N32-3: Why Did The Tribe Of Gad Decide To NOT Accompany Their Brothers Into The Promised Land?

We are currently studying a quite interesting situation whereby Israel as a nation are about to enter into the Promised Land to conquer it BUT…

….we have two tribes (Reuben and Gad) who are telling Moses they would rather stay in the Transjordan area, a territory that is OUTSIDE of the Promised Land.

The reason given for this decision is that the land east of the Jordan River was perfect pastureland for their farm animals.

Yet, as we saw with Reuben in my last post, there was a lot more to their decision than just wanting to live in territory that was suitable for their livestock.

It appears that from the very beginning Reuben was of unstable mind and character, a fact that was expressed in the prophetic “blessing” his father Jacob pronounced upon him when he called him “unstable as water“.

Let’s take a look at the blessing Jacob gave to Gad and see if we cannot connect the dots from his past to his descendants’ decision here in Numbers 32 concerning not wanting to live in the Promised Land. 

This is what Jacob told Gad on his deathbed.

“Gad [troop]— a troop will troop on him,
but he will troop on their heel.”
-Genesis 49:19

“Huh?  What the heck does that mean?” is probably your reaction, right?

Let’s do a little linguistic breakdown here and see if we can’t make some sense out of this riddle.

First, the word GAD comes from the Hebrew root GEDUD which means “troop“.

And the Hebrew root GEDUD is related to the Hebrew verb YEGUDENU which means “raided“.

This is a play on words and is predicting that GAD will turn out to be a military force to be reckoned with in the future.

A possibly better way to translate this from the original Hebrew would be to say…

“GAD will be raided by a troop,
but GAD will raid right back on
their heels!”

In a nutshell, GAD was going to become a fierce warrior tribe and historically we’ll see they became that way out of necessity.

Throughout their history, GAD was under constant threat and harassment from their enemies, but for the most part won most of their battles.

In fact, true to Jacob’s blessing, 500 years later, the Tribe of Gad turned out to be the most audacious and vicious tribe of fighters out in the wilderness.

Trust me, there is a very good reason why Moses was insistent that soldiers from the Tribe of Gad join Israel when they invaded Canaan.

Honestly speaking, I can’t decipher any connection between Jacob’s blessing upon the Tribe of Gad and their decision to not live in the Promised Land as I did with Reuben.

However, I will say this.

Gad and Reuben (and Simeon as well) formed one of the four divisions who were camped around the Tabernacle.

They lived together and were situated on the south side of the Tabernacle.

In addition, we can also see a blood connection.

Reuben and Simeon were both brothers born from Jacob’s first wife Leah.

And Gad was the son of Leah’s handmaiden Zilpah.

Hence, we can see that from birth, there was a close and natural relationship between Reuben and Gad (and Simeon of course).

So I’m pretty darn sure this also influenced Gad’s decision to also want to stay behind with Reuben and live in the fertile Transjordan area.

Having said all that, I do want to make it clear that it was never meant for Reuben and Gad to settle outside the Transjordan.

They had been given an allotment of land inside the Promised Land and they should have trusted the Lord and lived there.

Yet, as God always does and is such a master at doing, He made lemonade out of this lemon of a decision of theirs.

Because Reuben and Gad settled where they did, they were able to serve as a protective barrier and ward off attacking enemies (and there were a lot of them) from the east.

This helped greatly in protecting the tribal territories living inside of Canaan.

In fact, Reuben and Gad would bear the brunt of the many attacking invaders who had to pass through them first BEFORE getting to the other 10 tribes of Israel.

Possibly, this is the price the Lord made them pay for their decision.

Maybe the Lord was indirectly telling them “Sure you can live outside the Promised Land but just know you’re not going to be living in peace if you do“.