Comentário sobre Deuteronômio 3:11

מיתר הרפאים [ONLY OG … REMAINED] OF THE REST OF THE REPHAIM whom Amraphel and his allies slew in Ashteroth-Karnaim (Genesis 14:5), and he (Og) escaped from the battle, as it is said, (Genesis 14:13) "And the fugitive came", and that was Og (Genesis Rabbah 42:8; cf. Rashi on Genesis 14.13.1).

FOR ONLY OG KING OF BASHAN REMAINED OF THE REMNANT OF THE REPHAIM; BEHOLD, HIS BEDSTEAD WAS A BEDSTEAD OF IRON etc. The purport of the verse is to tell that this Og was called the king of the Amorites because he ruled over them, but he himself was of the Rephaim. And in order to tell of his height and strength, since the Rephaim were a people great, and many, and tall as the Anakim,²⁶⁷Above, 2:10. it states that his bedstead was a bedstead of iron, no bedstead of wood being able to support him as it does other people. It is in the city of Rabbah which was his dwelling place, and when the children of Ammon destroyed the Rephaim as is mentioned above,²⁶⁸Ibid., Verse 21. and his city [Og’s capital, Ashtaroth] was captured, he alone was saved from the hands of the Ammonites. It is this which is stated, For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of the Rephaim. His bed was left there in Rabbah which now belongs to the children of Ammon, and the Ammonites preserved it as testimony that they destroyed a great and tall people; and the mighty man whose height was like the height of the cedars, and he was strong as the oaks²⁶⁹Amos 2:9. — from him they captured his kingdom. This is the sense of the word behold [behold, his bedstead …], meaning: “behold, the proof of [Og’s strength] still exists; it is the iron bedstead, very long and wide, and is to be found in Rabbah of the children of Ammon,” since his bedstead, which was in Ashtaroth, was plundered and lost.²⁷⁰That is, when the Ammonites destroyed the Rephaim and captured Og’s capital city Ashtaroth (above, 1:4) they plundered it and took his bedstead from there and brought it to Rabbah.

באמת איש; according what the Refaim had adopted as their standard cubit, i.e. a much longer one than that of average sized citizens. Such subjective, as opposed to standard. measurements, are mentioned in Isaiah 56,11 where the prophet speaks of איש לבצעו מקצהו, “every one has done his own thing.” The word איש also occurs describing such individual feats in Kings I 20,20 ויכו איש אישו, “each man struck the opponent facing him.” There are other verses in which the word איש does not mean “man,” but is a simile for the individual nature of something, No doubt there were many “cubits” other than the one described here as 9 times the length of the cubit of an average sized individual. The reason the Torah relates this historically hardly important information is to impress the reader with the extraordinary size of these Refaim. The strength of such giants can be imagined once we are aware of their size. The fact that the Ammonites had been able to defeat a nation whose warriors were of such proportions gives us a clear indication that it must have been G’d’s will that they were able to do so. (compare our commentary on 2,21).