Deuteronomy3chapter 3

Deuteronomy 3:1-3

Then we turned, and went up: The account runs close to Numbers 21:33-35, down to the words Fear him not and the promise that Og will go the way Sihon went. What Numbers reports as narrative Moses here says in the second person to the children of the men who died in the wilderness, so the battle is being handed over as evidence rather than filed as record. Edrei sat at the southern edge of Bashan, and Og came out to meet Israel in the open field instead of holding his walls.

Deuteronomy 3:4-7

Threescore cities fall, all of them fenced with high walls, gates, and bars. The generation that refused the land had reported cities walled up to heaven at Numbers 13:28, and their children take sixty such cities before they reach Jordan. Verse 6 gives the extent of the destruction in plain words, the men, women, and children of every city, on the pattern already set at Heshbon in 2:34, while the cattle and the spoil of the cities were kept.

Deuteronomy 3:8-10

the two kings of the Amorites: The territory is measured by its edges, from the river of Arnon unto mount Hermon, which is the whole eastern side of Jordan taken in one sentence. Verse 9 stops to give the mountain its other names, Sirion among the Sidonians and Shenir among the Amorites, and Psalm 29:6 uses Sirion for it. Albert Barnes points out that Hermon carried Baal sanctuaries and was a religious centre of old Syria, so the aside names a peak readers of several nations would have known under their own word for it.

Deuteronomy 3:11

For only Og king of Bashan: Og is called the remnant of giants, the Rephaim, the people Genesis 14:5 places at Ashteroth Karnaim and Genesis 15:20 lists among the nations of the land promised to Abraham. The bedstead is given as nine cubits by four after the cubit of a man, near thirteen feet by six, and the writer sends the reader to Rabbath of the children of Ammon to look at it, which is a claim a reader of the time could go and check. Albert Barnes reads the iron as the black basalt of that country, which carries about a fifth part iron and is still called iron there, and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown report that Dathe and Roos took the Hebrew word for coffin rather than bed. Whether the measurement gives the man's stature or the size of a royal piece of furniture is where readers have divided, and the verse itself supplies the dimensions and the address and stops.

Deuteronomy 3:12-13

The land east of Jordan is parcelled out before the land west of it is entered, and Numbers 32 records the negotiation that produced the arrangement. Reuben and Gad take from Aroer by the Arnon with half mount Gilead, and the half tribe of Manasseh takes the rest of Gilead and all Bashan. Verse 13 adds that Bashan was called the land of giants, the Rephaim of verse 11, so the tribe is settled on ground that carried that name before Israel arrived.

Deuteronomy 3:14-15

Jair takes the country of Argob out to the borders of Geshuri and Maachathi and puts his own name on it, Bashan-havoth-jair, unto this day. Albert Barnes observes that unto this day fixes no particular length of time and by itself settles nothing about when the sentence was written. Machir receives Gilead through his descendants, since Numbers 32:40 makes the grant to the family, and Judges 10:3-4 later has a second Jair in Gilead with thirty sons and thirty cities under the same name.

Deuteronomy 3:16-17

The borders are drawn by water, the Arnon on the south, the Jabbok on the line of Ammon, and Jordan running between Chinnereth and the salt sea. Chinnereth is the lake the Gospels call the sea of Galilee, and the salt sea is the Dead Sea, so both ends of this eastern strip are places a modern map still carries. Ashdoth-pisgah closes the list and names the slope Moses is sent up in verse 27.

Deuteronomy 3:18-20

The eastern tribes hold their land on terms, and the terms are that their fighting men cross Jordan armed ahead of their brethren while wives, children and cattle stay behind in the cities already given them. Numbers 32:20-22 is where those terms were struck, and Joshua 22:1-4 is where Joshua discharges the men and sends them home. The word that governs the whole arrangement is rest, until the Lord have given rest unto your brethren, as well as unto you, which makes one tribe's settlement wait on the nation's.

Deuteronomy 3:21-22

Joshua is charged on the evidence of his own eyes, thine eyes have seen all that the Lord your God hath done unto these two kings. What happened to Sihon and Og is offered as the sample of what will happen to the kingdoms across the river, so two victories on the east bank become the ground of confidence for the campaign on the west. He shall fight for you repeats what Moses told the people at the sea in Exodus 14:14, and God gives Joshua the same charge himself at Joshua 1:5-9.

Deuteronomy 3:23-25

Moses asks once, and the prayer rests on what he has already been shown, thou hast begun to shew thy servant thy greatness. What God is there in heaven or in earth that can do according to thy works is put as a question, and it carries the request rather than decorating it. What he asks for is sight of the country, let me go over, and see the good land, that goodly mountain, and Lebanon, and Adam Clarke reads the plea as the wish of a man who had carried the people forty years to a border he was to stop at.

Deuteronomy 3:26-27

Moses gives the reason he cannot enter three times in this book, at 1:37, here, and at 4:21, and all three times he says the Lord was wroth with me for your sakes. Numbers 20:12 gives the reason in other words, because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, and both accounts stand in the canon together. Let it suffice thee, speak no more unto me of this matter ends the asking, and the sight he wanted is granted on other terms, from the top of Pisgah in every direction, which is where Deuteronomy 34:1-4 finds him at the last.

Deuteronomy 3:28-29

Three things are laid on Moses for his successor, charge him, encourage him, strengthen him, and the reason attached is that Joshua will cause the people to inherit the land Moses will only see. The chapter closes with the camp in the valley over against Beth-peor, the place where Israel joined itself unto Baal-peor in Numbers 25 and lost twenty and four thousand. Deuteronomy 34:6 puts the grave of Moses in a valley over against Beth-peor, so the ground this long speech is delivered from is the ground the speaker is buried in.