The birth of Jacob’s twelfth son marked the end of the era of forebears. Benjamin, the youngest, completed the shevatim, providing an element that had been missing from their ranks.
Benjamin stood starkly apart from the rest of Benei Yisrael. He was the only son born in the Land of Israel. He never experienced the submission of bowing to Esau, as had his brothers. He was not involved in the bloody aftermath of the traumatic rape of Dinah. He did not participate in the sale of Joseph. Similarly, the tribe of Benjamin was fundamentally different from the other shevatim, in ways that both isolated the tribe from the rest of the nation and uniquely positioned them to fight on its behalf.
The Last Born
Rachel died a few moments after the birth of Benjamin, bequeathing on him a name but little else. He knew his mother only through stories, nursed as he was at the breast of Bilhah. And yet Rachel’s essential characteristics – her beauty,1Tan. B. Miketz 13. her deceptive ways,2BR 92:8. her tzeniut3״בשכר צניעות שהיתה בה ברחל זכתה ויצא ממנה שאול [משבט בנימין]״ Megillah 13b. – were all hallmarks of Benjamin.
Twelve years had passed since Joseph’s birth,4Seder Olam 2. and since Jacob emerged shalem,5Genesis 33:18. complete, from the dangers of Laban and Esau. His house was built; he was named Israel by God.6Genesis 35:10. The birth of Joseph marked a critical juncture for Jacob. Joseph was his ben zekunim,7Genesis 37:3. the beloved child of his old age,8R. Saadiya Gaon, Rashi, Ramban, Rashbam, Ibn Ezra on Genesis 37:3. who seemed to round out the patriarch’s household.9“These are the generations of Jacob: Joseph was seventeen years old… ” Genesis 37:2. And yet, Jacob was not done, and his house was not truly complete, for Rachel had not yet given everything that she could to Beit Yisrael. Upon the birth of Joseph, she recognized instantly that this must not be her final act – that “God should grant me another son” (yosif Hashem li ben aĥer), and even named Joseph in that hope. Only with Benjamin, who resembled her more purely than did Joseph, was the family of Israel to be whole.
There was still a stretch of land to go to Ephrath, when Rachel went into labor and had difficulty in her childbirth. And it was when she had difficulty in her labor that the midwife said to her, “Have no fear, for this one, too, is a son for you.” And it came to pass, as her soul was departing – for she died – that she called his name Ben-Oni, but his father called him Benjamin.
Genesis 35:16–18
Rachel had no share of the joy that should have accompanied this miraculous birth. As she expired she named her son Ben-Oni, often translated as “son of my sorrow.” She may have intended another connotation: “this one has taken my very life. I have put all of my strength [another meaning of on] into this child.”
Benjamin was the only child of Jacob to be named by both his parents. He was, in fact, given two names. Jacob firmly chose the other meaning of Oni – not sorrow, but strength – and renamed him Benjamin, or “embodiment of strength.”10Alternatively, “son of days,” that he may live a long life unlike his mother (Midrash Aggadah, Numbers 1.4–14), or that he was the ben zekunim, the son of Jacob’s advanced age (Rashbam, Genesis 35:18). The doubly named Benjamin was also the only son of Jacob to be born after the patriarch had been given his second name, undergoing the paradigm shift to Israel. He was born, as it were, into a new reality of a nascent nation, coming into its own power.11Simeon and Levi’s confident slaughter of Shechem (ויבאו על העיר בטח) (Genesis 34:25), and the brothers’ wholesale plundering of the city’s women, children, and spoils (27–29), illustrate the clan’s newfound strength. This family was already a force that had proven itself on the battlefield with Esau and Shechem, and received from God the explicit blessing of nationhood. This first (and last) ben Yisrael to be born in the national homeland became the “embodiment of strength,” indeed.
On a personal level, Benjamin was both a painful reminder to Jacob of a life cut short, and an infinitely comforting testament of enduring love. The depth of Jacob’s pain upon his beloved Rachel’s death affirmed the strength of his relationship with Rachel. This child, in the mold of his mother, symbolized both pain and strength to his father, and so he had two names.
The Predator
The language of Jacob’s blessing to his youngest son was striking – and perhaps not what we would expect for the one who was always a “child” to his father. Though Jacob was frantic to protect his last-born throughout the fraught negotiations with Joseph-in-disguise, in his deathbed blessing, he described Benjamin as a predator, well able to defend himself:
Benjamin is a wolf that tears (its prey);
In the morning he will devour,
In the evening he will distribute spoils.
Genesis 49:27
This blessing became so definitive that the symbol on Benjamin’s standard was a wolf. Though perhaps not aligned with the glimpses we found of Benjamin in his personal story, the imagery of a predatory wolf well matched the consistent description of the tribe’s military prowess later in the Bible. Over and over, Benjaminites were singled out as experts at javelin and archery.12Judges 20:16; II Chronicles 14:7. Ze’ev Ehrlich points out that the prophet Jeremiah, who was “among the priests in Anatoth, in the land of Benjamin” (Jeremiah 1:1), used archery terminology sixteen times throughout his book of prophecy, and four times in his Lamentations. זאב ח׳ ארליך, לך מצא את החצים, מקור ראשון – שבת מוסף לתורה, הגות, ספרות ואומנות, 9 נובמבר 2007. Saul and his son Jonathan were both lauded as exceptionally skillful among a tribe that was considered distinctly capable with the bow.13II Samuel 1:22; I Samuel 20:18–20. For more on the fact that such skills ran in Saul’s family, see I Chronicles 12:1–2. See also Radak’s commentary on II Samuel 2:18, and Avodah Zarah 25a. This aptitude made the Benjaminites a formidable foe, as they held their own when attacked by the rest of the nation in the period of the Judges. But the blessing of the wolf was multifaceted, revealing different aspects throughout this tribe’s turbulent history.
The Left-Handed Tribe
Ironically for the one known as Bin-Yamin, “Son of the Right,” Benjaminites are consistently singled out as left-handed! This irony indicates that the seemingly inconsequential matter of the tribe’s left-handedness might be of real significance. In each instance, the context was military:
Ehud son of Gera, a Benjaminite judge, was described as having a “withered right hand” (Judges 3:15). Ehud used this fact to deceive the Moabite king Eglon into believing that he could not possibly be a threat, before killing the king with his left hand.
Within the army that Benjamin pulled together to battle their brethren in the period of the Judges are seven hundred choice fighters, each “with a withered right hand, all of whom could sling a stone at a hair and not miss” (Judges 20:16).
The men from Benjamin who abandoned support of Saul and rallied to David’s side in Ziklag were “among the mighty men who helped in war, armed with bows, both right-handed and left-handed in slinging stones or arrows with a bow” (I Chronicles 12:2).
Whether due to nature or training, use of the left hand to fight definitely made for unconventional warfare. The combatant’s left-handedness surprised and disconcerted his opponent, granting a certain advantage. Since left-handed people have always lived in a right-handed world, they compensate creatively for the “handicap,” developing the shiftiness and flexibility so crucial on the battlefield. Ralbag, for instance, read Ehud’s limitation as a distinct advantage:
God established for Israel a savior – Ehud son of Gera – from the tribe of Benjamin; he was underhanded and crafty in battle. How so? He sent a gift to Eglon under the pretense of friendship so as to gain ready access to the king, and his obvious handicap [no use of his right hand] would have Eglon unsuspecting that he carried a sword.14Ralbag, Judges 3:16.
The predatory wolf of Benjamin successfully stalked his prey through underhanded scheming and honed guerilla skills. While the Torah and rabbinic literature preferred the “right” as a symbol of strength and justice,15Exodus 15:6; Isaiah 41:10, 62:8; Psalms 118:16. Also Yoma 15b. Yigal Ariel suggested that the south (Yemin/Teiman) was preferred in Jewish literature over the north, which was to the left. See יגאל אריאל, עוז וענווה: עיונים ביהושע ושופטים (חיספין: מדרשת הגולן, 1995), 42, הערה 212. the “left,” though traditionally weaker, had the advantage of surprise.
The Yemini against Amalek16This entire section is based on the writings and shiurim of Rabbi Matis Weinberg and on the explanations offered by Batnadiv HaKarmi-Weinberg. For the full treatment of these concepts, see Frameworks, Exodus, 107–19, 229–78.
The irony here – a ben-yamin (yamin meaning “right”) was really a lefty! – gives us cause to broaden the traditional definition of “strength.” Yamin indicates conventional might, whether physical or strength of conviction. But Benjamin, as demonstrated above, operated in unconventional ways, a lone wolf who could catch his enemy by surprise. This tribe was primed to defeat that other predatory wolf, Amalek, again and again:
Note that [the verse] does not say, “ze’ev toref ” but, “ze’ev yetraf.” Accordingly, ze’ev could be the object of the verb, rendering the meaning “Benjamin will tear apart the wolf… ” [as opposed to the more conventional translation, “Benjamin is a ravenous wolf”]. It will be the smallest and youngest of the sons who will drive the “wolf,” eternal Amalek, away from the flock of Jacob.
Hirsch, Genesis 49:27
Amalek, grandson of Esau, was the historic nemesis of the nation of Israel. This enemy stabbed at the very heart of faith, cynically attacking the warmth of the loving relationship between God and His chosen ones, coldly and cruelly claiming that all in life was happenstance and without meaning. At the height of Israel’s glory, just when God had made manifest His personal care for them by redeeming them from Egypt – “I, and not a messenger, I and no one else” – Amalek struck. It was a calculated kamikaze attack,17Tan. Ki Tetzei 9. aimed at cooling off the world’s fervor at the divine redemption of Am Yisrael. Israel was charged to “wipe out the memory of Amalek from under the heavens,”18Deuteronomy 25:19. to destroy the doubt and uncertainty that they sowed in every generation among those who sought an intimate relationship with God.
Yet while the charge was laid upon Israel as a whole, it was specifically Benjamin who was destined to defeat Amalek. This was alluded to in Rashi’s commentary on the second part of Jacob’s blessing, where Benjamin was told that he will “devour spoils in the morning, and in the evening he will distribute plunder” (Genesis 49:27):
Jacob was speaking of Saul, who arose at the beginning of the shining of Israel. Even when the sun of Israel sets, when Nebuchadnezzar exiles them to Babylonia, Mordecai and Esther [who were from the tribe of Benjamin] will distribute the plunder of Haman.
Rashi, ad loc.
Both Saul and Mordecai were champions of Benjamin who battled Amalek, one at the dawn of the period of kings, the other as the nation was in exile. Rashi is not alone in assigning “morning” and “evening” to specific periods of Jewish history where Israel battled Amalek. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch offers a slightly different explication:
Jacob’s final glance comes to rest upon the end of days, when the last of the world powers will be overcome.…Already in the early morning, at the outset of the nation’s history, [Israel] will deal the wolf a powerful blow, but in the evening of time [the end of days] he will destroy the wolf completely.
Hirsch, ad loc.
Benjamin was the shevet who defeated Amalek in every generation, at the outset of our history and at its commencement, because he harbored the potential of both his parents to battle the nation’s most nefarious foe.
Benjamin, as last born, was uniquely suited to counter Amalek-of-Esau. He had the distinct advantage of being born after Jacob’s renaming.
God said to him, “Your name is Jacob; your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel should be your name.” And He called his name Israel.
Genesis 35:10
“Your name shall no longer be called Jacob,” which connotes a person who comes in stealth and treachery [akavah]; rather, your name will connote nobility [sar].”
Rashi, ad loc.
Benjamin was born after Jacob redeemed himself from the stain of having attained the blessings underhandedly. He was born to a father whose rights were acknowledged; he was born after Esau surrendered the field. Until God renamed Jacob, the element of deception inherent within him was still present. It was only after the battle with the angel that Jacob prevailed openly, not through trickery, but through force of will. The angel renamed him Israel, giving him the strength to confront Esau. When they finally did meet, Esau fully and openly yielded: “Let what you have remain yours” (Genesis 33:9) – he conceded the blessings to Jacob.19BR 78:11, as quoted by Rashi. Jacob was once more given the name Israel, this time by God himself, just prior to Benjamin’s birth.
It was only Benjamin, the son of Israel, who could battle Esau’s ultimate expression: Amalek. This unique strength came from both his father, who emerged as a true contender (sarar) to Esau, and from his mother: “Amalek will only fall to a child of Rachel (BR 99:2)…since Amalek embodies the aspects of sorcery and deception” (Benei Yisaskhar, Adar 5).20It is appropriate that the month corresponding to Benjamin is Kislev, during which we celebrate the victory of the Maccabi guerilla fighters, whose slick and savvy underhanded military tactics routed and humiliated Antiochus’s Syrian war machine.
This quality of Benjamin – his underhandedness, if you will – was inherited from Rachel, who “held the distaff of silence, and all her children were likewise mysterious.”21BR 71:5, Esther Rabbah 6:12. All Rachel’s descendants inherited different aspects of this trait, and her descendants alone (Joshua of Ephraim; Saul, Mordecai, and Esther of Benjamin; Mashiaĥ ben Yosef), have the tools to defeat Amalek, peddler of equivocation and doubt.
Mysterious Rachel had ironclad convictions and unorthodox methods. Quietly, privately, she decided what had to be done and acted on her decisions. In consideration of her sister’s feelings, she divulged to Leah the passwords that she and Jacob had shared. Deciding to rid her father’s household of idolatry, she spirited away the terafim under her skirts and then lied about doing so. She was certain of her actions just as her descendants were certain of the rightness of their cause. They were powerful in their conviction – true anshei yamin – while their clandestine modi operandi rendered them the most capable fighters.
Benjamin was a ben Yisrael, the only son of Jacob born into an era of confidence in the primacy of the nation over Esau and his descendants. He was also a ben Rachel, uniquely positioned to counter Amalek’s cynical aims with his unwavering commitment to tzeniut. Tzeniut, roughly and mistakenly translated as modesty, really means the nurturing of relationships through assiduous and sensitive care for privacy and dignity. The more one values a relationship, the more he will invest in guarding its sanctity; this is tzeniut. To be tzanua is to protect the vulnerability of self and other, to prevent the depth of a relationship from exposure to prying eyes which might cheapen its value. Holiness and blessing thrive in the hidden22״אין הברכה מצויה אלא בדבר הסמוי מן העין״ (ב״מ מב.). – specifically, the blessing of power to counter the forces of Amalek.
It took sensitivity to vulnerability to oppose Amalek, who always attacked the defenseless first:
Remember what Amalek did to you, as you came out from the Land of Egypt. How he came upon you when you were faint and weary, and cut off all those who were lagging behind you…
Deuteronomy 25:16–17
Benjamin and his descendants had a unique attachment to tzeniut, inherited from Rachel.
And Esther did not reveal her origins – this teaches us that she kept her silence as did her ancestress Rachel, who held the distaff of silence. Thus her greatest descendants guarded their silence: Benjamin her son kept his silence regarding the sale of Joseph, Saul told no one about his anointing, Esther did not reveal her origins.23Benjamin’s stone on the priestly breastplate was the yashpeh (jasper), known for its ability to halt bleeding. The homiletic explanation breaks down yashpeh to “yesh peh”: Benjamin does indeed have a mouth, but he often chooses not to use it, stopping himself before he reveals too much.
Esther Rabbah 6:12
The same Saul who carefully guarded his unique connection to Samuel, the Esther who carefully protected her relationship to Mordecai, were best able to cherish and protect the dynamic, vulnerable, and responsive relationship between God and His nation. It was the children of Benjamin who were poised to most effectively counter that enemy of relationships, Amalek, who was always seeking to undermine the perception of involvement and concern that God maintains with His creations. Their strong convictions brought the Benjaminites to close rank and protect what they cared for through the hidden power of tzeniut. They acted secretively, not exposing themselves or the things they loved, and it was their very tzeniut that was the most potent weapon against the cynicism and coldness of Amalek.
The Isolation of Benjamin
For the good and the bad, Benjamin was removed from the formative experiences shared by his brothers. This isolation from Benei Yisrael gave him unique strength, but also isolated him. The danger was demonstrated most strongly at the end of the Book of Judges, when the nation convened to punish the Benjamite evildoers of Gibeah who had gang-raped a visiting woman to death. The tribesmen refused to hand over their guilty kin, and the nation was thrust into a civil war that ended only when Benjamin was brought to the brink of extinction.24Judges 20. It was only through a careful rehabilitation that its numbers slowly rose again.25Judges 21; see below, “Touring Naĥalat Binyamin,” for a more detailed account. The midrash corroborated just how depleted the tribe was. A few generations after the bloody civil war, general Joab ben Zeruiah, charged by King David to take a census of the nation, feared to do an accounting of Benjamin. He was anxious not to cast evil aspersions (an ayin hara) on the weakened tribe, so paltry were their numbers. PR 11, 43b–44a.
Benjamin was, in some ways, a lone wolf, standing apart from the rest of the nation, maintaining a solitary independence. While at times this bordered on secession and travesty, it also nurtured the fortitude necessary to defeat Amalek, the “wolf that Benjamin will tear apart.”
This sense of utter aloneness was found in Esther, who was perhaps the prime expression of the royal house of Benjamin. Like her ancestor, Esther, too, was motherless from birth.26Megillah 13a. She was raised by a loving Mordecai, but bereft of the settling and solidifying mother’s embrace. Her loneliness was exacerbated when Esther was taken away from Mordecai, and required to retain her hester – total anonymity and hiddenness – through the many years spent in Ahasuerus’s palace. Only at the very end did she reveal herself, in a moment of enormous self-sacrifice and dedication. The Psalmist depicts Esther’s thoughts as she walked toward her fateful meeting with Ahasuerus. The poetry reveals insight into the power of Benjamin: the intensity of an utterly personal relationship to God; the conviction in God’s ultimate faithfulness to this relationship; and terrible loneliness:27Megillah 15b.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are You so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? / O my God, I cry by day, but You do not answer; and by night, but there is no respite for me.…I am a worm, and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by all. / All who see me, deride me; they open wide their mouths, they wag their heads./ But if one commits himself to God, He will come to his aid. He will rescue him, for He desires him./You are He who took me from the womb; You made me trust You at my mother’s breasts./On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God./ Be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there is none to help.…But you, O Lord, do not be far off!…I will proclaim Your Name to my brethren; in the midst of the congregation, I will praise You.
Psalms 22
Esther saved her people through her ability to hide what had to be hidden until the right moment to act; through her intense and all-consuming relationship to “my God”; through her trust that God would “come to my aid,” though He may seem far. Speaking from the place of greatest vulnerability – “a worm, barely human” – she was able to assert the value of the relationship, and finally to share it with her “brethren” – with those who can learn to appreciate and protect what is so real to her.
The Temple in Naĥalat Binyamin
Benjamin was distinguished in playing “host to the Shekhinah”28Yoma 12a. (the Divine Presence): the Temple was situated in its naĥalah. The midrash interpreted Moses’s blessing to Benjamin as alluding to this special privilege:
God’s beloved shall dwell safely by Him
He hovers over him forever,
And rests between his shoulders.
Deuteronomy 33:12
The Shekhinah would rest in Naĥalat Binyamin.
Zevaĥim 54b29Also BR 93:12; Megillah 26:1.
Perhaps this was because Benjamin was the only tribe born in Eretz Yisrael, affording him a higher level of holiness than his brothers. Or perhaps it was because he was the only son who never experienced submission to an enemy, born after the family’s displays of deference to Laban and Esau. Mordecai, arguably the most famous descendant of Benjamin, himself refused to bow to the Amalekite Haman, citing his ancestor Benjamin as his example:
I am of the descendants of Benjamin. When Jacob bowed before Esau, Benjamin was not yet born, and he never in all his life bowed before a mortal. Hence an eternal covenant was made with him while he was still in his mother’s womb, that when Israel goes up to their land and builds the Temple, it will be in his naĥalah, and the Shekhinah will dwell in his border, and that all the nations will bow and prostrate themselves in his land. Thus, I shall not bow before the wicked Haman!
Targum Sheni 3:4
And perhaps there was yet another reason. How ironic that a tribe that established that it could all but rip the nation apart provided the leadership to bind the nation together. As is often the case, the greatest strength and the greatest weakness spring from the same source. The same self-contained, private individuality that could lead to isolation was also the source of leadership and relationship – as demonstrated by Saul, Mordecai, and Esther. And how very appropriate, then, for the Temple – focal point of national unity, the symbol of the tie that binds – to be located in the naĥalah of Benjamin.30The flag of Benjamin was an indistinct color; it was described as being an amalgamation of all the other eleven colors, symbolizing the unity of Am Yisrael (BaR 2:7). Also see Ramĥal, Igrot ve-Teudot 34.
Judah and Benjamin
The ties that bind began in the harmonious, eternal relationship between the tribe of Judah, scion of benei Leah, and the tribe of Benjamin, scion of benei Rachel, whose very naĥalot intertwine within the Temple. This relationship had deep roots, reaching all the way back to the interaction of the two brothers during their lifetimes.
After the disguised Joseph demanded that the brothers bring Benjamin to him in Egypt, Judah vowed to a terrified Jacob that he would guarantee Benjamin’s safe return, if only Jacob would entrust the boy to him.
Upon Benjamin’s arrival in Egypt, Joseph set up a test. He knew the depth of the jealousy and hurt the brothers felt over the favoritism Jacob showed to Rachel, and he wanted to gauge whether they had moved past those feelings. Joseph had his goblet secretly planted in Benjamin’s pack and then waited to see the brothers’ reactions.
It would seem that the brothers never fully trusted Benjamin to stay out of mischief. They remembered well how his mother Rachel breathed her last – a consequence, said the midrash, for stealing the terafim idols away from her father Laban.31Jacob unknowingly cursed Rachel when he exclaimed, “Whoever has taken the terafim shall die” (Genesis 31:32). BR 74:8–11; PRE 36; Tan. VaYetzei 13. Also Moed Katan 18a and Makkot 11a, on the idea that even an unintentional curse takes effect. They lambasted the wiliness of Rachel upon discovering the planted goblet: “ ‘The goblet was found in Benjamin’s pack’ (Genesis 44:12). The brothers said to him, ‘You thief, the son of a thief – you are just like your mother, who stole from her own father!’” (BR 92:8).
And yet, Benjamin was innocent of theft or deception. He did not steal Joseph’s goblet. He was not part of the sale of Joseph, either. He was the clean-handed, pure son of Jacob and Rachel – and Judah, mastermind of the sale of Joseph, stepped in to take full responsibility for Benjamin’s welfare. From his oath to Jacob, “I personally will guarantee him,”32Genesis 33:9. to his acknowledgement before Joseph of the special relationship Jacob would always have with Rachel, Joseph, and Benjamin,33When Judah declared before Joseph, “Your servant my father said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons’” (Genesis 44:27), he acknowledged the love that Jacob had for Rachel, Joseph, and Benjamin over and against Leah, the maidservants, and their offspring – including himself. Judah passionately insisted on bearing Benjamin’s fate in his stead.
Your servant took responsibility for the youth [Benjamin] from my father saying, “If I do not bring him back to you then I will have sinned to [you,] my father, for all time.” Now, therefore, please let your servant remain instead of the youth as a servant to my lord, and let the youth go up with his brothers. For how can I go up to my father if the youth is not with me, lest I see the evil that will befall my father!
Genesis 44:32–34
This arevut, or interconnection, between Judah and Benjamin marked the first true linkage between benei Rachel and benei Leah without the taint of the sale of Joseph.34Rashi on Genesis 44:32 interpreted Judah’s proclamation that he would carry the sin “for all time” as implying that his commitment to Benjamin was eternal, that he even bound his share of the World to Come up in his protection of Benjamin. Benjamin’s deep bond to Judah was expressed throughout history, and their arevut surfaced time and again. During the Exodus from Egypt, when the tribe of Benjamin forged into the Red Sea even before it miraculously split, they were joined by Nahshon son of Aminadav, a Judahite.35Mekhilta, Beshalaĥ 5, 31a–31b, Sotah 37a. The Beit HaMikdash lay right at the juncture of the naĥalot of Judah and Benjamin. Benjamin aligned with Judah when the kingdom split into northern and southern spheres, and from that point on they enjoyed and suffered the same fate as the Judahites.36I Kings 12:20–23.
The powerful link between the two tribes37Benjamin and Judah became so intertwined that one of the greatest of Benjamin’s descendants, Mordecai, was known both as an ish yemini and an ish yehudi. was perhaps most fully and painfully expressed in the passionate love between Benjamin’s royal family and King David of Judah: first in Saul’s love for David, then in Michal’s love for him, to the extent that she chose him over her father, Saul. Ultimately, Jonathan of Benjamin and David of Judah become the very model for a selfless love38״איזו היא אהבה שאינה תלויה בדבר? זו אהבת דוד ויהונתן״ (אבות ה:טז). – a soulful love, “ki ahavat nafsho ahavo.”39I Samuel 20:17, 41–42.
Benjamin hovered constantly between isolation and arevut. He could be dangerously divisive, and at the same time capable of incredible loyalty. His existential loneliness, rooted in family dynamic and manifest throughout history, created the neutrality necessary to heal the rifts between benei Rachel and benei Leah. This was why his naĥalah was nested between theirs.
Naĥalat Binyamin – The Unifying Naĥalah
That Benjamin would serve to unite the nation was reflected in the contours of his naĥalah, which sat as a narrow belt smack-dab in the middle of the country. Bordering him on the north was Ephraim, with Dan to the west and Judah to the east. Benjamin was buffered between these three powerful and stormy tribes, and cushioned the Temple within its borders.
A midrash: Benjamin was named after the southern direction yamin/teiman, since he was born in a land far to the south of Padan Aram, or because his naĥalah was to be the southernmost of the sons of Rachel. The tribe therefore rested easily between Ephraim, their namesake’s full kin, and Judah, who was also yamin, the southernmost shevet.40I am indebted to Rabbi Eliyahu Mallai for this point. ״נחלת בנימין,״ האתר למקוריות במצוות, http://www.tora.us.fm/tnk1/sofrim/mali/nxlot_bnymin.html. Benjamin was the neutralizing factor here, a tribe as comfortable with the left as they were with the right.
Benjamin’s close relationship with Judah and his natural blood relationship with the other sons of Rachel (Manasseh and Ephraim) positioned him beautifully to tie the two factions into a unified whole. Moreover, Benjamin’s naĥalah connected the other two, and both met within those borders in service of God.
An additional consideration, unique to the one son of Jacob born in the Land of Israel, is that the naĥalah that bore his name likely included his birthplace (see further discussion on the probable site of Rachel’s death and burial).
Touring Naĥalat Binyamin
Itinerary: En-prat (En-fara), Khubur Bani Israi’el, Tel el-Ful
Benjamin’s life began with Rachel’s death, so we begin our tour in Eretz Binyamin by exploring a popular contender for the site of Rachel’s burial. For many hundreds of years, tradition assigned a tomb south of Jerusalem, on the road passing Bethlehem and heading down to biblical Ephrath in the naĥalah of Judah, as the burial spot of Rachel. That site satisfies the descriptive verse in Genesis 35:17–19:41Also Genesis 48:7.
There was still some distance [kivrat ha-aretz] before Ephrath, when Rachel went into difficult labor…and Rachel died, and she was buried on the road to Ephrath that was Bethlehem.
Kivrat ha-aretz, as explained by Rashi, Ramban, and Radak, was a short distance. It seems that as Jacob’s family journeyed on the main road down from Beth-el to Hebron, Rachel began heavy labor, and the caravan stopped just short of Bethlehem, south of Jerusalem. Upon her death, Jacob buried her along that road, and indeed she “accompanied” her children, as it were, many years later, lamenting their exile, as they were led away from their homeland:
A voice is heard from Ramah, crying and weeping bitterly. Rachel weeps for her children; she refuses to be consoled for her children, for they are gone.
Jeremiah 31:14–16
How, though, was Rachel’s voice heard from Ramah (er-Ram, located four kilometers/two and a half miles north of Jerusalem, squarely in Naĥalat Binyamin), when she was buried in the famous Kever Rachel next to ancient Bethlehem? More urgently: given that Rachel was not buried in the family tomb of Me’arat HaMakhpelah in Hebron, shouldn’t we expect her grave to be found in one of her own sons’ naĥalot, rather than in Naĥalat Yehudah?42Sifrei, Deuteronomy 33:12. Also Ĥizkuni, Genesis 48:7.
The most compelling evidence that Rachel’s burial place was in Naĥalat Binyamin comes from the Bible itself:
Then Samuel…said [to Saul]: When you leave me today, you will encounter two men near43Alternatively, “coming from (Rachel’s Tomb)” (Tosefta Sotah 11:7). Rachel’s Tomb, at the border of Benjamin, in Zelzah…
I Samuel 10:1–2
Samuel and Saul were in Ramah. From there, Saul was to make his way to Gibeath-elohim, in Benjamin,44Given the multitude of eponyms built off of the root g-b-’ (Geba, Gibeah, Geba Benjamin, Gibeah of Benjamin, Gibeah of Saul, Gibeon, and Gibeath-elohim), it is highly probable some of these names refer to a single place. Gibeath-elohim is identified as Gibeon by Aaron Demsky (“Geba, Gibeah and Gibeon – An Historico-Geographic Riddle,” BASOR 212 [1973]: 26–31). Demsky’s opinion is rejected by Patrick Arnold in favor of an identification of Gibeath-elohim with Gibeah (Gibeah: The Search for a Biblical City [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990], 28). All of the g-b-’ sites listed above are located in Naĥalat Binyamin. by way of Kever Rachel, located in Zelzah – identified as a site on Benjamin’s border. On his way to Gibeath-elohim, he was to meet three men who were heading north to Beth-el. This is quite an accumulation of evidence for an alternate site for the burial of Rachel: (a) Saul was headed to a location north of Jerusalem (Gibeath-elohim), he was to meet people who were also headed north (to Beth-el), and was also to meet in the interim with men at Kever Rachel, located near or in Benjamin’s border; (b) “the voice of Rachel is heard in Ramah, crying bitterly for her children,” and Ramah was north of Jerusalem in Naĥalat Binyamin; and (c) sheer poetic justice demands that she be buried in the naĥalah of the son she died birthing. All this combines to make a compelling case for us to seek out Kever Rachel in Naĥalat Binyamin.45This is the opinion of Ramban and Ĥizkuni (on Genesis 48:7).
But what of Ephrath and Bethlehem? The story of Rachel’s death and burial mentions those two places, located south of Jerusalem in Naĥalat Yehudah. That question is what brings us to the first stop on our tour of Naĥalat Binyamin – the springs of En-fara.
Enter Yishuv Almon (off of Route 437, near Pisgat Ze’ev in Jerusalem) and follow the signs down to the national park reserve of Nahal Prat (En-fara). Park at the first ticket counter, and take the blue path down to the canyon floor. You’ll pass the Faran Monastery, dating back to the fourth century CE, built into the cliff face. If you examine the imposing cliffs closely, you’ll spot caves that have been inhabited for hundreds of years by hermits seeking the solitude and quiet that this desert region offers in abundance.
This ancient riverbed, fed by runoff from the watershed line and by the freshwaters supplied by the three intermittent springs – oases, really – that dot the 28 kilometer (approx. 17 mile) stretch between northern Jerusalem and Jericho, is one of the most breathtaking spots in all of Israel. The westernmost oasis is En-fara, a series of natural pools just east of the monastery. While dipping in the perennially cool fresh spring waters, have a look at the tel rising on the northern bank of the wadi. This site was identified as the village of Parah in Naĥalat Binyamin (Joshua 18:23).46The stream was most likely called Prath after the spring and town, and is the most reasonable identification for the River Prath that Jeremiah was commanded by God to visit, given that the prophet’s home was in nearby Anatoth (Jeremiah 13:3–7). That Jeremiah was also told to hide his linen girdle in a rock crevice by the river was a strong indication that the “Prat” in that text was not the Euphrates, which was both a considerable distance from Jerusalem (700 kilometers/approx. 430 miles) and was rimmed by gentle earthen banks, not rocky cliffs like Prat in Benjamin.
Proponents of the theory that Rachel was buried in Naĥalat Binyamin believe that Parah may have also been known as Ephrath, and that the toponym “Bethlehem” (Beit-Lehem, which literally means “House of Bread”) was a common name for a central city within any particularly fertile grain-rich region.47In Joshua 19:15, Zebulun’s territory (located in the north) included the city of Bethlehem, proving that more than one Bethlehem existed during the biblical period. The theory that there was also a Bethlehem in Benjamin is helped along by the list supplied in Nehemiah 7:25–27 of those returning from Babylonia to various cities in Israel: “The people of Gibeon, 95. The people of Bethlehem and Netofah, 188. The people of Anatoth, 128.” Given the order of cities listed, it seems reasonable to posit that there was a Bethlehem north of Jerusalem, in the tribal territory of Benjamin. These identifications provide a solution for the sticky issue reconciling burial in Naĥalat Binyamin with the verses in Genesis that have Rachel buried “on the road to Ephrath, that was Bethlehem.”
Drive west on 437, turning right at the Hizmeh junction toward Beit-El. About a kilometer north (less than a mile), between Hizmeh and Geva-Benjamin (Adam), there’s a rocky plain with five monumental rectangular stone structures, dated to the second millennium Bce, known as Kubur Bani Israi’el. No one knows the origins of the name for certain, but those who believe Rachel was buried in Naĥalat Binyamin place her tomb there. With Fara just a few kilometers off to the east and Ramah just a kilometer off to the west (less than a mile), Rachel’s tomb here at Kubur Bani Israi’el would conform with multiple criteria: accordance with the geographical details in Genesis 35/48 as well as in I Samuel 10, and the capacity, as it were, to hear her “voice” in nearby Ramah.48For compelling arguments in favor of locating Kever Rachel at its traditional site, south of Jerusalem on the road leading past Bethlehem, see דניאל משה לוי, ״זיהוי חדש-ישן למקום מיתת רחל״, http://www.daat.ac.il/daat/tanach/tora/rachel/zihuy-2.htm. Levy elsewhere suggests that Kubur Bani Israi’el was the common burial site for the thousands of Benjaminites who were killed in the civil war in the period of the Judges (Judges 20). For that opinion, see his online book, המקרא והארכיולוגיה, http://www.daat.ac.il/daat/vl/levi-mikra/levi-mikra01.pdf, 1:48–49.
Our next stop is Tel el-Ful (literally Hill of Beans),49An alternative explanation for the eponym Tel el-Ful is that “Ful” is the Arabic pronunciation of “Paul,” which itself is the Greek version of Saul. The contemporary place name thus retains traces of the site’s original name: Gibeah of Saul. located just west of Pisgat Ze’ev and overlooking the Arab neighborhood of Shuafat. There’s not much to see of the excavations that were carried out sporadically between 1868 and 1964. Archaeologists uncovered a double-walled rectangular fortress with four corner towers, as well as some interesting smaller finds, such as a gaming board and kitchen utensils. The site underwent four different periods of settlement and destruction. The archaeological record fully accords with the various events as recorded in Tanakh, and a visit to the site demands that you come with Tanakh in hand to review those events and ponder their significance.
When you arrive, carefully make your way to the second floor of the skeleton of the monumental building on the crest of Tel el-Ful. You are now in what was intended to be a summer home for King Hussein of Jordan. He commissioned this palace in 1964 to further secure his standing on the “west bank” of what was then Jordan. His contractor managed to complete the shell of this royal residence before the Six Day War broke out and then the area fell to sovereign Israel. Cautiously pick your way around this somewhat dilapidated palace. You’ll be transported right back to 1967, when this unfinished Arab chateau built on the ruins of the colossal palace of King Saul fell into the astonished hands of the Israeli army.
This site was originally known as Gibeah, and was clearly located in Naĥalat Binyamin.50I Chronicles 11:31. The scholarly consensus on this matter was interrupted by I. Finkelstein in 2011, who dated the excavations to the Iron II rather than Iron I period and therefore rejected identifying the site with biblical Gibeah. See his “Tel el-Ful Revisted: The Assyrian and Hellenistic Periods (with a New Identification),” PEQ 143, 2 (2011): 106–18. The first reference to the city is in Judges 19, which recounted one of the darkest moments in our history. A Levite living in Naĥalat Ephraim (in southern Samaria, abutting the northern border of Naĥalat Binyamin) pursued his pilegesh (concubine), who had fled south, back to her ancestral home in Bethlehem (in Naĥalat Yehudah). After spending a few days with her father, the Levite started traveling north, back to his home in Ephraim, with his pilegesh restored to him. The entourage approached Jebus (later to be known as Ir David, or Jerusalem) at evening, and were wary of staying overnight in a Gentile city. Instead, the Levite led his group to nearby Gibeah of Benjamin, the site where we are currently standing. He sat down expectantly in the town square, waiting for a townsman to offer hospitality. None was forthcoming, until an Ephramite who happened to be living in Gibeah welcomed him home. The Benjamite townsmen surrounded the house and demanded that the guest be relinquished to them. The Ephramite host offered his daughter and the visiting pilegesh instead. (Does the storyline sound familiar? Think back to Sodom and Lot’s guests.) The bloodthirsty mob grabbed the pilegesh, abused her all night, and left her to die on the threshold of the Ephramite’s home. One last gory detail has been seared in the mind of every reader of Tanakh: the Levite dismembered his pilegesh’s body and sent one piece to each shevet in Israel, as if to say, “You are all guilty for allowing Shevet Binyamin to act so inhumanely.”
In response, all of Benei Yisrael banded together and insisted that Shevet Binyamin hand over the evildoers of Gibeah. When the Benjaminites refused, the nation rallied to war against them. After two crushing defeats, the national army was finally victorious and burned Gibeah to the ground. Shevet Binyamin was reduced to fewer than a thousand men, and the women were decimated. The nation vowed not to allow their daughters to marry into the tribe of Benjamin, fundamentally eradicating the shevet. Eventually realizing how tragic such an outcome would be, the Israelites captured four hundred women from Jabesh-gilead, a city in the Transjordan that had not participated in the battle against Gibeah and Benjamin, and gave those women to the small remnant of Benjaminites as wives. The sacrifice of Jabesh-gilead to salvage Shevet Binyamin was said to be rewarded some years later, bringing us to the next chapter of Gibeah’s history.
When Saul from Benjamin was anointed king by Samuel (I Samuel 10), he ruled from his home in Gibeah, which was rebuilt after its destruction so many years earlier, during the terrible civil war. The place assumed a more regal title at this point: Gibeah of Saul. Now, the people of Jabesh-gilead, blood relatives of Benjamin (as explained in the story above), were threatened by their hostile neighbors, the Ammonites (led by their appropriately named king, Nahash). They appealed desperately to King Saul down in Gibeah of Saul, who galvanized the whole of Israel to aid Jabesh-gilead by doing something highly evocative: he took a pair of oxen, dismembered them, and sent the pieces throughout the regions of all twelve shevatim, warning them that their oxen would meet the same fate, if they did not join in battle against the Ammonites to save their brethren.
With this act, the evil that once emanated from Gibeah was rectified. Once, the dismembered pieces sent throughout the land were human flesh, signifying both the moral decay of this tribe and the call for the rest of Am Yisrael to rid itself of such a depraved element from their midst. Now, the graphic symbol of dismembered flesh – issuing again from Gibeah – indicated just the opposite. In this pointed message from King Saul, the beloved hero of a rehabilitated tribe, Am Yisrael was once again charged to band together to rectify a wrong. This time, though, the threat was from an external enemy. This time, Gibeah served as the place from which justice emanated, rather than as the source of terrible violations. Benjamin came into his own, uniting the nation under his leadership. Benjamin – shevet and naĥalah –redeemed themselves.
As we stand in Hussein’s empty and permanently unfinished palace, we recall one other event that took place right here, on Tel el-Ful, ancient Gibeah of Saul. Flavius Josephus told us that as the Roman general Vespasian besieged Jerusalem in 70 CE, his infamous Legion X was camped right here, awaiting assault directives to destroy the Temple. A visit to Gibeah of Saul is an auspicious moment to ponder how enemies of Am Yisrael, whether Roman, Arab, or, most tragically, our own in-fighting, can bring upon us such terrible destruction. The seeds of redemption, though, are also to be found in this place, where an ancient king transformed his nation from a people steeped in divisiveness and enmity to a strong and united Israel, bent on promoting justice.