Settling on the Edge of a Promise
Introduction: The Geography of Obedience
We have come to a point in the book of Numbers where the rubber is about to meet the road. After forty years of wandering, judgment, and divine preservation in the wilderness, Israel is on the very brink of the Promised Land. The previous generation had perished in their unbelief, but God, who is rich in mercy, has raised up a new generation to inherit what their fathers forfeited. God is a covenant-keeping God, and His promises do not depend on our wavering faith, but on His immutable character. The land is theirs. The deed is written. God is now giving them the survey markers.
But in the midst of this great climax of redemptive history, we find a curious and troubling footnote. Before the nation as a whole crosses the Jordan to take the land God swore to Abraham, two and a half tribes decide to settle down early. They see that the land on the east side of the Jordan is good for their cattle, and they opt for what is convenient over what was commanded. They choose the suburbs of the promise, the comfortable borderlands, rather than pressing into the heart of the inheritance.
This is not some dusty historical detail. This is a permanent warning to the people of God in every generation. It is a spiritual diagnostic. It forces us to ask where we are settling. Have we crossed the Jordan? Or have we found a nice, grassy spot on the eastern banks that looks "good enough"? The Christian life is a conquest, an inheritance to be seized by faith. But the temptation is always to settle for a comfortable, respectable, and ultimately compromised position on the edge of what God has for us. This passage is about the geography of obedience, and it shows us that where you choose to live has everything to do with how you intend to live.
The Text
So Moses commanded the sons of Israel, saying, "This is the land that you shall inherit by lot among you as a possession, which Yahweh has commanded to give to the nine and a half tribes. For the tribe of the sons of Reuben have received theirs according to their fathers’ households, and the tribe of the sons of Gad according to their fathers’ households, and the half-tribe of Manasseh have received their inheritance. The two and a half tribes have received their inheritance across the Jordan opposite Jericho to the east toward the sunrise."
(Numbers 34:13-15 LSB)
The Sovereign Lot and the Commanded Gift (v. 13)
We begin with the command of Moses, which is simply the transmission of the command of God.
"So Moses commanded the sons of Israel, saying, 'This is the land that you shall inherit by lot among you as a possession, which Yahweh has commanded to give to the nine and a half tribes.'" (Numbers 34:13)
Notice the glorious tension here. The land is an inheritance, a gift. It is something Yahweh has "commanded to give." It is not earned by their righteousness or seized by their own strength. It is a sheer act of grace, a fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham centuries before. But it is also to be apportioned "by lot." This is crucial. The lot is not a game of chance; it is an instrument of divine sovereignty. As Proverbs tells us, "The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from Yahweh" (Prov. 16:33). God is not just giving them a country; He is assigning them their specific mailing addresses within it.
This demolishes all human pride and cuts the nerve of all envy. No tribe could boast that they received their portion because they were stronger, and no tribe could complain that their portion was lesser because they were weaker. God determined the outcome. This is a foundational principle of the Christian life. Your gifts, your station, your family, your calling, these are not accidents. They are a sovereign assignment from the Lord. Our task is not to covet the lot of another, but to faithfully work the one God has given to us.
This verse is a direct assault on the spirit of our age, which is one of radical autonomy and self-invention. We are told we can be anything we want to be, that we define our own reality. The Bible says otherwise. We are creatures, and we have a Creator who has cast our lot. True freedom is not found in rebelling against that assignment, but in joyfully receiving it as a gift from a good Father and cultivating it for His glory.
According to the Father's House (v. 14)
Verse 14 explains why the land is only for nine and a half tribes, and in so doing, it reveals the fundamental structure of a godly society.
"For the tribe of the sons of Reuben have received theirs according to their fathers’ households, and the tribe of the sons of Gad according to their fathers’ households, and the half-tribe of Manasseh have received their inheritance." (Numbers 34:14)
The inheritance is distributed "according to their fathers' households." God does not deal with His people as a disconnected mass of atomized individuals. He deals with them covenantally, in and through the family. The fundamental unit of society is not the individual, but the household, represented by its federal head, the father. This is the biblical pattern from Genesis to Revelation.
This is another truth that our generation despises. We have been catechized in a radical individualism that sees the family as a voluntary association of convenience, easily discarded. We have been taught an egalitarianism that bristles at the very idea of headship or authority. But here, God builds His nation upon the rock of the patriarchal family. The land is given to tribes, which are collections of clans, which are collections of households. And the households are identified by their fathers. When this structure is honored, society is stable. When it is attacked and dismantled, as it has been in our day, society disintegrates into chaos.
The health of the church and the health of the nation depend on the health of the Christian household. It depends on men taking up their responsibility as the heads of their homes, and women joyfully embracing their role within that structure. This is not cultural baggage; it is the created order. And we abandon it to our peril.
East of the Jordan, Toward the Sunrise (v. 15)
Finally, verse 15 specifies the location of this premature inheritance.
"The two and a half tribes have received their inheritance across the Jordan opposite Jericho to the east toward the sunrise." (Numbers 34:15)
Here is the heart of the matter. They settled "across the Jordan." The Jordan River is a massive theological symbol in Scripture. It is the boundary of the promise. To cross the Jordan is to enter into the inheritance proper. It is a picture of dying to the wilderness of the old life and being raised to new life in the land of promise. It is a type of baptism. The tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh stopped short. They saw that the land was good for grazing, and they made a pragmatic, economic decision that had profound spiritual consequences.
They settled for comfort over conquest. They chose the familiar over the faithful. And while they did fulfill their promise to help their brothers fight, their hearts were already invested elsewhere. Their decision put them on the frontier, making them the first to face enemy attacks from the east. And history shows they were the first tribes to be carried away into exile by the Assyrians. A choice for convenience often leads to calamity.
The text says their land was "to the east toward the sunrise." This sounds hopeful, but it is deeply ironic. They are looking at the sunrise, but their backs are to the Promised Land. They are looking at a new day of their own making, rather than the day the Lord had made for them in Canaan. This is a picture of worldly hope. It is the Christian who wants the blessings of God without the battle, the one who wants a crown without a cross. It is the church that wants cultural influence without confronting the culture, that prefers to build its own comfortable programs on the safe side of the river rather than crossing over to tear down the strongholds of Jericho.
Conclusion: Crossing Over into the Promise
This passage lays a choice before us. The land of Canaan is a type of the kingdom of God, the inheritance that is ours in Christ Jesus. Through His death and resurrection, our Joshua has crossed the Jordan for us and secured the victory. The command to us is to follow Him, to enter into that rest, to take possession of the land, and to drive out the idols and enemies that occupy it, beginning with our own hearts and extending to every area of life.
The temptation of the eastern tribes is the temptation of every Christian. It is the temptation to settle. To find a comfortable place in the world that is "close enough" to the kingdom. To be a Christian in private, but to make all our public, economic, and political decisions based on what is good for our "livestock." It is to have our treasure on the wrong side of the river.
God is not calling us to find a nice pasture east of Jordan. He is calling us to be conquerors. He is calling us to cross over. This means dying to self, taking up our cross, and engaging in the spiritual warfare necessary to claim our inheritance. Our inheritance is not just a ticket to heaven when we die. Our inheritance is the earth. "The meek," Jesus says, "shall inherit the earth." Psalm 2 says the nations are Christ's inheritance. We are called to disciple those nations, to bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. That work cannot be done from the comfortable suburbs of the promise. It must be done from within the land, having crossed the river by faith.
So the question is, where is your inheritance? Is it in the world, with its fleeting comforts and false sunrises? Or have you, by faith, crossed the Jordan with Christ, and are you now fighting to take possession of every good promise He has purchased for you? Do not settle on the edge. Cross over and take the land.