4 the country awhich the Lord defeated before the congregation of Israel, is a land for livestock, and your servants have livestock.”
5 Therefore they said, “If we have found favor in your sight, let this land be given to your servants as a possession. Do not take us over the Jordan.”
6 And Moses said to the children of Gad and to the children of Reuben: “Shall your brethren go to war while you sit here?
7 Now why will you adiscourage the heart of the children of Israel from going over into the land which the Lord has given them?
8 Thus your fathers did awhen I sent them away from Kadesh Barnea bto see the land.
9 For awhen they went up to the Valley of Eshcol and saw the land, they discouraged the heart of the children of Israel, so that they did not go into the land which the Lord had given them.
10aSo the Lord’s anger was aroused on that day, and He swore an oath, saying,
11 ‘Surely none of the men who came up from Egypt, afrom twenty years old and above, shall see the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, because bthey have not wholly followed Me,
12 except Caleb the son of Jephunneh, the Kenizzite, and Joshua the son of Nun, afor they have wholly followed the Lord.’
13 So the Lord’s anger was aroused against Israel, and He made them awander in the wilderness forty years, until ball the generation that had done evil in the sight of the Lord was gone.
14 And look! You have risen in your fathers’ place, a brood of sinful men, to increase still more the afierce anger of the Lord against Israel.
15 For if you aturn away from following Him, He will once again leave them in the wilderness, and you will destroy all these people.”
16 Then they came near to him and said: “We will build sheepfolds here for our livestock, and cities for our little ones,
17 but awe ourselves will be armed, ready togo before the children of Israel until we have brought them to their place; and our little ones will dwell in the fortified cities because of the inhabitants of the land.
18aWe will not return to our homes until every one of the children of Israel has1 received his inheritance.
19 For we will not inherit with them on the other side of the Jordan and beyond, abecause our inheritance has fallen to us on this eastern side of the Jordan.”
NUMBERS. This book is so called because it contains an account of the enumeration and arrangement of the Israelites. The early part of it, from the first through the tenth chapters, appears to be a supplement to Leviticus, being occupied with relating the appointment of the Levites to the sacred offices. The journal of the march through the wilderness is then given as far as Numbers 21:20; after which the early incidents of the invasion are narrated. One direct quotation only from this book (Numbers 16:5) is made in the New Testament (II Timothy 2:19); but indirect references to it by the later sacred writers are very numerous.
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