Deuteronomy 2:1-7

These verses indicate His generosity, even in judging. They look back upon the extra thirty-eight years in the wilderness. After telling the Israelites they were not to meddle with the Edomites, but were to buy food and water from them, we have to ask a question. Where did they get the money to buy the food and water while they were supposedly marching around the desert, marching around Mount Seir? Where did they get the money?

The first thing we would normally think of is that they used the gold and silver or whatever it was they brought out of Egypt. No. They did not. Notice verse 7 again.

To whom is He speaking? Supposedly it is these people who were marching through the wilderness. He blessed them in the work that they did while they were marching around in the wilderness, which leads, I believe, to a logical conclusion that they were not always marching. There were times—maybe long periods of time—when they were doing work.

Do you think that God was going to take a bunch of bums into the Promised Land—a people with welfare mentalities, where God is just feeding them all the time and taking care of them without developing their talents and abilities? God is not that way. He put the children of Israel to work while they were out there.

I do not know what all they did, but I do know that the elder generation was still alive when they went out there, and I am pretty sure that God had those people who were dying out—that generation of those who were above twenty when that episode took place back at the border of the Promised Land—teach their children and their grandchildren the kind of skills and things they did while they were in Egypt, and passing on the ability to build things.

They were not out there in the wilderness simply, totally all by themselves. There were caravans going back and forth between Egypt and the other nations, and you can be sure that they went into business selling the things they produced to the caravans that were going by. God does not produce people who cannot produce wealth. His children will not have welfare mentalities, thinking that they are owed a living. They work, enabling them to give to others. That is an entirely different mentality.

When the children of Israel finally got on the march again and came to the Promised Land the second time around, they had enough money to buy enough food for two and one-half million people; not once, but twice. Three times. They came upon the Edomites, and then Moabites, and then the Ammonites. In each case they had to buy food and water for them and their stock. Apparently they had plenty to enable them to do this so when His children out there went into the land, they were equipped to build a nation, and they did.

Deuteronomy 2:1-7

You would think that, because of all the trouble Israel suffered at the hands of the Edomites down through history, Obadiah would write with great antagonism: "These are our enemies and they deserve this!" But this does not seem to be the case from what I can determine. Reading in some of the commentaries reinforces my perception that there is a seeming sadness throughout these opening verses; and in various other verses throughout the book, we get a sense what can only be called a lament. The message also takes on an imploring tone from time to time. There is a visceral hope for them to change, to not do what is prophesied for them to do. This may spring from God's command in Deuteronomy:

God tells Israel, "Just do as I say and treat the Edomites with kid gloves as you go through their land."