On the very verge of the Land of Israel, Moab and Midian had made a last desperate attempt to thwart our return home. They fought against us both physically and spiritually, inflicting horrendous damage on us. They got their comeuppance in this week’s Parashah, when God commanded Moshe to lead the nation out in a war of vengeance against Midian. The Israelites killed all the Midianite males including their five kings, as well as Balaam (Numbers 31:7-8), and they left all the children and the adult women alive.
It seems clear enough why they killed only the adult males in the initial combat – such are the standard rules of warfare in Judaism. When fighting an enemy who has refused to make peace, “all adult males are to be killed, and their property and children are to be taken as booty. And it is forbidden to kill woman and children, as says, ‘The woman and the children…take as booty’. When does this apply? – In a voluntary war, which is a war fought against the other nations [than the seven Canaanite nations]. But in a war against the seven Canaanite nations or Amalek who did not accept peace, we do not leave a single soul of them alive, as says, ‘From the cities of those nations which Hashem your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall not keep a single soul alive’” (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings and Wars 6:4).
In the Torah system, there are two categories of war: milchemet mitzvah (“obligatory war”) and milchemet reshut (“voluntary war”). Obligatory wars are those fought against the seven Canaanite nations, against Amalek, and defensive wars against any enemy of Israel who initiates an attack; voluntary wars are those fought against other nations, or those fought to demonstrate the might of a king of Israel, to expand the borders of Israel, or to levy tribute on other nations. Voluntary wars can be fought only with the authorisation of the Sanhedrin; obligatory wars need no such authorisation (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings and Wars 5:1).
Since this was a war against Midian and not one of the seven Canaanite nations, and fought east of the River Jordan, it could well have seemed that this fell into the category of a “voluntary war”, in which women and children were to be left unharmed.
However, this was not God’s intention. Moshe castigated the Children of Israel for their misplaced mercy: “Have you kept every female alive? Behold – it was they who, at the word of Balaam, caused the Children of Israel to betray Hashem in the matter of Peor! And then the plague was in Hashem’s congregation! So now, kill every male among the children, and every woman who could have known a man by lying with him you shall kill” (Numbers 31:15-17).
In practical halakhic terms, the war against Midian had all the rules of a milchemet mitzvah (“obligatory war”) – and this has direct bearing on those tribes who chose to settle east of the River Jordan in the final chapter of the Parashah.
The Tribes of Reuben and Gad, seeing the excellent pasture-land east of the Jordan, asked to possess it as their tribal inheritance. Moshe, sensing that that they were spurning the Land of Israel as their fathers had done forty years earlier, and fearing that they were trying to avoid the inevitable impending war to conquer Canaan, initially objected to their request. But after they clarified their intention to cross the Jordan with the rest of the nation and only after fighting to conquer the Land to return to trans-Jordan, Moshe indeed gave Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh all those lands east of the River Jordan.
The Torah introduces this episode by telling us that “the children of Reuben had abundant livestock, as did the children of Gad – very great” (Numbers 32:1), which livestock was the booty of the recent war against Midian. The Kli Yakar (Rabbi Shlomo Efrayim, Luntchitz, Lvov [Lemberg], and Prague,1550-1619) and the Ohr ha-Chayim (Rabbi Chayim ben Atar, Morocco and Israel, 1696-1743) suggest that these two tribes had a proportionately greater share of the spoils because they had fought exceptionally devotedly.
This, then, was its own reward: shortly after these events, Joshua led us over the River Jordan into the Land of Israel, and then ensued seven years of fighting the Canaanite nations to conquer the Land. Once they had been subdued, Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh returned to their lands east of the Jordan, there to live in spacious pasture-land and well-appointed cities. (Exactly how and why half of Manasseh joined Reuben and Gad in Trans-Jordan is another subject for another D’var Torah.)
The Ramban (Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, Spain and Israel, 1195-c.1270), commenting on Numbers 32:1 (in some editions 32:2), suggests that because the Tribe of Gad was physically powerful, they were therefore not afraid of dwelling in that land, next to hostile elements, isolated from the main bulk of the nation.
So the practical result of Reuben’s and Gad’s especial heroism in fighting the Midianites and therefore having larger flocks, and their military prowess as a result of which they expanded the borders of the Land of Israel, was that they ended up with some of the most fertile land of all the Tribes; and when calculating their populations with the size of their tribal land, they ended up with far more land per family than the other Tribes.
The Rambam gives a halakhic definition of the Land of Israel: “Whenever the Land of Israel is mentioned, it means the lands which a king of Israel or a prophet conquered, ratified by the majority of Israel, and this is called national conquest. If, however, an individual Jew, or a family, or a Tribe, go and conquer a place by themselves, even if it is part of the Land promised to Abraham [i.e. between the Nile and the Euphrates], it is not called ‘the Land of Israel’ such that all the mitzvot would apply there. And this is the reason that Joshua and his court apportioned the entire Land of Israel among the Tribes even though not all of it had been conquered, so that when each individual tribe would conquer its territory, it would not be an individual conquest. The lands which King David conquered outside of the Land of Canaan…, even though he was a king of Israel and conquered them as authorised by the Sanhedrin, do not constitute the Land of Israel for all purposes, but neither are they exile for all purposes as Babylon and Egypt are… Why did they not acquire the status of the Land of Israel? – Because he conquered them before he had conquered the whole of the Land of Israel; he had left part of it with the seven Canaanite nations. Had he captured the entire Land of Canaan with all its borders, and subsequently conquered those other lands, then that conquest would have made those lands fully part of the Land of Israel” (Hilkhot Terumot 1:2-3).
In next week’s Parashah, Mas’ei, the Torah commands us, “You shall inherit the Land and you shall settle in it, because to you have I given the Land to inherit it” (Numbers 33:53). The Ramban (ad. loc.) comments: “In my opinion this is a positive commandment – He commands them to dwell in the Land and to inherit it, because He has given it to them and they are not to spurn Hashem’s inheritance. And those who consider going to conquer Shinar or Assyria or other countries and to settle there transgress Hashem’s command”.
This was Moshe’s initial objection to Reuben and Gad’s request to settle east of the River Jordan – that they rejected the Land of Israel. But when they clarified their intentions – that they would be the pioneers in fighting for the Land of Israel in the conquest, and then cross the Jordan to settle their territories and thus increase the borders of Israel, he gave them his blessing and apportioned them “the kingdom of Sihon king of the Amorite, and the kingdom of Og king of the Bashan – the land with the cities of its borders, and the cities of the surrounding land” (32:33).
When promising to fight for the Land of Israel, the Gadites and the Reubenites declared: “We will cross over armed and ahead of everyone, before Hashem, to the Land of Canaan” (32:32). The Ba’al ha-Turim (Rabbi Ya’akov ben Asher, Germany and Spain, c.1275-1343) notes that the word they use for “we” is nachnu, rather than the more usual anachnu, and that this form only occurs in two other places in the Tanakh: “We (nachnu) are all sons of one man” (Genesis 42:11, when the brothers address Joseph in Egypt); and “We (nachnu) have sinned and rebelled” (Lamentations 3:42). And The Ba’al ha-Turim draws the conclusion which, if only our nation and our leaders of today could understand it, we could bring the redemption immediately: “’We (nachnu) will cross over…to the Land of Canaan’. Why? – Because we are all sons of one man [i.e. we will inherit the Land because we are all brothers]. And if not – then we have sinned and rebelled”.