Torah Reading for Pinchas

This is Tzochar, mentioned among those who went down to Egypt, which is similar to צֹהַר “shining” and is thus a synonym of זֶרַח. However, the family of Ohad mentioned there had ceased to exist, as well as five families of the tribe of Benjamin – for he went down to Egypt with ten sons, yet here only five are enumerated, and the same applies to the family of Etzbon of the tribe of Gad – altogether seven families.

I found in Talmud Yerushalmi 2 that when Aaron passed away, the Clouds of Glory departed and the Canaanites came to attack Israel. The Israelites decided to return to Egypt and traveled back eight stops, from Mount Hor to Moserah, as it says: “The Israelites journeyed from the wells of Benei Ya’akan to Moserah. There, Aaron died.” 3 But did he not die at Mount Hor? And furthermore, there are eight stops in reverse direction from Moserah to Mount Hor! Rather, this verse tells us that they had turned back, fleeing the attack. The Levites pursued them in order to force them back, and killed seven of their families in the ensuing battle, and from among the Levites four families fell: the Shim’i family; the Uzi’el family; of the sons of Yitzhar, only the Korach family is counted here; and I do not know which is the fourth. Rabbi Tanchuma expounded that these families died in the plague that occurred in the incident of Balaam, but because of the decrease suffered by the tribe of Simeon in this census from the earlier census in the Sinai desert, it appears that all 24,000 who fell in that plague were from the tribe of Simeon.

This is Yov, mentioned among those who went down to Egypt, for all the families were named after those who descended to Egypt. In contrast, those born from then on did not have families named after them, with the exception of the families of Ephraim and Manasseh, for all their progenitors were born in Egypt, and Ard and Na’aman, sons of Bela son of Benjamin. I found the reason for this in the works of Rabbi Moshe HaDarshan, namely, that their mother descended to Egypt when she was pregnant with them, and therefore they became separate families although they were only grandsons of Benjamin, just like Chetzron and Chamul, who were the grandsons of Judah, and Chever and Malki’el, who were the grandsons of Asher.

If this is Aggadah, fine, but if not, I say a different, contextual explanation: Bela had many sons, and from these two, Ard and Na’aman, each issued a large family. The descendants of the other sons were named after Bela, whereas the descendants of these two were named after them, forming clans in their own right. I say that the same applies to the descendants of Machir, namely, that they were divided into two families, one named after him and the other named after his son Gilead, as he had many children.

Five families of the sons of Benjamin are missing; here part of his mother’s prophecy was fulfilled, for she named him Ben-Oni, meaning “son of my grief,” and in the incident of the concubine at Giv’ah it was fulfilled entirely. This I found in the works of Rabbi Moshe HaDarshan.