Deuteronomy 1–11

Moses Talks to the Israelites

1This is the message Moses gave to all the people of Israel in the desert east of the Jordan River. They were in the desert area near Suph, between Paran and the towns of Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Dizahab.

²(The trip from Mount Sinai to Kadesh Barnea on the Mount Seir road takes eleven days.) ³Forty years after the Israelites had left Egypt, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses told the people of Israel everything the Lord had commanded him to tell them. ⁴This was after the Lord had defeated Sihon and Og. Sihon was king of the Amorite people and lived in Heshbon. Og was king of Bashan and lived in Ashteroth and Edrei.

⁵Now the Israelites were east of the Jordan River in the land of Moab, and there Moses began to explain what God had commanded. He said:

⁶The Lord our God spoke to us at Mount Sinai and said, “You have stayed long enough at this mountain. ⁷Get ready, and go to the mountain country of the Amorites, and to all the places around there—the Jordan Valley, the mountains, the western hills, the southern area, the seacoast, the land of Canaan, and Lebanon. Go as far as the great river, the Euphrates. ⁸See, I have given you this land, so go in and take it for yourselves. The Lord promised it to your ancestors—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their descendants.”

Moses Appoints Leaders

⁹At that time I said, “I am not able to take care of you by myself. ¹⁰The Lord your God has made you grow in number so that there are as many of you as there are stars in the sky. ¹¹I pray that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, will give you a thousand times more people and do all the wonderful things he promised. ¹²But I cannot take care of your problems, your troubles, and your arguments by myself. ¹³So choose some men from each tribe—wise men who have understanding and experience—and I will make them leaders over you.”

¹⁴And you said, “That’s a good thing to do.”

¹⁵So I took the wise and experienced leaders of your tribes, and I made them your leaders. I appointed commanders over a thousand people, over a hundred people, over fifty people, and over ten people and made them officers over your tribes. ¹⁶Then I told your leaders, “Listen to the arguments between your people. Judge fairly between two Israelites or between an Israelite and a foreigner. ¹⁷When you judge, be fair to everyone; don’t act as if one person is more important than another, and don’t be afraid of anyone, because your decision comes from God. Bring the hard cases to me, and I will judge them.” ¹⁸At that time I told you everything you must do.

Spies Enter the Land

¹⁹Then, as the Lord our God commanded us, we left Mount Sinai and went toward the mountain country of the Amorite people. We went through that large and terrible desert you saw, and then we came to Kadesh Barnea. ²⁰I said to you, “You have now come to the mountain country of the Amorites, to the land the Lord our God will give us. ²¹Look, here it is! Go up and take it. The Lord, the God of your ancestors, told you to do this, so don’t be afraid and don’t worry.”

²²Then all of you came to me and said, “Let’s send men before us to spy out the land. They can come back and tell us about the way we should go and the cities we will find.”

²³I thought that was a good idea, so I chose twelve of your men, one for each tribe. ²⁴They left and went up to the mountains, and when they came to the Valley of Eshcol they explored it. ²⁵They took some of the fruit from that land and brought it down to us, saying, “It is a good land that the Lord our God is giving us.”

Israel Refuses to Enter

²⁶But you refused to go. You would not obey the command of the Lord your God, ²⁷but grumbled in your tents, saying, “The Lord hates us. He brought us out of Egypt just to give us to the Amorites, who will destroy us. ²⁸Where can we go now? The spies we sent have made us afraid, because they said, ‘The people there are stronger and taller than we are. The cities are big, with walls up to the sky. And we saw the Anakites there!’ ”

²⁹Then I said to you, “Don’t be frightened; don’t be afraid of those people. ³⁰The Lord your God will go ahead of you and fight for you as he did in Egypt; you saw him do it. ³¹And in the desert you saw how the Lord your God carried you, like one carries a child. And he has brought you safely all the way to this place.”

³²But you still did not trust the Lord your God, even though ³³he had always gone before you to find places for you to camp. In a fire at night and in a cloud during the day, he showed you which way to go.

³⁴When the Lord heard what you said, he was angry and made an oath, saying, ³⁵“I promised a good land to your ancestors, but none of you evil people will see it. ³⁶Only Caleb son of Jephunneh will see it. I will give him and his descendants the land he walked on, because he followed the Lord completely.”

³⁷Because of you, the Lord was also angry with me and said, “You won’t enter the land either, ³⁸but your assistant, Joshua son of Nun, will enter it. Encourage him, because he will lead Israel to take the land for their own.

³⁹“Your little children that you said would be captured, who do not know right from wrong at this time, will go into the land. I will give the land to them, and they will take it for their own. ⁴⁰But you must turn around and follow the desert road toward the Red Sea.”

⁴¹Then you said to me, “We have sinned against the Lord, but now we will go up and fight, as the Lord our God commanded us.” Then all of you put on weapons, thinking it would be easy to go into the mountains.

⁴²But the Lord said to me, “Tell the people, ‘You must not go up there and fight. I will not be with you, and your enemies will defeat you.’ ”

⁴³So I told you, but you would not listen. You would not obey the Lord’s command. You were proud, so you went on up into the mountains, ⁴⁴and the Amorites who lived in those mountains came out and fought you. They chased you like bees and defeated you from Edom to Hormah. ⁴⁵So you came back and cried before the Lord, but the Lord did not listen to you; he refused to pay attention to you. ⁴⁶So you stayed in Kadesh a long time.

Israel Wanders in the Desert

2Then we turned around, and we traveled on the desert road toward the Red Sea, as the Lord had told me to do. We traveled through the mountains of Edom for many days.

²Then the Lord said to me, ³“You have traveled through these mountains long enough. Turn north ⁴and give the people this command: ‘You will soon go through the land that belongs to your relatives, the descendants of Esau who live in Edom. They will be afraid of you, but be very careful. ⁵Do not go to war against them. I will not give you any of their land—not even a foot of it, because I have given the mountains of Edom to Esau as his own. ⁶You must pay them in silver for any food you eat or water you drink.’ ”

⁷The Lord your God has blessed everything you have done; he has protected you while you traveled through this great desert. The Lord your God has been with you for the past forty years, and you have had everything you needed.

⁸So we passed by our relatives, the descendants of Esau who lived in Edom. We turned off the Jordan Valley road that comes from the towns of Elath and Ezion Geber and traveled along the desert road to Moab.

The Land of Ar

⁹Then the Lord said to me, “Don’t bother the people of Moab. Don’t go to war against them, because I will not give you any of their land as your own; I have given Ar to the descendants of Lot as their own.” ¹⁰(The Emites, who lived in Ar before, were strong people, and there were many of them. They were very tall, like the Anakites. ¹¹The Emites were thought to be Rephaites, like the Anakites, but the Moabite people called them Emites. ¹²The Horites also lived in Edom before, but the descendants of Esau forced them out and destroyed them, taking their place as Israel did in the land the Lord gave them as their own.)

¹³And the Lord said to me, “Now get up and cross the Zered Valley.” So we crossed the valley. ¹⁴It had been thirty-eight years from the time we left Kadesh Barnea until we crossed the Zered Valley. By then, all the fighting men from that time had died, as the Lord had promised would happen. ¹⁵The Lord continued to work against them to remove them from the camp until they were all dead.

¹⁶When the last of those fighting men had died, ¹⁷the Lord said to me, ¹⁸“Today you will pass by Ar, on the border of Moab. ¹⁹When you come near the people of Ammon, don’t bother them or go to war against them, because I will not give you any of their land as your own. I have given it to the descendants of Lot for their own.”

²⁰(That land was also thought to be a land of the Rephaites, because those people used to live there, but the Ammonites called them Zamzummites. ²¹They were strong people, and there were many of them; they were very tall, like the Anakites. The Lord destroyed the Zamzummites, and the Ammonites forced them out of the land and took their place. ²²The Lord did the same thing for the descendants of Esau, who lived in Edom, when he destroyed the Horites. The Edomites forced them out of the land and took their place, and they live there to this day. ²³The Cretan people came from Crete and destroyed the Avvites, who lived in towns all the way to Gaza; the Cretans destroyed them and took their place.)

Fighting the Amorites

²⁴The Lord said, “Get up and cross the Arnon Ravine. See, I am giving you the power to defeat Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and I am giving you his land. So fight against him and begin taking his land. ²⁵Today I will begin to make all the people in the world afraid of you. When they hear reports about you, they will shake with fear, and they will be terrified of you.”

²⁶I sent messengers from the desert of Kedemoth to Sihon king of Heshbon. They offered him peace, saying, ²⁷“If you let us pass through your country, we will stay on the road and not turn right or left. ²⁸We will pay…