Charles H. Spurgeon on Psalms 136:19

Sihon occupied the whole district between the Arnon and Jabbok, through which the approach to the Jordan lay. He had wrested it from the predecessor of Balak, and had established himself, not in the ancient capital of Moab Ar, but in the city still conspicuous to the modern traveller from its wide prospect and its cluster of stone pines —Heshbon. The recollection of his victory survived in a savage war song, which passed into a kind of proverb in after times: —

"Come home to Heshbon;

Let the city of Sihon be built and prepared,

For there is gone out a fire from Heshbon,

A flame from the city of Sihon.

It hath consumed Ar of Moab,

And the lords of the high places of Arnon:

Woe to thee, Moab; thou art undone, thou people of Chemosh!

He hath given his sons that escaped, and his daughters, into captivity

To the king of the Amorites, Sihon." (Nu 21:27-29, repeated, as is well known, in Jer 48:45-46.)

The decisive battle between Sihon and his new foes took place at Jahaz, probably on the confines of the rich pastures of Moab and the desert whence the Israelites emerged. It was the first engagement in which they were confronted with the future enemies of their nation. The slingers and archers of Israel, afterwards so renowned, now first showed their skill. Sihon fell; the army fled (Joseph. Ant. iv. 5, 2.) (so ran the later tradition), and devoured by thirst, like the Athenians in the Assinarus on their flight from Syracuse, were slaughtered in the bed of one of the mountain streams. The memory of this battle was cherished in triumphant strains, in which, after reciting, in bitter irony, the song just quoted of the Amorites' triumph, they broke out into an exulting contrast of the past greatness of the defeated chief and his present fall: —

"We have shot at them: Heshbon is perished:

We have laid them waste: even unto Nophah:

With fire: even unto Medeba." (Nu 31:30.) —Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, in "The History of the Jewish Church."