Commento su Numeri 26:4

מבן עשרים שנה ומעלה כאשר צוה וגו׳ FROM TWENTY YEARS OLD AND ONWARDS, EVEN AS [THE LORD] HAS COMMANDED [MOSES AND THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL, WHO CAME FORTH FROM EGYPT] that the counting of them (of those who came out from Egypt) should be from twenty years old and upwards, as it is said. (Exodus 30:14): “Every one that passeth amongst them that are numbered [shall be from twenty years old and upwards]”.

מבן עשרים שנה ומעלה, from twenty years old and up, etc. Why doesn't the verse tell us the subject matter this number is relevant to as it had done in verse two? Did Moses expect the Israelites to guess the significance of this number? If that were to be assumed, why did the Torah trouble itself in verse two to provide the information that people fit for military service were to be counted? According to what I have explained on verse three that the number (census) and the location i.e. the wilderness of Moav, were interconnected seeing that the objective of the census was to demonstrate that the number of Israelites had not diminished during the years Moses had been in charge, even the younger members of the people ought to have been counted in order to establish Moses' claim. What good would it do the people if the numbers of men fit for military service had not decreased but the number of potential soldiers had decreased due to the families being smaller or mostly girls being bom? Perhaps someone really thought that all the Israelites were counted on this occasion in order to prove Moses' claim that the people were at least as numerous as when Moses had taken over. To prevent us from arriving at that conclusion, the Torah repeated that only males above the age of twenty were included in this census. The reason Moses did not count people younger than twenty was "as G'd had commanded Moses." Had the census been up to Moses' discretion alone, Moses would not have bothered to count the Israelites at all, neither the men of military age nor the ones younger or older. By writing the words: "as G'd commanded Moses," the Torah states that the entire census was G'd's idea. This being so, there was no reason to include any age category in such a census which had not been included in a previous census.

לאמר מבן עשרים שנה ומעלה; Moses and Eleazar told the Israelites to inform them with a list of all the details of the males who had attained the age of 20. This was parallel to what we were told in Numbers chapter 1 at the previous census, hence the words “as G’d had commanded,” etc.; if these words had referred to what occurred now there would have been no need for this phrase. At that time G’d’s instructions had included the words: “according to their families, the houses of their fathers,” i.e. the co-operation of each family in the census had been requested.