Deuteronomy 3:14, commentary and pictures

The territory Jair took and named Bashan-havoth-jair is called by the Hebrew word gheh-vel, which means region, country, or inherited territory and is elsewhere rendered lot of inheritance. It is not the different Hebrew word goh-rahl that is rendered lot in Daniel 12:13 concerning Daniel standing in his lot.

The verse belongs to the account of Moses giving Bashan, the kingdom of Og, to the half tribe of Manasseh. That account shows that Moses took the whole kingdom with its city in his day.

Jair, a chief of Manasseh, completed the conquest of Bashan begun by Moses by taking no fewer than sixty great cities fenced with high walls, gates and bars, besides a great many unwalled towns. These lay in Argob, a small province of Bashan about thirty miles by twenty. The record is literally true, for the cities exist to this day, some retaining the same Bible names. After three thousand years the boundaries of Argob are still clearly defined, with many visited and inspected cities almost as perfect as when first deserted by their inhabitants.

The houses are not ordinary houses, having walls five to eight feet thick of large quarried blocks of basalt, with roofs of slabs of the same stone reaching from wall to wall, and even doors and window shutters of stone. Some cities contain two to five hundred houses still perfect but without anyone dwelling in them. Their foundations are older than the Grecian Parthenon, the Roman Pantheon, and the Jewish Temple. They are fit dwellings for a giant race and probably the oldest specimens of domestic architecture in the world. They remain silent and untenanted perhaps since the days of Og to testify to the truth of the scriptural record against modern skepticism.