14. “Thirty-eight years passed from the time we first left Kadesh-barnea until we finally crossed the Zered Brook! By then, all the men old enough to fight in battle had died in the wilderness, as the lord had vowed would happen.
15. The lord struck them down until they had all been eliminated from the community.
16. “When all the men of fighting age had died,
17. the lord said to me,
18. ‘Today you will cross the border of Moab at Ar
19. and enter the land of the Ammonites, the descendants of Lot. But do not bother them or start a war with them. I have given the land of Ammon to them as their property, and I will not give you any of their land.’”
20. (That area was once considered the land of the Rephaites, who had lived there, though the Ammonites call them Zamzummites.