Deuteronomy 2:33

2:24-37 God tried his people, by forbidding them to meddle with the rich countries of Moab and Ammon. He gives them possession of the country of the Amorites. If we keep from what God forbids, we shall not lose by our obedience. The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof; and he gives it to whom he pleases; but when there is no express direction, none can plead his grant for such proceedings. Though God assured the Israelites that the land should be their own, yet they must contend with the enemy. What God gives we must endeavour to get. What a new world did Israel now come into! Much more joyful will the change be, which holy souls will experience, when they remove out of the wilderness of this world to the better country, that is, the heavenly, to the city that has foundations. Let us, by reflecting upon God's dealings with his people Israel, be led to meditate upon our years spent in vanity, through our transgressions. But happy are those whom Jesus has delivered from the wrath to come. To whom he hath given the earnest of his Spirit in their hearts. Their inheritance cannot be affected by revolutions of kingdoms, or changes in earthly possessions.

And the Lord our God delivered him before us,.... With their lands: and we smote him and his sons, and all his people; with the edge of the sword; slew them all: the Cetib or textual reading is "his son", though the Keri or margin is "his sons", which we follow. So Jarchi observes, it is written "his son", because he had a son mighty as himself, he says.

Verses 33, 34 (cf. Numbers 22:24, 25 ; Numbers 32:34, 35 , etc.). - And utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones.... we left none to remain. As the Amorites came out of Canaan, they belonged to the race which God had doomed to destruction. The Israelites, therefore, had a commission to extirpate them. Utterly destroyed ; literally, devoted or placed under a ban , which of course implied utter destruction. The men , and the women , and the little ones , of every city ; literally, every city of men and women and little children . The phrase "city of men" can hardly mean, as Rosenmüller affirms, "men of a city;" the hypallage here would be too violent. It rather means "a peopled city," "a city inhabited by men." The word rendered "men" ( מְתִים ) does not designate males as opposed to females, but is a designation of human beings in general (cf. Job 11:3 ; Job 24:12 [Hebrews 20:48]; 31:31; Psalm 26:4 , "vain persons," Authorized Version, literally, men of emptiness or of falsehood , etc.). The passage might be rendered, every inhabited city , even the women and the little children . Deuteronomy 2:33

24-36. Rise ye up … and pass over the river Arnon—At its mouth, this stream is eighty-two feet wide and four deep. It flows in a channel banked by perpendicular cliffs of sandstone. At the date of the Israelitish migration to the east of the Jordan, the whole of the fine country lying between the Arnon and the Jabbok including the mountainous tract of Gilead, had been seized by the Amorites, who, being one of the nations doomed to destruction (see De 7:2; 20:16), were utterly exterminated. Their country fell by right of conquest into the hands of the Israelites. Moses, however, considering this doom as referring solely to the Amorite possessions west of Jordan, sent a pacific message to Sihon, requesting permission to go through his territories, which lay on the east of that river. It is always customary to send messengers before to prepare the way; but the rejection of Moses' request by Sihon and his opposition to the advance of the Israelites (Nu 21:23; Jud 11:26) drew down on himself and his Amorite subjects the predicted doom on the first pitched battlefield with the Canaanites. It secured to Israel not only the possession of a fine and pastoral country, but, what was of more importance to them, a free access to the Jordan on the east.

Some take Deuteronomy 33:4-6 ( Deuteronomy 33:5-7 ) as secondary, and the rest as original to D. But it is nearly as plausible to reckon part or all of Deuteronomy 33:4-6 as D’s addition to earlier laws and to argue for the primitive origin of these (see below). Berth. holds that all Deuteronomy 33:1-8 ( Deuteronomy 33:2-9 ) is secondary, Deuteronomy 33:1-6 being from the time of Ezra and perhaps inserted by Ezra himself to correct the religious confusions which he found in Jerusalem. As there is nothing at that time to explain Deuteronomy 33:7 f. ( Deuteronomy 33:8 f.) he boldly suggests the origin of this in the Maccabean period ( Stellung d. Isr. zu d. Fremden , 142 ff., and his note on this passage). For answers to him see below.

Defeat of Sihon, as already described in the main in Numbers 21:23-26 . The war was a war of extermination, in which all the towns were laid under the ban (see Leviticus 27:29 ), i.e., the whole of the population of men, women, and children were put to death, and only the flocks and herds and material possessions were taken by the conquerors as prey.