All That Jahaz

Numbers 21: 21-35

And the traveling continues.

Israel seeks permission from the Amorite king to pass through promising to keep on the King's Highway- staying out of vineyards and wells along the way.  King Sihon makes a bad decision and instead of allowing passage, decides to confront the Israelites.  So a battle ensues at Jahaz and the Israelites do well (having God on their side and all).  They overtook all the cities of the Amorites and moved themselves in, including Heshbon where Sihon lived.

Perhaps mockingly Moses quotes a poem recounting Sihon's previous victory in taking Hashbon for the Amorites from the king of Moab.  The poem describes the great victory and restoration of the city to come under Sihon.  But here, Israel is the new inhabitant.  The poem may even be included to stress that Israel didn't just conquer some psuedo-army.  This is a force mighty enough that their battles resulted in poetry.  This is an army of legendary status... and they fell when confronted by God's chosen.

Spies went out into Jazer and the Israelites overthrow there too, driving out the newly relocated Amorites likely still reeling from the loss and destruction recently handed to them. 

Not detered by the Israelite victory, King Og of Bashan marched out with his army to meet the Israelites as they appraoched his city.  God tells the Israelites to buck up- I'm going to deliver him and his land just like I did the Amorites.  So the Isralites enter into battle and it's not pretty.  The Israelites don't leave a single survivor and take the land.

It seems that this passage illustrates the beginning of God's promise coming true.  He's delivering on this whole land thing and God's people may be starting to see the fruits of the generations of wandering in uncertainty.

It's hard for me, though, to not consider the perspective of the slaughtered here.  This context is so foreign to where we are and how we live that it's perhaps impossible to understand the concept of slaughter in God's name.  Maybe these were bad people, but the reading here suggests that they were folks defending what was their's- and the Israelites don't just displace them- they follow them to their new home and drive them out of it, too. 

I like this story much more as a metaphor of God's promises than as a reality of pain, death, and woe.  But regardless, it can serve as a reminder of God following through on what He promises and the folly of getting in His way.