Deuteronomy 2:11

Which also were accounted giants, as the Anakims; but the Moabites call them Emims.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

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.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

For the Emims, Horims, and Anakims, see the marginal references. These verses are either parenthetical or the insertion of a later hand.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

8-18. we passed … through the way of the plain—the Arabah or great valley, from Elath ("trees") (the Ailah of the Greeks and Romans). The site of it is marked by extensive mounds of rubbish.

Ezion-geber—now Akaba, both were within the territory of Edom; and after making a circuit of its southeastern boundary, the Israelites reached the border of Moab on the southeast of the Salt Sea. They had been forbidden by divine command to molest the Moabites in any way; and this special honor was conferred on that people not on their own account, for they were very wicked, but in virtue of their descent from Lot. (See on [113]De 23:3). Their territory comprised the fine country on the south, and partly on the north of the Arnon. They had won it by their arms from the original inhabitants, the Emims, a race, terrible, as their name imports, for physical power and stature (Ge 14:5), in like manner as the Edomites had obtained their settlement by the overthrow of the original occupiers of Seir, the Horims (Ge 14:6), who were troglodytes, or dwellers in caves. Moses alluded to these circumstances to encourage his countrymen to believe that God would much more enable them to expel the wicked and accursed Canaanites. At that time, however, the Moabites, having lost the greater part of their possessions through the usurpations of Sihon, were reduced to the small but fertile region between the Zered and the Arnon.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Which also were accounted giants, as the Anakims,.... Because of their bulky size and tall stature; or,"the Rephaim were they accounted, even they as the Anakims;''they were reckoned Rephaim, a name for giants in early times, even as the Anakims were; see Genesis 14:5.

but the Moabites called them Emims; to distinguish them from the Rephaim; so that it seems this name of Emims was not originally their name, but they are called so by a prolepsis, or anticipation, in Genesis 14:5 since they had it from the Moabites, a people of a later date.

Geneva Study Bible

Which also were accounted giants, as the Anakims; but the Moabites called them Emims.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

11. Rephaim … Anakim] See on Deuteronomy 1:28.

Deuteronomy 2:11

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

To confirm the fact that the Moabites and also the Edomites had received from God the land which they inhabited as a possession, Moses interpolates into the words of Jehovah certain ethnographical notices concerning the earlier inhabitants of these lands, from which it is obvious that Edom and Moab had not destroyed them by their own power, but that Jehovah had destroyed them before them, as is expressly stated in Deuteronomy 2:21, Deuteronomy 2:22. "The Emim dwelt formerly therein," sc., in Ar and its territory, in Moabitis, "a high (i.e., strong) and numerous people, of gigantic stature, which were also reckoned among the Rephaites, like the Enakites (Anakim)." Emim, i.e., frightful, terrible, was the name given to them by the Moabites. Whether this earlier or original population of Moabitis was of Hamitic or Semitic descent cannot be determined, any more than the connection between the Emim and the Rephaim can be ascertained. On the Rephaim; and on the Anakites, at Numbers 13:22.