ציטירנדיקער פּירוש אויף תהילים 147:4

וידבר אלו-הים את כל הדברים האלה לאמור, “G‘d spoke all these words to be relayed.” The word לאמור was added here in order to teach that all these Ten Commandments were spoken in a single utterance. This was something a human mouth would be unable to do, and a human ear would be unable to hear. We also find in Bamidbar Rabbah 11,19 concerning two apparently contradictory statements in Psalms 147,4 and Isaiah 40,26 that what G’d is able to do, man is not. In the former statement the psalmist says: “He counts each one of the stars supplying them with names,” whereas in Isaiah the prophet says: “He leads out their number as an army, each one He calls by name.” The meaning is that when G’d calls upon the stars He calls each one by name simultaneously.

They went down to Egypt: Not to settle there but to sojourn there: This teaches how shrewd Jacob was. When children of Jacob went down to Egypt they (and their father) were fearful that their descendents would intermix with the Egyptians and become entrenched there. Jacob chose a set place for his family to live so that if one of them chose to leave the community, they could no longer return even to work.¹⁰¹In other words, Jacob created the first Ghetto; this way of life was not imposed upon the children of Israel but was adopted by them in order to assure their continued unique identity. This is what the Torah means when it tells us Vayagar Sham, “they sojourned there,” that is, they chose to sojourn there and not dwell permanently among their neighbors. The land that he chose was Goshen: “Now, let your servant dwell in the land of Goshen…”¹⁰²Genesis 47:4; However, this verse is a statement by the brothers to Pharaoh and not by Jacob. Maybe the author implies that while they were speaking, Jacob was orchestrating this plan to isolate the family so they would not become assimilated into the general population.
Despite this plan, it does not appear that Jacob succeeded. When the children of Israel arrived in Egypt they were a quantifiable number of which they could easily keep track – there were only seventy people. But as the generations passed the people multiplied in a unnatural fashion (the Midrash says that every woman gave birth to sextuplets) so that within a short period of time there were so many Israelites that they were too numerous to keep count of. In such a case it would have been hard to keep track of the people and hard to keep them from assimilating into their environment. It would have been hard to keep everyone living in one confined area. Thus the Torah says, “With seventy souls your ancestors went down to Egypt but now I have made you more numerous than the stars in the heavens.”¹⁰³Deuteronomy 10:22 As a result the people would no longer have been in the category of a quantifiable number, and not capable of being tracked or counted.
In the Talmud Sanhedrin, we find a story in which the emperor who asked Rabban Gamliel what was so impressive about the fact that God could count the stars; even he can do this. Rabban Gamliel made the emperor aware that this is no easy matter since the stars and the heavens are constantly revolving.¹⁰⁴Sanhedrin 39a - Again the Emperor said to Rabban Gamliel: It is written, “He counts the number of the stars etc.” (Psalm 147:4) In what way is that remarkable; I too can count them!' Rabban Gamliel brought some quinces, put them into a sieve, whirled them around, and said: 'Count them.' 'Keep them still,' he requested. Thereupon Rabban Gamliel observed, 'But the Heavens revolve so.' Some say that the Emperor spoke thus to him: 'The number of the stars is known to me.' Thereupon Rabban Gamliel asked him, 'How many molars and [other] teeth have you' Putting his hand to his mouth, he began to count them. Said he to him, 'You know not what is in your mouth and yet wouldst know what is in Heaven!' The insight of this story applies here as well: God compared Israel to the stars because while human beings cannot count the stars, God can; therefore when the Israelites were as numerous as the stars, they were still quantifiable! Jacob, then, did succeed since God could keep track of the people of Israel even as they multiplied in Egypt. Rashi also points out that since Israel was compared to the stars in the heavens, each and every Israelite remained important and significant in the eyes of God. As long as each Jew is counted none will be lost!

A scientific/astrological approach: “counting the dust of Yaakov” is an allusion to resurrection of the dead in the future. Seeing that Bileam has already mused about how Israel will survive the destruction of the earth in the distant future whereas the nations of the world will perish, he now muses on the innumerable Jews who will be resurrected from their graves at that time and who will join their brethren who have survived the cataclysm. We know that this will be so from Daniel 12,2: “and many of those who have been asleep in the earth will wake up.”
Bileam referred to these people with two different words, מנין and מספר, both meaning “number of.” The reason may be that Israel has been compared to the stars and the psalmist employs the root מנה as well as the root ספר to describe G’d counting stars (Psalms 147,4) מונה מספר לכוכבים, “He counts the number of the stars.” Bileam also refers to Israel both as Israel and as Yaakov in the same verse. We have already explained that Yaakov is the term used to describe the Jewish people in the context of their physical functions whereas the name Israel is applied when their spiritual functions are mentioned. The prophet Isaiah 43,1 speaks of בוראך יעקב ויוצרך ישראל, “the One who created you as Yaakov and fashioned you as Israel.” The second stage of Yaakov’s development is described as resulting in ישראל. The same prophet draws similar distinctions when he describes G’d’s creation of darkness as opposed to His fashioning light, i.e. something superior to darkness. Negative phenomena in this world qualify only for the elementary part of creation בריאה, as opposed to יצירה (compare Isaiah 45,7). By associating עפר with Yaakov, and רובע with Israel, Bileam hints that the soul upon leaving the body returns the four constituent parts of the body to the earth, the dust. The soul is immortal by definition. When Bileam spoke about his נפש dying this was an inaccuracy seeing the soul cannot “die.” [The assumption being that “death” means dissolution of matter which had previously been amalgamated to form a functioning whole. Ed.]. Bileam referred to his body dying. This is not the only time the word נפש means “body.” When the Torah speaks about a נפש כי תחטא what is meant is “the soul in a body which sins,” seeing that a soul without a body is incapable of committing a sin. Similarly, when Leviticus 7,18 speaks of הנפש האוכלת, “the soul which eats,” clearly the meaning is the body inhabited by a soul which eats, as disembodied souls cannot eat. The reason we often find the word נפש when a whole personality, a functioning human being is meant is simply that the body without a soul is nothing; it would hardly do to refer to a human being merely as a “body.” When the Torah wants to include every type of human being, i.e. male, female, minor, senior, priest or layman, the word נפש includes them all.
Bileam revealed in these verses that there is a world (after death of the body) consisting of disembodied souls only, and that there is also a resurrection at a later stage when these disembodied souls will be reunited with their former bodies. This latter world is the ultimate purpose of man and his having been created to first live in this terrestrial universe.
It is presumed to be generally known that immediately upon death of the body the soul enters the domain of disembodied spirits. Bileam had expressed the hope that when he would die he (his soul) would qualify for immediate transfer to that world (not the region in which the soul is being judged which precedes it). When he added the word ותהי אחריתי כמוהו, he meant: ”may my ultimate destiny be like that of the Jewish people,” i.e. may I enjoy the delights of life in a perfect world after my soul has been reunited with my body. All of this is included in what Bileam termed מות ישרים, ‘the death of the upright.’ The very fact that Bileam wished himself this kind of death and this kind of afterlife is proof that he paid the Jewish people the greatest compliment possible. He thereby acknowledged that Israel would inherit the physical world of the future also. If we had been paid a similar compliment by a Jewish prophet it would have been far less meaningful as Jewish prophets are naturally prejudiced in favour of their own people. When a Gentile, by definition one of our accusers, is forced to affirm our superiority, i.e. to say “Amen” to G’d’s praises of His people, this is of special significance.