אבן עזרא — ולא תטמא את הארץ אשר אתם ישבים בה אשר אני שכן בתוכה כי אני ה' שכן בתוך בני ישראל

Q — Two questions on the closing pasuk of Bamidbar's laws of murder. (1) Grammar: is "תטמא" third-person feminine ("she/it will defile") or second-person masculine command ("you shall not defile")? (2) The double phrasing "אשר אני שכן בתוכה / כי אני ה' שכן בתוך בני ישראל" — why both?

A — Ibn Ezra offers both grammatical readings for "תטמא": (1) third-person feminine, with חנופה (from the previous pasuk's "ולא תחניפו") as the subject — "the perversion will defile the land"; (2) command form. Both work. On the doubling: Ibn Ezra reads it as the Torah glossing itself. "אשר אני שכן בתוכה" might mislead one to think the prohibition is for the LAND's honor. The closing phrase "כי אני ה' שכן בתוך בני ישראל" corrects this: God's dwelling in the Land is for ISRAEL's sake, not for the Land's. The land has no inherent honor that creates the prohibition; rather, Israel's relationship with God establishes everything. The double phrasing is anti-pagan: it forecloses any reading where the LAND itself is the deity-locus. The reading parallels Ibn Ezra's "עצרת" move in Emor — Torah's own gloss is the pshat.