The stream Israel is ordered to cross at the exact hinge of Deuteronomy 2 — ‘rise up and cross the brook Zered’ (v13) — and the boundary the chapter’s own chronology is built on: v14 states that the whole span from Kadesh-barnea to this crossing was thirty-eight years, ‘until the whole generation of the men of war had perished.’ Usually identified with the Wadi al-Hasa, the deep gorge that still marks the traditional line between Edom and Moab.