Journey past Seir

2 “Then we turned back and headed for the wilderness by way of the Red Sea,^(A) as the Lord had told me, and we traveled around the hill country of Seir for many days. ² The Lord then said to me, ³ ‘You’ve been traveling around this hill country long enough; turn north.^{(B) 4} Command the people: You are about to travel through the territory of your brothers, the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir. They will be afraid of you, so be very careful. ⁵ Don’t provoke them, for I will not give you any of their land, not even a foot of it,^[a] because I have given Esau the hill country of Seir as his possession.^{(C) 6} You may purchase food from them, so that you may eat, and buy water from them to drink.^{(D) 7} For the Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands.^(E) He has watched over your journey through this immense wilderness. The Lord your God has been with you these past forty years, and you have lacked nothing.’^(F)

Journey past Moab

⁸ “So we bypassed our brothers, the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir. We turned away from the Arabah road and from Elath and Ezion-geber.^(G) We traveled along the road to the Wilderness of Moab. ⁹ The Lord said to me, ‘Show no hostility toward Moab, and do not provoke them to battle, for I will not give you any of their land as a possession, since I have given Ar as a possession to the descendants of Lot.’”^(H)

¹⁰ The Emim, a great and numerous people as tall as the Anakim,^(I) had previously lived there. ¹¹ They were also regarded as Rephaim,^(J) like the Anakim, though the Moabites called them Emim.^{(K) 12} The Horites^(L) had previously lived in Seir, but the descendants of Esau drove them out, destroying them completely^[b] and settling in their place, just as Israel did in the land of its possession the Lord gave them.

¹³ “The Lord said, ‘Now get up and cross the Zered Valley.’ So we crossed the Zered Valley.^{(M) 14} The time we spent traveling from Kadesh-barnea until we crossed the Zered Valley was thirty-eight years until the entire generation of fighting men had perished from the camp, as the Lord had sworn to them. ¹⁵ Indeed, the Lord’s hand was against them, to eliminate^(N) them from the camp until they had all perished.^(O)