Deuteronomy 2:34

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 we took all his cities at that time,.... As Heshbon, and others mentioned in Numbers 21:25 , and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones of every city, we left none to remain; for the Amorites were one of the seven nations who were devoted to destruction, the measure of whose iniquity was now full, and therefore vengeance was taken.

(34) And utterly destroyed. —i.e., devoted to destruction. They made them chêrem, like the spoil of Jericho. This could only be by Divine direction. The word implies nothing less. It will be seen, therefore, that the narrative asserts in this case an extermination of Sihon’s people by the express command of Jehovah.

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.

34 . And we look all his cities ] E, Numbers 21:24 a , possessed his land from Arnon unto Jabboḳ ; J, id. 25: Israel took all these cities and dwelt in all the cities of the Amorites, Ḥeshbon and her towns . Anciently this part of the Plateau was thickly populated. From almost every elevation several groups of ruins are visible, mostly Byzantine, but how much older each site may be cannot yet be said. The land is very good for corn. utterly destroyed every inhabited city, with the women and the little ones ] Devoted — put to the ḥerem or ban — every city-full of males, with , etc. The first mention in Deut. of a custom practised also by other Semites. Mesha (Moabite Stone, 14–17) records that having taken Nebo from Israel he slew the whole population for he ‘had devoted it to Ashtar-Chemosh’; the same verb as in Heb. To Israel as to other peoples a war was from first to last a religious process (see on Deuteronomy 20:1 ff.) and the ḥerem was the climax of a series of solemn rites. It consisted of the devotion to the deity, by destruction, of the captives and spoil. The name is from the root ḥrm , ‘to set apart’ or ‘shut off’ (cp. Ar. ḥaram ‘sacred precincts’ and ḥarîm ) and was not confined to war. By the earliest code every idolatrous Israelite was put to the ḥerem, E, Exodus 22:20 [19]; cp. Deuteronomy 13:6-11 of idolaters, and Deuteronomy 13:12-18 [13–19] of an idolatrous city; P, Leviticus 27:28 f.

In war the full process was the slaughter of the conquered population and their cattle, the burning of combustible spoil, and the oblation of the rest to the sanctuary. So in the story of the fall of Jericho and Achan’s trespass, Joshua 6 f. (especially Deuteronomy 6:17-19 ; Deuteronomy 6:21 ; Deuteronomy 6:24 , Deuteronomy 7:1 ; Deuteronomy 7:11 ff.), which however contains many editorial additions. But as we see from several narratives and laws, the actual practice varied from time to time under the competing influences of religious feeling, material considerations and humane impulses. The most illustrative passage is 1 Samuel 15. Samuel charges Saul to devote all ‘Amaleḳ and their cattle; Saul spares the king and the best of the cattle . Either his excuse, that he reserved them for sacrifice, is an afterthought; or from the first he had been unwilling that the best cattle should be rendered by the ḥerem unusable by the people in sacrificial feasts. Was the king moved by feelings of humanity? Samuel condemns his action as disobedience against Jehovah; so absolutely at that time was the ḥerem conceived by the religious leaders.