Numbers 20:20-22

Amplified Bible, Classic Edition

²⁰But Edom said, You shall not go through. And Edom came out against Israel with many people and a strong hand.

²¹Thus Edom refused to give Israel passage through his territory, ^[a]so Israel turned away from him.

²²They journeyed from Kadesh, and the Israelites, even the whole congregation, came to Mount Hor.

Numbers 20:21 Israel (Jacob’s offspring) did not fight Edom, the offspring of Jacob’s brother Esau, because of the Lord’s warning, later conveyed in definite instructions (Deut. 23:7). But what had begun as only a quarrel between twin brothers (Gen. 27:41) had now been passed on for generations and was to cost countless lives, extending throughout the Old Testament and into the New, where Herod, remotely related to Esau, tried to take the life of the Babe of Bethlehem, a descendant of Jacob. “See how much wood or how great a forest a tiny spark can set ablaze!” (James 3:5).