Deuteronomy 32:26

I have spoken in My Word to withhold from them My Holy Spirit; I will make them weak; as a man who reaps his field leaveth but one upon the ground, so will I abolish their memory from the book of the genealogy of mankind;

There are those who say [cf. Sifrey on this verse] that I would annihilate them [Hebrew: af eyhem] is three words spoken together, but the truth is that it is a word which lacks a cognate, and which means “to destroy”, since the following parallel construction says I would obliterate their memory from mankind. And if things were in accordance with the opinion of those grammarians [cf. Septuagint on this verse: ει̉πα Διασπερω αυ̉τούς — Translator] who translate “I shall scatter them to every comer [Hebrew: pe ah]”, the parallelism would not adhere to the word’s meaning. Those who take the word to mean, “I shall destroy them in my anger [Hebrew: appi]” rendering the word correctly in the sense of “to extirpate”, and conjugating the verb like the word “I would obliterate them” — it is true that they get the parallelism right, and they would be correct, were it not for the second ’alef in af eyhem , which according to their theory ought to be a nun: anpihem , meaning, I shall be angry at them. Thus my original explanation is the correct one.

I said an anthroporphism, i.e., “I said to Myself”.

[‘AMARTI’ (I SAID)] ‘APHEIHEM.’ Grammarians. See also Ibn Ezra. explained it as meaning: “I will disperse them into every ‘corner.’” And if so, the word amarti means that it was the Will before Him by the attribute of justice that they be so scattered forever in every corner, and that their memory cease forever from among men — were it not that I was in dread of the wrath from the enemy. And in my opinion the word apheihem is a composite word, as is mentioned in the Sifre, 322. that it consists of these three words: aph ei heim [“I said in My ‘anger’ that I will banish them so that it will be said of them ‘where are they?’ “]. The meaning thereof is that I will put them in such a place and in such a manner that it will also be said of them “Where are they?” signifying that there will be no name or remnant left of them among the nations, and their place will not be known where they are. He thus alludes to the exile of the ten tribes that were banished to the river Gozan, this being the river which the Sages call “Sabbatyon.” The name “Gozan” is of the expressions: ‘vayagaz’ (and it brought over) quails from the sea; Thou art ‘gozi’ (He that took me out) of my mother’s womb, because those who remain behind [that river] are “divested” of any contacts with other people. It is called “Sabbatyon” because of its rest on the Sabbath-day, for the Sabbath-day in that language, as in Arabic, is called Sabbat, and they add adjectivial suffixes of ‘yon’ to certain nouns, such as: eizoviyon (Greek hyssop), churyon (another),. mulyon (a mule), and many others.

אמרתי אפאיהם, I had originally said that I would remove them from the world had it not been for My fear of becoming annoyed when the gentile nations would credit their own power with annihilating the Jewish people. [I am paraphrasing some of this. Ed.]

אמרתי אפאיהם, I had said that I would leave a small “corner” (from פאה, the 1/60th of the farmer’s field to be left for the poor to help themselves to) of them survive whereas I would destroy the balance. This is what I will do at the end of history before the final redemption, seeing that I had been unable to achieve My purpose either through giving them the Torah, or through giving them the Land of Israel, or even through sending them into exile to give them a taste of what they had lost due to their obstinacy. (compare Yoel,3,5 warning the Jewish people of precisely this )

אמרתי אפאיהם, “I had said I would make an end of them” so that no trace of them would remain.
אשביתה מאנוש זכרם “I would make even their memory extinct;”