Shabbat Parashat Bamidbar - 5786

Shabbat Parashat Bamidbar - 5786

Rabbi Hal Miller

  You shall give the Levites to Aharon and his sons, given given are they to him from the

  children of Israel. [Bamidbar 3:9]

We can ask a number of questions on our short verse. First, why is the word given repeated? Second, at the beginning of the verse God tells Moshe to give the Levites to Aharon, which implies that it is Moshe doing the giving, but the end of the verse says that they are given from the people. Third, where do the people obtain the authority to give the Levites to Aharon as if they owned the tribe?

To the first question about the repeated word given, Malbim asks a further question, that a giving requires both gift and recipient to exist at the time, and here the Levites are being obligated, both those present and those to be born in future generations, thus how could the latter be bound? He says the first word applies to the ones alive at the time, and the second word applies to all future generations.

Rashbam provides a simple answer to our first question, "the repetition of the word is similar to 'be sure to give' in Bamidbar 27:7" which he indicates means that the Levites were assigned forever for this role, thus the Kohanim would always supervise the Levites. But we could look at the word repetition in a couple other ways as well. If we apply the first given to the first half of our verse, it means Moshe is to give, and then the second word applies to the last half of the verse meaning the people will give, thus two separate givings. Or in an analogous way, we can understand the second to be the people giving and the first to be God giving, which seems to be implied anyway.

This segues into the second and third questions in that it appears God is handing off the Levites to Moshe to be given to Aharon, followed by the people also giving them to Aharon. Rashi addresses this in his comment to verse 3:12 "and behold I have taken", when he says "From where did I acquire them as Mine? From among the children of Israel". Of course, God owns everything and everyone and is entitled to assign things or people as He wishes, but this seems something more specific. The rest of 3:12 and 3:45 tell us that God acquired the tribe of Levi to replace the firstborn of the nation, thus He took them from the rest of the people. Malbim explains that this is due to the golden calf incident when Levi refused to be involved but stood with Moshe. Sforno sees this division that God gave in the first part and the people are making a deal in the second part, that they will give the Levites to the Kohanim to perform services that all the firstborn would have been obligated to perform, and they would in the future provide the ma'aser in payment for that. This deal would also cover the third question, the authority that the people would have for this giving.