Комментарий к Бамидбар 17:3

החטאים האלא בנפשתם THESE SINNERS AGAINST THEIR OWN SOULS — i.e. who became wilful transgressors against their own souls, because they rebelled against the Holy One, blessed be He.

כי הקריבום לפני ה' ויקדשו, they had become sanctified as vessels used for service for the Lord except if used of unauthorised service. This fact qualified these copper pans to be used as an overlay on the copper altar.

החטאים האלה בנפשתם, "of these sinners who sinned at the cost of their souls." The reason the Torah repeats this may have been so that Aaron and Moses would not feel badly at having been involved in causing the deaths of these people. The Israelites should also not attribute the death of Korach and associates to any fault on the part of Moses or Aaron. The Torah therefore emphasises that not Moses and Aaron but solely these sinners themselves were to blame for what happened to them. In spite of all this, the Israelites did not understand G'd's intention and accused Moses and Aaron of being the cause of the death of these people (17,6).

את מחתות החטאים האלה בנפשותם, “the fire-pans of these people who sinned at the cost of their lives.” The reason the Torah added the word “against their souls” was to reinforce the point that they forfeited the lives of their souls in the hereafter.

They became willful sinners with their souls. Rashi is answering the following question: Surely Moshe warned them. If so, why did the Torah write חטאים (sinners) which has the connotation of unintentional sin? Therefore he explains that they were willful sinners, as it is written (v. 30) “That these men have angered…” which connotes rebellion, meaning that they willfully rebelled in disputing what Hashem had commanded. The reason why the Torah states חטאים (unintentional sinners) rather than פושעים (willful sinners) appears to be because most of them were from the tribe of Reuven, Korach’s neighbors, whom he incited. Similarly, the Rabbis say about them, “Woe to the wicked and woe to his neighbor.” This implies that initially it was not because of their own wickedness that they joined him, only because Korach was their neighbor. Therefore, they were considered as if they were unintentional sinners. R. Yaakov Triosh.

החטאים האלה בנפשותם, “these sinners who paid for their sins with their lives;” they brought their death upon themselves. Moses had warned them in 16,7, when he made clear that only one person of all of them would be chosen by G-d. In other words, all the others would die as a result of this test. All of them foolishly risked their lives, knowing that 249 of them would die.

רקעי means beaten out (flattened).

The copper altar. Not the golden altar, because the firepans were copper and one could not use copper on the golden altar. Re’m. Furthermore, I have found [further proof that this is so] because it is written “and they shall be a sign for Bnei Yisroel” and a Yisroel is not permitted to enter the area of the golden altar.

כי הקריבום לפני ה׳ ויקדשו, "because they were offered before the Lord and have become sanctified." G'd explains that if He ordered these censers to be turned into a cover for the altar this did not mean that He was pleased with the incense that had been offered in them; on the contrary, the incense was repugnant to Him. However, the fact that these censers had been used for a holy purpose made them holy themselves. The new dimension of all this is that these censers were considered holy before the wrong people offered incense in them as they had been constructed for a holy purpose. ויקדשו, "they have become sanctified;" when someone donates silver or golden trinkets for the Temple, these trinkets become sanctified. Consider the status of these censers if the associates of Korach had decided at the last moment not to go through with their challenge to offer incense in them. The censers would have remained holy although they had not been used for the purpose for which they had been designated. As to the argument of Nachmanides against Rashi that the status of these censers was similar to vessels a non-priest constructed in order to offer a sacrifice outside the precincts of the Temple [and which therefore are not holy, Ed.], the Torah writes: "they have been offered before the Lord and become sanctified" (i.e. inside the precincts of the Tabernacle). The situation is not comparable to the one described by Nachmanides then as these censers had been brought to a site which was sanctified.

ועשו אותם, “so that they will make out of them, etc.” Moses, i.e. G-d refers to skilled artisans. This verse is abbreviated, as we find in similar verses such as Genesis 48,1 ויאמר אל יוסף, “he said to Joseph,” where the subject is missing, or verse 2 in the same chapter where the person giving this information to Yaakov has also not been named.

פחים are plates beaten out thin, tendus in O. F.

צפוי למזבח FOR AN OVERLAYING FOR THE ALTAR — i.e. for the copper altar.

ויהיו לאות AND THEY SHALL BE AS AN אות — The word לאות is the same as לזכרון, something to be mentioned (cf. Exodus 13:9) — that people will always say: These plates were from (once belonged to) those who raised dissension about the priesthood and were burnt.