12:6a
Verse 6 is a summary of how Moses and the Israelite army conquered the land east of the Jordan River and divided it among Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh.
Moses, the servant of the LORD: You should translate the phrase the servant of the LORD the same way you did in Joshua 1:1.
and the Israelites: The word Israelites indicates the Israelite army.
had struck them down: The pronoun them refers to King Sihon and King Og. It may be helpful to make this reference explicit. For example:
Moses, the servant of the Lord, had destroyed the people of King Sihon and King Og. (New Living Translation (2004))
12:6b
In the Hebrew text, the phrase “Moses, the servant of the LORD” is repeated here to emphasize the status of Moses as the one who led the Israelites out of Egypt. In some languages, it may be natural to repeat this phrase, as the Hebrew text does.
and given their land as an inheritance: The clause given their land as an inheritance indicates that Moses divided the land on the east side of the Jordan River between the two and a half tribes, who became the owners of it.
12:6c
to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh: The phrase the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh indicates the descendants of Reuben, the descendants of Gad, and the descendants of Makir, who was a son of Manasseh. The people of Reuben and Gad asked to settle east of the Jordan River because it was good land for shepherding herds and flocks. This story is told in Numbers 32:1-5. The descendants of Makir, from the tribe of Manasseh, conquered the land of Gilead and settled there in Numbers 32:39-40).
the half-tribe of Manasseh: Some English versions translate this as East Manasseh, because these people lived on the east side of the Jordan River.
© 2001, 2011, 2020, 2022, 2023 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.