Bible Strands
Joshua 12:6
Moses, the servant of the LORD, and the Israelites had struck them down and given their land as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The narrator records past military and territorial events immediately after listing the domains of eastern kings, preparing to shift focus to Joshua’s western campaigns.
The words — עֶֽבֶד (e.ved) = servant of, paired with הִכּוּ (hi.Ku) = they defeated. The text explicitly identifies Moses as the servant of Yahweh who carried out the decisive strike, while the verb denotes the completed act of conquest.
The thread — The allocation of this eastern territory to Reuben, Gad, and half-Manasseh appears in Numbers 32:33, where Moses formally grants the land, and Numbers 21:24, which records Israel taking possession of it.
Why it lands — It requires the reader to distinguish Moses’ completed eastern conquest from Joshua’s subsequent western campaign, grounding the tribal inheritances in verified historical action rather than later tradition.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Them did Moses the servant of the Lord and the children of Israel smite: and Moses the servant of the Lord gave it for a possession unto the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh.
Cross-references
- Numbers 32:33 So Moses gave to the Gadites, to the Reubenites, and to the half-tribe of Manasseh son of Joseph the kingdom of Sihon king of the Amorites and the kingdom of Og king of Bashan—the land including its cities and the territory surrounding them.
- Numbers 21:24 And Israel put him to the sword and took possession of his land, from the Arnon to the Jabbok—but only up to the border of the Ammonites, because it was fortified.
- Numbers 32:29 And Moses said to them, “If the Gadites and Reubenites cross the Jordan with you, with every man armed for battle before the LORD, and the land is subdued before you, then you are to give them the land of Gilead as a possession.
- Deuteronomy 3:11 (For only Og king of Bashan had remained of the remnant of the Rephaim. His bed of iron, nine cubits long and four cubits wide, is still in Rabbah of the Ammonites.)
- Luke 22:29 And I bestow on you a kingdom, just as My Father has bestowed one on Me,
- Joshua 13:8 The other half of Manasseh, along with the Reubenites and Gadites, had received the inheritance Moses had given them beyond the Jordan to the east, just as Moses the servant of the LORD had assigned to them: