Deuteronomy 2:16

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

All the men of war were consumed and dead. 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; but that outbreak only filled up the measure of their iniquities. For that generation, though not universally abandoned to paganish 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 (Ezekiel 20:25; Amos 5:25; Amos 5:27; Acts 7:42). "When all the men of war were consumed and dead," then, and not before, was the Jewish host permitted to invade the country in which they were finally to settle-then, not before, were they permitted to combat and to conquer, (Graves, 'Dissertation,' 1:, Lect. 6:)