Commentaire sur Les Nombres 32:41

חותיהם This is rendered in the Targum by THEIR VILLAGES.

AND JAIR THE SON OF MENASHEH. This man [who was in fact from the tribe of Judah, as will be explained] is [here] traced back by genealogy to his mother’s family [Menasheh], because he took his inheritance together with them [i.e., the children of Menasheh]. And in the Book of Chronicles¹⁵⁸I Chronicles 2:21-22. it says explicitly that he was a son¹⁵⁹Actually “a grandson,” for his father was Segub, the son of Hezron (ibid., Verse 22). of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah, and his mother was the daughter of Machir the son of Menasheh, as it says, And afterward Hezron went in to the daughter of Machir the father of Gilead; whom he took to wife when he was threeescore years old, and she bore him Segub. And Segub begot Jair, who had three and twenty cities in the land of Gilead;¹⁵⁸I Chronicles 2:21-22. and it is [further] written, And Geshur and Aram took the hamlets of Jair from them, Kenath, and the villages thereof, even threescore cities. All these were the sons of Machir the father of Gilead.¹⁶⁰Ibid., Verse 23. From this [fact that Kenath is here described as being amongst ‘the hamlets of Jair’] it would appear that Nobach [mentioned here in Verse 42] who conquered Kenath and the villages thereof was a son of Jair, [although it is not mentioned here], and therefore these cities were also called ‘the hamlets of Jair.’¹⁶¹Ramban here means that the explanation of the phrase at the end of Verse 42, vayikra lah Nobach bi’shmo is: “Nobach called it [i.e., Kenath and the villages thereof] by his name” [i.e., by the name of Jair — his father — mentioned in the previous verse]; hence these towns also came to be called ‘the hamlets of Jair,’ as they are described in I Chronicles ibid.
And the meaning of the verse, And Moses gave Gilead unto Machir the son of Menasheh¹⁶²Verse 40 here. is [not “unto Machir” himself, but unto] his family, for it was his sons who conquered it.¹⁶³Verse 39: And the children of Machir the son of Menasheh went to Gilead and conquered it. Similarly, And unto Machir I gave Gilead¹⁶⁴Deuteronomy 3:15. means “unto the Machirites,” for since Machir was an honored man and the chief of all his descendants, therefore his children were called by his name, and in the same way the verses refer to the heads of the tribes in connection with the inheritance [given to their children]: southward it was Ephraim’s, and northward it was Menasheh’s.¹⁶⁵Joshua 17:10. So also: The land of Tappuah belonged to Menasheh etc.¹⁶⁶Ibid., Verse 8. And when Scripture says in the Book of Joshua, And this was the lot for the tribe of Menasheh; for he was the firstborn of Joseph. As for Machir the firstborn of Menasheh, the father of Gilead, because he was a man of war, therefore he had Gilead and Bashan,¹⁶⁷Ibid., Verse 1. it also refers to his sons, who were men of war, for it was they who went to Gilead and conquered it, and therefore Moses gave them a great part of these lands. Perhaps Machir was still alive [at the time of the division of the Land in the days of Joshua], for the decree [against the generation] of the wilderness [resulting from the incident of the spies, that they were to die in the desert] had not been decreed upon him, as he was not amongst those counted by Moses and Aaron, being he was more than sixty years old [at the time of the first census after the exodus],¹⁶⁸Baba Bathra 121b. and he enjoyed longevity as did the earlier generations.¹⁶⁹See Vol. I, pp. 98-99.

ויאיר בן מנשה, “and Yair, son of Menashe, etc.” Nachmanides writes that this man traced himself to the family tree of his mother, seeing that he had taken possession of his ancestral land with that family. In Chronicles I 2,21 it is stated specifically that paternally he was the son of Chetzron, who in turn was a son of Peretz, son of Yehudah. [My version of the Tur, has this as Chetzron, son of Korach, clearly an error. Ed.] His mother was a daughter of Machir son of Menashe, as we have a verse stating: ואחר בא חצרון אל בת מכיר אבי גלעד ותלד לו את שגוב, ושגוב הוליד את יאיר ויהי לו עשרים ושלוש ערים בארץ גלעד, “after that Chetzron slept with (or married) a daughter of Machir, the father of Gilead. She bore for him Seguv, and Seguv fathered Yair, who had twenty three cities in the land of Gilead.” (Chronicles I 2,22)

V. 41. חות יאיר. Die Ethmologie von חוה als Dorf ist nicht sicher. Man glaubt von ”חיי“ mit verwandeltem י in ו, wie הוה von היה, und bedeutete es dann wie חית פלשתים einen Kreis von Menschen (vergl. Bereschit 18, 10). Vielleicht ist jedoch חוה lautverwandt mit ”חפה“ ,”חבא“ bergen, bedecken, und bedeutet sodann חוה das Dorf als "Schutzort" dessen Wohnungen vorzugsweise nur dem schützenden Unterkommen der Menschen bestimmt sind, nicht aber den Raum seiner eigentlichen Tätigkeit bilden, im Gegensatz zur Stadt, עיר, die organisch wie die "Haut" (עור) den Menschenverein umschließt und die Stätte seiner geistigen "Kulturentwicklung" (עור) wird (siehe Bereschit 4, 17). So ist auch die andere Bezeichnung für Dorf כפר, von כפר Schutzdecke, offenbar in diesem Gedankengange gebildet.

ויאיר בן מנשה, “meanwhile Yair, son of Menashe,” he was called after his mother, even though he was from the tribe of Yehudah (Ibn Ezra), as it is written that Chetzron. son of Yehudah married a daughter of Machir and sired Seguv from that marriage. Seguv in turn sired Yair, and they owned cities in Gilead. (Compare Chronicles I 2,21) We find a similar situation in Ezra 2,61 where priests were named after Barzilai the Giladi, who was not a priest. We cannot offer an excuse for how it came about that one tribe acquired part of another tribe’s ancestral heritage. We can only surmise that the rules of intermarriage between members of tribes did not apply as strictly in the lands conquered on the East Bank of the Jordan, formerly belonging to the tribe of the Emorites, as it did to the land west of the river Jordan.

ויקרא אתהן חות יאיר AND HE CALLED THEM “THE VILLAGES OF JAIR” — Because he had no children, he named them after himself, as a memorial.

ויקרא אתהן חוות יאיר, “and he named them;” ‘the villages of Yair.’ This was to commemorate Yair who had been killed in the battles for Ai. (verse 7) It is recorded here as it took place before the bulk of the country had been conquered, and was testimony to the bravery of Yair.