it. For we have had the good news told to us as well as to them, but the message they heard did not help them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened to it. For we who have believed are entering that rest, just as he has said, “So in my anger I swore a solemn oath that they would never enter my rest,” even though his works had been finished since the foundation of the world. For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day as follows: “On the seventh day God rested from all his works,”and again in this place, “They will never enter my rest” (Heb 4:1-5). Likewise Hebrews said: “Take heed lest a like evil befall you” (Heb. 3:7–19; 4:1–11). All God really requires is obedience because he is able to see situations we are not able to see as and following Him cannot but bring success.
There is a complete arrangement for meeting all our wants on the way to a nobler rest. In treading the way, we now have a far better Leader than Moses. We have far clearer light than Israel had. We have fuller and richer promises. We have a far higher rest in view. Throughout the way there will be demands on our faith. There is a danger from within, lest we should distrust God. Are we not conscious of such a danger? Our hearts are sinful, and predisposed to doubt. We have doubted God very much, and thus wronged him in times gone by. Such unbelief may take or may have taken the form of presumption or of despair. The latter kind of unbelief may be almost indefinitely varied. Men may doubt (1) the power of God to bring them to the rest; or (2) the willingness of God to do it; or (3) the readiness of God to bring them to the rest, without questioning his care for others; or they may even go so far as to doubt (4) whether the promises of the rest be Divine; (5) whether there is any such rest as the one promised; and even (6) whether there is any God of promise. Whichever of these forms a despairing unbelief may assume, the evil of it is sufficiently manifest. It is the greatest dishonor which we can cast on God, to allow the thought to gain the mastery that we are flung down hither without any sure destiny of blessedness being disclosed, or without any certainty of reaching it being made known. How can we enjoy any future rest? What sympathy with God can we have? Besides, God declares, “They shall not enter into my rest.” In that heavenly rest none can or will share who do not implicitly believe the promise and loyally obey the precept. And how much more serious it will be to trifle with Christ, than to slight Moses (Heb. 10:28–31)!
But there is a very bright side to this subject. While unbelief will shut us out of fulfillment nothing else will! Nothing can shut us out of our reward but doubting God! Poverty cannot. Persecution cannot. Reproach cannot. Obscurity cannot. No one shall ever sink who trusts his God. See that young and weak believer who has turned his back on the world, and set his face heavenward. A thousand difficulties bristle up in all directions. But he meets them all, saying, “God called me, God will help me, God will lead me, God will guard me.”
“A feeble saint shall win the day,
Though death and hell obstruct the way!”[viii]
CHAPTER 2
Vers. 1–23.—Journeying of Israel from Kadesh to the frontier of the Amorites.
The Israelites spent many years at Kadesh and it was not time to march towards Cannon. In order to get there they had to pass through or beyond the Edomites, descendants of Esau in Seir. The Lord spoke: “and they will be afraid of you. So be very careful; do not provoke them, for I will not give you any of their land, even as little as a footstep because I have given Mount Seir to Esau as a possession” (Dt 2:4-5). So the Israelites went past the Edomites and turned and passed through the wilderness of Moab. Then the LORD “Do not harass Moab, nor provoke them to war, for I will not give you any of their land as a possession, because I have given Ar to the sons of Lot as a possession. Remember Moab was the incestuous offspring of one of the daughters of Lot (v. 2:9).
The Lord said: “‘Now arise and cross over the brook Zered yourselves.’ So we crossed over the brook Zered”. Now the time that it took for us to come from Kadesh-barnea, until we crossed over the brook Zered, was thirty-eight years; until all the generation of the men of war perished from within the camp, as the LORD had sworn to them (Dt. 2:13-15). The Lord said further to cross over Ar, the border of Moab. And when you come opposite the sons of Ammon, do not harass them nor provoke them, for I will not give you any of the land of the sons of Ammon as a possession, because I have given it to the sons of Lot as a possession.’ Ammon was the second illegitimate son of Lot. Apparently the Lord, after all these years, honored His commitment to Lot (at least for the time being) (Dt. 2:16-19).
After having passed by the Ammonites and Edomites Israel came to the brook Zered which formed the boundary line between Edom and Moab, and was the limit of Israel’s wanderings in the wilderness. They crossed it thirty-eight years after the doom had been pronounced upon them at Kâdesh, and during that period the entire generation of those who had rebelled had died out.
Sihon and his people were Amorites, who had settled on the east of the Jordan in Gilead. But though not included in the original promise to Abraham, God had assigned this territory to the Israelites; and, therefore, he commanded the people under Moses to cross the Arnon and take the first step towards possessing the promised land, by assailing Sihon, King of Heshbon. This would assure them that from that day he would “put the dread and fear of them upon all nations under the whole heaven,” that is, all nations, wherever placed, to whom the fame of the Israelites should come (comp. Exod. 23:27; ch. 11:16).So the nations hearing of Israel should tremble and writhe as in pain (Isa. 13:8).
Moses, however, in the first instance, sent a message of peace to Sihon, proposing to pass through his territory on the same terms as he had made with the Moabites and Edomites, travelling by the highway, and paying for such provisions as his followers required. But this Sihon refused, and came out against Israel, with all his people, to battle. The issue was that he was utterly discomfited; all his towns were captured, he and all his people utterly destroyed, and the cattle and spoil of the whole country taken for booty. Israel thus became possessed of that entire territory, though it did not lie within the bounds of the land promised by God to Abraham, which was the reason, probably, why Moses made overtures of peace to Sihon, and would have passed through his country amicably, had he been permitted (Dt 2:24-37). Sihon had rejected Moses’ overtures of peace, because God had hardened his spirit, and made his heart obstinate; literally, “had sharpened his heart”; had made his determination keen. God had determined to give Sihon and his land to the Israelites, and so certainly should this be done, that Moses is exhorted already to begin to seize, in order to possess the land. Sihon initiated hostilities by coming out with his entire host to fight against Moses and the Israelites. The battle took place at Jahaz (or Jahazah, or Jahza), a town between Medeba and Dibon (Euseb.; cf. Numb. 33:45), afterwards belonging to the tribe of Reuben (Josh. 13:18), and assigned to the Levites of the line of Merari (Josh. 21:36; 1 Chron. 6:78). The war was one of extermination, in which all the people of Sihon were destroyed, from one end of his dominion to the other; all his cities were devoted irredeemably (comp. Lev. 27:29), and only the cattle and the material property were preserved as booty by the conquerors (Numb. 21:23–26).
In obedience to the Divine injunction, the Israelites left untouched the country of the Ammonites, situated on the eastern side of the Upper Jabbok. Cities in the mountains; the towns in the Ammonitish highlands. In Joshua. 13:25, half of the land of the Ammonites is said to be assigned to the tribe of Gad; but that refers to the part of the land between the Arnon and the Jabbok, which had been taken from the Ammonites by the Amorites, and was in the possession of the latter at the time of the Israeli invasion (Judg. 11:13, etc.). Whatsoever the Lord our God forbad us literally, all the land that Jehovah our God commanded us, not to come into.
Og, who was of the same giant race as the Moabites and Ammonites ruled over the northern half of the region of Gilead and over all Bashan.
