Deuteronomy 2:26-37
The Lord opens the way to inheritance by giving His people victory over hardened opposition while still binding their advance to His command.
26 I sent messengers out of the wilderness of Kedemoth to Sihon king of Heshbon with words of peace, saying,
27 “Let me pass through your land. I will go along by the highway. I will turn neither to the right hand nor to the left.
28 You shall sell me food for money, that I may eat; and give me water for money, that I may drink. Just let me pass through on my feet,
29 as the children of Esau who dwell in Seir, and the Moabites who dwell in Ar, did to me; until I pass over the Jordan into the land which Yahweh our God gives us.”
30 But Sihon king of Heshbon would not let us pass by him; for Yahweh your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate, that he might deliver him into your hand, as it is today.
31 Yahweh said to me, “Behold, I have begun to deliver up Sihon and his land before you. Begin to possess, that you may inherit his land.”
32 Then Sihon came out against us, he and all his people, to battle at Jahaz.
33 Yahweh our God delivered him up before us; and we struck him, his sons, and all his people.
34 We took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed every inhabited city, with the women and the little ones. We left no one remaining.
35 Only the livestock we took for plunder for ourselves, with the plunder of the cities which we had taken.
36 From Aroer, which is on the edge of the valley of the Arnon, and the city that is in the valley, even to Gilead, there was not a city too high for us. Yahweh our God delivered up all before us.
37 Only to the land of the children of Ammon you didn’t come near: all the banks of the river Jabbok, and the cities of the hill country, and wherever Yahweh our God forbade us.
The LORD opens the way to inheritance by giving His people victory over hardened opposition while still binding their advance to His command.
Moses recalls that Israel approached Sihon with terms of peaceful passage, but Sihon refused because the LORD hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate in order to give him into Israel's hand, resulting in Israel's first decisive Transjordan victory while still honoring the LORD's boundary command concerning Ammon.
Moses speaks to Israel on the plains of Moab as the nation prepares to cross the Jordan. After the LORD commands Israel to begin taking possession from Sihon, Moses recounts the actual encounter: Israel sends messengers from the Desert of Kedemoth with a peaceful request to pass through Amorite territory, offering to stay on the main road and pay for food and water. Sihon's refusal, however, becomes the LORD's appointed means of handing him over for judgment and giving his land to Israel.
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.