So it came to pass, when all the men of war were consumed,.... By wasting diseases and judgments of one kind or another:

and dead from among the people; the rising and surviving generation.

When this generation had quite died out, the Lord made known to Moses, and through him to the people, that they were to cross over the boundary of Moab (i.e., the Arnon, Deuteronomy 2:24; see at Numbers 21:13), the land of Ar (see at Deuteronomy 2:9), "to come nigh over against the children of Ammon," i.e., to advance into the neighbourhood of the Ammonites, who lived to the east of Moab; but they were not to meddle with these descendants of Lot, because He would give them nothing of the land that was given them for a possession (Deuteronomy 2:19, as at Deuteronomy 2:5 and Deuteronomy 2:9). - To confirm this, ethnographical notices are introduced again in Deuteronomy 2:20-22 into the words of God (as in Deuteronomy 2:10, Deuteronomy 2:11), concerning the earlier population of the country of the Ammonites. Ammonitis was also regarded as a land of the Rephaites, because Rephaites dwelt therein, whom the Ammonites called Zamzummim. "Zamzummim," from זמם, to hum, then to muse, equivalent to the humming or roaring people, probably the same people as the Zuzim mentioned in Genesis 14:5. This giant tribe Jehovah had destroyed before the Ammonites (Deuteronomy 2:22), just as He had done for the sons of Esau dwelling upon Mount Seir, namely, destroyed the Horites before them, so that the Edomites "dwelt in their stead, even unto this day."

So it came to pass, when all the men of war were consumed and dead from among the people,

16. all the men of war were consumed and dead from among the people-The outbreak at Kadesh on the false report of the spies had been the occasion of the fatal decree by which God doomed the whole grown-up population to die in the wilderness [Nu 14:29]; but that outbreak only filled up the measure of their iniquities. For that generation, though not universally abandoned to heathenish and idolatrous practices, yet had all along displayed a fearful amount of ungodliness in the desert, which this history only hints at obscurely, but which is expressly asserted elsewhere (Eze 20:25, 26; Am 5:25, 27; Ac 7:42, 43).

2:8-23 We have the origin of the Moabites, Edomites, and Ammonites. Moses also gives an instance older than any of these; the Caphtorims drove the Avims out of their country. These revolutions show what uncertain things wordly possessions are. It was so of old, and ever will be so. Families decline, and from them estates are transferred to families that increase; so little continuance is there in these things. This is recorded to encourage the children of Israel. If the providence of God has done this for Moabites and Ammonites, much more would his promise do it for Israel, his peculiar people. Cautions are given not to meddle with Moabites and Ammonites. Even wicked men must not be wronged. God gives and preserves outward blessings to wicked men; these are not the best things, he has better in store for his own children.