But Moses said to the sons of Gad and to the sons of Reuben: Moses does not agree to the request of the Gadites and Reubenites, but rebukes them for making it. He rejects their request as a breach of Israel’s unity (so Ashley, page 608). This quote frame introduces his rebuke, which extends through verse 15. But renders well the Hebrew waw conjunction here to mark Moses’ negative response. Since there is a change in speakers, it may also be helpful to insert a paragraph break (so Revised Standard Version, Good News Translation).

Shall your brethren go to the war while you sit here?: This question is rhetorical. Moses is not asking for information but is expressing surprise and strong disapproval. In the Hebrew text the disapproval is reinforced by the presence of an independent pronoun for you. The fighting in the region east of the Jordan River (against the Amorites, Moabites, and Midianites) had already been concluded successfully. So any tribes remaining there could sit, that is, “dwell” (another sense of the Hebrew verb here), there in relative safety. Chewa adds the pragmatic implication within this verb by saying “merely sit/dwell.” There could also be an element of sarcasm in Moses’ question. He also must have been especially frustrated by this appeal to stay east of the Jordan, when he himself would have given anything to have crossed that river (so Brown, page 278). Traduction œcuménique de la Bible expresses this rhetorical question well by saying “What! Your brothers will go out to battle and you, you would stay here?”

Cole (page 509) notes a number of verbal parallels between Moses’ speech of verses 6-15 and the words and events recorded in Num 11–14.

Quoted with permission from de Regt, Lénart J. and Wendland, Ernst R. A Handbook on Numbers. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .