A Conquered Kingdom and a Crossing Denied

Bashan is the high basalt plateau east of the Sea of Galilee, so “went up” is literal. Its cattle and oaks became bywords (Amos 4:1, Isaiah 2:13). Edrei, where Og meets them, is usually placed at modern Dar’a on the Syrian side of the Yarmuk. Numbers 21:33 records the same march in almost the same words.

God’s reassurance repeats Numbers 21:34 nearly word for word, and it argues from precedent: do to Og what was done to Sihon. Sihon’s capital, Heshbon, lay on the tableland east of the northern end of the Dead Sea, at the site now called Tell Hesban.

“None was left to him remaining” renders a Hebrew idiom built on sarid, a survivor, the word for whoever slips out of a disaster. The little word “also” carries the argument of 3:2: the second king went the way of the first.

Threescore is sixty. Argob probably means a heap or clod of stones, and many place it in the rough lava field later called Trachonitis. Solomon’s sixth district officer still governs “the region of Argob, which is in Bashan, threescore great cities with walls and brasen bars” (1 Kings 4:13).

In 1611 “fenced” meant fortified, the fence being a defence. Bars were the beams dropped across a city gate from inside. The “unwalled towns” are literally towns of the perazi, open country villages without walls, the settlements that would have fallen with any fortress nearby.

“Utterly destroyed” is the Hebrew charam, to devote something wholly to God and so take it out of human use, which in war meant killing it. The verb is doubled in the second clause, a Hebrew way of pressing the point, and the phrase “as we did unto Sihon” points back to 2:34.

“Prey” keeps its older English sense of booty. Here the ban falls on people and not on livestock. At Jericho everything was devoted (Joshua 6:17-19), which is why Achan’s theft mattered, and Saul was told to destroy the animals of Amalek as well (1 Samuel 15:3).

“This side Jordan” translates a phrase that literally says “across the Jordan”. In Deuteronomy it means whichever side the speaker is not facing; here Moses stands east of the river. The span runs from the Arnon gorge, midway down the Dead Sea, to Hermon at the northern end.

Sirion turns up again in Psalm 29:6, where Lebanon and Sirion skip like young oxen, and Shenir beside Hermon in Song of Solomon 4:8. Hermon itself shares a root with charam in 3:6: a mountain set apart. The parenthesis sounds like a scribe’s gloss for a reader who knows the other names.

“The plain” here is the mishor, the level tableland north of the Arnon around Medeba, not the Jordan valley. Salchah, modern Salkhad on the slopes of the Jebel Druze, marks Bashan’s eastern edge, and Edrei its south-western one, so the two names bracket Og’s kingdom.

“Giants” is Rephaim, an old people named again in 2:11. Nine by four cubits of an ordinary forearm is about thirteen by six feet. Some read eres barzel as a coffin of black basalt, a stone that looks like iron and is everywhere in Bashan; that is a proposal, not the text’s claim.

Aroer stood on the north lip of the Arnon gorge. Mesha, king of Moab, boasts on his stele of around 840 BC that he rebuilt Aroer and made the road at the Arnon, and that the men of Gad had lived in Ataroth from of old. Half Gilead is the part south of the Jabbok.

The half tribe of Manasseh receives the richest pasture east of the river. The clause “which was called the land of giants” is one of the antiquarian notes Deuteronomy 2 and 3 keep making about who held a region before, as with the Emim and the Zamzummim in 2:10-11 and 2:20.

“Son” means descendant: 1 Chronicles 2:21-22 makes Jair the grandson of Hezron through a daughter of Machir. Havoth-jair means the tent villages of Jair. Geshur survived him, and Absalom’s mother Maacah was the daughter of Geshur’s king (2 Samuel 3:3). “Unto this day” speaks from a later vantage.

The shortest line in the allotment. Machir was Manasseh’s firstborn (Joshua 17:1) and the father of Gilead (Numbers 26:29), so the clan receives the region that bears its own son’s name. Deborah’s song still counts Machir among the tribes that came down to fight (Judges 5:14).

“Half the valley” means the middle of the Arnon’s bed, the river itself as the line. The Jabbok is the stream Jacob crossed the night he wrestled (Genesis 32:22); its upper course bends south round Rabbah, which is why it can serve as the border with Ammon.

The plain here is a different Hebrew word, the Arabah, the deep rift of the Jordan. Chinnereth is the lake later called Galilee, and the sea of the plain is the Dead Sea, glossed at once as the salt sea. Ashdoth-pisgah means the slopes of Pisgah, where the eastern hills fall into the rift.

“Armed” is chalutsim, men stripped and equipped for action, and “meet” is the old English for fit. Moses is quoting the settlement of Numbers 32:20-22. Joshua repeats this charge to the same tribes the week of the crossing (Joshua 1:12-15).

“Little ones” is taph, children too young to march. In Numbers 32:16 the tribes proposed sheepfolds for the cattle and cities for the children, livestock first. Moses answered in 32:24 by putting the children first. Here the order stands as he corrected it: wives, little ones, then cattle.

The verb for giving rest is nuach, to settle down after movement. The condition is met in Joshua 22:4, where Joshua sends these tribes home because the LORD has given their brethren rest. “Beyond Jordan” now means the west bank, the reverse of 3:8, since the phrase follows the speaker’s standpoint.

Sihon and Og become a fixed pair in Israel’s memory. Rahab names both to the spies at Jericho as the news that melted Canaan’s heart (Joshua 2:10), and Psalms 135 and 136 sing them by name. Joshua is the one man in the room who saw both falls and will face what that report produced.

Though Joshua is addressed, the verb “ye shall not fear” is plural, spoken through him to the army. “The LORD your God he shall fight for you” is the promise of the Red Sea (Exodus 14:14), and the very words Moses used at Kadesh in 1:30, when nobody believed him.

“Besought” is va’etchanan, from chanan, to ask for grace one has no claim to. The synagogue’s weekly reading that begins here, running to 7:11, takes its name from this word. The request that follows is the only prayer of Moses for himself that Deuteronomy records.

The capitals in “Lord GOD” mark the divine name, which the King James sets as GOD when it follows Adonai. Moses, at a hundred and twenty, calls everything since Egypt a beginning. “What God is there” echoes the question of the song at the sea, “Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods?” (Exodus 15:11).

“Let me go over” is e’berah, from avar, to cross. “That goodly mountain” is the hill country west of the Jordan; the Targum and Rashi took it as Zion and Lebanon as the temple, a later reading. Lebanon’s name comes from laban, white, for the snow on its range.

The verb for “was wroth” is vayit’abber, from avar, the root of Moses’ “let me go over”: he asks to cross, and God crosses into anger. “Let it suffice thee” is rav lakh, “enough for you”, the phrase Moses flung at Korah in Numbers 16:7 and used of the long stay at Horeb in 1:6.

Pisgah is a headland of the Abarim range above the Dead Sea. The four directions echo God’s word to Abram in Genesis 13:14: lift up now thine eyes northward, southward, eastward and westward. The patriarch’s look came with a promise; Moses’ comes with a limit. Deuteronomy 34:1-4 carries it out.

“Encourage” and “strengthen” are chazzeq and ammets, the two verbs that become the charge “be strong and of a good courage” in 31:7 and four times in Joshua 1. “Cause them to inherit” is a causative form of nachal: Joshua will be the one who distributes the land by lot.

Beth-peor means house of Peor, the shrine where Israel joined itself to Baal-peor (Numbers 25:3). The camp sits opposite the place of its last great sin, and 4:3 is about to name it. Moses will be buried in this same valley over against Beth-peor (34:6).