Special Issue IOSOT 2013 - Books and Journals

S. Japhet / Vetus Testamentum IOSOT (2013) 36-76 55
c) The word מגרש alone and the phrase עיר מגרש are turned in Chr. into
technical terms denoting the levitical and priestly cities themselves. This last
meaning is peculiar to the Chr. and is found nowhere else in the O.T.
1) 1 Chr. xiii 2. והלויים בערי מגרשיהם“‏ ‏.”הכהנים The RSV translation is literal:
“The priests and Levites in the cities that have pasture lands”. But ערי מגרש in
Chr. means “levitical and priestly cities”, and so the whole verse is: “Let us send
abroad to our brethren who remain in all the land of Israel, and with them to
the priests and Levites in their cities that they may come . . .”.
מגרשיהם again, Here ‏”כי עזבו הלויים את מגרשיהם ואחוזתם“‏ :13-14 (2 2 Chr. xi
is not only the pasture lands surrounding the cities but the cities themselves. It
should be translated: “The Levites left their cities and their possessions”.
3) 2 Chr. xxi 19 אהרן הכהנים בשדי מגרש עריהם“‏ ‏”ולבני This, again is translated
literally by RSV, “. . . The priests who were in the fields of common land
belonging to their cities”. In fact, the text does not refer to the priests in “the
שדה מגרש Jerusalem. common land” but to the priests who were not present in
them- is taken over as a whole from Lev. xxv 34 and refers to the cities עריהם
selves. Here again it should be translated: “The priests . . . in their cities”, and
thus it continues: “there were men in the several cities who were designated by
name to distribute portions . . .”.
The technical term עיר מגרש is found, as a fixed term for the cities themselves,
in later literature.102
In Ezr.-Neh. we find neither the word מגרש nor the technical term. Ezr.-Neh.
describes the settlement of the returned exiles, and among them the priests
and the Levites. Nehemiah mentions that “. . . The Levites and the singers who
did the work, had fled each to his field” (Neh. xiii 40) but the cities are not
mentioned. This is all the more significant because we do have evidence in
Ezr.-Neh. for the existence of these cities.103 “And at the dedication of the wall
of Jerusalem they sought the Levites in all their places to bring them to Jerusalem.
. . . And the sons of the singers gathered together from the circuit round
Jerusalem and from the villages of Netophathites . . . for the singers had built
themselves villages around Jerusalem” (Neh. xii 27-29).
‏“משחרב בית המקדש בטל מלכות מבית דוד ובטלו אורים ותומים ופסקו ערי II. (102 Tosefta Sota 13
אף לא 5: (Very similar in the Babylonian Talmud Sota 48 b). The Mishna Ma’ser Sheni xiv ‏”מגרש
The translations here too ‏.אומר:‏ יש להם ערי מגרש ”. . . כהנים וליים שלא לקחו חלק בארץ.‏ רבי יוסי:‏
overlook the special technical significance of the construct state ערי מגרש which is literally “cities
of a pasture land” and translate it “cities with pasture land”. Actually it should be translated as a
unit: “levitical cities”.
103) Cf. S. Klein: “The Priestly and Levitical cities, etc.” (Hebrew), 1934, p. 19.