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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Numbers 35:1 - 35:1
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Appointment of Towns for the Levites. - As the Levites were to receive no inheritance of their own, i.e., no separate tribe-territory, in the land of Canaan (Num 18:20 and Num 18:23), Moses commanded the children of Israel, i.e., the rest of the tribes, in accordance with the divine instructions, to give (vacate) towns to the Levites to dwell in of the inheritance that fell to them for a possession, with pasturage by the cities round about them for their cattle. “Towns to dwell in,” i.e., not the whole of the towns as their own property, but as many houses in the towns as sufficed for the necessities of the Levites as their hereditary possession, which could be redeemed, if sold at any time, and which reverted to them without compensation in the year of jubilee, even if not redeemed before (Lev 25:32-33); but any portion of the towns which was not taken possession of by them, together with the fields and villages, continued the property of those tribes to which they had been assigned by lot (cf. Jos 21:12, and my commentary on this passage: also Bähr, Symbolik, ii. p. 50; Ewald, Gesch. ii. p. 403). They were also to give them מִגְרָשׁ (from גָּרַשׁ, to drive, drive out), pasturage or fields, to feed their flocks upon, all round the cities; and according to Lev 25:34, this was not to be sold, but to remain the eternal possession of the Levites. לִבְהֶמְתָּם, for their oxen and beasts of burden, and לִרְכוּשָׁם, for their (remaining) possessions in flocks (sheep and goats), which are generally described in other cases as Mikneh, in distinction from behemah (e.g., Num 32:26; Gen 34:23; Gen 36:6). לְכָל־חַיָּתָם and for all their animals, is merely a generalizing summary signifying all the animals which they possessed.