Study Desk

So from the thousands of Israel a thousand were taken from every tribe, twelve thousand men armed for war.

And Moses sent them out to war, a thousand from every tribe, and with them Phinehas, the son of Eleazar the priest, taking in his hands the vessels of the holy place and the horns for sounding the note of war.

The women of Midian with their little ones the children of Israel took prisoner; and all their cattle and flocks and all their goods they took for themselves;

But all the female children who have had no sex relations with men, you may keep for yourselves.

You yourselves will have to keep outside the tent-circle for seven days, anyone of you who has put any person to death or come near a dead body; and on the third day and on the seventh day make yourselves and your prisoners clean.

And let division be made of it into two parts, one for the men of war who went out to the fight, and one for all the people:

Now the beasts taken, in addition to what the fighting-men took for themselves, were six hundred and seventy-five thousand sheep,

And we have here an offering for the Lord from what every man took in the war, ornaments of gold, leg-chains and arm-rings, finger-rings, ear-rings, and neck-ornaments, to make our souls free from sin before the Lord.

(For every man of the army had taken goods for himself in the war.)

Now the children of Reuben and the children of Gad had a great number of cattle: and when they saw that the land of Jazer and the land of Gilead was a good place for cattle;

The land which the Lord gave into the hands of the children of Israel, is a land for cattle, and your servants have cattle.

For when they went up to the valley of Eshcol, and saw the land, they took from the children of Israel the desire to go into the land which the Lord had given them.

Then the Lord was angry with Israel, and he made them wanderers in the waste land for forty years? till all that generation who had done evil in the eyes of the Lord was dead.

For if you are turned away from him, he will send them wandering again in the waste land; and you will be the cause of the destruction of all this people.

Then they came to him, and said, We will make safe places for our cattle here, and towns for our little ones;

For we will not have our heritage with them on the other side of Jordan and forward; because our heritage has come to us on this side of Jordan to the east.

And the land is under the rule of the Lord: then after that you may come back, having done no wrong to the Lord and to Israel; and this land will be yours for your heritage before the Lord.

So get to work building your towns for your little ones, and safe places for your sheep; and do as you have said.

But your servants will go over, every man armed for war, before the Lord to the fight, as my lord says.

And Moses said to them, If the children of Gad and the children of Reuben go with you over Jordan, every man armed for the fight before the Lord, and all the land is given into your hands, then let them have the land of Gilead for a heritage: