Or HaChaim on Numbers 26:1/אור החיים על במדבר כ״ו:א׳

1 ויהי אחרי המגפה It was after the plague had stopped, etc. Why was the beginning of this paragraph written as if it were the conclusion of the previous paragraph, with the dividing symbol פ separating it from chapter 26? If you reflect on what I have written previously you will find that this makes perfect sense. The position of our verse at the end of the previous paragraph reflects the Torah's instruction that only by complying with the command to harass the Midianites in the manner we have explained could the Israelites rehabilitate themselves for having entertained idolatrous thoughts, i.e. the worship of Baal Pe-or. Only then would their positive relationship towards G'd become a natural one. Once this had been accomplished, ויהי אחרי המגפה, they would have put the plague behind them. The true disappearance (instead of mere arrest) of the plague occurred as the result of penitence along the lines G'd had indicated. This is why the new paragraph had to begin in the middle of the verse, as it were. [In editions of the Bible based on the church's divisions into chapters and verses, our verse is part of chapter 26 instead of being verse 19 in the last chapter as it ought to be. In either event, the verse is interrupted by the symbol פ which always indicates that what follows has to be a new line in the Torah scroll. Ed.] You may still ask why the Torah did not make this line a verse by itself? The reason is that the Torah also wanted to link our verse to the subject which follows, i.e. that G'd had decided that the time had come to conduct a new census amongst the 12 tribes exclusive of the tribe of Levi whose members were not to share in the distribution of the land of Canaan.

2Another reason why this verse is positioned so peculiarly and why it seems as if slashed in half, may have to do with a comment by Yalkut Shimoni item 773. The Midrash relates our verse to Psalms 94,18 in which Moses is the speaker. According to the Midrash, the nations of the world protested to G'd for having shown preference for the Jewish people by giving them the Torah. G'd countered asking that they produce proof that they were entitled to equal treatment on the basis of their ancestry. These nations were unable to establish the paternity of the men with whom their mothers had lived with any degree of certainty. As a result, G'd told them they had no claim to special treatment. Now that the Israelites had become guilty of "sleeping around," the nations challenged G'd once more about this, claiming Israel had lost its moral "crown." G'd therefore punished by death all the Israelites whose sins had undermined the image of the whole nation. The meaning of the verse in Psalms then may be that wiping out these people whose foot had slipped was an act of kindness by G'd for the remainder of the nation. In view of this, we can understand why our verse was positioned where it was and why it was also the natural introduction to the count of the Israelites. When the Israelites had been counted at the beginning of the Book of Numbers, we explained the term שאו for numbering as implying moral excellence on the part of the people being numbered. Only when the Israelites were counted again and everyone had been able to point to his father with certainty was the accusation by the Gentile nations that the Israelites were not morally superior disproved. The verse in Psalms mentioned by the author of Yalkut Shimoni means that though Israel had slipped morally, this was only temporary, i.e. מטה רגלי; now that they had repented, G'd's kindness had restored them to their former morally lofty position. The plague, which was related to their moral descent as per chapter 25, now enabled their moral rehabilitation as per the count in chapter 26. The verse therefore is the conceptual bridge between the two paragraphs.

3Still another reason for the unusual positioning of this verse, or rather half this verse, may be related to Bamidbar Rabbah 21,7. We are told there that when the people left Egypt and they were entrusted to Moses' leadership, he received them after they had been counted. Now that Moses was close to death and he had to give back the people who had been entrusted to him, he also had to count them before handing them over to a new leader. Thus far the Midrash. Now we understand the meaning of the words ויאמר ה׳ אל משה …שאו. Had the Torah only commenced with verse 1 in chapter 26 instructing Moses to count the people without the half verse "it was after the plague" preceding it without a full stop, we would have assumed that the only reason for this count at this time was what the Midrash had said. By placing the words ויהי אחרי המגפה where it did, the Torah supplied an additional reason for the count, i.e. that it symbolised the rehabilitation of the Jewish people in the eyes of G'd.