Og Rode Noah's Ark and Died at Moses' Feet

When Noah was loading animals into the ark, Og made a deal. He swore to Noah and his sons that if they let him come along, he would be their servant forever. Space on the ark was tight. Noah let him sit on the roof. A hole was cut so food could be passed through. And so the last of the giants rode out the destruction of the world clinging to the top of a floating box, eating through a hole, while every other creature of his kind drowned below him.

The Flood That Could Not Finish Him

Og came from the Nefilim, the giants whose fathers were the Watchers, the sons of God who had come down to the daughters of men. These unions produced children of massive size. One tradition measures them at three hundred ells from foot to knee. The Flood was God's response to the corruption they had brought into the world, and the Flood killed them all. Except Og. He was already on the roof before the first drop fell.

He was not grateful. He was never grateful. The moment Israel became his problem, he began scheming. At the time of Abraham, Og brought news that Lot had been taken captive, and some sages say he did it not from any loyalty to Abraham but because he wanted Abraham killed and Sarah available. Abraham saw through the trap, defeated the kings anyway, and Og walked away empty-handed. He had been circling Israel for generations before Moses ever picked up a staff.

The Mountain He Tore Out

When the Israelites came to the Bashan, Og was still king, still alive, still enormous. His iron bed measured nine cubits long and four cubits wide, roughly thirteen and a half feet by six. He was the last of the Rephaim standing. And when he saw the Israelite camp spread below him, he had an idea simple enough to match his size. He walked to the nearest mountain, tore it from its roots, and carried it on his head toward the camp. He planned to drop it and flatten Israel in a single moment.

But ants had gotten into the mountain during the time it took him to carry it. They bored through the stone while Og walked. The mountain crumbled and settled down around his neck like a collar he could not remove. He stood there with a mountain around his shoulders, unable to throw it, unable to lift it off.

How Moses Reached His Ankle

Moses was ten cubits tall, which is not short. He took a ten-cubit axe. He jumped ten cubits into the air. He swung the axe and struck Og in the ankle. It was enough. The giant fell. The Israelites stood over his body in the Bashan and had to acknowledge what they had just witnessed: the creature who had watched Noah's ark float over the bodies of his own kind, who had schemed against Abraham and waited out the generations, who had just tried to drop a mountain on their camp, was dead because a man with an axe had managed to reach his ankle.

God had told Moses not to be afraid of Og before the battle. Moses had been afraid anyway. He remembered that Og had survived the Flood, that Og had been alive when Abraham walked the earth, that men like this did not die easily. The command came again: do not fear him. I have given him into your hand. Moses went.

What Og Left Behind

The iron bed was placed in Rabbath of the Ammonites as a curiosity for visitors, the largest bed anyone had ever seen in a land that no longer had anyone to fill it. The Rephaim were finished. The Nefilim line that had survived the Flood on a rooftop, that had circled Israel for centuries like a threat that never quite arrived, ended in the Bashan with an axe blow to the ankle. The Torah notes his bed in two spare verses and moves on. The sages spent considerably longer on him, because a creature who survives a world-ending flood and still dies eventually requires more than two verses to put to rest.