What happened to the Reubenites and Gadites? Leviticus Rabbah 3:1
According to 1 Chronicles 5:26, Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria (ruled 745-727 BC) deported the Reubenites, Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh to "Halah, Habor, Hara, and the Gozan River."
Redeeming Relevance by Francis Nataf [not sure about this author, comments please]
“Tzvi Mauer and Urim Publications continue to provide a warm yet highly professional editorial home for the Redeeming Relevance series. I feel privileged to be involved with Urim, which has done the Jewish community an invaluable service by putting out so many important titles. May they continue to publish many more works of lasting value.”
פדיון הרלוונטיות על במדבר
, פרק חמישי י״ז-כ״ט
https://www.sefaria.org.il/ THE TWO LOST TRIBES
<a href= Redeeming_Relevance%3B_Numbers%2C_CHAPTER_5_Reuven_and_Gad%3B_The_Two_Lost_Tribes.35?lang=he&with=all&lang2=he>THE TWO LOST TRIBES<a>
Having looked at some of the themes common to all the tribes, it is time to return to the Torah’s interest in their differentiation. Some tribes are barely mentioned in the Torah, and in those cases we will not attempt to create something from nothing. Instead we will concentrate on the many tribes that are described in ways that allow us to absorb concepts that the Torah seems clearly interested in our understanding. We will devote the remaining chapters of the book to those tribes.
In Chapter One, we noted that the Reuven degel formation was made up of less successful tribes. While the story of Gad and Reuven’s request to settle in Transjordan stands at the center of the issue and thus begs our evaluation of it, there are several other reasons for G–d’s choice of specifically Gad and Shimon to complete Reuven’s formation. Since Reuven and Gad chose a common path, we will discuss them in this chapter. We will get back to the other member of the formation, Shimon – together with Levi – only in a later chapter.
The Decline of Reuven
As we discussed earlier, the Torah hints to the inferiority of the tribe of Reuven by placing his formation behind that of Yehudah, as well as by positioning him strategically in the various tribal listings such that even though he is the firstborn he is often not at the top of the list. We also pointed out that the decline of the tribe of Reuven parallels their progenitor’s earlier fall from leadership. In the book of Bereshit, Reuven seems to be tortured by the prospect of leadership. Understanding the responsibility that traditionally accompanies the firstborn but not having the requisite character, Reuven often responds to crises in a rash and emotional fashion.
We see this when he tears his clothes and bemoans his own fate after returning to the pit to find Yosef missing. We also see it when, while trying to convince Ya’akov to let the brothers go back to Egypt, he offers his father the right to kill his own children if he comes back without Binyamin. And finally we see it in Reuven’s disgrace of Bilhah, Rachel’s maidservant and one of Ya’akov’s wives.
As a result, his father proclaims him to be as “instable as water.” Thus it follows that Ya’akov designates Yehudah, and to a lesser extent Yosef, to take Reuven’s natural position of leadership. Turning our attention to his descendants in the book of Bemidbar, we will not surprisingly note a similar ambivalence regarding leadership which ultimately leads to the tribe’s complete withdrawal from such a role. We will now see how this plays itself out.
The only individuals from the tribe of Reuven that we know much about are Datan and Aviram, whose fame – or infamy – stems from their being among the major players in the Korach rebellion. Together with Ohn ben Pelet, they are described as bnei Reuven, sons of Reuven, a rather rare description of specific individuals within a tribe. This term stands out further because it appears right before the mention of other members of their party, who are described as bnei Yisrael.
Some commentators note that the Torah is emphasizing Datan and Aviram’s tribal identity to explain why they objected to Moshe’s leadership. Quite simply, they had neither accepted nor recognized the transfer of leadership away from their own tribe – of whom they were leaders – to Moshe and the Levites. (Abarbanel even suggests that Moshe was prepared to make concessions to them in recognition of this, in his opinion, understandable claim.)
The notion that these Reuvenite leaders are particularly disturbed by someone outside of their tribe holding the reins of leadership is reinforced by their emphasis on the leadership issue when they refuse to meet with Moshe. They ask rhetorically whether Moshe was to rule over them, in view of what they saw as a record of failure. Korach and his other followers, in contrast, had seemingly different, albeit related, concerns.
As opposed to what he would say later, Korach’s opening demand that there be no leadership whatsoever likely resonated most powerfully with the Reuvenites. True, it would have also taken power away from the tribe of Reuven, but this might not have been as unwelcome to them as we might think, considering that it was not necessarily out of jealousy that they resented Moshe’s ascendance.
Rather it was a constant reminder of their own incompetence, which was reinforced right after the affair of the spies. There, true leadership had been shown by the delegates of the ascendant tribes of Yehudah and Ephraim (Yosef) as opposed to Reuven.
Any tribe taking Reuven’s place in leadership always reminded the tribe of their failure to execute that which was expected of them as the firstborn. From this perspective, then, abolishing any hierarchy could be a way to erase their shame. What we see here is a manifestation of an inner turmoil which no other tribe would have to deal with. Thus, their alliance with Korach’s original public stance comes as no surprise.
It follows naturally, then, that once Korach moves away from his initial position of anarchy and agrees to a contest for the priesthood, Datan and Aviram separate themselves from his cause. That is why Moshe makes a separate appeal to them, only to be rebuffed by a stronger and more emotional tirade than anything we hear from Korach himself. In this, they remind us of the emotional instability that Ya’akov identified in their ancestor.
Yet, what is most important here is that the Reuvenite leaders return to Korach’s first position, which reveals that their only real interest is in dethroning Moshe. Since they don’t view themselves as candidates for the priesthood, the proposed contest between the Korach contingent and Aharon will not help them. The only thing they are interested in is the complete abolishment of leadership – and with it, their shame.
Moshe and Aharon held two types of leadership in the desert, that of the king and that of the high priest, respectively. As the contest for leadership from which Datan and Aviram distanced themselves was centered on the latter, it became an inner Levite affair between Korach and Moshe/Aharon. This should not surprise us, since the priestly rites had previously belonged to all firstborn males regardless of which tribe they were from. That means that this role had never belonged to Reuven.
Hence, the fact that the test was over ritual leadership and not political and social leadership could also be a reason why Datan and Aviram were uninterested in the contest. Yet, this alone does not explain their behavior; why didn’t they ask for their own showdown over what did have meaning for them? It seems more reasonable to conclude, then, that Datan and Aviram were against the establishment of any new leadership – for them, Korach would be just as bad as Moshe. The pair’s concern was to pursue an exclusively negative campaign against the concept of leadership altogether. Once Korach and his adherents veered from this, they pursued the struggle on their own.
It is tempting to see this approach as a key to the particular and peculiar punishment meted out to Datan and Aviram. As opposed to Korach’s followers, for whom the contest over the priesthood resulted in their being burned alive, Datan and Aviram, together with their constituency, were swallowed up by the earth – which was to leave no trace of them. On some level, this is an appropriate response to what the Reuvenites really wanted – an end to their shame.
Neither is it so different from what eventually happened to the rest of their tribe: their withdrawal to the other side of the Jordan, tucked away in the southeastern corner of Jewish habitation and out of sight from the rest of Israel and its new leaders. One way or another, then, the fate of Reuven was essentially to disappear.
As we continue in the story, we see still more evidence that Datan and Aviram’s claim against Moshe was based on his presumed usurpation of their tribal claim to leadership. As a sort of footnote to the struggle, the test involving the tribal staffs brings more testimony to what was really in question. Once Moshe’s other opponents, i.e., the 250 adherents of Korach who took part in the fire pan contest, had been killed, the prince of each tribe was told to lay his staff in the tent of meeting in order to see which one would miraculously bloom.
The “staff test” is a clear sign that there was confusion in the camp regarding who should have the right to the national leadership altogether. Had it only been a question of which Levite should preside over the ritual service, this test would have been out of place. Rather, even though the earth’s swallowing up Datan and Aviram had already demonstrated to the Jews that Moshe’s leadership was divinely sanctioned, it wasn’t enough. Apparently, a new, intertribal test was required in which Moshe would need to be completely passive, since there were those –especially in the tribe of Reuven, presumably – who still contested his and his tribe’s leadership.
It is worth noting that the next time the Levites take power by appointing one of their own as the political leader, i.e., at the time of the Hasmoneans, their action was criticized by the rabbis as a Levite usurpation of power that was reserved for the tribe of Yehudah. Still, the two cases are quite different. In the desert and into the early days of the Israelite commonwealth, political leadership had not yet been given to one tribe alone.
Until such a situation emerged and the Davidic line would firmly consolidate the sociopolitical leadership for Yehudah, it could be taken on by anyone capable of the task, including the Levites. Accordingly, the Shofetim, the early political leaders in the commonwealth, came from many different tribes. This was likely the position that the other tribes accepted even when they were in the desert, but it was apparently not accepted by Reuven, whose opposition was coming from a position of assumed entitlement.
Given Datan and Aviram’s enthusiastic support of Korach’s original call for political anarchy discussed above, the recalcitrant Reuvenites who survived them were no more interested in reclaiming the leadership for Reuven than they had been before. They too felt a guilt-induced inclination to protest its being taken by others, whether from one specific tribe or from any of them. Since the very notion of leadership reminded them of their own perceived failure and resulting anxiety, they would have been likely to protest almost anything having to do with leadership at all.
Whether the tribe of Reuven desired their own leadership of the Jewish people or no leadership at all, their desert defeat and its subsequent confirmation via the staffs was a watershed event for their aspirations — or at least, for their pretentions to leadership. Since it had now been fully established that Reuven had no particular claim to the leadership, the tribe would need to forge a new identity in line with the changed reality. Although we don’t hear anything more about Reuven until nearly the end of the book of Bemidbar, when we do it appears that the transformation had indeed taken place.
The next mention of Reuven, which narrates their decision to settle in Transjordan together with Gad, should be viewed as their formal abdication of any claims to leadership. Not only is this obvious from Reuven’s geographical separation from the other tribes, it is also indicated by the order of the two tribes that confront Moshe here. Many commentators note that as the head of the degel formation and the firstborn, Reuven should have appeared before Gad.
While at the beginning of the Transjordan narrative we do find Reuven before Gad, immediately afterward and throughout the discussion between the two tribes and Moshe, we see Gad before Reuven. For these commentators, this means that Gad is the leader of the initiative and Reuven merely the follower. Below we will discuss how Gad came to such a position, yet still such a move is hard to imagine had Reuven not shrunk back, taking on a secondary role even within its own formation. One can actually imagine Gad doing the talking as Reuven sullenly watches, hoping for permission to be left in peace and isolation.
Understanding the background makes us now more sensitive to the events that caused Reuven’s decline. Yet the firstborn tribe’s early exile, which we will soon explore, indicates that it did not fulfill its critical new task of showing humanity how to deal with frustration and disappointment. Not everyone is born for leadership, but everyone is born to fulfill a meaningful role. Figuring out that role can be a lifelong project, but dropping out is simply not an option.
Gad – The Tribe of the Nouveau Riche
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