Deuteronomy 2:16

2:8-23 We have the origin of the Moabites, Edomites, and Ammonites. Moses also gives an instance older than any of these; the Caphtorims drove the Avims out of their country. These revolutions show what uncertain things wordly possessions are. It was so of old, and ever will be so. Families decline, and from them estates are transferred to families that increase; so little continuance is there in these things. This is recorded to encourage the children of Israel. If the providence of God has done this for Moabites and Ammonites, much more would his promise do it for Israel, his peculiar people. Cautions are given not to meddle with Moabites and Ammonites. Even wicked men must not be wronged. God gives and preserves outward blessings to wicked men; these are not the best things, he has better in store for his own children.

Deuteronomy 2:16-17 . When all the men of war were consumed — Israel is not called to march against and attack the Canaanites till the men most fit for war, and who probably had learned the art of it in Egypt, and had been used to hardship, were all wasted and dead from among the people, and only a host of new raised men, trained up in a wilderness, were left, in whom, as being possessed of little knowledge, experience, or natural fortitude, no great dependance could be placed. Thus it became more fully manifest that the excellency of the power which subdued the warlike Canaanites, was of God and not of man. On the same principle, and with the same design, long after this, were the following words spoken by the Lord to Gideon: The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me. And thus, to subdue the enemies of God’s church, and bring sinners to the obedience of the faith, he hath chosen the weak things of the world, and things that are despised, and things that are not, to bring to naught the things that are, that no flesh may glory in his presence.

Verses 16-19. - The generation that sinned having quite died out, the people were now to cross the border of Moab and advance to the conquest of the Promised Land. To the east of Moab was the country of the Ammonites; these, also, the Israelites were to leave unassailed, for the Lord had given to them their land for a possession (cf. ver. 9). Deuteronomy 2:16

The cardinal point on which the whole of the prescriptions in this chapter turn, is evidently the same as has been so often insisted on in the previous chapters, namely, the concentration of the religious services of the people round one common sanctuary. The prohibition against observing the great Feasts of Passover, Pentecost, and tabernacle, the three annual epochs in the sacred year of the Jew, at home and in private, is reiterated in a variety of words no less than six times in the first sixteen verses of this chapter Deuteronomy 16:2 , Deuteronomy 16:6-7 , Deuteronomy 16:11 , Deuteronomy 16:15-16 . Hence, it is easy to see why nothing is here said of the other holy days. The Feast of Passover Exodus 12:1-27; Numbers 9:1-14; Leviticus 23:1-8. A re-enforcement of this ordinance was the more necessary because its observance had clearly been intermitted for thirty-nine years (see Joshua 6:10). One Passover only had been kept in the wilderness, that recorded in Numbers 9, where see the notes.

16. all the men of war were consumed and dead from among the people—The outbreak at Kadesh on the false report of the spies had been the occasion of the fatal decree by which God doomed the whole grown-up population to die in the wilderness [Nu 14:29]; but that outbreak only filled up the measure of their iniquities. For that generation, though not universally abandoned to heathenish and idolatrous practices, yet had all along displayed a fearful amount of ungodliness in the desert, which this history only hints at obscurely, but which is expressly asserted elsewhere (Eze 20:25, 26; Am 5:25, 27; Ac 7:42, 43).

16–25. Approach to the ‘Ammonites and Amorites The adult generation having died out ( Deuteronomy 2:16 ), Jehovah charged Moses that, being about to pass the border or cross the territory of Mo’ab ( Deuteronomy 2:17 f.) and to approach ‘Ammôn, Israel (Sg. address) must not fight the latter, for Jehovah gave that land to the sons of Lot ( Deuteronomy 2:19 ). Follows an archaeological note on the predecessors of ‘Ammôn ( Deuteronomy 2:20-23 ); and then the command, in the Pl. address, to cross the Arnon ( Deuteronomy 2:24 a ); then, in the Sg., an assurance that Sîḥôn should be given into Israel’s hands, they must fight him ( Deuteronomy 2:24 b ); for the dread of Israel would Jehovah put on all peoples at the mere report of Israel’s approach ( Deuteronomy 2:25 ). This section is perplexing, because of the apparently proleptic mention of ‘Ammôn, the use of the Pl. address only in Deuteronomy 2:24 a , and the discrepancy between Deuteronomy 2:24 b , Deuteronomy 2:25 and the next section, especially Deuteronomy 2:27-30 . On these grounds, combined with the fact that there are no parallels in JE, on which document the rest of this discourse is based, there is a strong case for the opinion that this section is for the most part from another hand than the rest of the discourse. Steuern. indeed takes only Deuteronomy 2:16-17 ; Deuteronomy 2:24 a as original. For details see notes.

When this generation had quite died out, the Lord made known to Moses, and through him to the people, that they were to cross over the boundary of Moab (i.e., the Arnon, Deuteronomy 2:24 ; see at Numbers 21:13 ), the land of Ar (see at Deuteronomy 2:9 ), "to come nigh over against the children of Ammon," i.e., to advance into the neighbourhood of the Ammonites, who lived to the east of Moab; but they were not to meddle with these descendants of Lot, because He would give them nothing of the land that was given them for a possession ( Deuteronomy 2:19 , as at Deuteronomy 2:5 and Deuteronomy 2:9 ). - To confirm this, ethnographical notices are introduced again in Deuteronomy 2:20-22 into the words of God (as in Deuteronomy 2:10 , Deuteronomy 2:11 ), concerning the earlier population of the country of the Ammonites. Ammonitis was also regarded as a land of the Rephaites, because Rephaites dwelt therein, whom the Ammonites called Zamzummim. "Zamzummim," from זמם, to hum, then to muse, equivalent to the humming or roaring people, probably the same people as the Zuzim mentioned in Genesis 14:5 . This giant tribe Jehovah had destroyed before the Ammonites ( Deuteronomy 2:22 ), just as He had done for the sons of Esau dwelling upon Mount Seir, namely, destroyed the Horites before them, so that the Edomites "dwelt in their stead, even unto this day."

The admonition in Deuteronomy 16:19 corresponds to the instructions in Exodus 23:6 and Exodus 23:8. "Respect persons:" as in Deuteronomy 1:17. To this there is added, in Deuteronomy 16:20, an emphatic admonition to strive zealously to maintain justice. The repetition of the word justice is emphatic: justice, and nothing but justice, as in Genesis 14:10, etc. But in order to give the people and the judges appointed by them a brief practical admonition, as to the things they were more especially to observe in their administration of justice, Moses notices by way of example a few crimes that were deserving of punishment (Deuteronomy 16:21, Deuteronomy 16:22, and Deuteronomy 17:1), and then proceeds in Deuteronomy 17:2-7 to describe more fully the judicial proceedings in the case of idolaters.