Shabbat Parashat Ki Tavo - 5785

​Shabbat Parashat Ki Tavo - 5785

Rabbi Hal Miller

 ​ These shall stand to bless the people on Mount Gerizim, when you have crossed

  the Jordan: Shimon and Levi and Yehudah and Yissachar and Yosef and Binyamin.

  [Devarim [27:12]

​Our verse and the one following it place tribes on top of the two mountains, Gerizim and Eival, six tribes on top of each. But the verse 14 comes and seems to conflict, specifying that the Levites are going to be in between the mountains. Where were the Levites supposed to be?

Looking to Yehoshua [8:33] we find the implementation: "And all Israel and its elders and officers and its judges stood on this side and that of the Ark opposite the Kohanim, the Levites, bearers of the Ark of the Covenant of God, proselyte and native alilke, half of them on the slope of Mount Gerizim and half of them on the slope of Mount Eival, as Moshe the servant of God had commanded, to first bless the people of Israel." Unfortunately this does not help us too much as this verse is somewhat unclear itself. When Yehoshua tells us "the Kohanim, the Levites, bearers of the Ark", is he giving us a list of three groups, or is he giving us three names for one group? There are times throughout the Torah where the sons of Aharon are called "the Kohanim, the Levites", which makes sense since they are in fact from the tribe of Levi. But this approach gets mixed up with how we designate the rest of Levi, also by the name Levites. Thus it falls to context for us to understand each mentioning. In Yehoshua, we know that the "bearers of the Ark" are the Kohanim, so it appears that this is in fact intended as three names for one group. This would mean that the Kohanim are in between the two mountains, and the rest of Levi are up on top of Mount Gerizim with five other tribes.

This seems to be the opinion of Onkelos, when he writes on verse [27:9] "Moshe and the levitical priests." Changing Levites from a noun to an adjective solves the problem.

But that point of view is not universal. Saadiah Gaon, for example, lists them separately, "priests and levites". Rashi, in describing the blessings-and-curses activities, states clearly that "the Levites turned their faces toward Mount Gerizim" etc., implying that more than just the Kohanim were in the middle, although earlier he cites the phrase "the Kohanim the Levites and the Ark" which implies as above that here Levite means Kohen. Rav Hirsch begins with a statement, "the Levites were representatives of the people so they had to be between the divided tribes" but then he brings the Gemora in Sotah [37a] which discusses our question.

The Gemora there discusses the Mishnah that appears on 32a: "Six tribes ascended to the top of Mount Gerizim and six tribes ascended to the top of Mount Eival, while the Kohanim, the Levites and the Ark stood below in the middle. The Kohanim surrounded the Ark, the Levites surrounded the Kohanim, and all of Israel was on this side and on that side." On its face, this Mishnah seems to be in direct conflict with our verse. The Gemora gives a few opinions. First is R'Eliezer ben Yaakov, who describes the conflict then says that in the middle with the Ark were the elders of the Kohanim and elders of the Levites, and that the rest of the tribe was up on Mount Gerizim. This is Rav Hirsch's opinion as well. R'Yoshiyah in the Gemora gives a similar opinion but with a twist, that all who were eligible to serve at the Altar were in the middle, and all who were not eligible were on top of the mountain. This splits off those too young or old, and various others. Then Rebbi gives another opinion, which Rav Hirsch also cites, that in fact all the tribes were in the valley between the mountains rather than on top, half to one side of the Ark and half to the other side, and that the word "al" should be read as "near" rather than "on". Thus the Levites were all together when turning for the blessings and curses. A close reading of Yehoshua might support this as the people were on the slopes of the mountains rather than on the tops.

Any of these opinions might be correct. Given that Yehoshua was the implementer, we might incline toward this opinion of Rebbi, but at least we have ways to reconcile the apparent conflict.