Parasha: Devarim · Aliyah: Sixth (Yesod)

ראה החילותי תת לפניך, "Behold, I have begun to deliver up to you, etc." G'd used the word: "I have begun" in the past tense, and the word refers to the time G'd had hardened the spirit of Sichon to deny Israel the right of passage through his country in order to have a pretext to deliver him into Israel's hands. The word החילותי refers to the giving of the land, not to the previous paragraph. Moses misunderstood thinking that the word referred to the whole previous paragraph. This was what caused him to think that G'd had revoked His decree against him and this is what prompted his entreaty at the beginning of the next פרשה as explained there by Sifri.

ויתן ה׳ אלוקינו בידנו, G'd delivered into our hands, etc. This verse is best explained by reference to Berachot 54 describing Og as uprooting a mountain of 12 kilometers (equal to the size of the encampment of the Jewish people) and trying to throw it onto the camp of the Israelites. G'd frustrated this plan. Thereupon Moses, who was ten cubits tall, took an axe ten cubits long and threw it at Og, hitting his ankles and killing him. The words ויתן ה׳ refer to G'd making the mountain Og had uprooted drop on his own neck, whereas the word בידנו refers to Moses personally having killed Og using his own hands. Although Moses used only a single hand, the Torah describes his acts by referring to "hands," using the plural ending, much as G'd has been described in Genesis 1,26 as in the plural when He was about to create Adam and said: "let us make a human being, etc." Moses' hand was considered as equivalent to the combined hands of all the Jewish people.

ההוא יקרא ארץ רפאים, "this is what is known as the land of the Rephaim." I have explained earlier that the meaning of the word is that this land though referred to as "land of the Rephaim" was not the land of the Rephaim in the true sense of the word, i.e. the land promised by G'd to Abraham as the land of the Rephaim. If you were not to understand the verse in this manner and the lands of Sichon and Og would have to be considered as the true lands of the Rephaim, then the Baraitha in the Sifri where we were told that the words "which the Lord your G'd is about to give to you" mean that the lands on the East Bank of the Jordan which you have taken for yourself" are excluded, would be incompatible with what is written here. When you add to this the fact that we have been told in Bereshit Rabbah 44, that the Rephaim were identical with the tribe known as Chivi, and we find that the Chivi is one of the seven tribes the Israelites were to dispossess on the West Bank (compare Exodus 3,17) surely it is impossible to consider the lands occupied by Og as the lands known as "the lands of the Rephaim."

You may reply that we also find that the Emorite was mentioned among the seven tribes which G'd would dispossess when the Israelites left Egypt, and this included Sichon as we know from Numbers 21,21 where Sichon was described as the "king of the Emorites." Moreover, the Torah continued in verse 25 of that chapter to describe the Israelites as settling in the towns formerly belonging to the "Emorites." In view of this the question against the Sifri appears to have been resurrected! This is no problem at all. The cities of the Emorite listed in Numbers as having belonged to Sichon are not what G'd had promised to Abraham. In fact the Torah had been at pains in Numbers 21,26 to describe even Cheshbon, the capital of Sichon, as a city which had a chequered past; it had once belonged to the Moabites, and had subsequently been conquered by Sichon from the first king of the Moabites. In other words, the Torah offers clear proof that the land over which Sichon ruled at the time was actually Moabite land. The only reason it was called "Emorite" was because king Sichon who belonged to the tribe of the Emorites had acquired it by force. It had never been part of the original lands of the tribe of the Emorites. As a result, it could not have been included in the lands of the Emorite promised by G'd to Abraham.

Furthermore, all the lands mentioned in the Torah as belonging to the Rephaim are included in what G'd had promised to Abraham when He said "ואת הרפאים" in Genesis 15,20. The lands of Sichon and Og were also included in that promise for the Torah refers to them as "the land of the Emorite and the land of Og." It is also called the land of the Rephaim as the Rephaim were identical with the Chivi. When the Baraitha quoted in the Sifri (reference Deut. 7,13) stated that the lands of the East Bank were not included in what G'd had promised to Abraham, this statement referred to the settlement of that part of the East Bank by the Israelites. Although G'd had given, i.e. promised, the lands of seven Canaanite tribes to the Israelites who participated in the Exodus, this did not mean that all these lands were of equal status, and that all of them qualified for the Israelites to dwell therein. This situation is no different from the situation on the West Bank itself. We know from the Talmud (Keylim 1,6) that there were 10 different degrees of sanctity in the various locations on the West Bank. We need to perceive the lands of Sichon and Og as possessing a lower degree of sanctity than the lands promised to Abraham on the West Bank of the Jordan. G'd wanted the Israelites to loot the belongings of these kings but He had not planned for the Israelites to dwell in their lands.

This is what the Sifri had in mind when its author wrote: "excluding the lands on the East Bank." The Torah in that instance had been careful to write "which the Lord our G'd swore an oath to give to us" (Deut. 6,23). This meant that those lands G'd had sworn to give to us to dwell in. By that wording the Torah meant to exclude other lands which, though promised to us by G'd, were not promised for us to dwell in because these lands did not qualify for the requisite degree of sanctity [necessary for the Israelites to develop their personalities in keeping with Torah imperatives. Ed.]. You will find something similar in the case of Ammon, Moav, and Edom, who are identical respectively with the tribes Keyni, Kenizi, and Kadmoni in G'd's promise to Abraham in Genesis chapter 15. Jeremiah 49,17 foretells of the desolation of the land of Edom. If so, the promise of that land to the Israelites could not have been meant for them to dwell in it. The same fate had been intended for the lands of Sichon and Og. Only the West Bank of the Jordan contained the lands G'd had intended to give to the descendants of the Patriarchs to dwell in. Nonetheless, despite the fact that those lands were not included in the promise to Abraham, the fact that the Israelites conquered them at the command of G'd and that some tribes settled there conferred a certain degree of sanctity on the soil of those lands.