In Jewish tradition, the battles against Sihon and Og, the kings of the Amorites, loom incredibly large. The sages even equated these triumphs to the monumental victory over Pharaoh at the Red Sea!

According to Legends of the Jews, these weren't just minor skirmishes. They were huge. Some say they were as important as Joshua's later conquest of thirty-one kings! Ginzberg, drawing from various Midrashic sources, explains that Israel should have sung songs of praise then, just like they did after escaping Pharaoh. It was that significant.

And in a way, they did. David, much later, composed songs of gratitude for God’s help in those very victories against Sihon and Og. It's as if David was retroactively acknowledging the incredible importance of what had occurred generations before.

But how did these victories actually happen? Was it all just mighty warriors clashing steel? Well, yes, in part. But Jewish tradition often layers the physical with the miraculous, the seen with the unseen. In this case, it wasn’t just swords and shields. God sent… hornets.

Yes, you read that right. Hornets.

Now, we're not talking about your average buzzing nuisances. These were divinely appointed agents of destruction. Midrashic sources tell us that two hornets were sent after every Amorite warrior. One stung one eye, the other the other. And their venom wasn't just painful – it was lethal.

The Zohar, the foundational text of Jewish mysticism, adds another layer to the story. These hornets, it says, remained on the eastern side of the Jordan River. They didn’t physically cross over with the Israelites into Canaan. However, that didn't stop them from wreaking havoc on the Canaanites on the western side.

How, you ask? Well, these hornets would stand on the eastern bank and spit their venom across the river! Any Canaanite unfortunate enough to be struck by this airborne toxin would instantly go blind and become disarmed. An entire army, weakened and vulnerable, not by direct combat, but by… divine insect warfare.

What does it all mean? Perhaps it's a reminder that even the smallest of creatures can be instruments of immense power. Maybe it's about how divine intervention can work in mysterious, unexpected ways. Or maybe it's a reminder that even seemingly small victories can have ripple effects far beyond what we initially imagine. The venom of those hornets, after all, reached across a river and changed the course of history.