פירוש על במדבר 21:16

ומשם בארה AND FROM THENCE TO THE WELL — from there the flow of blood ran to the well. How? The Holy One, blessed be He, said: Who will inform my children of those miracles? — The proverb says: If you have given bread to a child let its mother know (i.e., since the mother has, to an extent, benefitted by this, and the child cannot tell her, you should do so) (Shabbat 10b). After they (the Israelites) had passed by, the mountains returned to their original positions, and the well that followed the Israelites flowed down into the valley and brought up from there the blood and the arms and other limbs of those who had been thus killed, and carried them around the camp, so that Israel saw them, and they sang a song of triumph, as follows (Midrash Tanchuma, Chukat 20):

And from thence to B’eir,²⁷³Verse 16. The meaning of this is connected with the previous [Verse 13], saying that they pitched on the other side of the Arnon, and from there they set forth on their journey and went round about B’eir since they did not enter the Arnon or any [area] beyond it, because it continued [to be] the border of Moab. Scripture called here the name of the place [“B’eir”, which means “a well”] on account of the miracle²⁷⁴As stated in the verse: This is the well whereof the Eternal said unto Moses: ‘Gather the people together, and I will give them water.’ [which happened there], but in the [section enumerating the stages of their] journeys [in the wilderness] it is not called by that name.²⁷⁵See further, 33:44-49. It thus shows that B’eir mentioned here was only so called on account of the miracle which happened there, but further on this place is called by a different name.

V. 16. ומשם בארה. Entweder: der Arnon fließt von dort zum Brunnen hin, oder: von dort kommt man zum Brunnen. חיא חבאר. Der Ort wurde באר, Brunnen, genannt, weil dort ihnen der Brunnen wieder gegeben ward, den sie vor vierzig Jahren vom Choreb her erhielten (Schmot 1, 7) und der ihnen mit Mirjams Tod entschwunden war, oder wahrscheinlicher, weil dort der Brunnen zur Ruhe kam, den sie erhalten und wieder erhalten und der sie bis dahin begleitet. באר wäre dann der Name des Gipfels, von welchem V. 20 spricht.

ומשם בארה, “and from there to a place called “Be-er.” The well mentioned here appears to have emanated in the place they came to immediately afterwards. It was water gushing out of a rock.

ומשם, “and from there,“ i.e. from the boundary of Moav; the warning against harassing that nation becomes effective extending as far as the place known as Beer, which is identical with Kadesh, which is part of Edom, where G-d gave them the well.