<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; ">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; "><o:p>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<b>. </b></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">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 (<i>Moshav Zekeinim</i>).</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">rw</font></p></body></html>