Ch 13 The Division of the Land Among the Tribes (HaRav Yitzchak Breitowitz)

okay we began discussing yesterday uh a story about kve uh I want to put it in the back burner for for a minute because I want to talk about a different hakama to this uh the basic idea is that for seven years B Israel were o in Kush in conquering the land and at the end of those seven years most of the land was conquered but there were large sections that were still not conquered uh but yahushua only had s years of military activity the remaining land that had to be conquered was not conquered until the period of the Chau and some of it was David and we had mentioned now after the seven years of kush then comes seven years of seven years of actually dividing the land and allocating it to the tribes now there are a lot of questions here meaning to say yahushua lived at least another s years after the completion of the conquest so why did hash I mean why were the remaining conquests deferred to after yahushua's life when they could have perhaps have been done during the seven years of division meaning the way it seems to work is there were seven years of Conquest seven years of division yosua then dies and then the conquest is resumed why is there this interposition of 7 years of division before the conquest was concluded I don't know if we really have an answer for that I mean it was the that certain aspects of the Kush would not be done by yua but as I pointed out a number of times when the land is divided among the tribes that did include land that was not conquered yet meaning all of er Israel was divided among the tri tries even though not all of erel was congregant so in a sense it's kind of like uh buying an apartment in erel that's under construction meaning you don't have anything I remember in the olden days when harof was invented right there was a time in which harof was just empty vacant land that you could buy an apartment in harof that was not built yet for uh 30,000 shek can you believe that uh now obviously it was a big gamble people put down money and you know you never know if it's going to be built or it's not going to be built or how many years but if a person uh made such an investment now it's worth whatever a few million sheo or or the like so I think in real estate that called that's called buying Under the Water meaning you're buying land under the water so in a sense I mean I'm not going to call it luck or good luck or bad luck everything is but a eventually I'm using luck in a very non technical usage had bad luck meaning got that would not be conquered for a number of years so where did they live they had to rent in other words they had to live in others territory because their territory was quite literally Not Conquered right so that's the nafina the seven years of kush are not complete the seven years of are complete meaning all of Ares Isel was allocated even Those portions of land that were not to be conquered until many many years later now there is an intriguing again some I I'll go into more detail in all of this but there is an intriguing thought that the malbim develops based on a number of Pim that there were parts of Erich Israel that were not allocated to any tribe and they were there for expansion of a tribe if it grew bigger and bigger meaning to say there was Ru Shimon Ley right not Ley but the had their and then there were portions that were just like they say reserved for future use or whatever it is in which certain would be given R to go ahead and move into those territories that's a very big Kish because the pus of theim and the pus of kazal is that every part of Eric Israel was assigned to a tribe but the malum has various proofs that there were certain areas that were available for expansion of a given tribe Beyond its assigned borders again we we'll look at this more detail uh I just want to get out the idea of the unassigned territory which is really as far as I know it's the malish in the I don't think uh there's any m kazal that talks about unassigned land now here's the thing there's a between the ramban and Rashi about how er Isel was divided and it really goes back to the Kish itself when Yakov ainu before his death we're going to read it in a few weeks par the last par of Braes when Yakov blesses Ephraim and manasha yose's two sons so uh yakobin says and manim Ephraim and Masha my grandchildren are equivalent to ruen and Shima my children so what this basically means is that shave yose right ysf is you know Yakov son actually is divided into two tribes Ephraim and manasha meaning the uh the statement epim means instead of looking at epim and man as One Tribe that's called shave yose it is two tribes Ephraim and manashe and that's why uh there are actually 13 tribes not 12 tribes because the 12 sons of Yakov but count as too however the land was divided among 12 tribes because shavid Ley other words when we say the land is divided among 12 tribes that's counting Ephraim and manasha as two and not counting Ley because Ley only got cities throughout the territory so really there are 13 tribes but only 12 tribes participated in the division of the land land itself now here is the question what is the nafina between a large single tribe and two smaller tribes meaning Ephraim has a population and manasha has a population okay each one is approximately 50,000 based on the so what's the difference if you have one big tribe of 100,000 or two smaller tribes of 50,000 each it's the same number of people meaning dividing the tribe into two does not give you a bigger population the population is going to be the same soina so ramban says the following I'm GNA mention ramban first a very big Kish ramban says when er Israel was divided by tribes each tribe got an equivalent amount of territory in other words you divided ER Israel into 12 sections and I'm including ail leard because as you know ail leard actually had Ruan gods and some of manasha so let's put ail AR aside for a moment so in terms of the remaining lands there are nine and a half tribes that are going to get a share in west of the Jordan River not counting shave at Ley so the ran says ero was divided let's say in nine units and actually he says with Aver lardan and alike it was 12 equal units every shet got 12th of the territory of Eric Israel including a AR now what that means is large a larger tribe got the same amount of land as a smaller tribe which actually means that if you were a member of a larger tribe you got less land than if you were a member of a smaller tribe because the smaller tribe got the same territory as a larger tribe it then gets divided among the members of the tribe and we'll discuss that in more detail so Mima if you have 100,000 people dividing up X number of Acres each one is going to get less than if you have 50,000 people dividing so on some level you could say it's a little unfair meaning if I belong to a larger tribe I get less land than somebody who belongs to a smaller tribe but the ramban says theod ofas is each shet got an equivalent area of territory each shave got the same so according to ramban the significance of Ephraim and manasha being divided into two tribes is enormous it actually doubled their territory if there just would have been a shave at Yosef we would have divided erel into 11 portions because we exclude Ley so shabet yose would have gotten one 11th one over 11 of the territory of er Israel by dividing shet yose into ephra and Min we now have 12 tribes and Ephraim and manasha gets one six of er Israel right because 12 is two tribes so going from 11th to 16th is more or less a doubling almost a doubling of their territory so the significance of being divided into two tribes according to ramban was extremely important because it actually meant they got double the ter not quite double because it would have been 11th it wouldn't have been one uh it wouldn't have been 112th meaning it's not they didn't go from 112th to um to 16 they went from 11th to 16th but still it's very close to doubling their territory now you might ask a question on the ramban uh if you ever look at a map like say the back of the art scroll and you see uh the allocation of the a map of the tribal divisions based on the geography you see that there are all sorts of different sizes so number one uh either the map is not following ramban right it's following the other sheet I'll go with or number two even like ramban there's a possible answer which makes things more and more this gets more and more complicated and that is ramban based on AAR Basra makes a point that I have to qualify it a little bit it's not necessarily that they had the same area but they had the same value meaning to say very fertile land could have a much higher market value so according to ramban based on the gorra the way it actually works is you divide AR Israel into 12 sections of equivalent economic value but that still could mean the actual area was different that makes things even more complicated but uh that might be a possible reason why the boundaries may look different because even though one had more area but they didn't have more value so I I I have no idea what the value was but if if we imagine in contemporary uh currencies let's say that the economic value of the land of Eric Israel was one billion whatever it's $1 billion dollar then each shet got one 12th of that billion dollars so for some that may be less territory for some that would be more territory but it's equivalent but you still have the fairness problem because that still means an individual in a smaller tribe would wind up with less economic value than an individual in a larger tribe but the ran learns that we divide it according to sh and that is the significance of Rashi is ran I mean Rashi was earlier but rashi's position is that the amount of land that was allocated to a shave it was in fact a function of its population larger tribes got more land smaller tribes got less land and the result would be that every individual person who got lands would get the same amount of lands right in other words according to Rashi the Milo of rashi's is that there would be no discrimination between members of large tribes and members of small tribes because members of large tribes got more lands and therefore when that's subdivided they would get their particular portion members of smaller tribes got less land so when you divided the land among the population again we we have really discussed how that was done every individual would be the same now again if you're a political science junkie or whatever it is uh you might be thinking of the way the United States government is set up with the Senate versus the House of Representative this is exactly laav this is exactly uh what's going on here uh this the concept of the Senate is every state has an equal vote so whether it's Montana which has very few people or New York or California that has a lot of people they have the same clout uh they have two senators that's kind of the ramban's idea every shet is equal in its uh Power in its uh in its control of er Israel the House of Representatives is based on a different idea House of Representatives is based on the population of a state so a state with a large popul ation will have a lot of congressmen I don't know the numbers I don't remember the numbers but you know New York would have you know 30 40 whatever whatever it is and a state like Montana might have one okay so Rashi understands that erel was like the House of Representatives and the ran understands it was more like the Senate meaning every shave it was was equal now the truth of the matter is I'm I'm I'm telling you this as a makus Rashi and the ran the truth of the matter is it's a makus in the gorra itself I mean it's a question of how they pass in the gorra itself in Yan in the eth peric of Basra uh discusses whether there was equal tribal division or whether uh it was per capita meaning to say large tribes got more land small tribes got less land and the upshot would be therefore on an individual level everybody got the same now again you still go back to that qualification it doesn't mean the same in area but the same in value that that's another issue if you think about this this is why it took seven years to do this because it's quite complicated you need assessments you need valuation uh and and and and the like uh so when I when I say two people got the same every person got the same amount of land it's not the same amount of land it's the same economic value of the land so one person might get one acre one person might get five acres but they had the same economic uh productive value however you estimate this you again I have no idea uh but you see that this is a very very complicated process now here is a a problem and that is the following in the book of yahushua we clearly read that the land was divided up into sections and it was assigned to the tribes via a lottery so the way it's described is that you had elazar the Coen G remember elazar is Iron's son and he is the right iron died elaz is the co right you know this m kadan as well that elaz and the N right the land is divided with elazar and the 12 nan oh I'm sorry let let me go back I I skipped something so one second according to Rashi what does it mean ifim and manashe are two tribes in other words according to Rashi it makes no difference because like this if every tribe received Land Based on its population so it makes no difference if it's one tribe that that has 100,000 people or two tribes that have 50,000 people each Bish are like the ramban dividing a big tribe into two smaller tribes is going to double the area of land that they get or almost double from one out of 11 to two out of 12 one out of six but if I say that the land they shave it got was based on the size of its population so two tribes of 50 are going to get the same amount of land As One Tribe of a 100 so what is the significance of making Ephraim and man two tribes so if you look in Rashi and Par Rashi specifically says it is not a matter of getting more territory but it's a matter of kovot because it's two tribes they each had their own flag in the desert they each had their own Nasi which was a politically important point butami it did not make a difference in terms of territory you understand the idea here because a group of 100,000 people is going to get the same amount of land as two groups of 50,000 people right so the Big M Rashi and ran based on the gar was the land divided tribally with equality like the senates or excuse me for using the secular example or was the land divided based on population size like the House of Representatives MZ Rashi and ramban now here is where we have a problem when the book of yua describes the division of Israel it describes a certain ceremony that obviously is is working with rues in which you have elazar the Ken who is wearing the UR V again let me digress for a moment just to clarify a common misconception I think I've talked about this before but forgive me for repeating it uh when you ask uh people what is the V so they will tell you that this is the breastplate that the coing GLE wears that has 12 Jewels for each tribe of course keep in mind in the UR vum interestingly enough that's going to be an interesting question if and Masha are not in other words has Ru Shimon Ley and it has yose so interesting inter inly enough if and area not separated as two tribes in the UR but put that aside so you ask people what is the UR V they say oh that's the Coen gle's breastplate that not true the name of the coing gle's breastplate is called the Kosen and the aim of the Kosen are called the a or the the stones that fill the sence the or is a piece of parchment upon which is inscribed certain names of Hashem it's like software program and when the was put the parchment was put in the folds of the Kosen the Kosen became a prophetic medium through which Hashem communicated prophecies by the letter of the lighting up so for example the gamor says in that there was no in the just as there was noes in the bayen there was no the gar does not mean they didn't have AOS first of all if they didn't have AOS they could have made AOS and indeed they have to make AOS it's one of the required BM of the K they have to have AOS they didn't make an Ain because the Ain has a purpose only if there's luas we couldn't the Arin was hidden if we didn't have the luos we didn't make an Orin but but big deun you have to have but what it means is we lost either we lost the parchment of the UR or it no longer worked because we lost NAA and Ur is part of the NAA right so uh therefore when they say when when when we say Alazar is wearing the UR we mean Alazar is wearing the the and the and the prophetic software is inserted there and therefore there would be divine agreement to to whatever the gyro whatever the lottery is going to come up with okay so we have El lazor wearing the UR V we have the 12 theum we have two baskets in basket number one is a listing of all of the tribes except for shavid Ley now which means there are 12 uh 12 pieces of parchment or whatever it was in which is a name of a tribe and then in the other basket you have the 12 boundaries of AR now now actually again there are a few questions here I mean kazal describe it as 12 and 12 like 12 names of 12 boundaries of the land but that can't be totally literal because remember that two tribes have already gotten their inheritance already in the lifetime of Moser Ruan and G did not participate in the G the lottery of who gets a share in ER Isel because they already have their share a really are they now half of manasha also got it share but there's another half of manasha that's going to share in the lottery division so although you know I'm always reluctant to say this but it seems that kaz's reference to 12 and 12 must be because Ruben and God already had their him unless maybe what might have happened was this was a way of validating the gy meaning to say the following when they put 12 boundaries in they included the a lardan boundaries and the fact that the lottery came up with ruin and God on those sections shows that it's divine because how does it come up exactly what was already given to them so that might be got a lot of questions we just don't know okay but it's described therefore as a lottery in which one basket had the names of the tribes the other basket had the 12 sections of er Israel which must include aard if you say that and elazar would pick a pek that set a tribe's name and he would pick a boundary a section and the UR would confirm it by the tribe lighting up I don't know how that worked with to tell you the truth because are not on the but maybe what could happen is this the UR did contain all the letters of the AL because in addition to the tribes it also had the words abov shift so maybe for manasha you didn't get a a stone from manasha but you got letters that spelled manasha you see what I'm saying in other words the UR could communicate by lighting up the letters even though you didn't have a tribal Stone so basically it was a lottery that was confirmed by the UR vum or actually the L of the gamarra is the UR vum was illuminated first and then they did the lottery although it's not clear to me what the logic of that would be but some say they did the lottery confirmed by the or now here is the problem bish according to ramban the concept of Lottery makes a lot of sense you understand how this could work because every every one of the 12 boundary points was either the same area or the same value so it could go to any tribe so the lottery Alp hasem determines that this section goes to this tribe this section goes to this tribe this section goes to this tribe because any tribe could have taken any section but like Rashi the concept of a lottery doesn't make sense because if a larger tribe gets a larger area of land or a larger value of land however you measure it so when you have 12 boundary areas there are large areas there are small areas there are intermediate areas and then in the tribes you have large tribes small tribes medium tribes so what do you mean lottery I mean what happens if you pick a large area and a small tribe now of course Hashem was guiding the process that wouldn't happen but if we're going through a lottery aradas requires that we do a lottery that makes sense so like ramban a lottery makes sense because every section was the same size or same value so any tribe could get any territory but like Rashi until you know which tribe is going to get which territory how can you even draw the boundery so the gr is maber the gra follows rash the gra is masar that the IAL Lottery was not a precise area size it simply divided the country into districts northeast southeast Southwest kinit Etc and it did not give exact boundaries and only after the lottery determined which tribe gets it was the boundary then adjusted of according to the population meaning unlike the impression you get from saer yosua that there were precise boundaries for every section and they did a lottery which tribe would get which section according to the way the gr is mabar he's not mabar Rashi per se but Rashi I think would have to learn the same way the gr says it on his own barbanel actually said it earlier the there were no boundaries there were only geographical districting so once again so in the 12 in one basket are the 12 tribes in the other basket are 12 geographical districts which did not have precise boundaries they were just districts and the sizes were be were to be determined only after the lottery had assigned it to the shade so once it is determined that the Negev belongs to Yehuda which indeed is the case so then they draw up the boundaries based on Yehuda population you see so again therefore the M Rashi and ran will be importance not only in terms of area but also in terms of the mechanics of how the lottery system worked meaning according to ramban by the time of the lottery there already were precise divisions of the land its territories its boundaries because since every shabet got the same area or value of land so any shavid could have gotten any any portion and that's how the lottery worked according to Rashi and the gr be the lottery did not have exact boundaries because how can you determine what the boundary of any area is until you know the shavit that's going to get it and you don't know the shet that's going to get it until after the lottery so we have to say that it simply divided Eric Israel into different regions or different districts but the boundaries would not be fixed until after that is assigned to a given to a given shaven okay so this is uh kind of just an important some general information regarding the division of er Israel and as I indicated the gar indicates it was not even an area division it was a shavas a value division which can make it uh very very uh complicated uh so be aware of this now what we haven't discussed and the emis this is not this is not discussed in the book of Yeshua at all in fact it's not discussed anywhere in N but the gamar discusses it extensively is once a tribe has its division how does the how does it then turn into the individual Kos within the tribe the one thing we know is that according to ramban people in larger tribes got less land than people in smaller tribes according to Rashi people in larger tribes got the same amount of land as people in smaller tribes right so that we know but the question is going to be what population base do you use for the allocation of land because the the allocation of land is actually based on the census of B Isel that is recorded in the Torah and there are two censuses or Sensi I think is the correct Latin of B is that are recorded one is of the Jews who left mitah and most of them died in the desert because of the spies the other are the Jews who were entering erel and we're going to see that there's a huge makus in the gor was erel divided based on the yot MIT census or were they based on the bo census and we'll see the navamin uh between them but be it as it may you don't get to that question until you've already allocated to the tribes meaning there's tribal Division and then each tribe the Nim have the job of being Mak to the individuals and as I say that part of the story is not in the saer Yeshua but we will talk about it just to complete the process yeah so the by this the area of the tri was determined like in the times of Yeshua yes yes how does that explain like when in the when it talks about isar and Zab is it the two tribes yeah that doesn't say one of them gets the coastal region they're going to be like involved in Commerce and overseas trade like in back in the homish before the CL yeah yeah so that's yeah yeah so that that actually is a that actually is a good question uh because to to say that the regions that a tribe is going to have are based on this G uh implies that until the time of yosua that wasn't fixed right it's only the G that was K and yet we find in M's bra uh that San would get along the coast so uh you are correct I mean basically what the maam say is that since everything here is ales so even though it was known we had to go through this process and this process would would always it would always be consistent with everything else that was in the Torah but you're correct there was a certain knowledge for certain that they would have a certain the to be across thean River yeah those are also maybe confirmed yeah that has to be right that right that has to be because that they already had that they already had that yeah are we I just want to clarify we unsure about what the ran holds whether the land was divided by area or value no no no so here's the thing um the ranja says every shavit got the same and Rashi says every shave it got in accordance with his population okay now I was just saying that the gamor says generally that the land was not necessarily divided in accordance with area it was divided in accordance with value so all I'm saying is that I would I would read that other Garra in the ran the ran himself doesn't mention that other gamar but I think it's possible um okay so yeah could that also be read to that every person got uh the same land of economic value yes yes yes yeah that's what I that's what I really meant to say the statement of the gamarra can apply to Rashi and the ramban together but you also see going back to the you also see how this is a big Naina what does it mean that ifim and manasha are two tribes instead of one tribe what is theas of One Tribe becoming two tribes according to ramban it makes a very big difference in the land that they're going to get according to Rashi it is not going to make a difference in the land that they're going to get but it'll make a difference for Nim and deel and the like not that that type ofas that type of cover okay again um there's more to say about this we'll continue um but as I say uh this is a very very hard I mean I I remember I remember the first time I learned sa for Yeshua I think uh I was in fifth grade so I still remember that had a very good teacher very good rebi but when he reached perek yud giml which Begins the division of the land he says we're skipping all the way to peral which is after Thea says we just skipped it right so so for years you know I had this traumatic mental block you know this is like impossible to learn you know it's one of those things that uh it must be too hard it must be cabala or something uh so but it is it is actually very very difficult um and and there in fact there's a whole aspect of it that I'm not going to discuss so much and that is the actual geographical identification it gives cities after cities and boundaries and where is this city where is that City that's a whole field of the geography of of safer Yeshua but even if we don't focus on the geography and we just focus on the on the process of Kuka it actually is a very very complicated process of Kuka and obviously the geography will have a major impact on Rashi in ramban because if ramban is making the point unless you factor in economic value but if we can identify these places and we can see that this section is much bigger than that section you got a problem with Raman although as I say the economic value thing could could actually answer answer everything right so this indeed so my fifth grade the teacher four I think fourth fourth grade teacher was was correct that um this is really very very difficult but M hopefully we'll get a basic understanding of it thank you for listening to this awesome production to find out more and to partner in our mission please visit o.edu