Shabbat Parashat Maatot-Maasei - 5786

Shabbat Parashat Maatot-Maasei - 5786

Rabbi Hal Miller

  So Moshe gave to them, to the children of Gad and to the children of Reuven and to

  part of the tribe of Menashe son of Yosef, the kingdom of Sichon king of the Amorite

  and the kingdom of Og king of the Bashan, the land with its cities in the boundaries

  and the cities of the surrounding land. [Bamidbar 32:33]

The tribes of Reuven and Gad asked Moshe to allot to them the lands of Sichon and Og, whom the nation under Moshe had just conquered. Moshe launched into a tirade against the two tribes, eventually negotiating with them to a satisfactory conclusion. Why did the half tribe of Menashe get included as one of those negotiated terms, and why did Menashe suffer criticism for being across the Jordan if Moshe assigned it to them rather than their asking for it as did Reuven and Gad?

Ibn Ezra finds that a portion of the tribe of Menashe did in fact go to Moshe with Reuven and Gad to ask for their allocation to be in the lands of Sichon and Og, but that since it was only a part of the tribe, they were not listed in the verse. Although this would give us a simple answer to the question of why Menashe was picked and then criticized, most of the commentators disagree with Ibn Ezra.

There are a few commonly-stated answers to the question of why a portion of the remaining ten tribes was assigned to join Reuven and Gad. Ramban says that the amount of acreage in that area was so great that those two tribes would have ended up with far more land than any other tribe would have obtained. Adding a part of Menashe to the mix helped equalize across the twelve tribes. A second common reason given, for example by Rav Soloveitchik, is that by splitting a tribe across the Jordan, knowing that the members of that tribe would do their best to stay in touch with each other across the river, Moshe created a communications channel to keep all twelve tribes unified as a single nation. These answers are of interest but they do not explain why Menashe was chosen. One might have thought it should have been a selection by lottery.

Chizkuni says that the division of Menashe was in fact a punishment for the descendants of Yosef's son, as the original Menashe was the one who placed the silver cup into Binyamin's sack, causing much grief among the tribes at the time. But this is problematic for two reasons, one that the original Menashe was no longer around so this punishment would have been upon the sons for a sin of the father. The second reason is that not only did most of the tribe here take the land they were already due to take on the western side, but given that some of their family members were no longer in the mix they would have received larger assignments than they would have otherwise, so it was not much of a punishment for them.

Ramban gives a reason for the selection, that Moshe called for volunteers and two of the eight families of Menashe stepped forward. Ramban and others explain that the word chetzi here does not mean half but part, and he brings various examples. Ramban also gives a reason why Menashe was criticized at various later points. He says Moshe believed that these two families were impacted by the reports of the spies and therefore afraid the mission into Canaan would fail, thus they volunteered to take their inheritance as they did. Moshe then would have been angry that they had lost faith in God, therefore splitting the tribe was in fact a punishment for those who fell into that trap. To counter this, Moshe demanded that all two-and-a-half tribes would lead the fight first.  It may also be that Moshe did not want anyone to step forward so he could deny Reuven and Gad permission to stay behind. It may be that Moshe felt that the volunteering to give up inheritance in the land was a terrible thing, justifying criticism for all who chose to stay out. Rav Soloveitchik goes through a long series of explanations from the Gemara as to why the portion of land given to this part of Menashe was in fact part of the original land of Israel, even though the areas taken by Reuven and Gad were not, if so, Moshe should not have been criticing Menashe.

Moshe appears to have been trying to make the best of a not-particularly-good situation. Sforno comments that Moshe was trying to avoid confrontation within the nation. Given the solution he came to, he seems to have succeeded.