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Reuben -
Twelve Tribes of Israel
 The Tribe of Reuben
(רְאוּבֵן, Standard Hebrew) is one of the Hebrew tribes,
founded by Reuben son of Jacob.
At the Exodus numbered 46,500 male adults, from twenty
years old and upwards (Num. 1:20, 21), and at the close
of the wilderness wanderings they numbered only 43,730
(26:7). This tribe united with that of Gad in asking
permission to settle in the "land of Gilead," "on the
other side of Jordan"
(32:1-5). The lot assigned to Reuben was the smallest of
the lots given to the trans-Jordanic tribes. It extended
from the Arnon, in the south along the coast of the Dead
Sea to its northern end, where the Jordan flows into it
(Josh. 13:15-21, 23). It thus embraced the original
kingdom of Sihon. Reuben is "to the eastern tribes what
the Tribe of Simeon is to the western. 'Unstable as
water,' he vanishes away into a mere Arabian tribe. 'His
men are few;' it is all he can do 'to live and not die.'
We hear of nothing beyond the multiplication of their
cattle in the land of Gilead, their spoils of 'camels
fifty thousand, and of asses two thousand' (1 Chr. 5:9,
10, 20, 21). In the great struggles of the nation he
never took part. The complaint against him in the song
of Deborah is the summary of his whole history. 'By the
streams of Reuben,' i.e., by the fresh streams which
descend from the eastern hills into the Jordan and the
Dead Sea, on whose banks the Bedouin chiefs met then as
now to debate, in the 'streams' of Reuben great were the
'desires'", i.e., resolutions which were never carried
out, the people idly resting among their flocks as if it
were a time of peace (Judg. 5:15, 16). Stanley's Sinai
and Palestine.
All the three tribes on the east of Jordan at length
fell into complete apostasy, and the time of retribution
came. God "stirred up the spirit of Pul, king of
Assyria, and the spirit of Tiglath-Pileser III, king of
Assyria," to carry them away, the first of the tribes,
into captivity (1 Chr. 5:25, 26). |
