The difficulties determining the exact boundaries of areas apportioned to the two and a half tribes in the Transjordan stem primarily from textual discrepancies. Take, for instance, the description of Reuben’s naĥalah in Numbers 32:33, 37–38:
So Moses assigned to them – to Gad, Reuben, and 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 with its various cities and the territories of their surrounding towns.…Reuben rebuilt Heshbon, Elealeh, Kiriathaim, Nebo, and Baal-meon – some names being changed1Rashi suggested that Nebo and Baal-meon were originally named in honor of Amorite gods, hence Reuben saw fit to change to more appropriate names. What they chose instead, we do not know. – and Sibmah; they gave names to the towns that they rebuilt.
The two key Amorite cities, Heshbon and Jazer, were allocated respectively to Reuben and Gad. The third principle city in this region to dominate the King’s Highway was Rabbath-bene-ammon; intractable, it remained the capital of the Kingdom of Ammon.
The layout of the cities as they were divided in Numbers presented Reuben as almost cushioned within Gad’s territory, which was arranged in a sort of bow around the cities given to Reuben. Gad formed a northern, southern, and western perimeter around Reuben, whose cities sat toward the interior of the Mishor. Perhaps this division of cities was by design, drawing upon the innate character of Gad as the natural warriors who successfully defended the Israelites dwelling in the region against nations invading from the north (Ammonites), south (Moabites), and west (Canaanites). Further, textual evidence indicates that the Gadite cities were fortified against the enemy,2Numbers 32:36. זאב (ז׳אבו) ארליך, מזרח הירדן ממבט יהודי (דפוס מוריה, תשנ״ו), 157. a detail that remains unclear with regard to Reuben’s cities. Concerning potential uprisings from the indigenous Midianite population of the Mishor itself, three early episodes against that people quashed any threat of imminent attack.3The Balaam episode, where the dreams of the Midianites and Moabites destroying Israel were dashed when the prophet blessed the Children of Israel instead of cursing them (Numbers 22–24), the actions of Phineas and God’s ensuing charge for Israel to harass them (Numbers 25:6–18), and God’s vengeance toward the Midianites that resulted in their resounding defeat (Numbers 31:1–20). In a later period, the Midianites again attacked the Israelites, but the division of cities in Numbers 32 did not reflect that situation.
To these cities of Reuben were added another four, delineated in I Chronicles 6:63–64, that were designated as cities of Levi located in Naĥalat Reuven. These four cities, like all of those granted to Levi, were cities of refuge. They lay further inland on the Mishor, forming an eastern boundary of Reuben’s territory.
A competing version of the portion divisions is found in Joshua 13:15–23. In that narrative, Gad sat squarely to the north of Reuben, and Reuben’s naĥalah included such southern cities as Dibon and Aroer, which were assigned to Gad in the Numbers 32 version. Also, the southern cities Ataroth and Atroth-shophan, both inhabited by Gad in Numbers 32, were mentioned nowhere in the Joshua 13 list, though implicitly they shared the same fate as Dibon and Aroer, since they were present in the general description of Reuben’s naĥalah:
Their [Reuben’s] border was from Aroer that is on the edge of the River Arnon and the city that is in the middle of the river, and all the span of the Mishor until Medeba; Heshbon and all of its cities that are in the plain – Dibon and Bamoth-baal and Beth-baal-meon.…
Joshua 13:16–17
Thus, in the Book of Joshua, Reuben was allotted a much larger portion, spanning the entire Mishor: from the Arnon riverbed in the south up to Nebo and Heshbon in the north (both of which sat due east of the Plains of Moab), bordered on the west by the Dead Sea and on the east by the vast desert. The land division in Numbers had Gad on the volatile eastern and southern borders, while the Joshua version left Gad to contend only with Ammon on its eastern flank. The Joshua version saddled Reuben with sole defense of their southern border against the Moabites agitating just south of the Arnon.
To compound the difficulties presented by the competing narratives, an extra-biblical source of tremendous importance to the region offers yet another variation. The Mesha Stele, discovered in 1868 in Dibon, a city allotted to Gad in Numbers 32 and to Reuben in Joshua 13, is definitively dated to the ninth century Bce. The stele was a victory monument commissioned by Mesha, the king of Moab, to consecrate his victory over an Israelite king from the House of Omri. Aside from its relative importance in providing an extra-biblical corollary to II Kings 3, the Mesha Stele offers another glimpse into territorial division in the Transjordan. It boasts, for instance, of having captured the city of Ataroth away from Israel:
The men of Gad had dwelt in Ataroth from of old; and the king of Israel built Ataroth for him. But I fought against the city and took it.
Mesha Stele, lines 10–11
Ataroth, slightly north of the Arnon, was allotted to Gad in Numbers 32, and seems to have been absorbed into Naĥalat Reuven in Joshua 13. By 840 Bce, though, the Moabites described the city as having a long history of belonging to Gad: Mesha was firmly entrenched in Dibon, indicating that the city had been Moabite for some time.
In sum, the listing that ostensibly reflects the scenario during the Israelite conquest of the late Bronze period (thirteenth century BCE) has Gad’s territory skirting Reuben’s; some years later, the account of their naĥalot limits Gad to the northern belt of Reuben. Finally, the Moabite Stele, attesting to the reality of the ninth century BCE, returns to Gad the southern cities that were granted to them in Numbers 32 but were seemingly allocated to Reuben in Joshua 13. Can these accounts be reconciled?
One approach is to treat these narrratives as reflective of various shifts in history. These two tribes were intimately linked in their naĥalot, and assignment of territory or dominance of cities may have fluctuated over time. Alternatively, and more likely, the account in Joshua that mentions Dibon and Aroer within the naĥalah of Reuben, and intimates that Ataroth and Atrothshophan were also in Reuben’s naĥalah, is imprecise regarding the administration of these cities. While Reuben’s naĥalah might have broadly been described as the stretch from the Heshbon River (Wadi Hisban) to the Arnon, and while Gad’s portion was depicted as the stretch from the Jabbok to the Heshbon River, as per Joshua 13, these descriptions make no reference to those four southern cities as being Gadite. Perhaps this is because they were located in Reuben’s naĥalah. Gad, as the larger and more preeminent of the two tribes, needed more cities. From the outset, the Gadites built in Reuben’s southern belt and served not as a threat to the Reubenites, but as a buffer against the Moabites. The reference in the Mesha Stele to Gad’s long history in Ataroth is a solid indicator that the competing biblical texts should be reconciled as presenting complementary perceptions: Numbers is particular and city-oriented; Joshua is more general and region-oriented.