Or HaChaim on Numbers 14:38/אור החיים על במדבר י״ד:ל״ח

1 ויהושע בן נון, And Joshua son of Nun, etc. Why was there a need to write this verse seeing the Torah had already written that the men who issued the slanderous report died? Besides, what is the meaning of the words מן האנשים, "from amongst the men, etc.?"

2The meaning will become clear when we recall a statement by the Talmud Baba Batra 121 that Yair son of Menashe was born while Jacob was still alive. The Talmud queries this seeing that this same Yair was among the people who entered the land of Canaan as we know from Joshua 7,5 where the men of Ai are reported as having killed about 36 Israelites during the latter's first attempt to conquer that town. The Talmud there suggests that the peculiar phrase כשלושים וששה איש, means that only one man was killed and that the man was Yair ben Menashe. The reason the Book of Joshua spoke about "approximately 36 men," is that this Yair was so outstanding a person that he was considered equal to half the members of the Sanhedrin of 71 sages, i.e. 36. At any rate, it is obvious that this Yair was far older than 20 years when he left Egypt. How is it that he was permitted to enter the land of Canaan? Rabbi Acha concludes from this example that G'd's decree to kill the men over 20 applied only to the men between the ages of 20 and 60, i.e. the men who would bear arms and who would have been in danger of being killed by the Canaanites in any attempt to conquer the land. Our verse hints at the conclusion Rabbi Acha arrived at in the Talmud. The reason that Joshua and Caleb were exempted from the decree although they were under the age of 60 at that time was because they had been part of the group of spies and had proven their loyalty to G'd. Had they not been מן האנשים אשר תרו, from amongst the men who toured the land, they too would have been affected by the decree that all men between 20 and 60 had to die in the desert even though they were righteous.

3Our verse hints at yet another comment we find in Chagigah 15 that the deserving person inherits also the place in the hereafter reserved for a person who forfeited it through having become wicked. The words מן האנשים allude to Caleb and Joshua inheriting the share the other ten spies would have inherited in the hereafter had they not spread slander about the land. They also took over the shares reserved for these spies inside the land of ארץ ישראל (compare Baba Batra 117).