Two points I jot down this year:
1) For years I really didn’t have a clear pshat in the words, אֶחָד אָחֻז מִן הַחֲמִשִּׁים. People told me that the phrase means one in fifty. But what’s אָחֻז? Does it mean like we use it today? It is implied not, the Targum renders, דְּיִתָּחַד. But what does That mean? Anyway, to make a longer story shorter, my eyes fell upon a Chezkuni this year:
כשהלויים נטלו עשרה באלף, הכהנים נטלו בו אחד כנגדן שלא היו הם אלא אחד מאחת עשרה ידות שבמשפחות לוי כיצד משפחות לוי חמש ומחצה משפחת הלבני וחברוני המחלי והמושי העמרמי וחצי של יצהר כמו שפי׳ בפרשת פנחס ומשפחת העמרמי היתה חציה כהנים וחציה לויים הרי לך הכהנים אחת מאחת עשרה ידות שבמשפחות לוי.
Keeping this indeed short, it comes out according the cheshbon that he makes that it is indeed one in fifty.
I told this over to my friend R. Moshe Ben-Shem, and asked him if he ever heard an explanation for אָחֻז? He told me that he once heard from R. Meir Milikovsky, the Rebbe’s son, approx. (because he doesn’t remember exactly): That the first batch wasn’t separated by counting the whole thing. When they counted, when they got to 500, so they took one to the side. The same thing at 1000.
But when they came to the second batch, the meches for the levi’im, so then they already knew how many then had, because they counted them for the first batch. So the second meches could be done by just separating what they had.
R. Moshe didn’t tell me this, he knew that he didn’t remember everything, but it seems to me to add, and I imagine that this was also included in R. Meir’s words, that they didn’t know when they reached the half way point. They just counted and each 500 separated one. So then when they finished and knew exactly how much they had, so double the amount that they needed for the meches for the Cohanim was already separated. If so, then that was already אחוז, that was already held, so to speak.
2) I saw this week, also a Chezkuni, about how half of shevet Menacha came into the picture, listen to this:
ולחצי שבט מנשה בני מנשה: לא שאלו להם נחלה בארץ סיחון ועוג רק בני ראובן וגד שאלו אלא שעל ידי שאביהם גרם להם לשבטים שקרעו בגדיהם במעשה הגביע נתנה לו נחלתו בשני חלקים בשני עברי הירדן.
