Rashi (on 25:19) suggests two reasons for the count. One, just as a shepherd counts his flock after the flock is attacked, so too G-d counted the people after the plague recorded in 25:9. This is a difficult answer since G-d would not need to count the people to know how many people survived the plague. Rashi’s second answer is that the count in chapter 26 parallels the count of the people in the beginning of the book of Bemidbar. Again, using an analogy from a shepherd, the people were counted when they were entrusted to Moshe when they left Egypt, so too when Moshe was about to die, he handed them back with a number. This answer is appealing as it connects this count with the earlier count, but why is the census recorded in chapter 26?
Moskovitz (1988, p. 320) quotes two other reasons. One reason is that the census was for mustering the troops since the people were going into the land of Israel where they would have to fight. However, by the war with Midyan (chapter 31) the census was not relevant since a thousand people from each tribe went to fight, 31:4. Also, there is no mention that a census was taken prior to the wars by Sihon and Og. A second reason is that the count was to be able to divide the land of Israel evenly amongst the people. Thus, immediately after the count, 26:52-56 record how the land was to be parceled out. Yet, it is possible that this division of the land was a result of the census but was not the reason for the census. Thus, the Ramban (on 26:57) is hard pressed to explain why the Levites were counted since they did not receive any land.
Dennis Olson (1985) suggests a fifth reason that the census has a literary purpose to unify the book of Bemidbar. He argues that the censuses in chapters 1 and 26 divide the book of Bemidbar into two units, chapters 1-25 refer to the generation who left Egypt and chapters 26-36 refer to the new generation who would enter the land of Israel. The censuses then form the structure of the book, and the census of chapter 26 would signal that the old generation has died out and the generation has been born. Thus, he writes the name of the book, Numbers, is very appropriate. Olsen notes that with this idea the two censuses in the book of Bemidbar function similar to the toledot language in the book of Bereshit, that both provide the structure to the book. (For a discussion of the toledot structure in the book of Bereshit, see our discussion, “Introduction to the book of Bereshit.”)
There is only one toledot section in the Torah not in the book of Bereshit and it occurs in Bemidbar 3:1, the toledot of Aharon and Moshe, immediately after the count of the people. Olsen argues that the last toledot of Bereshit, 37:2, the toledot of Yaakov continue for the remainder of the Torah, and Bemidbar 3:1 introduces another toledot section of Aharon and Moshe. This last point seems difficult since in Bereshit each toledot section ends with a genealogy, or the death of cenral figure in the section, and then either Bereshit 46, which records the genealogy of Yaakov’s family, or Bereshit 50, which records the death of Yosef, ends the toledot section from Bereshit 37:1.
Yet, the connection Olsen makes between the census and the toledot framework is interesting. Maybe a toledot section cannot exist when dealing with the details of an entire nation since the tracking of the genealogy is too lengthy. Thus, Bemidbar 3:1 just uses the toledot section with regard to Moshe and Aharon because that is one small family. However, the conjunction of the toledot of Bemidbar 3:1 with the census in chapters 1 and 2 informs us that the toledot and census serve similar purposes as suggested by Olsen. Both the toledot sections of Bereshit and the two censuses mark the movement from one generation to the next. In the other three books of the Torah, there is no movement of generations, so there is no need either for the toledot language or a census.
A sixth way to understand the count in Bemidbar chapter 26 is to examine how it differs from the count in Bemidbar chapter one. Bemidbar chapter one just lists the population of each tribe, while Bemidbar chapter 26 also lists the family branches and includes various historical information. Olsen (p. 87) explains that this change “expresses the further development of the tribal families into a new generation which has now branched into various sub-clans.” Yet, the various sub-clans existed even during the first census. Instead, the sub-clans make the count of Bemidbar 26 parallel to the count of Bereshit 46, which occurred before Yaakov’s family went into Egypt. In Bereshit 46 there are seventy individuals, and in Bemidbar 26 there are seventy clans. In addition, Bemidbar 26:19,46 refer to individuals, Er, Onan, Serah, who are mentioned in Bereshit 46, but who were not part of any family sub-clan in the desert. The counts are even symmetric in their time frame. In Bereshit, the Jews were leaving Israel and going to Egypt, and in Bemidbar the Jews are leaving the desert and going to Israel.
Why is the count of Bemidbar 26 modeled after the count in Bereshit 46? The parallelism establishes a historical continuity between the generation about to enter the land of Israel and the people who left Israel. This is important in reference to the people's claim to the land of Israel, which is from Avraham, Yitzhak and Yaakov. Yet after all these years in Egypt, who knew if these were the descendants of Avraham? Thus, the parallelism shows that these people who are about to enter the land of Israel were the descendants of Avraham and had a right to land of Israel. Also, Avraham was told that his descendants would go into exile (Bereshit 15:13-16) and that his descendants would return to the land of Israel. The parallelism shows that the same people who went into exile are the people who have returned to the land of Israel. In addition, the count in Bereshit 46 showed how the blessing to Avraham that he would have numerous children had started to come true, that there were seventy descendants of Avraham who were part of the covenant. By modeling the count in Bemidbar 26 on Bereshit 46, we see that this blessing has continued to come true, as now there were seventy families who numbered more than 600,000 people. Furthermore, the count in Bereshit was the beginning of the journey, when the family left the land of Israel, and the count of Bemidbar 26 signals that the people are at the end of the journey.
A seventh possibility for the count of the people in Bemidbar chapter 26 is that it was due the covenant the new generation was going to make on the plains of Moav, Devarim 28:69, as there need to delineate which people are part of the covenant. The new generation really begins from chapter 20, since from 33:38 we know that chapter 20 must be recording events in the 40th year. It is true that some people of the old generation were alive in chapter 20, but the overwhelming majority of people were from the new generation, and chapter 19 is the dividing chapter between the generations. However, the new census could not have been done in chapter 20 since it was only when the people were passing by Moav did the entire first generation die, Devarim 2:14. In addition, if the census is related to the covenant, then it should have been done in the place where the covenant was established, the plains of Moav, which means the count could not have been before 22:1, which records that the people arrived at the plains of Moav. Yet, due to the plague that killed 24,000 people at Baal Pe’or, it did not make sense to count the people before the plague since the plague occurred soon after the people arrived at the plains of Moav. Thus 26:1 stresses that the census was only done after the plague was over. Hence, maybe chapter 26 was the earliest time a census of the new generation, who were to be part of the covenant on the plains of Moav, could have taken place.
Moskovitz, Yehiel Tzvi, 1988, Commentary on the book of Bemidbar, Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook.
Olson, Dennis, 1985, The Death of the Old and the Birth of the New, Chico, California: Scholar’s Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment