Tribe of Reuben

According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Reuben (Hebrew: רְאוּבֵן, Modern: Rəʼūven, Tiberian: Rəʼūḇēn) was one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Unlike the majority of the tribes, the land of Reuben, along with that of Gad and half of Manasseh, was on the eastern side of the Jordan and shared a border with Moab. According to the biblical narrative, the Tribe of Reuben descended from Reuben, the eldest son of the patriarch Jacob. Reuben, along with nine other tribes, is reckoned by the Bible as part of the northern kingdom of Israel, and disappears from history with the demise of that kingdom in c. 723 BC.

The Book of Joshua records that the tribes of Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh were allocated land by Moses on the eastern side of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. The Tribe of Reuben was allocated the territory immediately east of the Dead Sea, reaching from the Arnon river in the south, and as far north as the Dead Sea stretched, with an eastern border vaguely defined by the land dissolving into desert; the territory included the plain of Madaba.

The exact border between Reuben and the Tribe of Gad, generally considered to have been situated to the north of Reuben, is somewhat inconsistently specified in the Bible, with Dibon and Aroer being part of Gad according to Numbers 32:34, but part of Reuben according to Joshua 13:15–16. On that basis, the Jewish Encyclopedia (1906) claimed that the territory of Reuben was an enclave in the territory of Gad.

The territories described in Joshua 13 depict Gad as being to the north of Reuben, while the description in Numbers 32 and 34 has Reubenites living near Heshbon, surrounded by Gadites. Yohanan Aharoni interpreted the description in Numbers as referring to the actual distribution of Reubenites and Gadites around the time of David, and the description in Joshua 13 as reflecting administrative districts set up in the time of Solomon, but not reflecting actual tribal settlement patterns. By 900 BC, some of the territory of Reuben and Gad had been captured by the Moabite kingdom.

According to the Torah, the tribe consisted of descendants of Reuben, the first son of Jacob, and a son of Leah, from whom it took its name. Modern scholarship views the events described in Genesis and Exodus, which contain the early stories about Jacob and his immediate descendants, as non-historical.

The Bible divides the tribe of Reuben into four clans or families, the Hanochites, Palluites, Hezronites, and Carmites, which according to the Bible were descended from Reuben's sons Hanoch, Pallu, Hazron, and Carmi.

Genesis 49 contains the Blessing of Jacob, a series of predictions which the Bible presents as delivered by the patriarch Jacob about the future fate of the tribes descended from his twelve sons. Some textual scholars date it substantially later than these events.^{[page needed]} Reuben is characterised as fickle, "unstable as water", and condemned to no longer "have ... the excellency" due to Reuben's crime of having sexual relations with his father's concubine Bilhah.

The Bible relates that Jacob and his twelve sons, along with their sons, went down into Egypt as a group of about seventy persons, including Reuben and his four sons. According to the account in Exodus, the Israelites stayed in Egypt for 430 years, and their numbers grew to include about 600,000 men, not counting women or children. At this point they left Egypt (see The Exodus) and wandered for forty years in the wilderness between Egypt and the promised land of Canaan.