Moses recaps what happened the last time they were camped out next to the promised land, when they sent in spies who saw the giants living in the land and were afraid, and panicked the Israelites. They rebelled against God and balked at His plans so He told them they had to wander the desert for forty years until this wicked generation was gone. Only then could their children enter the land.
In describing the lands that they traveled through, Moses says that God told them not to fight several groups of people. He said to go through Seir, and that the people there would fear them, but not to fight even though they may win, because the land of Seir was promised to Esau and his descendants. Likewise with the Moabites and Amonites, since God promised that land to Lot’s descendants. We haven’t heard anything about Lot in a while. I forgot he ever got land from God. I guess God’s better at keeping track of that sort of thing than I am though.
After reading about the years of Jubilee and all land returning to the original owners then, and the fact that God is still honoring this contract with Lot hundreds of years after Lot’s death, it seems like God is pretty into land ownership lasting forever. That makes sense from a stewardship perspective I suppose. If you can’t ever completely rid yourself of your land, then you have a lot of incentive to take good care of it. What’s interesting about this permanence though is that under the formal rules of familial succession, there’s some guy out there today who has a legitimate claim to the hilly country or Seir because he’s the rightful heir of Esau. And God, being a faithful god, would likely back that guy’s claim if he ever showed up in modern day Jordan and started claiming ownership of the place.
That’s kind of fun to think about, although it would be pretty awkward politically.
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