Bible Strands
Deuteronomy 23:4
For they did not meet you with food and water on your way out of Egypt, and they hired Balaam son of Beor from Pethor in Aram-naharaim to curse you.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Moses addresses the Israelites assembled on the plains of Moab, just before they cross the Jordan into the Promised Land, as he codifies laws regarding tribal exclusion.
The words — קִדְּמ֤וּ (ki.de.Mu) = they met/provided, paired with לֹא (lo'-) = not, establishes the literal denial of basic sustenance during the Exodus journey.
The thread — The failure to provide hospitality resurfaces in Nehemiah 13:2 as a historical precedent for exclusion, while Deuteronomy 2:28 records the Moabites previously offering to sell food and water, and Deuteronomy 23:5 immediately follows with God’s reversal of the intended curse.
Why it lands — It requires readers to treat hospitality as a covenant boundary and to recognize that spiritual opposition to God’s people is ultimately subject to His sovereign blessing.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Because they met you not with bread and with water in the way, when ye came forth out of Egypt; and because they hired against thee Balaam the son of Beor of Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse thee.
Cross-references
- Nehemiah 13:2 because they had not met the Israelites with food and water, but had hired Balaam to call down a curse against them (although our God had turned the curse into a blessing).
- 2 Peter 2:15 They have left the straight way and wandered off to follow the way of Balaam son of Beor, who loved the wages of wickedness.
- Deuteronomy 2:28 You can sell us food to eat and water to drink in exchange for silver. Only let us pass through on foot,
- 1 Kings 18:4 for when Jezebel had slaughtered the prophets of the LORD, Obadiah had taken a hundred prophets and hidden them, fifty men per cave, providing them with food and water.)
- Numbers 22:5 he sent messengers to summon Balaam son of Beor at Pethor, which is by the Euphrates in the land of his people. “Behold, a people has come out of Egypt,” said Balak. “They cover the face of the land and have settled next to me.
- Numbers 22:17 for I will honor you richly and do whatever you say. So please come and put a curse on this people for me!’”
- Numbers 23:7 And Balaam lifted up an oracle, saying: “Balak brought me from Aram, the king of Moab from the mountains of the east. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘put a curse on Jacob for me; come and denounce Israel!’
- 1 Samuel 25:11 Why should I take my bread and water and the meat I have slaughtered for my shearers, and give them to these men whose origin I do not know?”
- Zechariah 2:8 For this is what the LORD of Hosts says: “After His Glory has sent Me against the nations that have plundered you—for whoever touches you touches the apple of His eye—
- Matthew 25:40 And the King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me.’