Comentário sobre Números 11:27

וירץ הנער THERE RAN THE LAD — There are some who say that it was Gershom, the son of Moses (Midrash Tanchuma, Beha'alotcha 12).

וירץ הנער ויגד למשה, The lad ran and told Moses; Why was the lad so upset that he told Moses that Eldod and Medod prophesied? Even allowing for the fact that he had adequate reason to tell Moses about it, why did he demand that they be locked up? Since when had prophecy become a punishable crime? According to those who believe that these two men were those who had been rejected out of the original 72 candidates we can understand Joshua very well. Moses had told the Israelites that seventy people would be endowed with prophetic spirit by G'd. All of a sudden Joshua saw that seventy-two people had become prophets. This could have one of two possible reasons. 1) Moses had not spoken the truth; 2) these people prophesied falsely. According to the opinion that these two prophets had indeed been part of the seventy elders who had been chosen, Joshua told Moses of the misdemeanour of people who had been bidden to come to the Tabernacle and who had failed to do so now prophesying inside the regular camp. According to Joshua these two, i.e. Eldod and Medod, committed two wrongs. 1) They ignored Moses' order. 2) They refused to become recipients of Moses' Holy Spirit but wanted to receive their Holy Spirit from a still higher source as a result of which they practiced their prophecy within the general camp.

וירץ הנער, “The disciple ran.” The lad in question was Gershon, son of Moses. The reason the Torah adds the words “the servant of Moses since his youth” in verse 28 is that he was one of the choicest among a number of men who acted as Moses’ disciples.

Some say that this was Gershom son of Moshe. Since it is written “the youth,” which implies someone obvious, and there was no one more obvious than Gershom who was the firstborn son of Moshe.

וירץ הנער, “the lad ran;” the lad was Moses’ son Gershom.

ויגד למשה אלדוד ומידד מתנבאים במחנה “he told Moses: “Eldod and Meydod are prophesying within the boundaries of the camp.” These two men were (half) brothers of Moses. When the Torah was given, and certain types of family members were no longer allowed to live in married union together, such couples separated in accordance with the law. This caused sorrow among such families as we know from verse 10 in our chapter where Moses is portrayed as listening to the weeping of families which had been broken up as a result of the new laws. (Compare Talmud, tractate Shabbat folio 130.) Amram, Moses’ father, was also affected by these new laws, as when Pharaoh had decreed that all male Jewish babies were to be downed, he had divorced his wife Yocheved, who was his aunt. He had remarried and Eldod and Meydod were sons sired by him from this marriage. Their named reflected that they were compensations for a marriage broken up as a result of the prohibition to marry one’s aunt. [I find this hard to understand as the new laws came into existence after Moses, son of Yocheved, was at least 81 years old, and any children his father could have sired from another wife subsequently could not have been more than babies at the time when the demand aired by the Israelites for meat could have happened. How could such babies have prophesied, much less have been taken seriously if they did? Besides we have no reason to assume that Amram had left Egypt at the Exodus as his son Moses by Yocheved, who had married him at the age of 130, so how old must he have been at the time of the Exodus? Ed.] Our author claims to have found a manuscript of a certain Rabbi Amram, son of a Rabbi Hillel, who had lived in the land of Israel, in which the author writes as follows: “I have personally seen the graves of Eldod and Meydod brother of Aaron through his father’s side but not from the same mother.”’ Some scholars claim that Eldod is identical with a certain Elidod son of Kisslon, mentioned in Numbers 34,21. Meydod is supposed to be identical with Kemuel son of Shifton in verse 24 in that chapter. According to Midrash Tanchuma, section 12 on our portion both these men had humbled themselves in five different ways. Whereas the other seventy men who had drawn lots making them elders, practiced prophecy only on that day, (as indicated in verse 25 when the prophecy concerned the imminent arrival of the quails). Eldod and Meydad prophesied what would happen at the end of the forty years, i.e. Moses’ death and Joshua becoming his successor. They were rewarded by enjoying prophetic status for an indefinite period. According to some opinions they predicted details of the last war before the coming of the messiah, the war involving Gog and Magog. Whereas the other seventy elders did not enter the Holy Land, these two men did. We know that Kisslon and Kemuel entered the Holy Land (Numbers 34). The names of the other seventy elders were not mentioned by the Torah, whereas the names of these men were mentioned. The reason why the prophetic powers of the seventy elders ceased, was that they had been a “’branch” of Moses’ prophetic powers, whereas these two men received their prophetic power directly from G–d. The Holy Spirit is described as functioning when they were not in the vicinity of Moses. This is why the Torah describes their prophesying “inside the camp” not only while on sacred ground next to the Tabernacle. This is the conclusion arrived at in the Talmud tractate Sanhedrin folio 17. The author finds it difficult to believe that these two men had been half-brothers of Moses seeing that according to the Torah in Numbers chapter 34, Elidod and Kisslon were members of the tribe of Binyamin. Kemuel is described there as a member of the tribe of Ephrayim.