But Jehovah our God gave him up before us; and we smote him, and his sons, and his whole people.
Israel's long years in the wilderness ended in a battle with Sihon, king of Heshbon. The verse raises two questions: who won that day, and by what right did Israel wipe out a whole people?
Moses had first asked Sihon for peaceful passage, offering to pay for food and water. One writer shows how careful God was to leave Israel blameless.
Did He authorise Israel to force Sihon with threats of vengeance, or to win him over by flattery? Did He offer him the book of the law with one hand and the sword with the other? Nothing of the sort... Israel kept the path of right and courtesy. Sihon rushed on them to his own ruin; and only so did Israel strike down and dispossess the king of Heshbon.
Another writer draws out the rule Israel lived by: fight when attacked, never first.
We meet people with whom we do not wish to have war, but they will not let us pass in peace... If we are attacked, we must defend ourselves; but we are not to be the aggressors. Israel wishes to pass quietly through the land of the Amorites. The Amorites will not allow it, and they suffer the consequences of the war they had sought against the people of God.
The verse says God gave Sihon over, and only then that Israel struck. That order matters. One writer keeps the credit where the verse puts it:
It was not Israel's power that accomplished this. Apart from the power of God, they could have accomplished nothing.
The killing of Sihon's sons and all his people is the hardest line in the verse. One explanation points to the Amorites' own wrongdoing, which was now full.
What is emphasised here... is that God gave him into their hand. Even the stubbornness that refused passage to the advancing army came from Him. The wrongdoing of the Amorites was now full... Israel was not driven by greed for land, nor by a passion for destroying, when this merciless wiping out came on Sihon and his people. The mercy was for the world, in rooting out of it a poisonous evil.
That same writer adds that Israel became "simply the executioners of the divine judgment." Another writer faces the obvious objection: what makes this different from any other bloody conquest?
Will anyone dare to compare this with what history records about the Spanish invasion of South America?... There is one great and all-important difference. Israel had the direct authority of God for what they did to Sihon and Og. The Spaniards could show no such authority for what they did.
This battle came before Israel ever set foot in Canaan, and it served a purpose beyond itself.
Sihon's name means "sweeping away," because mere talk sweeps away all that is good; it is empty vanity. When Sihon and his army attacked, Israel did not meet him with talk, but with decided action. By the grace and power of God they defeated this proud enemy, and took possession of his cities. So Israel showed something of the courage of faith before they entered the land of Canaan. In this way God was preparing them for the conquest of the land.
The defeat of Og shortly afterwards is described in similar terms — "a pledge of the full victory which the Lord would give over the nations of Canaan."
God told Israel He had given Sihon into their hand. Sihon still came out to fight. One writer finds the same pattern in Christian living: God gives, we take hold, and resistance follows.
As soon as we begin to possess, opposition springs up. The old powers do not yield without a struggle. It is hard work. It means saying "No" to many things which are not the things freely given to us by God. It means effort and conflict and trouble. But it is well worth it. Then comes the joy of victory. It is the joy of truly holding a little more of what is ours by an unbreakable title, as God's gift.
- Given — God announced the gift before the battle. Israel fought for what was already theirs, not for what was not.
- Provoked — Sihon chose the war. Israel asked to pass through and pay their way; the aggression, and the ruin, were his.
- Delivered — the verse credits God with handing Sihon over. Without His power Israel could have done nothing.
- Executed — God's sentence fell on the Amorites because their wrongdoing was now full. Israel carried it out under His direct authority, and that is what sets it apart from ordinary conquest.
- Possessed — this first victory trained Israel in the courage of faith. It also pictures how we take real hold of what God has already given.
And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed every city, men, and women, and little ones we let none escape.
Moses looks back here at Israel's war with Sihon, king of Heshbon, and reports that Israel spared no one. Few verses raise sharper questions: was this cruelty, and does God ask anything like it of His people today?
Israel did not set out to conquer Sihon. The war began with Sihon's own attack.
Did God authorise Israel to force Sihon by threats of vengeance, or to win him by flattery? Did He offer him the book of the law with one hand or the sword with the other? Nothing of the sort... Israel kept the path of right and courtesy. Sihon rushed on them to his own ruin; and only so did Israel strike down and dispossess the king of Heshbon.
Critics have long used this verse to attack the character of God. Commentators answer by pointing to what these peoples had become.
Many an unbeliever has sneered at this statement and blasphemed God. They charge Him with cruelty and injustice for allowing such an extermination of human beings. God is righteous. These people were steeped in every kind of vice and wickedness, like the depravity and vilest corruption of the Canaanites. God had to deal in judgment with them. He could not permit them to exist, and as the sovereign God He dealt with them in His righteous government.
This was not a new kind of act. Two earlier judgments stood behind it, with one difference.
The first case was of course the flood... The second was the destruction of the cities of the plain, including Sodom and Gomorrah. Only righteous Lot and two daughters were saved. On these two occasions the destruction was an act of God — by water and by fire and brimstone. In both cases human corruption had risen to such a height that it could not be further tolerated. This was now the case with the Amorite nations. Some four hundred years earlier God had told Abraham, "the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete" (Gen. 15:16). Now it was plainly complete. God purposed to wipe them out, as He had already done with the world before the flood and then with Sodom — only this time using Israel to do it. And because He used men to do His strange work of judgment, failure came in, and the work was not done thoroughly, as it was when God acted by the forces of nature.
Commentators differ on the hardest part of the verse. One gives a reason:
The terrible, indiscriminate slaughter of a whole culture may seem wrong to us. But God is wiser than we are. He knows what He is doing. Idolatry and demon worship had risen to such a height that there was no hope of recovery (1 Kings 21:26). Little children would be better dead than exposed to the evil their parents indulged in. Parents would be better dead than left to continue in the abominations that were common throughout their whole society.
Another says the question is beyond us, and hands it back to God.
Are we able to unravel the deep and awful mysteries of God's providence? Can we — are we even asked to — explain the terrible fact of helpless babies caught up in the judgement of their guilty parents? Scornful unbelief may sneer at these things. Morbid sentimentality may stumble over them. But the true believer, the devoted Christian, the reverent student of holy scripture will meet them all with one simple, safe and solid question: "Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?"
Wiping the nations out had a second purpose, aimed at Israel themselves.
Israel were meant to be the executioners of God's judgment on these utterly corrupt peoples. Wiping them out was designed to have a healthy effect on Israel themselves. It would have kept them from marrying the daughters of those peoples. Such marriages were the surest way for Israel to catch the infection of those awful idolatrous systems... Failing to judge and destroy the evil completely, they caught its infection and fell under its power.
Writers draw a sharp line between Israel's task then and the Christian's now.
The Lord put the sword of judgment into Israel's hands and commanded them to use it with unrelenting severity in certain cases. It was an honour given to them to carry out the judgment written. The same divine Lawgiver said to Saul, "Utterly destroy, and spare them not." That was in perfect harmony with the dispensation of the law. Now, in the day of salvation, He says to His redeemed, "Love your enemies... and pray for those who persecute you" (Matt. 5). This is the surpassing honour put upon those who are Christ's.
- Provocation — Israel kept the path of right and courtesy. Sihon attacked first, and only then did Israel strike him down.
- Patience — God waited four hundred years for the iniquity of the Amorites to be complete. This was judgment long delayed, not sudden anger.
- Precedent — the flood and Sodom were the same judgment by God's own hand. Here He used Israel instead, and the work was left unfinished.
- Protection — sparing survivors would have meant marriage with them, and then idolatry. Israel's later history proved it.
- Present — the command to spare none belonged to the age of law. Christ's people now are told to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them.