Citazione Commento su Giosuè 7:8

I am weary with my groaning; Every night make I my bed to swim; I melt my couch with my tears. – For I groan and am anxious on account of my sickness and weep until I make my bed swim every night, because at night the sickness is grievous, and a man laments and weeps on account of his sickness. Or he weeps at night because the household is asleep and no one sees him. And lo! he is weary with groaning and with weeping. And as for what he says: I make to swim and I water – it is by way of exaggeration and hyperbole. And the interpretation of אשחה (I make to swim) is (to be derived) from (such passages) as: “as he that swimmeth (השחה) spreadeth out his hands to swim (לשׂחות)” (Is. 25:11); or from the Targum (rendering) of “and he washed (וירחץ)” (Gen. 43:31), which is ואסתי. And the interpretation of אמסה (I melt) is (to be gathered) from (such passages) as: “they made the heart of the people melt (המסיו)” (Josh. 14:8); “and like a moth Thou makest his beauty to melt away (ותמס)” (Ps. 39:12). These (instances) are from verbs lamed he of the hifil conjugation. And there are many (cases) of double 'ayin verbs of this signification, as: “They have made my heart to melt (הֵמַסּוּ)” (Deut. 1:28); “and the heart of the people melted (וַיִּמָּס)” (Josh. 7:8).

בלתי כלב בן יפונה, ”except for Calev, son of Y’funeh.” If you were to ask how come that also Yair, son of Menashe entered the Holy Land (crossed the Jordan) and was killed during the siege on Ai, together with 35 comrades in arms (Talmud tractate Sanhedrin, folio 44) (according to Joshua 7,8) we have to answer that the decree issued after the Sin of the Spies concerning who would not be allowed to enter the Holy Land did not apply to people under the age of twenty at the time it was decreed, nor did it apply to people over the age of fifty, as neither category would have been drafted into military service, so that the spies’ refusal to undertake a campaign against the Canaanites would not have affected them personally.