Catholic Commentary
The Divine Commission Against Sihon: Holy War Begins
24“Rise up, take your journey, and pass over the valley of the Arnon. Behold, I have given into your hand Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land; begin to possess it, and contend with him in battle.25Today I will begin to put the dread of you and the fear of you on the peoples who are under the whole sky, who shall hear the report of you, and shall tremble and be in anguish because of you.”
Deuteronomy 2:24–25 records God's command for Israel to cross the Arnon Valley and begin conquering Sihon the Amorite's kingdom, with victory already promised before battle. God declares that fear and dread of Israel will spread to all nations who hear of their advance, establishing divine sovereignty over the coming conquest.
God declares victory before the battle is fought — Israel's only task is to cross the river in faith and possess what has already been given.
"Under the whole sky" — the scope is universal, not merely Canaanite. God's purposes are never merely local. The fear of Israel's God spreading across all nations anticipates the universal scope of the Gospel, when the name of Christ will spread to every people.
Typological and Spiritual Senses
The Church Fathers consistently read the Israelite conquest typologically. Origen, in his Homilies on Joshua, interprets the battles against Amorite kings as figures of the soul's warfare against vice and demonic powers. Sihon — whose name some ancient interpreters connected with "sweeping away" or "overthrow" — becomes a type of the powers of darkness that the Christian must "contend with in battle." The crossing of the Arnon prefigures Baptism: just as Israel passes through water to enter the land of promise, the Christian passes through the waters of rebirth to begin the spiritual warfare of the sanctified life. The divine guarantee of victory — spoken before the battle — mirrors the Christian's confidence in Christ's definitive victory over sin and death, a victory already won (Col 2:15) into which the baptized are enrolled.
Catholic tradition approaches these "holy war" passages neither with embarrassed silence nor with uncritical triumphalism, but with the interpretive keys of the fourfold sense of Scripture. The Catechism teaches that "the Old Testament…retains its permanent value" and that "even though it contains matters imperfect and provisional," it witnesses to the whole divine pedagogy (CCC §121–122). God's command to fight Sihon must be read within this pedagogy.
On the literal level, Catholic theology recognizes that God, as sovereign Lord of life and history, can direct the punishment of nations whose sin has "reached its full measure" (cf. Gen 15:16). Sihon's kingdom represented a society saturated in the cultic violence and moral disorder of Amorite civilization; the conquest is an act of divine justice, not arbitrary aggression.
On the typological level, St. Augustine in Contra Faustum (XXII.74–79) argues that the Israelite wars, when commanded by God, were just wars not because of Israel's merit but because of divine authority. This laid the foundation for the just war tradition that Catholic moral theology continues to develop.
Most profoundly, the Fathers read the divine promise of verse 24 — "I have given" — as a figure of grace preceding merit. Just as God declares the victory before it is fought, Catholic teaching on grace (defined at the Council of Orange, 529 AD, and affirmed at Trent) insists that God's gift precedes and enables human cooperation. We do not fight our way to grace; grace commissions and empowers our fighting. St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I-II, q.109) draws precisely this distinction: the initiative of salvation belongs entirely to God, yet it is fulfilled through the real, effortful cooperation of the creature.
The spreading of Israel's "dread" to all nations (v. 25) finds its eschatological fulfillment in the universal proclamation of the Gospel. Pope Benedict XVI (Verbum Domini §41) notes that the Old Testament's particularist history is always oriented toward a universal horizon — what begins with one people crossing one river is ordered toward Christ's lordship "over the whole sky."
Every Catholic faces his or her own "Arnon moments" — threshold crossings where God commands movement into territory that feels dangerous, uncertain, or beyond our strength. A parent must confront a child's destructive behavior; a professional faces a situation demanding costly moral witness; a parishioner is called to an apostolate that feels far too large. The temptation in each case is to remain south of the river, in the relative safety of the familiar.
Deuteronomy 2:24–25 offers a spiritually concrete remedy: attend not to the size of Sihon, but to the tense of God's promise. "I have given" — perfect tense, accomplished in eternity — precedes "begin to possess." The commission to act is grounded in a victory already declared by God. This is not mere morale-boosting; it is the grammar of grace. Catholics can pray these verses directly, placing the name of their particular "Sihon" — a sin, a fear, a mission — before God and asking to cross the Arnon in His strength. The daily Eucharist is precisely the moment where God renews this commission: "This is My Body, given for you" — perfect tense, eternal gift — sending us from the altar into the contested territory of our lives.
Commentary
Deuteronomy 2:24 — "Rise up, take your journey, and pass over the valley of the Arnon"
The Arnon was a deep, dramatic gorge running east-west into the Dead Sea, forming the boundary between Moab to the south and the Amorite kingdom of Sihon to the north. God's command to cross it is not merely geographical — it is covenantal. The threefold imperative ("rise up… take… pass over") echoes the dynamic language of divine vocation throughout Scripture, reminiscent of God's command to Abraham to "go forth" (Gen 12:1). Israel has been passive in the wilderness; now God mobilizes them with urgency.
"Behold, I have given into your hand Sihon the Amorite" — the perfect tense of the Hebrew נָתַתִּי (natáttî, "I have given") is theologically charged. Before a single Israelite soldier has entered battle, God speaks of the victory as already accomplished. This is the logic of divine sovereignty: the outcome belongs to God, and Israel's action is the execution of a decree already sealed in heaven. Sihon is identified precisely — king of Heshbon — grounding the narrative in real, identifiable history. Heshbon was a significant urban center, its king no minor chieftain. That God singles him out by name and title underscores that this is a deliberate, targeted act of divine judgment against a specific power, not general ethnic hostility.
"Begin to possess it, and contend with him in battle" — the word "begin" (הָחֵל, hāchēl) is significant. This is not merely a military order; it is the inauguration of the entire conquest program. The campaign against Sihon is the first domino — the moment at which Israel's redemption from Egypt finds its intended telos in the possession of the land. To "possess" (yārash) carries the weight of covenantal inheritance; it is the verb used of heirs receiving what was promised to their fathers.
Deuteronomy 2:25 — "Today I will begin to put the dread of you and the fear of you on the peoples…"
The word "today" (הַיּוֹם, hayyôm) is one of Deuteronomy's most theologically loaded terms, appearing dozens of times in the book to press the urgency of covenantal decision into the present moment. Here it marks a cosmic turning point: from this day forward, the nations will know that something new and fearful has entered the world.
"The dread of you and the fear of you" — the Hebrew uses two distinct words (פַּחְדְּךָ, pach'dekha, and יִרְאָתְךָ, yir'atekha), suggesting an overwhelming, double-fronted terror. This is not merely psychological propaganda; it is divine action — God this dread on the nations. Rahab's confession in Joshua 2:9–11 confirms that this promise was historically fulfilled: "I know that the LORD has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us."