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Joshua 12:2 Bible in Basic English (BBE)

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2 Sihon, king of the Amorites, who was living in Heshbon, ruling from Aroer, which is on the edge of the valley of the Arnon, and the town in the middle of the valley, and half Gilead, as far as the river Jabbok, the limits of the children of Ammon;

Cross Reference

Numbers 21:23-30 BBE

KJV ASV YLT DARBY WEB STRONG

And Sihon would not let Israel go through his land; but got all his people together and went out against Israel into the waste land, as far as Jahaz, to make war on Israel. But Israel overcame him, and took all his land from the Arnon to the Jabbok, as far as the country of the children of Ammon, for the country of the children of Ammon was strongly armed. And Israel took all their towns, living in Heshbon and all the towns and small places of the Amorites. For Heshbon was the town of Sihon, king of the Amorites, who had made war against an earlier king of Moab and taken from him all his land as far as the Arnon. So the makers of wise sayings say, Come to Heshbon, building up the town of Sihon and making it strong: For a fire has gone out of Heshbon, a flame from the town of Sihon: for the destruction of Ar in Moab, and the lords of the high places of the Arnon. Sorrow is yours, O Moab! Destruction is your fate, O people of Chemosh: his sons have gone in flight, and his daughters are prisoners, in the hands of Sihon, king of the Amorites. They are wounded with our arrows; destruction has come on Heshbon, even to Dibon; and we have made the land waste as far as Nophah, stretching out to Medeba.

Deuteronomy 2:24-37 BBE

KJV ASV YLT DARBY WEB STRONG

Get up now, and go on your journey, crossing over the valley of the Arnon: see, I have given into your hands Sihon, the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and all his land: go forward to make it yours, and make war on him, From now on I will put the fear of you in all peoples under heaven, who, hearing of you, will be shaking with fear and grief of heart because of you. Then from the waste land of Kedemoth I sent representatives to Sihon, king of Heshbon, with words of peace, saying, Let me go through your land: I will keep to the highway, not turning to the right or to the left; Let me have food, at a price, for my needs, and water for drinking: only let me go through on foot; As the children of Esau did for me in Seir and the Moabites in Ar; till I have gone over Jordan into the land which the Lord our God is giving us. But Sihon, king of Heshbon, would not let us go through; for the Lord your God made his spirit hard and his heart strong, so that he might give him up into your hands as at this day. And the Lord said to me, See, from now on I have given Sihon and his land into your hands: go forward now to take his land and make it yours. Then Sihon came out against us with all his people, to make an attack on us at Jahaz. And the Lord our God gave him into our hands; and we overcame him and his sons and all his people. At that time we took all his towns, and gave them over to complete destruction, together with men, women, and children; we had no mercy on any: Only the cattle we took for ourselves, with the goods from the towns we had taken. From Aroer on the edge of the valley of the Arnon and from the town in the valley as far as Gilead, no town was strong enough to keep us out; the Lord our God gave them all into our hands: But you did not go near the land of the children of Ammon, that is, all the side of the river Jabbok or the towns of the hill-country, wherever the Lord our God had said we were not to go.

Deuteronomy 3:6-17 BBE

KJV ASV YLT DARBY WEB STRONG

And we put them to the curse, every town together with men, women, and children. But we took for ourselves all the cattle and the stored wealth of the towns. At that time we took their land from the two kings of the Amorites on the far side of Jordan, from the valley of the Arnon to Mount Hermon; (By the Sidonians, Hermon is named Sirion, and by the Amorites Shenir;) All the towns of the table-land and all Gilead and Bashan as far as Salecah and Edrei, towns of the kingdom of Og in Bashan. (For Og, king of Bashan, was the last of all the Rephaim; his bed was made of iron; is it not in Rabbah, in the land of the children of Ammon? It was nine cubits long and four cubits wide, measured by the common cubit.) And this land which we took at that time, from Aroer by the valley of the Arnon, and half the hill-country of Gilead with its towns, I gave to the Reubenites and the Gadites. The rest of Gilead and all Bashan, the kingdom of Og, all the land of Argob, together with Bashan, I gave to the half-tribe of Manasseh. (This land is named the land of the Rephaim. Jair, the son of Manasseh, took all the land of Argob, as far as the country of the Geshurites and the Maacathites, naming it, Bashan, Havvoth-Jair after himself, as it is to this day.) And Gilead I gave to Machir. And the land from Gilead to the valley of the Arnon, with the middle of the valley as a limit, as far as the river Jabbok which is the limit of the country of the children of Ammon, I gave to the Reubenites and the Gadites; As well as the Arabah, with the river Jordan as their limit, from Chinnereth to the Salt Sea, under the slopes of Pisgah to the east.

Psalms 136:19-20 BBE

KJV ASV YLT DARBY WEB STRONG

Sihon, king of the Amorites: for his mercy is unchanging for ever: And Og, king of Bashan: for his mercy is unchanging for ever:

Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Joshua 12

Commentary on Joshua 12 Matthew Henry Commentary

John Gill   Keil & Delitzsch   Robert Jamieson: Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible  

Chapter 12

This chapter is a summary of Israel's conquests.

  • I. Their conquests under Moses, on the other side Jordan (for we now suppose ourselves in Canaan) eastward, which we had the history of, Num. 21:24, etc. And here the abridgment of that history (v. 1-6).
  • II. Their conquests under Joshua, on this side Jordan, westward.
    • 1. The country they reduced (v. 7, 8).
    • 2. The kings they subdued, thirty-one in all (v. 9-24). And this comes in here, not only as a conclusion of the history of the wars of Canaan (that we might at one view see what they had got), but as a preface to the history of the dividing of Canaan, that all that might be put together which they were not to make a distribution of.

Jos 12:1-6

Joshua, or whoever else is the historian before he comes to sum up the new conquests Israel had made, in these verses receives their former conquests in Moses's time, under whom they became masters of the great and potent kingdoms of Sihon and Og. Note, Fresh mercies must not drown the remembrance of former mercies, nor must the glory of the present instruments of good to the church be suffered to eclipse and diminish the just honour of those who have gone before them, and who were the blessings and ornaments of their day. Joshua's services and achievements are confessedly great, but let not those under Moses be overlooked and forgotten, since God was the same who wrought both, and both put together proclaim him the Alpha and Omega of Israel's great salvation. Here is,

  • 1. A description of this conquered country, the measure and bounds of it in general (v. 1): From the river Arnon in the south, to Mount Hermon in the north. In particular, here is a description of the kingdom of Sihon (v. 2, 3), and that of Og, v. 4, 5. Moses had described this country very particularly (Deu. 2:36; 3:4, etc.), and this description here agrees with his. King Og is said to dwell at Ashtaroth and Edrei (v. 4), probably because they were both his royal cities; he had palaces in both, and resided sometimes in one and sometimes in the other; one perhaps was his summer seat and the other his winter seat. But Israel took both from him, and made one grave to serve him that could not be content with one palace.
  • 2. The distribution of this country. Moses assigned it to the two tribes and a half, at their request, and divided it among them (v. 6), of which we had the story at large, Num. 32. The dividing of it when it was conquered by Moses is here mentioned as an example to Joshua what he must do now that he had conquered the country on this side Jordan. Moses, in his time, gave to one part of Israel a very rich and fruitful country, but it was on the outside of Jordan; but Joshua gave to all Israel the holy land, the mountain of God's sanctuary, within Jordan: so the law conferred upon some few of God's spiritual Israel external temporal blessings, which were earnests of good things to come; but our Lord Jesus, the true Joshua, has provided for all the children of promise spiritual blessings-the privileges of the sanctuary, and the heavenly Canaan. The triumphs and grants of the law were glorious, but those of the gospel far exceed in glory.

Jos 12:7-24

We have here a breviate of Joshua's conquests.

  • I. The limits of the country he conquered. It lay between Jordan on the east and the Mediterranean Sea on the west, and extended from Baal-gad near Lebanon in the north to Halak, which lay upon the country of Edom in the south, v. 7. The boundaries are more largely described, Num. 34:2, etc. But what is here said is enough to show that God had been as good as his word, and had given them possession of all he had promised them by Moses, if they would but have kept it.
  • II. The various kinds of land that were found in this country, which contributed both to its pleasantness and to its fruitfulness, v. 8. There were mountains, not craggy, and rocky, and barren, which are frightful to the traveller and useless to the inhabitants, but fruitful hills, such as put forth precious things (Deu. 33:15), which charmed the spectator's eye and filled the owner's hand. And valleys, not mossy and boggy, but covered with corn, Ps. 65:13. There were plains, and springs to water them; and even in that rich land there were wildernesses too, or forests, which were not so thickly inhabited as other parts, yet had towns and houses in them, but served as foils to set off the more pleasant and fruitful countries.
  • III. The several nations that had been in possession of this country-Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, etc., all of them descended from Canaan, the accursed son of Ham, Gen. 10:15-18. Seven nations they are called (Deu. 7:1), and so many are there reckoned up, but here six only are mentioned, the Girgashites being either lost or left out, though we find them, Gen. 10:16 and 15:21. Either they were incorporated with some other of these nations, or, as the tradition of the Jews is, upon the approach of Israel under Joshua they all withdrew and went into Africa, leaving their country to be possessed by Israel, with whom they saw it was to no purpose to contend, and therefore they are not named among the nations that Joshua subdued.
  • IV. A list of the kings that were conquered and subdued by the sword of Israel, some in the field, others in their own cities, thirty-one in all, and very particularly named and counted, it should seem, in the order in which they were conquered; for the catalogue begins with the kings of Jericho and Ai, then takes in the king of Jerusalem and the princes of the south that were in confederacy with him, and then proceeds to those of the northern association. Now,
    • 1. This shows what a very fruitful country Canaan then was, which could support so many kingdoms, and in which so many kings chose to throng together rather than disperse themselves into other countries, which we may suppose not yet inhabited, but where, though they might find more room, they could not expect such plenty and pleasure: this was the land God spied out for Israel; and yet at this day it is one of the most barren, despicable, and unprofitable countries in the world: such is the effect of the curse it lies under, since its possessors rejected Christ and his gospel, as was foretold by Moses, Deu. 29:23.
    • 2. It shows what narrow limits men's ambition was then confined to. These kings contented themselves with the government, each of them, of one city and the towns and villages that pertained to it; and no one of them, for aught that appears, aimed to make himself master of the rest, but, when there was occasion, all united for the common safety. Yet it should seem that what was wanting in the extent of their territories was made up in the absoluteness of their power, their subjects being all their tenants and vassals, and entirely at their command.
    • 3. It shows how good God was to Israel, in giving them victory over all these kings, and possession of all these kingdoms, and what obligations he hereby laid upon them to observe his statutes and to keep his laws, Ps. 105:44, 45. Here were thirty-one kingdoms, or seigniories, to be divided among nine tribes and a half of Israel. Of these there fell to the lot of Judah the kingdoms of Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish, Eglon, Debir, Arad, Libnan, and Adullam, eight in all, besides part of the kingdom of Jerusalem and part of Geder. Benjamin had the kingdoms of Jericho, Ai, Jerusalem, Makkedah, Beth-el, and the nations of Gilgal, six in all. Simeon had the kingdom of Hormah and part of Geder. Ephraim had the kingdoms of Gezer and Tirzah. Manasseh (that half-tribe) had the kingdoms of Tappuah and Hepher, Taanach and Megiddo. Asher had the kingdoms of Aphek and Achshaph. Zebulun had the kingdoms of Lasharon, Shimron-meron, and Jokneam. Naphtali had the kingdoms of Madon, Hazor, and Kedesh. And Issachar had that of Dor. These were some of the great and famous kings that God smote, for his mercy endureth for ever; and gave their land for a heritage, even a heritage unto Israel his servant, for his mercy endureth for ever, Ps. 136:17, etc.