Journey past Seir

2 “Then we turned back and headed for the wilderness by way of the Red Sea, 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. 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 you must be very careful. ⁵ Don’t fight with them, for I will not give you any of their land, not even an inch of it,^[a] because I have given Esau the hill country of Seir as his possession. ⁶ You may purchase food from them with silver, so that you may eat, and buy water from them to drink.^{(A) 7} For the Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands.^(B) He has watched over your journey through this immense wilderness. The Lord your God has been with you this past 40 years, and you have lacked nothing.’

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. 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.’”^(C)

¹⁰ The Emim, a great and numerous people as tall as the Anakim, had previously lived there. ¹¹ They were also regarded as Rephaim,^(D) like the Anakim, though the Moabites called them Emim.^{(E) 12} The Horites 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.^{(F) 14} The time we spent traveling from Kadesh-barnea until we crossed the Zered Valley was 38 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 them from the camp until they had all perished.