Shabbat Parashat Bamidbar - 5785
- halamiller
- May 28
- 4 min read
Shabbat Parashat Bamidbar - 5785
Rabbi Hal Miller
These are the names of the men who shall stand with you. For Reuven, Elizur ben Shedeur [Bamidbar 1:5]
Our verse begins one of two listings of tribes in our parsha. Not only is the order a bit different between them, but they are different from other locations in the Torah as well. What is the meaning of the orders of these two lists?
The first list has to do with assigning the tribal leaders who are to assist Moshe with the census, and the second list is the census count itself. The one difference between them is the placement of the tribe of Gad. When assigning a tribal assistant, Gad comes second to last, but when the count occurs, Gad is third overall.
In the first list, tribal assistants to Moshe, tribes are grouped by mother in order of their birth to that mother, excluding Levi but including Ephraim and Menashe for Yosef. The second list is also by mother with the exception of Gad being moved from Zilpah's grouping to the middle of Leah's. What is the reason for moving Gad?
Rav Hirsch gives a very short description of each of the tribes based on the son of Yaakov for which that tribe was named. For Gad he writes "Gad is the avenger of unjustified attack". One might derive an answer for our question from this. Reuven, the firstborn, was a large and strong tribe. Together with Gad and half of Menashe, they took inheritance in the north across the Jordan. Menashe was also known for his service to others, in particular serving his father Yosef while in Egypt. These two and a half tribes became the northern defensive border for the rest of the nation. One might think that Reuven, Gad and Menashe should have been grouped together in the list for inheritance, but they are split there. But Rav Hirsch gives us another clue in verse 1:20, "The order of the tribes in which they came to be counted is exactly in accordance with their grouping in the camp." He ties the order of counting the census with the order of the upcoming march through the desert.
While we can understand our first list, assignments in grouping by mothers, why is the order of march different? We might think that the latter was set up to balance the numbers between the four divisions, but those numbers are not balanced in any event, and they could have been reordered to get closer to such a number if this was the driving factor.
There is a way to read the second list as also grouped by mothers in that it begins with five of the six sons of Leah, excluding Levi, then adds Gad who was the eldest son of Zilpah, Leah's handmaid. As Ramban notes, the Reuven division of three tribes and the Yehudah division of three thus were made up of Leah's sons, with this one modification. While this explains putting Gad near the front of the list, it does not explain the out-of-birth-order positioning ahead of Yehudah, nor the fact that Asher remains near the bottom, being Zilpah's other son.
Ramban cites a Midrash about the divisional groupings, saying that Reuven represents repentance, Gad represents might, and Shimeon between them represents atonement. Since repentance is key to atonement and since might is required to fight the evil inclination, this division alludes to atonement. Ramban cites that Yehudah represents royalty, Yissachar represents Torah scholarship and Zevulun represents wealth, which together make up a division alluding to the life of the nation. For the Dan division, Dan represents the darkening of the world because of the idol that Yeravam made, Asher represents illumination of the darkness and Naftali represents blessing, so this division alludes to the impact of Israel on the world. Ephraim, Menashe and Binyamin, aside from being all from Rachel, allude to strength and security, both physical for the land and spiritual for overpowering the evil inclination. Ramban's understanding of this Midrash is a viable answer to our question of why Gad is moved in the list of actually performing the census.
We could still ask why the tribes couldn't have been counted in the assignments list order and then deployed to camp locations for the march. The answer to this comes in verse 1:42. Rav Hirsch (and others) explain that for all the tribes up to Naftali, the verse says l'bnei ploni, to the sons of whichever tribe, but for Naftali the verse does not have that lamed prefix. He says that as each tribe was counted, they moved away to get into march position, so at the end only Naftali stood before Moshe and the counting team. Malbim gives a different answer. Since we knew already the sum total of all tribes from the prior census of half a year earlier, and since there had been no deaths or new men turning 20 years old or becoming too old, by the time we reach Naftali, a simple subtraction of the new count from the old total census tells us how many are in Naftali now. Netziv in the name of the Arizal gives a similar answer to the Malbim.
Comments