Victories Over King Sihon and King Og

(Deuteronomy 2:26 - 3:11)
Moses continued, "Then Jehovah urged us, 'Resume your journey and cross the Arnon Gorge.  I am delivering to you the Amorite, King Sihon of Heshbon, and his country.  Commence your invasion and engage his forces in battle.  From this day I will put the fear of you into the hearts of all the nations under the sun.  They will hear reports of you that will make them tremble with dread terror.'

"From the desert of Kedemoth I dispatched ambassadors to present King Sihon with a message of peace.  It said, 'Grant us passage through your country.  We will stay on the main route, wandering off neither to the right nor to the left.  You may sell us food to eat and water to drink, and we will pay for it.  All we ask is safe passage through your land, as was granted to us by the descendants of Esau of Seir and the Moabites of Ar.  We wish passage through your land only until we can cross the River Jordan to the land that Jehovah our god is giving to us.'

"But King Sihon of Heshbon would not grant us passage, for your god Jehovah made his spirit stubborn and his heart defiant so that he would fall into your hands, as he has now done.  Jehovah told me, 'See, I have already begun to deliver King Sihon and his country into your hands!  Now invade and start occupying his land!'

"King Sihon and his entire army came out to do battle with us at Jahaz.  But our god Jehovah delivered him into our hands and we defeated him, his sons, and his army.  At that time we also captured all his cities and, as a divine offering, consigned to destruction every city, as well as every man, woman, and child.  No survivors were spared.  But we took for ourselves as spoils of war their livestock and anything of value that we could plunder from their towns.  From Aroer, on the edge of the Arnon Gorge, from the city within the gorge all the way to Gilead, not one town could prevail against us.  Our god Jehovah delivered them all into our hands.  But you did not invade any of the lands belonging to the Ammonites, neither the territory along the Jabbok River nor the towns of the hill country, that which was forbidden to us by Jehovah our god.

"Next we changed direction and marched up to Bashan.  King Og and his entire army came out against us and engaged us in battle at Edrei.  But Jehovah said to me, 'Don't be afraid of him, for I am delivering him, his people, and his country into your hands.  And will do to him what you did to the Amorite King Sihon who ruled from Heshbon.’

"And Jehovah our god delivered into our hands Og, the King of Bashan, and his people.  We killed them all, leaving not a man left alive.  At the same time we captured all his cities.  Not one of the 60 cities in the region of Argob (part of the kingdom of Og of Bashan) did we fail to take from them.  All of these cities were fortified with high walls, gates, and bars, and there were a great many unwalled villages as well.  We consigned them to complete destruction as a divine offering, as we did with those of King Sihon of Heshbon, every city --  and every man, woman, and child.  But all their livestock and the loot plundered from their cities we kept for ourselves.  At that time we acquired from these two kings all the Amorite territory east of the Jordan, from the Arnon gorges to Mount Hermon."  (Hermon is called Sirion by the Sidonians and Senir by the Amorites.)

"We had now conquered all the cities of the plain, the entirety of Gilead and Bashan as far as Salecah and Edrei, cities that were part of the kingdom ruled by Og of Bashan."  (Og, the king of Bashan, was the last surviving member of the Rephaim.  His bed, the frame of which was decorated with iron, was 9 cubits long by 4 cubits wide, according to the generally accepted value of the cubit.  It still can be viewed in the Ammonite city of Rabbah.)

Notes
1. Moses, in recounting the Israelite victories over the kings Sihon and Og, is revisiting recent history well known to his audience.  He is not above bragging quite a bit and takes delight in extolling what we would regard as genocidal atrocities.  I should again be mentioned that the rapid conquest of Transjordan by a tribe of nomads who have been wandering about the Sinai for 40 years is spectacular, but not supported at all by history.

2. Moses' promise to King Sihon that his people want only to peaceably pass through the country is nothing if not false and dishonest.  He has already been ordered by his god to make war upon Sihon and wrest his country from him, so Moses has no intention of honoring any promise he might make to Sihon.  Jehovah incites war between the Israelites and Sihon's kingdom by inducing Sihon to turn down the Israelite request.  (Does Jehovah get into people's minds and compel them to make decisions against their best interests?)  Then he helps the Israelites win on the battlefield against Sihon and, later, against Og.  What he actually does is not described.  Is his help on the battlefield merely psychological?  Does he put courage into the hearts of one side and cowardly thoughts into the minds of the other?  Or does he personally kill members of the opposing army and intervene in personal combats?   The Israelites must be indifferent and ineffectual warriors since they can't ever win a battle without Jehovah's aid.  In a fair fight, exempt from "divine" intervention, the Israelites are never anything but losers.

3. Og, always portrayed as a giant, was a mythic figure who had a colorful life outside the Bible.  Here the author claims that Og is the last surviving member of the Rephaim, a race of giants.  This is contradicted by other books of the Bible where giants such as Goliath appear hundreds of years later.  A bed used by Og apparently existed and was on display at Rabbah at the time Deuteronomy was written.  (One would think this would be any time during the 8th to 6th Centuries BC.)  This sounds like one of those dubious tourist attractions like Merlin's Cave or the Spear of Longinus.  It should be kept in mind that the reference to Og's stature does not appear in Moses' speech, but in the author's commentary upon it.

4. Some have translated the "bed of Og" as a sarcophagus.  That few sarcophagi are decorated with iron militates against this interpretation.  The only reason for mentioning the bed is to illustrate the giant stature of Og.  The size of a sarcophagus would not necessarily indicate the size of its occupant.  One would conclude that only a bed of iron could support him.  While bedsteads, even ones of bronze, were not unknown at that time, one could not have been made of iron, for it was impossible in ancient times to cast such a large object in that metal.  Besides, the Iron Age had not yet begun, and the forging and casting of iron was unknown before 1200 BC.   (Iron bedsteads weren't made until the 18th Century, and by the 1840's had become quite popular.)  Accepting that the bed existed and constructed centuries after Og, small decorations in worked iron might have been appliqued to a bed frame of wood.  This, as well as its size, would have made it worthy of note.  Otherwise, the account is merely fanciful.

5. The bed of Og at 9 by 4 cubits would be 13 1/2 by 6 feet, a cubit being a foot and a half.  This would furnish quite a lot of leg room even for the tallest man who ever lived, Robert Wadlow, the Alton Giant, who was just under 9 feet tall.  Giants rarely live a normal life span -- and the Israelites made sure that Og didn't either, if he indeed was a giant.  (Unless you accept the myth that Og was a survivor of the Flood.)  But the Bible asserts that Og was from a race of giants and that, therefore, his great stature was, for him and his race, normal.   The Watusi of central Africa might be considered a race of giants, but the average height of adult males is only 6 feet, 6 inches.  There is no anthropological evidence that any race of humans achieved the stature attributed to Og and the Rephaim.  The largest species of Gigantopithicus may have stood 10 feet tall, but it was an ape and not a man, and it went extinct 100,000 years ago. ---  Of course maybe Og was only 7 feet or so, but made a gigantic bed to delude people into believing he was even taller.  Self-aggrandizement was certainly not uncommon among the ancients, for we have seen a great deal of it in the biblical accounts of the Israelites.

6. The Arnon River, now known as Wadi Mujib, flows from the east into the Dead Sea at about its mid point north and south.  Its banks form spectacular gorges.  Also east of the middle of the Dead Sea was Kedemoth, which would become the easternmost city of Reubenite territory.  It was just east of Sihon’s kingdom and Heshbon and just north of the Arnon.  Jahaz is south of Heshbon.  Aroer, a Moabite city, was on the north bank of the Arnon River, 10 miles from its mouth.  The Jabbok River, now called the Zarqua, flows southwest into the River Jordan 20 miles north of the Dead Sea.  It forms a significant watershed with a wide river valley.  (Sadly it is now horribly polluted.)   Gilead is the northern region east of the Jordan, south of Bashan, the Golan Heights.  Edrei is in the eastern part of Bashan.  Argob, also called Lajat and Trachonitis, is an area of raised, craggy rock 20 by 30 miles in eastern Bashan.  It is noted for its 60 walled cities.  The massive construction of the architecture gave raise to the belief that it was built by giants.  Mount Hermon, actually consisting of three peaks and rising as high as 9000 feet, is situated in the northernmost part of the Golan Heights in territory still occupied by modern Syria, but on the Lebanese border.  Rabbah, the Ammonite capital, was located well to the east, near the border of the Arabian desert but also near the Jabbok River. It was destroyed in the 6th Century BC, but was later rebuilt in Hellenistic times and renamed Philadelphia.

Moses Addresses His People

(Deuteronomy 1:1 - 1:18)
These are the words Moses said to the people of Israel while they were encamped in the desert wastelands beyond the River Jordan in Arabah opposite Suph, between the towns of Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Dizahab.  It is an 11 day journey from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea by way of Mount Seir.  But it had been 40 years since the Israelites had left Egypt, and it was on the 1st day of the 11th month [Shevat] that Moses addressed the people of Israel to tell them all that Jehovah had commanded him to say.  (This took place after he had defeated King Sihon of the Amorites, who ruled from Heshbon, and King Og of Bashan, who ruled from Ashtaroth near Edrei.) While the Israelites were still in Moab, east of the River Jordan, Moses began to explain the commandments.  He began thusly:

"Our god Jehovah told us when we were in Horeb, 'You have tarried long enough at this mountain!  Break camp and resume your journey.  Advance into the hill country inhabited by the Amorites and the neighboring peoples, into Arabah, the uplands and the lowlands, into the Negev, the coastlands, the lands of the Canaanites, and Lebanon as far as the Euphrates River.  See, I am offering this land to you.  Invade it and take possession of the land I, Jehovah, promised to your forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to their descendants after them.'

"At that time I told you, ‘I’m not able to bear the burden of leading you alone.  Your god Jehovah has so increased your population that you are now as numerous as the stars in the sky.  --- And may Jehovah, the god of your fathers, multiply you a thousand times more and bless you, as he has promised to do.  --- But how can I assume the responsibilities you place upon me and deal with all your problems and disputes by myself?  So choose from each tribe men who are respected for their wisdom and judgment; I will make them your leaders.'  And you responded, 'What you propose is good for us.’  And so I took the wise and respected men selected by each of your tribes and appointed them to positions of authority over you, some responsible for a 1000 men, some 100, some 50, and others 10.  I charged the judges at that time, 'Hear cases of your fellow Israelites and resident aliens with equal fairness and render your decisions justly.  Show no impartiality between the great and the lowly.  Do not be intimidated by men, for the justice you administer is from God.  But any cases that are too difficult for you to decide, you may bring to me and I will handle them.'  At that time I instructed you in all that you were required to do."

Notes
1. In an address to his people, Moses recaps the history of the Israelites since they left Egypt.  This is rather like an old movie serial when, about two-thirds of the way through, a chapter is devoted to retelling the story so far, for the sake of viewers who missed earlier chapters or had lost the thread of the story.  One wonders how Moses could have addressed the entirety of his people, but perhaps he only spoke to the elders.  This is one of the few times when Moses expresses his own thoughts, tells his own story, and is not merely a mouthpiece of Jehovah.  Recounting what is now history, he speaks to those who, if they experienced the Exodus and subsequent events at all, were children at the time.

2. Moses spoke to his people on the 30th day of Shevat, about late January or February.

2. The Amorites in the Bible were Canaanites who occupied the uplands east of the River Jordan.  They are often described as giants.  They are probably not synonymous with the Amorites that figure in the history of Mesopotamia and Syria.  Bashan is now referred to as the Golan Heights, an area formerly in Syria, but most of which has been occupied since 1967 by Israel.  Heshbon, in modern Jordan, is northeast of the Dead Sea.  Horeb is another name of the Sinai.  Arabah refers to the Jordan Valley.

3. The decision that Moses made to delegate authority was suggested by his father-in-law Jethro, the Midianite.  Perhaps  because the Israelites have already totally exterminated the Midianites, a virtual genocide, Moses prefers to forget this fact.

4. Moses chooses to mention at the beginning of his remarks the appointment of judges.  Although their concepts of law would have been inherited from the Babylonians or acquired from the Egyptians, it is nevertheless admirable that the early Israelites, whose society and lifestyle was far more primitive, retained and fully embraced a fairly sophisticated and civilized legal system.