Behold a blessing and a curse

Psalm 136 makes reference to the great wars between Israel and the transjordanian kings, Sihon and Og. Similar reference is also reminisced in Deuteronomy's incipit. The stories "had been" told in Numbers... in order of Torah, by order of Torah's scribes. Most assume Deuteronomy used Numbers.

Jonathan Ben-Dov questions if this was so. These chapters were loci of later transposition for the sake of harmony: for instance the Samaritans have as plus to Deuteronomy 2:1-7's take on Edom, an "envoy report" which we read from Numbers. Ben-Dov floats that Numbers 21:33-35 be, in reverse, an older copy from Deuteronomy 3:1-3. Deuteronomy 2:26-9 is also an early-added envoy-report (as memory), for Sihon.

The motive - says Ben-Dov - was to ensure that when G-d or His Prophets said that a certain event happened, that this event was narrated appropriately. Deuteronomy in its original form drew from memory, written or not; once our Torah because that store of memory, it had better back up Deuteronomy's words. Ben-Dov flags the Jephthah speech but dismisses it UPDATE 12/7 so we'll deal with it later.

So: h/t Ross Nichols, Shapira's Valediction of Moses. Idan Dershowitz presents a truncated story of Sihon, exactly without this envoy-report and also without the despoliation. All Shapira got is 2:24a then vv.32-4a, 36 (not 37). Deuteronomy's version has been interpolated from the lawcode, 20:10-14 in our text.

Carrying on, after the ouster of Sihon, and the capture of Jazer and all the Amorite cities - Og of Bashan arrays his force for battle. He loses, of course. But Next we turned and went up along the road toward Bashan, the name of Edrei, and all YHWH's word Deut 3:2 / Num 21:34 is absent from V.

The Shapira text is a major rabbithole. Ancient Jew Review has some takes on it; Chanan Tigay may have found the very (mediaeval) parchments reused to concoct the book. (Although in this case, why the "bitumen"...?) An irony here is that Dershowitz was known, prior to all this, for pondering that ancient scribes used to cut pieces out of Torah with iron-age scalpels and rearrange them.