Musar sur Le Deutéronome 1:12

And all who are careful to observe these matters for the sake of the command and not merely to make themselves attractive and proud, even though this care of the body may seem like conceit — as long as it is his intention to serve God through cleanliness, there is great merit in him.

The Levites' cities absorbed those forced to go into exile because of their having committed involuntary manslaughter. When disaster struck the nation, the Levites too were sent into exile as we know from Psalm 137,3 which tells of the Levites being asked to sing the songs they used to sing in Zion. They responded by refusing, claiming they could not possibly do so on foreign soil. Our sages (Midrash Tehillim 137,5) say that they amputated the tops of their fingers so as to be unable to play their instruments. Israel without a rebuilt Temple is compared to כאדם עברו ברית, "just as Adam who had violated the covenant with G–d," in the words of Hoseah 6,7. Midrash Eichah Rabbah elaborates on this, Rabbi Abahu saying that G–d describes how he had placed Adam into Gan Eden, commanded him a single commandment, which he transgressed. G–d consequently punished him with expulsion and personally elegized him with the word איכ-ה, Ayekkoh, (Genesis 3,9), which can be read as Eychah, an expression of mourning as in Lamentations, and also as used by Moses in Deut. 1,12 in the same sense, until He was able to bring the Jewish people into the Holy Land. Jeremiah 2,7 describes this in the words ואביא אתכם אל ארץ הכרמל לאכול את פריה. "I have brought you to the land of the Carmel to eat its fruit." Proof that G–d commanded Israel to observe commandments in the Holy Land is derived from Numbers 34,2: "Command the children of Israel, say to them…when you enter the land of Canaan, etc." Israel transgressed these commandments as described in Daniel 9, 9-11. Daniel includes the whole people as having violated G–d's teachings, as a result of which the curses in the Torah were poured out over them. Our exile, too, was a result of such conduct as is stated in Hoseah 9,9: "I will expel them from My House." The expulsion was not only to a country adjoining their homeland, but also to far off places as is indicated by Jeremiah 15,1: שלח מעל פני ויצאו, "Dismiss them from My Presence; let them go forth!" In His elegy, G–d refers to the lonely and isolated situation Zion finds itself in as a result; cf. Lamentations 1,1. Thus the introduction of Midrash Eicha.

At the time Adam sinned G–d decreed not only expulsion from Gan Eden, but also mortality. The dual meaning of the expressions מסעיהם and מוצאיהם then is exile and death respectively. The decree was promulgated by the attribute of Justice, and the day that his expulsion occurred henceforth became the Day of Judgment, New Year's Day. This is the reason Parshat Devarim concerns itself with matters of דין, justice. It is filled with warnings, it alludes to G–d's "lamenting" the course man's history had taken with the איכה. It is symbolic that the numerical value of the word אלה, the opening word of the פרשה is 36, the same numerical value as that of the word איכה. It is no accident that Moses alluded to this when he said: איכה אשא לבדי, "how can I be expected to carry such a burden all by myself?" (1,12). Although this remark of Moses is significant in its own right, the fact remains that the death decreed on Adam was ultimately for his own good, since death has become the catalyst for rehabilitation (as I have explained at length on Parshat Nitzavim, as well as in my commentary on tractate Rosh Hashanah).