Original Meaning

Moses’ Recollections of Seir/Edom (2:2–8a)

IN THIS OPENING EPISODE, Moses remembers Israel’s encounter with the Edomites. After circling Mount Seir for many days, Yahweh broke his silence,1 telling Moses that they had milled around long enough and that the time had come to head north. But first they had to seek permission to pass through territory occupied by the descendants of Esau. Moses does not recount how the Israelites conducted their negotiations with the Edomites (cf. Num 20:14–21). In verses 2–7 he simply recalls verbatim the divinely prescribed policy for dealing with Edom: the Israelites were simply to pass through, treating the Edomites with respect and not provoking them in any way.

This policy appears to have been based on five considerations. (1) The Edomites were the Israelites’ relatives (Heb. ʾāḥîm, “brothers,” v. 4a).

(2) The Edomites were fearful of the Israelites (v. 4); apparently the story of their escape from Egypt and defeat of the Amalekites (Ex. 17:8–16) forty years ago had reached them (cf. Num. 22:3–4).

(3) Just as Yahweh had allocated the land of Canaan to Israel, so he allocated Seir as the rightful possession of Esau and his descendants. Whereas ancient Near Easterners tended to perceive patron deities as having jurisdiction only over their own territories, Yahweh, the God of Israel, exercises supranational authority and providential care over other nations.2 As Yahweh’s vassal, Israel was not to claim territory given by him to another.

(4) Yahweh prohibited the Israelites from looting or stealing from the Edomites; instead, they were to pay for any food or water that they would need with silver.

(5) Israel was to continue relying entirely on the direct provision of Yahweh (v. 7). In typical Mosaic style, he grounds this point in three facts. (a) Yahweh had blessed every activity to which the people had put their hands. (b) Yahweh had watched over3 the Israelites during their travels through the vast and dreadful desert (cf. 8:3–5). (c) Yahweh had been with his people for the past forty years,4 providing everything they needed. In verse 8a Moses notes that rather than risking a violation of the policy, the Israelites traveled around Edomite territory to the east, apparently avoiding the King’s Highway that ran through the Edomite heartland.5 Because verse 8a is vague, the route is not clear.6 But Yahweh’s speech represented a test of faith for the new generation. From what follows they obviously passed this test.

Since verses 12 and 22 also concern the Edomites we may consider them here. Verses 10–12 and 20–23, which review how the Transjordanian nations came to occupy the lands in which they lived, provide context for Israel’s conquest of Canaan. The pre-Edomite/Esauite occupants of Seir are identified as Horites (cf. Gen. 36:20–30). The comment in verse 22, “The LORD had done the same for the descendants of Esau,” suggests we should view Edom’s displacement of the Horites as paradigmatic. Just as Yahweh had destroyed the Horites and delivered their land into the Edomites’ hands, so he had done for the Ammonites, and so he would do for Israel. While verse 12 has the Edomites destroying the Horites, verse 22 attributes the action to God.

Bridging Contexts

THE PERMANENT THEOLOGICAL LESSONS deriving from this part of Moses’ first address relate especially to God’s providential activity, both with respect to his own people and with broader humanity.

Faithful to his promises. Centuries earlier Yahweh had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that their descendants would one day claim this land. While this plan may appear to have been forgotten for thirty-eight years, the progress of the Israelites from Kadesh Barnea to the Gulf of Aqaba, around Seir to the Wadi Zered, and on past the land of Moab demonstrates that Yahweh had not forgotten his oath. He was setting the stage for their triumphant entry into the Promised Land from across the Jordan opposite Jericho.

Faithful to his threats. This part of Moses’ speech also demonstrates that God is faithful to his threats. Because the faithless Israelites had refused to enter the Promised Land from Kadesh Barnea, Yahweh swore to destroy that generation in the desert and start over with a new people. The image of two million Israelite corpses (if one takes the registrations of Numbers 2 and 26 at face value) buried in the desert is not only tragic, but also seems shamefully wasteful to the modern reader. Could God not have relented just a little from his harsh response to their infidelity? And were not many of the Israelites victims of the system and particularly faithless leadership?

But Yahweh’s actions are not governed by sentimentality; he acts according to principle. For a people who were ungrateful for divine grace experienced over and over again and who repeatedly clamored to return to Egypt, the penalty did indeed suit the crime. God is not obligated to people who do not take seriously the privileges of divine election, salvation, covenant, and care.

God’s involvement in human affairs. This text also teaches a profound lesson on God’s involvement in all human affairs. In later times the Israelites would take pride in their unique election for covenant relationship with God. However, as Amos will remind his hearers in Amos 9:7, apart from faith and covenant loyalty, the migration of Israel from Egypt was a migration like that of any other nation. And as Paul would declare to the Athenians more than a millennium later, “From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live” (Acts 17:26).

God has been involved in the migration of peoples from the beginning. Even though they made no claim of allegiance to the God of Israel, behind the displacement of the Horites by the descendants of Esau, the Emites by Moabites, the Zamzummites by the Bene Ammon, and the Avvites by the Philistines, Moses recognizes the hidden hand of God. Yahweh, the God of Israel, exercises sovereignty over all nations in all times. Like pieces on a chessboard, he moves them around; he removes some and replaces them with others, and he determines their places.

As the story of Israel in the land unfolded, we observe that Yahweh’s response to persistent rebellion would be to hand them the same fate as the Horites, Emites, Zamzummites, and Avvites. A series of invasions punctuated Israel’s history in the first millennium BC, but each came in God’s time and in God’s order. In the end Yahweh used the Assyrians to discipline the northern kingdom, deporting their population and replacing them with foreigners.

But this could not be God’s final strategy, for he had made an eternal promise to Abraham that his descendants would be his people in his land forever. So to punish Judah and Jerusalem he brought in the Babylonians, who settled the Judaeans in advantageous circumstances by the Kebar River, where they could maintain their communal institutions and be preserved for future renewal. When the time for restoration came, God brought in a new player, the Persians, who assumed that happy gods would look on them with favor. So the Persian emperors authorized the return of subject peoples to their homelands, encouraging them to reconstruct their sacred temples and reinstitute indigenous religions.14 As benefactors of this general imperial policy, the Judaeans returned to Jerusalem in 538 BC to rebuild the community of faith in their homeland.

Contemporary Significance

ON THE SURFACE THIS text seems removed from the world in which we live. Exotic names like Horites, Zamzummites, Emites, Avvites, and Anakites are the stuff of myths and legends. However, this passage reminds us that human history is a history of migrations, conflicts, and claims to land. But behind the movements of peoples we see the hand of God—the same hand that guided Moabites and Edomites and Israelites also guided the aboriginal North Americans in their migration across the Bering Strait and in the past four or five centuries European migrations to North America. Nor are the movements of Asians and Latinos to formerly largely Anglo North America beyond the divine control. This does not mean migrating peoples are justified in abusing indigenous populations, but nothing happens by chance. The observation that Edomites dispossessed the Horites (v. 12) and then that Yahweh destroyed the Horites before them (v. 22) point to the synergy between free human and sovereign divine actions.

This text has special significance for the present crisis in the Middle East, reminding us that God’s eyes are not only on his chosen people. They are also on the Transjordanian lands, now taken up by the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan, and the Sinai peninsula, which is part of Egypt. The same God who preserved this land for Moabites and Ammonites has given it to the Jordanians and Egyptians. The church would do well to encourage modern Israel to treat their neighbors with the respect that Yahweh had demanded from the ancestors of this people more than three thousand years ago. Israelite title to the land is not unconditional. Apart from faith the migration of the Israelites is merely one migration among many (Amos 9:7). There is no automatic title to God’s promises for those who refuse to trust him and serve him. This is true for the physical descendants of Jacob as well as for those who claim to be his spiritual heirs.

Finally, from a terrestrial perspective, this text teaches Israel and all who read it that land is a gift delivered by Yahweh himself. The references to these fearful peoples highlight the truth that when God begins to do his work of grace, no one can stand in his way. The enemies may appear huge, numerous, and strong, but the church must remember that Yahweh, the God of Israel, is mightier than all. Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4).

Original Meaning

Moses’ Recollections of Seir/Edom (2:2–8a)

IN THIS OPENING EPISODE, Moses remembers Israel’s encounter with the Edomites. After circling Mount Seir for many days, Yahweh broke his silence,1 telling Moses that they had milled around long enough and that the time had come to head north. But first they had to seek permission to pass through territory occupied by the descendants of Esau. Moses does not recount how the Israelites conducted their negotiations with the Edomites (cf. Num 20:14–21). In verses 2–7 he simply recalls verbatim the divinely prescribed policy for dealing with Edom: the Israelites were simply to pass through, treating the Edomites with respect and not provoking them in any way.

This policy appears to have been based on five considerations. (1) The Edomites were the Israelites’ relatives (Heb. ʾāḥîm, “brothers,” v. 4a).

(2) The Edomites were fearful of the Israelites (v. 4); apparently the story of their escape from Egypt and defeat of the Amalekites (Ex. 17:8–16) forty years ago had reached them (cf. Num. 22:3–4).

(3) Just as Yahweh had allocated the land of Canaan to Israel, so he allocated Seir as the rightful possession of Esau and his descendants. Whereas ancient Near Easterners tended to perceive patron deities as having jurisdiction only over their own territories, Yahweh, the God of Israel, exercises supranational authority and providential care over other nations.2 As Yahweh’s vassal, Israel was not to claim territory given by him to another.

(4) Yahweh prohibited the Israelites from looting or stealing from the Edomites; instead, they were to pay for any food or water that they would need with silver.

(5) Israel was to continue relying entirely on the direct provision of Yahweh (v. 7). In typical Mosaic style, he grounds this point in three facts. (a) Yahweh had blessed every activity to which the people had put their hands. (b) Yahweh had watched over3 the Israelites during their travels through the vast and dreadful desert (cf. 8:3–5). (c) Yahweh had been with his people for the past forty years,4 providing everything they needed. In verse 8a Moses notes that rather than risking a violation of the policy, the Israelites traveled around Edomite territory to the east, apparently avoiding the King’s Highway that ran through the Edomite heartland.5 Because verse 8a is vague, the route is not clear.6 But Yahweh’s speech represented a test of faith for the new generation. From what follows they obviously passed this test.

Since verses 12 and 22 also concern the Edomites we may consider them here. Verses 10–12 and 20–23, which review how the Transjordanian nations came to occupy the lands in which they lived, provide context for Israel’s conquest of Canaan. The pre-Edomite/Esauite occupants of Seir are identified as Horites (cf. Gen. 36:20–30). The comment in verse 22, “The LORD had done the same for the descendants of Esau,” suggests we should view Edom’s displacement of the Horites as paradigmatic. Just as Yahweh had destroyed the Horites and delivered their land into the Edomites’ hands, so he had done for the Ammonites, and so he would do for Israel. While verse 12 has the Edomites destroying the Horites, verse 22 attributes the action to God.

Bridging Contexts

THE PERMANENT THEOLOGICAL LESSONS deriving from this part of Moses’ first address relate especially to God’s providential activity, both with respect to his own people and with broader humanity.

Faithful to his promises. Centuries earlier Yahweh had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that their descendants would one day claim this land. While this plan may appear to have been forgotten for thirty-eight years, the progress of the Israelites from Kadesh Barnea to the Gulf of Aqaba, around Seir to the Wadi Zered, and on past the land of Moab demonstrates that Yahweh had not forgotten his oath. He was setting the stage for their triumphant entry into the Promised Land from across the Jordan opposite Jericho.

Faithful to his threats. This part of Moses’ speech also demonstrates that God is faithful to his threats. Because the faithless Israelites had refused to enter the Promised Land from Kadesh Barnea, Yahweh swore to destroy that generation in the desert and start over with a new people. The image of two million Israelite corpses (if one takes the registrations of Numbers 2 and 26 at face value) buried in the desert is not only tragic, but also seems shamefully wasteful to the modern reader. Could God not have relented just a little from his harsh response to their infidelity? And were not many of the Israelites victims of the system and particularly faithless leadership?

But Yahweh’s actions are not governed by sentimentality; he acts according to principle. For a people who were ungrateful for divine grace experienced over and over again and who repeatedly clamored to return to Egypt, the penalty did indeed suit the crime. God is not obligated to people who do not take seriously the privileges of divine election, salvation, covenant, and care.

God’s involvement in human affairs. This text also teaches a profound lesson on God’s involvement in all human affairs. In later times the Israelites would take pride in their unique election for covenant relationship with God. However, as Amos will remind his hearers in Amos 9:7, apart from faith and covenant loyalty, the migration of Israel from Egypt was a migration like that of any other nation. And as Paul would declare to the Athenians more than a millennium later, “From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live” (Acts 17:26).

God has been involved in the migration of peoples from the beginning. Even though they made no claim of allegiance to the God of Israel, behind the displacement of the Horites by the descendants of Esau, the Emites by Moabites, the Zamzummites by the Bene Ammon, and the Avvites by the Philistines, Moses recognizes the hidden hand of God. Yahweh, the God of Israel, exercises sovereignty over all nations in all times. Like pieces on a chessboard, he moves them around; he removes some and replaces them with others, and he determines their places.

As the story of Israel in the land unfolded, we observe that Yahweh’s response to persistent rebellion would be to hand them the same fate as the Horites, Emites, Zamzummites, and Avvites. A series of invasions punctuated Israel’s history in the first millennium BC, but each came in God’s time and in God’s order. In the end Yahweh used the Assyrians to discipline the northern kingdom, deporting their population and replacing them with foreigners.

But this could not be God’s final strategy, for he had made an eternal promise to Abraham that his descendants would be his people in his land forever. So to punish Judah and Jerusalem he brought in the Babylonians, who settled the Judaeans in advantageous circumstances by the Kebar River, where they could maintain their communal institutions and be preserved for future renewal. When the time for restoration came, God brought in a new player, the Persians, who assumed that happy gods would look on them with favor. So the Persian emperors authorized the return of subject peoples to their homelands, encouraging them to reconstruct their sacred temples and reinstitute indigenous religions.14 As benefactors of this general imperial policy, the Judaeans returned to Jerusalem in 538 BC to rebuild the community of faith in their homeland.

Contemporary Significance

ON THE SURFACE THIS text seems removed from the world in which we live. Exotic names like Horites, Zamzummites, Emites, Avvites, and Anakites are the stuff of myths and legends. However, this passage reminds us that human history is a history of migrations, conflicts, and claims to land. But behind the movements of peoples we see the hand of God—the same hand that guided Moabites and Edomites and Israelites also guided the aboriginal North Americans in their migration across the Bering Strait and in the past four or five centuries European migrations to North America. Nor are the movements of Asians and Latinos to formerly largely Anglo North America beyond the divine control. This does not mean migrating peoples are justified in abusing indigenous populations, but nothing happens by chance. The observation that Edomites dispossessed the Horites (v. 12) and then that Yahweh destroyed the Horites before them (v. 22) point to the synergy between free human and sovereign divine actions.

This text has special significance for the present crisis in the Middle East, reminding us that God’s eyes are not only on his chosen people. They are also on the Transjordanian lands, now taken up by the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan, and the Sinai peninsula, which is part of Egypt. The same God who preserved this land for Moabites and Ammonites has given it to the Jordanians and Egyptians. The church would do well to encourage modern Israel to treat their neighbors with the respect that Yahweh had demanded from the ancestors of this people more than three thousand years ago. Israelite title to the land is not unconditional. Apart from faith the migration of the Israelites is merely one migration among many (Amos 9:7). There is no automatic title to God’s promises for those who refuse to trust him and serve him. This is true for the physical descendants of Jacob as well as for those who claim to be his spiritual heirs.

Finally, from a terrestrial perspective, this text teaches Israel and all who read it that land is a gift delivered by Yahweh himself. The references to these fearful peoples highlight the truth that when God begins to do his work of grace, no one can stand in his way. The enemies may appear huge, numerous, and strong, but the church must remember that Yahweh, the God of Israel, is mightier than all. Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4).

Original Meaning

Moses’ Recollection of Bene Ammon (2:16–23)

BECAUSE MOSES IS FOCUSED on getting the Israelites to the Promised Land rather than reporting encounters with the Moabites, he moves immediately to the next phase of the nation’s adventures.11 Like the previous episode, this one consists of a narrative introduction (vv. 16–17), a quotation of a speech by Yahweh (vv. 18–19), and a parenthetical historical note (vv. 20–23).

Once the last warriors of the faithless generation had died, Yahweh ordered the Israelites to move into the homestretch of their long journey, past the territory of the Ammonites. Like the Moabites, the Ammonites were descendants of Lot through his (younger) daughter. The conventional national name benê ʿammôn memorializes the incestuous sexual affair in the cave outside Sodom more explicitly than “Moab.” Yahweh’s instructions concerning Bene Ammon in verse 19 were virtually identical to his comments concerning Moab in verse 9. He prohibited the Israelites from harassing the Ammonites or from trying to take any of their territory, for he had given their land as their own possession. Here he claims authority normally attributed the Milkom, the acknowledged patron deity of Bene Ammon.12

The remainder of the report concerning Bene Ammon is taken up with a parenthetical note concerning the persons they displaced as occupants of the land (vv. 20–23). Their territory encompassed an amorphous region northwest of Moab around Rabbath-Ammon (modern Amman, Jordan) under the rule of Sihon king of Heshbon. But like the Moabites, the Ammonites had their own name for the fearsome indigenous population they displaced; they called them Zamzummites (Gen. 14:5). All these names reflect the terrorizing effect these gigantic people had on outsiders: Rephaites (“ghosts”), Emites (“terror”), Anakites (“giants”), and Zamzummites (“confused/threatening sound”). Just as Yahweh had enabled the descendants of Esau to dispossess and destroy the Horites in Seir and to occupy their land (v. 22), so he had destroyed the Zamzummites and allowed the Ammonites to dispossess them and occupy their land (v. 21).

Verse 23 adds a puzzling reference to historical events far away in the region of Philistia on the southwest coast of Palestine, where the Avvites were destroyed and dispossessed by the Caphtorites or Philistines (cf. Josh 13:3–4). While scholars debate how the Philistines might have traveled to Palestine, their original goal seems to have been to settle in Egypt. However, Rameses III defeated them in about 1190 BC and settled the vanquished forces in the coastal towns of southern Canaan. In the mid-twelfth century, the Philistines drove out their Egyptian overlords, forming the Philistine Pentapolis, a federation of five major city-states: Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, Gath, and Gaza. In the providence of God, the Philistines arrived in Palestine (which is named after them) from the west, at the same time as the Israelites were moving in from the east and trying to establish their authority over the land. Conflict was inevitable.13

Bridging Contexts

THE PERMANENT THEOLOGICAL LESSONS deriving from this part of Moses’ first address relate especially to God’s providential activity, both with respect to his own people and with broader humanity.

Faithful to his promises. Centuries earlier Yahweh had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that their descendants would one day claim this land. While this plan may appear to have been forgotten for thirty-eight years, the progress of the Israelites from Kadesh Barnea to the Gulf of Aqaba, around Seir to the Wadi Zered, and on past the land of Moab demonstrates that Yahweh had not forgotten his oath. He was setting the stage for their triumphant entry into the Promised Land from across the Jordan opposite Jericho.

Faithful to his threats. This part of Moses’ speech also demonstrates that God is faithful to his threats. Because the faithless Israelites had refused to enter the Promised Land from Kadesh Barnea, Yahweh swore to destroy that generation in the desert and start over with a new people. The image of two million Israelite corpses (if one takes the registrations of Numbers 2 and 26 at face value) buried in the desert is not only tragic, but also seems shamefully wasteful to the modern reader. Could God not have relented just a little from his harsh response to their infidelity? And were not many of the Israelites victims of the system and particularly faithless leadership?

But Yahweh’s actions are not governed by sentimentality; he acts according to principle. For a people who were ungrateful for divine grace experienced over and over again and who repeatedly clamored to return to Egypt, the penalty did indeed suit the crime. God is not obligated to people who do not take seriously the privileges of divine election, salvation, covenant, and care.

God’s involvement in human affairs. This text also teaches a profound lesson on God’s involvement in all human affairs. In later times the Israelites would take pride in their unique election for covenant relationship with God. However, as Amos will remind his hearers in Amos 9:7, apart from faith and covenant loyalty, the migration of Israel from Egypt was a migration like that of any other nation. And as Paul would declare to the Athenians more than a millennium later, “From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live” (Acts 17:26).

God has been involved in the migration of peoples from the beginning. Even though they made no claim of allegiance to the God of Israel, behind the displacement of the Horites by the descendants of Esau, the Emites by Moabites, the Zamzummites by the Bene Ammon, and the Avvites by the Philistines, Moses recognizes the hidden hand of God. Yahweh, the God of Israel, exercises sovereignty over all nations in all times. Like pieces on a chessboard, he moves them around; he removes some and replaces them with others, and he determines their places.

As the story of Israel in the land unfolded, we observe that Yahweh’s response to persistent rebellion would be to hand them the same fate as the Horites, Emites, Zamzummites, and Avvites. A series of invasions punctuated Israel’s history in the first millennium BC, but each came in God’s time and in God’s order. In the end Yahweh used the Assyrians to discipline the northern kingdom, deporting their population and replacing them with foreigners.

But this could not be God’s final strategy, for he had made an eternal promise to Abraham that his descendants would be his people in his land forever. So to punish Judah and Jerusalem he brought in the Babylonians, who settled the Judaeans in advantageous circumstances by the Kebar River, where they could maintain their communal institutions and be preserved for future renewal. When the time for restoration came, God brought in a new player, the Persians, who assumed that happy gods would look on them with favor. So the Persian emperors authorized the return of subject peoples to their homelands, encouraging them to reconstruct their sacred temples and reinstitute indigenous religions.14 As benefactors of this general imperial policy, the Judaeans returned to Jerusalem in 538 BC to rebuild the community of faith in their homeland.

Contemporary Significance

ON THE SURFACE THIS text seems removed from the world in which we live. Exotic names like Horites, Zamzummites, Emites, Avvites, and Anakites are the stuff of myths and legends. However, this passage reminds us that human history is a history of migrations, conflicts, and claims to land. But behind the movements of peoples we see the hand of God—the same hand that guided Moabites and Edomites and Israelites also guided the aboriginal North Americans in their migration across the Bering Strait and in the past four or five centuries European migrations to North America. Nor are the movements of Asians and Latinos to formerly largely Anglo North America beyond the divine control. This does not mean migrating peoples are justified in abusing indigenous populations, but nothing happens by chance. The observation that Edomites dispossessed the Horites (v. 12) and then that Yahweh destroyed the Horites before them (v. 22) point to the synergy between free human and sovereign divine actions.

This text has special significance for the present crisis in the Middle East, reminding us that God’s eyes are not only on his chosen people. They are also on the Transjordanian lands, now taken up by the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan, and the Sinai peninsula, which is part of Egypt. The same God who preserved this land for Moabites and Ammonites has given it to the Jordanians and Egyptians. The church would do well to encourage modern Israel to treat their neighbors with the respect that Yahweh had demanded from the ancestors of this people more than three thousand years ago. Israelite title to the land is not unconditional. Apart from faith the migration of the Israelites is merely one migration among many (Amos 9:7). There is no automatic title to God’s promises for those who refuse to trust him and serve him. This is true for the physical descendants of Jacob as well as for those who claim to be his spiritual heirs.

Finally, from a terrestrial perspective, this text teaches Israel and all who read it that land is a gift delivered by Yahweh himself. The references to these fearful peoples highlight the truth that when God begins to do his work of grace, no one can stand in his way. The enemies may appear huge, numerous, and strong, but the church must remember that Yahweh, the God of Israel, is mightier than all. Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4).