Numbers32chapter 32

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.

Moses fears the effect on the rest of Israel more than the loss of two tribes' fighting men. Discouragement had spread through the camp once before. At Deuteronomy 1:28 the people recall how their brothers made their hearts melt, and Numbers 14:1-4 shows the whole congregation weeping over a report.

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.

Albert Barnes notes at verse 8 that the generation of the Exodus was by now almost wholly dead, as Numbers 26:64-65 records. Moses speaks of your fathers to their sons. The mission that brought back the cluster of Numbers 13:23 also produced the bad report of 13:32.

Numbers 32:10-12

The oath is that of Numbers 14:22-24 and 14:29-30, and Moses gives as its reason a phrase those verses used only of Caleb, "follow Me wholeheartedly". Caleb is called "the Kenizzite", and Kenaz is an Edomite name at Genesis 36:11 and 36:15, a question of ancestry the text never answers. Adam Clarke gives the title to Jephunneh, and others take Kenaz for a clan absorbed into Judah.

The age of twenty is the census line of Numbers 14:29, so the sentence fell on every man numbered in the census. John Gill reads the failure to follow wholly as disobeying the order to go up at once and take the land, which Deuteronomy 1:21 records. That order came with a charge not to be discouraged.

Albert Barnes explains the title Kenizzite by noting that Kenaz at Genesis 36:11 is an Edomite name, and that Israel and Edom were of kindred origin, so shared names are no surprise. Caleb and Joshua appear together again at Numbers 34:17-19. Both men have a hand in dividing the land.

Numbers 32:13-15

made them wander in the wilderness: Verse 13 sums the sentence of chapter 14, forty years "until the whole generation who had done evil in His sight was gone", and then Moses turns it on the men before him. He calls them "a brood of sinners" risen "in place of your fathers", convicting them before they reply. Verse 15 names the cost he fears: one more refusal leaves the whole nation in the wilderness again.

Matthew Henry hears Moses charge the sons with rising in their fathers' place to despise the land, when he had hoped they rose to possess it. Henry adds that Moses was glad to see these tribes so increased in men. He grieved that the increase was of sinful men.

Moses reasons that two tribes' refusal brings judgment on the whole nation. The same reasoning returns at Joshua 22:18-20, where the western tribes fear that the altar built by Reuben, Gad and half Manasseh will bring anger on all Israel, as Achan's sin did. Both times the eastern tribes stand accused of turning away.

Numbers 32:16-17

They come near and answer with a plan. Their word order puts the sheepfolds before the cities and the livestock before the little ones, and Moses turns both around at verse 24. To "go ahead of the Israelites" means the front rank, and Joshua 4:12-13 records "About 40,000 troops armed for battle" crossing that way, ahead of the nation.

Adam Clarke doubts that women and children could hold fortified towns alone, and he names the neighbours they had to fear, Ammonites, Moabites, Idumeans and what remained of the Midianites and Amorites. From the census of Numbers 26 he reckons that many fighting men must have stayed behind. Joshua 4:13 counts about 40,000 who crossed.

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.

They speak of the land as already theirs. Matthew Henry notes that they promise to claim no share of the country still to be conquered west of the river. Numbers 34:14-15 later states the grant as done, and Joshua 13:8 records the inheritance Moses gave them beyond the Jordan to the east.

Numbers 32:20-22

Moses sets a chain of conditions, each one set "before the LORD". He restates their service to their brothers as service before the LORD, an oath rather than a bargain. To "be free of obligation to the LORD and to Israel" is the language of a debt discharged, and the land is theirs only once subdued.

Matthew Henry reads before the LORD as before the ark, and he notes that these two tribes marched immediately in front of it in the order of chapter 2. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown allow a wider sense. The enemies driven out are called His enemies.

Matthew Henry reads the phrase as a double discharge, with no sin before God and no blame before Israel. Joshua 22:2-4 records that release, when Joshua tells these tribes they have kept the charge and may go home. Henry counts it good to come to any possession that way.

The verse opens with a condition, "But if you do not do this", so the sin Moses names is one particular failure, breaking this promise to cross over armed. Albert Barnes gives the Hebrew more nearly as a command to know your sin, that it will find you out. John Gill reads sin here as its punishment, which overtakes a man who thought he had left it behind.

Moses reverses their plan, cities for the little ones first and folds second, and Matthew Henry reads their order as putting the flocks ahead of the families. The text comments on neither order. The closing charge, "do what you have promised", echoes the vow law of Numbers 30:2, "he must do everything he has promised", so their word 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.

The tribes now name their families before their flocks, the order Moses gave at verse 24 rather than their own order at verse 16. John Gill takes the cities of Gilead as the towns listed at verse 3. Gill says they meant to repair and fortify them.

Albert Barnes reads before the LORD as directly in front of the tokens of His presence, pointing to Numbers 10:17. Joshua 4:12-13 records the crossing in the same words. About 40,000 armed men crossed before the LORD into the plains of Jericho.

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.

Moses states the terms to Eleazar, Joshua and the family heads, and John Gill notes he did so because he knew he would die before they fell due. Matthew Henry calls it an estate upon condition, left to Joshua to declare absolute once the condition was met. Joshua does so at Joshua 22:4.

The penalty removes only the ground they asked for. Matthew Henry notes that Moses withholds only the inheritance they covet, and John Gill explains that a refusal would send them to take their lot in Canaan with the other tribes. Their share in Israel is secure either way.

Numbers 32:31-32

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

John Gill notes that the pledge is repeated again and again to make it sure. It is the tribes' last word in the chapter. Joshua 22:3-4 records that they stayed with their brothers until the LORD gave them rest.

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

Numbers 32:34-36

Clarke, Gill and Jamieson read "built up" as rebuilt, since these were standing Amorite towns taken in Numbers 21 and damaged in the taking. Dibon appears on the Moabite Stone, King Mesha's inscription found at Dhiban in 1868, whose tenth line says the men of Gad had lived in the land of Ataroth from of old. A hostile king names Gad in the towns this passage assigns to Gad.

Albert Barnes reads Atroth-shophan as Ataroth of Shophan, named so to set it apart from the Ataroth of verse 34. John Gill identifies Jazer with the town of verse 3, and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown place it near a spring about fifteen miles from Heshbon. Jogbehah returns at Judges 8:11 on Gideon's route beside Nobah.

John Gill takes Beth-nimrah as the Nimrah of verse 3 and Beth-haran as the Beth-haram of Joshua 13:27, a town Herod later renamed Livias or Julias. The folds are the ones promised at verse 16. The Gadites built what they had said they would build.

Numbers 32:37-38

Reuben's towns cluster around Heshbon, the Amorite capital of Numbers 21:26, and two, Nebo and Baal-meon, carry the names of gods, which the text marks: "whose names were changed". Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the change against Exodus 23:13, "You must not invoke the names of other gods". Adam Clarke reads renaming as the ordinary practice of conquerors, as Nobah does in verse 42.

Matthew Henry reads the renaming as an effort to bury the idols in oblivion, and he sets it beside Hosea 2, where at verse 17 God removes the names of the Baals from Israel's lips. Albert Barnes notes that Sibmah later became famous for its vines. Isaiah 16:8 mourns them.

Numbers 32:39-42

The chapter closes with three men who take ground and name it: Machir, Jair and Nobah. Jair's towns are the Havvoth-jair of Deuteronomy 3:14, and Albert Barnes notes that the name Nobah gave Kenath fell out of use, so the older name holds the site today. The tribes that settled first, outside the borders of Numbers 34, were carried away first, as 2 Kings 15:29 and 1 Chronicles 5:26 record.

John Gill takes the gift as made to Machir's descendants, since Machir himself, had he come out of Egypt, would have died with his generation under verse 11. Albert Barnes notes that Machir's sons were raised on Joseph's knees, as Genesis 50:23 records. Joshua 17:1 remembers Machir as a man of war.

John Gill traces Jair to Judah on his father's side through Hezron and Segub, and to Manasseh through a daughter of Machir, as 1 Chronicles 2:21-22 records. Albert Barnes renders Havvoth-jair as the tent villages of Jair. He takes Jair the judge of Judges 10:3 for a descendant.

called it Nobah, after his own name: John Wesley notes that Nobah the man is named nowhere else, though he was plainly a leading man of Manasseh. Israel later lost these towns. First Chronicles 2:23 records that Geshur and Aram took Havvoth-jair and Kenath with its sixty villages.