Paragraph 13:15-23

13:15

This verse begins with a Hebrew word that is often translated as “and.” This word introduces the next event in the story. Many English versions do not translate this word.

This is what Moses had given to the clans of the tribe of Reuben: The Hebrew text is more literally “Moses gave to the tribe of the sons of Reuben.” The phrase This is what is not in the Hebrew text. The Berean Standard Bible has supplied this phrase to make clear what Moses gave to the tribe of Reuben. Moses assigned land to the tribe of Reuben in Numbers 32.

to the clans: The phrase to the clans indicates that each clan or group of families within the tribe of Reuben received their own portion of land. See how you translated the words “clan” and “family” in Joshua 7:14.

Here are some other ways to translate this verse:

Moses had given each family group from the tribe of Reuben some land. (New Century Version)
-or-
Moses had assigned the following area to the clans of the tribe of Reuben. (New Living Translation (2004))

the tribe of Reuben: The phrase the tribe of Reuben indicates the people who were descended from Reuben, one of the sons of Jacob.

© 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.