Deuteronomy 2

I many days. From this it seems probable that most of the thirty-seven or thirty-eight years of wandering were spent in this neighbourhood, and not, as some have supposed, in the western desert.

4 afraid of you. When the Israelites had asked permission to pass through the land of Edom by the steep and easily-defensible passes of the mountains, they had been boldly refused (Numb. xx. 14-21). But when, after going round the southern end of the mountains [of Seir], they reached the table-land on the eastern side of Edom (see Numb. xxi. 10), it was natural that the Edomites should be afraid. It is to this latter march that the text refers.

6 buy meat (food). As the great pilgrim caravan is still supplied on its yearly march along this route from Damascus to Moces.

7 hath blessed thee. The Israelites were not inactive in the wilderness; they kept some cattle, and probably carried on some kind of commerce with the neighbouring tribes.

8 the plain. Rather, as in the Heb. and Sept., “the Arabah”; see note on i. 1; and on Gen. xiv. 5. Elath and Exion-gaber were a fortress and a port at the head of the eastern arm of the Red Sea, near the modern Akabah.

9. I have given, etc. The Moabites and Ammonites had conquered these lands by favour of God’s special Providence, and therefore were only to be attacked if they attempted to murder or injure the Israelites.—Ar. The capital of Moab (see Isa. xv. 1); called also “Rabbath-Moab.”

10. Emim. i.e., “terrible ones.” Vers. 10-12, and 20-23, are historical notices, added after this book was written; perhaps designed to show that the extermination of the Canaanites by the Hebrews was not an unprecedented act. The “Emim” and the other tribes here mentioned were the aborigines of the land, who had been conquered and nearly extirpated by the Moabites, Ammonites, etc.; see note on Gen. xiv. 5.

13 “said I.” These words are not in the Hebrew. The previous verses being read as a parenthesis, the first sentence of this verse is part of what God said to Moses, in continuance of ver. 9.

29 the children of Esau. Though the Edomites refused the Hebrew host a passage through the heart of their country by those defiles which have always been jealously guarded by their possessors, they did not obstruct it in its journey round the borders. Sihon and Og, however, refused it a passage along their confines.

34 destroyed. Heb., “devoted” or “put under a ban.”

37. Jabbok. This refers to the upper waters of the Jabbok (or Zerka), which in the higher part of its course flowed through the land of the Ammonites.