If the enemy can’t win through a frontal attack, he’ll try subterfuge and sabotage to get us!
The children of Israel had hardly settled down after the rout of the Amorites when “Og king of Bashan went out against them, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei” (Num 21:33). There’s something about that name, Og, that suggests he was no ordinary fellow. We later learn, “Only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of the giants. Indeed his bedstead was an iron bedstead.…Nine cubits is its length and four cubits its width” (Deut 3:11). Taking the cubit to be eighteen inches, the bed was 13.5 feet long! More than likely, Og was at least as tall as Goliath, who was nine feet, two inches in height. Any wonder, then, that “the Lord said to Moses, ‘Do not fear him for I have delivered him into your hand’” (Num 21:34). And so it happened: “they defeated him, his sons, and all his people, until there was no survivor left him; and they took possession of his land” (v 35). His land, sometimes referred to as Bashan, is today the highly contested Golan Heights, east and northeast of the Sea of Galilee. At this point, “the children of Israel moved, and camped in the plains of Moab on the side of the Jordan across from Jericho” (22:1). Israel seems on a roll, don’t they! God’s sunshine is on them, His well springing up for them, His strong right arm winning victories for them. But the enemy will make one more move to block their way to Canaan. The enemy here isn’t just Balaam, the soothsayer from Shinar, where the first conspiracy against God occurred at the Tower of Babel. The devil is behind this! Times have changed little in the thousands of years since, and the Book of Revelation tells us about one last great battle, trying to keep God’s rightful King from taking His throne, too. It won’t work then either. God always wins!