2:4-5 - Give the people these orders: 'You are about to pass through the territory of your brothers the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir. They will be afraid of you, but be very careful. ⁵Do not provoke them to war, for I will not give you any of their land, not even enough to put your foot on. I have given Esau the hill country of Seir as his own.

Though the exact course of this new stage of her journey is not clear, the behaviour Yahweh requires of Israel while on it is unambiguous; she is to be "very careful . . . do not provoke them." The reason for this caution is "they [the Edomites] will be afraid of you." Though Moses passes over the details of that encounter here, Num.20:14-21 records that the Edomites were intimidated enough not only to reject Israel's request to pass through their land, but also to threaten military action to keep Israel away. The reason for this fear may be surmised from the Moabite experience recorded in Num.22:3-4; on seeing the multitude of the approaching Israelites, they complained to their elders, "This horde is going to lick up everything around us, as an ox licks up the grass of the field."

Living in the crowded space that we moderns do, all of what we do have a dominoe effect on society. Here again, we are reminded that the promise of God to us is not a license to be insensitive to, and especially to be belligerant towards, others; something that our medieval forebears in the faith in the West failed to appreciate and that we, living in the shadow of their mistakes, must learn never to repeat. While oppositions will be a fact of the Christian life, Jesus' command to love our neighbours (this includes, of course, our enemies) requires us always to be careful and never to be provocative. In value terms, winning an argument never beats winning a friend (a lesson, I confess, that took me a—far too—long time to learn, and I am glad my children have done far better).

The promise of God to us
is not a license to be insensitive,
and especially to be belligerant, towards others.

Yahweh's assertion, "I will not give you any of their land . . . I have given Esau the hill country of Seir as his own," is, unfortunately, too little appreciated in Jewish and Christian theology of the land. While the promise of the land to Israel is a central tenet in such theology, this one—that God has also given lands to other peoples—has received scarcely any attention. It is crucial that we reinstate this teaching back into our thinking about the land in our theology. As we shall see later, it is not the gift of the land that made Israel special as the elect people of God; it is His presence that distinguishes her from other peoples—His presence and her life of obedience and justice.

The qualifier "not even enough to put you foot on" needs some attention. Before the days when ownership of a land is attested by a piece of paper called the title, ownership was stacked out, and the Old Testament expression for this is "setting your foot in it," (Deut 1:36; 11:24; Jos 1:3). When Yahweh asserts that He would give Israel "not even enough to put your foot on," it is equivalent to what is today called "establishing facts on the ground." The idea is for an outsider to come in and stamp his footprint in the dust, and later turn up to claim ownership; when challenged he could always go to the spot and point out his prior presence, and assumed owership, of the land. Though modern Israel may be the most notorious culprit, it happens everywhere, in the South China Sea to the Antartica. These are not acts of legitimized larceny that Yahweh would allow to ancient Israel.

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