Shabbat Parashat Shoftim - 5785

Shabbat Parashat Shoftim - 5785

Rabbi Hal Miller

  When you observe this entire commandment to perform it, which I command you

  today, to love Hashem your God, and to walk in His ways all the years, then you

  shall add three more cities to these three. [Devarim 19:9]

The Torah tells us that God commanded Moshe to set aside cities of refuge, and Yehoshua would set aside more later. We all think that Moshe set aside six and Yehoshua designated the rest (Yehoshua [20:1]). But there is some confusion in our parsha as to that count. In Bamidbar [35:14] the verse states "three cities shall you designate on the other side of the Jordan, and three cities shall you designate in the land of Canaan, they shall be cities of refuge." But in the verse prior to ours (Devarim 19:8) we see "when God will broaden your boundary as He swore to your forefathers and He will give you the entire land that He spoke to your forefathers to give" then our verse tells us that three more cities are to be added. How many did Moshe designate, and what are these last three about?

One way to read this is to note that the speaker in our verse is Moshe, telling the people about something they should do in the future when they are in the land. Thus Moshe is speaking about designating six cities, three on each side of the Jordan. He already set aside three ("these"), and the people are to set aside the other three immediately upon the crossing. Our verse would then be about the second set of three out of a total of six.

But Rashi does not read the situation that way. First he explains the phrase [19:8], "When Hashem will broaden your boundary as He swore to your forefathers", as referring back to Bereishit [15:19]. This means that at the point in time of Moshe's present dissertation, the people were only to conquer seven of the ten Canaanite nations, and that at some point in the future, which has not yet occurred even today, the rest of the land promised to Avraham will fall to Israel. Thus Rashi's comment here, "Then you shall add three more. There you have nine, three that are on the other side of the Jordan, and three that are in the land of Canaan, and three for the future." In this reading, Moshe is designating six now, and mentions three more to the east, which are in addition to the 42 in Canaan that Yehoshua will designate but are not addressed in these verses. Another way some commentators read Rashi is that Moshe is speaking of six total cities, not nine, and he is merely instructing the people regarding timing, that they should designate the second set of three added to the first set that Moshe himself already designated, but only after they enter the land and observe the Torah, however this is difficult to see in Rashi's words.

The approach of Ramban seems to be that cities 4, 5 and 6 should only be implemented once the nation gets across the river, as noted above. He asks why our verse would make an additional three cities dependent on the people observing the laws. The Torah already obligated the people to observe the laws, and it already stated that they should set aside a total of six cities, so why is another commandment needed for that?. Our verse adds "When you observe this entire commandment to perform it", and the prior verse adds "When Hashem will broaden your boundary", thus the three mentioned here are in addition to whatever they set aside based on the six commanded in Bamidbar. Ramban, for different reasons, ends up agreeing with Rashi that there are nine, three that Moshe designated already, three for Yehoshua to designate once they cross the river, and three more at some unspecified date in the then-distant future. The additional 42 cities for Yehoshua are not mentioned in this portion at all.