Numbers32chapter 32

Numbers 32:1-3

Reuben stands before Gad once, at verse 1, and from verse 2 to the end of the chapter Gad is named first. The land is described by what the cattle need before it is described by anything else, and the towns listed at verse 3 are the Amorite towns taken from Sihon in Numbers 21:25-30. Two of those names, Nebo and Baal-meon, carry the names of gods, which verse 38 comes back to.

Numbers 32:4-5

They ground the request on what God did, the country which the Lord smote before the congregation, and then ask to be left out of the crossing. The borders of the land Israel is about to receive are given at Numbers 34:2-12 and they run from the Jordan westward, so the ground these tribes want sits outside the line drawn there. Their last five words, bring us not over Jordan, are what Moses answers for the next eighteen verses.

Numbers 32:6-7

Moses puts two questions and makes no statement. The word rendered discourage at verse 7 is the word rendered disallow in the vow law two chapters back at Numbers 30:5, where a father cancels his daughter's vow, so the charge is that these tribes would annul the will of the rest. Numbers 14:34 uses a noun from the same root, which the King James text renders my breach of promise.

Numbers 32:8-9

Moses takes a request about pasture and reads it as Kadesh starting over. Eshcol is where the cluster was cut at Numbers 13:23, so the men who carried the fruit back are the men he charges with discouraging the heart. The same verb falls in verse 7 and again in verse 9, once of these tribes and once of their fathers, and the two uses are set side by side on purpose.

Numbers 32:10-12

The oath quoted here is the oath of Numbers 14:22-24 and 14:29-30, and Moses gives as its reason a phrase those verses used only of Caleb, that they have not wholly followed me. Caleb is called the Kenezite, and Kenaz is an Edomite name at Genesis 36:11 and 36:15, which raises a question about his ancestry the text never answers. Adam Clarke reads the title as belonging to Jephunneh rather than to Caleb, and others take Kenaz for a clan absorbed into Judah.

Numbers 32:13-15

made them wander in the wilderness: The whole sentence of chapter 14 is summed in one verse, forty years until that generation was consumed, and then Moses turns it on the men standing in front of him. He calls them an increase of sinful men risen up in their fathers' stead, which convicts them before they have said a word in reply. Verse 15 names the cost he fears, that one more refusal leaves the entire nation in the desert again.

Numbers 32:16-17

They come near and answer with a plan rather than a defence. Their word order puts the sheepfolds before the cities and the cattle before the little ones, and Moses turns both around at verse 24. Going armed before the children of Israel means going in the front rank, and Joshua 4:12-13 records about forty thousand of them crossing that way, ahead of the nation.

Numbers 32:18-19

The offer goes further than the question. Moses asked whether they would fight, and they bind themselves to stay in the field until every other tribe holds its own inheritance, which Joshua 22:1-4 records them doing to the end. They also give up any claim on the west side, so the exchange is fixed in both directions before Moses states a single term.

Numbers 32:20-22

Moses sets the terms as a chain of conditions, and the words before the Lord fall five times in these three verses. What they offered as service to their brethren he restates as service before the Lord, which puts the whole arrangement under an oath rather than a bargain. Guiltless at verse 22 is the language of a debt discharged, and the land becomes their possession only after Canaan is subdued.

Numbers 32:23

The sentence opens with a condition, but if ye will not do so, so the sin Moses names is one particular failure, the breaking of this promise to cross over armed. Albert Barnes gives the Hebrew more nearly as know ye your sin, that it will find you out. John Gill reads sin here as standing for the punishment of sin, the thing that overtakes a man who thought he had left it behind him.

Numbers 32:24

Moses hands their plan back with the order reversed, cities for the little ones first and folds for the sheep second. Matthew Henry reads their own order as a sign that the flocks stood ahead of the families in their thinking, and the text records both orders and comments on neither. The closing charge, do that which hath proceeded out of your mouth, is the language of the vow law at Numbers 30:2, so what they said now binds them as a vow.

Numbers 32:25-27

The Hebrew verb behind their answer is singular, which John Gill reads as the two tribes speaking with one voice or through one spokesman. Verse 27 repeats the crossing clause almost word for word, and the same clause comes round again at verses 29, 31 and 32. Repetition is how the terms get fixed, since nobody in this negotiation wants the wording left loose.

Numbers 32:28-30

Moses puts the agreement into the hands of Eleazar, Joshua and the heads of the tribes, because he will be dead before it comes due. Verse 30 supplies the penalty clause, that a failure to cross forfeits the east and drops them into Canaan with everyone else. Joshua 22:1-4 is where Joshua discharges them and sends them home, which is the far end of this same contract.

Numbers 32:31-32

Their final answer names the Lord where their earlier answer named Moses. John Gill marks the change and reads it as their receiving the terms from Moses as terms from God himself. The clause about their inheritance on this side Jordan repeats verse 19, and with that the request they opened at verse 5 has become a contract with parties, conditions and a penalty.

Numbers 32:33

Half the tribe of Manasseh receives an allotment here without appearing anywhere in the request. Verses 1 to 32 record no word from them, and verses 39 to 42 supply the ground after the fact, since the sons of Machir had already taken Gilead by force. Albert Barnes reads the grant as a reward for that conquest, and the territory named is the kingdoms of Sihon and Og taken in Numbers 21:21-35.

Numbers 32:34-36

Built here carries the sense of rebuilt, since these were standing Amorite towns taken in Numbers 21 and damaged in the taking, and Clarke, Gill and Jamieson all read the verb that way. Dibon turns up again on the Moabite Stone, the inscription of king Mesha found at Dhiban in 1868, whose tenth line says the men of Gad had dwelt in the land of Ataroth from of old. An outside record left by a hostile king names Gad in the towns this passage assigns to Gad.

Numbers 32:37-38

The towns of Reuben cluster tightly around Heshbon, the old Amorite capital of Numbers 21:26. Two of them carry the names of gods, Nebo and Baal-meon, and the text stops to say the names were changed. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the change against Exodus 23:13, which forbids the name of other gods to be heard from an Israelite mouth, while Adam Clarke reads renaming as the ordinary practice of conquerors, and verse 42 shows a man doing exactly that.

Numbers 32:39-42

The chapter closes with three men who take ground and put a name on it, Machir, Jair and Nobah. The towns of Jair are the Havoth-jair of Deuteronomy 3:14, and Nobah puts his own name on Kenath, which Albert Barnes notes fell out of use so completely that the older name holds the site today. The tribes that settled first, and settled outside the borders drawn in Numbers 34, are the tribes carried away first, which 2 Kings 15:29 and 1 Chronicles 5:26 record.