The Narrative of Numbers

In Numbers 21, Israel not only vanquishes the enemies who assault them but also settles in their territories. With respect to Sihon and the Amorites, for example, we are told:

Settlement is also reported for Jazer and its villages (21:31) as well as the realm of King Og of Bashan (21:35). Given that the reader has already been told that Israel took up residence in these Transjordanian towns and villages, the account in Numbers 32 presents three difficulties: First, it does not presuppose that the nation is already living in the region. Second, only two of the twelve tribes wish to settle in this region. Third, their desire to settle there enrages Moses. The battle accounts in chapter 21 depict the settlement as having already taken place; moreover, it was undertaken by the entire nation and didn’t face opposition from Moses.Footnote ¹

To address issues posed by Israelite communities in the Transjordan, the authors of Numbers 32 had no other choice than to tell the fuller story, as it were, of how part of the nation came to possess homes beyond Canaan’s borders. In this new account, Reuben and Gad seek permission to settle in the conquered territories of the Transjordan, yet instead of shirking their duties to the nation, they agree to fight in the vanguard when the Israelites cross the Jordan and invade Canaan.Footnote ²

The detailed itinerary recorded in Numbers 21:10–20 brings the Israelite camp all the way to the vicinity of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho and the place where Moses dies (Deut. 34:1). From here, they can move on to the plains of Moab (Num. 22:1) and to Shittim (Num. 25:1) and then, after the death of Moses, cross the Jordan in order to commence the conquest of Canaan (Josh 2:1, 3:1).

As observed in Chapter 3, the narrative is moving with an ineluctable force toward this final rest stop before Israel crosses the Jordan. One therefore has good reason to conjecture that the narrative’s oldest substratum consists of a basic itinerary connecting Egypt to Canaan with a minimal number of episodes in between. Seen in this way, much of Numbers and Deuteronomy represents a massive yet secondary block of material that has been interpolated, piecemeal, into the older narrative.

The Transjordanian battle stories in chapter 21 and the Balaam material in chapters 22–24, while relatively early texts, were probably not included in this older narrative. Yet even if the battle stories in chapter 21 appear to be supplementary, they are presupposed by chapter 32 and therefore must predate the latter. Most scholars agree that the remaining texts, which separate the battle stories in chapter 21 from the lengthy account in chapter 32, represent either supplements to an independent “Priestly source” (see the discussion later in this chapter) or additions made in the Pentateuch’s final compositional stages.Footnote ³

Composition of Numbers 32

Coming now to the composition of chapter 32, a number of clues indicate that the account has evolved from an older and much smaller core. Provided below is a literal translation of the text, arranged to show the results of my analysis. The indented material is what I identify as supplementary layers of the account, while the nonindented parts in boldface are what I ascribe to an older substratum. Isolated insertions are marked in italics:

According to my analysis, the earliest edition of the account was only a quarter of the size of the present text. Such dramatic growth for a biblical text wouldn’t be surprising, but what evidence is there to justify reconstructing the text as I’ve done?

A still popular approach in biblical studies attributes the remarkable length of this account not to textual growth but to the combination of independent documentary sources. Supporting this approach are a number of ostensible repetitions or doublets. For example, there seem to be two beginnings to the story: the first in verses 1a and 5, and the second in verses 2–4.

In conducting my analysis, I tested this approach and was initially convinced of its merits. I even published a piece arguing that the account is a synthesis of two independent versions.Footnote ⁴ But further analysis has revealed a different composition process: instead of weaving together separate narrative threads, the scribes produced the account by adding lines to a base text. What propelled this activity of supplementation – often referred to using the German term Fortschreibung – was the scribes’ concern 1) to expound upon what they deemed to be the text’s salient points and 2) to correct lines that, in their estimation, might leave the reader with a false impression.

The account begins by setting the context for the tribes’ petition to settle east of the Jordan. The unstated question addressed in the first lines is: What was it about these two tribes in particular that occasioned their petition? Why wouldn’t the other ten tribes have wanted to settle there? In response, the narrator sets forth two historical “facts” that the reader needs to know: 1) the Reubenites and Gadites boasted large herds, and 2) these eastern territories were ideal for cattle.

If this first verse (or at least the first half of it) was part of the original account, it would be difficult to explain why the scribe in the very next verse renames the subject, instead of including the simple formulation “and they said” (a single word in Hebrew and the most common in biblical narratives), as in verse 5. According to the prose style of biblical narratives, the renaming of a subject is repetitive unless the intervening details cause confusion about the subject’s identity. In this section, we were told who the actors are just two lines earlier, and they are still the ones performing the action in the directly preceding line. But if the account had originally begun in verse 2, there would have been no way for a later scribe to compose a new introduction without first identifying the subject, even if it produced an infelicitous repetition with what follows.

Notice that in verse 1a the scribe changes the order of “Reubenites and Gadites.” This order runs contrary to the remainder of the account, yet it conforms to the canonical order of the tribes. The introduction in verse 1a likely belongs to a late, if not the latest, compositional stage. (Given what we observe in other biblical and ancient Near Eastern texts, this assertion is unsurprising.Footnote ⁵) Notice also that the tribes only have cattle in verse 4, whereas they have “a very large number” of cattle in verse 1a.

The Shifting Contexts of the Account

The earlier supplement in verses 2b–4 harmonizes the account with the expectations of Priestly circles. Here, as so often in the Pentateuch, these circles wanted their readers to understand that – in keeping with the theocratic model of governance they promoted – the tribes knew their petition needed to be presented not only to Moses but also to the priest Eleazar and leaders of “the congregation.” The Priestly imprint can be felt not only here but also in Moses’s initial denunciation (vv. 7–14), in his later consent (vv. 20–23), and in his instructions to Eleazar and Joshua (vv. 25–32).

Now, if Priestly circles went to great lengths to bring this account into conformity with their theocratic agenda, it follows that these circles did not draft its earliest iteration. This is a consequential point. There can be no doubt that much of the Pentateuch derives from (Priestly) scribes working in the employ of the temple. They began their work perhaps shortly before the destruction of the Judean kingdom in 587 BCE, but they appear to have flourished during the Persian period, when a new temple assumed a central role in Judah’s governance as an imperial province. One of the earliest products of their literary activity is what scholars have long identified as a brief, yet highly nuanced, narrative of Israel’s early history. This narrative was likely not a supplementary layer but an independent source, which was eventually added to older materials to create the Pentateuch.Footnote ⁶

If the first drafts of our account are not the product of Priestly circles, where would they have originally appeared in the narrative of Numbers? According to my reconstruction, the account begins with two tribes approaching Moses and presenting a petition: “If we have found favor in your sight, let this land be given to your servants for a possession; do not bring us across the Jordan.”Footnote ⁷ To what place are the tribes referring when they speak of “this land”? The additions explicitly name the desired territory because over time it had become necessary to do so: as the account grew, so did the rest of the book, and the massive amount of supplementary material in the preceding ten chapters distanced it from its original setting.

As noted above, what may be an older narrative thread, consisting of a brief travel itinerary, locates Israel in “the plains of Moab on the other side of the Jordan [and] Jericho” (Num. 22:1). This is where Moses dies at the end of Deuteronomy and where the conquest of Canaan will commence in the book of Joshua. The continuation of this travel itinerary specifies the place as Shittim (“And Israel dwelt in Shittim,” Num. 25:1a); this place is not mentioned again until the conquest of Jericho (Josh. 2:1, 3:1). If these lines in Numbers 22:1 and 25:1a are older, then the location would have changed between Numbers 21 and Numbers 32, and we would expect the narrator to have renamed the territory instead of referring simply to “this land.” This observation may indicate that the author of our account didn’t see a problem with linking “this land” to “the plains of Moab on the other side of the Jordan [and] Jericho.” Alternatively, it may indicate that something is missing in our analysis.Footnote ⁸

A possible solution presents itself in Numbers 32:1b: “They looked at the land of Jazer, and at the land of Gilead, and behold the place was a place for cattle.” The last (and likely oldest) reference to Jazer in the wider narrative appears in a brief paragraph at the end of chapter 21, which describes Israel taking up residence “in the land of the Amorites” and Moses sending out a battalion “to spy out Jazer.” In carrying out their mission, the unnamed subjects capture its villages and dispossess the Amorites who were living there (see vv. 31–32). Footnote ⁹ If chapter 32 originally began in verse 1b, the account may have been conceived as the direct sequel to the conquest of Jazer described in chapter 21.

The problem with this suggestion is the presence of what some scholars deem to be older lines from the travel itinerary in 22:1 and 25:1a, yet it’s possible that these lines represent (early) additions that function as literary links to the accounts of Moses’s death and the conquest of Jericho. The statement in 25:1a that “Israel dwelt in Shittim” is in tension with the similar statement in 21:31 that “Israel dwelt in the land of the Amorites.” The matter is further complicated by 22:1, which reports that “the Israelites journeyed, and they camped in the plains of Moab on the other side of the Jordan [and] Jericho.” The first clause is formulated with late (Priestly) language, but without it, Israel would still be dwelling “in the land of the Amorites.” Moreover, in the account of Moses’s death in Deuteronomy 34, what is likely the oldest line (v. 5) describes the location as “the land of Moab,” whereas what many deem to be an editorial line (v. 1) uses the language of Numbers 22:1 (“the plains of Moab” and “Jericho”). Therefore, while Numbers 22:1 and 25:1a may be relatively old, their formulation renders them unreliable as fixed points in any attempt to discern the stratification of the exodus-conquest narrative.Footnote ¹⁰

There’s plenty of room for debate on these matters. The distance separating the tale of the Transjordanian tribes from the conquest accounts in chapter 21, and the tensions between these texts, are problems that face all diachronic approaches. Any reconstruction involves huge blocks of diverse materials spanning the books of Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua, and it’s unlikely that the original threads connecting early episodes in the sources were transmitted for centuries without being altered. The older edition of the tale appears to have been very concise and probably does not belong to a source – or at least not to one of the conventionally demarcated documents (Yahwist, Elohist, etc.). It’s more likely that this older edition was composed as a supplement to the conquest accounts in chapter 21 and stood in close proximity to them before the intervening materials were composed.Footnote ¹¹

Tribes Before Kings

Numbers 32 features many finely nuanced details (especially with respect to geographical details) that we must necessarily pass over in this book. But several are eminently relevant to our interest in the politico-theological dynamics of war commemoration.

In the earlier version, we are not told why the tribes make their petition. The Priestly expansions to the introduction answer that question with the two “facts” that we discussed above (i.e., the country was well suited to cattle, and these tribes had cattle). In making these claims, the scribes drew information from the older edition of the story, which presents the eastern tribes declaring that they will “build sheepfolds for their flocks and towns for their little ones” before they march off to battle for the nation (vv. 16–19). Later, Moses reiterates their declaration when accepting the proposal: “Build towns for your little ones, and folds for your flocks; but do what you have promised” (v. 24).

What might have prompted Priestly scribes to ascribe large herds to the two tribes? At the most basic level, the additions fill a conceptual gap in the text: the tribes’ petition makes better sense now that we know they left Egypt with a lot of cattle. Moreover, the Song of Deborah in the book of Judges refers repeatedly to herds and flocks when it formulates an indictment against the Transjordanian tribes, and this indictment, as we shall see, bears remarkable affinities to the question that Moses asks the tribes in our text.Footnote ¹²

But there is likely more going on here. Without the additions, the account would leave the reader wondering about what motivated the tribes’ petition. Were they trying to shirk their wartime obligations in the same way they turned a deaf ear to Deborah’s call-to-arms? This, indeed, is the first thing Moses asks when he begins his indictment in verse 6. The Priestly scribes effectively exonerated the tribes of this dishonorable intention, first by reframing the petition (vv. 2b–4) and then by prefacing a new line to the introduction (v. 1; drawn perhaps from Deut. 3:19).

We have to take a step back to appreciate the historical fiction: the kings of Israel had conquered territories east of the Jordan, and over time these territories came to be thought of as places where early Israelite communities had once lived.

The Mesha Stele, arguably our most important extrabiblical artifact bearing on the history of the Hebrew Bible, provides invaluable clues for understanding ancient Israel’s political relationship to the Transjordan. Discovered in 1870, the inscribed monument was set up in circa 840 BCE to commemorate the military triumphs and building projects of the Transjordanian ruler Mesha as he enlarged his kingdom of Moab.

In the Bible, Gad is the name of one of Jacob’s twelve sons whose descendants occupied territory in the Transjordan. According to Mesha’s account, however, the people of Gad had dwelt in a territory called Ataroth from time immemorial. Later, Mesha claims, a king of Israel (likely Ahab’s son Jehoram) came and laid claim to this territory, fortifying its chief city Ataroth (Khirbet Ataruz), but, with the help of his national deity, Mesha captured the city and “killed all the warriors of the city for the welfare of the god Chemosh and Moab.” (Recently, an altar was discovered at Ataroth bearing an inscription that may bear on these events.) On the basis of Mesha’s account, it seems likely that the territory and people of Gad came to be identified with Israel in the ninth century, when rulers of the Omride dynasty conquered the region and fortified Ataroth.Footnote ¹³

The book of Samuel dates Israel’s first appearance in the Transjordan to the inaugural moment of Saul’s reign, more than a century before the reigns of Omri and Ahab. An Ammonite king had attacked the Transjordanian town of Jabesh-Gilead. Desperate for help, the inhabitants of this town seek military assistance from their Israelite neighbors across the Jordan, and in response Saul ventures across the river to rescue them (1 Samuel 11). Read on its own, the account suggests that these inhabitants were not Israelites.Footnote ¹⁴

A biblical manuscript discovered at Qumran, as well as the retelling of the events by Josephus, reveal how later scribes attempted to reconcile the account in Samuel with the book of Judges, which describes the razing of the city. In the “new and improved” versions of the story, Saul embarks on a mission to save “the Israelites who lived beyond the Jordan.” These Israelites are identified explicitly as members of the tribes of Gad and Reuben, and they flee to Jabesh-Gilead for refuge after the internecine warfare depicted in Judges 21 had depopulated the town.Footnote ¹⁵

The evidence from Qumran presupposes the work of earlier generations to integrate the Transjordanian communities into the nation’s narrative. The ancestral stories in Genesis identify Gad and Reuben as the names of two of Jacob’s twelve sons; as such, they are the ancestors of two tribes, also called Gad and Reuben, that were part of the people of Israel during the exodus. The account in Numbers creates a clever fiction to explain how these tribes came to settle in the Transjordan instead of crossing over the Jordan with the rest of the nation: during the nation’s tenure in Egypt, Gad and Reuben had developed into tribes that possessed large herds, and since the land in the Transjordan was exceptionally suited to cattle, they had petitioned Moses for permission to settle in this territory. With respect to Ataroth, the account claims that the Gadites built this city at the time of the conquest – centuries before the reigns of Israel’s kings.

The Nation’s Avant-Garde

When the Transjordanian tribes respond to Moses in the older version of Numbers 32, they promise to lead the way into battle, serving in the perilous role of the vanguard: “But as for us, we will march as shock troops before the Israelites until we have brought them to their place.”

The vanguard battalion or “avant-garde” conventionally consists of the most skilled, fearless, determined, and loyal units of an army. In many ancient Western Asian armies, leaders were called ālik pani (lit. the one who goes at the front). The title could be borne also by the king and/or a deity (often in personal names), as a reflection of the unmatched martial valor attributed to royal and divine warriors. Vassal kings and their troops frequently were expected to take this position at the front as a way of demonstrating their willingness to die for the suzerain, demanded of them in many vassal treaties.

In our account, the eastern tribes vow to leave their flocks, children, and women behind and cross the Jordan armed for battle (v. 17). The primary purpose of these statements about flocks, children, and women staying behind is neither to address logistical matters nor to gender the battlefield as a space for the performance of manhood.Footnote ¹⁶ That these three groups would not participate in combat goes without saying for the scribes who composed these lines.Footnote ¹⁷ The statements concern rather the motivation for the tribes’ participation: By leaving their flocks and families back in the sheepfolds, houses, and towns of Jazer and Gilead, they demonstrate that they didn’t have their eyes set on the lands and houses they would receive as a reward for their wartime service. Instead of being impelled by a material incentive, they risk their lives out of solidarity with their Cisjordanian kin, who did not yet have properties and houses of their own.Footnote ¹⁸

When they render service during the invasion of Canaan, the eastern tribes do not need to be coerced with the threat of corporal punishment or harsh penalties – the common mechanisms of conscription in the ancient Near East.Footnote ¹⁹ In Joshua 1, where anyone who fails to perform military service is threatened with the death penalty, it is not the officers of the troops who pronounce this judgment, but rather the members of the Transjordanian tribes, who speak for themselves. Collectively, “the Reubenites and the Gadites” express their solidarity, affirming that everyone will bear arms across the Jordan.Footnote ²⁰

A similar objective informs the composition of Joshua 22:1–9, which tells how the eastern tribes collected the reward for their service. As they return to their homes and families, Joshua not only blesses them; he also loads them down with “much wealth, very much livestock, silver, gold, bronze, and iron, as well as a great quantity of clothing” (22:7b–8). By presenting the war spoils as an added bonus rather than as a condition of the pact made with Moses, these texts, as we shall see in Chapter 5, eliminate any basis for assuming that the Transjordanians fought for financial gain, and they make it clear that Joshua formally recognized the Transjordanians as full-fledged members of the nation: they had contributed selflessly to the campaign and hence deserve a handsome share of the booty seized from their own enemies (Josh. 22:8).

Kinship and Command

When dramatically amplifying the account in Numbers 32, the Priestly circles continued to affirm the Transjordanian tribes’ membership among the people of Israel. Yet in making a case for them, they did something surprising: they expanded Moses’s indictment into a lengthy and shrill denunciation of the tribes’ petition.

The older version of the account begins with Reuben and Gad expressing their desire to dwell in the Transjordan. Moses responds to their petition with a single accusatory question: “Shall your brothers go to war while you dwell here?” (v. 6). The narrative continues, in verse 16, with the tribes “drawing near” to Moses and explaining their petition.Footnote ²¹ In the expanded Priestly versions, Moses is enraged by their petition and proceeds to harangue them at great length (vv. 7–15) for “discouraging the people from passing over into the land that Yhwh gave them.”

In his new, lengthy indictment, Moses evokes the pivotal moment in the nation’s past when the spies discouraged the Israelites from entering the land. “And now you, a brood of sinners, have risen in the place of your ancestors, to increase Yhwh’s fierce anger against Israel! If you turn away from following him, he will again abandon them in the wilderness; and you will destroy all this people” (vv. 14–15, emphasis added). The comparison serves a clever rhetorical function. By accusing the two tribes of the same sin that an early generation of Israelites had committed, Moses’s fulminations remove any room for doubt that the Transjordanian communities are descendants of the exodus generation and thus full-fledged members of Israel. Both share culpability with respect to the conquest of Canaan. Whereas a new generation of the nation is poised now to take possession of the land west of the Jordan, these two tribes persist in the sins of a generation that was consigned to death in the wilderness.

Moses’s accusations – both in the older version and in the later Priestly editions – reflect what appear to have been widely shared misgivings toward the Transjordanian tribes (and the various communities represented by these tribes in the narrative).Footnote ²² The scribes who created Numbers 32 addressed this sentiment in their ranks by taking it seriously and having Moses himself share it. Ultimately, however, they undermine it by having the tribes vigorously repudiate Moses’s charges.

The older version of the account never even mentions Yhwh and emphasizes national solidarity. Responding to Moses’s question, the tribes declare that they will not abandon their “brothers” and will serve as a vanguard for the nation. The Priestly expansions assume an ethos of fraternity, yet they highlight a different purpose for fighting: The tribes now serve as a vanguard for Yhwh, and they do so in conformity with Moses’s command. Failure to participate in the war effort constitutes a violation of Mosaic authority.

The Cisjordanian campaign has now been redefined as a holy war. Yhwh conquers “the land” for himself by “driving out his enemies before him.” What was originally an offer of the tribes to fight as the nation’s avant-garde now begins as a command by Moses and ends with a pact obligating these tribes to participate. Military service is no longer a gesture of fraternal solidarity but an act of obedience to Yhwh, with the nation’s deity assuming the place of its members. The Transjordanians now fight as Yhwh’s vanguard.

In his negotiations with Reuben and Gad, Moses stipulates that because they participated in the Cisjordanian campaign, the territories they occupy in the Transjordan will have the status of “possession before Yhwh” and the tribes themselves will be “exempt of obligation to Yhwh and to Israel” (vv. 20–23). The word for “exempt” is nāqî (lit. clean), a technical term that appears elsewhere in contexts of military and civic obligations owed to the state.Footnote ²³ Here, it appears in a context that describes failure to fight “before Yhwh” as “sin” against the deity: “But if you do not do this, you will have sinned against Yhwh – be sure your sin will find you out!” (v. 23).

The account does more than strike a balance between the competing views of the Transjordanians; it also fuses fraternal obligations with the law laid down by Moses: “Your servants shall do as my lord commands” (v. 25), and “whatever Yhwh has spoken to your servants, that we shall do” (v. 31). Fidelity to Mosaic law comes to supplement, rather than supplant, kinship obligations.Footnote ²⁴ What makes Israel a people is a shared sense of kinship, while what unifies them as a nation and guarantees their longevity in their homeland is compliance with the divine commandments.Footnote ²⁵

The authors of our account rediscovered and reaffirmed a basic insight that guides the compositional history of the Pentateuch and Former Prophets: A feeling of fraternity and national belonging frequently fails to provide sufficient motivation for collective action. In any large and diverse community, bonds are easily formed between subgroups, while loyalty to the larger body is more difficult to inspire. (Thus, notice in Num. 16:1 the presence of Reubenites in Korah’s rebellion against Moses’s authority.) The ancient scribes who composed our account were convinced that a common deity, and a common law code that represents the will of that deity, had the capacity to surmount primordial rivalries and provide a broader foundation on which their communities could coalesce into a thriving nation.

Performing Peoplehood

When the communities of Israel and Judah were reconstituting themselves under foreign rule, they rarely had opportunities to take up arms for their native interests. Yet through war commemoration, biblical scribes could continue to tap the potential of armed service as the most basic mode of what I call “performing peoplehood.” To belong to a people, one must fight in their ranks, and it’s the task of war commemoration to identify who rendered this service and sacrifice, as well as who dodged their duties to the nation. This is precisely what the older version of Numbers 32 does.

After empires subjugated the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, new modes of national participation emerged. Among the most basic were communal construction projects, and this fact explains the prominence of building accounts in the Pentateuch (the tabernacle) and Ezra-Nehemiah (the temple and city walls).Footnote ²⁶ Alongside building projects, activities that we might call cultic or religious – worship of Yhwh and fidelity to Mosaic law – became paramount, and in Numbers 32 we can witness how Priestly scribes affirmed this point as they embellished an older war memorial.

Numbers 32, therefore, serves two purposes. The first is the negotiation of belonging via war commemoration. This purpose informs the account’s foundational stratum, which is past- and narrative-oriented. The second purpose, which was introduced in the Priestly reworking of the account, is didactic and normative, with Yhwh and his commandments affirmed as the basis of Israel’s national identity. These two purposes correspond not only to the two basic strata in the composition of Numbers 32 but also to two fundamental stages in the formation of the biblical corpus. They are the subject of more focused attention in the following chapters.