King of Bashan, defeated at Edrei in the last three verses of Numbers 21. He is introduced as though the reader already knows him, never speaks, and is dealt with in a sentence. ⚠ Numbers says nothing about his size; the detail everyone remembers comes later, at Deuteronomy 3:11, which reports that his iron bedstead was nine cubits long and still on show at Rabbah of the Ammonites, and calls him the last of the Rephaim. Whether that is a bed, a basalt sarcophagus or a dolmen has been argued for centuries and the verse does not say. With Sihon he becomes half of a standing pair in Israel’s liturgy of remembrance.