Voting on Laws
15 years ago
Monday, January 5, 2009
Numbers 32
The reading today was not very deep or meaningful, but it was interesting. Two of the twelve tribes of Israel requested to settle outside of the Promised Land, based on the area's suitability to raising livestock (of which they apparently had a lot). At first Moses reacts negatively, seemingly considering this an abandonment of the rest of the nation, but then accepts their proposal when they commit to sending troops to help with the coming conflict. Apparently another of the tribes also liked this idea, and forcibly took further lands on the far side of the Jordan as their inheritance; I can only presume they also agreed to send their military forces with the rest of Israel, since they were not rebuked.
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I've also found it interesting (something I never noticed until my last time through Numbers) that only half the tribe of Manasseh wanted land on the other side of the Jordan. I would have thought that the whole tribe would go either one way or the other. And at all those points where I had been reading "the half-tribe of Manasseh" as "half of the tribe of Joseph," I was incorrect. Joseph's tribe was split into two, but one filled in Joseph's place and one took the place of Levi's tribe, which received "no" inheritance. So half of Manasseh got land on the east of the Jordan and half got it on the west. Hmm.
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