ונשל, he threw. If one uproots, or separates anything its position where it was firmly attached is described in such terms. Compare Deuteronomy 28,40 כי ישל זיתיך, “for your olives will drop off.” Compare also Deut. 19,5 ונשל הברזל מן העץ, “the iron (axe) will fall off the handle.”

כי אם כה תעשו להם, “rather, this is what you shall do to them, etc.” תגדעון, the root גדע is used whenever something long is being cut down or felled; compare Psalms 75,11 וכל קרני רשעים אגדע, “and I will cut down all the horns of the wicked.”

לא מרובכם מכל העמים, intelligent people cannot conceal their surprise that Moses should have thought that the Israelites considered themselves as the most numerous nation so that Moses had to tell them that they were not. Furthermore, not only does G’d make the point that quantity does not determine whom He loves or prefers by adding חשק ה' בכם, but the meaning of the verse is as follows: In verse one the Torah had spoken of the many nations which G’d will dispossess on account of the Jewish people, seven powerful nations. These people had been described both as more numerous and as more powerful than the Israelites in that same verse. It was therefore possible that the Israelites might consider themselves as more numerous than those people and as militarily more powerful so that they could conquer the land of Canaan due to their military prowess and numerical superiority. Moses disabuses them of such thinking by saying that G’d would not like them on account of their being numerous even if that were true. The fact is that they were less numerous than any of these seven tribes. But, there is an irrational reason for what G’d does, i.e. He loves the Jewish people. 2.) He has to make good on an oath sworn to the forefathers of the Jewish people concerning their future.

וידעת כי ה' אלוקיך הוא האלוקים, in the event that you might says: “seeing that G’d has to keep His oath to our patriarchs, why do we have to bother to keep His commandments, seeing that he has to give us this land under any circumstances? Moses answers such a theoretical question before it is even mouthed by telling the people that G’d does not have to let them have the land as an heritage, Although, He has sworn to give the land to Avraham’s and Yaakov’s descendants, He would not violate His oath if this generation of Jews were not to take possession of this land forthwith. It is one of G’d’s attributes that He sometimes lets a long time elapse before carrying out anything He has said which was not tied to a date. Just as He remembers loving kindness performed by His creatures for 1000 generations, so, not lapsing any reward due to the descendants of a deserving ancestor, so He may decide that you are the generation which will be the beneficiary of the promise and oath mentioned. Moses promises that the people whom he addresses will indeed become these beneficiaries with the proviso that they keep G’d’s commandments.

ומשלם לשונאיו. retribution for its sins.

אל פניו, during their lifetime, not that of their children or children’s children. לא יאחר, either in his lifetime, or latest to the fourth generation. This is the plain meaning of the text. This is virtuous act, as Rashi says, that by letting the sinner die for sins (prematurely) it preserves his afterlife if the guilty party had repented his errors. G’d does not enact retribution for sins committed more that four generations ago. On the other hand, reward is paid even many generations later than merely four generations after the good deed had been performed. Even if the intervening generations had been sinful, this does not cancel out a reward G’d had not paid for the good deeds of the ancestor. If, eventually, a righteous person emerges from a sinful family, such a righteous person will become the beneficiary of merits accumulate by his ancestor who G’d had not yet repaid for this.

ושמרת, as I have explained on verse 9; G’d describes here the reason for otherwise perplexing sounding statements.

ושמר ה' אלוקיך לך, G’d keeps His covenant, i.e. the assurances He gave to the patriarchs concerning their descendants, with any generation which is fit, loyal and deserving. If the descendants do not keep His commandments then the covenant is valid for subsequent generations which do observe the terms of the covenant.

עקר, with two vowels kametz. Other examples of such constructions are חכם as opposed to אשה חכמה, (Samuel II 14,2) or שפל as opposed to ושפלה איננה in Leviticus 13,21. I have found that all the texts published in Spain follow this vowel pattern. [remember that our author was Ashkenazi. Ed.]

והמם מהומה גדולה, the construction of והמם, i.e. the vowel pattern of two successive letters מ and the two vowels kametz in succession is clearly parallel to וסבב בית אל in Samuel I 7,16 with the two letters ב, or as in Lamentations 5,18 שמם from שממה. The meaning of the phrase is that G’d made these people hear such powerful and earsplitting noise during the battle that this contributed greatly to their destruction. If we were to assume that the second letter מ is a pronoun ending meaning אותם, “them,” the vowel pattern should have been vehamaman. Seeing that the root of the word is המה as in יהמה לבי (Jeremiah 48,36) “my heart moans, etc.”, the Torah wrote vehamam, i.e. “He made them moan.” We find a line with similar meaning in Isaiah 48,5 עצבי עשם, “my carved images were the cause of this,” the word עשם being derived from the root עשה, or Genesis 29,10 כאשר ראה יעקב something which is referred to later in Genesis 32,3 as כאשר ראם, “when he saw them.” The root המה determines the construction here. If you were to say that the final letter ם was a sign of the pronoun “them,” as in the examples from Isaiah and Lamentations we have quoted, this is impossible, as the expression המיון, which implies something that is part of the human body, as in Isaiah 16,11 and Jeremiah 48,36, or in Psalms 46,4 יהמו יחמרו מימיו, “its waters rage and foam;” i.e. this is self-generated, not the result of action by outsiders. If the word were in the transitive mode, hiphil, the vowel pattern would have had to be vehimah, just as in the root כלה, for instance, the vowel pattern if it appeared in the transitive mode, hiphil, the vowel pattern would have to be kilah. Or it would have to be כלם, kilam as the case would be if the final letter ם were used as the pronoun ending for “them,” as in Lamentations 2,22 or 4,11. When used transitively, the root שנה meaning changing, exchanging, such as clothes, would be שנא, shina, in the plain past tense, as in Kings II 25,29, or וישניה, vayehshaneha, in the past tense introduced by the letter ו changing a future mode to a past mode, as in Esther 2,9.