Or HaChaim on Numbers 31:17/אור החיים על במדבר ל״א:י״ז

1 ועתה הרגו….הרוגו. "and now kill!…..kill." Why did the Torah have to repeat the command to kill separately for young male Midianites and for females who were no longer virgins? Sifri quotes Rabbi Yishmael as saying that the second הרוגו was necessary to separate this verse from the following verse. Had the Torah not written this word in between I would have understood the words וכל אשה in our verse as capable of referring either to what is written in verse 18 or to what is written in our verse. This seems problematical. If Rabbi Yishmael were correct, why did the Torah not interpose a statement such as החיו לכם, "keep alive for yourselves," as it did at the end of verse 18? If the Torah had done this there would have been no need to write the word הרוגו twice! Perhaps the Torah was afraid to write החיו לכם at this juncture as it would have appeared then that Moses commanded the Israelites to keep these Midianite virgins alive. Actually, Moses only gave permission to keep them alive. This is why the words וכל הטף introduced verse 18 to inform the Israelites of the status of these survivors, not to order them to keep these people alive.

2We also need to understand the word הרגו at the beginning of verse 17. Why did the Torah not content itself with the word הרוגו at the end of this verse? Perhaps the Torah wanted to write the words ועתה הרגו together to teach the people that the rehabilitation of the nation which had been the objective of the whole campaign could not be achieved until the people mentioned in our verse had been killed. The sooner this would be accomplished, i.e. ועתה, "now," the sooner would the Israelites be completely rehabilitated concerning the sin at Shittim. Alternatively, the Torah may have wanted to write together the words הרגו לטף on the one hand and הרוגו לאשה, to indicate that we are dealing with two separate commandments. Or, the words simply allude to the fact that these people should be executed forthwith, i.e. ועתה.