Parshat Chukat5 min read

The Mountain Og Lifted to Crush Israel Fell on His Own Neck

Og measured the camp of Israel with one eye, tore a mountain loose, and balanced it on his head to bury a whole nation under a single stone.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Giant Walked Off to Find a Lid for the World
  2. God Sent the Smallest Things Against the Largest
  3. His Own Teeth Locked the Mountain Shut
  4. Moses Leaped the Height of the Tabernacle
  5. The Hands That Threw and the Mouth That Held

The valley below Bashan was full of tents, and the giant on the ridge began to count them.

Og stood above the camp of Israel and narrowed one eye until the whole nation fit inside it. He let his gaze run from the first tent to the last, measuring, the way a builder measures a wall before he wrecks it. "Three parsangs across," he said to the wind. Three parsangs. He had outlived the Flood. He had ridden the roof of an ark while the world drowned beneath him, and he had buried more enemies than there were tents in that valley. He was not going to chase these people from rock to rock through the wilderness. He was going to end the whole Exodus in a single afternoon.

The Giant Walked Off to Find a Lid for the World

So Og turned his back on the camp and went looking for a stone the size of a nation. He found a mountain three parsangs wide, exactly the width he had measured with his eye, and he set his hands beneath its roots. He tore it loose. The ground let go with a sound like the world cracking its spine, and Og lifted the whole mass over his head and balanced it there, a roof for an entire people, a lid he meant to lower onto Israel until nothing moved underneath it again. Then he started back, slow and enormous, carrying a mountain the way a man carries a basket.

From the camp the tents looked small. From under the mountain, walking, Og could no longer see them at all.

God Sent the Smallest Things Against the Largest

The Holy One did not send fire. He did not send an angel with a sword the length of the sky. He sent ants. Some who tell it say a single raven, but most remember ants, a black river of them pouring up the slope of the stone on the giant's head. They went into the mountain and they bored. Grain by grain they hollowed it, tunneling through three parsangs of rock while Og walked on, and the peak above him began to soften and sag. Then the stone gave. It slipped, it sank, and it dropped down around Og's neck and settled there like a collar forged for a giant.

He reached up to shove it off.

His Own Teeth Locked the Mountain Shut

That was when his teeth betrayed him. As he strained against the rock, his teeth grew. They stretched out of his jaw, this way and that way, branching past his lips and curling over the lip of the stone, hooking the mountain fast against his own face. The harder he pulled, the deeper they caught. The giant who had measured a nation now could not measure the few inches between his teeth and freedom. He stood in the wilderness with a mountain around his neck and his own mouth holding it there, and he could not move.

The Rabbis heard this in a line of the Psalmist, "You have broken the teeth of the wicked." Do not read it broken, they said. Read it stretched out. The wicked are trapped by the very thing that grew from them.

Moses Leaped the Height of the Tabernacle

Moses came out to where the giant stood pinned. Moses was ten cubits tall, the full height of the Tabernacle he had raised in the wilderness. He took up an axe ten cubits long. And then, against a creature whose ankle stood above his head, Moses jumped. Ten cubits into the air, all of him and all of the axe, and at the top of that leap the blade came down on Og's ankle. The tendon went. The giant who had outlasted the Flood folded toward the ground he had tried to tear apart, and the mountain came down with him.

The Hands That Threw and the Mouth That Held

But the mountain Og had meant as a tomb for Israel never reached them. Moses spoke the Ineffable Name over the falling stone and held it in the air, three parsangs of rock hanging above the camp on the strength of a single word, so that not one tent was crushed. The people looked up at the mountain floating where their graves should have been, and they made a blessing and a curse in one breath. May the hands that lift a mountain to throw it be cut off. And may the mouth that holds a mountain up in the air be blessed.

The giant lay in the dust beside the stone he had carried so far. The ants were already gone.

OgGiantsMosesNumbersMidrashBashan
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From the tradition

Sources

2 sources

The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Midrash Aggadah, Numbers 21:35Midrash Aggadah

"And they struck him and his sons and all his people" (Numbers 21:35). They said concerning Og that he devised a plan and said: "How large is the camp of Israel? Three parsangs. I will go and uproot a mountain three parsangs wide and hurl it upon them." He went and uprooted the mountain, and it was three parsangs across, and he carried it upon his head and came. The Holy One, blessed be He, sent a raven, and some say an ant, and it bored through it, and it descended onto his neck. When he sought to remove it, his teeth stretched out this way and that way, and he was not able to remove it. So too you find with the teeth of the wicked in the time to come, as it is said: "You have broken the teeth of the wicked" (Psalms 3:8), do not read it "shibbarta" (you have broken) but "shirbavta" (you have stretched out). And when Moses our teacher saw that he was standing, what did he do? Moses was ten cubits tall, as it is said: "And he spread the tent over the Tabernacle" (Exodus 40:19), and the Tabernacle was ten cubits. He took an axe ten cubits long and leaped ten cubits and struck his ankle and killed him. From this they say: That mountain which Og was bringing to hurl upon Israel, Moses our teacher, peace be upon him, pronounced the Ineffable Name and held it in the air, so that it would not fall upon Israel. Then they said: May the hands that throw thus be cut off, and may the mouth that holds it up thus be blessed.

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Talmud, Berakhot 54bHebraic Literature (1901)

A tradition delivered at Sinai remembers the day Og, king of Bashan, nearly crushed the camp of Israel under a single stone.

Og stood above the valley and measured the camp with his eye. "Three miles across," he muttered. So he walked off, found a mountain three miles wide, tore it up by the roots, and hoisted it onto his head. He intended to drop it and end the Exodus in an afternoon.

the Holy One sent an army of ants. They swarmed the mountain and bored holes through it. The stone slipped, sagged, and dropped down around Og's neck like a collar. He tried to lift it off, but his teeth had grown out and pinned the rock against his jaw. He could not move.

The Rabbis read this into the Psalmist's line, Thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly (Psalms 3:7). Read it, they said, as "Thou hast caused his teeth to branch out", the very growth that trapped him.

Then Moses, ten cubits tall, took up an axe ten cubits long, leapt ten cubits into the air, and struck Og on the ankle. The giant fell.

Berakhot 54b preserves this legend. Even giants are brought down by ants and by a single honest blow.

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