page_title: Bemidbar (parsha)
section_title: Numbers chapter 1
hierarchical_section_title: Bemidbar (parsha) / In classical rabbinic interpretation / Numbers chapter 1
caption_attribution_description: English: Pink Akoya pearl,524px × 524px,150,26 Kb Français&#160;: Perles Akoya roses, 524px × 524px,150,26 Kb Русский: Розовая жемчужина Акойа,524px × 524px,150,26 КБ
context_page_description: Bemidbar, BeMidbar, B'midbar, Bamidbar, or Bamidbor, is the 34th weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the first in the Book of Numbers. The parashah tells of the census and the priests' duties.
  It constitutes Numbers 1:1–4:20. The parashah is made up of 7,393 Hebrew letters, 1,823 Hebrew words, 159 verses, and 263 lines in a Torah Scroll. Jews generally read it in May or early June.
context_section_description: The Rabbis discussed why, in the words of Numbers 1:1, God spoke to Moses "in wilderness." Rava taught that when people open themselves to everyone like a wilderness, God gives them the Torah. Similarly, a Midrash taught that those who do not throw themselves open to all like a wilderness cannot acquire wisdom and Torah. The Sages inferred from Numbers 1:1 that the Torah was given to the accompaniment of fire, water, and wilderness. And the giving of the Torah was marked by these three features to show that as these are free to all people, so are the words of the Torah; as Isaiah 55:1 states, "everyone who thirsts, come for water." Another Midrash taught that if the Torah had been given to the Israelites in the land of Israel, the tribe in whose territory it was given would have said that it had a prior claim to the Torah, so God gave it in the wilderness, so that all should have an equal claim to it. Another Midrash taught that as people neither sow nor till the wilderness, so those who accept the yoke of the Torah are relieved of the yoke of earning a living; and as the wilderness does not yield any taxes from crops, so scholars are free in this world. And another Midrash taught that the Torah was given in the wilderness because they preserve the Torah who keep themselves separate like a wilderness.
  The Gemara noted that Numbers 1:1 happened in "the second month, in the second year," while Numbers 9:1 happened "in the first month of the second year," and asked why the Torah presented the chapters beginning at Numbers 1 before Numbers 9, out of chronological order. Rav Menasia bar Tahlifa said in Rav's name that this proved that there is no chronological order in the Torah.
  Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak noted that both Numbers 1:1 and Numbers 9:1 begin, "And the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai," and deduced that just as Numbers 1:1 happened (in the words of that verse) "on the first day of the second month," so too Numbers 9:1 happened at the beginning of the month. And as Numbers 9:1 addressed the Passover offering, which the Israelites were to bring on the 14th of the month, the Gemara concluded that one should expound the laws of a holiday two weeks before the holiday.
  A Midrash taught that when God is about to make Israel great, God explicitly states the place, the day, the month, the year, and the era, as Numbers 1:1 says, "in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tent of meeting, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they were come out of the land of Egypt." The Midrash continued that God then said to the Israelites (rereading Numbers 1:2): "Raise to greatness all the congregation of the children of Israel" (interpreting "raise the head" — שְׂאוּ אֶת-רֹאשׁ — to mean "raise to greatness").
  A Midrash explained the specificity of Numbers 1:1 with a parable. A king married a wife and did not give her a legal marriage contract. He then sent her away without giving her a bill of divorce. He did the same to a second wife and a third, giving them neither a marriage contract nor a bill of divorce. Then he saw a poor, well-born orphan girl whom he desired to marry. He told his best man (שושבין, shoshbin) not to deal with her as with the previous ones, as she was well-born, modest in her actions, and worthy. The king directed his aide to draw up a marriage contract for her, stating the period of seven years, the year, the month, the day of the month, and the region, in the same way that Esther 2:16 writes about Esther, "So Esther was taken to king Ahasuerus into his house royal in the tenth month, which is the month Tevet, in the seventh year of his reign." So God did not state when God created the generation of the Flood and did not state when God removed them from the world, except insofar as Genesis 7:11 reports, "on the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up." Similarly, Scripture does not indicate when God created the generation of the Dispersal after the Tower of Babel or the generation of Egypt, or when either generation passed away. But when Israel appeared, God told 
caption: pearls
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