Commentary for Numbers 14:32

ופגריכם אתם — Understand this as the Targum does: (“But your carcasses — those of you — they shall fall in this desert”). Because in the previous verse He said of the children that He would bring them into the Land, and it wishes to state now: “but you will die”, this idiom is appropriate here — to say the word אתם (in addition to the personal suffix in פגריכם, in order to stress the contrast).

ופגריכם אתם, "As to you, you are already carcasses, etc." Why did the Torah have to write this verse, seeing it had already told us in verse 29 what would happen to the parents of these children? Perhaps the Torah intended to inform us that the children would not be allowed to carry the bones of their parents into the Holy Land with them, as the children of Israel had done with the bones of Joseph and those of the other tribes (Joseph's brothers).

פגריכם אתם, “your carcasses;” the meaning is that you are already like carcasses although you may feel perfectly healthy at this time. You will lie down some night and never wake up in the morning.

Bringing [the children] into the land. Meaning that He had discussed the children, recounting that He would bring them into the land, however they [the adults] would die. Thus the word אתם “yours” was necessary to differentiate between one and the other.

V. 32. ופגריכם אתם, das אתם hebt noch einmal den Gegensatz zu den Kindern hervor.

ופגריכם אתם, “and you who are already corpses;” this verse has been truncated, and it should really have been written in the reverse order, i.e. ואתם פגריכם, “and as for you, your carcasses etc.” This is also what Rashi had in mind when he wrote: “as per the Targum, your carcasses.”

The Torah may also have intended to tell us about another dimension of the death of this generation. Not only would their bodies die in the desert but they would experience an even greater indignity in that their very bodies would become the property of the שר המדבר, the spirtually negative force which rules over the desert. Scholars who have researched this matter agree that there is no more demeaning experience than to be told that after one has become a carcass one will yet experience another "fall." This is why the Torah speaks of פגריכם..יפלו, "your carcasses will fall." If the word "you will fall" had applied only to their actual death, the word "you will fall" should have preceded any word which described the death. To make this point very clear, the Torah wrote: "you who are already carcasses will fall." Clearly, this phraseology refers to something demeaning that will happen to their bodies after their deaths. The Torah is at pains to add the word אתם, "you," to prevent us from interpreting the verse as speaking of something that would happen to the grandchildren of the present generation. In view of the fact that grandchildren are often described as children, seeing the son is part of his father, the Torah was careful to prevent any misunderstanding by writing אתם.

I have heard in the name of scholars who have been expelled from Castilia that they interpreted the word אתם as a reference to Moses and Aaron whose death in the desert G'd had also decreed. Seeing G'd was addressing Moses and Aaron at the time, He used the word אתם when referring to what would happen to them personally. G'd provided a reason for His words when He concluded (verse 35) by saying: אם לא זאת אעשה לכל העדה הרעה הזאת…יתמו ושם ימותו. This can be understood as similar to the way Bamidbar Rabbah 19,13 explains Deut. 33,21: ויתא ראשי עם. The Midrash explains that the reason Moses was buried on the East Bank of the Jordan was to enable the generation of the spies to be resurrected at the time Moses would be resurrected. If Moses and Aaron had not died in the desert, the people would have thought that Moses led a new generation into the land of Canaan and thereby fulfilled his life's mission, whereas the generation which died in the desert was lost forever. Moses had to die and be buried in the desert to keep alive the tradition that eventually he himself would lead the generation he had led out of Egypt to the Holy Land at the time of the resurrection. This is, of course, merely an allegorial interpretation. It is quite inconceivable that the Torah would refer to the bodies of Moses and Aaron as פגר, "carcass." Their bodies were as refined as if they had been angels. The Torah would also not apply the tern נפילה, "fall," to two of the most illustrious human beings such as Moses and Aaron.