Numbers 32:16

"And they came near unto him, and said, We will build sheepfolds here for our cattle, and cities for our little ones: but we ourselves will be ready armed to go before the children of Israel, until we have brought them unto their place: and our little ones shall dwell in the fortified cities because of the inhabitants of the land. We will not return unto our houses, until the children of Israel have inherited every man his inheritance. For we will not inherit with them on the other side of the Jordan, and forward; because our inheritance is fallen to us on this side of the Jordan eastward."

"We will not inherit with them on the other side of Jordan ..." Here is the essential departure from God's will, based upon the same grounds that always underlies disobedience, "We will not!" Oh yes, the promises were excellent, no doubt made in good faith, and with the approving support of the whole nation; so Moses yielded. After all, it was the end of the line for him, and Israel would face the responsibilities of the future WITHOUT Moses. Therefore, he granted their request but included a final warning of what would be involved if they failed to keep their promises.

DID THEY KEEP THESE PROMISES?

No! They certainly did not. The women and children left behind under this arrangement could by no means have manned and defended the fortified towns and villages where they lived.

"Many of the men of war from these tribes were, of course, left behind. The total roster of the men of war for Reuben, Gad and half of the tribe of Manasseh was 110,580, according to the census in Numbers 26, but how many actually aided in the conquest? From Joshua 4:13, we learn that of those two and one half tribes, only forty thousand armed men passed over Jordan, meaning that 70,580 armed men remained at home for the defense of the women and children."[11]

The actual key to the full success of God's plan of moving Israel into Canaan was the driving out of all the original inhabitants. Only this could have saved the Israelites from their intermarriage with the native pagan peoples and the ultimate acceptance of their gods. The very serious loss of the powerful forces of these two and one half tribes had a doubly hurtful effect. Without these two and a half tribes Israel was not large enough to require the removal of all the pagan peoples, which, of course, was left undone. Also, these reluctant tribes were not strong enough, unaided, to drive out the pagan populations they dispossessed, with the result that all Israel was ultimately corrupted by the events recorded here. As Whitelaw said, "The subsequent history of the trans-Jordanic tribes is a melancholy commentary upon the real unwisdom of their choice."[12] "These two tribes (Reuben and Gad) were the very first to go into captivity because they transgressed against the God of their fathers and went a-whoring after strange gods."[13] Thus, as Matthew Henry put it: "There was much amiss in the principle upon which they acted: they consulted their own private convenience more than the public good. To the present time, many seek their own things more than the things of Christ, and being led by worldly interests and advantages, pull up short of the heavenly Canaan."[14]