Once they explain that they have every intention of crossing the Jordan (without women, children and cattle) and fighting alongside the rest of the tribes only to return once Canaan has been conquered, Moses replies more positively with a response that becomes the framework for all conditional contracts in Jewish law.
According to the Mishnah (Kiddushin 3:4) “Any conditional contract that is not like that of the Gadites and the Reubenites isn’t a contract!”
The Shulchan Aruch spells out the four critical features of this Gadite/Reubenite contract: (1) both an “if you do” and an “if you don’t”, (2) the “if you do” before the “if you don’t”, (3) each “if” before its “then”, and (4) the “if” is achievable (Even Ha’ezer 38:2). Lacking any one of these features makes a contract void.
It’s an interesting model, and formal Jewish contracts still follow this pattern, though I’m not sure how well it works when you’re trying to reason with a six-year-old. And yet perhaps it does make some sense after all, that we should try: (1) to reinforce an “if you do” with a “but if you don’t”, (2) to put the positive, active form before the more abstract “if you don’t”, (3) to speak in logical order – perhaps “if you drop it, it will break” is simpler than “it will break if you drop it”, and (4) never, in frustration, to set an impossible condition.
In summary: if this is the protasis, then this is the apodosis.
Image: The tribes of Reuben and Gad ask to settle on the east of the Jordan (from the Bible and Its Story, 1908/Wikimedia Commons)
