Numbers 32:1–19

Reuben and Gad Settle in Gilead

32Now the people of Reuben and the people of Gad had a very great number of livestock. And they saw the land of ^vJazer and the land of Gilead, and behold, the place was a place for livestock. ²So the people of Gad and the people of Reuben came and said to Moses and to Eleazar the priest and to the chiefs of the congregation, ^3w“Ataroth, ^xDibon, Jazer, Nimrah, Heshbon, Elealeh, Sebam, ^yNebo, and Beon, ⁴the land ^zthat the Lord struck down before the congregation of Israel, is a land for livestock, and your servants have livestock.” ⁵And they said, “If we have found favor in your sight, let this land be given to your servants for a possession. Do not take us across the Jordan.”

⁶But Moses said to the people of Gad and to the people of Reuben, “Shall your brothers go to the war while you sit here? ⁷Why will you discourage the heart of the people of Israel from going over into the land that the Lord has given them? ⁸Your fathers did this, ^awhen I sent them from Kadesh-barnea to see the land. ⁹For when they went up to the Valley of Eshcol and saw the land, they discouraged the heart of the people of Israel from going into the land that the Lord had given them. ^10bAnd the Lord’s anger was kindled on that day, and he swore, saying, ¹¹‘Surely none of the men who came up out of Egypt, ^cfrom twenty years old and upward, shall see the land that I swore to give ^dto Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, because they have not wholly followed me, ¹²none except Caleb the son of Jephunneh the ^eKenizzite and Joshua the son of Nun, for ^fthey have wholly followed the Lord.’ ¹³And the Lord’s anger was kindled against Israel, and he made them ^gwander in the wilderness forty years, until ^hall the generation that had done evil in the sight of the Lord was gone. ¹⁴And behold, you have risen in your fathers’ place, a brood of sinful men, to increase still more the fierce anger of the Lord against Israel! ¹⁵For if you ⁱturn away from following him, he will again abandon them in the wilderness, and you will destroy all this people.”

¹⁶Then they came near to him and said, ^j“We will build sheepfolds here for our livestock, and cities for our little ones, ¹⁷but ^kwe will take up arms, ready to go before the people of Israel, until we have brought them to their place. And our little ones shall live in the fortified cities because of the inhabitants of the land. ^18lWe will not return to our homes until each of the people of Israel has gained his inheritance. ¹⁹For we will not inherit with them on the other side of the Jordan and beyond, ^mbecause our inheritance has come to us on this side of the Jordan to the east.”