View Deuteronomy 3 in the note window.
The conquest of Og and his country, ver. 1 - 11.
The distribution of it to the two tribes and an half, ver. 12 - 17.
On condition of assisting their brethren, ver. 18 - 20.
Joshua encouraged, ver. 21 - 22.
Moses prays that he may go into Canaan, v. 23 - 25.
But is refused, yet permitted to see it, ver. 26 - 29.
8: On this side Jordan - So it was when Moses wrote this book;
but afterward when Israel passed over Jordan it was called the land
beyond Jordan.
9: Sirion - Elsewhere called Mount Gilead, and Lebanon, and
here Shenir, and Sirion, which several names are given to this one
mountain partly by several people, and partly in regard of several tops and
parts of it.
10: All Gilead - Gilead is sometimes taken for all the
Israelites possessions beyond Jordan, and so it comprehends
Bashan; but here for that part of it which lies in and near mount
Gilead, and so it is distinguished from Bashan and Argob.
11: In Rabbath - Where it might now be, either because the
Ammonites in some former battle with Og, had taken it as a spoil:
or because after Og's death, the Ammonites desired to have this monument
of his greatness, and the Israelites permitted them to carry it away to
their chief city. Nine cubits - So his bed was four yards and an half
long, and two yards broad.
14: Unto this day - This must be put among those passages which were
not written by Moses, but added by those holy men, who digested the
books of Moses into this order, and inserted some few passages to
accommodate things to their own time and people.
15: Gilead - That is, the half part of Gilead. To Machir - That
is, unto the children of Machir, son of Manasseh, for Machir was
now dead.
16: Half the valley - Or rather to the middle of the river: for
the word rendered half signifies commonly middle, and the same
Hebrew word means both a valley and a brook or river. And this
sense is agreeable to the truth, that their land extended from Gilead
unto Arnon, and, to speak exactly, to the middle of that river; for as
that river was the border between them and others, so one half of it
belonged to them, as the other half did to others, (Jos 12:2). The same
thing is expressed in the same words in the Hebrew which are here, though
our translators render the self - same words there, from the middle of the
river, which here they render, half of the valley. There the bounds
of Sihon's kingdom, which was the same portion here mentioned as given
to Reuben and Gad, are thus described, from Aroer, which is upon
the bank of the river of Arnon, and from the middle of the river, and
from half Gilead, even unto the river Jabbok, which is the border of
the children of Ammon.
17: The plain - The low country towards Jordan. The sea of
the plain - That is, that salt sea, which before that dreadful
conflagration was a goodly plain.
18: You - Namely, the Reubenites and Gadites. All that
are meet - In such number as your our brethren shall judge necessary.
They were in all above an hundred thousand. Forty thousand of them went
over Jordan before their brethren.
23: I besought the Lord - We should allow no desire in our hearts,
which we cannot in faith offer unto God by prayer.
24: Thou hast begun to shew thy servant thy greatness - Lord, perfect
what thou hast begun. The more we see of God's glory in his works, the more
we desire to see. And the more we are affected with what we have seen of
God, the better we are prepared for farther discoveries.
25: Let me go over - For he supposed God's threatening might be
conditional and reversible, as many others were. That goodly mountain
- Which the Jews not improbably understood of that mountain on which the
temple was to be built. This he seems to call that mountain,
emphatically and eminently, that which was much in Moses's thoughts,
though not in his eye.
28: He shall go over - It was not Moses, but Joshua or
Jesus that was to give the people rest, (Heb 4:8). 'Tis a comfort
to those who love mankind, when they are dying and going off, to see God's
work likely to be carried on by other hands, when they are silent in the
dust.
