Therefore it is said in the book of the wars of Jehovah, Vaheb in Suphah, and the brooks of Arnon;
Israel is camped beyond the Arnon gorge, on the border between Moab and the Amorites. There the story pauses to quote a poem from a lost book, which raises two questions: what was this book, and why does Scripture use it?
Older English versions added a word and turned the quoted line into a sentence. Commentators working from the Hebrew read it as a list of place names, which is how the ESV prints it.
Numbers 21:1, 14. — Here we must leave out "when." It is unwarranted and gives a false sense. We should also translate verse 14, "Vaheb in Suphah, and the valleys, or brooks, of Arnon."
The style of the fragment also tells us something about the book it came from.
The wars of the Lord. Num. 21:14. The quotation is poetry, so the book may have been a collection of songs by Moses about the LORD's wars.
Later in the chapter the text quotes a second source: sayings that people were repeating at the time. Some argue this proves that Moses pieced his books together from older material. One writer answers that these quotations do the opposite of what such a theory needs.
The account makes two references. One is to a book of that day, the book of the wars of the LORD (verse 14). The other is to certain proverbial sayings or legends in circulation at that time (verses 27-30). Critics pretend this supports the theory that Moses composed the first five books of the Bible from a mass of earlier material floating around among the Israelites of his day and their Gentile neighbours. It gives that theory no support at all. Scripture quotes these foreign traditions, written and spoken, on purpose. They serve one unusual aim: to prove from witnesses no opponent could challenge that the land in dispute did not belong to Ammon or Moab when Israel conquered it. It belonged to the doomed peoples of Canaan and the area around it.
Ownership was the real issue at the Arnon. God had forbidden Israel to touch Moab, so everything depended on one fact: the land had left Moab's hands before Israel arrived.
These well known records are quoted to prove one thing: the Amorites, not Moab, held the country in question when Israel took possession. This mattered enormously. God had forbidden Israel to touch Moab, but He had given them the country of the Amorites. Now Israel's own statements, whatever weight they carried at home, would have counted for nothing against their enemies... This is so plainly true that the people of Ammon claimed this very territory in the time of Jephthah (Judges 11). Jephthah goes over all this same ground to show why Israel was right to keep the country.
The same thing happens with the Book of Jasher. In the dispute with Ammon it counted as public evidence both sides could check, not as revelation.
The Book of Jasher was not inspired; but the king says to Ammon, "Go and look at that record, and see whether this country is not ours."
Borrowed material does not weaken the claim that God inspired all of Scripture.
No believer in God's full inspiration of the Scriptures needs to deny that Scripture includes human documents. He need not deny that it includes speeches or conversations of men who may have been godless or hostile.
The Bible names several such sources, and none has survived. One writer counts that loss as no loss at all.
You can look at these passages for original records that no longer exist: Num. 21:14; Joshua 10:13; 1 Chron. 29:29; 2 Chron. 9:29, 12:15, 33:18-19. They served a purpose for a time. Nothing in them can have had lasting importance, except what the historical books of the Hebrew canon preserve.
The title puts these wars in the Lord's name. One writer sorts them into two kinds.
"The wars of the Lord" (Num. 21:14)... are of two kinds — those He carried out entirely alone, and those in which He used His people. The battle at the Red Sea was of the first kind. The Lord was there all alone. Israel had nothing to do but be still and see God's salvation.
- Record. The verse quotes a poem from a lost book. Read as place names, the line marks Waheb, Suphah and the Arnon valleys along Israel's route.
- Right. The quotation is evidence in a property dispute: the land was Amorite, not Moabite, when Israel took it.
- Referee. Israel's own word proved nothing against its enemies. So Scripture points to a record the enemies themselves accepted — the argument Jephthah later used against Ammon.
- Reliability. A quoted document can be true and useful without being inspired. Scripture can include human records and still be God's word.
- Ruler. The book bears God's name because the victories were His. Some He won with His people. Some, like the Red Sea, He won alone while they stood still.
And the stream of the brooks which turneth to the dwelling of Ar, And inclineth toward the border of Moab.
Numbers 21:15 comes from a quotation out of another book — a record of Israel's wars — and it traces a line of land down to Ar, on Moab's frontier. Why does the Bible stop to quote an outside source here, and why did that border matter so much?
The record quoted here does legal work. It settles who held this land before Israel arrived:
These are well known records. They are cited to prove that the Amorites held this country, and not Moab, when Israel took possession. That mattered enormously. God had forbidden Israel to touch Moab, but He had handed the country of the Amorites over to them. So, to defend Israel's title to these lands, the text gives well known public records: how the Amorites had earlier conquered Moab, and how they gained this territory. It gives the border as it stood then.
Some read a quotation like this as proof that the Pentateuch is a patchwork of older scraps. One writer answers that charge:
Critics claim that Moses put the Pentateuch together from a mass of earlier material floating among the Israelites of his day and their Gentile neighbours. This gives that idea not the smallest support. Scripture quotes these foreign traditions, written and spoken, on purpose, with one unusual aim in view. They prove that when Israel took the land in dispute by conquest, it did not belong to Ammon or Moab. It belonged to the doomed nations of Canaan and the region around it. And they prove it from witnesses that Israel's most zealous opponents could not challenge. An enemy might dismiss a Jewish record of the land's earlier owners, and of Israel's own victories, as self-serving. But a quotation from the enemies' own popular songs settled the matter. In Judges 11 Jephthah takes exactly this ground when he refutes the claims of the king of Ammon in his day. The evidence was unanswerable: the Amorite held the disputed territory when Israel took it over.
The verse names Ar. God had already ruled that place out for Israel:
With Moab and Ammon it was the same. "The Lord said to me, Do not harass Moab or contend with them in battle, for I will not give you any of their land for a possession, because I have given Ar to the people of Lot for a possession."
One writer draws out the lesson for Israel in that restraint:
What we find here is a warning not to give in to the sight of their eyes or the violence of their hands, guarding against a covetous spirit that pays little regard to what God has assigned to others. It is always the same duty of submission to God's will.
The frontier this verse leans on was a river. It sat where it did because of an earlier war:
When the tribe of Reuben received their possession, their southern boundary was the river Arnon. That same river was the northern boundary of the Moabites. The Amorites had driven the Moabites south before Israel arrived.
The verse belongs to a fragment of poetry, and that has drawn plenty of criticism. One writer explains what kind of poetry it is:
Of the stages of the journey, only the fourth and fifth get any attention. The fourth marks the boundary of Moab, between Moab and the Amorites, and that Amorite territory was now to become Israel's own. Here we have a fragment of song, little understood, which gives plenty of scope for criticism. It is a quotation from the "Book of the Wars of the LORD," so it certainly seems to be a battle-song. It comes in at the very place where they had to fight. Mere geography would be tame enough.
The verse sits at a turning point. What follows it is a song at a well:
This is a remarkable passage, coming in at such a moment and in such a connection. The murmuring is hushed. The people are nearing the borders of the promised land. The effects of the serpents' bite have passed. Now, without any rod and without any striking, the people receive refreshment. What if the Amorites, Moabites, and Ammonites are around them? What if the power of Sihon stands in the way? God can open a well for His people and give them a song despite it all.
- Border. The verse traces a line down to Ar, on Moab's frontier. That line decided what Israel could and could not claim.
- Evidence. Israel's own enemies acknowledged the record, so no one could dispute Israel's claim.
- Restraint. God gave Ar to Lot's descendants, so Israel's strength stopped where His gift to another began.
- Song. The quotation reads as a battle-song, not a travel note. At this border Israel's voice returns.
- Progress. Here the wandering ends and the advance begins; enemies ring them round, yet God opens a well and gives a song.
And from thence to Beer that is the well of which Jehovah spoke to Moses, Assemble the people, and I will give them water.
Numbers 21 closes Israel's forty years of wandering, and near the end of the road they reach a place called Beer — the Hebrew word for "well." Here God speaks first, before anyone complains, and what follows is not another crisis but a song.
Earlier in the wilderness, the people complained first. Only then did Moses strike the rock and the water flow. Here God moves first. One writer sets the two scenes side by side:
Now, at the close of their wanderings, grace shines out more fully and clearly than before they came to Sinai. They murmured at Horeb. God does not chide, though He heard them, but tells Moses to strike the rock, and the waters flow. Here God does not wait to be asked; He promises beforehand and tells Moses that the well is at Beer. And God is still ahead of them, He is ready before they are, waiting to be gracious. They are scattered: "Gather the people together, so that I may give them water."
Other wells in Scripture carry a second word in their name. This one does not:
Beer in Hebrew is the word for well. We read of Beersheba (well of the oath), and Beer-lahai-roi (well of Him who sees me), but here it is simply Beer, that is THE well. "The LORD said to Moses, 'Gather the people together, so that I may give them water.'" They came to this well and they sang, "Spring up, O well; sing to it." Does this not remind you of what our Lord said to the sinful woman at the well, "The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life" (John 4:14)?
Something has changed in how God supplies His people. Just before this came the deadly bite of the serpent and the healing that followed. The well comes next:
Next, Israel goes forward, but they are not yet in the land. God relieves and refreshes them out of His own free grace, without their murmuring. He gathers the people. Israel celebrates again, close by the land, the wells found in the wilderness. They can now say for themselves, "Spring up, O well"; no more rock to strike, no more murmuring near the land. Life at the end of their course is no longer the question: it is salvation from the deadly wound of the serpent. They are healed; they walk and drink with joy and songs of praise.
The Lord promises the water. Yet the people still dig. One writer keeps both sides together:
We must notice this. Beer was "the well of which the LORD said to Moses, 'Gather the people together, so that I may give them water.'" Yet "they dug." We see the energy of life in this. And afterwards Sihon king of the Amorites and Og king of Bashan fall before them. They go from victory to victory.
Commentators differ on how the water came up. One writer sees ordinary work, not a miracle:
It was not a miraculous provision of water, but it came through the work of the leaders and nobles of the people.
Others read the digging as the human touch on a supply God alone had placed there — the water "brought to the surface by the power of God," needing "only the touch of the staves upon the ground."
The setting for this song is not safety. Hostile kingdoms surround the camp:
This is a remarkable passage, coming at such a moment and in such a connection. The murmuring has stopped. The people are nearing the borders of the promised land. The effects of the serpents' bite have passed away. Now the people receive refreshment, without any rod and without any striking. What though the Amorites, Moabites, and Ammonites are around them? What though the power of Sihon stands in the way? God can open a well for His people and give them a song despite it all.
Beer is more than a stop on the road. One writer calls it "the true gathering point, where the fountain of living water is, and the place of songs and praises" (H. L. Rossier).
- Gathered. God speaks before anyone says they are thirsty. He gathers the scattered people so He can give, and He is ready before they are.
- Given. No rod, no rock struck, no complaint. This water is free grace, and it comes after the healing of the serpent's bite.
- Dug. The Lord names the well, yet the people still dig. Promise and the energy of life belong together.
- Sung. The camp that had spoken against God now sings, and the song rises with enemy kingdoms on every side.
- Springing. Beer means "the well." Commentators read it as a picture of the spring of water welling up to eternal life that Jesus promised.