Deuteronomy 3:1-11
The Lord teaches Israel not to fear by giving Og and Bashan into their hand, showing that the obstacles that appear too strong are not stronger than His covenant promise.
1 Then we turned, and went up the way to Bashan. Og the king of Bashan came out against us, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei.
2 Yahweh said to me, “Don’t fear him; for I have delivered him, with all his people, and his land, into your hand. You shall do to him as you did to Sihon king of the Amorites, who lived at Heshbon.”
3 So Yahweh our God delivered into our hand Og also, the king of Bashan, and all his people. We struck him until no one was left to him remaining.
4 We took all his cities at that time. There was not a city which we didn’t take from them: sixty cities, all the region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan.
5 All these were cities fortified with high walls, gates, and bars, in addition to a great many villages without walls.
6 We utterly destroyed them, as we did to Sihon king of Heshbon, utterly destroying every inhabited city, with the women and the little ones.
7 But all the livestock, and the plunder of the cities, we took for plunder for ourselves.
8 We took the land at that time out of the hand of the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, from the valley of the Arnon to Mount Hermon.
9 (The Sidonians call Hermon Sirion, and the Amorites call it Senir.)
10 We took all the cities of the plain, and all Gilead, and all Bashan, to Salecah and Edrei, cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan.
11 (For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of the Rephaim. Behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron. Isn’t it in Rabbah of the children of Ammon? Nine cubits was its length, and four cubits its width, after the cubit of a man.)
The LORD teaches Israel not to fear by giving Og and Bashan into their hand, showing that the obstacles that appear too strong are not stronger than His covenant promise.
Moses recalls the LORD's command not to fear Og king of Bashan, the LORD's gift of Og, his army, and his land into Israel's hand, and Israel's complete victory over Bashan's fortified cities, so that the new generation would remember that the same LORD who defeated Sihon also overthrew the most intimidating northern Transjordan power before them.
Moses speaks on the plains of Moab to the generation about to enter Canaan. After Sihon king of Heshbon was defeated, Israel turned north toward Bashan. Og ruled a strong northern Transjordan region associated with fortified cities, many settlements, and the remnant memory of the Rephaites. Moses recalls the event not merely as military history but as covenant instruction: the LORD had commanded Israel not to fear, had promised to hand Og over, and had given his land into Israel's possession.
Og Defeated, the Land Divided, and Moses Refused Entry
The LORD completes the Transjordanian conquest by delivering Og of Bashan just as he delivered Sihon, then distributes the captured territory among Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh — but when Moses pleads to cross the Jordan himself, the LORD refuses, redirecting Moses's longing toward a mountaintop view and charging Joshua with the task of bringing the people in.