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In this post, I'll talk about Excursus 70 in Jacob Milgrom's Jewish Publication Society commentary on the Book of Numbers. This Excursus is entitled "The Settlement of Transjordan (chap. 32)".
Milgrom discusses discrepancies in the Hebrew Bible on who has what land in the Transjordan. One voice presents a picture in which "Gad lay to the south of Manasseh, and Reuben lay to the south of Gad" (page 495). This is what I see on Bible maps that I've looked at, and Milgrom cites such passages as Deuteronomy 4:23 and Joshua 20:8.
But there are other pictures in the Hebrew Bible. Numbers 32, for example, "places Gadite towns both to the north and south of Reuben", and, whereas Numbers 32 assigns Aroer and Dibon to Gad, Joshua 13:16-17 assigns them to Reuben.
Why are there different pictures of the Transjordan? One view that Milgrom cites is that of R. de Vaux. De Vaux argued that Reuben was eventually assimilated into Gad. There are indications in the Hebrew Bible that Reuben at some point lost its prominence and was eclipsed by Gad (Genesis 49:3-4; Deuteronomy 33:6, 20-21). In the time of Saul, the Transjordan is called Gad and Gilead (I Samuel 13:7). Moreover, "David's census north of the Arnon only mentions Gad (2 Sam. 24:5)", "Solomon's lower Transjordanian district is called Gad (I kings 4:19 LXX)", and "the Moabite stone (ninth century) refers only to Gad" (page 495).
Tomorrow, we'll look at critiques of De Vaux's proposal that Milgrom mentions.
