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 you in silver for any food we eat or water we drink. We only want to walk through your country. ²⁹The descendants of Esau in Edom let us go through their land, and so did the Moabites in Ar. We want to cross the Jordan River into the land the Lord our God has given us.” ³⁰But Sihon king of Heshbon would not let us pass, because the Lord your God had made him stubborn. The Lord wanted you to defeat Sihon, and now this has happened.

³¹The Lord said to me, “See, I have begun to give Sihon and his country to you. Begin taking the land as your own.”

³²Then Sihon and all his army came out and fought us at Jahaz, ³³but the Lord our God gave Sihon to us. We defeated him, his sons, and all his army. ³⁴We captured all his cities at that time and completely destroyed them, as well as the men, women, and children. We left no one alive. ³⁵But we kept the cattle and valuable things from the cities for ourselves. ³⁶We defeated Aroer on the edge of the Arnon Ravine, and we defeated the town in the ravine, and even as far as Gilead. No town was too strong for us; the Lord our God gave us all of them. ³⁷But you did not go near the land of the Ammonites, on the shores of the Jabbok River, or the towns in the mountains, as the Lord our God had commanded.

The Battle at Bashan

3When we turned and went up the road toward Bashan, Og king of Bashan and all his army came out to fight us at Edrei. ²The Lord said to me, “Don’t be afraid of Og, because I will hand him, his whole army, and his land over to you. Do to him what you did to Sihon king of the Amorites, who ruled in Heshbon.”

³So the Lord our God gave us Og king of Bashan and all his army; we defeated them and left no one alive. ⁴Then we captured all of Og’s cities, all sixty of them, and took the whole area of Argob, Og’s kingdom in Bashan. ⁵All these were strong cities, with high walls and gates with bars. And there were also many small towns with no walls. ⁶We completely destroyed them, just like the cities of Sihon king of Heshbon. We killed all the men, women, and children, ⁷but we kept all the cattle and valuable things from the cities for ourselves.

⁸So at that time we took the land east of the Jordan River, from the Arnon Ravine to Mount Hermon, from these two Amorite kings. ⁹(Hermon is called Sirion by the Sidonian people, but the Amorites call it Senir.) ¹⁰We captured all the cities on the high plain and all of Gilead, and we took all of Bashan as far as Salecah and Edrei, towns in Og’s kingdom of Bashan. ¹¹(Only Og king of Bashan was left of the few Rephaites. His bed was made of iron, and it was more than thirteen feet long and six feet wide! It is still in the Ammonite city of Rabbah.)

The Land Is Divided

¹²At that time we took this land to be our own. I gave the people of Reuben and Gad the land from Aroer by the Arnon Ravine, as well as half of the mountain country of Gilead and the cities in it. ¹³To the people of East Manasseh I gave the rest of Gilead and all of Bashan, the kingdom of Og. (The area of Argob in Bashan was called the land of the Rephaites. ¹⁴Jair, a descendant of Manasseh, took the whole area of Argob, all the way to the border of the Geshurites and Maacathites. So that land was named for Jair, and even today Bashan is called the Towns of Jair.) ¹⁵I gave Gilead to Makir. ¹⁶I gave the Reubenites and the Gadites the land that begins at Gilead and goes from the Arnon Ravine (the middle of the Arnon is the border) to the Jabbok River, which is the Ammonite border. ¹⁷The border on the west was the Jordan River in the Jordan Valley, and it goes from Lake Galilee to the Dead Sea west of Mount Pisgah.

¹⁸At that time I gave you this command: “The Lord your God has given you this land as your own. Now your fighting men must take their weapons, and you must lead the other Israelites across the river. ¹⁹Your wives, your young children, and your cattle may stay here. I know you have many cattle, and they may stay here in the cities I have given you, ²⁰until the Lord also gives your Israelite relatives a place to rest. They will receive the land the Lord your God has given them on the other side of the Jordan River. After that, you may each return to the land I have given you.”

²¹Then I gave this command to Joshua: “You have seen for yourself all that the Lord your God has done to these two kings. The Lord will do the same thing to all the kingdoms where you are going. ²²Don’t be afraid of them, because the Lord your God will fight for you.”

Moses Cannot Enter the Land

²³Then I begged the Lord: ²⁴“Lord God, you have begun to show me, your servant, how great you are. You have great strength, and no other god in heaven or on earth can do the powerful things you do. There is no other god like you. ²⁵Please let me cross the Jordan River so that I may see the good land by the Jordan. I want to see the beautiful mountains and Lebanon.”

²⁶But the Lord was angry with me because of you, and he would not listen to me. The Lord said to me, “That’s enough. Don’t talk to me anymore about it. ²⁷Climb to the top of Mount Pisgah and look west, north, south, and east. You can look at the land, but you will not cross the Jordan River. ²⁸Appoint Joshua and help him be brave and strong. He will lead the people across the river and give them the land that they are to inherit, but you can only look at it.” ²⁹So we stayed in the valley opposite Beth Peor.

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