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Context No. 306 of 4322 · Numbers

Context · Reflection

Numbers 21:23-30: in context

23Sihon would not allow Israel to pass through his border, but Sihon gathered all his people together, and went out against Israel into the wilderness, and came to Jahaz. He fought against Israel. 24Israel struck him with the edge of the sword, and possessed his land from the Arnon to the Jabbok, even to the children of Ammon; for the border of the children of Ammon was fortified. 25Israel took all these cities. Israel lived in all the cities of the Amorites, in Heshbon, and in all its villages. 26For Heshbon was the city of Sihon the king of the Amorites, who had fought against the former king of Moab, and taken all his land out of his hand, even to the Arnon. 27Therefore those who speak in proverbs say, “Come to Heshbon. Let the city of Sihon be built and established; 28for a fire has gone out of Heshbon, a flame from the city of Sihon. It has devoured Ar of Moab, The lords of the high places of the Arnon. 29Woe to you, Moab! You are undone, people of Chemosh! He has given his sons as fugitives, and his daughters into captivity, to Sihon king of the Amorites. 30We have shot at them. Heshbon has perished even to Dibon. We have laid waste even to Nophah, Which reaches to Medeba.”

Israel, on its way toward the promised land, asks King Sihon of the Amorites for safe passage through his territory. He refuses, gathers his army, and attacks, and Israel defeats him and takes his land, including his capital, Heshbon, and all its towns. That is the plain event. But the passage adds a detail that gives it a bitter twist, and then quotes an old song to drive it home.

Heshbon, the text notes, had not always been Sihon's. He had captured it from Moab, taking the whole territory up to the Arnon out of the hand of the Moabite king. And there had been a victory song about that conquest, a taunt the poets used to sing, mocking Moab's ruin: a fire went out from Heshbon, it devoured Ar of Moab, woe to you, Moab, you are undone, people of Chemosh. It was Sihon's triumph anthem, a song celebrating how thoroughly he had crushed his enemy. Now Israel has crushed Sihon and taken that same city, and the narrator reaches for that very song. The words Sihon sang over Moab's fall now sit in the record as the marker of his own. His triumph anthem outlived his triumph and became the epitaph of his defeat.

There is a warning folded into that. The song you compose over someone else's downfall has a way of circling back to describe your own. What triumphant thing have I said or thought over another person's fall, some quiet gloating over their ruin, that could just as easily, and just as fairly, be sung over mine?

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