Tafsiran Bilangan 32:22: Tze'enah Ure'enah, Or HaChaim, Rav Hirsch & Avi Ezer

“You should be clean before the Lord and Israel” [32:22]. You should be clean before God and Israel. From here we learn that each person should always make themselves clean before God and before people. Our sages said that there was a family called the house of Garmi, who made the showbread in the Temple. They did not want that fine flour bread be made in their houses so that people should not suspect them that they took fine flour from the Temple. Even though they were wealthy people and could afford to eat fine flour bread, they only ate whole wheat bread. There was a family called the house of Abtinas. They made the incense for the Temple. It had the same odor as other incense. They did not want that any bride from their family should be perfumed. Even though it is the custom that every bride is perfumed; in their family no bride was perfumed with incense so that nobody should suspect that they took the perfume from the incense.¹⁷B. Yoma, 38a.

ונכבשה הארץ, "and the land will be conquered, etc." Why did these words have to be written after we heard at the end of the last verse that G'd will drive out His enemies before Him? Furthermore, why did Moses have to mention once more: "and after that you will return?" We already understood from the context that after the other tribes had been settled the tribes of Reuven and Gad would return to their families on the East Bank. Actually, Moses wanted to tell the two tribes that as a result of their keeping their bargain a number of promises would be fulfilled. 1) The land would be subdued; 2) every one of them would return home whole in body and in spirit. Although we have been told in Baba Batra 121 that Yair the son of Menashe was killed in the fighting against the town of Ai, he belonged to the other half of the tribe of Menashe who had chosen the Left Bank as their rightful heritage. He was not amongst the people whom Moses addressed in our paragraph.

V. 22. והייתם נקיים מד׳ ומישראל (vergl. Bereschit 24, 41). והיית נקי מאלתי, אז תנקה מאלתי der mir geleistete Eid wird dir nichts mehr anhaben können, du wirst von ihm aus keine Verpflichtung mehr haben, du hast ihm genügt. So auch hier: Gott und Israel werden keine Forderung weiter an euch haben.