²⁶I sent messengers from the desert of Kedemoth to Sihon king of Heshbon. They offered him peace, saying, ²⁷“If you let us pass through your country, we will stay on the road and not turn right or left. ²⁸We will pay you in silver for any food we eat or water we drink. We only want to walk through your country. ²⁹The descendants of Esau in Edom let us go through their land, and so did the Moabites in Ar. We want to cross the Jordan River into the land the Lord our God has given us.” ³⁰But Sihon king of Heshbon would not let us pass, because the Lord your God had made him stubborn. The Lord wanted you to defeat Sihon, and now this has happened.

³¹The Lord said to me, “See, I have begun to give Sihon and his country to you. Begin taking the land as your own.”

³²Then Sihon and all his army came out and fought us at Jahaz, ³³but the Lord our God gave Sihon to us. We defeated him, his sons, and all his army. ³⁴We captured all his cities at that time and completely destroyed them, as well as the men, women, and children. We left no one alive. ³⁵But we kept the cattle and valuable things from the cities for ourselves. ³⁶We defeated Aroer on the edge of the Arnon Ravine, and we defeated the town in the ravine, and even as far as Gilead. No town was too strong for us; the Lord our God gave us all of them. ³⁷But you did not go near the land of the Ammonites, on the shores of the Jabbok River, or the towns in the mountains, as the Lord our God had commanded.

The Battle at Bashan

3When we turned and went up the road toward Bashan, Og king of Bashan and all his army came out to fight us at Edrei. ²The Lord said to me, “Don’t be afraid of Og, because I will hand him, his whole army, and his land over to you. Do to him what you did to Sihon king of the Amorites, who ruled in Heshbon.”

³So the Lord our God gave us Og king of Bashan and all his army; we defeated them and left no one alive. ⁴Then we captured all of Og’s cities, all sixty of them, and took the whole area of Argob, Og’s kingdom in Bashan. ⁵All these were strong cities, with high walls and gates with bars. And there were also many small towns with no walls. ⁶We completely destroyed them, just like the cities of Sihon king of Heshbon. We killed all the men, women, and children, ⁷but we kept all the cattle and valuable things from the cities for ourselves.

⁸So at that time we took the land east of the Jordan River, from the Arnon Ravine to Mount Hermon, from these two Amorite kings. ⁹(Hermon is called Sirion by the Sidonian people, but the Amorites call it Senir.) ¹⁰We captured all the cities on the high plain and all of Gilead, and we took all of Bashan as far as Salecah and Edrei, towns in Og’s kingdom of Bashan. ¹¹(Only Og king of Bashan was left of the few Rephaites. His bed was made of iron, and it was more than thirteen feet long and six feet wide! It is still in the Ammonite city of Rabbah.)

The Land Is Divided

¹²At that time we took this land to be our own. I gave the people of Reuben and Gad the land from Aroer by the Arnon Ravine, as well as half of the mountain country of Gilead and the cities in it. ¹³To the people of East Manasseh I gave the rest of Gilead and all of Bashan, the kingdom of Og. (The area of Argob in Bashan was called the land of the Rephaites. ¹⁴Jair, a descendant of Manasseh, took the whole area of Argob, all the way to the border of the Geshurites and Maacathites. So that land was named for Jair, and even today Bashan is called the Towns of Jair.) ¹⁵I gave Gilead to Makir. ¹⁶I gave the Reubenites and the Gadites the land that begins at Gilead and goes from the Arnon Ravine (the middle of the Arnon is the border) to the Jabbok River, which is the Ammonite border. ¹⁷The border on the west was the Jordan River in the Jordan Valley, and it goes from Lake Galilee to the Dead Sea west of Mount Pisgah.

¹⁸At that time I gave you this command: “The Lord your God has given you this land as your own. Now your fighting men must take their weapons, and you must lead the other Israelites across the river. ¹⁹Your wives, your young children, and your cattle may stay here. I know you have many cattle, and they may stay here in the cities I have given you, ²⁰until the Lord also gives your Israelite relatives a place to rest. They will receive the land the Lord your God has given them on the other side of the Jordan River. After that, you may each return to the land I have given you.”

²¹Then I gave this command to Joshua: “You have seen for yourself all that the Lord your God has done to these two kings. The Lord will do the same thing to all the kingdoms where you are going. ²²Don’t be afraid of them, because the Lord your God will fight for you.”

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