פּירוש אויף שמות 19:13

ירה יירה HE SHALL SURELY BE CAST DOWN — From this we derive the law regarding those who are sentenced to be stoned that they have to be thrown down from the place of stoning, which was a spot of the height of twice a man’s stature (Sanhedrin 45a).

לא תגע בו יד, “you must not touch him;” (the offender in order to pull him back) rather he shall be killed by stoning or by shooting arrows at him, but he must not be touched by human hand in order to be brought before a court of law to be dealt with. The Torah adds therefore that his death should occur without humans touching him. This prohibition applies equally to the Israelites’ beasts. If you were to ask why ascending the mountain is a worse offense than killing such a person by stoning him while ascending? The reason is that if the offender were to be killed through human action, the party touching that body, dead or alive, would also be considered as having personally touched that Mountain, whose holiness is such that it must not be touched by human bodies. Seeing that the Torah did not even allow a beast to touch that mountain, and a beast is not ritually impure while alive, how much more would the Torah not allow a human being to touch it, seeing that a living human being is subject to being ritually defiled while alive as well as when dead; so why did the Torah have to spell out this regulation as applying also to the people?The answer to this question can be learned from matters involving a high level of sanctity, such as the Tabernacle which was completely out of bounds to non priests. As soon as Nadav and Avihu approached to offer incense not prepared in accordance with the regulations pertaining to it, they were killed by lightning descending from G-d. They were not convicted after trial by a human court. Their corpses defiled the Tabernacle, although if they had been jailed and executed after a trial, the sanctity of the Tabernacle would not have been defiled. The same thing happened when Uzziah, King of Yehudah, not a priest, ascended the altar in the Temple of Solomon, planning to offer incense; after having been warned and having ignored the warning, he was struck by the dreaded skin disease of tzoraat on his forehead, something which defiled his entire body even though he was standing on the holiest place on earth. (Chronicles II 26,16) A different interpretation of the words: כי סקול יסקל, “for he will be stoned to death;” either with stones only, or with hail (stones). The words או ירה יירה, referring to the kind of hail that was a plague in Egypt would symbolise death both by stoning and by burning. Rashi claims that we would have expected the Torah to decree death by either drowning in water, i.e. ירה יירה, as in Exodus 15,4 when the Egyptian army was tossed into the sea to drown, or if not then by stoning. He bases this on the principle stated in Sanhedrin 45, that prior to stoning, the victim is pushed down by one of the witnesses who had testified against him from a wall two stories high into a pit, and if that did not kill him the others stone him by throwing stones at him. Alternately, the word או in our verse here does not mean: “or,” but means the same as אשר, “which,” as it does in Exodus 21,6, והגישו אל הדלת או אל המזוזה, “to the door, i.e. the door post;” this line has been translated by Yonatan ben Uzziel Targum as ויקריבנו לות דשא דלוח מזוזתא “he will bring him close to the entrance which is the doorpost.” The meaning of the line accordingly, is: “for the person violating this commandment will eventually be stoned to death after first having been thrown down into the pit.”

לא תגע בו יד, “do not touch it with your hand;” Why did this have to be repeated when we had heard already in the preceding verse that anyone touching the mountain would be subject to the death penalty? The two verses have to be understood as follows: “when you are about to execute a person guilty of having touched the mountain, do not do so by using your hands against him but stone him to death.” The stones are to be thrown from some distance away from the culprit. If you were to approach the area where the sin was committed you would be in danger of committing the same offence, even though unintentionally. Our author thinks that the repetition was to make clear which method of execution was to be applied to the offender, as the usual method, strangulation involves touching the victim.

יירה means HE SHALL BE THROWN BELOW to the ground, the word being similar to, (Exodus 15:4) “He hath cast down (ירה) into the sea”.