Aggada -- Translations into English; Bible. Old Testament -- Legends; Jewish legends; Midrash -- Translations into English
This giant never in all his days made use of a wooden chair or bed, as
these would have broken down beneath his weight, but sat upon iron
chairs and lay upon iron beds. He was not only of gigantic build and
strength, but of a breadth also that was completely out of proportion
even with his height, for his breadth was one half his height, whereas
the normal proportion of breadth to height is as one to three. [687] In
his youth Og had been a slave to Abraham, who had received him as a
gift from Nimrod, for Og is none other than Eliezer, Abraham's steward.
One day, when Abraham rebuked him and shouted at him, Eliezer was so
frightened that one of his teeth fell out, and Abraham fashioned out of
it a bed in which he always slept. Og daily devoured a thousand oxen or
an equal number of other animals, and drank correspondingly, requiring
daily not less than a thousand measures of liquids. [688] He remained
in Abraham's service until Isaac's marriage, when Abraham gave him his
freedom as a reward for having undertaken the labor of wooing Rebekah
for his son, and of fetching her to his house. God also rewarded him in
this world, that this wicked wight might not lay claim to a reward in
the world to come. He therefore made a king of him. [689] During his
reign he founded sixty cities, that he surrounded with high walls, the
lowest of which was not less than sixty miles in height. [690]
Moses now feared to wage war against Og, not only on account of his
giant strength and huge size, which Moses had now witnessed with his
own eyes, but he also thought: "I am only one hundred and twenty years
old, whereas he is more than five hundred. Surely he could never have
attained so great an age, had he not performed meritorious deeds."
[691] Moses also remembered that Og was the only giant that had escaped
the hand of Amraphel, and he perceived in this a token of God's special
favor toward Og. [692] Moses feared, moreover, that Israel in the
recent war against Sihon might have committed sins, so that God would
not now stand by them. "The pious are always afraid of the consequences
of sin, and therefore do not rely upon the assurances God had made to
them;" hence Moses now feared to advance upon Og even though God had
promised him aid against his enemies. [693] God, however, said to him:
"What is thy hand, [694] his destruction has been decreed since the
moment when he looked with evil eyes upon Jacob and his family when
they arrived in Egypt." For even then God had said to him: "O thou
wicked knave, why dost thou look upon them with all evil eye? Verily,
thine eye shall burst, for thou shalt fall into their hands." [695]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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