Wrong Side of the River - Numbers 32

Like I mentioned yesterday, the Midianites in general weren’t just one single tribe in one single place, they were spread out covering a lot of territory and when Israel defeated them, they only defeated one part of that territory. After they won their battle, the leaders from the tribes of Rueben and Gad noticed “hey this is some really great grazing land here and we have a lot of grazing livestock so maybe we should just stay here instead of going in to the land of Canaan and getting a land inheritance there. The group of “princes” approach Moses and Eleazar with this idea and TB makes sure to note that they aren’t demanding this or refusing to move forward like the previous people were, they just wanted to explain their position and see what Moses has to say about it.

Their request at first took Moses back because he was like “you guys want to have your lands here and just not go into Canaan and fight for your brethren to obtain their lands of inheritance?” Basically, he didn’t want to give up two tribes worth of fighters. TB notes that Gad apparently were really good soldiers because while they did have livestock as their main economic function, they were also really well trained and proficient warfighters. This was mostly because after they were given permission to stay in this Midianite conquered land, they were on the east of the Jordan river and weren’t connected to the other Israelites for protection so they spent a lot of their time and resources defending themselves from foreign entitles that constantly tried to invade and conquer them. Therefore, they became great fighters.

Ruben and Gad’s princes assure Moses that they would settle their families in that area but that the men would go with Israel into Canaan and would fight for them and only return to their families after Canaan was completely conquered and Israel settled into their lands. Now that I think about it, it probably wasn’t smart for all the men to leave these women and children undefended in easily conquerable lands while they are off fighting in another area, but maybe they didn’t see it like that, I don’t know.

Moses hears their compromise and agrees with it, and the rest of chapter 32 is spent giving the details of who goes where and it ends up that the tribes of Rueben, Gad, and part of Manasseh end up staying on the east of the Jordan river, outside of the promised lands of Canaan. I’m not exactly sure if this is a good think or a bad thing as far as what should have happened. The IM makes no comment on this chapter at all, TB suggests that these tribes east of Jordan were at a disadvantage because of this choice. I googled it and the answer is more of a “it depends.” According to TB, these tribes were outside of the geographic protection of the Jordan river and away from the rest of their people and google does say this is the reason why they are the first captured by the Assyrians. Likewise, this is a reason why Gad became such great fighters, because they were constantly having to protect themselves from foreign threats, so that’s not great. The land was apparently really great for their livestock, but they were also isolated and far away from the tabernacle and eventually the temple. But there were apparently 12 cities within the land given to Rueben and Gad for the Levites to live in as well so there were spiritual guides there. TB also suggested that the land that these tribes were promised within Canaan had better grazing land for their livestock and they missed out on that by staying on the east side of the river. But ultimately, Moses did approve the request so it’s hard to know what was right or better in this case for me.

Also the post title is a quote from the Mummy, a movie that I love very much.