24 "On your feet now. Get started. Cross the Brook Arnon. Look: Here's Sihon the Amorite king of Heshbon and his land. I'm handing it over to you - it's all yours. Go ahead take it. Go to war with him. 25 Before the day is out, I'll make sure that all the people around here are thoroughly terrified. Rumors of you are going to spread like wildfire; they'll totally panic."
26 From the Wilderness of Kedemoth, I sent messengers to Sihon, king of Heshbon. They carried a friendly message: 27 "Let me cross through your land on the highway. I'll stay right on the highway; I won't trespass right or left. 28 I'll pay you for any food or water we might need. Let me walk through. 29 "The People of Esau who live in Seir and the Moabites who live in Ar did this, helping me on my way until I can cross the Jordan and enter the land that God, our God, is giving us." 30 But Sihon king of Heshbon wouldn't let us cross his land. God, your God, turned his spirit mean and his heart hard so he could hand him over to you, as you can see that he has done. 31 Then God said to me, "Look, I've got the ball rolling - Sihon and his land are soon yours. Go ahead. Take it. It's practically yours!" 32 So Sihon and his entire army confronted us in battle at Jahaz. 33 God handed him, his sons, and his entire army over to us and we utterly crushed them. 34 While we were at it we captured all his towns and totally destroyed them, a holy destruction - men, women, and children. No survivors. 35 We took the livestock and the plunder from the towns we had captured and carried them off for ourselves. 36 From Aroer on the edge of the Brook Arnon and the town in the gorge, as far as Gilead, not a single town proved too much for us; God, our God, gave every last one of them to us. 37 The only land you didn't take, obeying God's command, was the land of the People of Ammon, the land along the Jabbok and around the cities in the hills.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Deuteronomy 2:24-37
Commentary on Deuteronomy 2:24-37
(Read Deuteronomy 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.