In this week’s parasha, Shoftim, we read about the six “cities of refuge” that God commanded the Israelites to establish. These cities were places where an inadvertent murderer could take refuge. The Torah gives an example: two people are chopping trees when the axe of one suddenly breaks, flinging the sharp end and killing the other person accidentally. It is understandable that the victim’s family might want to take revenge and pursue the inadvertent murderer. The Torah states that the inadvertent murderer should flee to the nearest city of refuge, where the victim’s family has no right to pursue him, and where he will be protected by Levites.
Of the six refuge cities, three were on the west side of the Jordan River – within the proper borders of the Holy Land – and three on the east side of the Jordan, where the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half of Menashe settled. The Arizal explains that this allowed Moses to fulfil an important mitzvah – after all, Moses himself was an inadvertent murderer! Back in Egypt, he had accidentally killed the Egyptian officer who was senselessly beating an Israelite slave. The Arizal states that Moses only wished to defend the Jew, but ended up killing the Egyptian inadvertently. While Moses was forbidden from entering the Holy Land, he was permitted to traverse the territories on the east side of the Jordan, so by establishing cities of refuge there, Moses could finally fulfil the mitzvah of an inadvertent murderer.
A bigger question one might ask is why were the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half of Menashe settled outside of the Holy Land to begin with? The Torah tells us the simple meaning: the Reubenites and Gadites liked the land on the east side of the Jordan, and were more than happy to settle there. Moses wanted half the tribe of Menashe to join them, perhaps to keep an eye on them to make sure they fulfil their vow in helping the rest of the Israelites conquer and settle the Holy Land.
Of course, nothing in the Torah is without its deeper meaning. If Reuben, Gad, and half of Menashe were settled outside of the land, there must be a good spiritual reason for it. The Arizal gives us some incredible mystical insights into the matter.
Conception in Holiness
After seven years of hard labour, Jacob was ready to marry his beloved Rachel. Instead, his father-in-law Laban tricked him by having him marry Leah. That night, Leah conceived. However, the whole time Jacob thought he was with Rachel! Thus, Reuben was conceived through trickery and deception, bringing a certain spiritual stain upon him. Later on, Reuben “mounted the bed” of his father (Genesis 35:22, 49:4), and apparently slept with Jacob’s wife Bilhah (originally Rachel’s maidservant). Therefore, Reuben lost his status as the firstborn son. Instead, the firstborn status went to Joseph, who was meant to be the firstborn all along since Jacob intended to marry Rachel. In Torah law, the firstborn receives a double portion from his father’s inheritance, and so, Joseph had two tribes – and two territories – issue from him, that of Menashe and Ephraim.
After Reuben’s birth, Jacob and Leah had Shimon, Levi, and Judah. These three were conceived in holiness, without any deception. At this point, Rachel was still childless so she suggested that Jacob use her maidservant Bilhah as a surrogate. Bilhah had two children: Dan and Naftali.
Now it was Leah’s turn to be jealous. Seeing that she stopped having children, Leah gave her own maidservant Zilpah to Jacob as a surrogate. Zilpah conceived and Leah called the child Gad. Peculiarly, the Torah states that Leah named him thus from the word bagad. This word literally means “traitor”. To avoid negative connotations, the word is traditionally split in two and read as ba gad, “luck has come”. But the Torah makes no such division. In fact, Rashi comments here that Leah said bagad because she felt like Jacob had cheated on her! Perhaps she regretted giving her maidservant to her beloved husband.
The Arizal goes further, pointing out another deception based on a careful reading of the verses. The night that Gad was conceived, Jacob was supposed to be with Leah. Instead, Leah wanted children so badly that she secretly had Zilpah go in her place! Jacob was deceived yet again. This child, too, would have a spiritual stain upon him, like Reuben. Zilpah went on to have one more child, Asher. The Arizal says that this name (אשר) is an anagram of rosh (ראש), “head”, since this time Jacob was in his right mind and had the correct intentions.
After this, Leah would have two more sons conceived in holiness, and Rachel would have her own two. Of the twelve sons, we see that two came into the world through deceit, and carried a certain spiritual defect. Thus, these two tribes – Reuben and Gad – were ultimately excluded from settling in the Holy Land.
What about the half-territory of Menashe?
Menashe was the firstborn son of Joseph. The Torah tells us that Joseph was married in Egypt to a woman named Osnat (Asenath), the daughter of an Egyptian priest. To solve the mystery of Menashe’s territory, we need to delve further into Osnat’s origins. The Midrash (Yalkut Shimoni, Beresheet 134) fills in the missing details.
After Leah had six sons, she had a seventh child, a daughter named Dinah. When Jacob returned to the Holy Land after twenty years with Laban, he settled in Shechem, and Dinah went out to meet “the daughters of the land” (Genesis 34:1). A young man named Shechem (not to be confused with the city of the same name) seduced Dinah and raped her. In their rage, Dinah’s two older brothers Shimon and Levi slaughtered Shechem and his compatriots. Jacob was not very happy with his violent sons, and for this reason, neither Shimon nor Levi would inherit complete territories in the Holy Land. Instead, each tribe received a number of cities interspersed among the territories of their fellow tribes.
Meanwhile, Dinah had conceived a child with Shechem. A daughter was born, which Shimon and Levi wanted to get rid of as well. To protect her, Jacob wrote a certain Divine Name on a piece of gold and tied it around her neck when she was abandoned (or fled). The girl hid in a bush, hence her name Osnat, which comes from the root s’neh, “bush”. The angel Michael (or in other versions, Gabriel) saved the girl and brought her to Egypt, to be raised by an Egyptian priest, Potiphar (or Poti-Phera), and his barren wife (named Zuleikha, according to Sefer HaYashar). Joseph met Osnat while working as a servant in the priest’s home. He knew he was meant to marry her because of the Divine Name on her special golden necklace.
The Arizal explains that Osnat’s spiritual make-up contained a holy portion (from Dinah) and an unholy portion (from Shechem). Joseph’s spiritual make-up, from Jacob and Rachel, was entirely holy. In conceiving Ephraim, Osnat’s holy portion combined with Joseph’s holy portion; in conceiving Menashe, however, it was Osnat’s unholy part that combined with Joseph’s, making their firstborn half pure and half impure. For this reason, half of the tribe of Menashe was inside the borders of the Holy Land, and half was outside!
In this way, the Arizal gives us a beautiful explanation of why Reuben, Gad, and half of Menashe were excluded from the Holy Land. Of course, when Mashiach comes and all of the spiritual rectifications are complete, the borders of the Holy Land will expand “from the Nile to the Euphrates” (Genesis 15:18), or from the Red Sea to the Euphrates (Exodus 23:31), and the territories of Reuben, Gad, and all of Menashe will indeed be part of the Holy Land. May we merit to see this day soon.