3:18-20 - I commanded you at that time: "The Lord your God has given you this land to take possession of it. But all your able-bodied men, armed for battle, must cross over ahead of your brother Israelites. However, your wives, your children and your livestock (I know you have much livestock) may stay in the towns I have given you, until the Lord gives rest to your brothers as he has to you, and they too have taken over the land that the Lord your God is giving them, across the Jordan. After that, each of you may go back to the possession I have given you."
Moses now reminds GB of how had commanded the TransJordan tribes once they had received their inheritance to keep their promise that they would march on in aid of their fellow Israelites' conquest of the land on the other side of the Jordan. The flow of this reminder is witness in its structure:1
A. Yahweh your God has given you this land to take possession of it, v18a
B. You shall cross over before your brothers, v18b
C. But your wives, your little children, and your livestock, v19a
C'. I know you have much livestock, v 19b
B'. Until Yahweh gives rest to your brothers, 20a
A'. After that, you may go back to the possession I have given you, v20b
The land taken and apportioned to the two and a half tribes is a genuine gift of God, and a sure and secure one—highlighted by the two points at the centre of the structure (C-C'), that their wives, children and livestock may remain behind and Moses's incidental remark about their wealth of livestock—but as long as the other tribes are not settled with the inheritance God intends for them, that gift remains incomplete. The meaning of the Hebrew participle chalutsim (NIV "armed for battle," NRS "armed as the vanguard") is unclear.2 The present context suggests it refers to actions that would lead to their fellow Israelites accomplishing their inheritance in the land across the Jordan. "Until Yahweh give rest to your brothers as he has to you . . . then you may go back" (v20) requires them to keep at it until the task is accomplished. Being a covenantal community means that every tribe, and every member of it, is responsible and committed to accomplishing Yahweh's rest for every other member and tribe. It may take them far from home, family, and rest (v19) but they (and we) are to be Yahweh's behalfers for one another. This is, of course, the attitude exemplified in Paul, a later son of Israel—of the tribe of Benjamin and a Hebrew of Hebrews (Phil.3:5)—who speaks of "the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any troubles with the comfort we ourselves have received from God" (2 Co.1:3-4).
Sadly, however, this would be the last time that Israel would do this for one another. Their latter history would show how, once settled in the land, the tribes quickly became indifferent to one another (see, e.g., Deborah's lament about the tribes that would not participate the battle against Jabin-Sisera in Judg.5:15b-17) and then patently hostile and subversive of one another until ten tribes of them would be exiled and lost into the flotsam of history under the Assyrians. Sadly, this too has often been the story of the Christian Church; a story, perhaps, no where more clearly epitomised than in the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Built over the traditional site of Christ's crucifixion and burial, it should have served the most potent symbol of the behalfness we are called towards one another in Christ. Instead the church is occupied by six groups who have contested so jealously over every inch of the ground until it irked the Ottoman rulers so badly that the keys to the church were confiscated from them and given over to two Muslim families for safe keeping.3 Ah, to be God's behalfers for one another instead of the bickerers and back-stabbers that we so often become!
Low Chai Hok
©Alberith, rev., 2021