"The Israelites shall camp each with his standard, under the banners of their ancestral house" (Numbers 2:2).TYLER DRATCH: The flags serve as orienting devices, ensuring that every tribe sits in its specific place.
SHLOMO SOBOL: we need to count each person according to his tribe and confirm that each tribe is living in their assigned portion of Israel. Maimonides writes that in the days of Mashiach every person will know through Ruach HaKodesh (Divine Spirit) to which tribe they belong.
Moshe Benovitz: The rabbis in the Midrash tried to say that Ephraim represents Torah study and he was a Torah scholar and Menashe represents worldliness and he was Josef's interpreter. The child has to imagine Ephraim and Menashe in his own image, in the image of the child himself.
William Varner: Some have tried to identify England and America as the modern tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim and thus the recipients of these promises. This teaching of British-Israelism, which began in the nineteenth century, is now a doctrinal plank of many cults and white supremacist groups.
"Tribe shall not depart from Judah nor Staff from between his feet until Ephraimite~Pacific comes and to Him shall be obedience of Peoples" (Genesis 49:10).
ברגעים אלו בלוד: שור זועם נכנס למתחם הגדול של בנק לאומי, נוגח רכבים ומשתולל במסדרונות pic.twitter.com/RZpwI5quLb
— מאיר ליוש Meir Layosh (@MeirLayosh) August 22, 2022
Isaiah Horowitz: Regarding the rulership of Joseph, its only purpose was to enable the Jewish people to be forged into a single nation, and the kingdom of Judah [from David] to be established.
Stephen Epstein: Some went down the Mekong River into Vietnam, the Philippines, Siam, Thailand and Malaysia, while some of the Israelites moved to Burma and west to India.
