Bashan

Bashan ("smooth, fertile plain") was the broad volcanic plateau east of the Jordan and northeast of Gilead — roughly the modern Hauran and Golan, rising toward Mount Hermon. In antiquity it was a byword for lush abundance, famed for its oak forests, its grain, and its well-fed herds: Scripture speaks of "the fat of lambs and rams of Bashan" (Deuteronomy 32:14) and of the sleek "cows of Bashan" (Amos 4:1). Its strength and fatness made it, in the poetry of Israel, an image both of God's bounty and of proud, brutish power.

Before the conquest Bashan was the kingdom of Og, the last of the Rephaim — a giant whose huge iron bedstead was still remembered (Deuteronomy 3:11). Israel met and destroyed him at Edrei (Numbers 21:33; Deuteronomy 3:3), taking the whole region of Argob with its sixty fortified cities (Deuteronomy 3:4). The land was then given to the half-tribe of Manasseh — to Jair and Machir — east of the Jordan (Joshua 13:30), and Golan in Bashan was set apart as a city of refuge (Joshua 20:8).

In later Scripture Bashan's might becomes a symbol of menace and arrogance. The strong "bulls of Bashan" encircle the suffering Messiah in his anguish (Psalm 22:12), and the lofty "mountain of Bashan" looks with envy upon the humble hill that God chose for his dwelling (Psalm 68:15). Its fat herds and self-indulgent ease drew prophetic rebuke. In the eighth century the Assyrian Tiglath-pileser swept through the Transjordan and carried its people into exile (2 Kings 15:29), so that the proud plateau, like every earthly stronghold, was humbled.

Yet Bashan also frames the triumph of Christ. The same psalm that mocks its towering peaks declares, "You ascended on high, leading a host of captives" (Psalm 68:18) — words Paul lifts up to celebrate the ascension of Jesus, who fills all things and gives gifts to his church (Ephesians 4:8). And at Caesarea Philippi, in the shadow of Hermon at Bashan's northern reach, Peter confessed Jesus as the Christ, and the Lord promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against his church (Matthew 16:16; Matthew 16:18). So the land of giants and high places becomes a backdrop for the kingdom that overthrows every proud power and stands forever.