Numbers 21:35

So they smote him and his sons, and all his people,.... They engaged in battle with him, slew him and his sons that came with him, and all his armies; and which consisted, as is probable, of all able

Verse 35. So they smote him, and his sons] There is a curious note of Dr. Lightfoot here, of which I should think it wrong to deprive the reader. "Sihon and Og conquered, A. M. 2553. Of the life of Moses, 120. From the Exodus, 40. It is now six and twenty generations from the creation, or from Adam to Moses; and accordingly doth Psa. cxxxvi, rehearse the durableness of God's mercy six and twenty times over, beginning the story with the creation, and ending it in the conquest of Sihon and Og. The numerals of the name יהוה Jehovah amount to the sum of six and twenty." ON some difficulties in this chapter Dr. Kennicott makes the following observations: - "This one chapter has several very considerable difficulties; and some verses, as now translated, are remarkably unintelligible, A true state of this chapter is not, however, to be despaired of; and it has in it some circumstances which merit more than common attention. It contains the history of the last part of the travels of the Israelites in their way to the promised land; beginning with them at Mount Hor, the thirty-fourth encampment, and concluding with them, as in their forty-second and last encampment, near Jordan, in the country which they had acquired by conquest over Sihon, king of the Amorites. "It begins with saying - that King Arad, the Canaanite, who dwelt in the south, (in the land of Canaan, Numbers 33:40), attacked Israel and was defeated, and that Israel destroyed their cities; and that, after destroying these Canaanite cities, and consequently after being in a part of Canaan, a part of the very country they were going to, on the west of the Dead Sea, they returned towards the Red Sea, and near the eastern tongue or gulf of the Red Sea, on the south of Edom, marched round Edom to the east of the Dead Sea, in order to enter Canaan from the east side of Jordan! "This surprising representation of so vast and dangerous a march, quite unnecessarily performed, is owing to two circumstances. The first is, (Numbers 21:1), the Canaanites heard that Israel was coming by the way of the spies, meaning, by the way the spies went from Kadesh-Barnea into Canaan. But this being impossible, because Israel had now marched from Meribah-Kadesh to Mount Hor, beyond Ezion-gaber, and were turning round Edom, to the south-east; it is happy that the word rendered spies, in our version, is in the Greek a proper name, (Atharim,) which removes that difficulty: and the other difficulty (Numbers 21:2-3) is removed by the Greek version likewise, according to which, the vow made, with the facts subsequent, does not signify destroying the Canaanite cities, but devoting them to destruction at some future time. See Wall's Crit. Notes.

35. and his sons] These words are absent from Deuteronomy 3:3; but cf. Numbers 2:33.

35. There was none left him alive — As in the case of Sihon and his kingdom — “We utterly destroyed the men and the women and the little ones of every city; we left none to remain.” Deuteronomy 2:34.