God’s Word for You

Deuteronomy 3:1-11 Og

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Saturday, October 17, 2026

3:1 Next we turned and went up along the road toward Bashan, and Og king of Bashan with his whole army marched out to meet us in battle at Edrei.

One of the strange things about Og (and there are several) is that he didn’t come to the aid of King Sihon. And when Sihon was defeated and completely wiped out, Og didn’t ask any of his neighbors for help. He marched out to Edrei to fight Israel. Edrei was a city some thirty miles east of the Jordan and southeast of the Sea of Galilee. It is on one of the streams that feeds the River Yarmuk. In New Testament times it would have been at the far eastern limit of the Decapolis. Bashan, Og’s territory, was that eastern side of Galilee. It was known later as good cattle country (Amos 4:1; Micah 7:14), a place of oak trees (Zechariah 11:2; Ezekiel 27:6) and lush growth (Nahum 1:4; Jeremiah 50:19). Today the region is sometimes called the Golan Heights (Golan is about ten or twelve miles northwest of Edrei). Perhaps Og felt he would have the advantage of the high ground there. The valley to the south and west is wide open and clearly visible from those heights; Israel could not make a surprise attack.

2 The LORD said to me, “Do not be afraid of him, for I have handed him over to you with his whole army and his land. Do to him what you did to Sihon king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon.” 3 So the LORD our God also gave into our hands Og king of Bashan and all his army. We struck them down, leaving no survivors.

Israel attacked with its most important companion, the blessing and command of God. Moses does not describe the battle here, but we know some details:

1, Both Og and his sons were killed in the battle (Numbers 21:35).

2, There was enough room in Bashan, Og’s land, for half of the tribe of Manasseh to settle there (Numbers 32:33).

3, Og’s dominion extended north as far as Mount Hermon (Joshua 12:5).

4, Og was utterly defeated; all of his people died in the battle and its aftermath (Joshua 2:10).

4 At that time we took all his cities. There was not one of the sixty cities that we did not take from them—the whole region of Argob, Og’s kingdom in Bashan. 5 All these cities were fortified with high walls and with gates and bars, and there were also a great many unwalled villages. 6 We completely destroyed them, as we had done with Sihon king of Heshbon, destroying every city—men, women and children. 7 But all the livestock and the plunder from their cities we carried off for ourselves.

The cities and villages that had been the possession of Og were destroyed and burned by Israel. They left nothing standing that had belonged to those Amorites. The only surviving things were the animals, flocks and herds, that they had possessed, and their wealth. These Israel captured and carried off as plunder. This was an echo or reminder of the way that Israel had plundered the Egyptians forty years before when they had left the land. The Egyptians had willingly given up much of their property to see Israel off (Exodus 12:36).

8 So at that time we took from these two kings of the Amorites the territory east of the Jordan, from the Arnon Gorge as far as Mount Hermon. 9 (Hermon is called Sirion by the Sidonians; the Amorites call it Senir.) 10 We took all the towns on the plateau, and all Gilead, and all Bashan as far as Salecah and Edrei, towns of Og’s kingdom in Bashan. 11 (Only Og king of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaites. His bed was made of iron and was more than thirteen feet long and six feet wide. It is still in Rabbah of the Ammonites.)

Here we learn about Og’s kingdom and its geography, and also something about Og himself. Moses says that he was the only one left of the Rephaites, a group of giants who lived in the hills of Bashan. Just as Dr. John Brug discovered in his 1984 thesis about the Philistines, the giants of Bashan must have received other peoples who came to live in their region and made a peaceful life with them. In this case, those people were Amorites, Canaanite shepherds who preferred hilltops to valleys or caves. They lived in many villages and the sixty cities of Og (3:4).

Og himself was an enormous man. Verse 11 tells us about his “bed,” ‘eres, which some think could also be the word for sarcophagus, although it is normally a word for bed (Job 7:13; Psalm 41:4, 132:3; Proverbs 7:16; Amos 3:12, 6:4). Whether bed or coffin, it was thirteen feet long, which implies a man of perhaps 12 feet in height. Luther writes: “Doubtless not only he was so tall, but his kingdom was administered by such great giants, many one of whom ventured to kill many Israelites, just as the way of the Anakim (Numbers 13:33), ‘Compared with them, we seemed like locusts.’ If the Anakim were numerous, we may believe that the giants of King Og were also many.”

They transported Og and his bed (or burial coffin) to Rabbah, which was forty miles to the south in the territory of the Ammonites. It isn’t clear why this was done, except that Rabbah was not all that far from Heshbon which had been the capital used by Sihon, the other Amorite king defeated by Israel.

Og and the remnant of the giant Rephaites (such as his own sons) were all defeated by Israel with God’s help. To some, and perhaps to all who saw them, they were a seemingly undefeatable enemy. But God gave his people the victory.

To us, the guilt of our sins is is a towering, gigantic and undefeatable foe. But Christ has overcome this foe in our place. He has given us peace, which for us is a happy and a quiet conscience. For “since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). Just as Israel did not win this victory for themselves, so also Christ has won the victory over sin in our place. “Christ,” says our Confession, “was given for us to believe that we are justified because of him.” As as we confess in the Small Catechism:

“He has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver but with his holy, precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death.”

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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