Tafsiran Imamat 26:37: Tze'enah Ure'enah, Rashi, Rabbeinu Bahya & Siftei Chakhamim

“They shall stumble over one another” [26:37]. Our sages say that each Israelite is responsible for his friend. That is, if his friend commits a sin, his friends must suffer for him and sometimes all of Israel are punished for the sin of one Israelite. Therefore, Israel is compared to a pile of nuts. When someone wants to take a nut, then all of them roll away. So too are Israel, when someone commits a sin, the Holy One punishes the other Israelites because of that sin.¹²Bahya, Leviticus, 26:37.

וכשלו איש באחיו AND THEY SHALL STUMBLE ONE UPON ANOTHER — When they are running in order to escape they will stumble one against the other because they will be in a hurry to run away.

וכשלו איש באחיו, “they will stumble over one another, etc.” According to Sanhedrin 27 the Torah means that they will stumble each over the sins committed by the other, i.e. their reciprocal responsibility which they disregarded became their undoing. This is also what Moses had in mind in Deut. 29,9 when he described each Israelite as “standing upright” at that time, (i.e. not stumbling over his fellow’s sins). The example for this reciprocal responsibility was illustrated most powerfully when because of failure to admonish Achan who had taken money from the loot of Jericho declared sacred for the Temple, this sin became the cause of Israel losing its first campaign after the capture of Jericho. (compare Joshua chapter seven with special emphasis on verse 11) [Contrary to Moses who had asked G’d in connection with Korach why the sin of one man should cause G’d’s anger against a whole nation, in Achan’s case G’d spelled out that it did. Ed.] G’d tells Joshua that “Israel has sinned;” He did not tell him that “an Israelite had sinned.” The whole nation was held responsible for the sin of an individual. An accessory after the fact, i.e. someone who does not admonish the sinner has made himself his partner. Seeing that what Achan had done could not have been concealed completely, there had already been many accessories.
This incident prompted the sages in Shir Hashirim Rabbah 6,16 to comment that the use of the word "nut” in אל גנת האגוז ירדתי, “I went down to the nut-grove” (Song of Songs 6,11), describes that just as it is impossible to pluck one walnut without making the whole tree shake, so it is impossible for an individual to commit a sin without ripples of what he did affecting the entire Jewish people. This is what had bothered Moses in Numbers 16,22: “one man sinned and You are angry at the whole congregation!”

כמפני חרב AS IT WERE BEFORE THE SWORD — i. e. as though they were fleeing from before murderers. It means that in their heart there will be timidity, and at every moment they will think that somebody is pursuing them. A Midrashic explanation of וכשלו איש באחיו is: one will stumble by reason of the sin of the other (באחיו is taken in the sense of: on account of the other), for all Israelites are held responsible for one another (Sifra, Bechukotai, Chapter 7 5; Sanhedrin 27b).