Sihon and Og
26 I sent messengers out of the wilderness of Kedemoth to Sihon king of Heshbon with words of peace, saying, 27 “Let me pass through your land. I will go along by the highway. I will turn neither to the right hand nor to the left. 28 You shall sell me food for money, that I may eat; and give me water for money, that I may drink. Just let me pass through on my feet, 29 as the children of Esau who dwell in Seir, and the Moabites who dwell in Ar, did to me, until I pass over the Jordan into the land which Yahweh our God gives us.” 30 But Sihon king of Heshbon would not let us pass by him, for Yahweh your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate, that he might deliver him into your hand, as it is today. 31 Yahweh said to me, “Behold, I have begun to deliver up Sihon and his land before you. Begin to possess, that you may inherit his land.” 32 Then Sihon came out against us, he and all his people, to battle at Jahaz. 33 Yahweh our God delivered him up before us; and we struck him, his sons, and all his people. 34 We took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed every inhabited city, with the women and the little ones. We left no one remaining. 35 Only the livestock we took for plunder for ourselves, with the plunder of the cities which we had taken. 36 From Aroer, which is on the edge of the valley of the Arnon, and the city that is in the valley, even to Gilead, there was not a city too high for us. Yahweh our God delivered up all before us. 37 Only to the land of the children of Ammon you didn’t come near: all the banks of the river Jabbok, and the cities of the hill country, and wherever Yahweh our God forbade us.
The war east of the Jordan begins with an offer to buy passage, and the refusal is attributed both to a king and to God.
Even the campaign that is commanded begins with an attempt to avoid it. Messengers go out with words of peace Deuteronomy 2:26, and the terms are modest to the point of self-effacement.
“Let me pass through your land. I will go along by the highway. I will turn neither to the right hand nor to the left.
Nobody will leave the road. Food and water will be bought, not requisitioned Deuteronomy 2:28. And a precedent is cited: Edom and Moab had already allowed it Deuteronomy 2:29.
That request is made to a king God has just said will be handed over. The offer of peace is genuine even though the outcome is announced, and the passage does not treat the two as inconsistent.
The refusal is then explained twice in one sentence. Sihon king of Heshbon would not let us pass by him, for Yahweh your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate, that he might deliver him into your hand Deuteronomy 2:30.
The grammar holds a decision and a permission together, in the way Scripture does elsewhere with the same word. Pharaoh hardens his own heart in the narrative that also says God hardened it Exodus 8:15 Exodus 9:12, and the two statements are never presented as competing. A king who had already chosen his course is confirmed in it, and the confirming is credited to God because it happened inside his government.
What follows is the destruction of Sihon's cities and then Og's, and the accounts are deliberately parallel: as we did to Sihon king of Heshbon Deuteronomy 3:6. Both are total, including the women and the little ones Deuteronomy 2:34 Deuteronomy 3:6.
The book does not soften those verses and nothing is gained by softening them here. What the text supplies is the frame: these are two kings who attacked an army passing on a road after being offered payment, in a war Israel did not open, on land that had been withheld from three neighboring nations for the sake of prior gifts. The same chapter that records the destruction records three refusals to take anything at all.
And the boundary is respected even in victory. Only to the land of the children of Ammon you didn't come near... and wherever Yahweh our God forbade us Deuteronomy 2:37. A victorious army stops at a line drawn by somebody else, having just been told the whole country south of it was theirs.
The note about Og's iron bed, nine cubits long and still on display in a foreign capital Deuteronomy 3:11, is the kind of detail a speaker adds because his audience has heard of it.
settled What this mark means