Deuteronomy3:1–11

Where the English smooths the original

• וַנֵּ֣פֶן BSB's “we turned” renders wannêp̄en (H6437), the verb pānâh — properly to turn the face in a new direction. It is not aimless wandering but a deliberate change of march, a wheeling of the whole column northward; Ellicott notes the Hebrew opens with a bare And, the artless seam of a continued narrative.
• לִקְרָאתֵ֜נוּ “To meet us” softens liqrāʼṯênū (H7122), from qārâʼ — a verb of encounter that is specifically hostile here, to confront in collision. Og does not greet Israel; he comes out to fall upon them. The Geneva note reads this verb as proof Israel had “just cause to fight against him,” for he was the aggressor.
• הַבָּשָׁ֑ן “To Bashan” drops the article the Hebrew keeps — hab-Bāšān (H1316), the Bashan. As the Cambridge editors observe, the name almost always carries the article in prose; it is less a bare place-name than the fertile, well-known upland east of the Jordan.

Where the English smooths the original

• נָתַ֧תִּי BSB's “I have delivered” is right to keep the past tense, but the verb is the plain nāṯattî (H5414), I have given — a completed grant. Ellicott corrects the older versions' “I will deliver”: “for into thy hand have I delivered him.” The battle is reported as already decided in heaven before it is fought on earth.
• אַל־תִּירָ֣א “Do not fear him” renders ʼal-tîrāʼ (H408 + H3372) — the deprecative ʼal with the imperfect, the standard formula of the holy-war oracle. Poole catches its concrete force: “Fear him not, though he be of so frightful a look and stature.”
• וְעָשִׂ֣יתָ “Do” flattens wəʻāśîṯā (H6213), a conjunctive perfect — and you shall do. It is not a fresh imperative but the consequence already woven into the gift: because God has given, Israel will do; the verb of human action is bound to the verb of divine grant.

Where the English smooths the original

• וַיִּתֵּן֩ “Delivered” in BSB renders wayyittên (H5414), the same verb nāṯan, gave, that sounded as a promise in v. 2 — now in fulfillment. The narrative deliberately echoes the oracle: what God said He gave, He gave. The word gam (H1571), also, ties this conquest to Sihon's as one connected act of giving.
• וַנַּכֵּ֕הוּ “We struck them down” renders wannakkêhū (H5221), the Hiphil of nâkâh with a singular suffix — literally and we struck him. The English plural “them” generalizes; the Hebrew keeps the blow aimed at the king himself, the head whose fall is the people's fall.
• בִּלְתִּ֥י שָׂרִֽיד “Until no survivor was left” compresses biltî śārîḏ (H1115 + H8300) — so as to leave no escapee, no remnant. śārîḏ is the technical word for the one who gets away from a slaughter; the idiom is the ban-formula of total defeat, identical to that used of Sihon (Deuteronomy 2:34).

Where the English smooths the original

• חֶ֣בֶל BSB's “region” renders ḥeḇel (H2256), whose root sense is a rope or measuring-line — and so a tract measured off by the line, a surveyed allotment. Keil reads it as “the chain for measuring, then the land or country measured with the chain.” The land is portioned, bounded, parceled — not a vague district but a deeded territory.
• אַרְגֹּ֔ב “Argob” is left untranslated, but the name itself, says Barnes, means “stone-heap” (cf. reḡeḇ, a clod); the Targums render the district as Trachonitis, “the rough country.” The English place-name hides a description of the broken, basalt-strewn ground the Israelites took.
• לֹא־לָקַ֖חְנוּ “We failed to take” renders a flat double negative, lōʼ lāqaḥnū (H3808 + H3947) — that we did not take. The Hebrew states the completeness by negation: there was no town we did not take. The litotes presses the totality harder than the English smoothing allows.

Where the English smooths the original

• בְּצֻר֛וֹת BSB's “fortified” renders bəṣurôṯ (H1219), the passive participle of bâtsar — cut off, made inaccessible. The same root that means to gather grapes (to strip a vine bare) yields the sense of a city walled in, sealed against approach. These are not merely walled but rendered unassailable — which makes their fall the more a gift of God.
• דְּלָתַ֣יִם וּבְרִ֑יחַ “Gates and bars” levels a precise pairing: dəlāṯayim (H1817) is a dual, two-leaved / double gates, and ḇərîaḥ (H1280) is a singular bar, the bolt that locks them. Barnes renders it exactly: “Double gates and a bar.” The stone doors of Bashan still hang in their sockets to illustrate it.
• הַפְּרָזִ֖י “Unwalled villages” renders happərāzî (H6521), the open-country folk — properly an adjective for the rustic, hamlet-dwelling population. Cambridge ties it to pərāzôṯ (Ezekiel 38:11), “open, rural places in contrast to fenced cities.” Even the defenseless settlements fell.

Where the English smooths the original

• וַנַּחֲרֵ֣ם BSB's “we devoted them to destruction” renders wannaḥărêm (H2763), the Hiphil of ḥâram — to place under the ḥērem, the ban. Ellicott names it without flinching: “Devoted them, made them chêrem.” This is not slaughter for plunder but the handing of a people over to God as something irrevocably forfeited. The word carries the whole theological weight — and the whole moral difficulty — of the conquest.
• הַחֲרֵם֙ “Utterly destroying” renders haḥărêm (H2763), the infinitive absolute of the same root ḥâram, set beside the finite verb — Hebrew's way of intensifying: devoting-utterly. Keil reads it as a gerund. The doubling is the grammar of finality; nothing is held back.
• וְהַטָּֽף “And children” renders haṭṭāp̄ (H2945) — the little ones, the toddling young of a household, named last and most exposed. The Hebrew does not soften the scope of the ban; it spells out men, women, and infants. The text records the act and leaves the reader to wrestle with it under God's stated command.

Where the English smooths the original

• הַבְּהֵמָ֛ה BSB's “livestock” renders habbəhêmâh (H929), properly the dumb beasts, the herd-animals — distinguished sharply from the ʼāḏām placed under the ban in v. 6. The grammar of the conquest is exact: the people are devoted to destruction; the beasts are taken. The line between the two is the line of the ḥērem.
• שְׁלַ֥ל “Plunder” renders šəlal (H7998), booty, paired with the cognate verb bazzōwnū (H962), we plundered — a figura etymologica, we spoiled the spoil. The doubling marks the lawful seizure: what was banned was forbidden, but the material goods were Israel's by grant, and Gill notes they were thereby “greatly enriched.”

Where the English smooths the original

• מִיַּ֗ד BSB's “from” renders mîyaḏ (H3027), literally from the hand of — the same word yāḏ that named the divine hand into which Og was given (v. 2-3). The conquest is told as a transfer of hands: out of the Amorites' grip, by way of God's grip, into Israel's possession.
• בְּעֵ֣בֶר הַיַּרְדֵּ֑ן “Across the Jordan” renders bəʻêḇer hayyardên (H5676 + H3383), the region-across the Jordan. Poole and Benson both flag the standpoint: “so it was when Moses wrote this book, but afterward, when Israel passed over Jordan, it was called the land beyond Jordan.” The phrase fixes the narrator's vantage east of the river.
• מִנַּ֥חַל אַרְנֹ֖ן “The Arnon Valley” softens naḥal ʼArnōn (H5158) — not a gentle valley but a winter-torrent ravine, the deep gorge that floods in the rains. The Hebrew word names a chasm; the whole conquered land is bounded south and north by two extremes, the Arnon gorge and the snow-peak of Hermon.

Where the English smooths the original

• צִידֹנִ֛ים ... וְהָ֣אֱמֹרִ֔י BSB's “the Sidonians ... but the Amorites” renders the parenthesis exactly, but the force of the verse is the contrast of peoples: each nation along Hermon's base has its own name for the one mountain. Ṣîḏōnîm (H6722) and hāʼĕmōrî (H567) frame a note about how shared geography wears different tongues.
• שִׂרְיֹ֑ן “Sirion” transliterates śiryōn (H8303) — a name found in only two verses of the Hebrew Bible. Gesenius (via Ellicott) takes it to mean “glittering like a breastplate,” the snow-sheathed peak shining like a coat of mail. The English name preserves the sound but loses the picture of armor on the mountain.
• שְׂנִֽיר “Senir” transliterates śənîr (H8149), the Amorite name. Cambridge records it on an Assyrian inscription of Shalmaneser as Saniru; Gill notes Jewish tradition that in “the Canaanitish language” it signified “snow.” Three peoples, three names, one snow-crowned summit.

Where the English smooths the original

• הַמִּישֹׁ֗ר BSB's “the plateau” renders hammîšōr (H4334), the level place — the high tableland east of the Jordan, the Moabite plain. Keil identifies it precisely: “the Amoritish table-land, stretching from the Arnon to Heshbon.” The English word is geographically apt; the Hebrew specifies the smooth, open upland over against the rugged Argob.
• הַגִּלְעָד֙ “Gilead” carries the article in Hebrew, haggilʻāḏ (H1568). Benson and Poole both flag its slipperiness: Gilead is “sometimes taken for all the Israelites' possessions beyond Jordan,” but “here for that part of it which lies in and near mount Gilead,” distinguished from Bashan and Argob. The article marks the narrower sense.
• עַד־עָרֵ֛י “As far as the cities of” renders ʻaḏ ʻārê (H5704 + H5892) — the boundary marker ʻaḏ, up to. Cambridge raises the geographic puzzle that both Salecah and Edrei lie on the southern rim, yet they are named to bound a kingdom said to reach north to Hermon — a tension the tool flags rather than resolves.

Where the English smooths the original

• הָרְפָאִים֒ BSB's “the Rephaim” transliterates hārəp̄āʼîm (H7497), the giant aborigines of the land (Genesis 14:5). Older versions render it “giants”; the proper name is better kept. Keil's point is theological: Og is named the last survivor of this race so that the victory recalls “the greatness of the grace of God that had been manifested.”
• עַרְשׂוֹ֙ “Bed” renders ʻarśôw (H6210), a couch, properly one with a canopy. The word is genuinely ambiguous: Cambridge argues from its synonyms that it means “sarcophagus” — a stone coffin — rather than a bedstead, while the Pulpit Commentary defends bed as alone giving a true measure of the man. The tool leaves the dispute open.
• בַּרְזֶ֔ל “Iron” renders barzel (H1270). But Barnes and Cambridge both argue the word here likely means the local black basalt, which “contains a large proportion ... of iron, and was actually called ‘iron,’” still so named by the Arabs of Hauran. An iron bedstead is improbable; a basalt one fits the country exactly.
• בְּאַמַּת־אִֽישׁ “Cubits” alone hides the qualifying phrase bəʼammaṯ ʼîš (H520 + H376), by the cubit of a man — the ordinary forearm-cubit, Keil compares the idiom “a man's pen” (Isaiah 8:1). The measurement is given in everyday units precisely so a reader could picture the giant's bed: roughly thirteen and a half feet by six.