Deuteronomy 3:10

Summary

Deuteronomy 3:10 lists the territories taken from Og, king of Bashan: the cities of the plain, all of Gilead, all of Bashan up to Salecah and Edrei, described as the cities of Og's kingdom in Bashan.

Key words

• kol ("all", H3605) — masculine singular construct noun, repeated three times (positions 1, 6, 10) to bind each following place-name as "all of X," creating a cumulative listing structure.
• 'arei ("cities of", H5892B) — masculine plural construct, used twice (positions 2 and 17) to frame the list: first "cities of the plain," then at the end "cities of the kingdom of Og," forming an envelope around the territorial list.
• mishor ("plain", H4334) — masculine singular noun with definite article ha (H9009), naming a specific geographic region, the tableland/plateau area.
• mamlekhet ("kingdom of", H4467) — feminine singular construct noun, linking 'arei ("cities of") to Og (H5747), specifying that the preceding cities belong to Og's kingdom.
• ba ("in the", H9003) — preposition plus article attached to Bashan (H1316) at the end, locating Og's kingdom geographically within Bashan.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of construct phrases, each introduced by kol ("all", H3605) plus a place name: "all the cities of the plain" (kol 'arei ha-mishor), "all Gilead" (ve-khol ha-Gil'ad), and "all Bashan" (ve-khol ha-Bashan). This triple repetition of kol creates a rhetorical emphasis on totality — every part of these regions is included in what follows in the preceding narrative (the conquest report).

The phrase 'ad Salkhah ve-Edre'i ("to Salecah and Edrei", H5704 + proper names) marks the extent of Bashan using two boundary cities. The final clause, 'arei mamlekhet Og ba-Bashan ("cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan"), closes the list by identifying the political owner of all these territories: Og, whose kingdom is located "in the Bashan" (ba-Bashan, with the preposition-article ba, H9003, prefixed directly to the place name). Grammatically, this final construct chain ('arei mamlekhet Og, "cities of the kingdom of Og") ties back to the 'arei at the start of the verse, giving the whole list a frame: cities of the plain ... cities of the kingdom of Og.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders Salkhah (H5548) as Elcha and 'Edre'i (H154) as Edraeim, transliterations differing somewhat from the Hebrew consonants. The Vulgate renders ha-mishor ("the plain", H4334) not as a place name but as a descriptive phrase, "civitates quae sitae sunt in planitie" ("cities which are situated in the plain"), interpreting the noun as a common geographic term rather than treating it as tightly as the construct chain suggests in Hebrew. The BSB renders the boundary marker 'ad ("to", H5704) as "as far as the cities of Salecah and Edrei," inserting "cities of" before these two names, which is not present in the Hebrew text at that point — in the Hebrew, 'ad Salkhah ve-'Edre'i marks the extent of Bashan directly, and the phrase 'arei mamlekhet Og ("cities of the kingdom of Og") begins only afterward as a separate construct chain.