Nations, Wanderings, and the Eastern Battles

"Ye have compassed this mountain long enough: turn you northward." Israel passes the descendants of Esau in Seir: "meddle not with them; for I will not give you of their land… because I have given mount Seir unto Esau for a possession." The same is said of Moab and of Ammon, the sons of Lot. Thirty-eight years pass between Kadesh and the brook Zered, "until all the generation of the men of war were wasted out from among the host."

Sihon king of Heshbon refuses passage, and Israel takes his land from the Arnon to the Jabbok. Og king of Bashan comes out at Edrei, and his sixty fortified cities, "fenced with high walls, gates, and bars," fall too. "For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron… nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it."

Moses gives the land east of the Jordan to Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh, on condition that their warriors cross with their brothers. Then he prays: "O Lord GOD, thou hast begun to shew thy servant thy greatness… I pray thee, let me go over, and see the good land." The answer: "Let it suffice thee; speak no more unto me of this matter. Get thee up into the top of Pisgah… and charge Joshua."

Lands given to other nations

Deuteronomy 2 says God dispossessed earlier peoples for Edom, Moab and Ammon as He would for Israel: the Horites before Esau, the Emim before Moab, the Zamzummim before Ammon, and the Avim before the Caphtorim (2:10–12, 20–23). These "antiquarian notes" read like a scribe's commentary. The names Emim ("terrors"), Zamzummim and Rephaim are presented as tall peoples "as the Anakim," but the text describes traditions, not skeletons; no remains of such giants have been found.

Og's bed and the Rephaim

Og's "bedstead of iron" at Rabbah (modern Amman) was about 4 by 1.8 meters. The Hebrew 'eres can mean a bed or couch; "iron" may describe black basalt. Some scholars connect it with the large stone dolmens of the Golan and northern Jordan, others with a royal funerary couch. No object at Rabbah has been identified as Og's bed. A Ugaritic text (KTU 1.108, 13th century BC) places Rapiʾu, "king of eternity," at ʿAshtaroth and Edreʿi, the same pair of towns Deuteronomy gives for Og (1:4). At Ugarit the rpum are honored royal ancestors, not necessarily giants.

Moab and Gad, centuries later

The Mesha Stele (Louvre AO 5066), carved by a Moabite king in the 9th century BC, names Dibon, Ataroth, Nebo and "the men of Gad" who had lived in Ataroth "from of old." It shows the same Israel–Moab border region contested centuries later. It is later context, not a record of Moses' time.

The same chapters inside Numbers

The Samaritan Pentateuch copies several passages of Deuteronomy 2–3 into Numbers 20–21 (for example 2:2–6, 2:9, 2:24–25, 3:24–28), so that the earlier story contains the words Moses later quotes. The Numbers lessons show each addition.