Deuteronomy 2:9-15
The Lord advances His people only after His word is honored in both restraint and judgment.
9 Yahweh said to me, “Don’t bother Moab, neither contend with them in battle; for I will not give you any of his land for a possession, because I have given Ar to the children of Lot for a possession.”
10 (The Emim lived there before, a great and numerous people, and tall as the Anakim.
11 These also are considered to be Rephaim, as the Anakim; but the Moabites call them Emim.
12 The Horites also lived in Seir in the past, but the children of Esau succeeded them. They destroyed them from before them, and lived in their place, as Israel did to the land of his possession, which Yahweh gave to them.)
13 “Now rise up, and cross over the brook Zered.” We went over the brook Zered.
14 The days in which we came from Kadesh Barnea until we had come over the brook Zered were thirty-eight years: until all the generation of the men of war were consumed from the middle of the camp, as Yahweh swore to them.
15 Moreover Yahweh’s hand was against them, to destroy them from the middle of the camp, until they were consumed.
The LORD advances His people only after His word is honored in both restraint and judgment.
Moses recalls the LORD's command not to harass Moab because He had given Ar to Lot's descendants, and he anchors that restraint in the larger moment when Israel crossed the Zered Valley after the fighting generation from Kadesh had fully perished under the LORD's sworn judgment.
Moses speaks from the plains of Moab to the generation poised to enter Canaan. After recounting the command concerning Edom and the route beyond Seir, he recalls the LORD's command concerning Moab: Israel must not harass or provoke Moab because Ar has been given to Lot's descendants. The passage also interprets the crossing of the Zered Valley as the completion point of the thirty-eight-year period in which the unbelieving fighting generation from Kadesh perished.
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.