פירוש על במדבר 3:14

AND THE ETERNAL SPOKE UNTO MOSES IN THE WILDERNESS OF SINAI. The reason for this statement is that since Scripture said above in the day that the Eternal spoke with Moses in Mount Sinai,¹⁵⁴Above, Verse 1. it refers back and says [here] that the command for counting the Levites was not given in Mount Sinai; for only the choosing of the [four] children of Aaron [as priests] took place in Mount Sinai on the day that He commanded Moses about the making of the Tabernacle, but he was not given the command about the choosing of [all] the Levites [as ministers to the priests] at Mount Sinai, but in the wilderness of Sinai in the Tent of Meeting, just like the commandment mentioned [above] concerning [the counting of] the children of Israel [about which it is clearly stated that it was in the wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting].¹³⁵Above, 1:1.
Now the tribe of Levi was not like all the other tribes, for [even though they were counted] from a month old and upward¹⁵⁵Verse 15 here. [unlike the other tribes who were counted only from the age of twenty years and over], they were still only twenty and two thousand,¹⁵⁶Further. Verse 39. and from thirty years old and over they were all together [only] eight thousand [and five hundred and fourscore].¹⁵⁷Ibid., 4:48. Thus, their number from twenty years old and over does not reach even a half of the [number of the] smallest of [the other] tribes of Israel!¹⁵⁸The smallest tribe was that of Menasheh, which numbered — from the age of twenty and over — 32,200 (above, 1:35). Thus the Levites, who numbered 8000 men above the age of thirty, certainly do not reach half of the numbers of Menasheh, even after taking into consideration a few more thousand between the ages of twenty and thirty. And they did not as yet carry the ark, [that we should say] that its holiness took a toll of them!¹⁵⁹According to tradition, the carrying of the ark involved great risk. Any of the Kohathites who was unworthy of carrying it immediately suffered a punishment; so also anyone who attended to it with an unwilling heart (Bamidbar Rabbah 5:1). But, as Ramban points out, when this census of the Levites was taken, they were not yet carrying the ark, since they only journeyed from Mount Sinai on the twentieth of Iyar. So the question reappears, why were their numbers so few? This is indeed astonishing, that His servants and His pious ones should not be blessed of the Eternal¹⁶⁰Isaiah 65:23. as were the rest of the people!
Therefore I am of the opinion that this is a confirmation of what our Rabbis have said,¹⁶¹Tanchuma Va’eira 6. See also Ramban on Exodus 5:4. that the tribe of Levi was not [subject to] the enslavement of Egyptian bondage and the rigorous work [that was imposed on the rest of the tribes]. Now since the children of Israel’s lives were made bitter by the Egyptians with hard work¹⁶²Exodus 1:14. in order to diminish them, the Holy One, blessed be He, increased them [miraculously] to overcome the decree of the Egyptians, just as He said, And as they afflicted them, so they multiplied and so they grew,¹⁶³Ibid., Verse 12. and just as it is said also with reference to the decree that if it be a son, then ye shall kill him¹⁶⁴Ibid., Verse 16. — and the people multiplied, and waxed very mighty¹⁶⁵Ibid., Verse 20. — since the Holy One, blessed be He, said: “We shall see whose words shall stand, Mine or theirs. ”¹⁶⁶Jeremiah 44:28. See Vol. I, p. 457. But the tribe of Levi [which was not subject to bondage] reproduced and increased in a normal way, and therefore they did not become as numerous as the other tribes. Perhaps also [their small numbers were] on account of the anger of the patriarch [Jacob] towards them,¹⁶⁷Genesis 34:25-30, and 49:5-7. for the tribe of Shimon which now had a large population¹⁶⁸See above, 1:23, where the verse numbers them at fifty-nine thousand and three hundred. decreased, so that at the time of their entry into the Land [they numbered only] twenty-two thousand [and two hundred¹⁶⁹Further, 26:14. — whereas most of the other tribes increased in the same period, or decreased relatively slightly]; similarly, Levi, the tribe of His pious ones,¹⁷⁰See Deuteronomy 33:8. was not decreased in the plague [caused because of Peor,¹⁷¹Further, 25:9. and yet at the time of entry into the Land they numbered only one thousand more¹⁷²Ibid., 26:62. than their present twenty-two thousand! Thus we see that it was the anger of the patriarch which affected the numbers of both Shimon and Levi.]

וידבר ה' אל משה במדבר סיני, “Hashem spoke to Moses in the desert of Sinai.” Nachmanides writes that seeing that the last communication by G’d to Moses had been introduced with the words ביום דבר ה' את משה בהר סיני, “on the day that G’d had spoken with Moses on Mount Sinai,” the Torah draws attention to the fact that this most recent communication took place in the desert of Sinai, when Moses was not in the lofty regions where he had existed for 40 days without bread and water. [I wonder at the difference in the nuance of וידבר את משה, and וידבר אל משה, the former perhaps suggesting a more intimate relationship between G’d and Moses while the latter was on the mountain. Ed.] At any rate, the Torah wants us to know that the appointment of the Levites as a tribe more holy than the others had not surfaced or been revealed to Moses already on Mount Sinai, i.e. before the sin of the golden calf. Only the sons of Aaron, as part of the tribe of Levi, had already been designated as possessing a holier status at Mount Sinai, even though they had not been told about it at that time. The Levites were different from the other tribes even in the manner in which they were counted. Whereas the general census of the other tribes began with males who had attained the age of 20, the male Levites were included in the count as soon as they had attained the age of one month. Even so, their total number amounted only to some 22000. They were counted from one month old although they could not perform their function until they had attained the age of 30. According to Nachmanides, at the time of the count of the Levites only some 8000 had attained the age of 30. At the time when the count took place the Holy Ark had not yet been carried, as since being placed in the Tabernacle (holy of holies) the Israelites had not moved from their encampment around Mount Sinai. Moreover, moving the Holy Ark was forbidden on pain of death. The reason why the Levites numbered relatively few members was that while in Egypt, the members of that tribe never had to perform hard labour, for just as Joseph at the time had exempted the priestly caste in Egypt from having to sell their property in order to secure food supplies from his storage chambers, the Egyptians had recognized already then that the Levites were to the Israelites what the priests were to the Egyptians. The phenomenal increase in the numbers of the other tribes had been G’d’s reward, compensation to them for the Egyptians having tried to hold down their birthrate by imposing a cruel regime on them, one involving back-breaking labour. It is also possible that the tribe of Levi was not so blessed, as Yaakov on his deathbed had failed to accord them the generous blessings he had bestowed on the other sons. Although the tribe of Shimon, at this stage, had become quite numerous, in spite of having shared Levi’s fate in Yaakov’s blessings, by the time the Israelites entered the Holy Land, their numbers had been drastically reduced also.

V. 14. Nachdem in dem Vorhergehenden (Verse 5-13) die Bestimmung der Leviten für den Dienst am Heiligtum im allgemeinen ausgesprochen war, folgt nun deren Zählung nach Vaterhäusern und Familien und die Überweisung bestimmter Dienstobjekte einem jeden Vaterhaus der Leviten, sowie dessen bestimmte Lagerstelle um das Heiligtum. במדבר סיני: auch hier wird, wie Kap. 1, 1, durch diese örtliche Bezeichnung der Zählung, mit Ausschluss alles politischen Äußern, die reine Bedeutung innerer Beziehung zum Gesetze gewahrt.