For the Lord has made the Jordan a border between us and you, you sons of Reuben and sons of Gad; you have no portion in the Lord." So your sons may make our sons stop fearing the Lord.'My first thought when I read this was skepticism. It seems absurd that suddenly a nation would decide that some of their people are not part of the nation, just because of a physical boundary like a river. After all, didn't the entire nation start out east of the Jordan, and have to come west from there? Why would that river which figured so prominently in their taking the land be a factor in deciding who was the Lord's people?
But then the rest of my mind caught up, and I realized how probable this would become. The people were known to be fractious. Rather than looking at them as a large family, it's more accurate to think of a clan. These people tended to first look out or their immediate families, and the tribe would likely take precedence over the rest of the nation. If they were given the proper motivation, either out of zeal or ambition, a smooth-talking leader could easily convince a large part of the nation that the rest had separated from them, not the other way around. Or, maybe the eastern tribes would actually forget their past, and fall away of their own accord. Either way, a division based on a major river is not as hard to comprehend as I first thought, and the leaders of the eastern tribes should be given credit for considering the possibility.
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