ARMED, equipped for war — from a root meaning to draw out or off (the same root that gives the sandal-removal ceremony of Deuteronomy 25:9-10, not yet on these pages). ⭐ Numbers 32 is where the word does its heaviest work in the whole Torah: it and the verb built on the same root recur seven times in one chapter (vv17, 20, 21, 27, 29, 30, 32), because the entire deal Moses strikes with Reuben and Gad turns on it — not whether they settle east of the Jordan (that was decided at v5), but whether every fighting man among them is chalutz, drawn out and ready, when Israel crosses. ⚠ The chapter pairs it relentlessly with the verb avar, ‘to cross over’, so the two words together — armed, and crossing — become almost a single compound condition repeated at every turn of the negotiation. This translation follows NWT and ASV’s ‘armed’ rather than KJV’s older ‘armed men’, since the Hebrew is an adjective, not yet a noun for the men themselves. → first discussed at Num 32:17