Deuteronomy 3:4 - Clarke's commentary and critical notes on the Bible

And we took all his cities at that time, there was not a city which we took not from them, threescore cities, all the region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan. All the region of Argob - כל חבל ארגב col chebel Argob, all the cable or cord of Argob; this expression, which is used in various other parts of Scripture, (see, in the original, Amos 7:17; Micah 2:5; Deuteronomy 32:9; Psalms 16:6), shows that anciently land was measured by lines or cords of a certain length, in a similar way to that by the chain among us, and the schoenus or cord among the Egyptians. Some think that it was the region of Argob that was afterwards called the region of Trachonites.