For this reason Israel was to remove from the desert of Moab (i.e., the desert which bounded Moabitis on the east), and to cross over the brook Zered, to advance against the country of the Amorites (see at Numbers 21:12-13). This occurred thirty-eight years after the condemnation of the people at Kadesh (Numbers 14:23, Numbers 14:29), when the generation rejected by God had entirely died out (תּמם, to be all gone, to disappear), so that not one of them saw the promised land. They did not all die a natural death, however, but "the hand of the Lord was against them to destroy them" (המם, lit., to throw into confusion, then used with special reference to the terrors with which Jehovah destroyed His enemies; Exodus 14:24; Exodus 23:27, etc.), sc., by extraordinary judgments (as in Numbers 16:35; Numbers 18:1; Numbers 21:6; Numbers 25:9).

Deuteronomy 2:21 Parallel Commentaries

great

Deuteronomy 2:10,11 The Emims dwelled therein in times past, a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims...

Deuteronomy 1:28 Where shall we go up? our brothers have discouraged our heart, saying, The people is greater and taller than we...

Deuteronomy 3:11 For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of giants; behold his bedstead was a bedstead of iron...

but the Lord These fragments of ancient history seem to be introduced to encourage the Israelites. If the Lord destroyed these gigantic people before the posterity of Lot and of Esau, what cause had the posterity of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, his chosen servants and friends, to fear the Anakims, of the Canaanites? especially as Israel acted by commission from God, and had his promise as their security of success, and the pledge of it in his presence, and the wonders which he had already wrought for them and as they were the only nation of worshippers of the Lord, in the ordinances of his institution, which could be found on earth. This is so often repeated to possess the minds of the Israelites with a sense of God's providence, which rules every where; displacing one people, and placing another in their stead; and fixing their bounds also, which they cannot pass without his leave.

Deuteronomy 2:22 As he did to the children of Esau, which dwelled in Seir, when he destroyed the Horims from before them; and they succeeded them...

Judges 11:24 Will not you possess that which Chemosh your god gives you to possess? So whomsoever the LORD our God shall drive out from before us...

Jeremiah 27:7,8 And all nations shall serve him, and his son, and his son's son, until the very time of his land come...

Habakkuk 1:10,11 And they shall scoff at the kings, and the princes shall be a scorn to them: they shall deride every strong hold...