2:32-37 - When Sihon and all his army came out to meet us in battle at Jahaz, the Lord our God delivered him over to us and we struck him down, together with his sons and his whole army. At that time we took all his towns and completely destroyed them— men, women and children.1 We left no survivors. But the livestock and the plunder from the towns we had captured we carried off for ourselves. From Aroer on the rim of the Arnon Gorge, and from the town in the gorge, even as far as Gilead, not one town was too strong for us. The Lord our God gave us all of them. But in accordance with the command of the Lord our God, you did not encroach on any of the land of the Ammonites, neither the land along the course of the Jabbok nor that around the towns in the hills.
The report of the conquest of Sihon opens with Moses recalling how Sihon, having rejected the offer of peace, engages GB in battle at Jahaz. While Moses provides no details of the battle, its result gets considerable attention, the focus being clearly on the success of the campaign. This success is first and last due to God's enabling, expressed here by its report being enclosed by two declarations of divine bounty: "Yahweh our God gave Sihon over to us" (v33) and "Yahweh our God gave all of them to us" (v36), thus fulfilling what he promised to do in his call to action in v31. The report "we struck them down" (v33b) may contrast with the assertion of divine largesse but does not contradict it. Indeed this apposition of divine grace with human initiative constitutes the brick and mortar of Deuteronomy's conception of faith: God promises but we have to obey.
The rest of the recall is infused by a heightened sense of confidence and self-assurance, evidenced especially in th use of the noun kol, "all," "every," used 18x in the 17 verses that make up this unit.2 Sihon may come out to meet Israel with "all his people," but "we struck down all his people" (v33), "we captured all his towns" and "we devoted to destruction every city" (v34), and "Yahweh gave us all of them" (v36). Even the negative particle, lo', "no," "not," (11x in this unit) is made to serve affirmative ends, e.g., "we left no survivors" (v34) and "no town was too strong for us" (v36).3 Their parents, a lifetime ago, may have found the cities they faced "large, with wall up to the sky" (1:28) and intimating, but not GenB. No, for this was a generation that obeyed. And obedience is the key that hypenates divine grace with human actions. It is on this note that Moses concludes his report on the war with Sihon, the only note of caution in the entire report: "but you did not encroach on any of the land . . . as Yahweh our God had commanded" (v37). Israel obeyed: she took everything God gave and carefully desisted from what Yahweh prohibited. Even in the one act that might possibly be construed of as contravention of the cherem, the culpability of guilt was neutralized by the act of explict acknowledgement (v35), suggesting that the loot that they "carried off for ourselves" came from circumstances where the cherem was not enacted. But, here too kol ("the entire region along the Jabbok," "everywhere else") and the negative particle ("you did not . . .") are brought into service to emphasize the breadth of Israel's obedience.
Low Chai Hok
©Alberith, rev., 2021