Deuteronomy 2
DOYLYChap. III. ver. 4.—all the region of Argob.] A small province, lying between Jordan and the mountains of Gilead; a little above the sea of Tiberias. This region was afterwards called Trachonitis, a Greek name, importing the ruggedness of the mountains. Bp. Patrick.
— is it not in Rabbath &c.] It is probable, that either Og conveyed his iron bedstead, with other furniture of his palace, into the country of the Ammonites, to prevent their falling into the hands of the Israelites: or else the Ammonites had taken it from him in some former conquest, and kept it as a monument of their victory. Pyle.
— nine cubits was the length thereof, &c.] Bedsteads being, according to the common custom, made a third part longer than the persons that lie in them, Og was perhaps about six cubits high; “after the cubit of a man,” that is, according to the cubit of ordinary men, which is a little more than half a yard. Bp. Patrick.
Some allowance may be made for the size of a royal bed: or king Og may have been possessed with the same kind of vanity, which occupied the mind of king Alexander, when he ordered his soldiers to enlarge the size of their beds, that they might give to the Indians in succeeding ages a great idea of the prodigious stature of a Macedonian. Bp. Watson.
The people of the East are extremely fond of corporeal greatness: and always consider it as a sign of the greatness of the soul, of courage, strength, and virtue. We found in Bactrians mummies of eight feet: but it is most likely, that the people bound up their dead at the greatest length, that posterity, discovering
Deuteronomy 2:4
4.—Ye are to pass through the coast] Or rather, near or by the coast, as the Hebrew particle may be rendered. They were not to “meddle with” the Edomites: not because the Edomites were too formidable an enemy; for it is said, “they shall be afraid of you:” but because God had bestowed that land upon Esau, Josh. xxiv. 4, and would not give to the Israelites thereof,
Before CHRIST 1451. to the treading of the sails of the fowl a Gen. 36. 8. The story is continued. Before CHRIST 1441. hand: he knoweth thy walking through this great wilderness: these forty years the LORD thy God hath been with thee; thou hast lacked nothing.
Deuteronomy 2:7
- — he knoweth thy walking] He hath directed and prospered thee in thy travels through a dangerous wilderness. See this signification of the word “knoweth” in Ps. i. 6; xxxi. 7. Bp. Patrick.
Deuteronomy 2:8
8.—from the river of Arnon unto mount Hermon:] This river was the bound of their country on the south; and Hermon, which was one of the mountains of Gilead, where it joins to Libanus, was their bound on the north. Hermon, said in the next verse to be called “Sirion” by the Sidonians, is called so in Ps. xxix. 6, and joined with Lebanon: for it was as much a part of Lebanon as of Gilead; these two mountains there meeting together. Whence Jeremiah calls Gilead the head of Lebanon, chap. xxii. 6; because Lebanon begins where Gilead ends. Bp. Patrick.
Deuteronomy 2:9
- — Ar] This was the principal city of the Moabites. Numb. xxi. 15, 28. It is here put for the country of the Moabites, as mount Seir in the first verse for that of the Edomites. Bp. Kidder. — unto the children of Lot] Though the Moabites were now a wicked people, yet, for the sake of their pious ancestor, God would not suffer them to be dispossessed. Bp. Patrick.
Deuteronomy 2:11
11.—a bedstead of iron:] That it might be strong enough to support his gigantick and weighty body; and yet not be too cumbersome, as it might have been if made of other materials. Dr. Wells. Such bedsteads were not unusual in ancient days, though much later than this. Thucydides says, that when the Thebans took Plates, they made beds of the brass and iron they found there. And beds of silver and gold are mentioned by other authors. Bp. Patrick.
Bedsteads of iron, brass, and other metals, are not
Bashan, and all his people: and we smote him until none was left to him remaining.
Deuteronomy 2:12
- — as Israel did unto the land of his possession,] Moses here alludes to what the Israelites had already done, in dispossessing Sihon and Og of their respective countries: which he had before given by God’s direction to the tribes of Reuben and Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh, Numb. xxxii. 33; xxxiv. 14, 15. Bp. Patrick. All these conquests of the Moabites over the Emims, and of the Edomites over the Horims, and of the Israelites themselves over the two kingdoms of the Amorites and of Bashan, are probably here noticed by Moses, to encourage the Israelites not to doubt, but The story is continued. Before CHRIST 1661. d Numb. 21. 21, 22.
Deuteronomy 2:26
- — I sent messengers out of the wilderness of Kedemoth] So called from a city of that name, mentioned among the cities given to the Reubenites, Josh. xiii. 18. Several weighty reasons may be assigned, why Moses took this course with Sihon, who was to be destroyed. 1. That the Israelites might be sensible, that their victory over Sihon was not owing to his fearfulness and want of courage, since he was so hardy as to refuse them a passage. 2. To strike terror by this example into the other nations which should be inclined to resist. 3. To give the Israelites a proof, that God’s counsel should stand, in that Sihon hardened himself, and refused the offer of peace. Bp. Kidder.
Deuteronomy 2:29
- (As the children of Esau &c. — did unto me;] He does not mean that they granted Israel a passage through their country: but that they did not refuse to sell them meat and drink, as they passed by their coasts. Bp. Patrick.
Deuteronomy 2:30
- — the Lord thy God hardened his spirit,] The Lord thy God gave him up to his own thoughts; and he put on stubborn resolutions against Israel. Bp. Hall.
When this haughty and obstinate prince denied the Israelites the courtesy of passing through his land, God, in punishment for the irreplaceable vices of his court and kingdom, left him to take the effects of his pride and passion. Pyle. God gave him over to his own inflexible humour, which was set upon violent courses; from which God did not divert him; but rather ordered things so, that his mind should be enraged and disturbed, and so unable to consider things prudently, and discern what belonged to his peace. This is the utmost that can be meant by “hardening his spirit, and making his heart obstinate:” which, as it is a sin, cannot be ascribed to God: but, as it is a punishment, might justly be inflicted by Him upon Sihon in return for his former sins. Bp. Patrick.
Deuteronomy 2:32
- Then Sihon came out against us,] Moses had sent ambassadours to the king of the Amorites with a peaceable request, that the Israelites might be permitted to pass through his land: and it does not appear, that they ever thought of forcing their way. But since, instead of acting on the defensive, which was all that in reason he should have done, Sihon placed himself at the head of his forces, and marched out to fight; the war,
even upon the common principles of equity, must be deemed unjust on his side, and his fate no more than be deserved. Stackhouse.
Deuteronomy 2:34
- — utterly destroyed the men, &c.] They being part of those wicked people the Amorites, whom God had condemned to utter destruction. For the Amorites came out of Canaan, and took this country from the Moabites, and the children of Ammon. Bp. Patrick.
In reading the Old Testament account of the Jewish wars and the conquests in Canaan, and the terrible destruction brought upon the inhabitants thereof, we are constantly to bear in mind, that we are reading the execution of a dreadful, but just, sentence, pronounced by God against the intolerable and incorrigible crimes of these nations:—that they were intended to be made an example to the whole world of God’s avenging wrath against sins of such a magnitude and such a kind; sins, which, if they had been suffered to continue, might have polluted the whole ancient world, and which could only be checked by the signal and public overthrow of nations notoriously addicted to them, and so addicted, as to have incorporated them even into their religious and their public institutions:—that the miseries, inflicted upon the nations by the invasion of the Jews, were expressly declared to be inflicted on account of their abominable sins:—that God had borne with them long:—that He did not proceed to execute His judgments till their wickedness was full:—that the Israelites were mere instruments in the hands of a righteous Providence for effecting the extermination of a people, whom it was necessary to make a public example to the rest of mankind:—that this extermination, which might have been accomplished by a pestilence, by fire, by earthquakes, was appointed to be done by the hands of the Israelites, as being the clearest and most intelligible method of displaying the power and righteousness of the God of Israel; His power over the pretended gods of other nations, and His righteous hatred of the crimes into which they were fallen.
This is the true statement of the case. It is no forced or invented construction, but the idea of the transaction set forth in Scripture: and it is an idea, which, if retained in our thoughts, may fairly, I think, reconcile us to every thing which we read in the Old Testament concerning it. Archdeacon Paley. See the note on chap. vii. 24.
The story of the conquest of Og king of Bashan. Before CHRIST 1451.