Og meaning

Meaning

Encompassing, Bending, Altering

Etymology

From the verb עוג ('ug), to bend or encircle, or to bring together several ingredients and/or to produce [circular] breads.

The name Og belongs to the giant Amorite king of Bashan at Ashtaroth in Gilead, the proverbial last of the Rephaim, whose enormous iron bed is forever to be found in Rabbah of the sons of Ammon (Deuteronomy 3:10-11).

We hear first of king Og of Bashan when he and his people meet Israel at the battle of Edrei, and he and his people are entirely annihilated, just like king Sihon of the Amorites at Hebron (Numbers 21:33-35, Deuteronomy 3:1-4, 4:47, 29:7, 31:4). The conquered lands of Og and Sihon are given to the tribes of Gad, Reuben and Manasseh (Numbers 32:33, Deuteronomy 3:13, Joshua 13:12, 13:30-31), and the two kingly characters remain indicative of the eastern part (east of the Jordan) of the Canaanite campaign, whilst Israel was still captained by Moses (Deuteronomy 1:4, Joshua 12:4).

When Rahab of Jericho hides Joshua's two spies she explains her motivations by referring to the legendary defeat of Sihon and Og (Joshua 2:10). Likewise, when the Gibeonites seek Joshua's mercy, they claim to have come from a distant land where they heard of the Name of YHWH and his now legendary defeat of Og and Sihon (Joshua 9:10). As late as the monarchy of Solomon, people refer to the land beyond the Jordan as the land of Og and Sihon: an ambassador named Geber is stationed there (1 Kings 4:19). Nehemiah commemorates the defeat of Og and Sihon (Nehemiah 9:22). So does the Psalmist (Psalm 135:11, 136:19-20).

The Bible tells the story of information technology and the rise of human consciousness as a result of the emergence of language, its standardization and finally formation of text and the alphabet (hence the name YHWH). The promised land west of the Jordan corresponds to rational knowledge, the Logos if you will, whereas the lands west of the Jordan correspond to subconscious or intuitive knowledge.

Both kings Og and Sihon are proverbial bastions of unlegislated or sub-rational and thus intuitive comprehension, regardless of what modern concept they might correspond to — there is certainly no paint-by-number correlation between ancient structures of the mind and modern ones; see our article on δρακων (drakon) for a brief discussion of the classical three-tier human mind — king Og appears to somewhat correlate to (or may have inspired the formation of) the Greek idea of Oceanos (Ωκεανος, Okeanos, see our article on ογκος, ogkos, bulk or mass), or the world river: the collective subconscious human mind from which the dry land of rational consciousness emerges and ultimately produces or connect to the great human κοσμος (kosmos), which is the politically and legally governed human world (for more on the correlation between rivers and government, see our article on the name Tigris).

Our name Og derives from the root עוג ('ug):

The noun עגה ('uga) describes perhaps some special sort of bread, or else is a rarer synonym of the more common word for bread, namely לחם (lehem), which is spelled identical to the verb לחם (laham), to engage in battle.

Bread was the first synthetic food that humans invented and bread became the symbol for the bringing together of natural elements in order to produce something that did not occur like that in nature. The making of a good bread requires the coming together of a large complex of agriculture and technology, and that doesn't happen without effective governance and hence legislation. Making bread is such a tricky art that many ancient civilizations noted a correlation between a society's bakery skills and its overall refinement and sophistication. The Greek word for bread, namely αρτος (artos), is closely similar to the adverb αρτι (arti), meaning "precisely right" and the prophet Micah predicted that the Messiah, the Logos in human flesh, would be born in Bethlehem, meaning House of Bread (Micah 5:2).

Whatever Og and Sihon embodied, certainly not the Logos, who rises above all parties and religions and fashions (Galatians 3:28, Colossians 3:11). The Logos is like E=mc², which isn't true because it "really happened" that one time and someone quickly wrote it down, or because it is Christian or Jewish or Islamic or even Atheistic. It's true because it fits without friction into the great symmetry (Deuteronomy 6:4) that is the foundation of all reality, that has primality over all existence, and from which come all the preservation laws of physics, and which governs all economy whether material, biological, mental, financial or scientific (Colossians 1:15-17).

For a meaning of the name Og, NOBSE Study Bible Name List has Giant, which is incorrect (Og was a giant but, like Goliath, his name does not mean giant).

Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names points to a specialization of our verb עוג ('ug) in Aramaic, where it was also used to mean to dig a [circular] trench around a tree. Hence Jones reads Furrow and explains that with the note: as long as a furrow. This seems somewhat contrived, and would surely not have been be the primary explanation of our name of the original audience of the story of king Og.

BDB Theological Dictionary does not offer an interpretation of our name.