Numbers 32:1-42 - The Final Arrangement

II. BUT THOUGH THEY DO NOT RESENT THE REBUKE OF MOSES , THEY HOLD TO THEIR ORIGINAL PURPOSE . So confident are they that they call this much-coveted ]and their inheritance. They cannot but feel the probing force of what Moses has said, but they are also quick to notice what he has omitted to say. If they had put their thoughts into speech they would have run somewhat like this: "He has been a shepherd himself, a practical man in flocks and herds, and of course he knows nicely that these lands for which we ask are just the place for our cattle. We shall hold to our choice, though it may involve a little more trouble and delay than we could have wished." Even when men are made to smart under a just, unanswerable rebuke they keep to their darling projects. They do not believe in their hearts, even though Christ says it, that one cannot serve God and mammon. Reuben and Gad mean to try the experiment of living east of Jordan, and yet keeping their place in the unity and the privileges of Israel.

III. THEY PROPOSE A RASH AND DIFFICULT COMPROMISE . The more we consider what they undertook to do, the more also we see their short-sighted policy. Mark their overweening self-confidence. They cannot risk the chance—which was indeed no chance at all, but a Divine certainty—of finding suitable pastures in Canaan, but they are quite willing to risk their families and flocks in fenced cities of the land they had chosen. Yet on their own admission fenced cities were no adequate security. The fighting men among them were going across Jordan to help in conquering a ]and where, as had been reported to their fathers, the cities were walled and very great ( Numbers 13:28 ). There appears in their resolution a curious mixture of reasonable faith and rash self-confidence. They have learned enough to assure them that Canaan will be conquered, and they are quite ready to believe that in some unaccountable way their own dearest possessions will also be safe. Yet they did not really know how long they were to be absent. It seems to have been several years before they were allowed to return, and when they did return it was not with the unmingled self-congratulations which might have been expected. He who would ]earn how disastrous their choice turned out in the end must carefully consider Joshua 22:1-34 . Most assuredly, whatever Reuben and Gad gained in pastures they more than lost in their permanent isolation from their brethren.—Y.