²⁶I sent messengers from the Desert of Kedemoth. I told them to go to Sihon, the king of Heshbon. They offered him peace. They said, ²⁷“Let us pass through your country. We’ll stay on the main road. We won’t turn off it to one side or the other. ²⁸We’ll pay you the right amount of silver for food to eat and water to drink. Just let us walk through your country. ²⁹The people of Esau, who live in Seir, allowed us to do that. The people of Moab, who live in Ar, also allowed us to do it. So let us walk through until we go across the Jordan River. Then we’ll be able to go into the land the Lord our God is giving us.”

³⁰But Sihon, the king of Heshbon, refused to let us walk through. The Lord your God had made his heart and spirit stubborn. The Lord wanted to hand him over to you. And that’s exactly what he has done.

³¹The Lord said to me, “I have begun to hand Sihon and his country over to you. So begin the battle to take his land as your own.”

³²Sihon and his whole army came out to fight against us at Jahaz. ³³But the Lord our God handed him over to us. We struck him down together with his sons and his whole army. ³⁴At that time we took all of his towns. We completely destroyed them. We killed all of the men, women and children. We didn’t leave any of them alive. ³⁵But we took for ourselves the livestock and everything else from the towns we had captured.

³⁶Not a single town was too strong for us. That includes all of the towns from Aroer on the rim of the Arnon River valley all the way to Gilead. It also includes the town in the valley. The Lord our God gave us all of them.

³⁷And you obeyed the Lord’s command. You didn’t go near any part of the land of the Ammonites. That includes the land along the Jabbok River. It also includes the land around the towns that are in the hills.

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