REUBEN (reu'ben), (Heb. reh-oo-bane', behold a son).
The eldest son of Jacob by Leah (Gen. xxix :32; xxxv :23; xlvi :8) .
(1) His Crime. His improper intercourse with Bilhah, his father's concubine wife, was an enor mity too great for Jacob ever to forget, and he spoke of it with abhorrence even on his dying bed (Gen. xxxii :22 ; xlix:4)• Some severe temptation there must surely have been to impel Reuben to an act which, regarded in its social rather than in its moral aspect, would be peculiarly abhorrent to a patriarchal society, and which is specially and repeatedly reprobated in the Law of Moses. The Rabbinical version of the occurrence (as given in Targ. Pseudojon) is very characteristic, and well illustrates the differ ence between the spirit of early and of late Jew ish history. "Reuben went and disordered the couch of Bilhah, his father's concubine, which was placed right opposite the couch of Leah, and it was counted unto him as if he had lain with her. And when Israel heard it it displeased him, and he said, `Lo! an unworthy person shall proceed from me, as Ishmael did from Abraham and Esau from my father.' And the Holy Spirit answered him and said, 'All are righteous, and there is not one un worthy among them.' " (Smith, Bib. Diet.) (2) Befriends Joseph. The part taken by Reuben in the case of Joseph, whom he intended to rescue from the hands of his brothers and re store to his father, and whose supposed death he so sincerely lamented, exhibits his character in an amiable point of view (Gen. XXXViI:2I, 22, 29, 30). We are, however, to remember that he, as the eldest son, was more responsible for the safety of Joseph than were the others ; and it would seem that he eventually acquiesced in the decep tion practiced upon his father.
(3) In Egypt. Subsequently, Reuben offered to make the lives of his own sons responsible for that of Benjamin, when it was necessary to pre vail on Jacob to let him go down to Egypt (Gen. xlii :37, 38). The fine conduct of Judah in after wards undertaking the same responsibility, is in advantageous contrast with this coarse, although well-meant, proposal. For his conduct in the mat ter of Bilhals, Jacob, in his last blessing, deprived him of the pre-eminence and double portion which belonged to his birthright, assigning the former to Judah, and the latter to Joseph (Gen. xlix :3, 4;
comp. ver. 8-so; xlviii :5).
(4) The Tribe. The doom, 'Thou shalt not ex cel,' was exactly fulfilled in the destinies of the tribe descended from Reuben, which makes no figure in the Hebrew history, and never produced any eminent person. At the time of the Exodus, this tribe numbered 46,50o adult males, which ranked it as the seventh in population; but at the later census before entering Canaan, its numbers had decreased to 43,73o, which rendered it the ninth in population (Nuns. I:21 ; xxvi :5). The Reubenites received for their inheritance the fine pasture land (the present Belka) on the east of the Jordan, which to a cattle-breeding people, as they were, must have been very desirable (Num. xxxii:1 sq.; xxxiV :14 ; Josh. i:x4: xv :17). This lay south of the territories of Gad (Deut. 111:12, 16), and north of the river Arnon. Although thus settled earlier than the other tribes, excepting Gad and half Manasseh, who shared with them the territory beyond the Jordan, the Reubenites willingly assisted their brethren in the wars of Canaan (Num. xxxii :27. 29; Josh. iv :12) ; after which they returned to their own lands (Josh. xxii :15) ; and we hear little more of them till the time of Hazael, king of Syria, who ravaged and for a time held possession of their country (2 Kings x :33). The Reubenites, and the other tribes beyond the river, were naturally the first to give way before the invaders from the East, and were the first of all the Israelites sent into exile by Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, B. C.' 773 (1 Chron. v:26).
(5) Character. "Reuben appears to have been of an ardent, impetuous, unbalanced, but not of an ungenerous nature; not crafty and cruel, as were Simeon and Levi, but rather, to use the metaphor of the dying patriarch, boiling up like a vessel of water over the rapid wood fire of the nomad tent, and as quickly subsiding into apathy when the fuel was withdrawn." (Smith, Bib. Diet.)