CHAPTER 3 Apr. 20 
Og King of Bashan Defeated
Then we turned and went up the way to Bashan, and Og the king of Bashan came out against us, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei. 2Yahweh said to me, Don’t fear him, for I have delivered him and all his people and his land into your hand; you shall do to him as you did to Sihon king of the Amorites, who lived at Heshbon. 3So Yahweh our God delivered into our hand Og also, the king of Bashan and all his people, and we struck him until none remained. 4We took all his cities at that time. There was not a city which we didn’t take from them; sixty cities, all the region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan. 5All these were fortified cities with high walls, gates, and bars, besides the unwalled towns very many. 6We utterly destroyed them, as we did to Sihon king of Heshbon, utterly destroying every inhabited city, with the women and the little ones. 7But all the livestock and the spoil of the cities we took for a prey to ourselves. 8We took the land at that time out of the hand of the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, from the valley of the Arnon to Mount Hermon. 9(The Sidonians call Hermon Sirion, and the Amorites call it Senir.) 10We took all the cities of the plain, all Gilead, and all Bashan, to Salecah and Edrei, cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan. 11(For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of the Rephaim; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron. Is it not in Rabbah of the children of Ammon? Nine cubits was its length and four cubits its breadth, after the cubit of a man.) 
Sharing the Land
12This land we took in possession at that time: from Aroer which is by the valley of the Arnon, and half the hill country of Gilead and its cities I gave to the Reubenites and to the Gadites; 13and the rest of Gilead and all Bashan, the kingdom of Og, I gave to the half-tribe of Manasseh; all the region of Argob, all of Bashan. (The same is called the land of Rephaim.) 14Jair the son of Manasseh took all the region of Argob to the border of the Geshurites and the Maacathites, and called them, even Bashan, after his own name, Havvoth Jair, to this day. 15I gave Gilead to Machir. 16To the Reubenites and to the Gadites I gave from Gilead to the valley of the Arnon, the middle of the valley and its border, to the river Jabbok, which is the border of the children of Ammon; 17the Arabah also, and the Jordan and its border, from Chinnereth to the sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, under the slopes of Pisgah eastward. 18I commanded you at that time, saying Yahweh your God has given you this land to possess it; you shall pass over armed before your brothers, the children of Israel, all the men of valour. 19But your wives and your little ones and your livestock (I know that you have much livestock) shall live in your cities which I have given you, 20until Yahweh gives rest to your brothers as to you, and they also possess the land which Yahweh your God gives them beyond the Jordan; then you shall return every man to his possession which I have given you. 21I commanded Joshua at that time saying, Your eyes have seen all that Yahweh your God has done to these two kings; so shall Yahweh do to all the kingdoms where you go. 22You shall not fear them, for Yahweh your God, He it is who fights for you.
Moses Forbidden to Cross the Jordan
23I begged Yahweh at that time saying, 24Lord Yahweh, You have begun to show Your servant Your greatness and Your strong hand; for what god is there in heaven or in earth that can do according to Your works and according to Your mighty acts? 25Please let me go over and see the good land that is beyond the Jordan, that good mountain, and Lebanon. 26But Yahweh was angry with me for your sakes and didn’t listen to me; and Yahweh said to me, Let it suffice you; speak no more to Me of this matter. 27Go up to the top of Pisgah and lift up your eyes westward and northward and southward and eastward, and see with your eyes, for you shall not go over this Jordan. 28But commission Joshua and encourage him and strengthen him, for he shall go over before this people and he shall cause them to inherit the land which you shall see. 29So we stayed in the valley over against Beth Peor.

Commentary

3:2 Into your hand- God gives us potential victories, but we still have to fight the human battle.
3:18 God has given you this land to possess it- Moses has just said that he gave Israel their land possessions (:12,13,15,16). So often we encounter this kind of thing; Moses loves to emphasize that God is working through him, that he is identified with God and merely His agent doing His work. Likewise the language of God can be applied to all His servants and supremely to His Son. This doesn’t mean that are God in person, neither was Jesus; but it also doesn’t mean that we as individuals are meaningless because God is manifest through us.
3:21 We are given some foretastes of the Kingdom of God even in this life; just as their victories in the wilderness were foretastes of the greater victories they would have against the inhabitants of Canaan.
3:25 Moses knew God well enough to know that He is capable of changing His stated intentions; for Moses had persuaded God not to destroy Israel as He once planned in His wrath. God is open to dialogue, He isn’t the impervious ‘Allah’ of Islam who must be merely submitted to; and this gives our prayer life real energy and zest, knowing that we’re not simply firing requests at God in the hope we might get at least some response; we can dialogue with God, wrestling in prayer over specific, concrete situations and requests.
3:26 For your sakes- Moses says this several times. Although he spoke Deuteronomy in his spiritual maturity at the end of his life, it could be argued that like all of us, he died with some spiritual point of weakness; and in his case it would have been his failure to own up fully to his sin of striking the rock, still blaming it on others even at the end of his life. But Moses will be saved; without any complacency, we all the same shouldn’t think that we won’t be saved because we have weaknesses we failed to overcome, and likewise we shouldn’t assume others won’t be saved because they can’t recognize what to us is an obvious failure in their behaviour or personality.