6. You must pay the people of Esau for any food you eat or water you drink there.
7. Remember that the Lord your God has blessed you in everything you have done. He knows about everything that happened on the trip through this great desert. The Lord your God has been with you these 40 years. You have always had everything you needed.’
8. “So we passed by our relatives, the people of Esau living there in Seir. We left the road that leads from the Jordan Valley to the towns of Elath and Ezion Geber. We turned onto the road that goes to the desert in Moab.
9. “The Lord said to me, ‘Don’t bother the Moabites. Don’t start a war against them. I will not give you any of their land. They are the descendants of Lot, and I gave them the city of Ar.’”
10. (In the past, the Emites lived in Ar. They were strong people, and there were many of them. They were very tall, like the Anakites.
11. The Anakites were part of the Rephaites. People thought the Emites were also Rephaites, but the people of Moab called them Emites.
12. The Horites also lived in Seir in the past. Then Esau’s people destroyed the Horites, took their land, and settled there, just as the Israelites did to the people in the land that the Lord gave them.)
13. “The Lord told me, ‘Now, go to the other side of Zered Valley.’ So we crossed Zered Valley.
14. It was 38 years from the time we left Kadesh Barnea until the time we crossed Zered Valley. As the Lord had promised, all the fighting men in our camp from that generation had died.
15. The Lord had opposed those men until they were all dead and gone from our camp.
16. “After all the fighting men were dead and gone,
17. the Lord said to me,
18. ‘Today you must cross the border at Ar and go into Moab.
19. You will be just across from the Ammonites. Don’t bother them or fight with them, because I will not give you their land. They are descendants of Lot, and I have given that land to them.’”
20. (That country is also known as the Land of Rephaim. The Rephaites lived there in the past. The people of Ammon called them the Zamzummites.
21. There were many Rephaites, and they were very strong and tall like the Anakites. But the Lord helped the Ammonites destroy them. The Ammonites took that land and live there now.