Alberith Deuteronomy

2:10-12 - (The Emites used to live there—a people strong and numerous, and as tall as the Anakites. Like the Anakites, they too were considered Rephaites, but the Moabites called them Emites. Horites used to live in Seir, but the descendants of Esau drove them out. They destroyed the Horites from before them and settled in their place, just as Israel did in the land the Lord gave them as their possession.)

2:20-23 - (That too was considered a land of the Rephaites, who used to live there; but the Ammonites called them Zamzummites. They were a people strong and numerous, and as tall as the Anakites. The Lord destroyed them from before the Ammonites, who drove them out and settled in their place. The Lord had done the same for the descendants of Esau, who lived in Seir, when he destroyed the Horites from before them. They drove them out and have lived in their place to this day. And as for the Avvites who lived in villages as far as Gaza, the Caphtorites coming out from Caphtor destroyed them and settled in their place.)

(You will notice that the text of these two sections (on the left) has been set against a different background colour. This is to highlight their parenthetical nature. For pedagogical reasons we suggest you skip the comments here until you are finished with studying vv13-19. That would give you a better appreciation of the context for appreciating the significance of theses verse. We will make sure to send you back here at the appropriate point. We have already dealt with v13 (under comments on v9) so we move next to v14-19: Click here to proceed. Because of this arrangement, please note that the "Next" button at the end of this comment will take you onwards to vv24-25 instead.)

The question that should concern us here is really what purpose/s these two remarks serve in the book. What possible purpose might the narrator have in inserting these two parenthetical remarks here?

These verses are often placed within brackets in modern translations to indicate that they are parenthetical comments by the narrator.1 That this is so is clear from the remark in v12—". . . just as Israel did in the land of its possession that the Lord gave to them"—suggesting that they derive from a time when Israelite possession of the land west of the Jordan was already an established fact.

The answer cannot be answered with certainty. Part of the problem is that they present some baffling question in matter of detailed exegesis. E.g., the information about the Emites in vv10-11 and the Avvites and Caphtorites may be innately interesting but what purposes do they serve? Additionally, both references to the descendants of Esau (v12 & 22) seem out of place in a passage concerned with Israel's journey through the territories given to the descendants of Lot.

J. G. McConville thinks that these "short pre-histor[ies]" serve to elaborate the theology of Yahweh's gift of land to Moab and Ammon.2 Two observations suggest that these editorial remarks serve, perhaps additionally, another more decidedly theological purpose. First, these remarks, taken together with the accounts of Israel's journey through Moab and Ammon, bracket the elimination of GenA, and should probably be understood in relation to it. We recall the structure presented earlier of this unit:

Aa. Israel's Journey through the Territory of the Descendents
of Lot (Moab), v9.

Aa'. Israel's Journey through the Territory of the Descendants
of Lot (Ammon), v19.

As Aa & Aa' serve to remind Israel that the other peoples to whom Yahweh gave lands received them because they drove out their previous occupants, so Ab & Ab' serve to remind them that those land were also occuppied by giants like the ones GenA refused to face in Canaan. Giants are no excuse for disobedience; the way to face giants and to bring them down is trust in Yahweh. If asked, Israelites would probably say that no other nation had Yahweh on their side. And if the Moabites and the Ammonites still brought down their giants when they did not (presumably) have Yahweh with them, why Israel's failure? The answer is simple: Israel—specifically GenA—refused to have Yahweh with them. That is the essence of disobedience and distrust.

Second, the verb used for the destruction of the original inhabitants of the land (the Emites and the Zumzummites) by the Moabites and Ammonites, respectively, is samad (v12, 21,22,23). The only occurrence of this verb prior to the present texts is in GenA's accusation that the Lord had brought them out of Egypt to deliver them to the Amorites to destroy them (1:27). We suggest that these remarks serve, in fact, to elaborate a theology of disobedience. GenA has accused Lord of serving them up to be destroyed (samad) by the Amorites; in the end it is the Lord who 'totalled' (tm) them. The Lord had given lands to the Moabites and Ammonites, just as he had to Israel, lands that had been inhabited by giants no less fearsome as the Anakites the scouts reported they saw in Canaan. But, the Moabites and Ammonites destroyed (samad) them. As a result they now enjoy their, inheritance. Even the Caphtorites are settled in Gaza; they dispossessed the Avvites who lived there! Had GenA obeyed, they too would be enjoying their inheritance. Instead, here an entire generation meets their end. Thus, by this detour into the fate of the demised inhabitants, the narrator asserts for GenN that Israel's presence still on the plains of Moab was due to GenA's failure to trust. For him the gift of the land is a given (v12b), but giftedness without obedience means nothing!