Sihon
Si'hon (Heb. Sichon', zxסַיחוֹן [or סיחֹ, Nu 21:21,23,26,28,34; Nu 32:33; De 1:4; De 2:24,31-32; De 3:2,6; De 4:46; De 29:7; Jos 2:10; Jer 48:45], sweeping away, i.e. warrior [Gesen.], or bold [Furst]
Sept. Σηών v.r. Σιών; Josephus, Σιχών), the king of the Amorites when Israel arrived on the borders of the Promised Land. (Nu 21:21). B.C. 1618. He was evidently a man of great courage and audacity. Shortly before the time of Israel's arrival, he had dispossessed the Moabites of a splendid territory, driving them south of the natural bulwark of the Arnon with great slaughter and the loss of a great number of captives (21:26-29). When the Israelitish host appears, he does not hesitate or temporize like Balak, but at once gathers his people together and attacks them. But the battle was his last. He and all his host were destroyed, and their district from Arnon to Jabbok became at once the possession of the conqueror. Josephus (Ant. 4, 5, 2) has preserved some singular details of the battle, which have not survived in the text either of the Hebrew or Sept. He represents the Amoritish army as containing every man in the nation fit to bear arms. He states that they were unable to fight when away. from the shelter of their cities, and that being especially galled by the slings and arrows of the Hebrews, and at last suffering severely from thirst, they rushed to the stream and to the shelter. of the recesses of the ravine of the Arnon. Into these recesses they were pursued by their active enemy and slaughtered in vast numbers. Whether we accept these details or not, it is plain, from the manner in which the name of Sihon fixed itself in the national mind, and the space which his image occupies in the official records and in the later poetry of Israel, that he was a truly formidable chieftain (De 31:4; Jos 9:10; Jos 12:2,5; Jos 13:10,21,27; Jg 11:19-21; 1Ki 4:19; Ne 9:22; Ps 135:11; Ps 136:19). It is probable that a trace of the name still remains, in the Jebel Shihan, a lofty and conspicuous mountain just to the south of the Wady Mojeb.
