.”
Deuteronomy 2:5
“I have given mount Seir to Esau - Though the descendants of Esau were conquered by David 2Sa 8:14, yet they were not dispossessed of their land, and in the reign of Jehoshaphat they regained their independence 2Ki 8:20-22.”
Deuteronomy 2:6
“Buy meat - For thongh the manna did yet rain upon them, they were not forbidden to buy other meats when they had opportunity, but only were forbidden greedily to hunger after them when they could not obtain them. Buy water - For water in those parts was scarce, and therefore private persons did severally dig pits for their particular use.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
The verb given governs both sides of this chapter. Mount Seir belongs to Esau by the same kind of grant that gives Canaan to Israel, so the conquest has a border drawn by the one who authorises it, and not so much as a foot breadth lies outside that border. Numbers 20:14-21 has Edom refusing passage and coming out with a strong hand, while this chapter has Israel going along the coast and buying food and water for money; Barnes reads the difference as the eastern frontier rather than the road through the middle.
3. (v. 7)
Deuteronomy 2:7
“The Lord - hath blessed thee, etc. - God had given them much property, and therefore they had no need of plunder; they had gold and silver to buy the provender they needed, and therefore God would not permit them to take any thing by violence.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Thou hast lacked nothing is the ground for the command to buy rather than seize, and Clarke reads it that way, since a people already given silver has no need of plunder. The same claim is pressed further at 8:4, where the raiment waxed not old and the foot did not swell, and Nehemiah 9:21 repeats it in a prayer many centuries later. He knoweth thy walking makes God the witness of the forty years and not only their cause.
4. (v. 8)
Deuteronomy 2:8
“Elath (Akaba) is at the northern extremity of the eastern arm of the Red Sea, and gives to that arm the name of the Elanitic Gulf. The name means “trees;” and is still justified by the grove of palm-trees at Akaba.”
Deuteronomy 2:8-9
Moab is spared on the same ground as Edom, and the grant is traced to the children of Lot rather than to Moab, which runs it back to Genesis 19:36-37. Numbers 22 has Balak of Moab hiring Balaam against this same people, and Henry sets the two side by side: a nation that meant Israel harm is still not Israel's to take. Chapter 23:3 will shut the Moabite out of the congregation without touching a mile of his land.
B. Moab left alone while a generation dies out
1. (v. 9)
Deuteronomy 2:9
“The Moabites and the Ammonites Deu 2:19 being descended from Lot, the nephew of Abraham Gen 19:30-38, were, like the Edomites, kinsmen of the Israelites.”
1 more voice on this verse
Deuteronomy 2:9
“Ar - The chief city of the Moabites, here put for the whole country which depended upon it. The children of Lot - So called to signify that this preservation, was not for their sakes, for they were a wicked people, but for Lot's sake whose memory God yet honours.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
2. (vv. 10-11)
Deuteronomy 2:10
“The Emims dwelt therein - Calmet supposes that these people were destroyed in the war made against them by Chedorlaomer and his allies, Gen 14:5. Lot possessed their country after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. They are generally esteemed as giants; probably they were a hardy, fierce, and terrible people, who lived, like the wandering Arabs, on the plunder of others. This was sufficient to gain them the appellation of giants, or men of prodigious stature. See next verse, Deu 2:11 (note).”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Deuteronomy 2:10
“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 (Ge 14:5), in like manner as the Edomites had obtained their settlement by the overthrow of the original occupiers of Seir, the Horims (Ge 14:6), who were troglodytes, or dwellers in caves.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Deuteronomy 2:11
“Which also were accounted giants, as the Anakims,.... Because of their bulky size and tall stature; or,"the Rephaim were they accounted, even they as the Anakims;''they were reckoned Rephaim, a name for giants in early times, even as the Anakims were; see Gen 14:5. but the Moabites called them Emims; to distinguish them from the Rephaim; so that it seems this name of Emims was not originally their name, but they are called so by a prolepsis, or anticipation, in Gen 14:5 since they had it from the Moabites, a people of a later date.”
1 more voice on this verse
Deuteronomy 2:11
“Which also were accounted giants - This is not a fortunate version. The word is not giants, but רפאים Rephaim, the name of a people. It appears that the Emim, the Anakim, and the Rephaim, were probably the same people, called by different names in the different countries where they dwelt; for they appear originally to have been a kind of wandering free-booters, who lived by plunder. (See on Deu 2:10 (note)). It must be granted, however, that there were several men of this race of extraordinary stature. And hence all gigantic men have been called Rephaim.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
The word rendered giants is Rephaim, which is a people name, and Clarke says so outright. Emims is what Moab called them, and the Anakims are the measure of size the passage keeps reaching for. That measure is the report of the spies at Numbers 13:33, which 1:28 has already quoted back at Israel as the fear that cost the last generation its land, so the excursus is answering something the reader has just heard.
3. (v. 12)
The Horims are the Horites of Genesis 14:6 and 36:20-21, and Esau took Seir from them the way Israel is to take the land ahead. The verse draws that comparison itself, as Israel did unto the land of his possession, which sets the conquest inside a pattern the chapter has now shown twice. Readers differ over which possession is meant, whether the ground east of Jordan taken from Sihon and Og later in this chapter, or the whole land spoken of as good as given.
4. (vv. 13-15)
Deuteronomy 2:13
“The words, “said I,” are not in the Hebrew. The words “rise up, and get you over the brook Zered” (Num 21:12 note) connect themselves with Deu 2:9, and form the conclusion of what God said to Moses.”
Deuteronomy 2:15
“For indeed the hand of the Lord was against them,....”
Zered is given as the line that closes an era, thirty and eight years out from Kadesh-barnea, and by the crossing the generation of the men of war is gone. Numbers 14:29-35 is the sentence being served, where the carcases of the men numbered from twenty years old fall in the wilderness. Verse 15 states the cause of all those deaths in one clause, that the hand of the Lord was against them, which is the only place the chapter says it.
C. Ammon, giants, and older displacements
1. (vv. 16-19)
Deuteronomy 2:16
“So it came to pass, when all the men of war were consumed,.... By wasting diseases and judgments of one kind or another: and dead from among the people; the rising and surviving generation.”
Deuteronomy 2:17
“That the Lord spoke unto me,.... At the brook Zered, having passed that, or at Dibongad, which was their next station: saying; as follows.”
Deuteronomy 2:18
“Ar, called in later times Rabbah, was the capital of Moab and situated twenty-five miles south of the Arnon on the banks of a small but shady stream, the Beni Hamed.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Deuteronomy 2:19
“And when thou comest nigh over against the children of Ammon,....”
The word comes again only when the last of the men of war is dead, so the account resumes exactly where the sentence ends. Ammon is spared on the third turn of the same formula, and once more the grant is traced to Lot rather than to Ammon, which is Genesis 19:38. Judges 11:12-27 has Jephthah answer an Ammonite land claim by rehearsing these marches, that Israel took nothing of Moab or of Ammon and held only what Sihon had held, and he reckons three hundred years since, so the borders of this chapter were still being argued long afterward.
2. (vv. 20-23)
Deuteronomy 2:20
“That also was accounted a land of giants - That was accounted the land or territory of the Rephaim. Zamzummims - Supposed to be the same as the Zuzim, Gen 14:5. Of these ancient people we know very little; they were probably inconsiderable tribes or clans, “pursuing and pursued, each other’s prey,” till at length a stronger totally destroyed or subdued them, and their name became either extinct or absorbed in that of their conquerors.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Deuteronomy 2:21
“A people great and many, and tall as the Anakims,.... As the Emims were, Deu 2:10 but the Lord destroyed them before them; destroyed the Zamzummims before the children of Amman; or otherwise they would have been an too much for them, being so numerous, and of such a gigantic stature: and they succeeded them, and dwelt in their stead; and in this way, and by these means, he gave them their land for a possession, Deu 2:19.”
Deuteronomy 2:22
“As he did to the children of Esau which dwelt in Seir,.... He did the like things for them as he did for the Ammonites: when he destroyed the Horims from before them: which is repeated from Deu 2:12, other instances of the like kind being here recited: and they succeeded them, and dwelt in their stead, even unto this day; See Gill on Deu 2:12.”
Deuteronomy 2:23
“Caphtor - Which is by the learned thought to be Cappadocia: whither these people might make an expedition out of Egypt, either because of the report of the great riches of part of that country which drew others thither from places equally remote, or for some other reason now unknown.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
The aside widens past Israel's kin. Ammon's giants are called Zamzummims, and the Lord is said to have destroyed them before Ammon in the same words used of Israel's own wars, so the hand that grants a land is the hand that takes it from somebody else. The last case leaves the family altogether: the Caphtorims out of Caphtor drove out the Avims as far as Azzah, which is Gaza, and Amos 9:7 and Jeremiah 47:4 tie Caphtor to the Philistines, the people Israel would fight for centuries in that same coastal strip. Joshua 13:3 still lists Avites there.
D. Sihon refuses, and Heshbon falls
1. (vv. 24-25)
Deuteronomy 2:24
“Rise ye up . . . and pass over the river Arnon--At its mouth, this stream is eighty-two feet wide and four deep. It flows in a channel banked by perpendicular cliffs of sandstone.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Deuteronomy 2:25
“This day will I begin to put the dread of thee,....”
Three times the chapter has said I will not give you, and here it says I have given into thine hand, so the conquest opens east of Jordan against a king who is neither Edom nor Moab nor Ammon. Verse 25 promises dread of Israel upon the nations under the whole heaven, which is what Exodus 15:14-16 sang before any of it happened. Joshua 2:9-11 has Rahab report it from inside Jericho and name Sihon and Og as the reason the country melted.
2. (vv. 26-29)
Deuteronomy 2:26
“Kedemoth - literally, “Easternmost parts;” the name of a town afterward assigned to the Reubenites, and given out of that tribe to the Levites. Compare Jos 13:18; 1Ch 6:79.”
1 more voice on this verse
Deuteronomy 2:26
“Moses herein did neither disobey God, who bade him contend with Sihon, nor dissemble with Sihon; but doubtless it was by divine direction that he did it, that Sihon might be left inexcusable, though God hardened his heart. This may illustrate the method of God's dealing with those to whom he gives his gospel, but does not give grace to believe it.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Deuteronomy 2:27
“Let me pass through thy land,.... See Gill on Num 21:22, I will go along by the highway; the king's highway, as in the place referred to, the public road: I will neither turn to the right hand nor to the left; to go into his fields and vineyards, and gather the fruit, or tread down the corn and vines, or do any manner of mischief to them; see the above place.”
Deuteronomy 2:28
“On my feet - Or, with my company who are on foot: which is added significantly, because if their army had consisted as much of horsemen as many other armies did, their passage through his land might have been more mischievous and dangerous.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Deuteronomy 2:29
“As the children of Esau which dwell in Seir, and the Moabites which dwell in Ar, did unto me,.... Which respects, as Jarchi observes, not the affair of passing through their land requested, for neither of them granted that, but buying food and drink; for though the Edomites at first seem not to have granted that, yet afterwards they did.”
The embassy is the one at Numbers 21:21-23, told there in the third person and here by the man who sent it. Chapter 20:10 will make an offer of peace the required first move against a city, and this offer is that rule acted out before it is written down. Verse 29 argues from precedent, that Esau and Moab had already sold Israel food and water, which puts the transaction of verse 6 to work as a reference.
3. (vv. 30-31)
Deuteronomy 2:30
“But Sihon king of Heshbon would not let us pass by him,....”
1 more voice on this verse
Deuteronomy 2:30
“The Lord - hardened his spirit - See the notes on Exo 4:21, and Exo 9:15 (note), etc.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Deuteronomy 2:31
“And the Lord said unto me,.... After or about the time when the messengers were sent to Sihon, perhaps when they had returned and had brought his answer: behold, I have begun to give Sihon and his land before thee; by hardening his heart, which was a sure token of his ruin, and a leading step to the delivery of him into the hands of Israel: begin to possess, that thou mayest inherit his land; move towards it and enter into it, not fearing any opposition made by him.”
The wording is the wording used of Pharaoh at Exodus 4:21 and 7:3, and Joshua 11:20 will say the same of the Canaanite kings, that it was of the Lord to harden their hearts so that they should come against Israel in battle. The offer of peace at verse 26 stands in the text beside the hardening at verse 30, and readers have long divided over how the two hold together: Calvin treats the hardening as God's own act, while Henry writes that the embassy left Sihon without excuse. Paul takes up the Pharaoh case at Romans 9:17-18, where the same question is still being argued.
4. (vv. 32-33)
Deuteronomy 2:32
“Then Sihon came out against us,.... Perceiving they were upon their march towards his land or into it, he gathered all his people and went out of Heshbon their capital city, where he resided: he and all his people, to fight at Jahaz; a city which he had taken from the king of Moab, and which in later times, after the captivity of the ten tribes, came into their hands again, Isa 15:4; see Gill on Num 21:21.”
Deuteronomy 2:33
“And the Lord our God delivered him before us,.... With their lands: and we smote him and his sons, and all his people; with the edge of the sword; slew them all: the Cetib or textual reading is "his son", though the Keri or margin is "his sons", which we follow. So Jarchi observes, it is written "his son", because he had a son mighty as himself, he says.”
Jahaz is where Numbers 21:23-24 puts the same battle, and Sihon comes out into the open rather than holding Heshbon behind its walls. The Hebrew consonantal text at verse 33 reads his son where the reading tradition gives his sons, and Gill notes the difference along with the rabbinic comment that one son was as mighty as his father. The King James follows the plural.
5. (vv. 34-35)
Deuteronomy 2:34
“And we took all his cities at that time,.... As Heshbon, and others mentioned in Num 21:25, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones of every city, we left none to remain; for the Amorites were one of the seven nations who were devoted to destruction, the measure of whose iniquity was now full, and therefore vengeance was taken.”
1 more voice on this verse
Deuteronomy 2:34
“Utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city - Render, laid under ban (compare Lev 27:28 note) every inhabited city, both women and children: these last words being added by way of fuller explanation.”
Deuteronomy 2:35
“Only the cattle we took for a prey unto ourselves,.... These they did not destroy, but preserved alive for their own use and profit, and took them as their own property: and the spoil of the cities which we took; as household goods, gold, silver, and whatever valuable was found by them; this they took as plunder, and shared it among themselves.”
Barnes renders the verb behind utterly destroyed as laid under ban, the word Leviticus 27:28 uses of a thing devoted, and here it covers the whole population of every city. Genesis 15:16 had set the term four hundred years before, that Abraham's seed would come back in the fourth generation because the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full, and verse 24 calls Sihon the Amorite. Cattle and spoil are kept in this campaign, which is where it differs from Jericho, where Joshua 6:18-19 puts everything into the treasury and Achan's keeping of it costs the next battle.
6. (vv. 36-37)
Deuteronomy 2:36
“Most of them were born, and had lived all their days, in a vast howling wilderness, where they knew not what either fields or cities were, had no houses to dwell in, and neither sowed nor reaped; and now of a sudden to become masters of a country so well built, so well husbanded, this made them amends for their long waiting, and yet it was but the earnest of a great deal more.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
The victory and the restraint are reported in one breath, not one city too strong from Aroer to Gilead, and nothing whatever taken from Ammon. Numbers 21:24 gives a different reason for the Ammonite line holding, that the border of the children of Ammon was strong, where verse 37 says the Lord our God forbad us; both accounts stand in the canon, and it is the chapter claiming no city was too strong that gives the second reason. The land taken here is what Reuben, Gad and half Manasseh will ask for at Numbers 32.
This page carries no textual note on Deuteronomy 2. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Calvin, Commentary on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Pentateuch and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.