Day 32: Are parts of the Bible boring? - Deuteronomy 2 vs 1-15

1-3 “We turned around and headed back across the wilderness toward the Red Sea, just as the Lord had instructed me, and we wandered around in the region of Mount Seir for a long time. “Then at last the Lord said to me, ‘You have been wandering around in this hill country long enough; turn to the north. 4- 5 Give these orders to the people: “You will pass through the country belonging to your relatives the Edomites, the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir. The Edomites will feel threatened, so be careful. Do not bother them, for I have given them all the hill country around Mount Seir as their property, and I will not give you even one square foot of their land. 6-7  If you need food to eat or water to drink, pay them for it. For the Lord your God has blessed you in everything you have done. He has watched your every step through this great wilderness. During these forty years, the Lord your God has been with you, and you have lacked nothing.”’

8-9 “So we bypassed the territory of our relatives, the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir. We avoided the road through the Arabah Valley that comes up from Elath and Ezion-geber. “Then as we turned north along the desert route through Moab, the Lord warned us, ‘Do not bother the Moabites, the descendants of Lot, or start a war with them. I have given them Ar as their property, and I will not give you any of their land.’”

10-12 (A race of giants called the Emites had once lived in the area of Ar. They were as strong and numerous and tall as the Anakites, another race of giants. Both the Emites and the Anakites are also known as the Rephaites, though the Moabites call them Emites. In earlier times the Horites had lived in Seir, but they were driven out and displaced by the descendants of Esau, just as Israel drove out the people of Canaan when the Lord gave Israel their land.)

13-15 Moses continued, “Then the Lord said to us, ‘Get moving. Cross the Zered Brook.’ So we crossed the brook. Thirty-eight years passed from the time we first left Kadesh-barnea until we finally crossed the Zered Brook! By then, all the men old enough to fight in battle had died in the wilderness, as the Lord had vowed would happen. The Lord struck them down until they had all been eliminated from the community. Deuteronomy 2:1-15 New Living Translation.

Today's reading is one of those parts of the Bible that make some folk say 'what's the purpose these lists of strange names?' But it shouldn't put us off. All of us has a 'family tree'. We had a dad, granddad and even great-great-granddad! So today's reading shows us the Bible story is of real people and real history. A summary of the main characters here would be as follows:

A man named Terah had three sons, Abram, Nahor and Haran. Haran had a son named Lot who was ancestor to the nation of Moab. Abram (whose name was changed to Abraham) had two sons, Ishmael and Issac. His brother Nahor had a son named Bethuel and a daughter named Rebekah. Isaac and Rebekah married (as cousins sometimes did in those days, and still do in some cultures) and were the parents of Esau and Jacob. Esau was the ancestor of the nation of Edom, and Jacob, as we know, was ancestor to the nation of Israel. So the Bible tells us here how the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob approached a region called Canaan where the descendants of people like Nahor, Lot, Ishmael and Esau lived. They were like those distant relatives we all have.

And because some nations were their distant relatives, what did God say to Israel in vs 4-5 and 8-9?

They were not to invade those nations because God was going to give Israel a land of it's own. A thought here. Do we pray for unsaved relatives in our wider family? We may be the only ones who do so let's not give up on praying for them.

What do verse 6-7 tell us about God's patient care, especially if we remember how often the Israelites grumbled about some situations they found themselves in, and they blamed God for?

Lastly, notice again, in vs 13-15, how long it took Israel to do a journey that should've taken no more than a couple of weeks! The writer of the New Testament book, Hebrews, uses this to urge us to not be stubborn about obeying God. He said: “Today when you hear His voice - don’t harden your hearts as Israel did when they rebelled.” And who was it who rebelled against God, even though they heard his voice? Wasn’t it the people Moses led out of Egypt?  And who made God angry for forty years? Wasn’t it the people who sinned, whose corpses lay in the wilderness? And to whom was God speaking when he took an oath that they would never enter his rest? Wasn’t it the people who disobeyed him? So we see that because of their unbelief they were not able to enter his rest.” (Hebrews 3 vs 15-19)

May our hearts be sensitive to God's word, and quick to obey, so that we experience that 'rest' which He alone can give.