Numbers 32 · a question people ask
Was it wrong for Reuben and Gad to ask for land east of the Jordan?
The text gives both a sharp rebuke and a gift. Moses answers their request with "Shall your brothers go to war while you sit here?" (32:6) and "an increase of sinful men" (32:14). Yet he agrees on terms (32:20-24), and "Moses gave to them" the land (32:33). What every reading agrees on is what Moses objected to: staying behind while their brothers fought (32:6-7), and what the agreement required: going over armed until the land was subdued (32:20-22). What happened when they finally went home is told in Joshua 22:1-6, with the altar that followed in Joshua 22:10-34. The two main readings below each rest on verses.
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
A wrong request, set right
Those who hold this view start from the request itself, "Don’t bring us over the Jordan" (32:5), and from how Moses heard it: "Your fathers did so" (32:8), "you have risen up in your fathers’ place, an increase of sinful men" (32:14). They note that the land of Canaan described in Numbers 34 has its eastern border at the Jordan: "The border shall go down to the Jordan, and end at the Salt Sea" (34:12). On this reading the request began as a turning away, and the agreement in 32:20-24 is what turned it into something Moses could grant.
Numbers 32:5 · Numbers 32:8 · Numbers 32:14 · Numbers 34:12
A fair request, once they went with their brothers
Those who hold this view start from what the tribes offered, "we ourselves will be ready armed to go before the children of Israel" (32:17), and from how the land is spoken of afterward: "this land shall be your possession before the LORD" (32:22), and Moses later recalls, "The LORD your God has given you this land to possess it" (Deuteronomy 3:18). When Moses sets out the land of Canaan, he says, "The two tribes and the half-tribe have received their inheritance beyond the Jordan at Jericho eastward" (34:15). When they kept their word, Joshua said, "You have kept all that Moses the servant of the LORD commanded you" (Joshua 22:2). On this reading Moses' rebuke was aimed at the words "Don’t bring us over the Jordan" (32:5), not at the land they asked for.
Numbers 32:17 · Numbers 32:22 · Deuteronomy 3:18 · Numbers 34:15 · Joshua 22:2
The verses
“They said, “If we have found favor in your sight, let this land be given to your servants for a possession. Don’t bring us over the Jordan.” Moses said to the children of Gad, and to the children of Reuben, “Shall your brothers go to war while you sit here? Why do you discourage the heart of the children of Israel from going over into the land which the LORD has given them?”
““Behold, you have risen up in your fathers’ place, an increase of sinful men, to increase the fierce anger of the LORD toward Israel.”
“Moses gave to them, even to the children of Gad, and to the children of Reuben, and to the half-tribe of Manasseh the son of Joseph, the kingdom of Sihon king of the Amorites, and the kingdom of Og king of Bashan; the land, according to its cities and borders, even the cities of the surrounding land.”