[Avodah] Pinchas "Generations Go, Generations Come"

[Cantor Wolberg]

After the words, "Vay'hi acharei ha-mageifa" 26:1 ("When the plague  
was over"), the Torah suddenly inserts a highly unusual paragraph  
break [piska b’emtza pasuk]. Very rarely does the Torah begin a new  
paragraph in the middle of a verse.

Chizkuni explains the Torah uses this device to emphasize that the  
deaths that had occurred up to this point were the last ones that  
would be decreed on that generation. From this point on, those who  
were to be counted in the forthcoming census would all enter the Land.

Alternatively, this mention of the plague is juxtaposed to verses 17  
and 18 (Ch.25) immediately preceding it to show that the Midianites  
were directly responsible for the plague of the twenty-four thousand  
who lost their lives. Thus the sense of the verse is that after the  
plague -- which aroused the feeling that 24,000 Jews were dead but the  
Midianites who had caused the disaster had escaped retribution -- God  
would command Israel to exact vengeance upon the Midianites (Moshav  
Zekeinim).

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