Why will you discourage the heart of the people of Israel from going over into the land which the LORD has given them?: Here Moses uses another rhetorical question to continue his rebuke of the Gadites and Reubenites. He is concerned that with their request they will discourage the other tribes from pursuing the military occupation of the land of Canaan (so Knierim and Coats, page 300). The Hebrew verb for discourage can be understood to mean “turn round” and the word for heart can also mean “mind” or “will,” so New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh renders this question as “Why will you turn the minds of the Israelites from crossing into the land that the LORD has given them?” and Levine has “Why would you turn the will of the Israelites against crossing over into the land which YHWH has granted them?” Some languages may have an idiomatic equivalent, for example, “Why do you want to cause the Israelites to throw away their heart from crossing over to the land that the LORD has given them?” Revised English Bible makes it clear that this question is a rebuke by saying “How dare you discourage the Israelites from crossing over to the land which the LORD has given them?” (similarly Good News Translation), and so does New Living Translation with “Why do you want to discourage the rest of the people of Israel from going across to the land the LORD has given them?” Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch changes the question into a strong statement of accusation: “If you stay here, you take away from the Israelites all courage to cross the Jordan into the land that the LORD wants to give them.” Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch adds the implied idea of the Jordan River here (so also Good News Translation). For the land which the LORD has given them, see 20.12.

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 .