Moses sent them the thousand from each tribe to the

army,

them along with Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest

to the army,

with the sacred utensils and the trumpets for sounding

in his possession.

(Bamidbar

31:6)

If you go to war in your land against an adversary

that oppresses you,

you shall blow a teruah with the trumpets

and be remembered before the Lord your God,

and thus be saved from your enemies.

(Bamidbar

10:9)

Regarding the verse you shall blow a teruah with the trumpets

and be remembered, it is not to be

understood literally, as if – God forbid – there could be forgetfulness at the

Throne Of Glory and the teruah would recall that which was forgotten. Rather,

it is like all expressions applied to the blessed Lord that speak of affect,

such as ire and anger, annoyance, mercy, and forgiveness. These states come

upon Him in a metaphorical sense and in reaction to human behavior and disposition.

If they [humans] act wickedly and receive a punishment or He abandons them to

chance and nature, people will say He was angry and dismayed with them and then

forgot them, for that is how they speak of it if one human treated another in

that way. And if they improve their deeds and return to Him and He again looks

after them and saves them, they would say that He remembered them and had mercy

on them and forgave them. All of this is said regarding actions which He

performed upon the receivers, and not because He was affected and forgot and

became angry and changed His mind and had mercy and remembered and forgave. That

is what they meant by saying "Could trumpets remind [Him]? But He does not

forget!" Rather, if they were capable of trumpeting and did not, and

because of that they were not saved, it seems to us as if they had not been

brought to the Omnipresent's attention, and by trumpeting and repenting, it seems

to us that He was reminded of them. However, in truth He did not forget and He

had no forgetfulness; and since He did not forget, neither did He remember, for

there can only be remembering after forgetting. When we talk about His

remembering, it refers to His saving them again, since it seems to us as if He

forgot and again remembered. That is why they said, "They are only

remembered for salvations" – for it is because of acts of salvation that

we feel He has again remembered them.

(Malbim Bamidbar 10:9)

The Debate Between

Moses and the Tribes of Reuben and Gad

Ronit and Avi Porten

The story of how the tribes Reuben, Gad, and

half of Manasseh settled in Transjordan, across from Jericho, lends the reader

insights about the kind of behavior expected from the Israelites and how such

behavior can affect the nation's unity and future.

Parashat Matot presents us with a dialogue

between the tribes of Reuben and Gad on the one hand, and Moses on the other,

just on the eve of the Israelites' entry into the Promised Land. The tribal

representatives speak four times and Moses responds three times. The discussion

results in an agreement forged between the two sides concerning settlement in

Transjordan.

Chapter 32 opens with a description of the

situation that serves as background to the tribes' request of Moses:

The descendants of

livestock. (32:9)

Next comes an account of their first appeal

to Moses:

Ataroth, Dibon,

Jazer, and Nimrah, Heshbon, Elealeh, Sebam, Nebo, and Beon, the land that the Lord struck down before the congregation

of Israel is a land for livestock, and your servants have livestock.

They said,

do not take us across the Jordan."

At first glance, the request made by the two

tribes seems natural and sensible: Scripture points out that the land in

question is appropriate for grazing, and it is conquered territory (the tribes

list the cities captured by the Israelites from Sihon and Og) and, apparently,

ripe for settlement. The tribes' difficulties caring for their large herds

could be solved by taking hold of the area; that might also allow for a less

stressful division of lands among the other tribes, who would be left with more

territory on the other side of the Jordan.

It should be noted that the tribes couch

their request in hesitant language, they are feeling their way and testing the patience

of Moses, Elazar the priest, and the princes. This impression is produced by

the repetition of the word vayomru – they said in the middle of their

speech, before they received an answer. It is as if they uttered the first

sentence (up to is a land for livestock, and your

servants have livestock) and then stopped and wait for Moses himself to

draw the desired conclusion – "give us this land." But Moses

did not respond, and there is a feeling of a heavy silence in the air. Moses

forced them to explicitly formulate their request themselves, and then they

continued: do not take us across the Jordan (see Yehiel Tzvi Markowitz's

comments on this in Da'at Mikra).

Moses completely

rejects their request with these very harsh words:

Moses said to the

to war while you stay here?(verse 6)

Then Moses rehearsed the story of the Sin of

the Spies at length, comparing it to the tribes' request. Note that Moses made

use of expressions found in the original telling of the story of the Spies. In

the original passage we read: … you will [thus]

bear your iniquities for forty years; thus you will come to know My

discouragement [tenuati] (14:34, and see Rashi and Ha'amek Davar there).

In our parasha we read: Why do you discourage [taniun] the hearts of

the Israelites (verse

7); and they discouraged the hearts of the Israelites

(verse 9). The punishment for this

was, and He made them wander [vayni’em]

in the desert for forty years (32:13). The word heart appears

both in the story of the Spies (Devarim 1:28)

as well as in our parasha (verses 7 and 9).

Apparently, the tribes took council among themselves and then promised to arm ourselves quickly [and go] before the Israelites

in the war to conquer the Land (verses 16-19).

Why did Moses react so strongly to the

tribes' seemingly natural and logical request, going so far as to compare it to

the Sin of the Spies? A few answers may be forwarded and some of them are found

in Moses' own words:

1) Demoralization – Why do you discourage the hearts of the Israelites from

crossing over to the Land the Lord has given them. Moses was worried that

the tribes' suggestion would weaken the will of the rest of the people to enter

the Land of Israel. Perhaps they would embrace the idea forwarded by the two

tribes and prefer to remain in Transjordan. Even if they do not go that far, it

may still have caused them to wonder whether the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and

half of Manasseh were afraid of the coming war (see Rashi on the verse). Perhaps

it is simply that the nation's military power would be weakened when two and a

half of the tribes opt out of fighting.

2) An offense against mutual

responsibility, justice, and equality – Shall

your brethren go to war while you stay here? They damaged

mutual responsibility and national unity. It is not proper that one section of

the people sit around placidly while the others fight to conquer their

designated lands. This injustice is compounded by the fact that the entire

nation fought to conquer Transjordan – the territories wanted by Gad and Rueben

– while the latter would not help in the conquest of the Land of Israel which

was designated for the other tribes.

3) A warped moral stance – Many

commentators point out the problematic way that the tribes' made their case:

a) The tribes mentioned their cattle before

their children: We shall build sheepfolds for our livestock and cities for

our children. Yalku Shimoni writes: "They made the primary

thing secondary and the secondary thing primary, for they loved their property

more than [they loved] people."

b) The repeated use of the word mikneh

than terms such as tzon [flocks] implies that they were avaricious and

their property was more important to them than their families.

4) Warped religious faith – The tribes

"took God out of the picture." They would fight before the Israelites

and they would not return to their homes until each

of the children of Israel has taken possession of his inheritance (verses 17-18).

In his response (verses

20-24), Moses emphasized his unease with the tribes' approach. He mentioned

the children before the livestock: build yourselves cities for your children

and sheepfolds for your flocks and he repeated the phrase before the

Lord four times. The tribes thought that they were proposing an agreement

with the other Israelites tribes, but Moses referred to it as an agreement made

with God.

It is interesting to note that although the

purpose of the Exodus was to crystallize the Israelites into a nation and bring

them to the land that had been promised to their forefathers, Moses made no

mention of the tribes' unwillingness to take possession of the Promised Land

when scolding them.

Moses stipulated a condition for the tribes

(that famous double condition, about which it is written in tractate Gittin:

"From where do we learn about all conditions? From the condition

stipulated of Gad and the condition stipulated of Reuben."):

You shall go at the head of the ranks in the

war to conquer the Land of Israel, fighting until the conquest is complete. Only

then may you return to your families and only then will you receive the

territories you asked for as an inheritance.

The tribes of Gad and

Reuben accepted Moses' conditions, and we indeed read in the Book of Joshua (chapter 22) that they

fulfilled the condition and took an active role in the conquest. It would be

expected that having completed their part of the bargain the whole affair would

come to an end. The Sages, however, were uncomfortable with the tribes'

behavior, as we can see from the following midrash:

The descendants of

Reuben and Gad had an abundance of livestock… thus taught our Rabbis: the

Holy One, blessed be He, created three gifts in the world: wisdom, valor, and

wealth. If a man wins one of them, he takes all that is desirable in the world;

if he wins wisdom, he wins everything. If he wins valor, he wins all. If he

wins wealth, he wins all. When? When these are gifts from Heaven and derive

from the power of the Holy One, blessed be He, but human valor and wealth are

nothing… and so you find in the case of the Gadites and Reubenites. They were

very wealthy and had much livestock and loved their possessions and settled

outside the Land. Therefore they were exiled before all the other tribes, as it

is said, and he exiled the Reubenites and the Gadites and half the tribe of Manasseh

(I Chronicles

5:26). And what caused this? That they separated themselves from

their brothers for the sake of their livestock… (Tanhuma Matot)

Acquisitiveness and

avarice have their price: Transjordan was given to the tribes as a mere

land-holding [ahuza], that is to say, as a temporary tenure over the

land. It is not included in the promise of an eternal inheritance relating to

the Land of Israel. Reuben and Gad were treated with poetic justice: they were

chiefly concerned with property, and so they received territory that was easily

available without any guaranties regarding the future. As a punishment they

were the first to have their connection to their land broken (compare with R.

Yitzhak Hershkowitz's article, Re'uven, Gad, VeHatzi Shevet HaMenasheh – T'mikha

Ambivalentit UMivhan Manhigut on the website of Petach Tikva's yeshivat

hesder.)

Nothing comes without

a price. Despite their having completely fulfilled their side of the bargain,

the danger facing the two tribes had not abated. The danger of avarice, of

separating oneself from the community, and the danger of living outside the

Beloved Land, all of these led to Gad and Reuben being the first tribes to lose

their possessions and to be torn away from the Israelite community to taste the

bitter taste of exile.

Ronit and Avi

Porten live in Jerusalem. Ronit works in the human resources department of

Sharei Tzedek hospital and Avi is an attorney.

Midrashei Tzafon

From the pen of our member, Ronen Ahituv

Any vow or any binding oath of self

affliction, her husband can either uphold it or revoke it (30:14).

Could it be that she is under her husband's

control, for it says: that every man dominate in his household (Esther 1:22)?

It would be just, that since the woman sinned

against her husband's will, and she was told, he shall rule over you (Bereishit 3:16), that

she not be able to make a vow without her husband's permission!

We learn from the words self affliction

that he can only revoke vows of self affliction.

Did you allow all the females to live?

(31:15). Could it be that they killed

all the women? Rather, we learn from the words They

were the same ones that they only killed those who caused them to

sin at Baal Peor.

Every daughter who inherits property… (36:8)

Could this hold true throughout the generations?

We learn from the verse this is the word (36:6) – that this word will only be followed in this

generation.

For the Sages made men and women equal in most of the commandments of

the Torah.

There are three contexts of gender in the parasha and all of them seem

to promote anti-women messages: the cancellation of vows, the killing of the

Midianite women, and the obligation of Zelafhad's daughters to marry within

their families. Regarding two of the three cases, the midrash has already

intervened to limit the insult to women: in the cancellation of vows (see Mishnah Nedarim 11:1) and the marriages of

Zelafhad's daughters (see Bava Batra 120a).

I added a drasha in the same spirit regarding the Midianite women. R. Eliezer

son of R. Shimon is quoted in Yalkut Shimoni 785:

R. Eliezer son of R. Shimon says: This

teaches that they knew them all and they said to each other, "She sinned

with so-and-so."

While it's true that in Sifrei (Matot 5)

we find R. Yishmael saying that they also killed the women who were of an

appropriate age for intercourse – even those who did not engage in it – still,

I preferred R. Eliezer's drasha since it was in line with the other drashot of

the Sages on the parasha.

Ronen Ahituv

The Vengeance of the Israelites – God's Vengeance?

We have already on Bereishit 4:15 pointed out the relationship of nakom

[avenge] to kum [rise up] (compare hom & naham, zol

& nazal, zor & nazor, sug &

nasog, potz & nafatz, utz & na'atz, doh

& da'ah, etc.). It is the re-erection of rights which have been

trodden under foot, or a person who has been thrown to the ground. The avenger

identifies himself with the object to be raised up. That probably explains the

reflexive form nakam, and also the mode of construing with the letter mem:

carry out the avenging of the Israelites from [me'eit] the Midianites (Bamidbar 31:2). The

purpose is not revenge, throwing down an enemy – that would be construed with

the letter bet [ ba'Midyanim]. The purpose is the re-erection of

Israel from the Midianites, its spiritual and moral freeing out of the

power of their arts.

(Rabbi S.R. Hirsch on Bamidbar 31:2, Isaac Levy translation)

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