²⁶ I then sent messengers from the Kedemoth desert to Sihon, Heshbon’s king, with words of peace: ²⁷ “Please let us^[a] pass through your land. We promise to stay on the road. We won’t step off it, right or left. ²⁸ Please sell us food for money so we can eat; sell us water for money so we can drink. Let us pass through on foot— ²⁹ just as Esau’s descendants who live in Seir and the Moabites who live in Ar did for me—until we cross the Jordan River into the land that the Lord our God is giving to us.”

³⁰ But Sihon, Heshbon’s king, wasn’t willing to let us pass through his land because the Lord your God had made his spirit hard and his heart inflexible so that God could hand him over to you, which is exactly how it happened. ³¹ The Lord said to me: Look! Right now I’m laying Sihon and his land before you. It’s time to take possession of his land!

³² Sihon and all his forces came out to meet us in battle at Jahaz. ³³ But the Lord our God gave him to us. We struck him down, along with his sons, and all his forces. ³⁴ At that time, we captured all of Sihon’s cities, and we placed every town—men, women, and children—under the ban.^[b] We left no survivors. ³⁵ The only things we kept for ourselves were the animals and the plunder from the towns we had taken. ³⁶ From Aroer, which is on the edge of the Arnon Ravine, to the town that is in the valley there,^[c] even as far as Gilead, there wasn’t a city that could resist us. The Lord our God laid everything out before us. ³⁷ But you didn’t go near the Ammonite lands or hillside cities alongside the Jabbok River, in compliance with all^[d] that the Lord our God had commanded.