Numbers 32
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CHAPTER 32
The Transjordan Tribes (32:1–42)
1–5 Two of Israel’s tribes—the Reubenites and Gadites—asked Moses if they could settle on the east side of the Jordan River (the Transjordan). This region included the Amorite kingdoms of Sihon and Og, which Israel had recently conquered (Numbers 21:21–35). It was part of the land originally promised to Abraham (Genesis 15:18–21). So the request of the two tribes to settle there was a reasonable one.
6–15 But Moses immediately saw two problems. First, he thought the Reubenites and Gadites were trying to avoid entering Canaan proper—just as their fathers had done forty years earlier (Numbers 14:1–4). He feared that the other tribes also might refuse to cross into Canaan, and that God would punish Israel all over again for rejecting His gift of the land (verses 7,11).
Indeed, in these verses Moses gives the central teaching of the whole book of Numbers: the first generation of Israelites failed to obey God, they lost their inheritance and died in the desert. Would the second generation be like the first? Would they too disobey God and bring destruction upon all of Israel? (verses 14–15).
The second problem Moses saw was a military one: God had commanded Israel as a whole to occupy Canaan. The fighting men of the two tribes were needed to defeat the Canaanites. Why should the Reubenites and Gadites get their allotment of land without cost, as it were, while the other tribes had to fight for theirs? (verse 6).
16–24 The Reubenites and Gadites immediately assured Moses that they were not trying to get out of fighting and that their men would join with the other tribes until victory over the Canaanites was complete and every Israelite had received his inheritance (verse 18).
Moses agreed to their plan, but he gave the two tribes a stern warning: “Do what you have promised or you will be sinning against the Lord, and your sin will find you out” (verse 23). Our sin is not something merely passive that “waits to be discovered”; our sin itself will expose us—it will “find us out” and cause judgment to be brought upon us. And even if we think we can hide our sin from other people, we will never be able to hide it from God, the final Judge.
25–32 Moses told Eleazar and Joshua that if the two tribes failed to keep their word, they were not to be given the land they wanted east of the Jordan; instead, they would have to accept a much smaller inheritance within Canaan itself (verse 30).
33–42 In verse 33, we notice that half the tribe of Manasseh joined with the tribes of Reuben and Gad in choosing their inheritance on the east side of the Jordan; Manasseh’s inheritance was farther north in the region of Gilead and Bashan. These two and a half tribes settled their families and their livestock in secure areas; then their fighting men joined with the other tribes in the conquest of Canaan.