Deuteronomy 2:4–19

⁴Command the people: You are about to travel through the territory of your brothers, the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir. They will be afraid of you, so be very careful. ⁵Don’t provoke them, for I will not give you any of their land, not even a foot of it,^B because I have given Esau the hill country of Seir as his possession.^{n 6}You may purchase food from them, so that you may eat, and buy water from them to drink.^{o 7}For the Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands.^p He has watched over your journey through this immense wilderness. The Lord your God has been with you these past forty years, and you have lacked nothing.’^q

JOURNEY PAST MOAB

⁸“So we bypassed our brothers, the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir. We turned away from the Arabah road and from Elath and Ezion-geber.^r We traveled along the road to the Wilderness of Moab. ⁹The Lord said to me, ‘Show no hostility toward Moab, and do not provoke them to battle, for I will not give you any of their land as a possession, since I have given Ar as a possession to the descendants of Lot.’ ”^s

¹⁰The Emim, a great and numerous people as tall as the Anakim,^t had previously lived there. ¹¹They were also regarded as Rephaim,^u like the Anakim, though the Moabites called them Emim.^{v 12}The Horites^w had previously lived in Seir, but the descendants of Esau drove them out, destroying them completely^C and settling in their place, just as Israel did in the land of its possession the Lord gave them.

¹³“The Lord said, ‘Now get up and cross the Zered Valley.’ So we crossed the Zered Valley.^{x 14}The time we spent traveling from Kadesh-barnea until we crossed the Zered Valley was thirty-eight years until the entire generation of fighting men had perished from the camp, as the Lord had sworn to them. ¹⁵Indeed, the Lord’s hand was against them, to eliminate^y them from the camp until they had all perished.^z

JOURNEY PAST AMMON

¹⁶“When all the fighting men had died among the people, ¹⁷the Lord spoke to me, ¹⁸‘Today you are going to cross the border of Moab at Ar. ¹⁹When you get close to the Ammonites, don’t show any hostility to them or provoke them, for I will not give you any of the Ammonites’ land as a possession; I have given it as a possession to the descendants of Lot.’ ”^a