Numbers 32:15-17

New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition

¹⁵ If you turn away from following him, he will again abandon them in the wilderness; and you will destroy all this people.’

¹⁶ Then they came up to him and said, ‘We will build sheepfolds here for our flocks, and towns for our little ones, ¹⁷ but we will take up arms as a vanguard^[a] before the Israelites, until we have brought them to their place. Meanwhile our little ones will stay in the fortified towns because of the inhabitants of the land.