DEUTERONOMY 2 — THE LONG WAY: GOD'S PROVIDENCE THROUGH THE WILDERNESS
Why does God give lands to Esau, Lot, and others but dispossess the Canaanites? Study Deuteronomy 2 with context, apologetic analysis, and cross-references.
Deuteronomy 23 questions
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Dr. Lucas D. Shallua Commentary · DEUTERONOMY 2 — THE LONG WAY: GOD'S PROVIDENCE THROUGH THE WILDERNESS
01
The precise difficulties
Why does God give lands to Esau, Lot, and others but dispossess the Canaanites?
What about "the LORD hardened his spirit"? Did Sihon have a choice?
Thirty-eight years of wandering — was that wasted time?
02
Verse and question study
Why does God give lands to Esau, Lot, and others but dispossess the Canaanites?
The chapter itself answers: all lands are held by divine assignment — the Emim, Horites, and Zamzummim were displaced before Moab, Edom, and Ammon (vv. 20–23). The Canaanites' dispossession is the same divine act within the same framework, timed with the Abrahamic promise and aggravated by the moral corruption Genesis 15:16 and Leviticus 18 specify. God's management of nations is one continuous story, not a special pleading for Israel.
What about "the LORD hardened his spirit"? Did Sihon have a choice?
Sihon refused Israel's peaceable transit — a historical decision with moral content. Judicial hardening in Scripture always follows sustained refusal (as with Pharaoh): God confirms a settled posture and uses it redemptively. Sihon's obstinacy served the conquest's timing; his responsibility remains his own.
Thirty-eight years of wandering — was that wasted time?
"You have lacked nothing" is God's verdict on those years. A generation died, a generation grew, and Israel learned that the promise waits on obedience. Nothing in God's timeline is wasted.
03
Historical and literary context
Deuteronomy 2 covers roughly the same ground as Numbers 20–21 and 33: the wanderings from Kadesh to the Arnon, the peaceful transit of Transjordan, and the wars with Sihon and (in ch. 3) Og. The address is pastoral: Moses is showing the new generation that every step of the wilderness was governed — Edom's border was respected, Moab's was respected, Ammon's was respected, and only God's assigned enemies were engaged. Even conquest has a map, and the map is God's.
04
Apologetic note
The geography is dense and checkable: Kadesh-Barnea, Mount Seir, the Arnon gorge (Wadi Mujib), the Jabbok (Wadi Zerqa), Heshbon (Tell Hesban, extensively excavated — showing a Bronze/Iron Age kingdom center), Jahaz, Aroer, Gilead, and the kingdom boundary lines. Heshbon's identification and archaeology give the Sihon tradition a concrete anchor; the Amorite kingdoms east of the Jordan match the Amorite presence known from second-millennium sources. The Moabite Stone (Mesha stele) centuries later still recalls Omri's seizure of "Naboth the Israelite's" lands in this same region — the Transjordanian chessboard stayed contested for a millennium.