Numbers 32:6

"And Moses said unto the children of Gad and to the children of Reuben, Shall your brethren go to the war, and shall ye sit here? And wherefore discourage ye the heart of the children of Israel from going over into the land which Jehovah hath given them? Thus did your fathers, when I sent them from Kadesh-barnea to see the land. For when they went up unto the valley of Eshcol, and saw the land, they discouraged the heart of the children of Israel, that they should not go into the land which Jehovah had given them. And Jehovah's anger was kindled in that day, and he sware, saying, Surely none of the men that came up out of Egypt, from twenty years old and upward, shall see the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob; because they have not wholly followed me: save Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite, and Joshua the son of Nun; because they have wholly followed Jehovah. And Jehovah's anger was kindled against Israel, and he made them wander to and fro in the wilderness forty years, until all the generation that had done evil in the sight of Jehovah, was consumed. And, behold, ye are risen up in your fathers' stead, an increase of sinful men, to augment yet the fierce anger of Jehovah toward Israel. For if ye turn away from after him, he will yet again leave them in the wilderness; and ye will destroy all this people."

In our view, Moses' anger and frustration were fully justified. True, he listened to the glorying promises of these potential rebels and permitted them to do as they wished, but there can hardly be any doubt that Moses' first and immediate response to this was correct. This response, of course, was a rehearsal of events following Kadesh-Barnea and the sending out of the spies which resulted as follows: (1) it discouraged Israel; (2) Jehovah's anger was kindled against Israel; (3) God forbade any of that generation except Caleb and Joshua to enter Canaan; and (4) the Lord punished the whole nation by some forty years of aimless wanderings in the wilderness. Now, forty years later, once more standing on the verge of entering Canaan, here the sons of those original sinners once more appear with a plan of their own. They would NOT enter Canaan at all, but settle EAST of Jordan! What a fine place to pasture sheep!

Moses' rebuke did not frustrate the dissident tribes. They at once continued the request, making glorying promises about how they would, after all, enter Canaan with their armed troops, and after the land was conquered, they would, of course, return EAST of Jordan, leaving more room for the rest of Israel WEST of the Jordan! It was the kind of request that would probably have been supported by the vast majority of the whole nation. Here is what they proposed: