²⁶I sent messengers from the Desert of Kedemoth. I told them to go to Sihon, the king of Heshbon. They offered him peace. They said, ²⁷“Let us pass through your country. We’ll stay on the main road. We won’t turn off it to one side or the other. ²⁸We’ll pay you the right amount of silver for food to eat and water to drink. Just let us walk through your country. ²⁹The people of Esau, who live in Seir, allowed us to do that. The people of Moab, who live in Ar, also allowed us to do it. So let us walk through until we go across the Jordan River. Then we’ll be able to go into the land the Lord our God is giving us.”

³⁰But Sihon, the king of Heshbon, refused to let us walk through. The Lord your God had made his heart and spirit stubborn. The Lord wanted to hand him over to you. And that’s exactly what he has done.

³¹The Lord said to me, “I have begun to hand Sihon and his country over to you. So begin the battle to take his land as your own.”

³²Sihon and his whole army came out to fight against us at Jahaz. ³³But the Lord our God handed him over to us. We struck him down together with his sons and his whole army. ³⁴At that time we took all of his towns. We completely destroyed them. We killed all of the men, women and children. We didn’t leave any of them alive. ³⁵But we took for ourselves the livestock and everything else from the towns we had captured.

³⁶Not a single town was too strong for us. That includes all of the towns from Aroer on the rim of the Arnon River valley all the way to Gilead. It also includes the town in the valley. The Lord our God gave us all of them.

³⁷And you obeyed the Lord’s command. You didn’t go near any part of the land of the Ammonites. That includes the land along the Jabbok River. It also includes the land around the towns that are in the hills.

Israel Wins the Battle Over Og

3Next, we turned and went up along the road toward Bashan. Og, the king of Bashan, marched out with his whole army. They fought against us at Edrei.

²The Lord said to me, “Do not be afraid of Og. I have handed him over to you. I have also handed over his whole army and his land. Do to him what you did to Sihon. Sihon was the Amorite king who ruled in Heshbon.”

³So the Lord our God also handed Og, the king of Bashan, and his whole army over to us. We struck them down. We didn’t leave any of them alive. ⁴At that time we took all of his cities. There were 60 of them. We took the whole area of Argob. That was Og’s kingdom in Bashan.

⁵All of those cities had high walls around them. The city gates were made secure with heavy metal bars. There were also large numbers of villages that didn’t have walls. ⁶We completely destroyed them. We did to them just as we had done to Sihon, the king of Heshbon. We destroyed all of their cities. We destroyed the men, women and children. ⁷But we kept for ourselves the livestock and everything else we took from their cities.

⁸So at that time we took the territory east of the Jordan River. We captured it from those two Amorite kings. The territory goes all the way from the Arnon River valley to Mount Hermon. ⁹Hermon is called Sirion by the people of Sidon. The Amorites call it Senir.

¹⁰We captured all of the towns on the high flatlands. We took the whole land of Gilead. And we captured the whole land of Bashan as far away as Salecah and Edrei. Those were towns that belonged to Og’s kingdom in Bashan.

¹¹Og, the king of Bashan, was the only Rephaite left. His bed was made out of iron. It was more than 13 feet long and six feet wide. It is still in the Ammonite city of Rabbah.

Moses Divides Up the Land

¹²I divided up the land we took over at that time. I gave the tribes of Reuben and Gad the territory north of Aroer by the Arnon River valley. It includes half of the hill country of Gilead together with its towns.

¹³I gave the rest of Gilead to half of the tribe of Manasseh. I also gave them the whole land of Bashan, the kingdom of Og. The whole area of Argob in Bashan used to be known as a land of the Rephaites.

¹⁴Jair took the whole area of Argob. He was from the family line of Manasseh. Argob goes all the way to the border of the people of Geshur and Maacah. It was named after Jair. So Bashan is called Havvoth Jair to this very day. ¹⁵I gave Gilead to Makir.

¹⁶But I gave to the tribes of Reuben and Gad the territory that reaches from Gilead down to the Arnon River valley. It reaches all the way to the Jabbok River. The Jabbok is the northern border of Ammon. The middle of the Arnon River valley is its southern border.

¹⁷The western border of Reuben and Gad is the Jordan River in the Arabah Valley. It reaches from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea. It runs below the slopes of Pisgah.

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