Numbers 21 Summary and Study Guide

Thirty-eight years after Israel refused to enter Canaan, they were still marching the wrong way, south and away from it. Numbers 21 is where that reverses. This Numbers 21 summary and study guide walks the turn, from the bronze serpent Moses lifted in the wilderness to the two Amorite kings whose land became the first ground Israel ever held.

Setting the Stage

Israel came to the southern edge of Canaan and sent twelve men in to look at it. Ten of them came back saying the people there were too strong, and the nation refused to go up. God’s answer was that nobody of that generation over twenty years old would enter the land, and that their children would go in instead (Numbers 14:29-31).

Thirty-eight years of wandering followed. By the time Numbers 21 opens, Aaron the high priest has died on Mount Hor, Moses has been told he will not enter the land either, and the king of Edom has refused Israel permission to cross his country. So they are marching south, away from Canaan, with the sentence of Numbers 14 still running. This is the chapter where it finally ends.

Comprehensive Numbers 21 Summary

A Canaanite king named Arad hears that Israel is coming, attacks them, and takes prisoners. Israel does not strike back on its own account. It makes a vow to God, promising that if He hands this people over, Israel will destroy their cities completely. God does, Israel does, and the place is named Hormah, which means devoted to destruction.

Then the long march south begins, around Edom, and the patience of the people runs out. They speak against God and against Moses, complaining that there is no bread and no water, and calling the manna they are eating worthless. God sends venomous snakes among them and many die.

The people come back to Moses, admit the sin, and ask him to pray that the snakes be taken away. Moses prays. God does not take the snakes away.

He tells Moses to make a snake of bronze, put it on a pole, and promise that anyone bitten who looks at it will live. Moses makes it, and the bitten who look, live.

From there the nation moves north through Oboth, Ije-abarim, the valley of Zered and the river Arnon, and Moses quotes an old book of war songs to fix exactly where the Moabite border runs. At a place called Beer, God gives water without being asked, the leaders dig the well with their own staffs, and Israel sings for the first time in decades.

Israel then asks Sihon king of the Amorites for safe passage along the main road. Sihon refuses, marches out, and attacks at Jahaz. Israel destroys his army and takes his whole territory from the Arnon to the Jabbok, including his capital at Heshbon. Og king of Bashan comes out next, God tells Moses not to fear him, and Og and his sons and his people are killed and their land taken.

One Word Summary

• Turning: the wandering stops in this chapter and the conquest starts.
• Looking: the cure was a direction to face, not a medicine.
• Title: the chapter argues Israel’s claim to the land, not only its victories.

In One Sentence

Israel’s complaint against God brings a plague of snakes and a bronze snake on a pole that saves everyone who looks at it, and from there the nation stops wandering, defeats Sihon king of the Amorites and Og king of Bashan, and settles in their land.

Theme of Numbers 21

Numbers 21 is about God bringing His people forward when they have given Him every reason to leave them where they are. Two ideas run alongside that one. The nation that despises His food in verse 5 is the same nation He waters at Beer, arms against Sihon and settles in Heshbon, and nothing between those points is earned.

And what He gives them, He gives openly. The chapter stops to say who owned Heshbon before Sihon did and quotes an enemy song to prove it, because God’s gift to Israel is not a theft He wants covered up.

Numbers 21 Outline

• Numbers 21:1-3: King Arad attacks Israel and takes prisoners, Israel vows to destroy his cities if God gives the victory, and the place is named Hormah.
• Numbers 21:4-5: Israel turns south around Edom, loses patience with the route, and speaks against God and Moses about the food and water.
• Numbers 21:6-7: God sends venomous snakes, many die, and the people confess and ask Moses to pray.
• Numbers 21:8-9: God tells Moses to make a bronze snake and set it on a pole, and everyone bitten who looks at it lives.
• Numbers 21:10-13: Israel camps at Oboth, Ije-abarim, the valley of Zered and the far side of the Arnon, the border between Moab and the Amorites.
• Numbers 21:14-15: Moses quotes the Book of the Wars of the LORD on the Arnon and the slopes running down to Ar.
• Numbers 21:16-18: At Beer God promises water, the leaders dig the well with their staffs, and Israel sings the Song of the Well.
• Numbers 21:19-20: Israel moves on through Mattanah, Nahaliel and Bamoth to the valley in Moab below the top of Pisgah.
• Numbers 21:21-25: Israel asks Sihon for passage, Sihon attacks at Jahaz, and Israel destroys him and occupies his cities from the Arnon to the Jabbok, Heshbon included.
• Numbers 21:26-30: Heshbon is shown to have been taken from Moab by Sihon first, and the old ballad of that conquest is quoted and then turned against Sihon himself.
• Numbers 21:31-32: Israel settles in Amorite territory and takes Jazer and its villages.
• Numbers 21:33-35: Og king of Bashan attacks at Edrei, God tells Moses not to fear him, and Og and all his people are destroyed.

The Song of the Well

The people had just accused God of leaving them with no water at all. At Beer they get it without asking, and they sing.

Spring up, O well; sing ye unto it: The princes digged the well, the nobles of the people digged it, by the direction of the lawgiver, with their staves.

Numbers 21:17-18

Rise, well, and let everyone sing about it. The leaders of the nation dug this well, the men of rank dug it, working under the lawgiver’s direction with the staffs they carried as marks of office.

• God offered before they asked. “Gather the people together, and I will give them water” (Numbers 21:16). God told Moses to call the nation together because He was about to give them water. Every other time God gives Israel water in these books, a complaint comes first: at Marah (Exodus 15:24), at Rephidim (Exodus 17:2) and at Meribah (Numbers 20:2-3). Here nothing does.
• They dug. At Rephidim and at Meribah, water came out of a struck rock and the people watched. Here they work for it, and the men holding the staffs of office are the ones in the sand.
• They sang. The last recorded singing in Israel was the Song of the Sea after the Red Sea crossing (Exodus 15:1). Somewhere near forty years had passed since then, and the wilderness generation had died in between.

The Ballad of Heshbon

The chapter quotes a second poem, and this one was not written by Israelites. It is an Amorite victory song about Sihon beating Moab and taking the city of Heshbon off them.

Come into Heshbon, let the city of Sihon be built and prepared: For there is a fire gone out of 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, O people of Chemosh.

Numbers 21:27-29

Come to Heshbon and rebuild it as Sihon’s own city, because war went out of Heshbon like fire and burned up Ar of Moab and the chiefs who held the heights above the Arnon. Moab is finished, and so are the people who worship the god Chemosh.

Then the poem turns on the singers: “We have shot at them; Heshbon is perished even unto Dibon” (Numbers 21:30). Whoever the “we” is, they shot the enemy down and Heshbon lies ruined as far as Dibon. Many Bible teachers read that line as Israel’s own answer to the Amorite boast above it, though the passage does not say so outright.

Moses quotes it as a receipt. Heshbon had been Moab’s once, and Israel was under orders to take nothing of Moab’s, and the Difficult Verses section below works through how this song answers that.

Observations from Numbers 21

God did not take the snakes away

The people asked for one thing and got another. “Pray unto the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us” (Numbers 21:7) is a request to remove the snakes altogether. God gives them something else. Moses is to make a metal copy of the thing biting them, raise it on a pole, and tell every bitten person that looking at it will keep them alive (Numbers 21:8).

The snakes stay in the camp. So does the remedy, and every person who is bitten has to use it. God answered a people who had just called His provision worthless by putting something in front of them they had to keep turning toward.

The people ask Moses to pray, and nowhere else in Exodus or Numbers do they ask him

Israel complains constantly through both books and Moses prays for them often, but the request in verse 7 comes from the people themselves: “pray unto the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us.” They tell Moses to ask God to take the snakes away.

The nearest thing to it is Numbers 11:2, where the people cried out to Moses and Moses prayed, without the text recording what they said. And the man they ask is the man they had been speaking against two verses earlier.

The last of the old generation is buried in one line

“From thence they removed, and pitched in the valley of Zared” (Numbers 21:12). Israel moved on and camped in the Zered valley. It reads like any other campsite.

Deuteronomy 2:14 says what that crossing was: “the space in which we came from Kadesh-barnea, until we were come over the brook Zered, was thirty and eight years; until all the generation of the men of war were wasted out from among the host.” Thirty-eight years ran from Kadesh-barnea to the Zered crossing, and by the time Israel stepped over that stream every fighting man of the condemned generation had died.

Those are the 603,550 men counted at Sinai in our Numbers 1 summary, and Numbers 26:65 says not one of them was left except Caleb and Joshua. The complaint in verse 5 is the last one Scripture records before that crossing, and seven verses later the generation that made it is gone.

The campsite names read like the things they had been short of

Oboth means waterskins (Numbers 21:10). Beer means a well (Numbers 21:16). Mattanah means a gift, Nahaliel means the brook of God, and Bamoth means high places (Numbers 21:18-19). A nation that had spent forty years thirsty is now walking through a string of names about water and gifts.

The run of them sits between the chapter’s last complaint about water in verse 5 and its first war in verse 23, and Israel is singing in the middle of it.

One campsite from this stretch is missing here and worth knowing about. Numbers 33:42-43 puts Punon between Mount Hor and Oboth, and Jerome describes Punon as a place where copper was dug. If that is the same Punon, Israel had just come through copper country when Moses was told to make something out of brass, though this chapter never says where the metal came from.

Israel wins the argument with the enemy’s own words

Nothing in the chapter says Israel composed the ballad of Heshbon. Verse 27 credits it to “they that speak in proverbs”, the poets, and every line of it celebrates an Amorite king beating Moab.

Moses reproduces it anyway, because it answers a question Israel would be asked for centuries: by what right did they hold the land beyond the Arnon? Jephthah put that answer to the Ammonites three hundred years later, and used this chapter to do it (Judges 11:19-26).

Difficult Verses Explained

Were Arad’s Cities Really Destroyed at This Point?

Verse 3 says Israel “utterly destroyed them and their cities”, and yet Joshua 12:14 still lists a king of Arad and a king of Hormah among the kings Joshua defeated much later, and Judges 1:17 has Judah and Simeon destroying the town of Zephath and naming it Hormah after that.

The Hebrew verb behind “utterly destroyed” means to devote something to destruction, so the verse can be read as recording the vow taking effect rather than the last stone falling. Israel turns away south in the very next verse and does not enter Canaan here at all. Many Bible teachers therefore take verses 1 to 3 as the vow and its first fulfilment, with the rest carried out under Joshua and the judges.

What Is “Vaheb in Suphah”, and Why Does Verse 14 Stop?

Numbers 21:14 quotes a book that no longer exists, and the quotation has no verb in it. The King James reads “What he did in the Red sea, and in the brooks of Arnon”, and prints “Vaheb in Suphah” in the margin because the Hebrew words are place names of uncertain meaning.

Commentators from Barnes to Keil agree the fragment is grammatically incomplete, and the likeliest reason is that Moses is citing a book his readers already had. He needs one line of it, the line about the Arnon, because verse 13 has just made a claim about where the Moabite border runs. Nobody can translate it with certainty.

If God Forbade Israel to Touch Moab, How Could They Take Heshbon?

God had said plainly that Israel was to leave Moab alone, “for I will not give thee of their land for a possession” (Deuteronomy 2:9). None of Moab’s territory was Israel’s to take.

Verse 26 answers that: “For Heshbon was the city of Sihon the king of the Amorites, who had fought against the former king of Moab, and taken all his land out of his hand, even unto Arnon.” Heshbon had been Moabite once, and Sihon had conquered it before Israel came anywhere near. About the Amorites God had said the opposite: “pass over the river Arnon: behold, I have given into thine hand Sihon the Amorite” (Deuteronomy 2:24). Israel took Amorite land, and left Moab alone.

Was Sihon Treated Justly if God Hardened His Heart?

Deuteronomy 2:30 says that Sihon “would not let us pass by him: for the LORD thy God hardened his spirit, and made his heart obstinate, that he might deliver him into thy hand.” God made Sihon stubborn so that Israel would defeat him.

Numbers 21 records the other half. Israel asked for nothing but the road and promised to touch no field, vineyard or well (Numbers 21:22). Sihon did not merely refuse.

He gathered his whole army, left his own territory, and attacked Israel in open country (Numbers 21:23). Scripture holds both together without softening either. God gave Sihon over to what he already wanted, and Sihon struck the first blow.

Common Misunderstandings

• That the bronze snake had healing power in it. Verse 9 says the bitten man looked and lived, and never says the metal did anything. God healed, and He used a pole and an object made of brass to do it.
• That the Book of the Wars of the LORD is a lost book of the Bible. Scripture quotes outside sources elsewhere without making them Scripture, as Paul does with a pagan poet in Acts 17:28. What Moses needed from it was a border reference, and what was inspired he wrote into Numbers.
• That “fiery serpents” means flying dragons. The Hebrew word describes either the burning of the bite or the burnished look of the creature, and the same root names the seraphim in Isaiah 6:2.
• That this chapter is about the meaning of the number 21. Numbers is the name of the fourth book of the Bible, from the two censuses it records. The chapter number is a chapter number.

Christ Connection

Jesus took this chapter and applied it to Himself, which makes the connection His rather than ours: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:14-15). Just as Moses raised the snake in the desert, the Son of man had to be raised, so that everyone who trusts Him has eternal life instead of dying.

Paul reads the same episode and names who was offended in it: “Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents” (1 Corinthians 10:9). We should not put Christ to the test the way some of Israel did, who were killed by the snakes. Four things in Numbers 21 point toward the cross.

• The likeness. What Moses lifted was made in the shape of the thing that was killing them, and carried none of the venom. God “sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Romans 8:3) sent Him in our shape without our sin, and “made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
• The lifting. The word translated “pole” in verse 8 is the Hebrew word for a standard or banner. It is the word in the altar name Jehovah-nissi, the LORD my banner (Exodus 17:15), and the word in Isaiah’s promise that a descendant of Jesse “shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek” (Isaiah 11:10). A raised banner is something you find by looking up.
• The looking. Nobody had to touch the snake, pay for it, or bring a priest. Isaiah puts the same terms to the whole world: “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 45:22).
• The limit. The bronze had no power of its own, and God is the one who healed through the thing He appointed. That is why Hezekiah could smash it centuries later without anything being lost, and why looking to Christ is trust in a person rather than in an object.

When, Where, and Why

• When: The fortieth year after the exodus, following Aaron’s death on Mount Hor, which Numbers 33:38 dates to the first day of the fifth month of that year.
• Where: Down the Arabah valley toward the head of the Gulf of Aqaba, then east and north along the far side of Edom, across the Zered and the Arnon into Amorite country east of the Dead Sea, ending on the ridge of Pisgah above the Jordan valley. The Arnon is the modern Wady Mojeb, the Jabbok is the Zerka, and Heshbon survives as the ruins of Hesban in Jordan.
• Why: Moses records the point where the forty-year sentence of Numbers 14 ran out and Israel began to receive land. He is also putting Israel’s claim to the country east of the Jordan on record, which is why two victory songs and a border citation sit inside a war narrative.

Key Verses

And the people spake against God, and against Moses … for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread.

Numbers 21:5

The people accused God and Moses of dragging them out of Egypt to die, said they had no food and no water, and called the bread they were eating worthless. The Hebrew word behind “light” is doubled for force, and it means cheap or contemptible. They were eating what Psalm 78:24-25 calls the corn of heaven and angels’ food, and calling it garbage.

One thing changes in the wording here. Every earlier account of Israel grumbling that names a target at all names Moses or Aaron (Exodus 15:24; 16:2; 17:3; Numbers 14:2; 16:41; 20:3), even where God Himself says the murmuring reached Him (Numbers 14:27; 20:13). Verse 5 is where the narrator puts God in the sentence alongside Moses.

And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.

Numbers 21:8-9

God told Moses to make a snake, set it up on a pole, and promise life to every bitten person who looked at it, and it worked exactly as He said. In Hebrew the snake and the brass are near neighbours, nachash and nechosheth, so the cure carried the name of the thing that had caused the wound. These are the two verses Jesus reached for when He explained the cross to Nicodemus.

Then Israel sang this song, Spring up, O well; sing ye unto it.

Numbers 21:17

Israel sang, telling the well to rise and everyone to sing about it. Five verses earlier the same nation was accusing God of starving them, and nothing in between has changed except that God gave without being asked.

And the LORD said unto Moses, Fear him not: for I have delivered him into thy hand, and all his people, and his land.

Numbers 21:34

God told Moses not to be afraid of Og, because Og and his army and his country were already handed over. God does not argue Israel out of the fear or weigh the odds against Og, and the reason He gives is in the past tense: the thing has been done.

Key Lessons from Numbers 21

• Contempt for what God provides is treated in this chapter as sin against God Himself, not as a complaint about the menu (Numbers 21:5-6).
• God sometimes leaves the trouble in place and puts the remedy beside it, as He did when the snakes stayed and the bronze snake went up (Numbers 21:8).
• The rescue God gave cost the dying nothing but a direction to look, which is why Jesus used it to explain believing (Numbers 21:9; John 3:14-15).
• God gave water at Beer before anyone asked for it (Numbers 21:16).
• The leaders of Israel had to dig for the water God had already promised them (Numbers 21:18).
• Israel was told to fight the Amorites and to leave Moab and Ammon alone, so obedience here meant knowing which enemy was not theirs to fight (Numbers 21:24; Deuteronomy 2:9, 19).
• Og’s size was never the question, because God had already handed him over before the battle started (Numbers 21:34).

To see how this chapter fits the rest of the book, read our full walk through every chapter: The Book of Numbers Summary by Chapter.

Bible Study Questions

1. In Numbers 21:5 the people list two things they lack and one thing they despise. What does the third complaint reveal that the first two do not?
2. Israel asked for the plague to be lifted and God refused. What does His actual answer in verse 8 give them that lifting it would not have?
3. In verse 7 the people ask Moses to pray for them, and they ask the man they had just spoken against. What does that tell you about them, and about Moses?
4. Compare Israel’s request to Edom in Numbers 20:17 with its request to Sihon in Numbers 21:22. Why do the two refusals end so differently?
5. Why does Moses quote an Amorite war song in verses 27 to 30 instead of simply stating that Sihon had conquered Heshbon?
6. Jesus applies Numbers 21:8-9 to Himself in John 3:14-15. What does looking at the bronze snake tell you about what believing in Christ involves, and what it does not involve?
7. Read Exodus 15:1-2 beside Numbers 21:17. What is the same about the two songs, and what has changed about the people singing them?

Frequently Asked Questions

Numbers 21, The Full Text (KJV)

Read the full chapter below for reference.

1 And when king Arad the Canaanite, which dwelt in the south, heard tell that Israel came by the way of the spies; then he fought against Israel, and took some of them prisoners.

2 And Israel vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou wilt indeed deliver this people into my hand, then I will utterly destroy their cities.

3 And the LORD hearkened to the voice of Israel, and delivered up the Canaanites; and they utterly destroyed them and their cities: and he called the name of the place Hormah.

4 And they journeyed from mount Hor by the way of the Red sea, to compass the land of Edom: and the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way.

5 And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread.

6 And the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.

7 Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD, and against thee; pray unto the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people.

8 And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.

9 And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.

10 And the children of Israel set forward, and pitched in Oboth.

11 And they journeyed from Oboth, and pitched at Ije-abarim, in the wilderness which is before Moab, toward the sunrising.

12 From thence they removed, and pitched in the valley of Zared.

13 From thence they removed, and pitched on the other side of Arnon, which is in the wilderness that cometh out of the coasts of the Amorites: for Arnon is the border of Moab, between Moab and the Amorites.

14 Wherefore it is said in the book of the wars of the LORD, What he did in the Red sea, and in the brooks of Arnon,

15 And at the stream of the brooks that goeth down to the dwelling of Ar, and lieth upon the border of Moab.

16 And from thence they went to Beer: that is the well whereof the LORD spake unto Moses, Gather the people together, and I will give them water.

17 Then Israel sang this song, Spring up, O well; sing ye unto it:

18 The princes digged the well, the nobles of the people digged it, by the direction of the lawgiver, with their staves. And from the wilderness they went to Mattanah:

19 And from Mattanah to Nahaliel: and from Nahaliel to Bamoth:

20 And from Bamoth in the valley, that is in the country of Moab, to the top of Pisgah, which looketh toward Jeshimon.

21 And Israel sent messengers unto Sihon king of the Amorites, saying,

22 Let me pass through thy land: we will not turn into the fields, or into the vineyards; we will not drink of the waters of the well: but we will go along by the king’s high way, until we be past thy borders.

23 And Sihon would not suffer Israel to pass through his border: but Sihon gathered all his people together, and went out against Israel into the wilderness: and he came to Jahaz, and fought against Israel.

24 And Israel smote him with the edge of the sword, and possessed his land from Arnon unto Jabbok, even unto the children of Ammon: for the border of the children of Ammon was strong.

25 And Israel took all these cities: and Israel dwelt in all the cities of the Amorites, in Heshbon, and in all the villages thereof.

26 For Heshbon was the city of Sihon the king of the Amorites, who had fought against the former king of Moab, and taken all his land out of his hand, even unto Arnon.

27 Wherefore they that speak in proverbs say, Come into Heshbon, let the city of Sihon be built and prepared:

28 For there is a fire gone out of Heshbon, a flame from the city of Sihon: it hath consumed Ar of Moab, and the lords of the high places of Arnon.

29 Woe to thee, Moab! thou art undone, O people of Chemosh: he hath given his sons that escaped, and his daughters, into captivity unto Sihon king of the Amorites.

30 We have shot at them; Heshbon is perished even unto Dibon, and we have laid them waste even unto Nophah, which reacheth unto Medeba.

31 Thus Israel dwelt in the land of the Amorites.

32 And Moses sent to spy out Jaazer, and they took the villages thereof, and drove out the Amorites that were there.

33 And they turned and went up by the way of Bashan: and Og the king of Bashan went out against them, he, and all his people, to the battle at Edrei.

34 And the LORD said unto Moses, Fear him not: for I have delivered him into thy hand, and all his people, and his land; and thou shalt do to him as thou didst unto Sihon king of the Amorites, which dwelt at Heshbon.

35 So they smote him, and his sons, and all his people, until there was none left him alive: and they possessed his land.