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Num_21:33-35
Advancing northward, the Hebrew host, on crossing the brook Zered, which enters the Dead Sea near the southern end, ended their long pilgrimage in the wilderness, and entered into a cultivated and settled country. That country belonged to the Moabites, who had been driven into the narrow southern tract on the east of the Dead Sea, between the brook Zered and the river Arnon, by the Amorites, who had dispossessed them of a much finer and larger country to the north of that river. The Amorites, who had thus established themselves in the country east of the Jordan, seem to have been a colony sent forth by the same nation in Canaan. Probably the great increase of their numbers had rendered their possessions in the west country too narrow for them, and had induced a proportion of the most daring of them to seek, under warlike leaders, new settlements in the eastern region, then inhabited by less ancient and powerful nations than those which divided the land of Canaan, and not allied to them by the same ties of consanguinity and ancient neighborhood. The Amorites were among the nations whose territories were promised to the Israelites; yet it is clear that Moses did not consider that this applied to any but their ancient territories in the proper Canaan west of the river, and that he did not at all contemplate any acquisitions on the east of the Jordan. It had been expressly forbidden to enter into any treaty or compact with the people of Canaan, yet Moses sent to ask the permission of Sihon, the king of eastern Amorites, to pass through his territory, with, the same offer that had been made to Edom, of leaving the inhabitants unmolested on their march, and of purchasing all the victuals required—and he asks it as leave to pass “to the land which the Lord our God hath given us”—clearly distinguishing the western country as that alone to which their attention was directed. Sihon, however, not, only refused this request, but did what the king of Edom had only threatened—came out in arms against them. The conflict which it then became impossible to avoid, was thus by no means of Moses seeking, or its result contemplated by him. That result was, that Sihon was utterly defeated, and the Israelites, quite beyond their calculations, found themselves in possession of a fine country, full of towns and villages. What was of more immediate importance to them, they had secured a free passage to the Jordan, and, if left unmolested, would have sought no further warfare or conquest on the east of the river. But Og, the king of Bashan, whose territories lay to the north of those of which Sihon had been dispossessed, by no means relished the presence of his new neighbors, and burned to avenge the overthrow of his friends and allies. Although, therefore, he had no immediate interest in the matter, seeing that the Israelites had nothing to ask of him, he collected his forces, and marched to give them battle. He was in his turn defeated and slain, and thus Israel became possessed of two kingdoms—whose united territories extended from the river Arnon to the roots of Lebanon—forming one of the finest countries in the world, well wooded, and full of rich pastures. Thus Israel began its career of conquest by acquiring a valuable possession over and above what had been promised to them; and by this their faith must have been much encouraged.
But there is more to be said of king Og. He was the last member of an old gigantic race, which had long held away on this side of the river. It is in Deu_3:11, that we read more of him—“Only Og remained of the remnant of the giants: behold his bedstead was a bedstead of iron: is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth thereof, after the cubit of a man.” This length we take to be thirteen and a-half feet, at the rate of half a yard to a cubit. But a man’s bedstead is usually larger than himself, yet not so much larger but that it might be taken as some indication of the length of his stature. It is so intended in the text, which clearly shows that then, as now, bedsteads were not much longer than the person who lay in them. If, therefore, the bedstead were thirteen and a half feet, the man may have been about ten or eleven feet high—a very great stature—higher than that of Goliath, but not incredible or unexampled. We have, however, engaged the reader’s attention sufficiently on this subject, and shall not return to it. The modest estimates of Scripture, in all these matters in which the eastern imagination is most prone to exaggerate, may be judged from the circumstantial rabbinical traditions respecting him. They regard him as “a remnant of the giants” who lived before the flood, and to have been the only one who survived the general destruction. There are two accounts of the manner of his preservation—one, that he was tall enough to walk by the side of the ark through the water; and the other, that he rode astride on the top of the Noachic vessel, receiving from the inmates a daily supply of victuals. During the time he was thus their guest, he consumed a thousand oxen, and the same number of every sort of game. It is also alleged that he afterwards became the servant of Abraham, under the name of Eliezer. His stature, according to these accounts, throws into the shade all the imaginations of Gulliver and Sinbad. According to one account, the soles of his feet were forty miles long; and Moses, though himself of gigantic stature, and armed with a spear of proportionate length, could smite him no higher than the ankle. One time, while in Abraham’s service, on being scolded by his master, fear shook a tooth out of his head. This Abraham took and made himself a bedstead of it, on which he lay and slept. Other authorities, equally credible, however, assure us that it was not a bed that he made of Og’s tooth. but a chair, on which he sat as long as he lived.
As to the bedstead, concerning which some speculation has been excited, we have some remarks to offer. Many, having but a rough knowledge of the East, have imagined that there are no bedsteads, save couches or divans running along the whole side of a room, and having therefore no reference to the stature of the person lying on them. This is a great mistake. We have ourselves slept on the bedstead now in common use in Egypt, and which is of the same form and construction as those represented in the mural paintings of Egypt. It is made of the mid stem of the palm-frond, and was probably so made formerly in Palestine and Syria, where the palm tree was more common than at present, although now more generally made of boards in these countries. For sleeping on the house-top during the summer, this bedstead is of very general use. We conceive the bedstead of king Og was of this sort. But bedsteads of this kind are incapable of resisting any undue weight without being disjointed and bent awry; and this would dictate the necessity of making the one destined to sustain the vast bulk of Og, rather with bars of iron than with palm sticks. All such bedsteads bear the same proportion to the human stature that our own do, affording a sufficient reason for its dimensions being given, to indicate the stature of this gigantic king.
Our own not unfrequent use of iron bedsteads, divests the fact of Og’s bedstead being so framed, of all strangeness. In the warm climates of the East, bedsteads of metal seem to have been more in use anciently than at present, for the purpose of avoiding the insects that are disposed to harbor in those of wood. Heathen writers notice bedsteads of gold and silver. The books of Proverbs and of Esther notice beds of this kind. Note: Pro_7:16-17; Est_1:6. Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus describe beds and tables of these metals, which they obtained in eastern temples. Note: Herod. i. 181; Diodor. vi. 10. A bed of gold was found by Alexander the Great in the tomb of Cyrus. Note: Arrian, de Expedit. Alex., lib 6. Sardanapalus caused a hundred and fifty beds of gold, and as many tables of the same metal, to be burned with him. Note: Ctesias apud Athenaeum, l. xii. The Parthian monarchs ordinarily slept on beds of gold, and this was counted a special privilege of their estate. Note: Josephus, Antiq., xx. 3. At the time of the Trojan War, Agamemnon has several beds of brass. Note: Thersites apud Athenaeum, xiii. 11. Both Livy and St. Augustine affirm, that the Romans brought beds of brass from Asia to Rome, after the wars they had in that part of the world. Note: Tit. Liv., l. 39; August. de Civit. Dei, iii. 21. It is related by Thucydides, that when the Thebans had destroyed the city of Platea, they took away many beds of brass and iron, which they found there, and consecrated them to Juno. Note: Thucydides, l. 3. These are sufficient instances of the ancient usage; but most of them show that such beds or bedsteads were not in common use, but belonged to princes and persons of distinction.