🔢WEB · Numbers 21:33
What does Numbers 21:33 mean?
"They turned and went up by the way of Bashan. Og the king of Bashan went out against them, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei."
— Numbers 21:33 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
We have shot at them. Heshbon has perished even to Dibon. We have laid waste even to Nophah, Which reaches to Medeba.”
Thus Israel lived in the land of the Amorites.
Moses sent to spy out Jazer. They took its villages, and drove out the Amorites who were there.
They turned and went up by the way of Bashan. Og the king of Bashan went out against them, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei.
Yahweh said to Moses, “Don’t fear him, for I have delivered him into your hand, with all his people, and his land. You shall do to him as you did to Sihon king of the Amorites, who lived at Heshbon.”
So they struck him, with his sons and all his people, until there were no survivors; and they possessed his land.
Explanation
Numbers 21:33 records a simple narrative statement: as the Israelites continued their journey toward the Promised Land, they turned northward along the route leading to Bashan, a region east of the Jordan River. Og, the king of Bashan, responded by mobilizing his entire army and marching out to confront Israel in battle at a place called Edrei. The verse itself is a straightforward transition line, setting the stage for the battle account that follows in verses 34-35, where God assures Moses of victory and Israel defeats Og just as they had defeated Sihon, king of the Amorites, in the preceding verses.
The book of Numbers was written to document Israel's forty years of wilderness wandering after the exodus from Egypt, traditionally attributed to Moses, and addressed to the generation of Israelites poised to enter Canaan. By this point in the narrative, the older generation that had rebelled at Kadesh has died off, and a new generation is being prepared to take possession of the land God promised to their ancestors. The military campaigns described in Numbers 21, including the defeats of Sihon and Og, were significant because they secured the Transjordan territory (land east of the Jordan) which would eventually be allotted to the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh. Og was remembered as a notable figure in Israel's history; later texts describe
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