We have come,” they continued, “in order to sojourn in this land, for there is no pasture for your servants’ flocks, because the famine has been severe in the land of Canaan. So now please let your servants settle in the region of Goshen.”
They who have just been listed by name set out during the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah, and attacked their tents and also the Meunites who were there. They put them under the ban that is still in force to this day and dwelt in their place because they found pasture there for their flocks.
For thus says the Lord concerning the house of the king of Judah: Though you be to me like Gilead, like the peak of Lebanon, I swear I shall turn you into a waste, with cities uninhabited.
More than for Jazer I weep for you, vine of Sibmah. Your tendrils trailed down to the sea, as far as Jazer they stretched. Upon your summer harvest and your vintage, the destroyer has fallen.
Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock of your heritage, That lives apart in a woodland, in the midst of an orchard. Let them feed in Bashan and Gilead, as in the days of old;
He saw that the best should be his, for there the commander’s portion was assigned; he came at the head of the people. He carried out the justice of the Lord and his ordinances for Israel.
So the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh left the other Israelites at Shiloh in the land of Canaan and returned to the land of Gilead, their own land, which they had received according to the Lord’s command through Moses. The Altar Beside the Jordan.