I recently read Numbers 32,
in which the tribes of Reuben and Gad prefer to settle in the
Transjordan rather than the land of Canaan. They agree, however, to
assist the rest of Israel in conquering Canaan.
The first time
that this story became solidified in my mind was when I was a student at
Harvard Divinity School. I did a lot of private quiet times while I
was there, and there was a time when I was going through the Book of
Numbers. But I think that I might have heard the story before, when I
was a child. If so, then it was probably in a sermon by David Antion or Ron Dart, because they actually touched on some of the lesser known stories in the Hebrew Bible.
But,
as a child, if my memory serves me correctly, I didn't know exactly
what to do with the story. Why's that? Because it's not entirely clear
what is right and what is wrong within it. In many of the
Bible stories that I heard as a child, there were good guys and there
were bad guys, or (since the good guys didn't always do good) there was
at least God's standard about what was right and what was wrong. But my
vague recollection is that the story in Numbers 32 struck me as
different. We're not explicitly told what God thinks about the
desire of Reuben and Gad to locate in the Transjordan. Reuben and Gad
don't seem to be malicious in their request: they just like the
Transjordan for its pastureland. But I had the impression that
there was something wrong with what they were doing, only I wasn't being
told what that was. And, as a child with Asperger's (though Asperger's
wasn't exactly on my family's radar at the time), I liked to be told
things explicitly rather than shown.
Years later from my
childhood, I heard plenty of preachers who would tell me (well, not me
personally, but me as a listener or as someone in their audience) what
they thought was wrong with the request by Reuben and Gad: that Reuben
and Gad were pursuing an alternative to God's plan for Israel to inherit
the Promised Land, or that Reuben and Gad were cutting themselves off
from the larger body of God's people by striking out on their own.
Points of application for Christians were drawn from the story. For
example, one claim that preachers made was that, in the same way that
Reuben was taken out early by Assyria, so Christians who cut themselves
off from the church body are especially vulnerable to Satanic attack. (Never mind the attacks that Christians may receive inside of the church walls----judgmentalism, authoritarianism, etc.)
Another claim made was that Reuben and Gad, by separating themselves
from the larger body of Israel, were missing out on the glorious things
that God was doing for his people. Similarly, I was told, Christians
who forsake the assembly of the brethren miss out on seeing and hearing
about what God is doing in people's lives. (This may be a valid point,
but God is everywhere, not just in the church.)
The thing is,
though, that God tolerated what Reuben and Gad did. I don't think that
it was considered to be ideal within the larger story of the Bible, for
it's interesting to note that Ezekiel 48's prediction about the division
of Israel gives Reuben and Gad land in the Cisjordan, not the
Transjordan. But God tolerated Reuben and Gad's preference for the
Transjordan. That didn't make much sense to my Aspie mind when I was a
child: that there is not always black and white, but there is often
better and worse. Come to think of it, I'm not sure to what extent a
number of religionists would be comfortable with shades of gray, as they
seek in the Scriptures clear rules of what is right and what is wrong
for all time.
I found that my latest reading of Numbers 32 was
different from some of my previous readings, and I mean as an adult.
During my previous readings, I somewhat identified with Reuben and Gad
because I myself was a lone-ranger Christian. Even though I went to
church and a small group in the past, I recoiled from Christian
community, since I had a hard time fitting into social settings, plus I
felt more at ease when I was reading the Bible by myself. Part
of this was my Asperger's, and part of it was my religious heritage, for
I came from a family and associated with people who felt disconnected
from church and decided to avoid the trap of organized religion by
reading the Bible on their own, or with their families. And that was
considered to be all right. It was mainly when I entered evangelicalism
that I heard that it was not all right (though even evangelicalism had
stories of people finding God alone in their hotel rooms as they read a
Gideon's Bible, or similar occurrences).
But, this time
around, when I read Numbers 32, I felt sad, especially by v 22, in which
Moses tells Reuben and Gad that, after they fight the Conquest, they
will be exempt from their obligations to the LORD and to Israel. Moses
may have meant that they didn't have to fight the Conquest anymore, but
perhaps he meant that Reuben and Gad didn't have to serve the larger
body of Israel at all after the Conquest, if they chose not to do so.
(And Judges 5:16-17 may suggest that Reuben didn't feel an obligation to
Israel after the Conquest and sat out of Israel's war against Sisera.)
For some reason, it saddens me that Reuben felt so disconnected from
the rest of Israel----as if it could care less about what happened to
the LORD's people.
I wonder if Reuben and Gad felt marginalized
within Israel even before they chose to settle in the Transjordan. I
can't really speak about Gad, for I don't know much about that tribe,
but Reuben in the Hebrew Bible is criticized because Reuben slept with
Jacob's servant-girl (Genesis 35:22; 49:3-4; I Chronicles 5:1), and
Reubenites led a revolt against Moses and Aaron (Numbers 16:1). The
Reubenites were once a prominent tribe within Israel, for Reuben was
called Jacob's firstborn, but Reuben declined in number, according to
Numbers 26 (if one compares the census there and the census in Numbers
1) and perhaps Deuteronomy 33:6. Did Reuben get to the point where it
did not feel that it had a home within Israel----that it was not valued,
and so it might as well go off on its own rather than have a
second-class status within the larger Israelite community?
In terms of where I am now, I still value having an individual
faith----of believing that God has a relationship with me personally and
loves me, whether or not I fit into a Christian community (and, right
now, I have an excellent church home). For me, it's important for my
faith to be my own, not something that group-think imposes on me. But I
also think that it's good to be connected with other people, on some
level----to care about them, to be invested in them and their success,
to care about the LORD's cause and whether or not people's lives are
being improved for the better (as people come to know a loving God, or
the poor are fed). Unlike a number of evangelicals, I don't make this
into some iron-clad rule about how to please God, for there are many
people who have difficulty finding a church community where they fit
in----and beating them up with self-righteous platitudes like "Well, you
need to reach out to people, too" (when an outsider reaching out to
people in church may then be looked on as a freak by the in-crowd) or
"You need to be the change that you want to see" does not really help
matters. In my opinion, they can find comfort in a one-on-one
relationship with God, and God does not look down on them for going that
route.