Judgment, Healing, and the First Occupied Kingdoms

“King Arad” reads the city as a man’s name; the Hebrew is “the Canaanite, the king of Arad”, a town in the Negev. “The way of the spies” renders haatharim, a word found only here, taken by the KJV from tur, to spy, and by others as a place name, Atharim.

“Utterly destroy” is hacharamti, “I will devote”, the ban, cherem, under which nothing taken may be kept. The vow has the shape of Jacob’s at Bethel in Genesis 28:20: if God will do this, then I will do that.

Hormah takes its name from the same cherem. Judges 1:17 records Judah and Simeon destroying Zephath, “and the name of the city was called Hormah”, which may be the same naming told from the later side.

“Discouraged” is literally “the soul of the people was short”, impatient, spent. Exodus 6:9 used a close idiom for Israel in Egypt, who would not listen to Moses “for anguish of spirit”, literally shortness of spirit.

For the first time the people speak against God by name, Elohim, and not only against Moses. “Light bread” is qeloqel, a contemptuous word found only here, “worthless” or “wretched”, from qalal, to be light or despised.

“Fiery serpents” is nechashim serafim, “burning serpents”, perhaps from the burn of the venom; seraf is the word behind the seraphim of Isaiah 6:2. Deuteronomy 8:15 remembers “that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents”.

The confession names both parties, “against the LORD, and against thee”, the two the people spoke against in verse 5. “Prayed” is palal, the verb of intercession used of Moses at Taberah in 11:2.

“A fiery serpent” is in Hebrew simply “a seraph”, with no word for serpent. “Pole” is nes, a standard or banner, the word Moses used at the altar after Amalek in Exodus 17:15, “Jehovah-nissi”, the LORD my banner.

“Serpent of brass” is nechash nechoshet: serpent and bronze share the same letters. A copper serpent about five inches long was found in a Midianite shrine at Timna, in the Arabah, near the route this chapter follows.

Oboth probably means “water-skins”. The fuller itinerary of 33:41–43 puts Zalmonah and Punon, a copper-mining site, between Mount Hor and Oboth.

Ije-abarim means “ruins of Abarim”, the range east of the Dead Sea from which Moses is later told to view the land (27:12). “Toward the sunrising” puts the camp east of Moab: Israel skirts Moab on the desert side.

Zared, or Zered, is the wadi running into the south end of the Dead Sea, the border between Edom and Moab. Deuteronomy 2:13–14 marks the crossing of it as the end of the thirty-eight years.

Arnon is the deep gorge now called Wadi Mujib, entering the Dead Sea at about its midpoint. Camping on its far side, the north, Israel stands on land that was Amorite, not Moabite.

“What he did in the Red sea” is in Hebrew vahev besufah, most likely a place, “Waheb in Suphah”, whose meaning was lost early. The book of the wars of the LORD is one of the lost works the Old Testament cites, like the book of Jasher in Joshua 10:13.

“Stream” is eshed, the slope or fall of the wadis. Ar is a Moabite city or district, which Deuteronomy 2:9 says the LORD had given to the children of Lot, and so was not to be touched.

Beer simply means “well”. “Gather the people together” is the command of 20:8 at Meribah, given now on an occasion when no one has complained at all.

“Then Israel sang” is az yashir Yisrael, the same opening as Exodus 15:1, az yashir Moshe, “Then sang Moses”. “Spring up” is alee, “go up”, the verb of going up into the land, spoken to water. “Sing ye unto it” is anu, to answer in song, as Miriam answered in Exodus 15:21.

“Lawgiver” is mechoqeq, a ruler’s staff or the one who holds it, the word of Genesis 49:10, “nor a lawgiver from between his feet”. The staves are walking staffs, not spades. Mattanah means “gift”.

Nahaliel means “wadi of God”. Bamoth means “high places”, heights where Moab worshipped; Balak brings Balaam to “the high places of Baal”, Bamoth-baal, in 22:41.

Pisgah is the ridge of Abarim from which Moses views the land before he dies (Deuteronomy 34:1), and Balak brings Balaam to “the top of Pisgah” in 23:14. Jeshimon means “the waste”, the barren ground north of the Dead Sea.

Deuteronomy 2:26 names where the embassy was sent from, the wilderness of Kedemoth, and calls its message “words of peace”. Judges 11:19 retells it in Jephthah’s reply to Ammon.

The message to Sihon is shorter than the one to Edom: no history, no claim of kinship, no offer to pay for water. Sihon is not a brother, and the request is reduced to the promise about the road.

Jahaz lay on the plateau north of the Arnon and became a Levite town of Reuben (Joshua 21:36). The Mesha Stele names it among the places the king of Moab says he took back from Israel.

“Edge of the sword” is literally “mouth of the sword”, the blade pictured as devouring. The Jabbok is the river where Jacob wrestled (Genesis 32:22). “Strong” is az, which the Greek read as a name: “for Jazer is the border of the children of Ammon”.

“Villages” is literally “daughters”, the dependent towns around a mother city, an idiom the chapter uses again in verse 32. Heshbon is Tell Hesban, on the plateau east of the Jordan’s mouth. Israel dwells in cities for the first time since Egypt.

The note explains why Israel could hold land north of the Arnon without taking it from Moab: it was already Amorite by conquest. Jephthah makes exactly this argument to the king of Ammon in Judges 11:15–26: “Israel took not away the land of Moab”.

“They that speak in proverbs” is hammoshlim, singers of meshalim, taunting verses. The same word names Balaam’s oracles in the next chapters: “he took up his parable” (23:7).

Jeremiah 48:45 quotes this line against Moab centuries later: “a fire shall come forth out of Heshbon, and a flame from the midst of Sihon”. Ar and the heights of the Arnon mark Moab’s southern reaches.

Chemosh is the national god of Moab, named on the Mesha Stele, where Mesha says Chemosh had been angry with his land. The poem has the god hand over his own sons and daughters, and Jeremiah 48:46 repeats its woe.

The Hebrew of this verse is among the most obscure in Numbers; “We have shot at them” may instead mean “their lamp has perished”. Dibon is Dhiban, where the Mesha Stele was found in 1868; Medeba is Madaba, south of Heshbon.

The verb is yashav, to settle or dwell. Until now Israel has camped; here it lives in the land of a defeated king, east of the Jordan and before any crossing.

Jaazer, near the border of Ammon, later became a Levite city of Gad (Joshua 21:39). In 32:1 Reuben and Gad see that “the land of Jazer” is good for cattle, and ask to stay there.

Bashan is the high tableland east of the Sea of Galilee, famed for cattle and oaks (Amos 4:1; Isaiah 2:13). Edrei is modern Daraa in southern Syria. Deuteronomy 3:11 says Og’s iron bedstead was nine cubits long.

“I have delivered him” is in the past tense: the battle is spoken of as already won. Deuteronomy 3:2 repeats the words exactly, “Fear him not: for I will deliver him”, as the first thing Moses recalls of Bashan.

“None left him alive” uses sarid, a survivor, as Deuteronomy 3:3 does. Og’s land goes to half the tribe of Manasseh in 32:33. Psalm 136:19–20 sings the two kings side by side: “Sihon king of the Amorites… And Og the king of Bashan”.