Joshua 9:10

Jos 9:10 And all that he did to the two kings of the Amorites, that [were] beyond Jordan, to Sihon king of Heshbon, and to Og king of Bashan, which [was] at Ashtaroth.

Ver. 10. And all that he did to the two kings.] Not of Jericho and Ai, but of Heshbon and Pashan, things long since done, and far and near talked of.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

10. to Og, king of Bashan] They prudently omit all mention of the late capture of Jericho and Ai, lest the revelation of what had recently occurred should betray them.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And all that he did to the two kings of the Amorites, that were beyond Jordan,.... On the other side of Jordan from Gilgal:

to Sihon king of Heshbon, and to Og king of Bashan in Ashtaroth; the history of which see in Num 21:21; they wisely took no notice of the miracle of dividing the waters of Jordan, to make a passage for the Israelites; nor of the destruction of Jericho and Ai, which were recent things, and could not be thought as yet to have reached a far country they pretended to come from; and which, if they mentioned, might have created a stronger suspicion still of their being Canaanites.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Astaroth. They take care not to mention what had happened so recently at Jericho, lest they might be detected. (Calmet)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

10. Amorites… Sihon… Heshbon… Og… Bashan — See note on Jos_2:10.

Which was at Ashtaroth — The word which (according to old English) refers to Og, and should be rendered who. This royal city of Og was in Bashan, and named from Ashtoreth, the Greek Astarte, the Oriental Venus, who was worshipped there. Ashtaroth is the plural form of Ashtoreth, and the place perhaps took this form of the name from the many Astarte-images used in her worship there. It lies six miles north-west of Edrei, and, according to Robinson, is the modern Tell-Astereh. After its capture it was assigned to the Levites.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Sihon, king of Heshbon, and Og, the king of Bashan. (see Num_21:21, Num_21:35) Ashtaroth. (see Jos_12:4 Jos_13:31; also Deu_1:4) In Nu 21 Edrei only is mentioned. This is not the Ashtaroth-Karnaim of Gen_14:5, which is so called from the worship of the horned Astarte, or crescent (see below), to distinguish it from this Ashtaroth. The two cities were close together. Eusebius and Jerome state that they were only nine miles apart. The site of this city has been identified with Tel Ashtereh, in a wide plain on the east of Jordan. It appears as Astaratu in the Karnak list of cities captured by Thothines III The name has been identified with the Assyrian Ishtar, the Persian, Greek, and Latin aster and our star. So Gesenius, "Thesaurus," s.v. Whence Lucian seems to have been wrong in his idea that the worship of Astarte, like that of Artemis at Ephesus, was that of the moon. But Rawlinson, in his "Ancient Monarchies," decides against this identification. The last mention of this city in Jewish history is in the bold and successful expedition of Judas Maccabaeus into Gilead, in which he penetrated as far as this city (called Kar-naim), and brought the Jews residing there and in the neighbourhood to Jerusalem. (RAPC 1Ma 6) Kuenen, in his "History of the Religion of Israel," makes a distinction between the worship of Ashtaroth and of Asherah. The former he regards as the worship of the moon, and a pure worship; the latter of Venus, and an impure one. But though Asherah and Ashtaroth, or Ashtoreth, are undoubtedly distinct, yet both worships may have been impure, as the worship of Artemis of the Ephesians (the Diana Multimamma, or the image of fecundity) unquestionably was. "It is probable," says Mr. G. Smith, "that the first intention in the mythology was only to represent love as heaven born, but in time a more sensual view prevailed, and the worship of Ishtar became one of the darkest features in Babylonian mythology." The Babylonian Mylitta, or Venus, was worshipped under a crescent form, as Babylonian sculptures prove. A Syrian altar with the crescent on it is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge. It has a female figure on one side, with the crescent, and a male figure of Baal, no doubt on the other. Another is mentioned in a late able article in the Times, as having been found in Carehemish, the Hittite capital. The Chaldaean astronomers had, no doubt, discovered the use of telescopes (though in the translucent sky of Chaldaea perhaps the crescent Venus might be seen without them), for we find Saturn represented on their monuments with a ring (see Proctor, "Saturn and his System," p. 197). Consequently the worship of the crescent Venus involves no anachronism. Asherah, often wrongly translated "grove" in our version, (see Jud_1:6:25) is probably the goddess Fortune, derived from r happiness. Ashtaroth is spelt not with Aleph, but with Ain.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.