Texts in Conversation
Deuteronomy notes Og’s iron bed as evidence of his huge size. Rabbinic tradition in tractate Berakhot pictures Moses, ten cubits tall himself, jumping ten cubits with a ten-cubit ax to strike Og on the ankle and bring him down.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Deuteronomy 3:11
Hebrew Bible
10 all the cities of the plateau, all of Gilead and Bashan as far as Salecah and Edrei, cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan. 11 Only King Og of Bashan was left of the remaining Rephaites. (It is noteworthy that his sarcophagus was made of iron. Does it not, indeed, still remain in Rabbath of the Ammonites? It is 13½ feet long and 6 feet wide according to standard measure.) 12 This is the land we brought under our control at that time: The territory extending from Aroer by the Wadi Arnon and half the Gilead hill country with its cities I gave to the Reubenites and Gadites.
Berakhot 54b
Babylonian Talmud
Rabbinic
With regard to the rock that Og, King of Bashan, sought to throw upon Israel, there is no biblical reference, but rather a tradition was transmitted. The Gemara relates that Og said: How large is the camp of Israel? It is three parasangs. I will go and uproot a mountain three parasangs long and I will hurl it upon them and kill them. He went, uprooted a mountain three parasangs long, and brought it on his head. And The Holy One, Blessed be He, brought grasshoppers upon it and they pierced the peak of the mountain and it fell on his neck. Og wanted to remove it from his head; his teeth were extended to one side of his head and to the other and he was unable to remove it. And that is what is written: “You break the teeth of the wicked” (Psalms 3:8). And this is in accordance with the homiletic interpretation of Rabbi Shimon Ben Lakish, as Rabbi Shimon Ben Lakish said: What is the meaning of that which is written: “You break the teeth of the wicked”? Do not read it as: You break [shibarta], but rather as: You lengthened [shirbavta]. The story concludes: How tall was Moses? He was ten cubits tall. He took an axe ten cubits long, jumped up ten cubits, and struck Og in the ankle and killed him.
Date: 450-550 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
“... A similar approach marks Levi’s interpretation of the strange ‘tall’ tale in Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 54b of Moses smiting Og, whose head got stuck in the mountain he lifted to throw upon Israel. Moses Ibn Tibbon, as we have seen in the previous chapter, treats the tale as a historical allegory describing the war between Og and the Israelites, and Og’s swearing of allegiance to a powerful king in exchange for help to destroy Israel. The alliance broke up due to mutual rancor, and Moses was able to slay Og while Og was sitting in his siege tower, which was thirty cubits high. Levi does not reject Ibn Tibbon’s interpretation in this instance, but he adds another layer. He treats it as a philosophic allegory in addition to a historic one. It refers to the activity of the evil inclination that comes to overthrow the powers of the intellect and is not successful. The stone and the mountain refer to evil desires. The size of Moses is given as ten cubits to allude to his apprehension of all the forms of the sublunar world; his leap is given as ten cubits to allude to his apprehension of the motions of the spheres; and the size of his ax is given as ten cubits to allude to his apprehension of the Separate Intellects and his conjunction with the tenth one (the Active Intellect). In this manner he defeated Og, who denied the existence of non-material existents and God’s governance of the world. ...”
Kreisel, Howard
Judaism as Philosophy: Studies in Maimonides and the Medieval Jewish Philosophers of Provence
(pp. 145-146) Academic Studies Press, 2015
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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