Deuteronomy 2:16-23
The Lord rules the land of Ammon as surely as He rules Israel's inheritance.
16 So, when all the men of war were consumed and dead from among the people,
17 Yahweh spoke to me, saying,
18 “You are to pass over Ar, the border of Moab, today.
19 When you come near the border of the children of Ammon, don’t bother them, nor contend with them; for I will not give you any of the land of the children of Ammon for a possession, because I have given it to the children of Lot for a possession.”
20 (That also is considered a land of Rephaim. Rephaim lived there in the past, but the Ammonites call them Zamzummim,
21 a great people, many, and tall, as the Anakim; but Yahweh destroyed them from before Israel, and they succeeded them, and lived in their place;
22 as he did for the children of Esau who dwell in Seir, when he destroyed the Horites from before them; and they succeeded them, and lived in their place even to this day.
23 Then the Avvim, who lived in villages as far as Gaza: the Caphtorim, who came out of Caphtor, destroyed them and lived in their place.)
The LORD rules the land of Ammon as surely as He rules Israel's inheritance.
Moses recalls the moment after the death of the fighting generation when the LORD commanded Israel to pass by Moab and not provoke Ammon, because the land of the Ammonites had been given to Lot's descendants and had already come under the LORD's providential rule over prior peoples.
Moses speaks on the plains of Moab to the generation preparing to enter the land. After the wilderness fighting generation has died, the LORD directs Israel to pass by the region of Moab near Ar and warns them not to harass or provoke the Ammonites. The passage recalls Ammon's prior possession of land once associated with Rephaites, called Zamzummites by the Ammonites, and places Ammon's settlement beside other examples of providential dispossession involving Esau's descendants, the Horites, the Avvites, and the Caphtorites.
The Wilderness Years End and the March Begins
The LORD sovereignly governs the nations — giving Edom, Moab, and Ammon their lands just as he gives Israel theirs — and now brings the wilderness years to a close by commanding Israel to pass through, then to conquer, as a demonstration that the God who restrained them at Kadesh is the same God who now fights for them against Sihon.