Apparently about the same time that Sihon had expelled the Moabites from the rich territory south of the Jabbok, another Amorite chief seized the country extending from that river to the foot of Hermon, and known as the land of Bashan. His name was OG, one of the last of the giant-race of Rephaim. He ruled over sixty cities, and his stronghold was a remarkable oval district, about 22 miles from north to south by 14 from west to east, called by the Hebrews _Argob_, or the _stony_, afterwards by the Greeks _Trachonitis_, and now _Lejah_. This extraordinary region has been described as “an ocean of basaltic rocks and boulders, tossed about in the wildest confusion, and intermingled with fissures and crevices in every direction, and yet in spite of its ungainly and forbidding features thickly studded even now with deserted cities and villages, in all of which the dwellings are solidly built and of remote antiquity[125].” On a rocky promontory south-west of this marvellous region, “without water, without access, save over rocks and through defiles almost impracticable[126],” was the city of Edrei (_strength_). Here, “as if in the Thermopylæ of his kingdom,” the giant king of Bashan and all his people resolved to encounter the advancing hosts of the Israelites, led, it seems probable, by two eminent chiefs of the tribe of Manasseh, Jair and Nobah. (Comp. Num. xxxii. 41, 42; Deut. iii. 14.) Like the Amorite chief of Heshbon, Og could not withstand the valour of the Israelites. He was utterly routed, and _his threescore cities fenced with high walls, gates and bars_, besides _unwalled towns a great many_, fell into their hands. A trophy of this victory, long preserved by the children of Ammon in the city of ♦Rabbah, was the huge iron bedstead[127] of the Amorite king, nine cubits long, by four wide; and long afterwards the subjugation of _Sihon king of the Amorites_, and _Og the king of Bashan, great kings, famous kings, mighty kings_, was deemed worthy of being ranked with the tokens and wonders wrought in the land of Egypt, and the overthrow of Pharaoh in the Red Sea (Ps. cxxxv. 10–12; cxxxvi. 15–21).