( Which Hermon the Sidonians call Sirion; and the Amorites call it Shenir;)
Hermon was a mountain known by different names among the peoples around it, the Sidonians calling it Sirion and the Amorites calling it Shenir. This naming stands as part of Moses's record of the nations Israel encountered. Its glens and its heights, together with the rocky defiles of Argob, were the dwelling place of a war-trained giant people who lived in fortified, fortress-like cities.
Their nationality was destroyed and their power utterly broken when Israel took Bashan, though some of the native tribes were never entirely subdued or exterminated. The chapter belongs to the judgment of peoples wholly given over to evil, whose continued survival could bring corruption. Their walled cities failed to offer effectual resistance, and the giant strength of Heshbon and Bashan fell before a nomad people unused to war whose only reliance under God was upon flocks and herds. That outcome proves Israel could conquer them only under the special guidance and by the assistance of Heaven, revealing the supernatural element commingled with the real history of the conquest of Bashan.
Hermon was a mountain known by different names among the peoples around it, the Sidonians calling it Sirion and the Amorites calling it Shenir. This naming stands as part of Moses's record of the nations Israel encountered. Its glens and its heights, together with the rocky defiles of Argob, were the dwelling place of a war-trained giant people who lived in fortified, fortress-like cities.
Their nationality was destroyed and their power utterly broken when Israel took Bashan, though some of the native tribes were never entirely subdued or exterminated. The chapter belongs to the judgment of peoples wholly given over to evil, whose continued survival could bring corruption. Their walled cities failed to offer effectual resistance, and the giant strength of Heshbon and Bashan fell before a nomad people unused to war whose only reliance under God was upon flocks and herds. That outcome proves Israel could conquer them only under the special guidance and by the assistance of Heaven, revealing the supernatural element commingled with the real history of the conquest of Bashan.