What Does Deuteronomy 2:19 Mean?
And when you draw near facing the children of Ammon, do not press them, and do not stir them up. For I will not give you any of the land of the children of Ammon as a taking, since I have given it to the children of Lot as a taking.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And when thou comest nigh over against the children of Ammon, distress them not, nor meddle with them: for I will not give thee of the land of the children of Ammon any possession; because I have given it unto the children of Lot for a possession.THE KEY
The land Israel is told not to take is already named as another people’s inheritance, so nearness never becomes a claim.
THE MEANING
The verse addresses you at the edge of someone else’s allotted place: being near it does not make it yours, and you are told not to distress or provoke its people. Their land is already given to the children of Lot as an inheritance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what lies within reach, or in the way, is yours to claim.
THE ROOT
יְרֻשָּׁה
yerushah
GROWS FROM
ירשׁ
To inherit or take possession; in a causative form, to dispossess.
The word carries the sense of a received allotment, tied to the verb for inheriting or taking possession. That same root can describe dispossessing, so the verse holds possession and displacement in one seed: Israel’s claim has a limit where Lot’s descendants’ inheritance begins.
ALSO GROWS
yarash: To inherit or take possession.
יָרַשׁ
This is the verb behind the inheritance named in the verse; possession is framed as something allotted, not simply seized.
horish: To dispossess or drive out.
הוֹרִישׁ
This causative form shows the root can include displacing another; the verse marks the point where Israel must not do that.
morashah: Heritage or inheritance.
מוֹרָשָׁה
This related noun also names something received as a possession, echoing the land given to Lot’s descendants.
תְּצֻרֵם
tetsurem
GROWS FROM
צרר
To bind, press in, or show hostility.
“press” in this verse is tetsurem. The verb behind “distress” carries the sense of pressure and binding. Beside the command not to provoke them, it makes restraint a boundary around the place already allotted to another people.
ALSO GROWS
tsar: Narrow, tight, or an adversary.
צַר
This branch carries the sense of constriction, revealing the pressure contained in “distress.”
tsarah: Distress or trouble.
צָרָה
This noun makes explicit the trouble the command forbids Israel from bringing upon Ammon.
THE PATTERN
A boundary can recognize another’s allotted place, keeping possession from becoming a claim to take what is theirs.
Do not stir them up, for I will not give you any of their land, not even as far as the sole of a foot treads; since I have given the mountain of Seir to Esau as his possession.Do not move the age-old boundary your fathers made.And he made from one blood every nation of humankind to settle upon all the face of the earth, marking out their fitted seasons and setting the boundary stones of their dwelling.THE THREAD
See, I have set the land before you. Go in and take hold of the land that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to them and to their seed after them.“Possess” here and “possession” in Deuteronomy 2:19 come from the same root, ירשׁ (yarash), meaning to inherit or take possession. The root connects the command to take the land given to Israel with the boundary that keeps them from taking the inheritance given to Lot’s descendants.
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