אַךְ־בְּ֭שָׂרוֹ עָלָ֣יו יִכְאָ֑ב וְ֝נַפְשׁ֗וֹ עָלָ֥יו תֶּאֱבָֽל׃ (פ)
Hanya tubuhnya yang merasakan sakit atas dirinya, dan jiwanya berduka atas dirinya.
Rabbeinu Bahya
זאת הארץ אשר נשבעתי לאברהם ליצחק וליעקב לאמר: לזרעך אתננה, “this is the land concerning which I have sworn to Avraham, to Yitzchok, and to Yaakov, saying: “to your descendants I shall give it.” In this verse Moses hints that at an appropriate time the Shechinah will return to the land of Israel, the time in question being the one discussed at the end of the Book of Daniel. In Berachot 18 the sages focus on the word לאמור in the verse above; Rabbi Yonathan says there: “how do we know that the dead are in verbal communication with one another?” He answers that we derive this from the word לאמור in the above quoted verse. G’d is reported to have said to Moses: “tell Avraham, Yitzchok, and Yaakov that the oath I swore to them I have fulfilled to their children.” The Talmud therefore concluded that the dead could communicate with one another, otherwise how could Moses tell all this to the patriarchs seeing that all of them were dead? The Talmud further concludes that the dead experience pain on their bodies, proving it from a verse in Job 14,22: “He feels only the pain of his flesh, and his spirit mourns in him.” The Talmud assumed first that the dead experiences only pain inflicted upon himself but not that inflicted upon others; later on, the Talmud concludes that the dead experience even pains inflicted upon others, and that they are not only aware of what goes on in their world but also of what goes on in our world. They deduce all this from our verse, seeing that if they did not know what was going on in our world what good would it do for G’d to tell Moses to tell them what He had done on earth? The Talmud retorts that this latter argument is faulty, for if the patriarchs had known what goes on in our world why did G’d have to instruct Moses to tell them something they knew already? The Talmud answers that G’d wanted that the patriarchs give credit to Moses for having told them, although he had not told them something they had not been aware of.
Tosafot Yom Tov
INCREASES WORMS. Rav: in the grave, where a worm is as painful to the dead as a needle in the flesh of the living. Midrash Shmuel in the name of R. Yosef ibn Shoshan: not that they were of the opinion that the corpse feels anything, but that anyone of refined mind should be pained during his life by the disgrace that will come at his death, and should attempt to minimize this disgrace and imagine while he is still alive that he feels the worm that will bite him upon his death, which is the same feeling as a needle in live flesh. He will then minimize this disgrace and not increase his flesh because this increases worms. I cannot understand what complaint a living person could have about the disgrace he may suffer when he has been brought to burial and submerged in dirt, where nobody sees or knows anything about whether a worm rules over him or a maggot eats him. There is nothing disgraceful about a disgrace that nobody is witness to, all the more so since the disgraced one is dead and knows nothing of this disgrace. For what reason, then, should the thought of this pain a person while he lives?
Their words, however, were truly spoken: it is painful for the dead person [Heb. met] himself. Not because they believed that he has sensation and turned non-existent things into existing ones, but because the pain they spoke of is the pain of the dead person’s soul, which is still in existence and which beholds the disgrace of the body and is greatly pained by it; even the non-Jewish sages have agreed that the soul remains after death. This is the meaning of the verse in Job, 14:22: “Only his flesh shall pain [Heb. yich’av] him, and his soul mourn over him,” per Ibn Ezra’s commentary ad loc.: yich’av here has the sense of destruction, as in “you will destroy [Heb. tach’ivu] every good piece of land with stones” (2 Kings 3:19). The word was borrowed for unfeeling objects, for whom destruction is like pain for a person. The verse explains that the soul will indeed be in mourning on account of the pain it feels at seeing and recognizing the body in which it once was. [*And it is on the basis of this verse that one opinion in Shabbat 152b holds that as long as the flesh has not decomposed, the dead know whatever is said before them.] This is what they meant when they said that the worm is painful to the dead person, i.e. to the soul that knows of this. We can further deduce that this is what they meant because in speaking of the dead person they didn’t mention “flesh” and in speaking of the living one they said “the flesh of the living.” They should have used the same expression, saying either “like a needle in the living” or “in the flesh of the dead,” but they did not do so because they hold that the pain is felt by the dead person himself, i.e. his soul, and not his flesh, which feels nothing.
You shouldn’t find it odd that the soul is called met, “the dead,” for we find the Torah using the word this way in the verse “or one who consults the dead” (Deuteronomy 18:11), which obviously refers to the souls of the dead. Since this consultation occurs where the bodies of the dead are located it is called “consulting the dead,” even though the consultation is actually with the souls of those bodies. In our case the pain is similarly said to affect the dead, even though it is the souls that are pained, because the act that brings about the pain of the soul is done to the body. This is what seems correct to me.
[*I later found that Kol Bo writes in Hilchot Avel that the reason for burying the dead is that the soul is pained when it beholds the body in disgrace and lying about unburied, and says: they had the same idea in mind when they said “the worm is as painful to the dead as a needle in the flesh of the living,” which is a parallel only in terms of the existence of pain, not what type of pain it is. I also found that Rashba in responsum 1:369 considers it obvious that the dead do not feel the pain of the knife, and cites the embalming process as proof.]
Their words, however, were truly spoken: it is painful for the dead person [Heb. met] himself. Not because they believed that he has sensation and turned non-existent things into existing ones, but because the pain they spoke of is the pain of the dead person’s soul, which is still in existence and which beholds the disgrace of the body and is greatly pained by it; even the non-Jewish sages have agreed that the soul remains after death. This is the meaning of the verse in Job, 14:22: “Only his flesh shall pain [Heb. yich’av] him, and his soul mourn over him,” per Ibn Ezra’s commentary ad loc.: yich’av here has the sense of destruction, as in “you will destroy [Heb. tach’ivu] every good piece of land with stones” (2 Kings 3:19). The word was borrowed for unfeeling objects, for whom destruction is like pain for a person. The verse explains that the soul will indeed be in mourning on account of the pain it feels at seeing and recognizing the body in which it once was. [*And it is on the basis of this verse that one opinion in Shabbat 152b holds that as long as the flesh has not decomposed, the dead know whatever is said before them.] This is what they meant when they said that the worm is painful to the dead person, i.e. to the soul that knows of this. We can further deduce that this is what they meant because in speaking of the dead person they didn’t mention “flesh” and in speaking of the living one they said “the flesh of the living.” They should have used the same expression, saying either “like a needle in the living” or “in the flesh of the dead,” but they did not do so because they hold that the pain is felt by the dead person himself, i.e. his soul, and not his flesh, which feels nothing.
You shouldn’t find it odd that the soul is called met, “the dead,” for we find the Torah using the word this way in the verse “or one who consults the dead” (Deuteronomy 18:11), which obviously refers to the souls of the dead. Since this consultation occurs where the bodies of the dead are located it is called “consulting the dead,” even though the consultation is actually with the souls of those bodies. In our case the pain is similarly said to affect the dead, even though it is the souls that are pained, because the act that brings about the pain of the soul is done to the body. This is what seems correct to me.
[*I later found that Kol Bo writes in Hilchot Avel that the reason for burying the dead is that the soul is pained when it beholds the body in disgrace and lying about unburied, and says: they had the same idea in mind when they said “the worm is as painful to the dead as a needle in the flesh of the living,” which is a parallel only in terms of the existence of pain, not what type of pain it is. I also found that Rashba in responsum 1:369 considers it obvious that the dead do not feel the pain of the knife, and cites the embalming process as proof.]
Or HaChaim
On the one hand Laban considered Jacob as his bone (self), on the other hand, he was well aware of the difference between them. Laban represented darkness rather than light. Perhaps he wanted to specify that all they had in common was flesh and bone.