Shabbos Parashas Bamidbar - 5779

Shabbos Parashas Bamidbar - 5779

Rabbi Hal Miller

The children of Israel shall encamp, each man by his division according to the

emblems of their fathers' household, at a distance surrounding the Tent of Meeting

shall they encamp. [Bamidbar 2:2]

Our verse is difficult to translate to English, and is understood in many different ways by

the commentators, so looking carefully at the words may provide some clarity. In the literal

Hebrew, it reads something like, each man upon his degel, with otot, like the house of

their fathers, the children of Israel will encamp across, around the Tent of Meeting they

will encamp. Pretty obviously, there are a couple of differences from the literal to the

common translations, such as the one above. Our question is, what are these degalim, and

what are the otot?

The word 'degel' is usually translated as a flag or a banner. Otot is usually translated as

signs. Radak interprets our verse literally with these translations. Given this, our verse

means that the people camped by their own flags, but somehow related to a sign of their

ancestral tribe. Thus, the Torah has supplied a parking map for people to avoid getting lost.

Rashi says that a degel is a military formation, a division consisting of three tribes,

combined under one superior flag, the ot. The Torah does explain to us which tribes

were combined with which others as it lays out the order of encampment and march, so

this also makes sense.

Onkelos looks at the grammatical construct. Degel, or more accurately diglo (his degel)

is singular, but otot is plural. For each tribe, there were many flags, otot, but each had

only one emblem on it, the same one, so a man would camp only under one of the

banners with his tribe's emblem.

Malbim comes closest to the translation above. He says that each division of three tribes

had one banner, degel, with an emblem on it for that division, and each of the tribes

in the division had multiple flags, otot with tribe-unique colors of "their fathers' houses".

But what is all this telling us? Why do we need to know the layout of the camp?

Right after this, the Torah commands the second census in 20 days. Many

attribute our verse to this preparation for war, as the nation was about to cross

into the land and begin the war of conquest. But our verse, as Rav Chaim Kanievsky

noted, separates the nation into subcamps, probably the least likely thing a military

commander would do. He says that with the Sanctuary in the middle, putting

everyone effectively equal distance from it (other than Levi) allowed for the

separation into tribal camps without jealousy.

Rav Soloveitchik sees the separation in the same way that plants are separated in the

world of botany, rather than grafted together. Each has its own role to play in Creation.

So too, we can see each tribe, and even moreso each individual with his own role to

play in society. Without dividing people into sections, everyone thinks he must play a

great role himself in the social order. When the nation is split up, each group has a

teamwork role to play, each has a specialty, and the whole becomes greater than the

sum of the parts. Only by this division can Israel as a nation become one.