Og and Sichon
The gemara in nida on daf 61a quotes the pasuk that Hashem had to tell Moshe not to be afraid of Og. The gemara asks why Moshe was only afraid of Og and not of Sichon if they were brothers and it answers because Og had the zchus of having told Avraham about Lot. We know that it was him because the pasuk says that "the one who was saved" told Avraham so it must have been someone who was saved from the mabul and that was Og.
Rashi says that Og was saved by going to Eretz Yisrael where there was no mabul. That's a machlokes between Reish Lakish and R' Yochanan. Tosafos points out that according to the other pshat the Midrash says that Og survived by hanging onto the side of teiva. Tosafos though asks if Sichon and Og were brothers then if Og was saved then Sichon must have been saved also so how do we know that the "one who was saved" is referring to Og and not Sichon. Tosafos answers that we know it from the fact that Moshe was only afraid of Og so it must have been that it was he who told Avraham. The Maharsha says that there's a midrash that says that only Og was saved without being in the Teiva. Sichon wasn't born before the mabul but he was still Sichon's brother because their father was mezane with Cham's wife and she was pregnant when the mabul started and Sichon was actually born on the teiva. The Aruch Laner says that it can't be that they were mezane because then Cham's wife was no better than all the people who were killed in the mabul so why was she saved? He explains that it must be that Cham's wife had actually been married to Og and Sichon's father and then he died (or they got divorced) while she was pregnant. Then she married Cham and then they went on the teiva and Sichon was born on the teiva.
One more thing still bothered me. What was the gemara's question in the first place? It seems like the gemara is asking that Moshe should have been just as afraid of Sichon since he was Og's brother. And therefore what? It seems that it's saying they must have been equally strong. Is that true? All brothers are equally strong? That seems very strange. Also, why all of a sudden is Moshe afraid of strong people? He'd defeated some of the strongest nations and there have been numerous miracles and now he was afraid? I was glad to see that the Aruch Laner also had a couple other questions and therefore offers another pshat. Moshe never feared Og because he was strong. He feared him because he was so old. How could he have survived since the days of Noach if not for the fact that he had zchusim! The gemara then asks but Sichon was his brother and close to the same age so why wasn't Moshe afraid of him. The gemara answers that Og had the extra zchus of having told Avraham about Lot.
posted by David @ 7:55 AM
6 Comments:
>>>It seems that it's saying they must have been equally strong. Is that true? All brothers are equally strong? That seems very strange.<<<
First of all, you try answering this by saying that since Og lived since Noach, he must have had special zchussim. But if that's the case, you're still not answering the question about sichon, because even according the pshat that Sichon was the son of Cham's wife, he too lived since the times of Noach, yet we don't hear about him having any special zchussim.
So maybe, we can answer with something that happened afterwards. When Lot was kidnapped by the kings, it was Og who informed Avraham about it (albeit for ulterior motives), and THAT is the zchus that Moshe feared in Og. Sichon didn't have that special zchus.
I forgot to include in my original post the reason I quoted the above passage.
Brother's aren't generally equal in strentgh, but again, these are both people who have survived since Noach, these guys WERE very strong. But like I said before, Og had that one special zchus.
The way that the Aruch Laner explains it is that the hava amina of the gemara was that Moshe was afraid of Og because he had lived so long so he must have had special zchusim. The gemara asks if that's true then he should have been just as afraid of Sichon because he was his brother so he had lived about the same amount of time. The gemara answers that he was afraid of the extra zchusim that Og had because he had told Avraham about Lot.
That explains why Moshe was afraid of Og and not Sichon. The question still remains why did Sichon get to live so long if he didn't have zchusim. You could say that he did have zchusim just that we don't know what they were or you could say like you suggested that they were just very "strong" (good genes etc.) but that still wasn't why Moshe feared them. He wasn't afraid of big and strong guys. He was afraid of people with special zchusim.
There's a Midrash somewhere that says that Og was Eliezer (of parshas chayyei sarah fame). The Radal asks the obvious questions on this midrash, but it does explain why Moshe was afraid of his zechuyot.
If this gemara believed that Og was really Eliezer then the question of the gemara didn't make much sense. Of course, Og had far more zchusim than Sichon if he was Eliezer!
But how/why would Eliezer have 'turned bad?'
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