Sihon, Og, and the Mercy Hidden Inside Their Destruction

The Giant on the Roof of the Ark

Og, king of Bashan, had survived the Flood. The Targum Jonathan on Genesis 14 says he rode on top of Noah's Ark through the forty days of water, too large to fit inside, fed through a hole in the roof by Noah himself. He swore an oath that he would be Noah's slave forever in exchange for the food. And Noah complied, and Og survived the waters that drowned every other creature of his kind.

He was the last of the Rephaim, the giant race that had filled the land before ordinary human beings inherited it. He waited through the centuries. He watched Abraham come up from the east. He was actually present at the battle of the four kings, the Targum Jonathan says, the one who brought Abraham the news that Lot had been captured. He was still alive, centuries later, when Israel came up out of Egypt and began moving through the wilderness toward Canaan. He stood in their path. And God told Moses: do not fear him.

What Made Sihon and Og So Dangerous

Midrash Tehillim, working with Psalm 136:17-20, asks why the psalm treats the defeat of Sihon and Og as an act of mercy. Mercy for whom? They were not Israelites. They were enemies. Their destruction cleared the road for Israel. But the psalm includes their defeat in the great litany of divine mercies, each verse closing with for his mercy endures forever, the same refrain used for the splitting of the sea and the exodus from Egypt and the creation of the sun and moon. Why does their destruction belong on that list?

The answer the midrash develops is about angelic powers. Sihon and Og were not simply military opponents. They were protected by heavenly princes, the celestial representatives of their nations who argued for them in the divine court. Every nation had such a prince, an angelic advocate who could intercede, delay judgment, and prolong the nation's existence. To defeat Sihon and Og on the battlefield, Israel first needed those angelic powers neutralized in the heavenly realm. The mercy was not only for Israel. It was also structural: the defeat meant the angelic forces that had given these kings their power were themselves overcome.

Why Og Required Special Reassurance

God told Moses specifically: do not fear him. Not the general command to trust God that appears throughout the wilderness narrative. A targeted reassurance, directed at Og by name. The Legends of the Jews explains why: Moses was afraid of Og because Og was the man who had served Abraham. He had a merit from that service, a connection to the founding of the covenant. Moses was afraid that Og's merit from Abraham would stand up in the heavenly court and protect him. God's reassurance was not just about military odds. It was a declaration that Og's ancient connection to Abraham had already been accounted for and would not shield him.

Og's size was, as Legends of the Jews records it, built on a different scale from ordinary human beings. His breadth was half his height, an abnormal proportion. In his youth he had been Eliezer, Abraham's servant, in some traditions, the man who negotiated Rebecca's betrothal to Isaac and who had spent decades in Abraham's household learning what a man near the covenant looked like from the outside. He had been near enough to the covenant to know its shape without ever entering it. His merit was the merit of proximity.

The Litany That Holds the Destruction

Psalm 136 places Sihon and Og between the crossing of the Red Sea and the giving of the land to Israel as an inheritance. They are the last obstacle before the inheritance. The for his mercy endures forever that closes their verse is addressed to Israel: God's mercy to you included clearing away the last two beings in the world whose existence could have stopped you. The destruction was merciful in the precise sense that it completed something. The sea crossing and the wilderness and Sinai and forty years of wandering had all been moving toward the land. Sihon and Og were the door, and the mercy was in opening it.