January 7, 2025
Please use the comment section on this page to share insights from today’s reading OR your own personal Bible reading.
Reading along with us in Deuteronomy and Corinthians? Here’s today’s reading:
Deuteronomy 2 (NIV)
Wanderings in the Wilderness
1 Then we turned back and set out toward the wilderness along the route to the Red Sea, as the Lord had directed me. For a long time we made our way around the hill country of Seir.
2 Then the Lord said to me, 3“You have made your way around this hill country long enough; now turn north.……Continue Reading
Deuteronomy 2
DEUTERONOMY 2
Deuteronomy 2
Deuteronomy 2
Moses telling about the Israelites finally taking the promised land after their disobedience and fear forced them to stay out for almost 40 years. God did make a way and gave them victories in battles that they couldn’t see happening all those years earlier despite all God had done and provided for them up until that point.
This made me think how often we feel like we are waiting on God for Him to do or provide the things we want or need (maybe better the things we THINK we want or need) but really it is God waiting on us to get our acts together and really surrender to His plan and see what He actually has for us that we didn’t even realize we wanted or needed 😉
God instruct Moses on where to travel and who to conquer. It is notable that Esau and Lot are given property and God preserves their conquering of it and possession of it. It is interesting to hear the history of the people that lived there before, giants like the Anakim but known by different names.
”They were also regarded as giants, like the Anakim, but the Moabites call them Emim.
(That was also regarded as a land of giants; giants formerly dwelt there. But the Ammonites call them Zamzummim, a people as great and numerous and tall as the Anakim.
But the Lord destroyed them before them, and they dispossessed them and dwelt in their place,“
Deuteronomy 2:11, 20-21 NKJV
Deuteronomy 2
I, like Amy, was struck by God not allowing the Jews to make war with the descendants of Esau and Lot. What grace that shows of our great God and His covenantal nature. It was because of Esau and Lot…and probably because of their connection to Abraham and Isaac/Jacob, independent of what the people had become. And it is also interesting to get the background details of the peoples as well as the itinerary of the Jewish people. How telling that the people of Sihon did not accept the offer of peaceful passage and yet God was the One who orchestrated that. It just goes to show that God can work His way in people’s hearts (never causing them to do something they wouldn’t already have the tendency to do) and yet still influencing them along a path that will accomplish His will. But because their will is still engaged in the process, they are responsible for their decisions. But in it all, God remains sovereign and His will will be done….