1. Then we turned, and set out toward the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea, as the Lord spoke to me, and we circled Mount Seir for many days.
2. Then the Lord spoke to me, saying,
3. “You have circled this mountain long enough. Now turn north.
4. Command the people, saying: You are to pass through the territory of your brothers the children of Esau, who dwell in Seir, and they shall be afraid of you. So carefully watch yourselves.
5. Do not provoke them, for I will not give you any of their land, no, not so much as a footprint, because I have given Mount Seir to Esau for a possession.
6. You may buy food from them with money so that you may eat, and you may also buy water from them with money so that you may drink.
7. “For the Lord your God has blessed you in all the works of your hands. He knows your wanderings through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you. You have lacked nothing.”
8. So we passed by our brothers, the children of Esau, who lived in Seir, through the way of the plain from Elath and from Ezion Geber, and we turned and passed by the way of the Wilderness of Moab.
9. The Lord said to me, “Do not harass the Moabites, nor contend with them in battle, for I will not give you any of their land for a possession, because I have given Ar to the children of Lot as a possession.”
10. (The Emites lived there in times past, a people as great and as many and as tall as the Anakites.
11. These people, as well as the Anakites, also were regarded as giants, but the Moabites call them Emites.
12. The Horites also formerly lived in Seir, but the children of Esau dispossessed and destroyed them, and settled there in their place, just as Israel did to the land of its possession, which the Lord gave to them.)
13. “Cross over the Zered Valley.” So we went over the Zered Valley.
14. Now the length of time it took for us to come to Kadesh Barnea until we crossed over the brook Zered was thirty-eight years, until all the generation of the men of war perished from among the army, just as the Lord swore to them.