Week 10 Deuteronomy 2
Last weekend I was thinking about the Edomites & the Ammonites & the Moabites (“whose land?“). They were three Outsider Families from early in Genesis. Definitely Not Israel. But in spite of that still hanging-around for hundreds of years.
Anyway a couple of days ago I see that Israel was approaching the Promised Land the Lord told Moses: Leave Those People Alone because I’m Giving Them Land! So I was wondering how long the land grant to those groups lasted.
I checked my bible maps. One of them showed Tribal Land Divisions (so around about Joshua’s time). East of the Jordan River – ranged top to bottom – Manasseh & Gad & Reuben were marked in bright red. And Ammon & Moab & Edom were right there too (low-lighted in black).
The next map was The Divided Kingdom (so quite a bit later). Manasseh & Gad & Reuben are not marked on that map (though maybe their successors were there.) But Ammon & Moab & Edom are still there and holding onto territory east and south of the Dead Sea.
The last map is Palestine in the Time of Jesus – hundreds of more years later. There’s no sign of Manasseh Gad Reuben Ammon Moab or Edom.
I know this is an almost totally useless way to accurately track how long Ammon-Moab-Edom retained the land they got from the Lord (it’d take more digging inside-and-outside-the-bible for that). But it looks like Ammon-Moab-Edom held onto the land the Lord gave them for a fairly long time. Not permanently. But for centuries.