Aggada -- Translations into English; Bible. Old Testament -- Legends; Jewish legends; Midrash -- Translations into English
The war with Sihon took place in the month of Elul. In the following
month of Tishri they rested on account of the holy days, but
immediately after these they set out to battle against Og. [682] This
king did not hasten to his brother's aid, although he was only one
day's distance from him, for he felt sure Sihon could conquer Israel
without his assistance. [683] He erred in this, however, as in some
other matters. In the war of the four kings against the five, it was Og
who had brought to Abraham news of his nephew Lot's bondage, assuming
that Abraham would surely hasten to his kinsman's aid, be killed in
battle, and thus enable Og to get possession of the beautiful Sarah.
God, however, leaves no man unrewarded or unpunished. To reward him for
hastening with quick steps to advise Abraham of Lot's captivity, God
granted him life for five hundred years, but he was eventually killed
because it was only a wicked motive that had induced him to perform
this service for Abraham. He did not, as he had hoped, gain Sarah, but
was slain by her descendant Moses. [684]
The battle against Og took place in Edrei, the outskirts of which
Israel reached toward nightfall. On the following morning, however,
barely at gray dawn, Moses arose and prepared to attack the city, but
looking toward the city wall, he cried in amazement, "Behold, in the
night they have built up a new wall about the city!" Moses did not see
clearly in the misty morning, for there was no wall, but only the giant
Og who sat upon the wall with his feet touching the ground below. [685]
Considering Og's enormous stature, Moses' mistake was pardonable, for
as a grave-digger of later times related, Og's thigh-bone alone
measured more than three parasangs. "Once," so records Abba Saul, "I
hunted a stag which fled into the thigh bone of a dead man. I pursued
it and ran along three parasangs of the thigh-bone, yet had not reached
its end." This thigh-bone, as was later established, was Og's. [686]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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