“ And Israel sent messengers to Sihon king of the Amorites, the king of Heshbon, and Israel said to him, ‘Let us pass, we pray you, through your land to my place.”
Israel had not only been generous to Moab they had also dealt in a friendly way with Sihon and the Amorites, with their capital city at Heshbon. All they had asked to do was pass through without fighting. They had had no intention of conquest. They had just wanted to reach ‘their place' safely, the land which Yahweh had promised to them and which was therefore theirs. It was Sihon who insisted on fighting for the land. Israel's behaviour was thus in contrast to Ammon's now, for Ammon were positively invading it without provocation.