Og
Encyclopedia
Og, according to the bible, was an Amorite
king of Bashan who, along with his army, was slain by Moses
and his men at the battle of Edrei. In Islam
ic folklore he is referred to as ‘Uj ibn Anaq
(‘Ûj ibn ‘Anâq عوج بن عنق), one of the giants mentioned in the Qur'an
(jababirat or jabbirun).
Og is mentioned in Jewish folklore as being alive from the time of Noah up until the time of his death in battle with the Jews. It is also written in the Midrash
that he had a special compartment in Noah's Ark just for him. Aggadah suggests an alternative to this; that he sat upon the top of the ark, riding out the flood for the duration of the storm from this location.
. Like his neighbor Sihon
of Heshbon
, whom Moses had previously conquered at the battle of Jahaz he was an Amorite
king, the ruler of Bashan
, which contained sixty walled cities and many unwalled towns, with his capital at Ashtaroth (probably modern Tell Ashareh, where there still exists a 70-foot mound).
The Book of Deuteronomy continues:
Og's destruction is told in psalms 135:11 and 136:20 as one of many great victories for the nation of Israel, and the book of Amos
2:9 may refer to Og as "the Amorite" whose height was like the height of the cedars
and whose strength was like the oaks.
In Deut. 3:11 and later in the book of Numbers and Joshua, Og is pronounced as the last of the Rephaim. Rephaim is a Hebrew
word for giants
. Deut. 3:11 declares that his "bedstead" (translated in some texts as "sarcophagus") of iron is "nine cubits in length and four cubits in width" (13.5 ft x 6 ft) according to the standard cubit of a man. It goes on to say that at the royal city of Rabbah
of the Ammon
ites, his giant bedstead could still be seen as a novelty in those days (The era in which the narrative was written). If the giant king's bedstead was built in proportion to his size as most beds are, he may have been 13 feet in height. However, Rabbinic tradition has it, that the length of his bedstead was measured with the cubits of Og himself. The Talmud further documents that Og was so large that he sought the destruction of the Israelites by uprooting a mountain so large, that it would have crushed the entire Israelite encampment. Moses, fulfilling the LORD's injunction not to fear him, seized a spear of ten cubits length, and jumped a similar vertical distance, succeeding in stabbing Og in the ankle
. The LORD then caused Og's teeth to lengthen until they grew into the mountain he held aloft; millions of ants then swarmed into his mouth, killing him. It is noteworthy that the region north of the river Jabbok, or Bashan
, "the land of Rephaim", contains hundreds of megalithic stone tombs (dolmen)
dating from the 5th to 3rd millennia BC. In 1918, Gustav Dalman discovered in the neighborhood of Amman Jordan (Amman is built on the ancient city of Rabbah of Ammon) a noteworthy dolmen which matched the approximate dimensions of Og's bed as described in the Bible. Such ancient rock burials are seldom seen west of the Jordan river, and the only other concentration of these megaliths is to be found in the hills of Judah in the vicinity of Hebron, where the giant sons of Anak
were said to have lived (Numbers 13:33).
A possible connection can also be made with the much older Ugaritic text KTU 1.108, which uses the term "king" in association with the root /rp/ or "Rapah" (the Rephaim of the Bible) and geographic place names that probably correspond to the cities of Ashtaroth and Edrei in the Bible, and with which king Og is clearly associated (Deuteronomy 1:4; Joshua 9:10; 12:4; 13:12, 31).
" or "The Book of Giants" depicts the adventures of a giant named Ogias who fought a great dragon, and who was supposedly either identical with the Biblical Og or was Og's father.
The book enjoyed considerable currency for several centuries, especially due to having been taken up by the Manichaean religion.The term og in this modern world means to be a famous member of a group of people [gangs] who appears to lead a different life from the society.
", Rabelais lists Hurtaly
(a version of Og) as one of Pantagruel's ancestors. He describes Hurtaly as sitting astride the Ark, saving it from shipwreck
by guiding it with his feet as the grateful Noah and his family feed him through the chimney.
Amorite
Amorite refers to an ancient Semitic people who occupied large parts of Mesopotamia from the 21st Century BC...
king of Bashan who, along with his army, was slain by Moses
Moses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...
and his men at the battle of Edrei. In Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
ic folklore he is referred to as ‘Uj ibn Anaq
‘Uj ibn Anaq
‘Uj ibn Anaq is a giant, portrayed in Islamic tales and miniatures. The origins of this character lay in Jewish lore and the Old Testament, e.g. king Og. He takes his ‘surname’ from his mother Anaq – ‘Anâq; cf. Book of Numbers 13:33– who begat him after an incest affair...
(‘Ûj ibn ‘Anâq عوج بن عنق), one of the giants mentioned in the Qur'an
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
(jababirat or jabbirun).
Og is mentioned in Jewish folklore as being alive from the time of Noah up until the time of his death in battle with the Jews. It is also written in the Midrash
Midrash
The Hebrew term Midrash is a homiletic method of biblical exegesis. The term also refers to the whole compilation of homiletic teachings on the Bible....
that he had a special compartment in Noah's Ark just for him. Aggadah suggests an alternative to this; that he sat upon the top of the ark, riding out the flood for the duration of the storm from this location.
The destruction of King Og
Og is introduced in the Book of NumbersBook of Numbers
The Book of Numbers is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible, and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch....
. Like his neighbor Sihon
Sihon
Sihon, according to the Old Testament, was an Amorite king, who refused to let the Israelites pass through his country. The Bible describes that as the Israelites in their Exodus came to the country east of the Jordan, near Heshbon, King of the Amorites refused to let them pass through his...
of Heshbon
Heshbon
Heshbon was an ancient town located east of the Jordan River in the modern Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and historically within the territories of Ammon and Ancient Israel....
, whom Moses had previously conquered at the battle of Jahaz he was an Amorite
Amorite
Amorite refers to an ancient Semitic people who occupied large parts of Mesopotamia from the 21st Century BC...
king, the ruler of Bashan
Bashan
Bashan or Basan is a biblical place first mentioned in , where it is said that Chedorlaomer and his confederates "smote the Rephaim in Ashteroth", where Og the king of Bashan had his residence. At the time of Israel's entrance into the Promised Land, Og came out against them, but was utterly routed...
, which contained sixty walled cities and many unwalled towns, with his capital at Ashtaroth (probably modern Tell Ashareh, where there still exists a 70-foot mound).
The Book of Deuteronomy continues:
-
-
- "Next we turned and went up along the road toward Bashan, and Og king of Bashan with his whole army marched out to meet us in battle at Edrei." Moses speaks: "The LORD said to me, "Do not be afraid of him, for I have handed him over to you with his whole army and his land. Do to him what you did to Sihon king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon ... So the LORD our God also gave into our hands Og king of Bashan and all his army. We struck them down, leaving no survivors." ... "At that time we took all his cities, there was not one of the sixty cities that we did not take from them—the whole region of Argob, Og's kingdom in Bashan ... destroying every city, men, women and children ... But all the livestock and the plunder from their cities we carried off for ourselves."
-
Og's destruction is told in psalms 135:11 and 136:20 as one of many great victories for the nation of Israel, and the book of Amos
Book of Amos
The Book of Amos is a prophetic book of the Hebrew Bible, one of the Twelve Minor Prophets. Amos, an older contemporary of Hosea and Isaiah, was active c. 750 BCE during the reign of Jeroboam II, making the Book of Amos the first biblical prophetic book written. Amos lived in the kingdom of Judah...
2:9 may refer to Og as "the Amorite" whose height was like the height of the cedars
Cedars
Cedars may refer to:* Cedar , several types of tree* Cedars-Sinai Medical Center* The Cedars, Dallas, Texas, a neighborhood near downtown Dallas, Texas, USA* The name of a Virginia mansion, headquarters of The Fellowship Foundation....
and whose strength was like the oaks.
Og and the Rephaim
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
word for giants
Giant (mythology)
The mythology and legends of many different cultures include monsters of human appearance but prodigious size and strength. "Giant" is the English word commonly used for such beings, derived from one of the most famed examples: the gigantes of Greek mythology.In various Indo-European mythologies,...
. Deut. 3:11 declares that his "bedstead" (translated in some texts as "sarcophagus") of iron is "nine cubits in length and four cubits in width" (13.5 ft x 6 ft) according to the standard cubit of a man. It goes on to say that at the royal city of Rabbah
Rabbah
Rabbah - "Rabbath of the children of Ammon," thechief city and capital of the Ammonites, among the eastern hills, some 20miles east of the Jordan, on the southern of the two streams...
of the Ammon
Ammon
Ammon , also referred to as the Ammonites and children of Ammon, was an ancient nation located east of the Jordan River, Gilead, and the Dead Sea, in present-day Jordan. The chief city of the country was Rabbah or Rabbath Ammon, site of the modern city of Amman, Jordan's capital...
ites, his giant bedstead could still be seen as a novelty in those days (The era in which the narrative was written). If the giant king's bedstead was built in proportion to his size as most beds are, he may have been 13 feet in height. However, Rabbinic tradition has it, that the length of his bedstead was measured with the cubits of Og himself. The Talmud further documents that Og was so large that he sought the destruction of the Israelites by uprooting a mountain so large, that it would have crushed the entire Israelite encampment. Moses, fulfilling the LORD's injunction not to fear him, seized a spear of ten cubits length, and jumped a similar vertical distance, succeeding in stabbing Og in the ankle
Ankle
The ankle joint is formed where the foot and the leg meet. The ankle, or talocrural joint, is a synovial hinge joint that connects the distal ends of the tibia and fibula in the lower limb with the proximal end of the talus bone in the foot...
. The LORD then caused Og's teeth to lengthen until they grew into the mountain he held aloft; millions of ants then swarmed into his mouth, killing him. It is noteworthy that the region north of the river Jabbok, or Bashan
Bashan
Bashan or Basan is a biblical place first mentioned in , where it is said that Chedorlaomer and his confederates "smote the Rephaim in Ashteroth", where Og the king of Bashan had his residence. At the time of Israel's entrance into the Promised Land, Og came out against them, but was utterly routed...
, "the land of Rephaim", contains hundreds of megalithic stone tombs (dolmen)
Dolmen
A dolmen—also known as a portal tomb, portal grave, dolmain , cromlech , anta , Hünengrab/Hünenbett , Adamra , Ispun , Hunebed , dös , goindol or quoit—is a type of single-chamber megalithic tomb, usually consisting of...
dating from the 5th to 3rd millennia BC. In 1918, Gustav Dalman discovered in the neighborhood of Amman Jordan (Amman is built on the ancient city of Rabbah of Ammon) a noteworthy dolmen which matched the approximate dimensions of Og's bed as described in the Bible. Such ancient rock burials are seldom seen west of the Jordan river, and the only other concentration of these megaliths is to be found in the hills of Judah in the vicinity of Hebron, where the giant sons of Anak
Anak
According to the Book of Numbers, during the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites, Anak was a well known figure, and a forefather of the Anakites who have been considered "strong and tall," they were also said to have been a mixed race of giant people, descendants of the Nephilim...
were said to have lived (Numbers 13:33).
Og in non-Biblical inscriptions
A reference to "Og" appears in a Phoenician inscription from Byblos (Byblos 13) published in 1974 by Wolfgang Rölling in "Eine new phoenizische Inschrift aus Byblos," (Neue Ephemeris für Semitische Epigraphik, vol 2, 1-15 and plate 1). It appears in a damaged 7-line funerary inscription that Rölling dates to around 500 BC, and appears to say that if someone disturbs the bones of the occupant, "the mighty Og will avenge me."A possible connection can also be made with the much older Ugaritic text KTU 1.108, which uses the term "king" in association with the root /rp/ or "Rapah" (the Rephaim of the Bible) and geographic place names that probably correspond to the cities of Ashtaroth and Edrei in the Bible, and with which king Og is clearly associated (Deuteronomy 1:4; Joshua 9:10; 12:4; 13:12, 31).
"Ogias the Giant"
The 2nd century BC apocryphal book "Ogias the GiantOgias the Giant
Ogias the Giant, also known as The Book of Giants, is an apocryphal Jewish book expanding a narrative in the Hebrew Bible. Its discovery at Qumran dates the text's creation to before the 2nd century BCE.-Origin:...
" or "The Book of Giants" depicts the adventures of a giant named Ogias who fought a great dragon, and who was supposedly either identical with the Biblical Og or was Og's father.
The book enjoyed considerable currency for several centuries, especially due to having been taken up by the Manichaean religion.The term og in this modern world means to be a famous member of a group of people [gangs] who appears to lead a different life from the society.
Hurtaly
In "PantagruelGargantua and Pantagruel
The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel is a connected series of five novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais. It is the story of two giants, a father and his son and their adventures, written in an amusing, extravagant, satirical vein...
", Rabelais lists Hurtaly
Hurtaly
Hurtaly or Hurtali is a legendary giant. He appears in Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais, as an ancestor of Gargantua. Hurtaly is there said to have survived Noah's Flood, by sitting astride Noah's Ark. He is characterised as beau mangeur des souppes, and as the son of Faribroth, father of...
(a version of Og) as one of Pantagruel's ancestors. He describes Hurtaly as sitting astride the Ark, saving it from shipwreck
Shipwreck
A shipwreck is what remains of a ship that has wrecked, either sunk or beached. Whatever the cause, a sunken ship or a wrecked ship is a physical example of the event: this explains why the two concepts are often overlapping in English....
by guiding it with his feet as the grateful Noah and his family feed him through the chimney.
Literature
- Kosman, Admiel: "The Story of a Giant Story - The Winding Way of Og King of Bashan in the Jewish Aggadic Tradition", in: HUCA 73, (2002) pp. 157–190.