Giants on the Way to the Giant
Introduction: The Necessity of Holy War
We have come to a portion of the Scriptures that makes our modern, sentimental age very uncomfortable. We like our religion to be a matter of private preference, a therapeutic comfort, something that helps us feel better about ourselves but never makes any demands on anyone else. But the God of the Bible is not a tame God. He is a warrior, a king, and a judge. And the history of His people is a history of warfare. Not metaphorical warfare, not spiritual warfare in some ethereal sense, but real, bloody, sword-and-spear warfare.
The conquest of Canaan, of which this battle is a part, is an offense to the modern mind. We hear sneering charges of "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing." But this is to fundamentally misunderstand what is happening. God's judgments are never ethnic; they are always ethical. God had waited patiently for centuries, telling Abraham that his descendants could not yet possess the land because "the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full" (Gen. 15:16). These Canaanite cultures were not quaint, primitive societies. They were cultures devoted to the institutionalized evil of child sacrifice, sexual perversion, and demonic worship. They were a cancer on the face of the earth, and God, the great physician, was using Israel as His scalpel to cut it out.
This is not a story about Israel's ethnic superiority. It is a story about God's holiness and His justice. Israel was not chosen because they were better than anyone else. They were chosen to be the instrument of God's judgment, and they themselves were warned that if they adopted the wicked practices of the Canaanites, the same land would vomit them out (Lev. 18:28). This is a holy war, which is to say, it is God's war. Israel is simply the army He has conscripted. And in this brief account of the defeat of Og, king of Bashan, we see a critical pattern: God gives the promise, God commands His people not to fear, and God delivers the victory.
This pattern is not confined to the Old Testament. It is the pattern of our salvation, the pattern of the Church's mission, and the pattern of our daily Christian lives. We too face giants. We too are commanded not to fear. And we too are promised the victory, not through our own strength, but through the power of our conquering King, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Text
Then they turned and went up by the way of Bashan, and Og the king of Bashan went out to meet them, he and all his people for battle at Edrei. But Yahweh said to Moses, "Do not fear him, for I have given him into your hand, and all his people and his land; and you shall do to him as you did to Sihon, king of the Amorites, who lived at Heshbon." So they struck down him and his sons and all his people, until there was no survivor remaining for him; and they possessed his land.
(Numbers 21:33-35 LSB)
The Confrontation with Og (v. 33)
We begin with the initial encounter:
"Then they turned and went up by the way of Bashan, and Og the king of Bashan went out to meet them, he and all his people for battle at Edrei." (Numbers 21:33)
Israel is on the move. Having just defeated Sihon, king of the Amorites, they now turn north toward Bashan. This was not a random detour. This was part of the strategic advance toward the promised land, securing the territory east of the Jordan. And as they advance, the local power, Og, comes out to meet them. He is not waiting to be attacked; he initiates the conflict. This is how the world always responds to the advance of God's kingdom. It does not sit idly by. It marshals its forces for battle.
Who was this Og? The Scriptures tell us elsewhere that he was a giant, one of the last of the Rephaim (Deut. 3:11). His bed, a massive iron bedstead, was over thirteen feet long. This was not just a tall man; this was a figure of legendary, intimidating proportions. He was the Goliath of his day. Bashan itself was known for its fertile land, its strong oaks, and its mighty bulls. It was a place of strength and earthly power. So, what we have here is the people of God, a wandering nation of former slaves, coming face to face with a monstrous king in a fortified land. On a purely human level, this is a mismatch.
The enemy always appears bigger, stronger, and more entrenched than we are. Whether it is the giant of personal sin, the giant of a hostile culture, or the giant of institutional opposition, the people of God are always, from a worldly perspective, the underdogs. The world trusts in its chariots and horses, its iron bedsteads and fortified cities. But we are called to trust in the name of the Lord our God.
The Divine Command and Promise (v. 34)
Just as the threat appears, God speaks a word of command and assurance.
"But Yahweh said to Moses, 'Do not fear him, for I have given him into your hand, and all his people and his land; and you shall do to him as you did to Sihon, king of the Amorites, who lived at Heshbon.'" (Numbers 21:34)
Notice the structure. The first word from God is a command: "Do not fear him." Fear is the natural human response to giants. It is the response that paralyzed the previous generation at Kadesh Barnea, causing them to wander and die in the wilderness. Fear is unbelief in action. It looks at the size of the giant instead of the size of God. God commands them not to do what their senses and their natural reason would scream at them to do. Faith is not the absence of the temptation to fear; it is the refusal to bow to it because of a higher word.
And why should they not fear? Because of the second part of God's speech: the promise. "For I have given him into your hand." Notice the past tense. From God's perspective, the victory is already accomplished. He is not saying, "I will help you fight him," or "You have a good chance of winning." He says, "I have given him." The battle on the ground is simply the outworking in time and space of a victory that has already been secured in the heavenly realms. Our warfare is always to take possession of a victory that has already been won for us by Christ.
God's promises are the only firm foundation for courage. We do not fight for victory; we fight from victory. God then gives them a point of reference. "You shall do to him as you did to Sihon." God builds our faith by reminding us of His past faithfulness. He had just delivered Sihon into their hands. The same God who did it then can and will do it now. This is why it is so crucial for Christians to remember their history, both the history recorded in Scripture and the history of God's faithfulness in our own lives. Every past deliverance is a down payment on a future victory.
The Total Victory (v. 35)
The result of God's promise and Israel's obedience is a decisive, total victory.
"So they struck down him and his sons and all his people, until there was no survivor remaining for him; and they possessed his land." (Numbers 21:35)
The language here is stark and absolute. They struck him down, along with his sons (the line of succession) and all his people. This is the language of 'herem,' or total devotion to destruction. This was not wanton cruelty. This was the execution of a divine sentence. These people and their culture were under the judgment of God, and Israel was the executioner. To leave survivors would be to disobey a direct command and to allow the cancer of Canaanite wickedness to metastasize within Israel. This is what Saul failed to do with the Amalekites, and it cost him his kingdom.
The victory is complete: "until there was no survivor remaining for him." When God judges, His judgment is total. There is no middle ground, no compromise with evil. This is a hard lesson, but a necessary one. In our own spiritual lives, we are not called to negotiate with our sin. We are not called to manage it or to make a truce with it. We are called to put it to death (Col. 3:5). We are to show it no mercy. The war against sin is a total war.
And the result of this obedience is possession. "And they possessed his land." The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is the inheritance. By destroying God's enemies, they took possession of God's promise. The land was not won by their military might; it was received as a gift, a gift that had to be taken by force. This is the paradox of the Christian life. We fight, not to earn our inheritance, but because it has been freely given to us, and we must seize it by faith.
The Greater Giant and the Greater Victory
This account is more than just a historical record of an ancient battle. It is a picture, a type, of a much greater conflict. Og of Bashan, the last of the giants, is a type of that ancient serpent, the devil, who is the ultimate giant that stands against the people of God.
Like Og, Satan is a monstrous foe who comes out to meet us for battle. He is the prince of this world, the ruler of a powerful and fertile kingdom of darkness. He and his demonic hosts are giants who tower over us in their native strength. And our natural response to him is fear. He is the accuser, the tempter, the one who seeks to devour us.
But to us, as to Moses, God has spoken a word. Through His Son, He has said, "Do not fear." Why? "For I have given him into your hand." The victory over Satan was secured at the cross. When Jesus died and rose again, he crushed the serpent's head (Gen. 3:15). He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in His crucifixion (Col. 2:15).
The death of Og, his sons, and all his people points to the totality of Christ's victory. He did not just wound the devil; He destroyed him and his works (1 John 3:8). There is no "survivor" left of Satan's ultimate authority. His kingdom has been conquered, and the keys of that kingdom have been given to the Church (Matt. 16:19).
And just as Israel possessed the land of Bashan, so we, in Christ, possess the inheritance. We have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's beloved Son. We are seated with Christ in the heavenly places (Eph. 2:6), ruling with Him. The battles we fight now, against sin, the flesh, and the devil, are not desperate struggles to see if we can win. They are mop-up operations. We are simply possessing the territory that our King has already conquered for us. He defeated Sihon, the king of the Amorites, a type of the power of sin. And He has defeated Og, the giant king of Bashan, a type of the power of death and Satan. Therefore, we are to go forward in faith, without fear, striking down every enemy, until every foe is vanquished and we possess the land in its fullness.