And Israel sent messengers unto Sihon. The narrative here returns to the point of time when the Israelites first reached the Upper Arnon, the boundary stream of the kingdom of Sihon (see on Numbers 21:13, and cf.
Deuteronomy 2:24-37). The list of stations in the preceding verses may probably have been copied out of some official record; it may be considered as marking the movements of the tabernacle with Eleazar and the Levites and the mass of the non-combatant population.
In the mean time the armies of Israel were engaged in victorious enterprises which took them far afield. King of the Amorites. The Amorites were not akin to the Hebrews, as the Edomites, Moabites, and Ammonites were, who all claimed descent from Terah.
They were of the Canaanitish stock (Genesis 10:16), and indeed the name Amorite often appears as synonymous with Canaanite in its larger sense (Deuteronomy 1:7, Deuteronomy 1:19, Deuteronomy 1:27, &c.
). If at one time they are mentioned side by side with five or six other tribes of the same stock (Exodus 34:11), yet at another they seem to be so much the representative race that "the Ammorite" stands for the inhabitants of Canaan in general whom Israel was commissioned to oust on account of his iniquity (Genesis 15:16).
It is not, therefore, possible to draw any certain distinction between the Amorites of Sihon's kingdom and the mass of the Canaanites on the other side Jordan. Both Sihon and his people appear as intruders in this region, having come down perhaps from the northern parts of Palestine, and having but recently (it would seem) wrested from the king of Moab all his territory north of Arnon.
It was the fact of the Amorites being found here which led to the conquest and settlement of the trans-Jordanic territory. That territory was not apparently included in the original gift (compare Numbers 34:2-12 with Genesis 10:19 and Genesis 15:19-21), but since the Amorite had possessed himself of it, it must pass with all the rest of his habitation to the chosen people.