Yesterday we learned that the Edomites and the Moabites had, at some time in the past, driven giants from the region the Israelites passed through in the wilderness. Today we see that the Ammonites, as well as a group of people of Egyptian heritage, had also defeated giants and taken their territory.
But first Moses is still recounting Israel's wanderings in the wilderness. "And the Lord said, 'Now get up and cross the Zered Valley.'" (Deuteronomy 2:13) The Zered Valley was mentioned in Numbers 21:12. The Israelites camped in the Zered Valley after breaking camp at Iye Abarim, "the wilderness that faces Moab toward the sunrise" (Numbers 12:11) and before moving on to camp by the Arnon River.
"Thirty-eight years passed from the time we left Kadesh Barnea until we crossed the Zered Valley. By then, the generation of fighting men had perished from the camp, as the Lord had sworn to them. The Lord's hand was against them until He had completely eliminated them from the camp." (Deuteronomy 2:14-15) The peopled rebelled at Kadesh and would not move forward because ten of the twelve spies provided a negative report about the promised land. The ten spies testified that it was a good land but said there was no way the Israelite soldiers could overtake the fortified cities or successfully fight men of tall stature who lived there.
When speaking of the giants in the land, I believe the ten spies exaggerated when they said they felt like grasshoppers in comparison to these men. The giants were indeed tall but not so tall that they could step on normal sized human beings in the way a person might step on a bug. Goliath, the most famous Biblical giant, is believed to have possibly been nine feet tall, judging by the descriptions of the size of his armor and spear, but imposing as he may have looked, he could not have squashed a man under his foot. When we studied giants in Genesis we spoke about the medical causes of gigantism and we looked at the well-documented heights of several modern day giants. I talked about how I had stood beside a statue of the late Robert Wardlow, a giant who lived from 1918 til 1940, who was eight feet eleven inches tall. Did I feel small standing next to this statue? Yes, I'm three and a half feet shorter than Mr. Wardlow was. Would I have wanted to engage in hand-to-hand combat with someone that size? Not if I could help it, and in that sense we can understand why ten of the spies, who probably entered Canaan in the same hopeful spirit as the other two spies, felt their hearts drop down into their stomachs when they laid eyes on not one but an unspecified number of giants. Stricken by fear at the thought of fighting men of such stature, they deliberately discouraged their fellow men of Israel from going up to take the promised land.
On the other hand, we've already learned that the Edomites and the Moabites drove giants out of Seir and Ar and took their place, and the Edomites and Moabites didn't have the Lord on their side in quite the way the Israelites did. The Edomites were related to the Israelites through Jacob's son Esau, and the Moabites were related to the Israelites through Abraham's nephew Lot, but these two groups of Israel's relatives had already fallen into idolatry by Moses' day. I think they believed in the God worshiped by Abraham and Jacob, but they did not serve Him, at least not as their official state religion. There may have been some of their citizens who still worshiped the Lord, either as the one true God or as one of several deities they recognized, but they were not the Lord's people in the way Israel was the Lord's people. And my point is that, if idolaters such as the Edomites and Moabites were able to rout giants and take over their territories, then certainly Israel could rout giants and take over their territories.
Moses now provides another example of people who drove out giants. These people are the Ammonites, descendants of Lot. "Now when the last of these fighting men among the people had died, the Lord said to me, 'Today you are to pass by the region of Moab at Ar. When you come to the Ammonites, do not harass them or provoke them to war, for I will not give you possession of any land belonging to the Ammonites. I have given it as a possession to the descendants of Lot.'" (Deuteronomy 2:16-19) You'll recall from Genesis that Lot fathered a son by each of his daughters after he and the two young women escaped from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. His two daughters, not believing the Lord's word that only those two cities were on fire, believed the entire world was being judged and burned up. In their sinful ignorance they decided that saving the human race was up to them and that, since every man on earth but their father must be dead, they had to have incestuous relations with him in order to conceive children. They got their father so drunk on the occasions when they lay with him that he had no idea where he was or what he was doing. He ended up fathering Moab and Ben-Ammi, whose descendants became the Moabites and the Ammonites.
This wasn't a very auspicious beginning for those two tribes and in Moses' day they were serving false gods and bowing down to idols and indulging in various sinful pagan practices. Yet the Ammonites, like the Moabites, managed to send giants packing. Moses adds this footnote regarding the Ammonites: "(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.)" (Deuteronomy 2:20-22)
If the Lord fought on the side of people whose hearts weren't fully committed to Him, imagine how powerfully He was going to fight on the side of Israel! The Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites weren't good examples of people wholly faithful to the Lord but they were related to the patriarch Abraham and the Lord showed them mercy---I believe---for Abraham's sake. If you'll recall, Lot didn't particularly want to leave the region of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot wanted to live a life of spiritual compromise. Lot wanted to live a life of comfort and prosperity. It was for Abraham's sake, more than for Lot's sake, that the Lord sent angels to rescue Lot and his family from the coming destruction. The descendants of Esau were also related to Abraham and I think the Lord showed them mercy for his sake more than for their own sake. Abraham's prayers for his descendants continued to live on long after he had passed away. The Lord heard and honored his prayers and this ought to encourage us to keep praying for our loved ones. The prayers you pray today for your children, grandchildren, and beyond will keep paying off long after you have gone to be with the Lord.
The Lord not only gave help to Abraham's descendants against the giants, but He also allowed people who were not related to Abraham to defeat powerful warriors. The Caphtorites, who were of Egyptian heritage, successfully fought the Philistine group known as the Avvites. "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." (Deuteronomy 2:23) Were the Avvites giants? Possibly so, or at least some of them may have been, for we know from the Bible that there were some giants among the Philistines. Goliath, was a Philistine from the territory of Gath (Goliath is sometimes referred to as a "Gittite" which was simply what persons from Gath were called; this doesn't mean he wasn't a Philistine). I think there must have been some giants among the Avvites because of the context of our passage. This whole section has been about defeating giants and it makes sense that the war between the Caphtorites and the Avvites is mentioned here because it was a war between average sized men and men of greater physical stature.
If unbelievers can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and be successful in great endeavors through sheer willpower, then believers in the Lord can certainly expect victories in this life. If a person can do big things through mere human strength, how much more can a person do when operating in the Lord's strength? I think this is the point Moses is trying to make. The first generation of Israelites to come out of Egypt were too fearful to believe they could take a land containing giants even though nations who didn't even serve the Lord had successfully driven giants away from lands they wanted for themselves. (We could spend a lot of time speculating about why they were so fearful but I think their former status as slaves had seriously affected their sense of self-worth and their ability to believe in the awesome territory the Lord wanted to give them. Perhaps they couldn't imagine themselves inheriting such greatness after being treated like sub-humans by the Egyptians.) But Moses is asking, "If the Lord enabled idolaters to defeat giants, how much more will He enable you?" The pagans took a town here or a town there for their own, but the people of the Lord are going to take an enormous amount of territory away from fierce giants and from idolaters who have no scruples whatsoever. You've heard the saying, "All is fair in love and war," and the Israelites can hardly expect that the idolaters of Canaan will fight fairly or observe any rules of combat. At times Israel will be outnumbered and outgunned, so to speak, but with the Lord on her side she can't lose. The same can be said of you and me. We are the children of the living God. When the Lord tells us to move ahead, we better move ahead no matter how much self-doubt we may feel. The victory doesn't depend solely on our own strength. It depends on the strength of a God whose power has no limits.
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