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Moses continued, “From the wilderness of Kedemoth I sent ambassadors to King Sihon of Heshbon with this proposal of peace:
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‘Let us travel through your land. We will stay on the main road and won’t turn off into the fields on either side.
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Sell us food to eat and water to drink, and we will pay for it. All we want is permission to pass through your land.
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The descendants of Esau who live in Seir allowed us to go through their country, and so did the Moabites, who live in Ar. Let us pass through until we cross the Jordan into the land the Lord our God is giving us.’
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“But King Sihon of Heshbon refused to allow us to pass through, because the Lord your God made Sihon stubborn and defiant so he could help you defeat him, as he has now done.
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“Then the Lord said to me, ‘Look, I have begun to hand King Sihon and his land over to you. Begin now to conquer and occupy his land.’
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“Then King Sihon declared war on us and mobilized his forces at Jahaz.
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But the Lord our God handed him over to us, and we crushed him, his sons, and all his people.
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We conquered all his towns and completely destroyed 1 everyone - men, women, and children. Not a single person was spared.
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We took all the livestock as plunder for ourselves, along with anything of value from the towns we ransacked.
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“The Lord our God also helped us conquer Aroer on the edge of the Arnon Gorge, and the town in the gorge, and the whole area as far as Gilead. No town had walls too strong for us.
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However, we avoided the land of the Ammonites all along the Jabbok River and the towns in the hill country - all the places the Lord our God had commanded us to leave alone.