20 And Og, king of Bashan: for his mercy is unchanging for ever:
Then turning they went up by the way of Bashan; and Og, king of Bashan, went out against them with all his people, to the fight at Edrei.
Then turning we took the road to Bashan: and Og, king of Bashan, came out against us with all his people, and made an attack on us at Edrei. And the Lord said to me, Have no fear of him: for I have given him and all his people and his land into your hands; do to him as you did to Sihon, king of the Amorites, who was ruling in Heshbon. So the Lord our God gave up Og, king of Bashan, and all his people into our hands; and we overcame him so completely that all his people came to their end in the fight. At that time we took all his towns; there was not one town of the sixty towns, all the country of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan, which we did not take. All these towns had high walls round them with doors and locks; and in addition we took a great number of unwalled towns. 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. At that time I gave you orders, saying, The Lord has given you this land for your heritage: all the men of war are to go over armed before your brothers the children of Israel. But your wives and your little ones and your cattle (for it is clear that you have much cattle) may go on living in the towns I have given you; Till the Lord has given rest to your brothers as to you, and till they have taken for themselves the land which the Lord your God is giving them on the other side of Jordan: then you may go back, every man of you, to the heritage which I have given you. And I gave orders to Joshua at that time, saying, Your eyes have seen what the Lord your God has done to these two kings: so will the Lord do to all the kingdoms into which you come. Have no fear of them, for the Lord your God will be fighting for you. And at that time I made request to the Lord, saying, O Lord God, you have now for the first time let your servant see your great power and the strength of your hand; for what god is there in heaven or on earth able to do such great works and such acts of power? Let me go over, O Lord, and see the good land on the other side of Jordan, and that fair mountain country, even Lebanon. But the Lord was angry with me because of you and would not give ear to my prayer; and the Lord said to me, Let it be enough, say no more about this thing. Go up to the top of Pisgah, and turning your eyes to the west and the north, to the south and the east, see the land with your eyes: for you are not to go over Jordan. But give my orders to Joshua, comforting him and making him strong; for he is to go over Jordan at the head of this people, and he will give them this land which you will see for their heritage. So we were waiting in the valley facing Beth-peor.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 136
Commentary on Psalms 136 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
O Give Thanks unto the Lord, for He Is Good
The cry Psalms 135:3, Praise ye Jāh , for good is Jahve , is here followed by a Hodu , the last of the collection, with “for His goodness endureth for ever” repeated twenty-six times as a versus intercalaris . In the liturgical language this Psalm is called par excellence the great Hallel, for according to its broadest compass the great Hallel comprehends Ps 120-136,
(Note: There are three opinions in the Talmud and Midrash concerning the compass of the “Great Hallel,” viz., (1) Ps 136, (2) Ps. 135:4-136:26, (3) Ps 120-136.)
whilst the Hallel which is absolutely so called extends from Psalms 113:1-9 to Ps 118. Down to Psalms 136:18 the song and counter-song organize themselves into hexastichic groups or strophes, which, however, from Psalms 136:19 (and therefore from the point where the dependence on Ps 135, already begun with Psalms 136:17, becomes a borrowing, onwards) pass over into octastichs. In Heidenheim's Psalter the Psalm appears (after Norzi) in two columns (like Deut. 32), which it is true has neither tradition (vid., Ps 18) nor MSS precedent in its favour, but really corresponds to its structure.
Like the preceding Psalm, this Psalm allies itself to the Book of Deuteronomy. Psalms 136:2 and Psalms 136:3 ( God of gods and Lord of lords ) are taken from Deuteronomy 10:17; Psalms 136:12 ( with a strong hand and stretched-out arm ) from Deuteronomy 4:34; Deuteronomy 5:15, and frequently (cf. Jeremiah 32:21); Psalms 136:16 like Deuteronomy 8:15 (cf. Jeremiah 2:6). With reference to the Deuteronomic colouring of Psalms 136:19-22, vid., on Psalms 135:10-12; also the expression “Israel His servant” recalls Deuteronomy 32:36 (cf. Psalms 135:14; Psalms 90:13), and still more Isaiah 40:1, where the comprehension of Israel under the unity of this notion has its own proper place. In other respects, too, the Psalm is an echo of earlier model passages. Who alone doeth great wonders sounds like Psalms 72:18 (Psalms 86:10); and the adjective “great” that is added to “wonders” shows that the poet found the formula already in existence. In connection with Psalms 136:5 he has Proverbs 3:19 or Jeremiah 10:12 in his mind; תּבוּנה , like חכמה , is the demiurgic wisdom. Psalms 136:6 calls to mind Isaiah 42:5; Isaiah 44:24; the expression is “above the waters,” as in Psalms 34:2 “upon the seas,” because the water is partly visible and partly invisible מתּחת לארץ (Exodus 20:4). The plural אורים , luces , instead of מארות , lumina (cf. Ezekiel 32:8, מאורי אור ), is without precedent. It is a controverted point whether אורת in Isaiah 26:19 signifies lights (cf. אורה , Psalms 139:12) or herbs (2 Kings 4:39). The plural ממשׁלות is also rare (occurring only besides in Psalms 114:2): it here denotes the dominion of the moon on the one hand, and (going beyond Genesis 1:16) of the stars on the other. בּלּילה , like בּיּום , is the second member of the stat. construct .
Up to this point it is God the absolute in general, the Creator of all things, to the celebration of whose praise they are summoned; and from this point onwards the God of the history of salvation. In Psalms 136:13 גּזר (instead of בּקע , Psalms 78:13; Exodus 14:21; Nehemiah 9:11) of the dividing of the Red Sea is peculiar; גּזרים (Genesis 15:17, side by side with בּתרים ) are the pieces or parts of a thing that is cut up into pieces. נער is a favourite word taken from Exodus 14:27. With reference to the name of the Egyptian ruler Pharaoh (Herodotus also, ii. 111, calls the Pharaoh of the Exodus the son of Sesostris-Rameses Miumun, not Μενόφθας , as he is properly called, but absolutely Φερῶν ), vid., on Psalms 73:22. After the God to whom the praise is to be ascribed has been introduced with ל by always fresh attributes, the ל before the names of Sihon and of Og is perplexing. The words are taken over, as are the six lines of Psalms 136:17-22 in the main, from Psalms 135:10-12, with only a slight alteration in the expression. In Psalms 136:23 the continued influence of the construction הודוּ ל is at an end. The connection by means of שׁ (cf. Psalms 135:8, Psalms 135:10) therefore has reference to the preceding “for His goodness endureth for ever.” The language here has the stamp of the latest period. It is true זכר with Lamed of the object is used even in the earliest Hebrew, but שׁפל is only authenticated by Ecclesiastes 10:6, and פּרק , to break loose = to rescue (the customary Aramaic word for redemption), by Lamentations 5:8, just as in the closing verse, which recurs to the beginning, “God of heaven” is a name for God belonging to the latest literature, Nehemiah 1:4; Nehemiah 2:4. In Psalms 136:23 the praise changes suddenly to that which has been experienced very recently. The attribute in Psalms 136:25 (cf. Psalms 147:9; Psalms 145:15) leads one to look back to a time in which famine befell them together with slavery.