Remember the Road (1 of 2)

In context

Deuteronomy is mostly Moses’ last words to Israel, spoken east of the Jordan in the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month (Deuteronomy 1:3–5). The book notes that it is “eleven days’ journey from Horeb” (Sinai) to Kadesh Barnea (1:2). Moses retells the story to a new generation: the fighting men who refused to enter the land at Kadesh had all died in the thirty-eight years before Israel crossed the brook Zered (2:14–16).

He reminds them how he appointed leaders to share his load (1:9–18), how the spies brought back fruit and the people were afraid to go up (1:19–46), and how the Lord “carried you, as a man carries his son, in all the way that you went” (1:31). “These forty years, Yahweh your God has been with you. You have lacked nothing” (2:7).

Israel was told not to fight Esau’s descendants in Seir, “your brothers,” or Moab and Ammon, the descendants of Lot, Abraham’s nephew, because the Lord had given them their lands (2:4–9, 19). The book pauses to tell of peoples who lived there before, “tall as the Anakim” (2:10–11, 20–21). Then comes a hard part: when Sihon, king of Heshbon, came out to fight, Israel destroyed his towns, “with the women and the little ones” (2:32–34).