Book of Joshua

Chapter 1
"MOSES MY SERVANT IS DEAD"

The Book of Joshua is the direct continuation from the end of Deuteronomy which
narrates the death of Moses. Prior to his death, Moses had already said to Israel:
"For I know that after my death you will surely go to ruin and depart from the path
that I have commanded you, and evil will befall you at the end of days because you
have done evil in the eyes of HaShem to anger Him with the work of your hands"
(Deut. 31:29).

The entire NaCh will narrate the story and draw out the moral of this departure
from the path with its terrible consequences, tracing the history of Israel in their
time of glory (the conquest of the land and the building of Solomon's Temple) and
their time of decline (destruction of the Temple and exile).

Our rabbis taught that "the face of Moses was like the face of the sun, while the
face of Joshua was like the face of the moon" (Bava Basra 75a). Now that the sun
had gone down with the death of Moses, it was time for the moon to shine. As long
as the moon is aligned with the sun, the entire face of the moon is lit up and
perfectly reflects the light of the sun. As long as Joshua reflected Moses' Torah, the
people succeeded. Joshua was from the tribe of Ephraim (son of Joseph, son of
Rachel, Jacob's beloved). The task of Ephraim is to actualize the keeping of the
Torah in this real, material world (and thus Rachel signifies the Shechinah, the
Indwelling Presence in this world). Keeping the Torah to perfection in this world had
to be accomplished in God's chosen land, the Land of Israel , and thus Joshua's
task was to lead the people in and conquer the land. But when the moon is not
aligned with the sun, its face becomes successively darkened. Thus it was Ephraim
under the leadership of Jeraboam – Yeravam ben Nevat – who led the people away
from the path, which brought about the exile, as we will see later. The people of
Israel today must study and ponder the story of the NaCh and its moral in order to
gain possession of the Land of Israel forever and shine its light to the whole world.

Joshua ch. 1 vv. 3-4 reiterates the boundaries of the Promised Land as already laid
down in Numbers 34, 1-15. Here in verse 4 we simply have a brief depiction of the
"breadth" of the land (from the Wilderness of Zin up to the Euphrates ), and it's
"length" (from those two points until the Great Sea , the Mediterranean ). From
verse 3 we learn that AFTER Israel have conquered the entire Promised Land, then
"any place where the sole of your foot steps I will give to you", thereby
incorporating other territories (see Rashi on vv.3-4).

The condition upon which Israel is able to conquer and retain the Land is made
completely clear here at the beginning of the Prophets: "Be strong and very firm to
guard and practice according to all the Torah that Moses my servant commanded
you…" (v. 7). "And the book of this Torah shall not depart from your mouth…" (v.
8). Everything depends on KEEPING THE TORAH, and this depends upon
CONSTANT STUDY OF THE TORAH BY DAY AND BY NIGHT. For then HaShem your
God will be with you.

CHRONOLOGY OF THE ENTRY INTO THE LAND

Rashi proves from the text that it was on 7 Nissan that Joshua gave orders to
prepare the people to cross the Jordan "in another three days". 7 Nissan was the
conclusion of the 30 day period of mourning for Moses, who died on 7 Adar (just as
he had been born on that day, 3 months exactly before 7 Sivan, the day he was
cast into the river and the date of the giving of the Torah 80 years later.) 10 Nissan
would be an appropriate day for the supernatural miracle of the parting of the
Jordan, as it was the anniversary of the day when the Children of Israel took the
Paschal Lamb in Egypt just prior to the Exodus. Taking the lamb for sacrifice
indicates submitting the power of nature, symbolized in the constellation of Aries,
the "Ram", to the higher power of God. God controls nature and can bend it at will.
God has the power to give a tiny nation dominion. If the people of Israel would
keep to God's covenant they would always be above nature.

Joshua reminds the tribes of Reuven, Gad and the half of Menashe who had taken
their territories east of the Jordan of their commitment to help their brothers
conquer the land of Canaan . Today this can be taken as a message to the Jews
living in the Diaspora of their responsibility to identify with and help their brothers
and sisters living in Israel in their struggle to settle the land in the proper way.

Chapter 2
Rashi proves from the text that Joshua sent the two spies to Jericho two days
before he commanded the people to prepare to cross the Jordan . According to
tradition the spies were Caleb (Joshua's only faithful companion among the 12
Spies sent by Moses) and Pinchas. Thus Joshua (Ephraim) works together with
Caleb (the royal tribe of Judah ) and Pinchas (the Priest). Why were they sent to
Jericho specifically? Because Jericho "was as hard as all the rest of the country put
together because it was on the border" (Rashi v. 1) – it was the "lock" of the land
of Israel (which was why in the days of Oslo the slogan was " Jericho first").

RAHAV– A GREAT HEROINE

Rahav is celebrated as one of the outstanding converts of all time (together with
Hagar, Osnath, Tzipora, Shifra, Puah, Pharaoh's daughter Batya, Ruth and Yael).
This is because Rahav acknowledged that "Hashem your God is God in heaven
above and on the earth below" – she alone among the Canaanites was willing to
join Israel instead of fighting them, because she recognized the divine hand in their
Exodus from Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea and their complete victory over the
kings of the Emorites (vv.9-11). Her above-quoted declaration of faith is
incorporated in the first paragraph of the Oleinu prayer recited at the end of each of
the 3 daily prayer services.

Why did Rahav alone draw the right concluson? Was it because she was lowly and
therefore humble? According to Targum Yonasan, Rahav was an innkeeper, but the
Midrash Mechilta is less delicate. "She was 10 when the Children of Israel went out
of Egypt and practiced prostitution for all of the forty years that they were in the
wilderness… There was not a minister or dignitary that had not been with Rahab."
That was how she knew so intimately that "no more spirit stands up in any man in
face of you".
Rahav was obviously a woman of profound understanding as she drew the right
conclusion. More than that, she showed the trait that is the hallmark of Israel :
CHESSED, kindness. She did not HAVE to save the two spies – she could quite
easily have handed them over to the authorities. It was because she showed them
pure CHESSED by saving them without expecting a reward that she felt able to ask
them for pure CHESSED when the children of Israel would conquer Jericho : that
they should save her life and that of her family. There was a great TIKKUN (repair)
in her letting the spies out through her window in the city wall and later using the
sign of the scarlet thread: her clients used to use a rope to climb in and out of her
window unseen. According to the rabbis, Rahav prayed that the three elements of
the wall, the window and the thread should atone for her neglect of the 3
commandments incumbent upon an Israelite woman: lighting the Shabbat lights,
separating Challah and observing the laws of Niddah (family purity). The rabbis said
that no less than eight prophets and priests were descended from Rahav, including
Jeremiah and Hilkiah and the prophetess Hulda. In their later history, Israel were
frequently compared to a whore. Rahav is the outstanding example of such a
woman who repented with all her heart and attained the greatest heights.

Chapters 3-4
THE CROSSING OF THE JORDAN

"The sea saw and fled, the Jordan turned backwards…" (Psalm 114:3)

Psalm 114 compares the greatness of the miracle of the splitting of the Jordan ,
enabling the Children of Israel to cross easily on dry land into their homeland, to
the greatness of the splitting of the Red Sea , whereby they had been saved from
their Egyptian enslavers. Likewise Joshua, who presided over the splitting of the
Jordan , is specifically compared in today's text to Moses, who raised his staff to
split the sea (Joshua 4:14). However it was not his staff that Joshua raised. Instead
he instructed the Children of Israel to follow the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord of
all the Earth.

The Midrash on Psalms 114 asks what it was that the sea saw to make it flee. It
answers that the sea "saw" the Ark (coffin) of Joseph being carried up from Egypt .
Through the merit of Joseph, who bent and controlled his physical passions in order
to serve his Maker, God bent nature and caused the sea to part for the Children of
Israel. Now Joseph's descendant, Joshua, who had learned the Torah from Moses,
sent the Ark of the Covenant ahead of his people to teach that God is stronger than
nature and can bend it to his will. In the Ark were the Tablets of Stone and Moses'
Sefer Torah.

It was necessary for the people to purify themselves to experience this miracle (ch
3 v 5) because they were about to enter a new path through which their
observance of God's Covenant -- His Torah -- would enable them to transcend
natural law. This was one of only three occasions when the Ark was carried not by
the Levites but by the Cohanim (priests) – the other two occasions were in the
siege of Jericho and when the Ark was returned from the Philistines.

To impress the lesson of this great day upon everyone, in verse 9 Joshua says to
the people: "Draw close to me over here!" Our rabbis taught that "Joshua
assembled the entire nation BETWEEN THE TWO POLES OF THE ARK, and this was
one of the places where the little held the great".
Skeptics will wonder how this was possible. Even those who sincerely want to
believe often find it hard if not impossible to understand and accept the sometimes
apparently quite outlandish and rationality-defying statements found in rabbinic
Midrash ("exposition, searching out"). Since this series of study notes on NaCh will
rely heavily on teachings of the Talmud and Midrash illumining our biblical texts, let
me say at the very outset of the series that the Bible is the Word of the Living God,
revealed to us through His prophets and sages. As soon as you scratch beneath the
surface of the biblical words, you see that they are far from what they appear –
"deep, deep, who can find it?" The Bible teaches about the spiritual dimension of
this material world in which we live. Since this spiritual dimension is often quite
unapparent to those sunk in materialism, the sages of the Midrash and Talmud –
who lovingly counted every single word and letter of the Hebrew text and who were
alert to its every subtle nuance and allusion – developed a unique poetry of
allegories and riddles in order to encourage us to jump out of our pre-existing
misconceptions about the nature and purpose of the world and rethink everything
we thought we knew.

Johsua's bringing the entire nation "between the poles of the Ark" may be
understood as his having succeeded in bringing everyone within the bounds of a
totally new level of consciousness emanating out of the Ark and what it
represented, in which they all perceived that God alone rules over everything. "The
Living God" (v. 10) alludes kabbalistically to the Sefirah of Yesod, the Covenant. It
is precisely this quality of moral purity, embodied in Joseph the Tzaddik, that would
drive out the Seven Canaanite Nations, who were the physical, mental and
ideological KELIPAH (husk) over the Covenant (corresponding to the 7 days prior to
circumcision, during which the Orlah-foreskin still hides the holy crown).

The greatness of the miracle of the splitting of the Jordan was enhanced because it
was Nissan, springtime, when the melting snows of winter made the river so full
that it was bursting its banks. It was in the merit of the Israelites having taken and
slaughtered the Paschal Lamb (alluding to Aries, head of the constellations) on the
10 th of Nissan 40 years earlier, bending the constellations under the will of God,
that the new generation witnessed this new, unheard of miracle of the splitting of a
flowing river.

The Talmudic discussion of the splitting of the Jordan is contained in Sotah 35a ff.
Just to further irritate the skeptics, the Talmud states that according to Rabbi
Yehuda, when the river split and the flow from the north backed up, it caused a
huge cubic pillar of water 12 by 12 miles large corresponding to the size of the
Israelite camp. Rabbi Elazar ben Shimon (bar Yochai) objected, saying that the
pillar was more than 300 miles high so that all the kings of the east and the west
saw it, as it says, "When the kings of the Emorites heard…" Just to increase the
mystery, the rabbis said of the city of "Adam" mentioned in verse 16, "Did you ever
in your life hear of a city called Adam? No, this alludes to Abraham, 'the great man
(Adam) among giants' (Joshua 14:15)… It was in Abraham's merit that this miracle
took place" – because he was the first to bend nature to his will when he
circumcised himself.

Chapter 4
WRITING THE TORAH ON STONE

According to the Talmudic account in Sotah, the essential gist of which is quoted
with characteristic brevity in Rashi's commentary on our text, the day of the
crossing of the Jordan was one of superhuman activity by the twelve
representatives of the tribes who took up stones from the Jordan to set up in Gilgal,
and indeed superhuman activity by the entire people. This was a day to remember
for ever.

Altogether there were three sets of 12 stones. The first had been set up by Moses
in the land of Moab (Deut 1:5 and 27:8), and on them he wrote the entire Torah.
Then Joshua set up a second set of stones in the Jordan itself (Joshua 4, verse 9),
while a third set of stones was taken from the Jordan and set up in Gilgal (v. 8).
The Torah was likewise written on these stones.

However the third set of stones was not merely taken directly from the Jordan to
Gilgal. According to the Talmud, on the very day of the crossing of the Jordan the
entire people journeyed to Mount Gerizim and Mount Eival, built an altar, coated it
with lime and wrote the entire Torah on it, offered burnt offerings and peace
offerings, ate and drank, recited the blessings and the curses, all in accordance
with Moses' instructions (Deuteronomy ch. 27). It was only after this that they took
the stones THAT SAME DAY and carried them to Gilgal, where they were set up to
educate the future generations.

Thus on the very day of their entry into the Land, the Children of Israel wrote the
Torah not merely on parchment but onto the very rocks and boulders of their new
Land. The whole purpose of this was to teach their children and descendants in all
the generations to come a profound lesson about how God works through history
(ch 4 vv. 6-7). It was through the power of God's Covenant, inscribed in His holy
Torah, that the Children of Israel entered their land. Using the stones to stimulate
the children's curiosity and give them a lesson in history is reminiscent of the
annual Seder Night recalling the Exodus. (The ancient idolaters, including the
Canaanites, were wont to set up stone circles as part of their highly sophisticated
systems of worship of the stars. The twelve stones of the twelve tribes,
corresponding to the twelve signs of the Zodiac, were the ultimate TIKUN (repair)
for this idolatry.

MORE MIRACLES

Ch 4 vv. 10 & 15-19 go back to narrate further miracles relating to the splitting of
the Jordan . It was only when the priests carrying the Ark first dipped their feet into
in the water by the east bank of the river that the main miracle – the splitting of
the river -- occurred, enabling the entire people to cross on dry land. Rashi,
reflecting the Talmudic discussion, which is based on hints in our text, explains that
after the people crossed the river to the west bank of the Jordan , the priests
returned with the Ark to the EAST bank. The moment the priests stepped out of the
water, the river returned to its normal flow, after which the priests crossed the river
OVER THE FLOWING WATER, CARRIED BY THE ARK – thus graphically showing the
entire nation that THE ARK CARRIES THOSE WHO CARRY IT and not vice versa (see
Rashi on vv. 16 and 18.).The Torah may seem like a heavy yoke, but in fact it
carries those who practice it – it carries them above and beyond nature!!!

The lesson of this unforgettable day in the history of the Children of Israel is
summed up in the concluding verse of our text (ch 4 v 24): "In order for all the
peoples of the land to know that the hand of HaShem is mighty, in order that you
should fear HaShem your God all your days."
 Chapter 5
THE CIRCUMCISION

It was through the power of the Ark of the Covenant that the River Jordan had split
to enable the Children of Israel to walk into their home country on dry land.
Immediately after their entry into the Land, it was necessary to inscribe the mark
of the Covenant on the very flesh of all the males as laid down in the Torah
(Genesis 17:1-14, Leviticus 12:3) as a sign that observance of the Covenant is the
absolute condition for possession of the Land.

The circumcision was urgent as they had entered the Land on 10 Nissan and four
days later everyone would have to offer and eat of the Pesach lamb, which was only
permitted to the circumcised since partaking of the Paschal lamb is an intrinsic part
of the Covenant. Our rabbis teach that immediately following their entry into the
Land, during those four days before Pesach the people also went through
purification from defilement from the dead using the ashes of the Red Heiffer so as
to be able to bring the Pesach sacrifice in a state of complete purity.

At the time of the Exodus from Egypt all the Israelite males had been circumcised
as part of their "conversion" to the faith of Israel . But according to the simple
meaning of our text (PSHAT), the new generation that had been born during the 40
years of wandering in the wilderness had not been circumcised. The rabbis explain
that since the people were journeying in the wilderness by the word of God and
might at any time be called upon to break camp and travel, it was impossible to
circumcise the baby boys. Furthermore, they teach that the north wind, which has
curative powers, did not blow throughout the forty years in the wilderness so as not
to disperse the Cloud that led the people (see RaDaK on Joshua 5:2). [That
beneficial north wind is the same wind of divine power that would blow through the
strings of King David's harp and awaken him at midnight, Berachos 3b.]

On the other hand, Tanna deVei Eliahu (the Midrash of Elijah the prophet) states
that it is not possible that the people who received the Torah at Sinai could have
neglected the mitzvah of circumcision in the wilderness. Rather, they had only
performed the first part of it – the actual MILAH, cutting off the foreskin – but had
failed to perform the second part, PERIYAH, the peeling back of the membrane,
which is an intrinsic part of the mitzvah ("if one cuts off the foreskin but does not
perform PERIYAH, it is as if he has not circumcised"). This was why God told Joshua
to circumcise them "a second time" (v. 2) – i.e. to complete the mitzvah.

The circumcision was performed in the location of the Israelites' first encampment
in their land, which to mark this mass demonstration of recommitment to the
Covenant was named GILGAL for the reason explained in our text (v. 9): "I have
ROLLED OFF (GALosi) the shame of Egypt from upon you" -- for the Egyptian
astrologers saw blood on the Israelites and thought it was a sign they would be
defeated, not knowing that it was the blood of the circumcision, through which they
would be victorious (Rashi). GILGAL is also related to the Hebrew word GILGUL
which has the connotation of recycling – reincarnation. Each and every generation
must rededicate itself to the Covenant because history goes in cycles.

Eating of the "produce of the land" from the day after Pesach (v 11) brought the
Children of Israel to a new mode of being. For 40 years in the Wilderness their food
had been the miraculous, spiritual Manna. It was because they were now going to
be living in a real, actual country making a living using natural methods, agriculture
etc. that they first had to rededicate themselves to the Covenant, through which we
cut the flesh to indicate that our task is to bring this material world under the law of
God. The Covenant enables the material world (MALCHUT) to receive spiritual
blessing, and thus ARI (Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, outstanding 16 th century Kabbalist)
points out that in our verse (v. 11) the Hebrew word for produce, EEBUR, is made
up of BOR (a "pit", signifying the inherently "empty" receiving Sefira of Malchut)
together with the letter AYIN (=70), signifying the flow of all the seven Sefirot of
Building, each of them containing all 10 Sefirot – 7 x 10 – into Malchut.

The 16 th of Nissan, when they started to eat the produce of the Land, is the day of
the Omer offering in the Temple : it is only after this offering that it is permitted to
eat from the new harvest (Leviticus 23:14).

THE ANGEL

Now that the people were purified, God's Angel – a being so fearsome that even
Joshua was uncertain if he was for us or against – appeared to protect the people.
"NOW I have come" (v. 14) – in the time of Joshua, but not before! For Moses had
insisted that God Himself lead the people into the Land and not through a mere
angel (Exodus 33:15). But now that Moses had departed, only a trace or residue of
the exalted providence of his time remained in the form of this angel – Michael ,
Israel 's protective angel (see Likutey Moharan II, 5). The angel impresses on
Joshua that the Land of Israel is not like any other: "Take off your shoe from your
foot, for the place upon which you are standing is holy". Similarly, the priests went
barefoot in the Temple . (Zohar Chadash 59a indicates that the removal of the shoe
alludes to Joshua's having to separate from his wife in order to be ready to receive
prophecy at any time just as Moses had been.)

Chapter 6
JERICHO

"And Jericho was closed up" (Ch 6 v 2). The Hebrew word for "closed up" is
doubled, indicating that they wouldn't let anyone in or anyone out. Targum Yonasan
says they had gates of iron with bars of bronze. ARI explains that Jericho
(YEREICHO) alludes to the moon (YAREIACH) which signifies MALCHUS, the
receiver – this world, which must receive the spiritual flow from above. But under
the Canaanites, Jericho was completely closed up – i.e. surrounded by walls and
barriers – KELIPAH, the evil husk – preventing the divine flow from entering and
manifesting in this world.

Now that the Children of Israel were in the Land, they could not expect that all their
affairs would be run miraculously by God as in the wilderness without their having
to take any action here on earth. They had to act in some way in the material world
in order to conquer Jericho (Radak). While their daily encirclement of the city can
be seen as an exercise to demoralize the enemy, its significance goes far deeper.
Our rabbis teach that the seven days of encirclement started on a Sunday,
culminating with seven circuits on the Shabbat. This was not coincidental: the
entire exercise came to prove that Israel's conquest and possession of the Land
depend upon observance of Shabbat – the weekly Shabbat, the seven year
Sabbatical cycle of six years of agricultural work and then rest -- Shemittah – in the
seventh year, and then the seven cycles of seven years culminating in the 50 th
"Jubilee" year, called after the YOVEL – the ram's horn of freedom sounded in that
year.

Sounding the Shofar – signifying man's wordless cry to God from the very depths of
the heart – was an integral part of the ritual that led to the capture of Jericho . The
entire ritual was built around sevens. It came to undermine the idolatrous
Canaanites, whose religions were built around the worship of the 7 planets. The
Israelite processions must have been a most awesome spectacle, with the men of
the tribes of Reuven and Gad leading, followed by the Shofar-blasting priests and
the Ark, followed by Dan at the rear gathering up any stragglers (Rashi on v. 9).
The entire camp of Israel was involved in this Shabbos demonstration!

The Talmud Yerushalmi in Shabbos explains why Joshua declared Jericho and all its
plunder CHEREM -- completely dedicated to God. This was because the city fell on
Shabbos and it is forbidden to benefit from labor performed on Shabbos. The first
conquest in the Land of Israel came about not through the agency of man but
essentially through God's miracle. Nobody was allowed to have material benefit
from God's miracle as this would detract from His glory. Joshua gave the city the
status of IR HANIDACHAS – an idolatrous city, all of whose property must be
destroyed (Deut. 13:3-19).

The ethics of the commandment to destroy the Canaanites completely will be

addressed in a future installment. Suffice it to say here that had they been willing
to accept the One God they could have saved themselves, as Rahav did. The rabbis
taught that Joshua himself took Rahav as his wife and their descendants included
prophets and priests.

Joshua's grim oath (v 26) that anyone who tried to rebuild Jericho would pay with
the lives of all his sons was actually fulfilled many generations later in the time of
King Achav, as we will learn in a few months time when we reach the Book of Kings
I ch 16. The TaNaCh is first and foremost a moral teaching on a grand scale. God is
very patient with His creatures but He always fulfils His word in the end.

Chapter 7
AYAYAY!!!

The heady mood of self-confidence engendered among the Israelites by the

spectacular collapse of the walls of Jericho was quickly punctured by the disaster at
the city of Ai , caused by the sin of Achan ben Karmi in embezzling from the
treasures of Jericho that Joshua had dedicated to God. "And Israel sinned with the
devoted treasure…" A single individual's sin is the sin of the whole people, for we
are all responsible for one another! The Hebrew root of the word sin in v. 1 is
MA'AL. While referring generically to sin, this word specifically indicates stealing
from HEKDESH, property dedicated to God, such as Temple property, for one's own
personal benefit. This sin leads to the corruption of religion when people use what
belongs to God for their own personal pleasure and enrichment.

"Pride comes before a fall": heady after the capture of Jericho, the spies sent by
Joshua to check out Ai (mentioned in Genesis 12:8 as one of Abraham's first
stopping places in the Land and site of his second altar there) returned and advised
that only a small force was needed to take the city "for they are few" (v. 3). In
saying this they showed that they did not yet understand that for God, victory in
the Land of Israel depends not on numerical advantage but only upon our loyalty to
Him. It was the fatal flaw in loyalty expressed in Achan's embezzlement that caused
the reverse at Ai. "And they smote ABOUT thirty-six men" (v 5). Rabbi Yehuda said
literally 36 men were lost, but Rabbi Nehemiah pointed out that the verse says
"LIKE thirty-six men " (the KAF of KISHLOSHIM is comparative). The one man who
was lost in the battle was LIKE (the equivalent of) thirty-six men (36 = a majority
of the 71-member Sanhedrin): this was Yair ben Menashe (Numbers 32:41; Bava
Basra 121b) – it was a national disaster for even a single Israelite to be lost.
Our text shows the proper reaction of a true Israelite leader when even a single
man looses his life in war. "And Joshua tore his garments and fell on his face on the
ground…" (v.6). Unlike contemporary leaders, who appoint commissions of enquiry
into their failures in order to blame someone else, Joshua took personal
responsibility. Indeed God told him that it was his own fault because he had stayed
back in the camp instead of going out to battle against Ai in front of his men.
Moreover it was he who declared Jericho CHEREM (dedicated/destroyed) on his own
initiative without being so commanded by God. Therefore Israel would be CHEREM
until the sinner was punished (Rashi on v. 10).

THE LOTTERY

God could have simply TOLD Joshua directly who the guilty man was, but instead
He revealed his identity indirectly through a series of lotteries that were held
publicly to establish from which tribe the sinner was, from which clan of that tribe
and from which family… There was an ulterior purpose in turning the exposure of
Achan into a national spectacle using the lottery (GORAL): this was because the
Land was destined to be divided up among the tribes and families using the very
same method of LOTTERY, as Moses had been commanded (Numbers 33:54).
Having seen how the holy spirit governed the lottery in a capital case like Achan's,
the people would accept its validity in matters of property (Rashi on v. 19;
Yerushalmi Sanhedrin 86).

Rashi (on v. 20) explains that before Achan's confession the situation was
explosive. Achan was in denial and the members of his tribe (Judah) were getting
ready to make war against Joshua (Ephraim) for accusing their leader of a crime. It
was only when Achan realized his continuing silence would cause the death of many
Israelites that he confessed. Joshua's messengers RAN to Achan's tent to find the
booty (v. 22) in order to prevent men from the tribe of Judah getting there first to
hide it.

"And I saw in the booty a robe of Shin'ar…" (v.21). Shin'ar is Babylon (Genesis
10:10). Explaining what a Babylonian robe was doing in Jericho , Rashi (v. 21) says
that every foreign power wanted a foothold in Israel and no king felt content until
he established his influence there. Thus the king of Babylon had a palace in Jericho
, and left special robes there for him to wear when he visited. The presence of
foreign kings explains why the tiny country of Israel had no less than THIRTY-ONE
of them, as we will see in the continuation of the book of Joshua. Likewise today
every self-respecting nation demands a say in what happens in Israel !

It was through his confession that Achan redeemed himself, becoming the
archetype of the sinner that confesses (following in the footsteps of his tribal
ancestor, Judah, who was the first to confess – Genesis 38:26). "Everyone who
confesses has a share in the world to come" (Sanhedrin 43b). The law that a
condemned man confesses before his execution and that this brings him atonement
is derived from our text. Thus Joshua said to Achan, "As for your having sullied us,
God will sully you ON THIS DAY" – i.e. in THIS WORLD but not in the World to
Come, because confession brings atonement. Achan's atonement before Joshua is
one of the main foundations of Rabbi Nachman's teaching on confession of one's
sins before a Torah sage (see Likutey Moharan Vol. 1 Discourse 4).

CHAPTER 8
Achan's confession and punishment cleansed the Israelites of the flaw that led to
their defeat at Ai. At God's command they now used a brilliant military ruse against
Ai, engaging the men of the city in battle and then feigning retreat in order to lure
them out of the city so that a waiting ambush could enter unopposed and set the
whole place on fire (Joshua 8:1-29). Sometimes the best way to advance and make
gains is by first retreating a little.

After the capture of Ai, the text gives an account of the ceremonies that took place
at Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Eival after the entry of the Children of Israel into the Land.
Rashi (chapter 8 v 30) comments that the narrative is not written in order, because
Joshua's building of the Altar on Mount Eival, the writing of the Torah on the stones
and the solemn ceremony of reciting the Blessings and Curses before the entire
nation in fact all took place on the very same day that they crossed the Jordan (see
KNOW YOUR BIBLE on Joshua ch 3). The description of the sacrifices and the
ceremony in today's text relates back to the commandment given by Moses in
Deuteronomy ch 27, where he says all this was to be done "on the day that you
cross the Jordan" (v. 2).

Since the ensuing chapters of Joshua will recount the conquest of the Land in detail,
the positioning of the account of the recital of the Blessings and Curses right here
underlines yet again that Israel 's conquest and possession of the Land are
conditional upon our observance of God's Torah.

CHAPTER 9
All the Canaanite kings throughout the land " gathered together to fight with
Yoshua and with Israel WITH ONE MOUTH" (ch 9 v 2).

This was all out war not only against Israel but against the One God who had
promised them the Land. "In three places we find the people of the world rebelling
against the Holy One blessed be He: at the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1), in the
war of Gog and Magog (Psalms 2:2) and in the days of Joshua. Why does it say
'with ONE mouth'? Because they went against God, of whom it is said, 'Hear, O
Israel, HaShem is ONE!'" (Tanchuma). Since many today are convinced that the
world is in the throes of the war of Gog and Magog, this Midrash underlines the
connection between many aspects of our present text about the war in the days of
Joshua and the times we are living in now.

For Israel in the time of Joshua, the war for the conquest of the Land was a holy
war. The decadent Canaanite star-worshippers, suddenly threatened with being
driven out of their lovely homeland, doubtless saw the Israelites as a new breed of
religious fanatics waging a dangerous Jihad that had to be thwarted at all costs. Yet
after witnessing God's miracles on behalf of the Israelites, many of the Canaanites
were already demoralized and fearful, and felt that "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em".

However, in the Torah God had strictly forbidden the Israelites to make any
covenant with the Cananites and their gods or permit them to dwell in their Land
"lest they make you sin against Me when you serve their gods, for they will be a
snare for you" (Exodus 23:32-3).

The classic biblical commentator RaDaK (Rabbi David Kimche 1160-1235) in a

lengthy comment on our text v. 7 explains exactly what the Israelite warriors were
demanding of the Canaanites. They were not intending to kill them no matter what.
The commandment to destroy the Canaanites applied only if "they make you sin".
However, if they would agree to uproot idolatry from among them and accept the 7
Universal Commandments of the Children of Noah, they would be allowed to remain
in the Land on condition that they agreed to serve and pay taxes to the Israelites –
i.e. subordinate themselves to the Israelite national agenda of building God's
Temple and spreading His light to the nations. Only if they refused these conditions
and refused to evacuate would they be killed. The one difference between the
Canaanites and any other nations against whom Israel made war was that if other
nations refused to make peace and insisted on waging war, the Israelites would on
defeating them kill only their males but keep their wives and children as slaves.
However, if the Canaanites made war, the Israelites were commanded by God to
kill them all, men, women and children.

For some this may raise agonizing ethical issues, which I cannot address except by
saying that the biblical commandment to exterminate these nations is evidently
founded on the premise that they were a thoroughly evil influence that had to be
nullified completely for the sake of God's plan to reveal Himself to the entire world
by replacing ancient idolatry with faith in the one God. It must be emphasized that
nowhere in Judaism is there any justification whatever for the wholesale
extermination of any nation excepting the Amalekites and the Canaanites, both of
whom have now completely disappeared. If today some evil criminals and terrorists
BEHAVE like Canaanites and Amalekites, then the individuals or gangs exhibiting
such behavior should be brought to justice by the legitimate forces of law and order
in order to neutralize their destructive influence.

Yerushalmi Shavuos 6:5 states that on entry to the Land, Joshua sent three written
proclamations to the Canaanites. "Whoever wants to make peace can make peace;
whoever wants to make war may make war, and whoever wants to evacuate may
leave."

Some of the Canaanites departed voluntarily and went to N. Africa ( Carthage )

where they received a land as prosperous as the one they left. Some sources state
that some of the Canaanites went to Europe ( Germany ).

Since the Gibeonites knew that they could save themselves without leaving if they
agreed to the Israelite conditions, RaDaK (ibid.) asks why they resorted to the ruse
described in our chapter, and answers that having seen how the Israelites had
destroyed Jericho and Ai, they were afraid that the Israelites might not adhere to
their conditions.

THE BITE OF THE SERPENT

The Gibeonites were actually Hivites (v. 7). Their deception of Joshua and the
Children of Israel was a deep historical irony, as the Hivites had tried to "convert"
and intermarry with Israel in the time of Jacob (Genesis ch 34) when Shechem son
of Hamor the Hivite raped Dinah. Jacob's sons tricked the men of Shechem into
circumcising, but "on the third day" when they were in great pain, Shimon and Levi
entered the town and killed them all (for having failed to protest the rape of Dinah,
which flouted the Noahide code.) Thus in our chapter, we read that "they ALSO
acted with cunning" (v. 4). This was the cunning of the serpent – in Aramaic, a
serpent is HIVIA, from the same root as the Hivites.

Students of Kabbalah will note that the fake old provisions, clothes and shoes the
Gibeonites used included "crumbs" (NEKUDIM) alluding to the Kabbalistic World of
Chaos, Nekudim, the root of evil (see 138 Openings of Wisdom, Opening 36ff).
RaDaK, noting that moldy bread is covered in red, green and black spots, also
relates NEKUDIM to Laban's SPOTTED flock (Genesis 30:32ff), likewise bound up
with the mystery of the world of Nekudim.

Midrash Tanchuma shows the parallel between how the serpent tricked Adam and
Eve into sinning in the hope of killing Adam and marrying Eve, and how the
Gibeonites tricked the Israelites into making a forbidden covenant with them: "If
they kill us they will violate their oath, while if they keep us alive they will violate
God's commandment: either way they will be punished and will not inherit the
land."

The Gibeonites were not true converts since they converted not because they
wanted to serve the One God but out of fear (verse 24). It was "at the end of
THREE DAYS" that the Israelites found out that they had been deceived: this is a
hark-back to Shimon and Levi's deception of the men of Shechem "on the third
day".. Despite the Gibeonites' deception, the Israelites, having publicly sworn to
protect them, could not violate their oath as this would have been a HILUL
HASHEM, desecration of God's Name (Gittin 46a).

Joshua therefore gave the Gibeonites the status of a caste of Temple laborers who
were not permitted to intermarry with Israelites (in this respect they were similar to
a MAMZER, a child born of an incestuous union). They appear on the stage of
history again in the time of King Saul and King David, and after the destruction of
the First Temple they went into exile to Babylon with the tribe of Judah , returning
to Israel with Ezra. The Gibeonites are unknown today.

Chapter 10
"And when Adoni-Tzedek king of Jerusalem heard…." (ch 10 v 1). The Midrash
comments on his name: "This place ( Jerusalem ) makes its inhabitants righteous –
Malki-Tzedek (Genesis 14:18), Adoni-Tzedek… 'Righteousness (TZEDEK) will dwell
in it' (Isaiah 1:21; Bereishis Rabba 23).

Since Jerusalem was to be the place of God's Temple , it is significant that the main
war of the Canaanites against the Israelites was initiated by the king of that city.
However, Adoni-Tzedek's "righteousness" was for the sake of appearances. Instead
of confronting the Israelites directly, he devised a roundabout way to provoke them
by following the classic Middle East method of staging an attack on the pro-Israeli
"collaborators", the Gibeonites.

The Israelites were honor-bound to come to their aid, and God fought for Israel ,
raining down from heaven stones of ALGAVISH on the backs of their fleeing
enemies (AL GAV ISH -- "on a man's back"). The giant stones littering the area of
Beit Choron (ch 10 v 11) were visible in Talmudic times and are mentioned in
Berachos 54b as a spectacle over which one should make a blessing for the
miracles performed for our ancestors.

The truly outstanding miracle in our chapter is how Joshua caused the sun and the
moon to stop in their tracks in order to give the Israelites more time to chase after
and destroy their enemies (verses 12-14). "Then Joshua SPOKE" – his words were
a prayer and a song (see RaDaK ad loc.). The Talmud states that the battle took
place on a Friday, the eve of Shabbat, and Joshua was afraid lest the Israelites
would come to violate the Shabbat (Avoda Zara 25a). Midrash Tanchuma states
that from the time the sun rises until the time it sets, it sings a song of praise to
God. Joshua commanded the sun to "BE SILENT in Giv'on" – for if the sun were to
cease to sing, it would immediately stop in its tracks. The sun asked Joshua why it
should stop singing since it was created on the fourth day while Joshua, a man, was
created only on the sixth. Joshua replied that God had given Abraham possession of
the heavens (Genesis 14:19), and moreover, the sun had bowed down to Joseph,
Joshua's ancestor (Genesis 37:9). The sun said, 'If I don't sing to God, who will?'
"THEN JOSHUA SPOKE", as if to say, "I WILL!!!" The "Book of Righteousness"
(Joshua 10:13) in which this was already prophesied is the Torah, in which it is
written that Jacob promised Joseph that the fame of the seed of Ephraim would "fill
the nations" (Genesis 48:19; see Rashi on Joshua 10 v. 13).

No human can explain or understand how exactly Joshua succeeded in "bending

time" to his will and extending the day by as much as 36 hours according to some
rabbinic opinions. Pirkey d'Rabbi Eliezer states that Joshua saw that the Canaanite
astrologers were planning an attack on the Israelites on the rapidly approaching
Shabbat and this was why he prayed to extend the Friday. That God "listened to
the voice of a man" (v. 14) indicates that the power of holy prayer is greater even
than the influence of the stars and planets, which govern time, while prayer can
elevate us beyond time.

Chapter 11
The book of Joshua recounts the conquest of the Land in six not particularly lengthy
chapters (6-11), yet at the end of the account it says "Joshua made war with all
these kings for MANY DAYS" (ch 11 v 18). Thus we see that our text presents only
the highlights and main contours of what was in fact a lengthy process: the NaCh is
in essence God's moral teaching, not a detailed military history.

Nevertheless, the strategy of the conquest is clear. It began with Jericho , which
our sages call the "lock" of Eretz Israel . Jericho is the only good gateway between
the south west of the Land of Israel and the territories east of the Jordan , which
had been conquered in the days of Moses and had been given to the tribes of
Reuven, Gad and half of Menasheh. The conquest of Jericho thus ensured the link
between the Israelite populations on both sides of the Jordan as well as cutting off
the Canaanite nations from possible help from elements east of the Jordan hostile
to the Israelites.

We may understand the significance of the conquest of Ai (ch 7-8) and the
subjugation of Givon (chs 9-10), both in the hills of Shomron north of Jerusalem,
when we take into account that in the times of Joshua much of the center of the
Land was covered by extensive forests (see Joshua ch 17 vv 14-18). The conquest
of these two cities thus brought the entire central region of the country, which was
relatively uninhabited, under Israelite control. (Shechem, the largest city in the
area, was inhabited by Hivites, and evidently submitted to Israelite dominion at the
same time as their clansmen the Hivite Giveonites.) Israelite control of the center
of the country cut off the Canaanite city states of the north (Hatzor etc.) from those
of the south, and they were thus unable to unite to fight all together against the
Israelites.

After the defeat of the five Emorite kings in the south, as described in the previous
chapter (10 vv 1-11) Joshua did not immediately destroy their cities but instead
turned against Makedah, Livnah, Lachish and Eglon (ibid 28-35), these being the
key cities guarding the approach to the mountains of Judea dominating the south of
the country. The mountain region was thus cut off from the coastal plain, thereby
isolating Mount Hevron from all possible assistance from the west, north and south.
Joshua then went up to conquer Mount Hevron and the rest of the southern regions
of the country, which meant that the entire south and center of the Land were now
under Israelite control.

The hardest part of the conquest was that of the north, as described in our present
text, Chapter 11, because the city-state of Hatzor, under King Yavin, was the most
powerful influence in the region, possessing great wealth as well as "a very great
number of horses and chariots" (11, 4), of which the Israelites had none.
Kabbalistically, we must look at the Land of Israel not through the spectacles of
modern geography, where every map is aligned along the north-south axis.
Instead, we must bear in mind that, Kabbalistically, the all important axis is the
center column, corresponding to the daily journey of the sun from east (Tiferet) to
west (Malchus). When you face east, the south is to your right, corresponding to
Chessed, Kindness, while the north is to your left, corresponding to Gevurah,
Strength. South and north are thus the two arms. The Israelites entered the Land
from the east (Tiferet) and first conquered the center (Ai, Giveon), then the south
(Chessed) and then the north (Gevurah). Thus the king of Hatzor, the major power
of the north, was Yavin,(Heb. = "he will understand"), alluding to the left column
root sefirah of Binah.

God commanded Joshua to break the ankles of all their enemies' horses and burn
all their chariots (v 6) even though the prohibition of BAL TASHCHIS ("do not
destroy" Deut. 20:19) forbids wanton destruction. RaDaK (v 9) explains that the
Canaanites had put their trust in the power of their horses and chariots, and God
did not want the Israelites to plunder them in order to ensure that they would not
also come to put their faith in military might. It was not necessary to kill the
horses. All that was needed was to cut their hooves so that they would not be of
any use in battle.

"MANY DAYS"

As we have seen, our text gives a brief account of what was in fact a long process
of conquest and subjugation. Joshua was criticized for taking "many days" to
conquer all the kings of Canaan . God had promised him that "as I was with Moses,
so shall I be with you" (ch 1 v 5), which indicates that Joshua should have lived to
the age of 120 like Moses. However, the Midrash tells us that Joshua feared he
would be taken from the world as soon as he completed the conquest, and was
therefore inclined to tarry. God said to him: "Moses your teacher did not act like
that when I told him to exact vengeance from the Midianites and then die (Numbers
31:1) – he made war on them immediately. Since you think this way, I shall
SUBTRACT from your years (Joshua – like his ancestor Joseph – died at the age of
110.) 'Many are the thoughts in a man's heart but it is God's counsel that will
stand'" (Bamidbar Rabbah 22:7). Sometimes the stratagems we devise to stave off
perceived dangers actually bring those very dangers nearer.

"IT WAS FROM GOD TO HARDEN THEIR HEARTS"

The Canaanites themselves caused their own destruction by refusing to submit to

the Israelite conditions for remaining in the Land – giving up their idolatry. As v 20
states, their recalcitrance was sent by heaven. RaDaK explains that God hardened
their hearts similarly to the way He hardened the heart of Pharaoh, in order to
punish them for their sins, and secondly, in order to enable the Israelites to destroy
them as God had commanded Moses so that they would not cause the Israelites to
sin.

The recalcitrance of the Canaanites has been mirrored in modern times by that of
the Arabs who have systematically resisted the return of the people of Israel to
resettle their ancestral lands. Many Jews find it impossible to understand the
unrelenting opposition of the Arabs to Jewish settlement of the Land – and indeed,
it is impossible to understand it in rational terms. It might appear that the Arabs
would have a lot to gain from peaceful cooperation with a people who have time
and time again manifested their God-given blessing of being able to turn a tiny strip
of land in the dry, backward Middle East into a flourishing, prosperous jewel of a
country. Those Arabs who agree to help the people of Israel in our national mission
as laid down in God's road map in the Bible will indeed have a place and a role in
the future order as foretold by the prophets. But those who refuse will one day
discover that their trust in bombs, missiles and machine guns is entirely misplaced.

"AND THE LAND RESTED FROM WAR"

"This means that the Canaanites did not rise up again and gather to make war
against the Israelites because they saw they had been defeated in all the wars.
Likewise the Israelites remained in the territories they had conquered but did not
conquer more land. When Joshua was old, God told him to urge on Israel to
conquer the remaining territories and He ordered him to divide up the Land in his
life time. Joshua began with the tribes of Judah and Joseph, because he was told
prophetically that they were the heads of Israel and would stand on the boundaries
of Israel , Judah to the south [Chessed] and Ephraim to the north [Gevurah], with
the other seven tribes between them. Once the territories were allotted to each
tribe by the lottery, they considered the whole land to have been conquered as all
the boundaries were in their hands and any remaining Canaanites were locked in
between… (RaDaK on v 23).

Chapter 12
THE THIRTY ONE KINGS OF CANAAN

In Hebrew the number 31 is written with the letters Lamed (=30) and Aleph (=1).
The two possible permutations of these two letters make up two Hebrew words. The
first is EL (literally, "power" but also "God" – as such it is pronounced KEL except in
prayer since this is one of the seven names of God that may not be erased). The
second is LO (= "no"). The 31 kings all said "No" to Israel , and paid for their
intransigence with their very lives in order to show that "it is God's counsel that will
stand".

When the Five Books of Moses are written on a parchment scroll for the public
reading of the Torah in the Synagogue, the scribe must observe detailed rules and
conventions in writing the text. In the same way, there are specific rules governing
the writing of the Prophets and Holy Writings on a parchment scroll (some
communities read the weekly Haftara and the Megillot from valid scrolls).
Yerushalmi Megillah ch 4 tells us that in the parchment scroll of Joshua, the names
of the 31 kings of Canaan must be written similarly to way the names of the 10
Sons of Haman hanged on the tree are written in Megillas Esther. The 31 kings are
written each on a separate line with the name at the beginning of the line and the
repeated word "ONE" (vv. 9-23) at the end. Perhaps the repetition of the word ONE
comes to emphasize that although Israel were faced with a multiplicity of enemies,
they were all sent by the One God who ultimately destroyed them all.

With the completion of the summary of the conquest of the Land in Chapter 12, we
are ready for the account of its allocation by lottery to the Tribes of Israel as
narrated in the coming chapters.

Chapter 13
SOME HISTORY

"And Joshua was old, advanced in days" (Joshua 13:1). The deeper meaning of this
verse is illumined by Rabbi Nachman's teaching that the true elder constantly
advances in holiness and wisdom with every single day and every hour and minute.
In terms of the literal chronology of our text, God's command to Joshua to divide
the land even though it was not yet fully subdued came after seven years of
conquest following the Children of Israel's entry. This is learned out from today's
text Chapter 14 v 10 where Calev ben Yefuneh – Joshua's fellow spy among the
twelve sent by Moses from the wilderness at the start of what became 40 years of
wandering – says, "God has given me life this FORTY-FIVE years" (i.e. it was 45
years since God's promise to give Calev the land he trod upon in his visit to Israel,
since he was the only faithful spy out of the twelve besides Joshua). Rashi on this
verse says that it is from here that we learn that the conquest took seven years,
because Moses sent the spies in the second year in the wilderness, and the
remaining 38 years of wandering with another seven for the conquest make a total
of 45.

According to the dating system of the rabbinic historical Midrash SEDER OLAM
("Order of the World") followed in this series (which puts the Destruction of the
Second Temple in the year 3828 = 68 of the Common Era), the Exodus from Egypt
took place in 2448 (1312 B.C.E.), with the death of Moses and Joshua's subsequent
entry into the Land in 2488 (1272 B.C.E.).

Joshua had been 44 at the time of the sending of the spies, and was 82 when he
entered the Land. Thereafter he ruled over Israel for 28 years until his death at the
age of 110, and was thus 89 at the time of the commencement of the division of
the Land.

SOME GEOGRAPHY

Today's text and the texts of the coming days are filled with the names of various
peoples and tribes and very many place-names. These are chapters filled with the
love of God's holy Promised Land and its every mountain, hill, plain and river…
Many profound secrets are woven into these subtle texts. By way of introduction to
the coming chapters of the book of Joshua, let us establish some basic principles
relating to the Land God has given to Israel .

In the "Covenant between the Parts" God promised Abraham "this Land from the
river of Egypt until the great river, the River Euphrates. The Keinite, the Kenizzite
and the Kadmoni. And the Hitite, the Perrizite and the Refa'im. And the Emorite and
the Canaanite and the Girgashite and the Jebusite". (Genesis 15:18-20). This is the
"Promised Land".

As noted by Rashi (ad loc.), ten peoples are listed here – whereas in the time of the
conquest of Joshua, the Israelites were commanded only to take possession of the
lands of the seven Canaanite nations. The three other peoples listed in God's
promise to Abraham, the Keinite, Kenizzite and Kadmoni, refer to Edom , Moab and
Ammon, which are destined to come under the rule of Israel in time to come.

The geographical definition of the Holy Land promised to Abraham is "from the river
to the river" – the entire Mediterranean arm of the "Fertile Crescent" from the
western point of the Euphrates all the way to the eastern arm of the Nile delta (this
is the usual interpretation of "the River of Egypt" though some identify it with with
Wadi Arish).

A similar definition of the Promised Land is in God's Covenant with Israel at Sinai,
where the territory is "from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines
(Mediterranean) and from the wilderness until the River ( Euphrates )" (Exodus
23:31).
King David conquered most of this area, and under King Solomon the entire area
was indeed under the sway of Israel: "And Solomon waas the ruler over all the
principalities from the River (Euphrates) to the land oaf the Philistines and the
border of Egypt" (Kings 1, 5:1-5). After Solomon, the Israelite influence waned but
in the later history of the kingdom of Israel , King Jeraboam ben Joash restored
most of the lands over which Solomon had held sway. Thereafter, however, the
Israelite grip on the land was lost when first the Ten Tribes went into exile and
subsequently Judah .

The period from the conquest of the Land by Joshua until the destruction of the
First Temple in 3338 (422 B.C.E.) is one of 850 years, in which the people of Israel
practiced the laws and customs of their fathers with varying levels of fidelity,
following the agricultural and other laws of the Torah. After Ezra's return from exile
in Babylon, with the rebuilding of the Second Temple, there followed another period
of more than 700 years of continuous Jewish residence in the Land of Israel until
several centuries after the destruction of the Second Temple.

Knowledge of the exact boundaries and divisions of the Land is important in order
to know how the various agricultural laws of the Torah apply in different regions.
(For example, in Temple times the Omer barley offering could not be brought from
east of the Jordan ; certain details of the laws of tithing of produce are different in
Ammon and Moab from Israel west of the Jordan , etc.)

THE EAST AND WEST BANKS OF THE JORDAN

Most of Chapter 13 of our text today deals not with the allocation of the lands of
the Seven Canaanite nations but with the territories EAST of the River Jordan which
had been taken in the time of Moses and given by him to the tribes of Reuven, Gad
and half of Menashh, as related in the Torah in the later chapters of Numbers (chs
21 ff) and again in the early chapters of Deuteronomy. The conquest and division of
these territories are recounted in detail in our present chapter, Joshua 13. Their
topography is given in detail – from the territories to the south taken from the
Emorite (Canaanite) king Sichon comprising areas of Moab and Ammon (current
day Jordan) through the fertile Gil'ad (also in Jordan) up to the Bashan taken from
King Og, a remnant of the (Canaanite) Refa'im (Bashan includes parts of the
present day Golan heights and other parts of Syria and Jordan).

From Biblical times until after well after the destruction of the Second Temple , the
Israelite population thus spread both in the " Land of Israel " WEST of the Jordan
and also in the ancestral territories given to them by Moses EAST of the Jordan
(MEY-EYVER LA-YARDEN). Their respective populations were in constant
communication (thus Mishneh Rosh HaShanah describes how the news of the
Sanctification of the New Moon was signaled by torches from mountain to mountain
across vast swathes of territory until everyone knew it.)

The political geography of the Middle East since 1948 has concealed the intimate
bond that exists for Israel between the east and west banks of the Jordan . Prior to
1948, Palestine was a generic term for territories that are now divided up between
present day Egypt , Jordan , Syria , Lebanon and Israel . The name Palestine was
given by the Romans after the destruction of Jewish sovereignty in the Land, and
was originally intended as an insult to the Jews by calling their ancestral homeland
by the Latinized name of their traditional national enemies, the Philistines. [The
Philistines were not a clan of the Canaanites but a powerful sea-faring invader
people who came in waves from earlier habitations in the Mediterranean area from
the times of Abraham and thereafter.] When in 1917 Britain assumed the mandate
over "Palestine" and made the "Balfour Declaration" stating that its government
"viewed with favour the establishment in PALESTINE of a national home for the
Jewish people", the term Palestine still referred to territories stretching from east of
the Nile through present day Israel, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

It was only in the years after 1917 that sprawling " Palestine " was successively
trimmed, cut down and redefined until the State of Israel was left with territory that
is only a small part of the Promised Land given by God to Abraham. It is deeply
significant that the extensive areas that did not come under Israelite possession in
the times of Joshua are still beyond the borders of the State of Israel.

Chapter 14
The allocation of the Land amongst the Children of Israel in the time of Joshua was
determined by the GORAL or "lottery" involving the High Priest (Elazar son of
Aharon) and the "King" (Joshua student of Moses) using the Urim VeTumim – holy
spirit channeled through the High Priest's breastplate inscribed with the
luminescent Hebrew letters of the names of the Tribes, which would flash one after
another to reveal divine messages.

The main narrative of Chapter 14 concerns the request of Calev to receive the
territory where he alone had trod as a Spy 45 years earlier. Numbers 13:21 hints
through the use of the Hebrew singular "and HE came to Hebron" that Calev alone
out of the spies had the courage to risk the perilous journey to Hebron, the burial
place of Adam and the three Patriarchs, in order to pray (see Rashi ad loc.).

Here at the very beginning of the chapters dealing with the allocation of the Land of
Israel among the tribes, the prominent positioning of Calev's request to receive
Mount Hebron as the very heart of the royal tribe of Judah 's portion shows the
supreme importance of Hebron to Israel and the Jewish people. King David ( Judah
) reigned in Hebron for seven years before he reigned in Jerusalem – he had to bind
himself to the Three Fathers in Hebron before taking his position as the "fourth leg
of the Throne". Joshua Chapter 14 shows the antiquity of Judah 's bond with
Hebron , which will never be broken.

Chapter 15
"AND THE LOT FOR THE TRIBE OF JUDAH …" (Joshua 15:1)

The royal tribe of Judah took their share in the Land first. We learn in Talmud Bava
Kama 122a: "Rabbi Yehuda said, One measure of land in Judah is worth five in the
Galilee , and the Land was divided by the GORAL (="lottery", "destiny"), as it says
(Numbers 26:55) 'Through the GORAL shall the Land be divided'. It was divided
through the Urim Ve-Tumim. How? Eliezer would wear the Urim Ve-Tumim (the
High Priest's breastplate) and Joshua and all Israel stood before him. Placed in front
of him was the urn of the lots with details of the boundaries of each of the different
portions of the land lying in it. He would concentrate with holy spirit and say, If
Zevulun comes up, the region of Acco will come up for him. He would shake the urn
containing the names of the tribes and Zevulun would come up. Then he would
shake the urn with the boundaries and up in his hand would come Acco. And so
with Naftali, and so on." [i.e. Everyone saw that the Land was divided through Holy
Spirit and this way everyone knew it was the Will of God and accepted their
portions joyously.]

The Talmud continues: "Not like the division in this world (i.e. in the time of
Joshua) shall be the division in time to come. In this world a man who has a fruit
grove doesn't have a field, or if he has a field he doesn't have a fruit grove. But in
the division of the world to come, there is not a single Israelite who does not have
a share in the lowlands, the mountains and the south, and the Holy One blessed be
He will divides it among them Himself, as it says (in the account of the future
division, Ezekiel 48:29): 'And these are their allotments says HaShem'".

NAMES, NAMES, NAMES

Today's texts and those of the coming days are full of many names and
topographical details. It can be taxing to try to focus on so many details, but we
can fortify ourselves with Rabbi Nachman's teaching that in Torah study, it is
sufficient simply to read the words one by one, even without understanding.

For these chapters about the boundaries, towns and villages of the Land of Israel
are the national treasures of our nation, proving the antiquity of our link with that
contested strip of land on the eastern Mediterranean seaboard. The Canaanites and
Philistines of old have disappeared without trace together with their cultures and
languages, and the Jewish people's link with the Land is far older than that of any
of the other peoples who have laid claim to the land. Those who preserve and study
the Torah and this book of Joshua possess the true deed of title to the Land.

Difficult though they may be to read and study, these chapters are far more than
mere lists of names. Those familiar with present-day Israel will recognize many of
the names of the towns and locations in the text. The names have their own poetry,
whose beauty is particularly discernible to those with a broad acquaintance with the
Hebrew of the Bible and the connotations of different words and roots. Some towns
were called after their founder-builders or conquerors, some after an associated
event, some after some striking and important environmental feature, a hill, valley,
plain, rock, well, spring, a tree or trees, animals etc. Some names relate to the
occupations of the original inhabitants, notably in the fields of agriculture, vine
culture, and the like.

Besides their simple PSHAT meaning, these lists of the boundaries and towns and
villages of the Land are woven of holy names and letters containing a wealth of
wisdom for those who would dig amidst these treasures. Rabbi Nathan of Breslov
writes in his introduction to SEFER HAMIDDOT ("The Aleph Beit Book") by his
master, Rabbi Nachman, that the Rebbe said he learned ALL THE REMEDIES IN THE
WORLD from these chapters in the book of Joshua detailing the boundaries of the
Land of Israel (ch's 15-19). He explained that the names of all the cities in each
tribe's portion are ciphers denoting the names of all the remedies in the world in all
languages. The reason is that the Land of Israel corresponds to the human form
and the division of the land corresponds to the divisions of the body. One tribe's
portion is the "head", another's the "right arm" etc., and the biblical passage
describing each tribe's portion contains the remedies relating to the corresponding
body part.

It is noteworthy that Jerusalem appears both directly and indirectly several times in
Chapter 15, even though Jerusalem itself was not part of Judah's tribal inheritance
but in Benjamin's. Nevertheless, Jerusalem is alluded to in the account of Judah 's
boundaries, because, as Rashi (v. 3) notes, "Wherever the text speaks about the
boundary "going up" (OLEH) from the south, it means going up to Jerusalem, and
where it speaks about from Jerusalem and beyond it speaks of how it goes down.
From here we learn that Jerusalem is higher than all of Eretz Israel ".

Verse 8 (see Rashi) explicitly teaches that while Judah 's northern boundary
touched the southern tip of Jerusalem , it did not include the city, which Jacob had
promised to Benjamin, the youngest of his twelve sons, and son of his beloved
Rachel. In fact Judah's boundary came right inside the Temple, touching the south
east corner of the Altar, which for this reason had no YESOD (foundation) in that
corner, so that no part of the Altar should stand anywhere except in the territory of
Benjamin.

KIRYAT SEFER & OSNIEL BEN KNAZ

An intriguing part of Chapter 15 is Calev's challenge for someone to capture D'vir-

Kiryat Sefer in return for marrying his daughter Achsa. His half-brother Osniel son
of Knaz stepped forward and took the town, after which Achsa asked her father for
"springs of water… the upper springs and the lower springs" (vv 15-19). This is one
of thOse deep, deep sections that can only begin to be grasped with the help of
rabbinic Midrash. Here we have the first appearance of he who was to become the
first of the Judges after Joshua. "'And the sun rises and the sun goes down'
Ecclesiastes 1:5): Said R. Abba bar Kahana, Don't we know that the sun rises and
the sun sets? What this verse means is that before the Holy One blessed be He
causes the sun of one Tzaddik to set, He already causes the sun of another one to
rise… Even before Joshua's sun set, the sun of Osniel ben Knaz rose, as it says,
'And Osniel ben Knaz captured [Dvir]" (Bereshis Rabba, Noah).

The mystery of the capture of D'vir whose name was formerly Kiryat Sefer (City of
the Book) is, as the Talmud (Temurah 16a) states, that during the thirty days of
mourning for Moses, one thousand seven hundred detailed laws were forgotten, but
even so, Osniel ben Knaz was able to bring them back through the power of his
PILPUL (Talmudic logical reasoning). It is his recovery of all this lost Torah that is
alluded to in v. 17: "And he captured". Of Achsa (relating to the Hebrew root
KA'AS, anger) the rabbis said cryptically that "any man who saw her got angry with
his wife" (ibid.) – presumably because she showed other women up badly??? Not
that her head was only in the clouds. Rashi v. 19 notes that her complaint that the
portion she received with her new husband was "dry" means "dried up from all
good, a man who has nothing in him except Torah". "And Calev gave her the upper
springs and the lower springs" (v. 19). The Hebrew for "springs" is GOOLOS, from
the root GALAH, to "reveal". Osniel was one "to whom the secrets of the upper
realms and the lower realms were revealed". Osniel is also identified with Yaabetz,
an archetypal Torah teacher in Israel .

We should derive encouragement from the example of Osniel, because it means

that even if some of the Torah has been forgotten, it can be recovered through the
power of logic.

AND THE SONS OF JUDAH COULD NOT DRIVE OUT THE JEBUSITES
DWELLERS OF JERUSALEM (v. 63).

Rashi on this verse notes that these Jebusites dwelling in Jerusalem were not from
the Canaanite tribe of the Jebusites but Philistines descended from Avimelech, to
whom Abraham, in return for purchasing the burial cave in Hebron , had to swear
that he would not harm his grandson or great grandson.

While the KRI (pronunciation of the text as handed down by the Rabbis). means
"they could not", the KTIV (the word as written by tradition in the parchment
manuscript) means "they will not be able to". Many DRASHOT come out of such
divergences between the KRI and the KTIV. Here it indicates that Judah did not
drive out the Jebusites not because they were not physically able to but because
they were not allowed to. This was because Abraham's oath still stood because
Avimelech's great grandson was still alive. It was only King David who took
Jerusalem after the elapse of the oath, when the appointed time came, and thus it
was called David's city as destined by God. David purchased the site of the Temple
from Aravna, the last king of the Jebusite Philistines. Everything comes at its proper
time, especially when it comes to the possession of the Holy Land .

Chapter 16
THE PORTION OF EPHRAIM

Second among the tribes to receive their portion was the tribe of Ephraim, blessed
by Jacob to be the more prominent, although the younger, of Joseph's two sons.
While Judah's share of the Land was south of Jerusalem and much of it arid,
Ephraim's share included the rich, fertile territories to the north of Jerusalem
(Shomron), with Benjamin nestling in between the two, and a number of other
tribes having certain portions within those of Judah and Ephraim.

The concluding verse of Chapter 16 does not say that the children of Ephraim
"could not" drive out the Canaanites from certain parts of their territory as in the
case of Judah (ch 15:63). Rather it says that they DID NOT drive them out,
indicating that they could and should have done so. It is not until we reach the
book of Judges that we begin to feel the increasingly heavy REPROOF that the
Prophets who wrote the Bible directed at the Children of Israel for their sins and
failures in the Land. There we shall see that was precisely their failure to drive out
the Canaanites as they had been commanded in the Torah that caused all of their
subsequent problems in the land, leading eventually to the destruction of the
Temple and exile. Here in Joshua the text simply notes that they did not drive out
the Canaanites.

Each one of us has the task of driving out the Canaanite from within ourselves –
that "merchant" who is constantly trying to sell us the fake goods of This World.
Today the conquest of the Land must be first and foremost on the spiritual plane:
we must reclaim the Land for God by spreading His Torah among all the people and
spreading His word to the whole world. By keeping firm in this mission we will
welcome Melech HaMashiach quickly in our times.

Chapter 17
Following the delineation of Ephraim's inheritance in the previous chapter (16), our
text continues with the account of the division of the Land of Israel among the
other Tribes, giving the boundaries of Menashe, Joseph's firstborn, in chapter 17.
While part of the tribe of Menashe had already taken their inheritance in the
territories captured in the time of Moses east of the Jordan (see Joshua ch 13:29-
31), the majority of this populous tribe took their share in the Land of Israel proper,
to the north of the portion of Ephraim.

THE DAUGHTERS OF TZELAFHAD

When God commanded Moses to divide the Land among the tribes (Numbers
26:52-56), the daughters of Tzelafhad (from the tribe of Menasheh) immediately
stepped forward to press their claim for their share since their father had no sons
(Numbers 27:1-11; see also Numbers 36:1-13). Under Torah law, daughters inherit
their father's estate only when there is no surviving son: if there is a son or sons,
the males inherit the entire estate and from it they have to pay to support and
marry off their sisters.
Now that Joshua was actually dividing the Land, the irrepressible daughters of
Tzelafhad again stand up before Elazar the High Priest and Joshua the king to
demand their share. Not only are the daughters of Tzelafhad archetypes of the
Israelite women that show even greater love and yearning for the Land than the
men. They were also very wise (see Rashi on Numbers 27:4) and their insistence
on their rights to the Land brought about the revelation of several portions relating
to the Torah laws of inheritance.

An interesting, if somewhat subtle, point relating to these laws comes out of our
text today, ch 17 v 5: "TEN shares fell to Menasheh besides the territories of the
land of Gil'ad and Bashan east of the Jordan ". Rashi (ad loc.) explains that out of
these ten, the daughters of Tzelafhad took FOUR: (1) Tzelafhad's own share as one
of those who went out of Egypt, because the Land was divided among those who
left Egypt; (2) The share that Tzelafhad took with his brothers in the possessions of
his father Heifer, who was also one of those who went out of Egypt; (3) Tzelafhad's
"double" share in his father's estate as a firstborn; (4) The share belonging to
Tzelafhad's brother, who had died in the wilderness without children.

Rashi concludes: "The verse did not need to tell us about the shares of the
daughters except to teach us that they took the share of the firstborn and also to
inform us that their share in the Land of Israel was already under their ownership
[MUCHZEKES] from the time of their fathers, for if not, there is a legal principle
that the first-born does not take a share in property that is not yet part of the
estate and merely DUE (RO-OUIY) to come later. The firstborn takes his double
share only from property that has already come into the estate (MUCHZAK)." [E.g.
the first born would NOT take a share of a debt owing the estate that was
uncollected at the time of death of the deceased but only of lands and goods that
were already part of the estate.]

To those unfamiliar with the intricacies of Torah law, the above may be somewhat
confusing, but what it means is that even before the Land of Israel was actually
conquered and occupied by the generation of Joshua, it was already in the
POSSESSION (MUCHZAK – under the HAZAKAH, "ownership") of the Children of
Israel as an ancestral inheritance from those to whom its ownership had been given
by God – the generation that actually left Egypt in the Exodus. The same would
apply today. Even though the Children of Israel do not as yet control by any means
all of the Promised Land, it is all still their property and belongs to them as an
ancestral inheritance.

AND THE CHILDREN OF JOSEPH SPOKE TO JOSHUA (v. 14)

They were asking for more land because of their numbers. The commentators tell
us that these were the Children of Menasheh, who were particularly populous (see
Rashi on 17:4), as we learn from the substantial increase in their numbers – by
TWENTY THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED -- between the first count of the Children of
Israel in the wilderness and the second (Numbers chs 1:35 and 26:34). This was in
fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham "Thus – KoH – shall be your seed" (Gen.
15:5). KoH is made up of Kaf (= 20) and Heh (=5) alluding to the TWENTY
THOUSAND and the FIVE HUNDRED (Midrash).

Ephraim was less populous. One reason is that according to the Midrash, many of
the Bnay Ephraim were killed prior to the Exodus from Egypt when they tried to
calculate the time of the redemption but erred. They went up to Israel before the
proper time and when they came to Gath to take possession of the Land, the
Philistine inhabitants, who had been born there and were therefore familiar with it,
overwhelmed and killed them. It was their bones that Ezekiel saw in his vision of
the Valley of the Dry Bones. The sources for this fascinating and very suggestive
Midrash are Chronicles 1, 7:21: "The sons of Gath who were born in the land killed
them (the sons of Ephraim), for they went down to take their possessions, and
Ephraim their father mourned them many days and his brothers came to comfort
him" (see Metzudos commentary on this verse). See also Sanhedrin 92b and see
RaDaK on Ezekiel 37:1.

Chapter 18
SHILO

"And all the assembly of the Children of Israel gathered to Shilo and set up there
the Tent of Meeting" (Joshua 18:1).

This was fourteen years after their entry into the Land (RaDaK). The fourteen years
consisted of seven years of conquest and seven more dividing up the Land. All this
time the Tent of Meeting made by Moses in the wilderness had stood in Gilgal, their
first encampment after crossing the Jordan .

Establishing the Sanctuary in Shilo signified more settled times: "…and the Land
was conquered before them" (ch 18 v 1): Comments Rashi: "From the time the
Sanctuary was established, the Land became easy for them to conquer".

The Sanctuary remained in Shilo for a total of 369 years – until the time of Eli the
High Priest, when the Philistines sacked it and took the Ark. Shilo was in the
territory of Joseph . It was predestined that the Sanctuary and the Two Temples
should stand only in the territories of Rachel's two sons, Joseph and Benjamin.
(This is why in Genesis 45:14 it says that on their reconciliation in Egypt , Joseph
fell on the NECKS of Benjamin – the Hebrew plural signifies the TWO Temples –
while Benjamin wept on Joseph's NECK – the singular alludes to the Sanctuary in
Shilo.)

With the conquest of the Land still in progress, the enterprise of turning the Land of
Israel into the light of the Nations was still incomplete, and this was signified in the
structure of the Sanctuary in Shilo. Our text here calls it a TENT – because the
"roof" was made of skins, as in the case of the wilderness Sanctuary. However the
walls of Shilo were stone, unlike those of the wilderness Sanctuary, which were
made of gold-coated wood. It would only be in Jerusalem – the place of the Temple
forever – that the roof of the Temple would also be of stone.

The Sanctuary in Shilo will figure in several important passages in the Book of
Judges and particularly in the early part of Samuel dealing with Eli and Hannah. The
reference in our text today to Shilo makes a fitting start to the chapter delineating
the tribal inheritance of Benjamin, youngest son of Jacob's beloved wife Rachel,
nestling as it did between the two great tribes of Judah to the south and Ephraim to
the north.

We see from today's text and subsequent chapters that the territories of the
different tribes sometimes entered into one another. Similarly, in the human body,
the different limbs and organs are closely interconnected and enter into one
another.
 Chapter 19
"AND THE SECOND PORTION WENT TO SHIMON…" (Joshua 19:1)

As Rashi notes on this verse, the tribe of Shimon was "second" after Benjamin, the
first of the SEVEN tribes that only received their portions AFTER Reuven, Gad and
half Menasheh took theirs the east of the Jordan and AFTER the royal tribe of Judah
and the first-born Joseph (Ephraim and Menasheh) took theirs to the west of the
Jordan. Only after these leading tribes had already taken their portions did Joshua
command the remaining seven tribes to send a team of three envoys each to make
a survey of the rest of the Land in order to receive their portions (see ch 18 v 7).

After Benjamin (son of Jacob's beloved Rachel), the remaining tribes out of these
seven were – in the order given in our present chapter – Shimon, Zebulun and
Issachar (the three other sons of Leah besides Reuven, Levi – who did not receive a
portion, and the royal tribe of Judah) followed by Asher (son of Leah's handmaiden
Zilpah, as was Gad, who had already taken his portion E. of the Jordan), then
Naftali and finally Dan (these last two being the sons of Rachel's handmaiden
Bilhah).

The kabbalistic Sefirot corresponding to the tribes are: Judah-Malchus; Issachar-

Netzach of Malchus; Zevulun-Hod of Malchus; Reuven-Chessed of Malchus;
Shimon-Gevurah of Malchus; Gad-Hod of Malchus; Ephraim-Ateres-Yesod of Zeir
Anpin; Menashe-Yesod; Binyamin-Nekudas Tzion; Dan-lowest limb of Hod of
Malchus; Asher-heel of Netzach of Malchus; Naftali-lowest limb of Netzach of
Malchus.

SHIMON

The tribe of Shimon received their portion from part of Judah 's territory (verse 9)
since Judah had taken more territory than required for their population (Rashi ad
loc.) This is bound up with the fact that Shimon was something of a maverick tribe
– Shimon had gone with Levi to kill the men of Shechem (Genesis 34:25) and while
both were criticized by Jacob when he blessed his sons ("accursed is their anger… I
shall divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel" Genesis 49:7), Levi was
"divided" and "scattered" in an honorable way in the Levitical cities, while Shimon
was "divided" and "scattered" amidst the territory of Judah. (This is also bound up
with the fact that Zimri ben Saloo Prince of the Tribe of Shimon had flouted Moses
in taking the Midianite woman – Numbers 25:6 & 14 -- as a result of which Moses
did not give Shimon a blessing.) Nevertheless Shimon did receive Beer Sheva, one
of the outstanding features of the land since the time of Abraham and now one of
present-day Israel 's most important cities.

ZEVULUN, ISSACHAR, ASHER AND NAFTALI

These four tribes took their portions in some of the most fertile and beautiful
territories of northern Israel . Although many of the locations mentioned in our text
cannot be identified conclusively today, there are many that can be identified
(including some whose names survive in the present-day Arab names of the
associated villages), and the general areas in which each tribe took their portions
can be discerned until today.

Yissachar and Zevulun took their portions around the Valley of Yizre'el and the
Lower Galilee respectively, while Asher and Naftali took theirs in the Upper Galilee,
with Asher to the west alongside the Mediterranean coast and Naftali to the east
running all the way to the upper Jordan valley. After the time of Joshua, a
contingent from the tribe of Dan took a portion in between Asher and Naftali around
the sources of the River Jordan (Tel Dan, Banyas), although Dan's main portion was
in the center of Israel (Tel Aviv-Jaffo etc. – see below). Dan's joining Asher and
Naftali in the Galilee is bound up with their having been neighbors in the Israelite
camp in the Wilderness (Numbers 2:25-31).

The locations in which the tribes were to take their portions had already been
indicated allusively in Jacob's blessings to his sons and in Moses' blessings to the
tribes.

Zevulun's portion was around Yokne'am (mentioned explicitly in today's text)

including present-day Zichron Yaakov. Although the coastal region from Mt. Carmel
and northwards was in the territory of Asher, Zevulun also jutted into Asher's
portion in order to take a share in the coastal region in fulfillment of Jacob's
blessing that "he shall be by the coast and his flank shall reach to Sidon" (Genesis
49:13).

Our text indicates that the territories of the three tribes of Zevulun, Issachar and
Naftali all met at Mt. Tabor . In the light of Rabbi Nachman's teaching that all of the
names in our chapters allude to parts of the human body (as discussed in the
commentary on Joshua ch 15) it is interesting to examine Rashi's comment on our
text, Joshua 19:12, speaking about where Zevulun's portion touched Mt. Tabor . "
And it turned from Sarid eastward toward the sunrising unto the border of
CHISLOTH-TABOR ". In the words of Rashi, "I say that CHISLOTH has the
connotation of CHESALIM, the flanks – it was not on the peak of the mountain or at
its foot but on the slope near the middle towards the back and away from the front
in the same way as the flanks stand in an animal. And where it says AZNOTH-
TABOR [in verse 34, speaking of where Naftali's portion touched Mt. Tabor ] it
means near the head in the place of the ears – OZNAYIM." Note how many
anatomical terms Rashi introduces here in speaking about the topography of the
Holy Land !!!

Yissachar's territory, as mentioned, included the fertile region of the Yizre'el Valley.

Asher's territory was in the western part of the Upper Galilee including the coastal
strip, and extended way up into present-day Lebanon up to Sidon . The portion of
Naftali (the letters of whose name, when rearranged, spell out TEFILIN) was in the
eastern Upper Galilee in one of the areas of Israel that is most conducive to
spiritual ascent, including the beautiful mountain region around Safed and Meiron,
the Kinneret (v. 35) and the lush valley of the upper Jordan (v. 34).

THE TRIBE OF DAN

The well-known phrase "from Dan to Be'er Sheva" seems to indicate that Dan's
portion was located in the NORTH of Israel at the opposite end from Be'er Sheva in
the south. However, in fact our text indicates that Dan's main portion was in the
CENTER of present-day Israel including the locations of present-day Tel Aviv and
Bney Brak – still known as the Dan Region – as well as areas further into the
interior as far east as Beit Shemesh, Eshta'ol and Zor'ah, near which the grave of
Dan ben Yaakov can be visited until today. (Some may wonder whether Dan's role
in the wilderness as the tribe marching at the very rear, gathering in the stragglers,
has some relationship to the presence of latter-day Tel Aviv is his portion???)

Dan's additional territory located in the north of Israel around the sources of the
River Jordan is mentioned briefly in our text in verse 47. Dan's capture of this
territory actually took place after the death of Joshua in the time of Osniel ben Knaz
and is described in more detail in Judges ch 18.

Chapter 20
With the division of the Land among the tribes complete, it was now left to Joshua
to establish the foundations of a society governed by the Torah that he had
received from his teacher Moses. The first foundation of a civilized society is the
protection of its citizens from violence and particularly from murder. Human beings
all have their own interests, which often conflict with those of others, and strife is
inevitable in human society. A successful society is one that can keep this inevitable
strife under control without its being allowed to get out of hand. This is why the
first institution that Joshua laid down after the division of the land was that of the
Cities of Refuge for unwitting killers. This was in fulfillment of God's commandment
to Moses that three cities of refuge were to be established in Israel proper – the
territories west of the Jordan -- and another three in the territories east of the
Jordan (Exodus 21:12; Numbers 35:13f; Deuteronomy 4:41-3 & 19:2).

Accidents do occur, and in any society where people are active and busy it can
always happen that one person may cause another person's death quite
unintentionally. The purpose of the Cities of Refuge is to ensure that the accidental
killing of one person does not escalate into a bloody cycle in which that person's
relatives seek to avenge the death by killing the killer… Torah law provides that
intentional murder must be punished with the death penalty, but the unintentional
killer can take refuge in one of the Cities of Refuge in order to live securely while
repenting for the unintended tragedy that came about because of what may have
been some element of negligence on his part.

In the words of Rambam (Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Murder 4:9) "While
there are sins that are more serious than bloodshed, they do not destroy civilization
in the same way that bloodshed destroys it." It is profoundly ironic that of the three
cities of refuge mentioned in today's text in the Land of Israel proper east of the
Jordan , two – Hebron and Shechem (" Nablus ") – have been turned into cities of
refuge not for unwitting killers but for willful killers and terrorists. Whether the third
of the cities of refuge – Kedesh in the north – can be identified with present-day
Safed is a moot point, though it was certainly in the near vicinity.

Let us pray that the tranquil spirit of Safed will spread to all the inhabitants of the
Holy Land , and that sanity will return so that willful killers and terrorists are duly
punished and unwitting killers sent into exile in order that ordinary law-abiding
citizens may once again live securely without fear in a state of true peace.

Chapter 21
CITIES OF THE PRIESTS AND LEVITES

Following the establishment of the cities of refuge for unwitting killers (Joshua ch
20), the next step in laying the foundations for a truly Godly society in the Holy
Land was to set aside special cities up and down the country for the Levites and the
Priests, as God had commanded Moses (Numbers 35:1-8).

Under Torah law, those who had a special responsibility for maintaining the spiritual
bond of the people as a whole with God were not a group of democratically-elected
or self-selecting religious leaders. Rather they were a hereditary caste consisting of
the entire tribe of the Levites, of whom one family in particular – the descendants
of Aaron – were set aside as Cohanim, the priests.

The Torah had provided a unique system of tithes of produce and other vital
necessities to be given by all the people in order to provide the Cohanim and
Levites with their livelihood so as to leave them free from the need to earn a living
in order not only to serve in the Temple but also to be able to teach the people
Torah and minister to their spiritual needs. The Cohanim were to receive Terumah
(about 2% of a farmer's crops) together with the first-fruits and first of the dough
(CHALLAH), gifts of wool for their clothing, choice parts of animals slaughtered for
regular consumption, portions of sacrificial animals and certain other gifts. The
Levites were to receive Maaser (10% of the crops) for their livelihood, out of which
they were to contribute one tenth as their own TERUMAS MAASER to the priests.

Our present chapter (Joshua 21) gives an account of the cities set aside from the
territorial portions of the other tribes in order to provide the Levites and Priests
places for their residence and for their livestock and other needs. (It was not
forbidden for the Levites and Priests to work the land, but their main task was to
serve in the Temple and to teach and minister to the people.) The account in our
chapter parallels the account of the cities of the Priests and Levites given with their
genealogies in Chronicles I, 6:39:66.

Altogether the Priests and Levites received 42 cities of their own together with the
6 cities of refuge for unwitting killers (who needed the presence of spiritual
ministers to help them in their repentance) making a total of 48 cities,
corresponding to the 48 ways in which the Torah is acquired (Avot 6:6). Of these
13 were for the Cohanim-Priests and the remaining 35 for the Levites.

From the accounts here in Joshua and in Chronicles it emerges that the different
tribes did not contribute equal numbers of cities. Judah contributed the most – 8
cities – while Shimon gave only one. Naftali gave 3 and all the other tribes gave
four, "each according to his inheritance" (Numbers 35:8).

The Cohanim were all concentrated in the territories of Judah (9 cities including that
given by Shimon, who lived in Judah ) and Benjamin (4). This made sense since the
Cohanim were required to serve regularly in the Sanctuary / Temple -- in Shilo,
Nob, Giv'on and finally Yerushalayim – all of which were in or adjacent to the
territories of Benjamin and Judah.

The giving of Hebron – the outstanding jewel in the crown of Judah – to Aaron and
his sons – signifies the close alliance between the tribe of Judah and the priesthood
ever since Aaron the Priest had taken for his wife Bat Sheva, sister of Nachshon,
Prince of the Tribe of Judah (Exodus 6:23). The royal tribe of Judah took particular
responsibility for the establishment of the Temple , which was built through the
efforts of David – from the tribe of Judah -- and his son Solomon. It would be
David's songs that were sung by the Levites in the Temple as the Cohanim offered
the sacrifices.

The dispersal of the Priests and Levites in cities up and down the Land served a
vital function in bringing the Torah and its spiritual message to the people. The
Torah's unique method of giving the Priests and Levites their livelihood ensured
that they were in constant contact with the Israelite population of independent
farmers, who could never separate their business affairs from their religious
obligations because the Priests and Levites would come to their very barns and
threshing floors in order to collect their tithes and gifts. This was how the Torah to
which the Priests and Levites were particularly devoted percolated to the entire
nation.

Today the majority of Jews do not live in agricultural societies and in any case
cannot give TERUMAH to the Priests, since it may only be eaten in a state of ritual
purity which today's Cohanim are unable to attain in the absence of the ashes of
the Red Heiffer to purify them from defilement from the dead. Unless a Levite can
PROVE his pedigree, there is no obligation to give him MAASER. Thus although
there is still today an obligation to separate TERUMAH and MAASROS from the
produce of Eretz Yisrael, the separation is largely symbolic as we cannot give the
gifts to their intended recipients.

The contemporary equivalent of tithes for the Priests and Levites is the charity
money given to TORAH SCHOLARS to enable them to pursue their profession of
studying and teaching the Torah. Rambam (Maimonides) was strongly opposed to
the scholars' relying on charity rather than working to make their living and
supporting themselves to study Torah (Laws of Torah Study 3:10-11). However in
Rambam's time it was possible to earn sufficient to live off in about three hours
work a day (ibid. 1:12). This would probably still be possible today were it not for
the extravagances of contemporary "civilization", whose obscene military budgets
and many other excesses result in heavy taxation and all kinds of other expenses
that eat away at people's income, leaving the majority enslaved to their work for
many hours every day. Without the generosity of the brave few who provide
financial support for Torah scholars, the Torah would be in danger of being entirely
forgotten by the people. Charity support for Torah scholarship is intended not to
allow lazy layabouts to smoke and drink coffee all day in front of an open SEFER. It
is intended to enable truly sincere and devout seekers to discover and internalize
God's Torah and prepare themselves to practice it and teach it to others. In our
times of spiritual darkness and confusion there is no worthier charitable cause than
that of the Torah institutions that are genuinely and seriously pursuing the study of
the Torah as it applies practically in our time and spreading that knowledge among
the wider population. Let us pray that as more and more BAALEY BATIM (working
householders) make their way to the true Torah scholars to study, the overall level
of Torah knowledge among the people will increase to the point where we will be
ready to return to the Temple system with its Priests and Levites speedily in our
time. Amen.

Chapter 22
With the Cities of Refuge and those of the Priests and Levites established, the
people were ready to settle down to their intended life of Torah, Mitzvos and
devotion to God in the Holy Land , "each under his vine and each under his fig
tree". The Canaanites had been largely subdued, though not completely defeated,
and with the entire Land apportioned to the Tribes, the period of conquest had
come to an end. Thus the tribes of Reuven, Gad and half of Menasheh that had
taken their territories east of the Jordan were ready to return to their homes,
having fulfilled their undertaking to Moses not to do so until they had fought with
their brothers for the conquest of the Land west of the Jordan (Numbers ch 32).

The building of an Altar by the tribes of Reuven, Gad and Menasheh close to the
Jordan river near the boundary between the Land of Israel west of the Jordan and
their territories to the east set off a confrontation with the other tribes of Israel that
was an ominous precursor of what was to come in the times of the Judges and
almost led to a terrible internecine war.
With the building of the Sanctuary at Shilo, it was strictly forbidden to offer
sacrifices anywhere else (see Rashi on Joshua 22:12). Torah law explicitly
prohibited offering sacrifices on a "private" altar (BAMAH, "high place") once the
Sanctuary was at rest in the Holy Land (Deuteronomy 12:6; 12:11). The penalty
for violating the prohibition is KARET (spiritual excision), the most severe
punishment in the Torah (Leviticus 17:4). The unity of God was to be affirmed
through the choice of one and only one place in the whole world for the offering of
animal sacrifices by the Cohanim. It was forbidden for each individual to set up his
own personal Temple ritual, which could lead to the development of weird and alien
cults that would quickly turn into the very opposite of what the Torah intended.

This was why the 10 Tribes in Israel proper sent Pinchas the Priest with a
delegation of tribal representatives ready to make war against Reuven, Gad and
half Menasheh. (Pinchas had shown himself the nation's outstanding "zealot" in the
time of Moses, thereby earning the priesthood for himself, Numbers 25:7-13.)

When the three tribes answered and defended themselves against all
misconceptions, they invoked three names of God twice over: KEIL ELOKIM
HASHEM… (v. 22). The Midrash (Shochar Tov 3) comments: "What did the children
of Gad and Reuven see to invoke these three names twice over? For through them
He created the world (see Psalms 50:1) and through them He gave Israel the Torah
("for I am the Lord – HASHEM – your God – ELOKIM – a jealous God – KEL"). These
three names correspond to the three attributes through which the world was
created, with Wisdom (KEL, column of CHESSED, kindness), Understanding
(ELOKIM, column of GEVURAH, might) and Knowledge (HASHEM, center column,
TIFERET, beauty and harmony) – (see Proverbs 3:19).

The reason why they built the Altar was not to sacrifice on it but as a sign that they
too were Israelites like their brothers east of the Jordan , so that nobody should
come along in the future and say they had nothing to do with the people of Israel .
They were appealing to their brothers not to drive them away.

This is a message that could today be addressed to those who consider themselves
to be the "mainstream" of Jewry: Do not push away those who are earnestly and
sincerely seeking God's true Torah, even if at times they do things that are not
comprehensible to you and even seem like verging on the forbidden. A similar
message could be addressed to those in Israel to keep their arms open to their
brothers and sisters in the Diaspora. Before you jump to conclusions, first ask,
enquire and listen carefully.

Pinchas' mission was a successful exercise in conflict resolution and the Talmud
comments, "And Pinchas THE PRIEST heard…" (ch 22 v 30) – "Pinchas was not
inaugurated as a Cohen until he made peace among the tribes" (Zevachim 101b).
May Pinchas in his incarnation as Eliahu HaNavi come soon to make peace among
us all! Amen.

Chapters 23-24
THE SUMMATION

Joshua's address to the nation and its elders, heads, judges and officers points to
the lessons that were to be drawn from the conquest of the Land of Israel, one of
the most decisive events in the people's history. Having witnessed how God had
miraculously defeated the Canaanite nations on their own territory, the people of
Israel were to internalize the message that their entire future in the Land depended
on keeping God's Torah as a whole, and specifically upon not intermarrying or in
any way becoming culturally integrated with the remaining Canaanites, whose
pluralistic religions and cultures were the very antithesis of the monotheism of the
Torah.

Joshua warns of the existential danger of Israelite intermarriage with the

Canaanites, which would result in God's not driving the latter from the Land,
leaving them as "a trap and a stumbling block, whips at your sides and thorns in
your eyes until you are destroyed from upon the good land that the Lord your God
has given you" (ch 23 v 13). This would occur if the Children of Israel made any
compromise with the idolatry of the surrounding nations: just as God had showed
His faithfulness in bestowing all His promised good upon the Israelites, so He would
show His faith in wreaking vengeance upon them if they betrayed His Covenant.

THE FINAL ASSEMBLY IN SHECHEM

Rashi (ch 24 v 26) notes that Joshua had the Ark of the Covenant brought to
Shechem to add to the great solemnity of his final reproof to the nation before his
death. Our Rabbis cite numerous examples of the outstanding Tzaddikim of the
Bible (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Samuel, David) who only delivered their
reproofs immediately prior to their deaths so as not to have to repeat them over
and over, causing the recipients embarrassment and bad feelings (Sifri on Deut.
1:1; see Likutey Moharan II:8).

In his address, Joshua reviews the key events in the formation of the nation and its
identity, tracing their roots back to their idolatrous forefathers who dwelled "on the
other side of the river (Euphrates)", i.e. in Babylon. The opening words of this
passage (vv. 2-4) will be familiar to many since our sages quoted them at the
beginning of the Seder night Haggadah, when every Israelite father is commanded
to relate our national history starting with shame and ending in glory.

Joshua emphasizes that the victory of Israel over their enemies was "not through
your sword and not through your bow" (v. 12) but only through God, Who controls
the entire universe and every tiny detail in it (see Rashi on v. 7). Israel's mission is
to serve the One God and Him alone, and to shine the light of His unity to the
entire world. This is why their national mission in the Land of Israel was to
eliminate completely all trace of the idolatrous Canaanites – representing the
antithesis of God's unity. The commentary Metzudas David (on verse 14) points out
that in essence the task of removing idolatry is internal to each person: "Remove
the gods that your fathers served on the other side of the river and in Egypt" –
"entirely remove any thought of idolatry from your HEART".

Rashi (on v. 22) comments that Joshua's reason for needling the people until they
reaffirmed their staunch commitment not to mingle and assimilate with the nations
was that he saw (through holy spirit) that in time to come they would rebel and say
"Let us be like the nations" (Ezekiel 20:32). Reflecting on the ravages caused to the
Jewish people by the mass assimilations of the past few hundred years should also
needle us into mentally and spiritually separating ourselves from contemporary
alien influences that can weaken our devotion to the Torah.

MYSTERIES OF TANACH

The TaNaCh is a unique work that transcends time and applies to all the
generations. As we continue our study of our national heritage, we must have the
humility to accept that the apparent simplicity of the beautiful weave of stories
through which our prophets taught us God's Torah is deceptive. Buried within and
behind the prophetic words and letters of the Hebrew text are layers upon layers of
meaning, with multiple hints and allusions flying off in every direction. The rabbis
and sages who cherished and revered this literature and knew it forwards and
backwards by heart have through their Midrashim and other comments opened tiny
chinks in the thick veil concealing the infinite light that shines from the words of
these texts.

Thus we cannot always take the stories of NaCh as simple consecutive historical
narratives. For example, some readers ask why ch 24 v 32 on the burial of Joseph's
bones in Shechem comes AFTER the account of the burial of Joshua – is it possible
that the people have waited THIRTY-EIGHT years after their entry into the Land
before burying Joseph's bones, which they had brought up with them from Egypt???
But the truth is that it is not necessary to infer from our text that they did not bury
Joseph until after they had buried Joshua. One of the most important hermeneutic
principles of the Torah is that "there is no BEFORE and AFTER in the Torah". Events
are often juxtaposed in the verses not because of their temporal contiguity but
because of their thematic interconnection.

With Joshua's death and burial in his tribal inheritance in Timnath-Serach in Mt.
Ephraim next to Shechem, a whole cycle of history was complete. It was from
Shechem that Joseph, Jacob's chosen "first-born", had been stolen by his brothers
in accordance with God's deep plan (Genesis 37:14; see Rashi there) and it was to
Shechem that he was returned by his brothers, the Children of Israel, in the end.
Shechem had been the first place in the Holy Land that Jacob had acquired – he
paid good money for it (Genesis 33:19) – and he had given it to Joseph as the
"double portion" of the "firstborn" (ibid. 48:22). Joseph's mission (YESOD) was to
cause the Divine Presence to dwell in the very Land itself, the material world. The
conquest of the Land by Israel under the leadership of Joshua, Joseph's direct
descendant, was a crucial stage in the fulfillment of this mission. Now that Joshua
had completed his own life's work, it was fitting that he should be laid to rest in
Shechem, the very place from which Joseph had been stolen, because Joshua, who
like Joseph lived 110 years, was in fact his incarnation. Joshua's burial in Shechem
– thereby acquiring his burial place as his eternal possession – was the completion
of the cycle that began with Joseph's sale, concluding now with Israel's possession
of the Land. Thus the ATZMOS YOSEPH (literally the "bones" of Joseph, but
allusively his very "essence" = ETZEM), were now absorbed into the Land itself. It
may be that the physical burial of Joseph's bones actually took place in the early
days of the conquest, but it is mentioned here in order to point up the perfection of
God's deep plan, through which the cycle always swings around to the end.

"If Israel had not sinned they would have received only the Five Books of Moses
and the Book of Joshua, which is the Registry of the Land of Israel (i.e. of its tribal
portions)" (Nedarim 22b). The whole of the rest of the narrative and prophetic
portions of the NaCh tells the story of how the Israelites failed to drive out the
Canaanites and the terrible consequences to which this led. Some say that the only
lesson we learn from history is that nobody ever learns anything from history. It
may be true that many fail to draw and implement the lessons of history, but we do
not have to be like them. In Joshua's final discourse he emphasizes that we are
FREE to choose our own path (ch 24 vv. 14-15). Let us choose the path of life and
learn the lessons of our national history now in order not to repeat the mistakes of
the past in future.
 Book of Judges
The Book of Judges narrates the inner, spiritual history of Israel from after the
death of Joshua until the very threshold of the establishment of the kingship by the
prophet Samuel – a span of some four hundred years, in which the nation was
largely without a single, unifying leader except at times when outstanding "Judges"
– spiritual leaders of exceptional stature – arose to save them from their plight in
face of their enemies. According to our rabbis, the Book of Judges was written by
Samuel on the basis of "kabbalah" – i.e. the prophetic tradition handed down from
generation to generation until it came to his teacher, Eli the High Priest (Bava Basra
14b; see RaDaK on Judges 1:21). The entire book can be seen as an intimate study
of the developing moral sickness of the Israelites in their land that necessitated the
establishment of the messianic kingship by Samuel.

NO BEFORE AND AFTER IN THE TORAH

The principle that "there is no before and after in the Torah" was discussed in the
Study Notes on Joshua 23-24. We need this principle now in order to resolve
possible confusion caused by the "time-line" of Judges chs 1-2, which zig-zags quite
sharply back and forth. Chapter 1 verse 1 of Judges seems to pick up the historical
narrative where the book of Joshua left off, but as it begins to describe the tribe of
Judah's conquest of their territories, the narrative seamlessly slips back to events
that apparently took place in Joshua's lifetime and were already described in the
book of Joshua – the conquest of Hebron and that of Dvir by Osniel ben Knaz.(see
Joshua chapter 15).

Similarly, Chapter 2 of Judges opens with the appearance of God's messenger from
Gilgal to reprove the people, which would seem to have taken place after Joshua's
death. Whether or not it did, the text of Ch. 2 then interjects with the retelling of
Joshua's death and burial (Ch 2 vv. 6-10) even though the whole book of Judges
1:1 has already started AFTER Joshua's death. (Likewise Numbers 1:1 starts in the
SECOND month of the second year after the Exodus, while a later chapter,
Numbers 9:1 tells what happened in the FIRST month of the second year!) As
stated in the last installment, it is not necessarily the temporal contiguity of events
that determines their juxtaposition in the text, but rather their thematic
interconnection. Thus we shall find that the two striking episodes described at the
end of the book of Judges (ch's 17-21) – Michah's idol and the Concubine of Giv'on
– actually occurred in the very beginning of the period of the Judges.

Chapter 1
"WHO WILL GO UP FOR US" (Judges 1:1)

Although it appears that the people consulted the Urim VeTumim of the High Priest
in order to ask which TRIBE should "go up" first against the Canaanites, our rabbis
taught that God's answer – "Yehuda shall go up" (ch 1 v 2) specifically referred to
OSNIEL BEN KNAZ, the hero of the capture of Dvir, whose name was in fact
"Yehuda brother of Shimon". He was called OSNIEL because it contains the letters
of the Hebrew word ANISA, "You have answered" – because God answered his
prayers (see Temura 16a).

Osniel ben Knaz (also called YAABETZ see Chronicles 1, 2:55) was the second
Judge of Israel after Joshua, and the account of his capture of KIRYAT SEFER-DVIR
refers allegorically to his conquest of the Torah (particularly those portions that
were forgotten after the death of Moses.)

PURIFYING THE WORLD OF EVIL

A few hints of the profound allegory that underlies the book of Judges are contained
in SEFER HALIKUTIM of the ARI (R. Itzhak Luria, outstanding 16 th century
kabbalist). Following the account of the capture of Dvir, we are told that "the
children of KAYNI, Moses' father in law (=Jethro) went up from the city of dates (=
Jericho ) to be with the children of Judah in the wilderness of Judah …" (1:16).

Rashi (ad loc.) explains that the fat, lush territory around Jericho was given to
Jethro's offspring (who as converts did not have a share in the land) but only
temporarily, as it would later be given in "compensation" to the Tribe in whose
territory the Temple was to be built (Benjamin) as the place of the Temple would
no longer be theirs but would belong to all Israel. However, Jethro's offspring, the
KAYNITES, had more sense than to attach themselves to a temporary material plot
of land. Instead, since they lived in tents anyway, they went to the wilderness of
Judah – a territory with no material benefits – in order to learn Torah from
YAABETZ=OSNIEL BEN KNAZ and thereby gain an eternal spiritual acquisition. The
KAYNITES were later adduced by Jeremiah as the prime exemplar of the righteous
convert who chooses the Torah itself as his inheritance (Jer. Ch 35).

The KAYNITES will reappear in our narrative in Judges ch 4 where Yael wife of
HEVER HA-KAYNI distinguished herself by killing Sisera. In chapter 4 it says that
"Hever HaKayni SEPARATED himself from Kayin (=Adam's son)" (Judges 4:11).
They also appear in Samuel, when Saul asks them to move away from the
Amalekites, where they were then encamped, in order to facilitate his attack.

ARI explains that Jethro was from the root of Kayin (GEVUROT, severe judgment)
and Hever was from the seed of Jethro. This is why he is called HA-KAYNI from the
root Kayin. Kayin was a mixture of good and evil, and in Jethro the "food" was
sifted out from the "waste" and thereby rectified. This was when the good was
SEPARATED from the evil, as alluded to in the above-quoted verse. The evil
descended into the husks (Amalek, Goliath) while the good was left in Jethro.
KEYNI succeeded in bringing the husk "inside", into the realm of the holy, and thus,
"In the place where penitents stand, even complete Tzaddikim cannot stand",
because, as ARI explains, the penitents bring the husk inside and sweeten it.

Within the context of these notes it is impossible to condense the ARI's elaborate
teachings about the various incarnations alluded to in these stories of RAHAV, YAEL
and ELI (the last two have the same Hebrew letters), KAYIN, YISRO (Jethro) and
others. I am mentioning them only to underline how profoundly deep are these
chapters of NaCh that we have the privilege of studying.

THE MYSTERY OF LUZ

The above secrets relating to these souls are revealed in an extensive Drush of ARI
relating to the entire first section of Judges and centering in particular on Deborah
(ch's 4-5).
In the course of this Drush ARI reveals that the town of Beit El mentioned in our
present text, Judges 1:23 (and is first mentioned in Genesis 12:8 as having been
visited by Abraham and later, in Genesis 28:19, as the site of Jacob's dream of the
Ladder) alludes to the Partzuf of Leah in the world of Beriyah, while Luz – the
"name of the town before" – alludes to the Partzuf of Leah in the world of Atzilut.
(Lamed Zayin = 37 = gematria of Leah). In the Form of Man, this corresponds to
the place of the knot of the strap (RETZU'AH) of the Tefilin of the Head. As
explained in Shulchan Aruch (Code of Torah Law) the knot must be placed at the
bottom of the skull (OREF), just above where the neck (TZAVAR) begins. According
to our rabbis, it is from this bone that the body of man will develop in time to
come, at the time of the resurrection, and this bone is called LUZ. (Many Jews know
the tradition that this bone is nourished only by the food we eat at the MELAVEH
MALKA feast accompanying out the departing Shabbat each week.)

ARI's introductions may open a tiny chink in the veil to help us appreciate the
awesome depths of the very beautiful Midrashim about Luz brought in the
"revealed" Torah as opposed to the esoteric Torah of ARI. Thus Rashi (on v. 24)
tells us that the only way into this mysterious city of Luz was through a cave, at the
entrance to which stood a LUZ (=almond? nut?) tree. (Was there a hidden door in
the tree?) The man who showed the Israelites how to get in did not even say a
word. He merely gestured with his finger. Further details of the story are given in
Sota 46b, where we learn that in return for this great favor, the Israelites spared
the man, who went off to found a city likewise named Luz in the Land of the Hitim
(Asia Minor) that became prosperous from the Techeiles (blue die) industry,
survived even the ravages of Sennacheriv and Nebuchadnezzar, and which even
the Angel of Death was not authorized to enter. When the elders of the city, after
living on and on, reached the limits of knowledge, they would go outside the city
walls and die… All this was the man's reward for having ACCOMPANIED the
Israelites and pointing them in the right direction (just as we accompany out the
Shabbat). This Midrash suggests that the mystery of Luz is bound up with the
mystery of drawing the timeless world to come (Leah in Atzilus) down towards this
world (which derives from Beriyah…

Chapter 2
English translations of the Bible say that an ANGEL of the Lord came up from Gilgal
to Bochim (Judges 2:1). What is an ANGEL? Our rabbis taught that this "angel" was
none other than Pinchas the Priest, of whom the rabbis said that "when holy spirit
would rest upon him, his face would burn like fiery torches" (Midrash Tanchumah).

Those who imagine angels as radiant winged beings from other realms may have
been looking at medieval artists' reconstructions of events that are based on
complete ignorance of the Hebrew language and the true meaning of the Bible. The
Hebrew world MAL'ACH, which is frequently translated as "angel", simply means an
AGENT or MESSENGER. Indeed this exactly is the meaning of the ancient Greek
word ANGELOS from which our world ANGEL derives.

A MAL'ACH from God is definitely not an ordinary, animalistic human being that
eats and drinks like a glutton and is three quarters asleep most of the time. This
does not mean that God may not at times choose outstanding Tzaddikim who have
completely transcended the physical to be His MAL'ACHIM, as in the case of Moses,
who is referred to both in the Chumash and in Psalms as a MALACH.
 THE CYCLE OF WEEPING

The message of the MALACH who came up "from GILGAL" (=reincarnation,

recycling) to BOCHIM ("the weepers") gives the very essence of the moral of the
Book of Judges as a whole: The cyclical problem with which Judges deals is that the
Israelites failed to drive out all of the Canaanites, instead permitting them to
continue to dwell among them. This alone and in itself was not the fatal flaw. The
flaw was that as a result, the Israelites MIXED WITH and LEARNED FROM the
Canaanites, and adopted the religions and idolatrous practices of the nations
around them.

Chapter 2 suddenly interjects the death and burial of Joshua into the reproof that
traces the failure of the Children of Israel to live up to God's Covenant (vv. 6-10).
We read once again, as already told at the end of Joshua, that Joshua was buried in
TIMNATH CHERES to the north of HAR GO'ASH. TIMNATH CHERES means "picture
of the sun" – for an image of the sun was placed over Joshua's grave (see Rashi on
v. 9). This in itself does not have anything to do with idolatry: the allusion to the
sun was fitting since it was Joshua who had stopped the sun in its tracks at Giv'on –
Joshua TRANSCENDED NATURE. HAR GO'ASH is the VOLCANO. The rabbis taught
that the people failed to eulogize Joshua properly after his death, and as a result
God almost destroyed them all under a flood of lava (Rashi on Joshua 30. We note
that our texts never refer to thirty days of mourning for Joshua as they do in the
case of Moses, Jacob, etc. This is presumably the textual hint that Joshua was not
properly eulogized.)

In other words, after Joshua's final address to the people in Shechem (Joshua ch.
24), they all went home to attend to their own vineyards and fig trees without
"eulogizing Joshua" i.e. without seeking to INTERNALIZE the lessons that Joshua
had imbibed from HIS teacher, Moses (who WAS eulogized for thirty days). This
rupture in the tradition is the key to the subsequent tragic history of the Israelites
in the Land. They did not draw close to and internalize the messages of their
spiritual leaders except when they were direly threatened by their enemies,
whereas they should have continued to keep their departed leaders' Torah near to
their hearts all the time. (Perhaps this indicates that attaining the true Chassidic
relationship between Chassid and Tzaddik would be the remedy and thus one of the
main keys to our future redemption???)

Chapter 2 verse 13 tells us that "they abandoned HaShem and served the Baal and
the Ashtoroth". Since these terms for idolatrous deities will recur frequently in our
texts, it is worth noting that RaDaK (ad loc.) comments that Baal is a generic term
for graven images and idols, "since they are like a LORD (Adon = Baal) to those
that serve them". (Today also, we see that much of the world is under the spell of
the images daily spun by the communications media, which are the latter-day
purveyors of idolatry.) While ASHTAROTH are literally images of female sheep, they
also allude to the idolatry of wealth (the Hebrew letters of the word OSHER,
"wealth" are contained in the name ASHTAROTH.)

Chapter 3
The opening verses of our text paint a picture that is depressingly familiar to the
modern Israeli. The generation that witnessed the heroic days of the miraculous
conquest of the Land had passed, and a new generation arose that had not seen
God's great work and they rebelled against Him (see Rashi on verse 1). Instead of
enjoying peace and prosperity in the Land pursuing the Torah, they were forced to
learn the art of warfare, just as in contemporary Israel , where the very flower of
the country's youth are sacrificed on the altar of war.
Significantly the locations in the Promised Land over which the Israelites lost their
hold as told in our present text (v. 3) correspond exactly to those that are the
sorest trial for Israel until today. The "five officers of the Philistines" ruled over the
"big five" Philistine cities, Ashdod, Gaza, Gath , Ashkelon and Ekron in the
Mediterranean coastal region. The Sidonians and Hivites were dwelling in present-
day Lebanon, southern Syria and the Golan Heights.

Were it not for the hostility of the Arab population to the Jews, it is very likely that
much of today's secular Israeli population would have intermarried with the
surrounding peoples just as the Israelites did after the death of Joshua (v. 6). Verse
7 adds a new element to the idolatry which the ancient Israelites adopted from
their neighbors: the ASHEROT (not to be confused with the ASH-T-EROT in Judges
ch 3). The ASHERA is a tree worshiped as a god: tree veneration is mentioned in
the Torah (Deut. 16:21) as one of the idolatries practiced by the Canaanites. The
prohibition of anything that comes from an Ashera tree recurs throughout the Shas
and Poskim (Talmud and Codifiers). Significantly, the Kabbalah sees all worlds,
revealed and concealed, as parts of the Tree of Life, the Tree of the Sefirot, yet the
sages typify any kind of theology that splits off divine powers from one another as
"uprooting saplings" (Chagiga 14b).

KUSHAN RISHATHAYIM

Kushan Rishathayim king of Mesopotamia, whom God sent to try Israel (v. 8), was
an ideological as well as a physical enemy. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 105b) states
that this was none other than Bilaam-Laban (RISHATHAYIM means a DOUBLE
wickedness) – i.e. the treacherous spirit of Laban the Aramean and his sorcerer
offspring Bilaam reared its head and ruled again in the world. That Osniel ben Knaz
had the power to overcome this attests to his great power. It is said that Osniel
noted that God had said to Moses "I have surely seen (RA'OH RA-EESEE, the verb is
doubled) the misery of My people" (Ex. 3:7). Osniel learned out from the doubling
of the verb that God had already seen that the people would sin with the Golden
Calf, yet He still had compassion on them. Osniel said, "Whether they are worthy or
guilty, He is obliged to save them" (Rashi on v. 10). Let us turn this into our prayer
today for contemporary Israel!

EGLON KING OF MOAB

After the death of Osniel, the people's sins caused Eglon king of Moab to gain
ascendancy. Just as the Arameans of Kushan Rishathayim were relatives of the
Israelites – being from the family of Abraham's brother Nachor – so too were the
Moabites, who were descended from Abraham's nephew Lot, through his incestuous
relation with his oldest daughter. Moab corresponds to the southern region of
present-day Jordan east of the "Dead" Sea.

The capture by Moses of the territories of the Emorites east of the Jordan (who had
previously taken over parts of Moab) had driven a wedge between Moab and her
sister nation to the north, Ammon (= Amman, capital of Jordan), severely
weakening Moab. Eglon took advantage of the moral deterioration of the Israelites
to reassert Moabite sovereignty over the territories of Reuven, Gad and Menasheh
east of the Jordan, thereby joining up with Ammon again and also with Israel's
implacable enemy Amalek (who dwelled in the wilderness areas south east and
south west of the "Dead" Sea). Eglon even conquered Jericho, the "lock" of the Holy
Land.

Given the choice of going right or left by Abraham, Lot had opted to go to the left
(Genesis 13:9 ff). It is therefore significant that Ehud ben Gera used a "sinister"
ploy to kill Eglon through the power of his LEFT HAND. Although from the tribe of
Benjamin (BIN-YAMIN, "son of the RIGHT"), Ehud, like many other members of his
tribe was LEFT-HANDED (cf. Judges 20:16. Rabbi Nachman, who discusses left-
handedness in a number of places, notes that Benjamin corresponds to the Tefilin,
and the Tefilin of the arm are worn on the LEFT arm – Likutey Moharan II, 77; see
Rabbi Nachman's Wisdom p. 293).

The small "sword that had two mouths" (v. 16) which Ehud made and hid on his
right thigh under his clothes for surprise use against Eglon with his LEFT hand was
none other than the Torah, which is called "a sword of mouths" (Psalm 149)
because those who engage in its study eat in this world and in the world to come
(Tanchuma).

RUTH

Our rabbis note that when Ehud told Eglon "I have the word of God for you"
(Judges 3:20), Eglon arose from his throne out of respect. "Said the Holy One,
blessed be He, 'You accorded Me honor and rose from your throne for the sake of
My glory. By your life, I will raise up a descendant from you whom I shall seat upon
My throne, as it is said, And Solomon sat upon the throne of God as king'" (Ruth
Rabbah 2:9). Eglon had two daughters: While Orpah was the mother of Goliath,
Ruth became one of the most celebrated converts of all time and was the great
grandmother of King David, father of Solomon.

It is noteworthy that in this roundabout way Ruth's conversion came about through
Ehud, who was from the tribe of Benjamin, from which came Saul, the first king of
Israel . Saul persecuted David, who was said to be not even Jewish since the Torah
explicitly forbids a Moabite to enter the Assembly (Deut. 23:4). Only when the
sages of the generation revived Samuel's Midrash that this does not apply to a
MoabitESS was David accepted. Evidently left-handed, roundabout courses of
events are part of the coming of Mashiach!!!

Just as Benjamin contributed Ehud ben Gera to the illustrious history of Israel's
judges, so every one of the tribes of Israel contributed at least one judge, including
Levi (Eli and Samuel), with the sole exception of Shimon, whose history of rebellion
under Zimri ben Saloo in the time of Moses precluded the possibility of their
producing a judge.

Chapter 4
A certain "confusion" between right-handedness and left-handedness continues in
Chapter 4: even Rabbi Chaim Vital, who wrote down the teachings of the ARI,
states that he cannot remember if his master said that Yavin king of Canaan who
ruled in Hatzor (Judges 4:2) was from the LEFT side, Imma-Binah (Yavin, "he will
understand") or from the RIGHT side, Abba-Chochmah (YaVIN=72=Chochmah; see
Sefer HaLikutim, Shoftim). In any event, ARI reveals that the root of KAYIN
(Adam's first son), which derives from the GEVUROT of BINAH, descended into the
unholy realm of the husks to manifest as the unholy DA'AS ("knowledge").

For this reason, Yavin's general was called SISERA: The two middle letters of his
name are Samach (60)-Reish (200) = 260 = 26 x 10 = i.e. ten Havayot (Each
HaVaYaH is one Tetragrammaton, in gematria = 26; HaVaYaH is Da'at, here
spreading through all ten Sefirot). The remaining letters of SISERA are Samach
(60), Yud (10) Aleph (1) making a total of 71, which is the sum of MaH (the "Milui"
– filling of the letters -- of HaVaYaH, corresponding to Zeir Anpin = 45) plus Kaf-
Vav (26=HaVaYaH). ARI states that Sisera alludes to the mystery of Daas of Zeir
Anpin on the side of the Kelipot-husks (ibid).

The Midrash attributes enormous military resources to Sisera. Besides the 900
chariots of iron mentioned in our text (v. 13), "he brought 40,000 commanding
officers each of whom had one hundred thousand men. Sisera was thirty years old
and conquered the whole world. There was not a city whose wall he did not cause
to fall through his roar. Even a wild animal that he roared at in the field would
stand unable to move from its place. When he went to bathe in the River Kishon, he
would come out of the water with his beard full of enough fish to feed many, many
people…" (Yalkut). All of this seems to be alluding allegorically to what the ARI
expresses Kabbalistically through the use of Gematrias.

Given that, as ARI explains, this was on one level a war of spirit and ideology, it is
interesting to note that the war actually took place in areas of Israel that many
today find to be the most spiritual – the lower and upper Galilee. Yavin's Hatzor had
been destroyed together with its king, also called Yavin, in the time of Joshua (ch.
11). Now, however, the new Yavin reasserted the Canaanite power, threatening the
entire north and center of the Land: the territories of Ephraim, Zevulun and Naftali.
With all the other tribes now settled in their respective inheritances, they were so
preoccupied with their lives, farms etc. that they did not unite as in former times to
help their threatened brothers.

The leader of the hour was the prophetess DEBORAH of the tribe of Ephraim. The
Midrash states that she was exceptionally wealthy (Targum on Judges 4:5 teaches
that the topography in this verse alludes not to places but to her sources of wealth,
see Rashi ad loc.). ARI explains the topography spiritually: Devorah is rooted in
MALCHUS, Her "husband" LAPIDOS (=flashing torches=BARAK=flash of lightening)
is YESOD. The TOMER under which she modestly sits so as not to have YICHUD
with the Israelites who come to consult her on Torah law also alludes to YESOD. It
was "between RAMAH and BEIT EL" because BEIT EL is Leah who is RAMAH, "high
up", the concealed world of BINAH. Thus we begin to see how it is that Devorah
was part of the repair of the faulty world of Yavin-Daat of Kelipah.

"What was Devorah doing there judging Israel – wasn't Pinchas ben Elazar still
alive? I BRING HEAVEN AND EARTH TO WITNESS: BE IT A GENTILE OR ISRAELITE,
A MAN OR A WOMAN, A SLAVE OR MAIDSERVANT, ACCORDING TO A PERSON'S
DEEDS, SO HOLY SPIRIT DWELLS UPON THEM. In the academy of Elijah it was
taught that Devorah's husband was an ignoramus, but Devorah said to him, 'Go
and make wicks for the lamp in the Sanctuary in Shilo and then your share will be
among the righteous among them and you will come to the life of the world to
come.' Thus he would make the wicks and he had three names: Lapidos, Barak and
Michael…" (Midrash Tanchumah). The concept of the wick of the lamp is bound up
with Binah (see Likutey Moharan I:60 etc.).

The ten thousand men of Naftali and Zevulun that Barak brought against Sisera
were nothing but small farmers – how were they to stand up against Sisera's hosts
and his 900 iron chariots? Barak went to Mount Tabor to lure Sisera out against
him, but Sisera was a wily general and knew that his chariots would be useless in
the rocky terrain of the mountain. It was springtime, and he stayed down below in
the valley of the upper Kishon, where he expected that his chariots would easily
overcome the Israelites. (The River Kishon starts in the eastern Galilee and runs all
the way through the Yezriel valley down to the Mediterranean Sea by Haifa).

In the Song of Deborah (ch. 5) we learn that "from heaven they fought -- the very
stars fought from their tracks with Sisera" (v. 20). (The initial letters of
HAKOCHAVIM MIMESILOSOM NILCHAMU make up HaMaN, for the Divine victory
over Sisera was the victory over the husk of Amalek, with which he was bound up.
Amalek touts the Law of Nature, but God transcends nature.) How exactly did the
very stars miraculously transcend the normal laws of nature to bring about the
defeat the Canaanites? It is thought that the miracle consisted in a sudden, totally
unexpected tornado sweeping in from the region stretching from the Rift Valley
(ARAVA) to the Kinneret east of the Lower Galilee, bringing torrents of pelting rain
that turned the Kishon Valley into a treacherous muddy bog that totally
incapacitated the iron chariots of the Canaanites and swept them into the river,
forcing Sisera to flee ignominiously. The miracle is not that there was a tornado –
these occur periodically in this region – but that the tornado came exactly when it
did (see Baal Shem Tov al HaTorah, Beshallach).

The other heroine of this story is YAEL, another of the outstanding converts of all
time. The wife of the itinerant KEINI, she could have saved Sisera, let him lie with
her in the tent and risen to "greatness". Instead she remained faithful to her
husband, cleverly giving Sisera not the thirst-quenching waters of kindness but
soporific milk, which caused him to doze off exhausted from the battle. She then
took the tent peg and smashed his head. It was fitting that it should have been his
brain that she dashed, since, as revealed by ARI, Sisera's hold was in the brain and
mind (DAAT).

With the destruction of the unholy husk, the holy spark was released, and thus
Rabbi Akiva ben Yosef came forth from the descendants of Sisera, just as Rav
Shmuel bar Shilas came from those of Haman (ARI). Rabbi Chaim Vital concludes
the ARI's Drash on Devorah by saying: "And my master told me that my soul was
there too."

Chapter 5
THE SONG OF DEVORA

It was fitting that Devora should sing the song of victory over Sisera. DEVORA is
from the root DAVAR, "word", as in DIBUR, "speech" (= Malchut, through which
Godliness is revealed.) When speech rises to the level of song, speech is perfected
through the musical notes of the melody (TA'AMEY HAMIKRA), which come from a
higher level. Speech is from the Nefesh ego-soul (Malchut) while song is from the
Neshamah-soul (Binah, Understanding). Understanding elevates speech.

Devorah's song was sixth of the ten great songs of history. They are listed in
Targum on Shir HaShirim 1:1: Song of the Sabbath day at creation, Song at the
Red Sea, Song over the well in wilderness (Numbers 21:17), Moses' song of
Ha'azinu, "Hear O heavens…"; Joshua's song that stopped the sun at Giv'on,
Deborah's song, Hannah's song over the birth of Samuel, David's song over his
victory over all his enemies, Solomon's Song of Songs and the Song of the future
redemption. The Hebrew word for song is SHIR, linked to the root SHEIR, a "chain".
A song is a chain of words and notes that give TA'AM -- deeper MEANING – to
events and experiences that would otherwise seem disconnected. The song links
everything together as part of God's symphony of creation: the melody is the song
of His HASHGACHAH, His "providence" over every detail.

Deborah's song was sung with Holy Spirit. It is highly allusive, and we are in need
of the commentators if we are to trace the multiple hints it contains. First among
the commentators we need on any such a flighty, eloquent passage is the Aramaic
Targum, which in translating simple narrative portions of NaCh is normally terse
and direct, but which expands considerably on the meaning of many prophetic
passages in order to explain them in greater depth. While the best known Aramaic
Targum on the Five Books of Moses is that of Onkelos the Ger (Convert) our
Aramaic Targum on the Prophets and Holy Writings was written by R. Yonasan ben
Uzziel (who also wrote a Targum on Chumash, somewhat lengthier and with more
midrash than that of Onkelos). R. Yonasan was the greatest of the students of Hillel
– while Rabban Yochanan ben Zakai, who went on to lead the Jewish people during
and after the destruction of the Second Temple, is described by the Talmud as
Hillel's "smallest" pupil. Given that Raban Yochanan knew all the secrets of the
universe and even the "conversations of trees", it boggles the imagination to try to
understand the level of R. Yonasan ben Uzziel, who was so devoted to the Torah
that he never even married.

The Targum of Yonasan brings out various allusions in Deborah's song to past and
future events in Israel's history, including the Crossing of the Red Sea and the
Giving of the Torah. The miracle that Deborah's generation witnessed whereby the
overwhelming forces of Sisera and his allies were swept away by the River Kishon
was seen as a miracle on the soil of the Holy Land that bore comparison with that
of the splitting of the Red Sea in its significance for the nation and its survival. The
Targum and Midrash state that at the time of the Giving of the Torah, Mt. Tabor
and Mt. Carmel had come asking for the Torah to be given on them, but God
decreed that it was to be given on the humble Mount Sinai in the Wilderness.
Nevertheless, Tabor and Carmel were rewarded: Elijah performed the miracle of the
consumption of his offering by heavenly fire on Mt. Carmel, while Mt. Tabor was the
scene of the "Giving of the Torah" in the time of Deborah.

The song of Deborah (as explained by Targum, Rashi and the other commentators)
portrays the dire state of Israel prior to the victory over Sisera. It had become
impossible to travel the roads because of danger from the enemies; it was
impossible even for the girls to go out to draw water from the wells; it was
impossible to live in open, unfortified settlements – the Israelites had to take
refuge behind walls! (See Targum and Rashi on vv. 6-7, v. 11.) The Israelites were
faced with an "Intifada" from the Canaanites that made life impossible in the
country, not unlike today.

The song also hints at the cracks of disunity among the tribes. Reuven in particular
comes in for criticism (vv. 15-16) for sitting on the east of the Jordan telling Barak
"we are on your side" and Sisera "we are on your side", waiting to see who would
win (Targum). The tribe of Dan is also criticized for loading their possessions into
boats on the River Jordan in order to escape (v. 17), and MEIROZ is severely
cursed (v. 23) although there are different opinions as to whether this was a city, a
prominent individual, or perhaps a star (Moed Katan 16a).

The greatest praise goes to YAEL, who became a Judge in her own right (Rashi on
v. 6). "She is blessed more than women in the tent" (v. 24). This implies that she is
compared favorably to the matriarchs Sarah, Rivka, Rachel and Leah, all of whom
are described in the texts as being "in the tent".

How did Yael have the strength to kill a mighty warrior like Sisera. The Talmud
states that her greatness lay in carrying out a sin for the sake of God (LISHMAH),
which is greater than carrying out a mitzvah not for the sake of God (SHELO
LISHMAH). The Talmud infers from v. 27 that Sisera had relations with her seven
times, thereby exhausting all his strength and thus enabling her to kill him (Nazir
23b).

"Thus let all your enemies be destroyed… and those who love Him are like the sun
coming out in its strength" (v. 31). On the latter part of the verse, the Talmud
comments, "This verse refers to those who allow themselves to be insulted and do
not insult back, who hear themselves abused and do not answer, who do what they
do out of love and rejoice in suffering" (Yoma 23a). In time to come the light will be
seven times seven the light of the seven days of creation – i.e. 343 times greater
(7 x 7 x 7; see Rashi on this verse).

Chapter 6
The victory over Sisera brought relief to the Israelites but they did not take
advantage of the victory to drive out the Canaanites and consolidate their hold on
the Land. This gave the Midianites their opportunity to make ever more destructive
predatory incursions. The Midianites, who were descended from Abraham's son
from the "concubine" Ketura (Gen. 25:2), were a group of five clans, some
shepherds, some traders and some of them marauding bandits, who lived as
nomads across the vast stretch of desert east of Ammon and Moab (present day
eastern Jordan and north west Saudi Arabia). They were sworn enemies of Israel
(Numbers 25:18). The Israelite failure to drive out the Canaanites from their
strongholds in the Jezreel valley enabled the Midianites to cross the Jordan river
fords into the Land and establish a footing in the Beit She'an valley, from which
they began attacking the tribes of the Galilee and advancing into the center of the
country into the tribal areas of Ephraim and Menasheh.

"And Israel became very low" (vayiDAL, DAL = poor, wretched) (v. 6). "They were
poor without good deeds… And they didn't even have the resources to bring a
MINCHAH offering" (Tanchuma, Behar).

The prophet who came to reprove the people (verse 8) was according to tradition
Pinchas ben Elazar.

Gideon was from the tribe of Menasheh, from that half of the tribe that had settled
in the Land itself. The town of "Ofra" in which he lived is not to be confused with
Ofra north of Jerusalem in the territory of Benjamin, an important settlement until
today. RaDaK on verse 11 states that Gideon's Ofra was a town of the same name
further to the north: it was probably a little to the south west of Shechem (Nablus).

The Zohar (I, 254) states that Gideon was not a tzaddik, nor the son of a tzaddik,
but that he merited his role as savior because he spoke in defense of Israel (see
Rashi on v. 13).

The depiction of Gideon helping his father to beat and sift wheat in a wine vat out
of fear of the Midianites shows the dire state of affairs in Israel . According to the
Midrash, Gideon said he would do all the work so that his father could go to hide
from the Midianites, and it was for this act of filial piety that he was worthy of the
visit from the angel (v. 11).

Our commentators make no effort to identify the angel with any human. It is clear
from the text that this was a spiritual messenger from God who appeared to Gideon
when he was in a state of prophecy (see RaDaK on v. 9).

From Gideon's sacrifice of MATZOT before the angel, we learn that it was Pesach
(Rashi on v. 19). According to tradition, Gideon had heard his father recounting the
miracles of the Exodus at the Pesach Seder and said to God, "If our ancestors were
Tzaddikim, then save us in our merit, and if they were wicked, then just like you
did wonders for them for free, so too perform wonders for us – WHERE ARE ALL
HIS WONDERS THAT OUR FATHERS TOLD US???"
Gideon's smashing of the Baal-idol is reminiscent of Abraham's smashing the idols
of his father Terach as told in the famous midrash. His father Joash's challenge to
the men of the city that Baal himself should avenge those who broke his statue is
somewhat reminiscent of Abraham's mocking answer to Terach when asked how
the idols were smashed and he said that the biggest idol smashed all the others.

When Gideon sacrificed to God on an altar built from the stones of the altar to Baal
and with vessels and fuel taken from the Ashera tree, eight Torah prohibitions were
temporarily suspended to enable him to do so: (1) sacrificing outside the sanctuary
(2) at night (3) by a non-Cohen (4) using vessels of an Ashera, which is forbidden
for benefit even for a mitzvah (5) using the stones of an idolatrous altar (6) using
the wood of the Ashera for fuel; (7) sacrificing an animal set aside as an offering to
an idol – the fattened ox (8) sacrificing an animal that had been worshipped – the
other ox (Temura 28b). "It is time to do for the Lord, they have broken
(HEIFEIROO, = "you should break") Your Torah" (Psalms 119:126).

Even though Gideon was obliged to perform his revolutionary, iconoclastic mission
at nighttime because of fear of repercussions from the local bastions of political
correctness, his heroic act was the beginning of a sweeping movement of
repentance from idolatry that led to victory over the Midianites. As soon as one
simple Israelite was willing to get up and shatter the gods of political correctness,
the redemption could take place.

If Gideon believed in God, why did he ask for a SECOND sign after God had already
performed a patent miracle in drenching the fleece with dew when everything
around was dry (vv. 36-40)? RaDaK (on v. 39) points out that "You shall not try the
Lord" (Deut 6:16) but answers in the name of R. Saadia Gaon that it was not that
Gideon had any doubt about God's ABILITY to save Israel. To test God would be to
say "Prove that you can do it". But what Gideon wanted was reassurance about
whether he himself was worthy to be the channel for such a great miracle.

We can learn from Gideon that even a simple person can merit God's
communicating with him directly and using him as the instrument of His
redemption, all through the power of simple mitzvoth, good deeds and love of the
people of Israel.

Chapter 7
The magnitude of the challenge facing Gideon must be reconstructed from hints
scattered through our text. The marauding Midianites with their Amalekite and
other allies, the "Children of the East" (ch 7 v 12), numbered one hundred and
thirty-five thousand warriors (ch 8 v 10) -- over four times as many as Gideon's
32,000 – the great majority of whom proved to be too afraid to go out to battle (ch
7 v 3). The Midianites were encamped in the western corner of the Beit Shean
valley between the protruding spurs of Giv'at Hamoreh with Mt. Tabor behind it to
their north and Mt. Gilboa to the south. They had watchmen posted on the hills (ch
7:2 see Targum/RaDaK). Gideon had rallied Naftali and Asher, the tribes of the
Galilee, to Mt. Tabor, intending that they should attack the Midianites on their
northern flank, while he himself was waiting for reinforcements to come up from his
own tribe of Menasheh in the south in order to advance northwards from Gilboa to
attack the Midianites on their southern flank. However, the plan for a pincer attack
failed because the hoped for reinforcements from Menasheh did not arrive in time,
and from ch 8 vv. 18-19 we learn that the Midianites succeeded in routing the
northern tribes on Mt Tabor under the leadership of Gideon's brother, whom they
killed.
Thus Gideon was left with no more than ten thousand men to stand against the
vast army of invading hordes from the east. Yet even Gideon's 10,000 were far too
many for God, Who wanted to teach that Israel does not need great numbers in
order to accomplish His purpose, "lest Israel boast against Me saying 'my own hand
saved me'" (verse 2). God does not need numerical advantage for His victories. For
"not because of your multitude out of all the peoples did the Lord desire you and
chose you, for you are the small minority out of all the peoples" (Deut. 7:7).

What counts for God is true devotion and righteousness. Gideon showed
outstanding faith and courage in sending away all but the 300 tzaddikim who,
rather than fall down on their knees like Baal-worshippers in order to plunge their
faces into the stream to slake their desperate thirst, preferred to draw up the water
with their hands and bring it up to their mouths with dignity. DEREKH ERETZ ("the
way of the land", "good manners") comes even before the Torah. "And his HAND
was FAITH" (Exodus 17:12). Instead of greedily bending down and swallowing what
they needed to take from the world, they drew it to themselves through the hand of
FAITH and PRAYER.

Why was kneeling down by the water the sign of an idolater? RaDaK (on v 4) brings
an illuminating midrash that says that the people of that generation used to kneel
down and bow down TO THEIR OWN REFLECTIONS – i.e. they were filled with
narcissistic pride. (Do we too look too much in the mirror?) Self-love with the
accompanying craving for kudos were the fatal flaws that subsequently led to so
much strife between Gideon and Ephraim, the men of Succoth and Penu-el (ch 8)
and eventually to the downfall of Gideon's own dynasty (ch 9).

THE CAKE OF BARLEY

Man's egotistical pride is precisely what the Omer barley offering brought in the
Temple on the second day of Pesach, 16th of Nissan, comes to rectify. We have
already seen (ch 6 v 19) that Gideon's smashing of the idols took place on the first
day of Pesach. He "rose early in the morning" (ch 7 v 1) and advanced all day,
dispatching all who were unworthy to take part in the miracle. It was thus on the
eve of the 16th Nissan that God told him to go down to spy on the Midianite camp,
and they were routed that night.

The Midianite man's dream about the coal-baked cake of barley that rolled through
and overturned the Midianite camp alludes to the merit of the small Omer-measure
of Barley offered by Israel (Rashi on v. 13). The Omer offering, which initiates the
harvest season, is a kind of national Sotah (unfaithful wife) offering to propitiate
God for apparent disloyalty. The only two grain offerings in the Temple that had to
be of barley and not wheat were the Omer and Sotah woman's offerings. Barley is
normally for animal consumption. Offering barley on the Altar signifies man's
repentance for having succumbed to his animal instincts. RaDaK relates the unusual
word TZLIL referring to the barley cake (TZLIL is the KRI, the way the word is to be
READ) to TZLIL meaning a "noise", alluding to the tumult in the camp that the
barley-cake brought in its wake. However, the Midrash darshens the KSIV – the
word as WRITTEN in the parchment scroll, TZALOOL – as indicating that the
generation was TZALOOL, "strained off" of all Tzaddikim (see Rashi on v 13 and
Vayikra Rabba 28:6). Practically no-one was left except Gideon's tiny band. Even
so, they saw victory through their humble faith and their confidence that even in
their degradation and smallness, their repentance could bring God to perform
miracles for them.
The Shofars and Torches that were their only military "equipment" came to arouse
the merit of the Giving of the Torah, which was accompanied by the blast of the
shofar, thunder and lightning (Rashi on v 16). From the point of view of
psychological warfare, the idea was to surround the Midianites and make them
think that they were in the middle of a surprise night-time ambush on all sides by a
vast Israelite army.

Thus God showed that one man's dream could throw an entire army into a state of
such demoralization that an ingenious display of night-time fireworks with
accompanying Shofar-blowing could send them all into flight. The defeat of the
Midianites came about not through numbers but all through the power of the spirit.

The Midianites fled southwards along the western bank of the River Jordan, hoping
to cross over the river fords into Ammon in order to escape eastwards to their
home territories in the Arabian desert.

Chapter 8
God's miraculous defeat of the Midianites and their allies is celebrated in Psalm 83
(particularly vv. 10-12). The lesson that comes forth from the narrative in our text
in Judges is that the vital flaw of pride and arrogance, together with the internecine
rivalry to which it leads, still prevented the Israelites from uniting under a
messianic king whose goal would be not his own personal glorification and that of
his dynasty but only the sanctification of God's great Name. It would take
generations before the nation was ready for a true king of Israel.

Gideon himself showed himself largely free of this pride: he eloquently dissipated a
potential conflict with the Ephraimites by humbly offering them the kudos, but he
was faced with excessive mean-mindedness from the men of Succoth and Penu-el,
whose refusal to assist him in his efforts against the common enemy is reminiscent
of Naval's later refusal to help David. Succoth and Penuel are east of the River
Jordan near the Adam Bridge in the valley of the River Yabok. Penu-el had been the
site of Jacob's encounter with the angel prior to his confrontation with Esau
(Genesis 32:31) while Succoth was where Jacob subsequently built a house for
himself and "tabernacles" for his animals (ibid. 33:16). Perhaps the severe reprisals
which Gideon the Judge meted out against the men of Succoth and Penu-el were
intended to eradicate the animalistic Esau-trait that their meanness betrayed.

The remaining forces of Midian and their allies succeeded in reaching KARKOR,
which is about 200 km. EAST of the River Jordan. There they thought they would be
safe from Gideon, yet he succeeded in capturing their kings and routing the entire
camp.

The final destruction of the Midianites by a scion of the tribe of Menasheh was
fitting since it was the Midianites who had purchased Menasheh's father Joseph
from his brothers and sold him to the Egyptians (Genesis 37:28 & 36). Gideon
refused the Israelite offer to be their king with a dynasty of his own offspring as
kings after him: he understood that Israel was not yet ready for a king. Instead he
took a rich share of the booty captured from the Midianites, who in v. 24 are
referred to as Ishmaelites since as a son of Ketura (=Hagar) Midian was Ishmael's
brother and came under his wing. The splendid gold necklaces and ornaments of
the Midianite hosts indicate pride. Gideon's receiving the Midianite booty was
perhaps a "repayment" for the sale of Joseph, his ancestor, but could he rectify the
pride?

Why did Gideon make himself an EPHOD? The EPHOD is one of the eight garments
of the High Priest (Exodus 28:6 ff). Gideon had indeed, although not a COHEN,
served as "High Priest" when he broke down the altar of Baal and sacrificed to
HaShem. However, the Midrash (Bereishis Rabba 45) explains that he had a
particular motive in making an EPHOD for himself. On the CHOSHEN MISHPAT, the
breast-plate of the High Priest worn with the EPHOD, there were twelve stones
corresponding to the Twelve Tribes of Israel. But because one of the stones was for
Levi, it was impossible to have more than one stone for the tribe of Joseph even
though it had become two, with Ephraim and Menasheh. Since Ephraim was the
natural leader of Joseph there was apparently no stone in the High Priest's
breastplate for Gideon's tribe of Menasheh. Since the twelve stones correspond to
the twelve constellations (MAZALOT), it was as if Menasheh had no MAZAL, and this
was why Gideon made the EPHOD. If MAZAL means "luck" (well, kind of), Gideon's
EPHOD proved to be very luckless, for although he intended it for the sake of
heaven, this symbol of "his" victory over the Midianites became a stumbling-block
for Israel as they turned it into a cult object, and although Gideon himself enjoyed
a good old age, his success in weaning the Israelites from idolatry were thus short-
lived.

May God save us from pride and unholy rivalry and bring us to the humility that will
enable us to be worthy of His victory over our enemies despite our tiny numbers
and their overwhelming force.

Chapter 9
BETRAYAL

At the end of Judges Chapter 8 we learned that after the death of Gideon
(=Yeruba'al, "he who strives with Baal") the Children of Israel reverted "and they
went astray after the Baalim and they put BAAL BRIS as god over them" (v. 33). It
is unnecessary to try to imagine the ancient Israelites falling down and mindlessly
prostrating to sticks and stones. The Talmud (B'rachos 12b) interprets the word VE-
ZONU, "they went astray", lit. "they whored after", as implying that they
entertained THOUGHTS of idolatry, which suggests that many may not have openly
practiced idolatrous rituals but were ideologically alienated from their ancestral
faith. In fact the ideology underlying certain kinds of idolatry can be seemingly
highly profound and indeed very attractive to the enquiring mind.

What exactly the ideology of BAAL BRIS was is hard to say. The Talmud (Shabbos
83) says that BAAL BRIS (lit. "master of the covenant") was identical with ZVUV,
the god of the Philistines of Ekron. A ZVUV is a "fly". It may seem weird that
anyone would worship a fly, though in fact flies have been even more successful
than humanity in populating the world with their kind and can usually move a lot
faster than even the best swatters. Whether this god was actually represented as a
fly of some kind is open to question. The rabbis encouraged mispronouncing the
names of idols in order to deride them. What is significant is that the Israelites,
who were sworn to God's Covenant (BRIS), had now allowed the very concept of
the Covenant, with the loyalty it demands, to become degraded. Thus the story of
AVIMELECH – who burned up the people of Shechem who followed this idolatry – is
essentially one of betrayal and its bloody consequences.

I WANT TO BE KING

We also learned at the end of Chapter 8 that Gideon had seventy legitimate sons
and one son from his PILEGESH in Shechem. Under Torah law a PILEGESH is a
woman that a man designates for himself as a concubine but without the ceremony
of KIDDUSHIN (sanctifying a woman to oneself as a wife, the first stage of
marriage) and without the protection of a KESUBA (the "marriage contract"
guaranteeing the woman financial security even in widowhood or after divorce). The
PILEGESH thus does not have the status of a wife and is considered somewhat
disreputable: thus RaDaK on Judges 11:1 equates PILEGESH with ZONAH, "whore".
Did Gideon call this son AVIMELECH – or did the boy that was born of this not-so-
proper relationship take the name for himself? From Judges 8:31, a careful reading
of the Hebrew suggests that he himself gave himself the name of AVIMELECH,
which literally means "My father is king": thus he tried to cover over his
disreputable origin using the KUDOS of Gideon. However, AVIMELECH also has the
connotation of I WANT TO BE KING: AVI is thus from the same root as AVA, I want,
as in EVIYON, the "poor one", who "wants" (see Likutey Moharan I, 10:4).

Midrash Tanchuma contrasts this AVIMELECH unfavorably with AVIMELECH king of

the Philistines in the time of Abraham (Genesis ch 20 etc.). "'Better is a near
neighbor than a distant brother' (Proverbs 27:10). Better was Avimelech king of the
Philistines who gave great honor to Abraham, saying 'Here, my land is before you'
(Gen. 20:15) than Avimelech son of Yerubaal who killed his brothers. Said the Holy
One blessed be He to Avimelech: 'You wicked man. You killed SEVENTY MEN ON
ONE STONE (Judges 9:5) – You will be punished': 'And a certain woman cast down
the MILLSTONE (ibid. v. 53). 'He who digs a trap will fall into it and he that rolls a
stone will have it come back against him' (Prov. 26:27)."

AND AVIMELECH… WENT TO SHECHEM (v 1)

The city of Shechem was designated for punishments from long before. It was there
that Jacob's daughter Dinah had been raped, sullying the purity of his family and
leading to the slaughter of the men of Shechem by Levi and Shimon (Gen. ch 34).
It was to Shechem that Joseph's brothers went to graze and devise their plan to
destroy him. The solemn ceremony of the Blessings and Curses (Deut. 11:29 ff;
ibid. 27:11; Joshua ch 8) had been carried out on Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Eival
overlooking Shechem. Joseph's bones had been finally buried Shechem, but since
the death of Joshua there had been a steady decline in the Israelites that was
expressed now in the corruption of the leadership. Faith and trust in God were
replaced with mob appeal.

In Shechem, Avimelech used his mother's family's influence to build a political base
for himself founded not on loyalty but on popular resentment against the splendid
dynasty of 70 princes that Gideon had established. Avimelech won over the BAALEY
SHECHEM – the "owners", "masters" or "bosses" of the place with all the Mafiosi
connotations that the term has. With money taken from the Temple of BAAL BRIS
(was this the local bank?) Avimelech hired a gang of ruffians to form a private
militia to carry out the bloody killing of his seventy paternal brothers.

Only YOTAM was saved. The name implies "God (YO) is perfect/pure (TAM)" and is
also an anagram of YATOM (="orphan"). To put his curse upon the murderer
Avimelech, Yotam went up Mt. Gerizim . In the ceremony of Blessings and Curses,
the blessings had been delivered from Mt Gerizim and the curses from Mt Eival.
Yotam reasoned that if so, the blessings went in the direction of Mt Eival and the
curses to Mt Gerizim, and thus the latter was a suitable location from which to send
curses in the direction of the Bosses of Shechem. (In later time, after the exile of
the Ten Tribes, Sennacheriv under his policy of population exchange settled the
KOOTIM, who came to be known also as the SHOMRONIM – Samaritans – in
Shechem. They semi-converted to Torah practice but later fell into idolatry and
placed an image of a dove on the ill-fated Mt Gerizim, after which they were
proscribed by the rabbis as idolaters. In many Talmudic editions the term KOOTI is
used synonymously with NOCHRI or AKUM – oveid avodah zarah, "idolater".)

Yotam's eloquent parable about the trees turning successively to the Olive Tree, the
Fig Tree and the Vine to rule over them alludes to the growing degeneracy of the
Israelite leadership. The Olive Tree alludes to Osniel ben Knaz ( Judah is compared
to an olive tree -- Jeremiah 11:16). The Fig Tree alludes to Devorah, who gave the
people sweet nourishment with her Song, while the Vine refers to Gideon. That
Avimelech could be compared only with the pricky thorn bush which hurts anyone
who touches it and affords scarcely any shade is symptomatic of the decline of the
leadership.

Our text (ch 9 v 22) states that Avimelech ruled over Israel for three years,
implying that he was more than merely a local tyrant, although no heroic acts of
national service are attributed to him. He was merely power-hungry. Nevertheless,
he is considered the Seventh Judge of Israel, and was the first to actually be called
MELECH ("king"; ch 9 v 6). He had about as much staying power as the succession
of rickety governments with which contemporary Israel has been plagued in recent
years: Avimelech ruled for only three years.

The RUACH RAAH ("bad spirit") that God sent between Avimelech and the bosses of
Shechem is also reminiscent of the break-up of so many latter-day Israeli political
coalitions with all the accompanying betrayal and acrimony. Opportunism and
shifting loyalty were the order of the day. "And all the bosses of Shechem… went
and made Avimelech king" (v. 6). "And the bosses of Shechem BETRAYED
Avimelech" (v. 23). "And Ga'al ben Eved moved into Shechem, and the bosses of
Shechem TRUSTED IN HIM" (v. 26). Verse 25 illustrates the anarchy that prevailed:
this verse is cited in Talmud Bava Kama 72b as the paradigm case of blatant
robbery.

Rashi states that GAAL BEN EVED "was from another people" (Rashi on v. 26).
GAAL has the connotation of vomiting, and EVED is a slave. His influence over the
bosses of Shechem illustrates the extent of the Israelite assimilation with the
surrounding peoples. They listen when Gaal tells them they would be better off
serving HAMOR FATHER OF SHECHEM (the Hivite, the archetypal serpent) than
serving Avimelech (v. 28).

Avimelech is the embodiment of degenerate MALCHUS (kingship). MALCHUS is

identified with FIRE (see Likutey Moharan I, 4) – and Avimelech takes vengeance
on the people of Shechem for their rebellion against him by going on a rampage of
bloodshed and burning, moving from town to town to chase after and destroy his
enemies.

This was a horrible civil war the like of which had not been known among the
Israelites. It was stopped only through the quick thinking and resourcefulness of
the anonymous woman who rolled a heavy millstone down from the fortress tower
of the city of THEBETZ , smashing Avimelech's skull just in time to prevent him
setting fire to it. The moral of the whole sorry story seems to be that secular
politics is a dirty business.

Chapter 10
Our sources contain scant information about the exploits of Tola ben Pu'ah of the
tribe of Issachar who judged Israel after Avimelech, and very little about Ya'ir
HaGiladi, who seems to have established a splendid dynastic empire with his thirty
sons on their thirty foals and their thirty cities. Rashi on verse 6 states that even he
was numbered among those who abandoned HaShem and did not serve Him.

The deepening idolatry of the people now encompassed the cults of no less than
SEVEN of the surrounding nations, despite the fact that God had saved Israel from
SEVEN enemies (v. 6 & v. 11, see Rashi). This led to a terrible retribution in which
the Israelites became subject to yet another "existential threat", this time from the
Philistines and the Ammonites.

The Ammonites, who not only gained sway over the territories of Reuven, Gad and
half-Menasheh east of the R. Jordan but were now attacking the very heartland of
Judah, Benjamin and Ephraim (v. 8-9) were the offspring of Lot's incestuous
relationship with his younger daughter (Genesis 19:38). Their territory was in what
is today northern Jordan , whose capital, Amman , is named after them. The
Ammonites' frightening successes against the Israelites left the distraught leaders
of Gil'ad asking the same question that so many are asking today. "Who is the man
who will start to fight for us…?" There is a vacancy for Mashiach: who is going to fill
it?

Chapter 11
GOOD INTENTIONS

Like Avimelech, Yiftach (Jepthah) son of Gil'ad, the Tenth Judge of Israel, was also
the son of a PILEGESH (concubine). However, despite being rejected by his half-
brothers, the sons of Gil'ad's full wife, Yiftach did not follow the example of his
blood-thirsty predecessor Avimelech but instead fled from the more "respectable"
members of his family and "dwelled in the land of TOV" (="good", ch 11 v. 3). The
commentators (Metzudos, RaDaK), explaining PSHAT, the simple, direct meaning of
the text, say that Tov was the name of a man, the baron of that region (cf. Ruth
3:13, where Tov may also indicate a man's name). Yet it is clear that our allusive
Bible is here teaching us something deeper. Yiftach was not a RASHA (wicked man)
like Avimelech. He was a Tzaddik – a "good guy" with truly good intentions. The
flaw lay in the fact that his righteousness was not combined with clear
understanding of Torah. Yiftach wanted to do the right thing, but not being a
scholar he did what he IMAGINED to be right and brought about a terrible tragedy.
"Because he was not a BEN TORAH he lost his daughter. Even if a man is a tzaddik,
if he does not study the Torah he is left with nothing in his hand" (Tanchuma).

A LESSON IN HISTORY

The Ammonite "existential threat" to Israel was described at the end of Chapter 10.
The Ammonites were encamped by the town of Gil'ad, which is east of the River
Jordan, south of the River Yabok about 30 km north of present day Amman. The
broader region of Gil'ad stretches along the entire east bank of the Jordan from the
northern tip of the "Dead" Sea up to the Kinneret. This region was part of the huge
swathe of territories east of the Jordan which the Children of Israel captured from
the Emorite king Sichon and Og king of Bashan as described in the later sections of
the book of Numbers (ch's 21 and 32). They were given to the tribes of Reuven,
Gad and half Menasheh, who took their portions east of the Jordan.

Prior to the time of king Sichon this entire swathe of territories was under the
influence of the sister nations of Moab and Ammon. Their lands had been promised
by God to Abraham together with that of Edom as part of the "greater" Promised
Land (Genesis 15:19-20, see Rashi), but they were only to come under the full
possession of Israel in the "final settlement" at the end of days. Until then Moses
was enjoined not to take from the lands of Edom (Deut. 2:5) or Moab (Deut. 2:9)
or Ammon (Deut. 2:19). Deuteronomy ch 2 describes the primeval tribes of
"giants" etc. who dwelled in these territories before their conquest by Edom,
Ammon and Moab, and also describes the conquest by Moses of the territories
which Sichon had conquered from Moab and Ammon.
The reason why it was permitted for Israel to take possession of those areas
previously occupied by Moab and Ammon that Sichon had conquered was because
Sichon's conquest "purified" those lands of their association with the children of Lot
(Gittin 38a).

LAND FOR PEACE

The Israelite presence in the areas of Gil'ad taken from Sichon drove a wedge
between Ammon, who had been driven into the hinterland east of present-day
Amman, and their sister nation Moab, who were left only with their territories south
east of the River Arnon, (which meets the tongue-shaped "Dead" Sea
approximately in the middle).

This gave the Ammonites strong motivation to seek a CAUSUS BELLI against Israel,
and when Yiftach sent messengers to the king of Ammon protesting their
aggressions, the Ammonite king replied with an argument that has been repeated
endlessly by Israel's enemies until this very day: "Because Israel TOOK MY LAND"
(v 3). Moreover, the king promised exactly the same as Israel's enemies until this
very day. "And now, return them…" (note how "my land" has seamlessly turned
into the PLURAL) "…in PEACE". In other words the Ammonite king proposed exactly
the same formula as Israel's present day Arab friends: LAND FOR PEACE.

The messengers whom Yiftach sent back to the king of Ammon gave him a detailed
history lesson the purpose of which was to explain precisely the above-mentioned
point: the territories which Israel took east of the Jordan no longer belonged to
Ammon or Moab since they had been conquered by Sichon king of the Emorites.
This refutation of the Ammonite claim is based on the principle that "the whole
world belongs to the Holy One blessed be He: He created it and He gave it to
whoever it was right in His eyes to give it. Through His will He gave it to them and
through His will He took it from them and gave it to us" (see Rashi on Genesis 1:1).

YIFTACH'S VOW

The Ammonite intransigence in spite of Yiftach's arguments (reminiscent of years of

Arab "NO! NO! NO") left him with no alternative but to go to war to prevent them
penetrating the very heartland of Israel (see Judges 10:9). The Spirit of God was
on Yiftach, who advanced from the northern Gil'ad towards the Ammonite camp.

The practice of vowing to make a dedication to God if He grants one's request goes
back to Jacob, "head of those who take vows". After his dream of the Ladder during
his flight from the wrath of Esau, Jacob had vowed to give God a tithe of everything
if He would bring him home safely (Genesis 28:20ff). Likewise in the wilderness,
when Israel was attacked by "the Canaanite" king of Arad (=Amalek, see Rashi on
Numbers 21:1), "And Israel vowed a vow to God…" (Numbers 21:2). Likewise, as
we shall see when we begin the book of Samuel I, Hannah vowed that if she would
be granted a child she would dedicate him to God.

"Two vowed and were rewarded; two vowed and lost. Israel vowed and they won.
Hanna vowed and she was rewarded. But Jacob vowed and lost, because his wife
Rachel died, while Yiftach vowed – and lost his daughter" (Bereishis Rabbah 70).

The fatal flaw that vitiated Yiftah's vow was that it was imprecisely formulated. The
mark of the wise man is that "he sees what will develop" (Avot ch 2). Yiftah lacked
the wisdom to see the hidden pitfall contained in the vow that he uttered at the
height of his inspiration and enthusiasm. The vow was insufficiently articulated, and
because its implications were not perceived by Yiftach at the time that he made it,
he caused a terrible tragedy.

It is hard when we enthusiastically make some commitment to stop for a moment

to ask whether we will really be able to stand up to it. Sometimes people make wild
offers and some MAZAL enables them to get out clean, but if the person lacks
MAZAL it can lead to disaster. "Four asked improperly; to three He gave properly,
but to one He gave improperly" (Ta'anis 4a). The four were Eliezer, servant of
Abraham, Calev, Saul and Yiftach. Eliezer said that the first girl who offered to
water his camels would be Isaac's wife – how did he know that she wouldn't be
some lowly waif who was not fit for him? When Calev offered his daughter to
whoever would capture Kiryat Sefer, how did he know that the man would not be
disreputable. The same applies to King Saul's offer of his daughter to whoever
would kill Goliath. Eliezer, Calev and Saul all had some MAZAL that ensured that
despite their imprecise wording, they were not answered improperly. However,
Yiftach apparently lacked something. He IMAGINED that the one who would first
come out of the doors of his house to greet him on his safe return from the war
would be some FAT OX or FAT LAMB that would make a fitting thanksgiving
sacrifice to God, and it did not occur to him that perhaps it would be his own
DAUGHTER.

WHY DIDN'T YIFTACH ANNUL HIS VOW?

The laws of vows and oaths and their proper formulation is the subject of three
entire tractates of the Talmud – NEDARIM, NAZIR and SHAVUOS. Had Yiftach been
more of a TALMID CHACHAM (Torah scholar), he would have known that in fact he
was under no obligation to offer his daughter as a sacrifice. The Midrash (Bereishis
Rabbah 60) presents an intricate discussion between Rabbi Yochanan and his
student-chaver Reish Lakish (Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish) whose meaning is readily
comprehensible to those with some background in the above laws. Rabbi Yochanan
maintains that Yiftach could have redeemed his daughter for money which he would
then have dedicated to the purchase of a sacrificial animal, while Reish Lakish
maintains that even this was unnecessary since "One who says of an impure animal
or of an animal with a blemish that it is a burnt offering has not said anything"
since these animals are not eligible as a sacrifice anyway. The same applies to
Yiftach's daughter.

Yiftach is an example of the many people who have very high principles but lack the
detailed knowledge of the Torah to know how properly to apply them in practice.
Yiftach IMAGINED he was bound by his vow, and his high-minded determination to
carry out what he thought was his obligation brought him to an unparalleled
perversity. Even Abraham was not commanded to KILL Isaac, and indeed according
to the commentators, Yiftach did not actually KILL his daughter. Rather, she was
condemned to remain unmarried in a state of permanent HISBODEDUS (isolation)
and divine service except for the few days of the year when her maiden friends
would come to comfort her (see Metzudos David on v 37 and RaDaK on v 40).

The Midrash brings out the absurdity and criminality of Yiftach's condemning his
only child to a life of celibacy, thereby destroying the continuity of his own line. Not
only was Yiftach criticized but so too were all the rabbis and scholars of his time
and even Pinchas the High Priest (who according to tradition was still alive despite
the passage of over 300 years since he entered the Land with Joshua).

Through a mixture of high principles and pride, Yiftach would not go to Pinchas to
nullify his vow, although the HALACHAH specifically permits this. Likewise Pinchas
would not go to Yiftach to nullify the vow, reasoning that his own status as Priest
required that Yiftach should come to him. Between the two of them, the poor girl
"died". Pinchas was punished with the withdrawal from him of holy spirit
(Chronicles I, 9:20 – "HaShem was with him PREVIOUSLY"). Yiftach was punished
with an illness akin to leprosy in the modern sense of the term, which caused his
limbs to drop off one by one while he was still alive. For this reason "he was buried
IN THE CITIES of Gil'ad" (ch 12 v 7) i.e. in several different places.

Yiftach's daughter said to him: "Leave me for two months and I will go AND I
SHALL DESCEND UPON the mountains" (ch 11 v 37). Since when do you DESCEND
upon a mountain – first you have to GO UP??? These were not regular mountains.
What she was really saying was, Let me go down to the elders of the Sanhedrin
(who are called Mountains) in case they can find some release clause (PETACH, an
"opening") from your vow.

The Tanna deVei Eliyahu puts the responsibility for the tragedy squarely on the
shoulders of the Sanhedrin. "Anyone who has the power to protest and does not do
so carries responsibility for all the blood shed in Israel. The great Sanhedrin that
Moses left behind him should have girded their loins with metal chains and lifted
their garments above their knees and gone round to all the cities of Israel, one day
in Lachish, one day in Eglon, one day in Hebron, one day in Beit El, one day in
Jerusalem… and that way they could have taught them the proper way of doing
things (DERECH ERETZ) in one, two, three, four or maximum five years until the
land would have been properly settled. Instead, after Israel entered the Land, each
one ran to his vineyard and olive tree and said, Peace be upon my soul – let me not
have to make too much effort."

Chapter 12
The ruffled pride of the Ephraimites who felt that Yiftach had not involved them in
the war against the Ammonites led more to bloody consequences. There is a
suggestion in the above-quoted passage from Tanna deVei Eliahu that the
Ephraimites that were killed if they could not pronounce SHIBBOLETH properly were
involved in some kind of idolatry, because "SIBOLETH" is an idolatrous term, as
when a man says "SA BEIL" ("Exalt BEIL", this being the name of a Babylonian god,
as in Belshazzar in the book of Daniel.)

Little is known of the succession of Judges enumerated in the latter part of Chapter
12, except for IVTZAN from Beith Lechem (verse 8), whom the rabbis identified
with BO'AZ, known to us from the Book of Ruth. The Midrash tells that Bo'az lost all
his thirty sons and thirty daughters because he did not show hospitality to Manoah,
father of Shimshon, and thus he was childless when he married Ruth, who
conceived Oveid, father of Yishai, the father of King David. As we thus approach the
threshold of the dawn of David's kingship, the Bible steadily delineates the national
crisis into which Israel had sunk, from which David would come to save them.

Chapters 13-14
AND GOD GAVE THEM INTO THE HAND OF THE PHILISTINES…

From the time of Shimshon (=Samson) until that of David, the Philistines were
foremost among the oppressors of Israel (just as the "Palestinians" who have
adopted the Latinized version of their name are today). The Philistines originated
from the descendants of Ham, whose son Mitzrayim gave birth among others to the
Pathrusim and Kasluhim (Genesis 10:13). It was from between the two of them
that the Philistines “emerged” (i.e. they were a “bastard” people, see Rashi ad loc.).
A sea-faring nation, they spread to Crete and throughout the Greek islands into
Greece proper, where they lived until the Dorian Greeks invaded and began to
oppress them, causing many to migrate eastwards to the coastal regions of the
eastern Mediterranean. They were no match for the powerful Egyptians, who fought
against them, but they were able to settle in the Land of Canaan and became
particularly strongly entrenched along the entire coastal strip all the way from
present-day Ashdod to the eastern arm of the Nile delta.

The Philistines were new immigrants to the Land in the time of Abraham, who was
also a new-comer. The fact that both had come to live in a new country might help
explain why relations between Abraham and Avimelech, the Philistine king of Gerar,
were cordial to the point that Abraham swore an oath not to harm Avimelech or his
descendants to the fourth generation (Genesis 21:23ff). However, with increasing
pressure on the Philistine communities in mainland Greece and the Greek islands,
more and more were moving in waves into Canaan. Many came in the period of the
Israelite exile in Egypt, and more entered during the early period of the Judges.
They were fierce fighters and far more powerful than the Israelite settlers, who
were mainly farmers without a centralized government or regular army. Through
the sins of the Israelites the Philistines were able to gain power over them and
dominate them.

Kabbalistically, the “bastard” nation of the Philistines are emblematic of the most
severe concealment of God’s light. The Hebrew letters of their name, PHILISHTIM,
are Peh (80) + Lamed (30) + Shin (300) + Tav (400) + Yud (10) + Mem (40) =
860 = 10 x 86. 86 is the gematria of the divine name ELOKIM expressing the
attribute of GEVUROT, “mighty powers”, restraint, severe judgment… In the
Philistines, this attribute dominates in all their 10 Sefirot.

It could be that Abraham, as the embodiment of CHESSED, kindness, knew that his
offspring would have to be tested by and would have to overcome the husk of the
Philistines and for that reason swore the oath allowing them to remain in the Land
for the necessary period of time. By the time of Shimshon, the time had elapsed.
As the Angel tells Manoah’s wife, “For the lad shall be separated to God from the
womb, and HE WILL BEGIN (YACHEL) TO SAVE ISRAEL FROM THE HAND OF THE
PHILISTINES” (ch 13 v 5). “Said Rabbi Hama ben Hanina: The oath of Avimelech
was annulled (HUCHAL), as it written, Do not betray me, my grandson and my
great grandson” (Sota 9b).

Those who imagine Shimshon as a muscled superman out of a wham-bam cartoon

animation will be greatly disappointed on trying to penetrate the deeply-veiled
allegory in our text with the help of our rabbis. The first surprise is that Rabbi
Yochanan states that while Bilaam was lame only in one leg, Shimshon was lame in
both! (Sotah 10). Who ever heard of a lame Superman? We may begin to unlock
the mystery if we ponder the verse R. Yochanan cites as proof. While of Bilaam it is
said “And he went SHEFI (has connotation of lame)” (Numbers 23:3), it says of
Dan, “a serpent (SHEFIFON) by the path” (Genesis 49:17) – it is the doubled form
of SHEFIFON that is the hint that Shimshon – the outstanding Judge from the tribe
of Dan – was “lame”.

"Dan will judge his people like one of the tribes of Israel" (ibid. v. 16) – this refers
to Shimshon, the only judge contributed by that tribe. He is described as "biting the
heels of the horse, his rider will fall backwards" (ibid. v. 17). In the wilderness, the
tribe of Dan marched last, gathering in all the weak remnants and saving them
from the Amalekite "serpent". It was now Shimshon's task to bite back – to use the
bite of the serpent against the serpent itself in order to redeem Israel – except that
he failed in his lifetime and succeeded only in his death.

Shimshon's lameness has the deepest roots, as revealed by the ARI (in Likutey
Torah on Judges), who explains that Shimshon was the GILGUL (incarnation) of
ADAM HARISHON, the first man. Shimshon had the power to rectify Adam’s sin,
which came about through the eyes (“and the woman SAW” Gen. 3:6), but he
failed, because “Shimson rebelled with his eyes, as it says, ‘And Shimshon said to
his father, take HER for me because she is right in my EYES’ (Judges 14:3)”.
Accordingly, Shimshon was punished by having his eyes gouged out. After his
capture by the Philistines, he was taken in “chains of copper” (NECHUSHTAYIM,
related to the root NACHASH = serpent) and placed in the House of the Bound =
Domain of the Kelipot, the “husks” (ch 16 v 21). Just as the serpent was
condemned to crawl with no legs, so was Shimshon "lame".

Just as Adam sinned and allowed his power to fall into the Kelipot, so did
Shimshon. It was only with his death that he was able to take vengeance on the
Philistines, the husks, and by pushing the PILLARS of their Temple – the LEGS that
supported the entire structure – thereby redeem his own sin.

Shimshon was a NAZIR although the rabbis are divided about the exact nature of
his particular form of Nazirite status, which diverges somewhat from the normal
Nazirite status as set forth in Numbers ch 6. Shimshon was forbidden to cut his hair
at all, while a normal NAZIR would make his vow only for a specified period, usually
30 days, after which he was at liberty to cut his hair. Shimshon, like a regular Nazir
was forbidden wine or anything deriving from the grape, but he was evidently
permitted to defile himself with the dead, which is strictly forbidden to a Nazir who
takes the vow himself. But since Shimshon was dedicated from the womb, he was
subject only to the restrictions explicitly stated in our text, and we find him defiling
himself with the dead by stripping Philistine corpses of their clothes etc. (ch 14 v
19; see RaDaK on Judges 13:4 for a detailed discussion of Shimshon’s status).

Zohar (Parshas Naso) explains that the NAZIR alludes to the divine PARTZUF of
ARICH ANPIN, the “long face”, which stands as KETER, the crown over ZEIR ANPIN,
which is the “small face” where by God is revealed to the world. The sweetness of
ARICH ANPIN rectifies the harsh judgments of ZEIR. Thus the attributes of the
Partzuf of Arich Anpin include long white hair, which is bound up with the concept of
the long hair of the NAZIR (each hair – SE’AR – is a SHA’AR or gateway – a channel
of divine light. These revelations of kindness must not be "cut").

Because of the NAZIR’s association with this exalted level, he is forbidden to drink
wine or indeed even partake of any part of the grape left after the juice is squeezed
out, the lees. Adam's wife Eve “squeezed wine” from the primordial grapes but
gave Adam the lees and husks – harsh judgments. It was through this unpurified
wine that Adam fell, and Shimshon was to make the repair by being separated from
wine.
Shimshon was to go down into the very lair of the husks – the Philistines – and take
out any remaining divine sparks in order to then destroy the remaining husks and
waste. This is why our text repeatedly speaks of Shimshon “going down” (ch 14:1 &
5 etc.). However, he “went after his eyes” and fell, revealing his own secrets to his
Philistine wives and thereby falling into the net of the Kelipot. It may seem strange
that Shimshon the Judge took Philistine wives – yet he is not criticized for this in
our text, whereas if he had done anything sinful he would have been criticized (see
RaDaK on ch 13 v 4). Shimshon's sin was that he was drawn after the "beauty" of
his Philistine wives and instead of drawing out the holy sparks, he revealed all his
holy secrets to them, causing more holiness to fall into the clutches of the Kelipot.

Shimshon's tragic end should not be allowed to overshadow his tremendous power,
which was not that of a Superman in the modern entertainment sense but literally
that of ADAM. The rabbis stated that the fruit that Eve gave to Adam was wheat,
figs or grapes. (In fact, because of the mysterious way in which midrash "works", it
was all three!) The mystery of the FIG enters into the deep allegory of these
chapters in ch 14 v 4: "And his father and his mother did not know, for it was from
God, for he (? He ?) sought a PRETEXT (TO-A-NOH) against the Philistines". The
word TO-A-NOH has exactly the same Hebrew letters as TE-ENAH, a "fig".

The fruit caused Adam to fall to the realm of the husks – for one hundred and
thirty-years he had relations with demons, chief among them "Lilith". This was why
Shimshon had to take DELILAH, who was the embodiment of Lilith. Had he
accomplished the Tikkun and not revealed his secret to her, he would have rectified
everything and been the Redeemer. But the time was not yet ripe. "He will BEGIN
to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines" (ch 13 v 5), but he was not able to
complete the task. However, he "sought a PRETEXT" – he initiated Israel's war of
liberation against the Philistines and showed the Israelites that they could become
free.

He was called SHIMSHON from the root SHEMESH, the Sun = DAAS, Godly
knowledge. The Rabbis said that Adam's very heel darkened the sun – i.e. through
his sin, he darkened the light of DAAS. Abraham began the repair – "Abraham had
a jewel which he hung on the sphere of the sun" – but the repair was still not
complete. Shimshon had the power to finish it but he failed because the time was
not ripe. Melech HaMashiach will complete the TIKKUN "and his name will continue
AS LONG AS THE SUN" (Psalms 72:17).

Chapters 15-16
It must be understood that Shimshon's life came at the very end of the period of
the Judges on the very threshold of the institution of the kingship under the
prophet Samuel, the cycle of whose stories is told in Samuel I. After today's text a
sizeable portion of the book of Judges still lies ahead of us before we reach the
Book of Samuel, but the two episodes related in the last five chapters of Judges –
Michah's idol (ch's 17-18) and the Concubine in Giv'ah (ch's 19-21) – in fact
occurred early in the period of the Judges, as noted by the commentators. They are
placed at the end of the book in order to characterize the deep national malady that
prevailed throughout the period of the Judges in order to explain the need for the
kingship.

The narrative in our present text, with all its many riddles and deep allegories,
reflects the situation prevailing immediately before the institution of the kingship.
The Israelites had practically turned into a subject nation living in constant fear of
their Philistine rulers. As the men of Judah complained to Shimshon, whom they
saw as a dangerous provocateur: "Don't you know that the Philistines rule over
us?" (ch 15 v 11).

RaDaK in his lengthy introduction to the story of Shimshon (ch 13 v 4) notes that
the Israelites were not fighting the Philistines at this time: Shimshon alone was
engaged in a single-handed campaign against them. RaDaK states that it is
unthinkable that Shimshon simply married idolatrous Philistine women without
converting them, for if he had, he would have been criticized for violating the
prohibition against intermarriage with other peoples (Deut. 7:3f). Likewise Rambam
(Maimonides) in the Laws of Forbidden Relationships (Issurey Bi'ah 13:14) states
categorically that one should not imagine that Shimshon married unconverted
women. As in the case of King Solomon, who also took foreign wives, Rambam and
RaDaK state that Shimshon converted them first. If Shimshon could be criticized, it
is because he "went after his eyes" – he strayed from his original holy intentions
because of some kind of "material desire" (on his exalted level). This showed that
he did not convert them entirely LISHMOH (in the name of true conversion).
Nevertheless, "it was from God" (ch 14 v 4) that he took Philistine wives. This was
because "He sought a PRETEXT against the Philistines" (ibid.) in order to take
revenge against them, and this is why God was with Shimshon and give him such
success.

RaDaK states that the Israelites in that period were not sufficiently God-fearing to
be worthy of God's sending them complete salvation from the Philistines. Shimshon
kept the Philistines in check through using the various "pretexts" that God arranged
(the honey in the lion's carcass, the giving of Shimshon's wife from Timnah to
another man, etc.) in order to terrorize and wreak havoc among them.

Shimshon's heroism in single-handedly struggling against those seeking to deny the

people of Israel their right to live at peace in their ancestral land is reminiscent of
the courageous few who are today willing to defy the contemporary "political
correctness" of latter-day Israel's so-called "peace camp", endorsed by its
mainstream media and high court etc., which is essentially a policy of appeasement
and capitulation to Arab terror. Just as the men of Judah tied up Shimshon and
handed him over to the Philistines, so too Israel's latter-day appeasers have had no
scruples about doing everything in their power to gag, strap, tie up and inhibit
those who would defend the actual people of Israel from their worst enemies in the
absence of any concerted government campaign against them.

The subtle weave of riddles and allegories in our text makes for a colorful story
replete with word-play and other mysteries leading up to the heart-rending
conclusion in which Shimshon reveals his secret and falls prey to his barbaric
enemies. "If I am shaved, my power will depart from me and I will become weak
(VE-CHOLISI – I will be CHOL, profane) and I will be LIKE EVERY MAN (KE-CHOL
HA-ADAM)". It is here that the deep inner truth of the allegory stares us right in the
face. "If I fail, I will be like ADAM". Shimshon was the GILGUL (incarnation) of
ADAM. His mission was to rectify Adam's sin, but he was unable to do so in his
lifetime and could only take vengeance on the Philistines with his death.

We see that Shimshon constantly called out to God and prayed for all that he
needed. He was a CHATZOS JEW – he was awake and active from midnight
(=CHATZOS), thus escaping the wiles of the Philistines who plotted to kill him in
the morning (ch 17 v 3). Similarly every Jew can escape the wiles of the YETZER
RA, the evil urge that lurks in wait to kill him each morning – by getting up long
before the dawn in order to pray and study Torah thereby outwitting the YETZER,
destroying its power.

There was no end to Shimshon's ambition: he wanted to take all the sparks of
holiness from the Philistines and thereby destroy them. But their GEVUROT (mighty
powers) proved too much for him, because Israel was not yet ready for salvation.
The five "captains" of the Philistines who offered Delilah money to extract
Shimshon's secret are called "SARNEY Philishtim". The gematria of SARNEY is 320,
alluding to the SHaCH Dinim (320 severe judgments) that hide Godliness from the
world. The rabbis taught that Delilah tormented Shimshon by pulling out from
under him immediately before he could climax. Embodiment of the evil demon
Lilith, she thereby succeeded in steadily wearing him down until he came closer and
closer to revealing his secret and finally did: his power came from his uncut locks.
As discussed in yesterday's commentary, Shimshon the Nazirite's hair alludes to the
hairs of the head of the Partzuf of Arich Anpin, source of all the sweetening mercies
in the world. Once these were cut, the Shechinah departed from Shimshon without
his even knowing it.
The Talmud comments on the verse "and the lad grew and God blessed him" (ch
13:24) that He blessed him in his organ, because it was like that of a regular man
but his seed was like a flowing river (Sotah 10a). All this creative power was
captured by the forces of evil. "And he was grinding in the house of the prisoners"
(Judges ch 16 v 21). "Said Rabbi Yochanan, 'grinding' is an expression having the
connotation of sin. This teaches that each and every Philistine would bring his wife
to the prison house to be impregnated by him" (Sotah 10a).

The Philistine celebration of the capture of their most feared enemy and their praise
of their idols for the victory was a terrible CHILUL HASHEM, desecration of God's
Name. We shed tears as we read Shimshon's last prayer to God (ch 16 v 28). "Let
my soul die with the Philistines" (v. 30): Shimshon was the true archetype suicide
martyr, who gave his life to bring about an eternal KIDDUSH HASHEM
(Sanctification of God's Name). He sacrificed the merit of one of his gouged eyes in
order to take vengeance on his enemies in this world. The merit of his second eye
is stored up in the World to Come (Yerushalmi Sota). There the truth of the
mystery of Shimshon is known and revealed.

Chapters 17-18
Rashi on Judges 17:1 writes: "Even though these two portions about Michah (ch's
17-18) and the Concubine in Giv'ah (ch's 19-21) are written at the END of the Book
of Judges, these episodes actually took place at the BEGINNING of the period of the
Judges in the days of Osniel ben Knaz". Rashi's opinion follows that of SEDER OLAM
(the ancient rabbinic historical Midrash giving the dates of all the main biblical
events based on calculations of the years mentioned in the text and other hints).
RaDaK, however, characteristically seeks to follow the simple PSHAT of the
narrative, arguing in great detail that these episodes could equally well have taken
place at the END of the period of Judges, between the time of Shimshon and that of
Eli the High Priest. (See RaDaK on ch 17 v 1 & ch 18 v 1.)

Nevertheless the very heavily-veiled tale of Michah and his idol has a timelessness
that makes the question of when exactly it took place almost incidental. The NaCh
is teaching us lessons that go beyond any specific time and place: The recurrent
motif is: "In those days there was no king in Israel; each man would do what was
right in his eyes" (ch 17 v 6). The text presents the narrative without moralizing,
leaving the student to seek to deduce and understand the subtle lesson and
reproof.

MICHAH

Michah is unidentified in our text except for his location in Mt Ephraim, but this
does not necessarily mean he was from that tribe (cf. Rashi on Judges 17:7). The
rabbis taught that he was called MICHAH because he was SQUASHED (nisMACH-
MECH) in a building (Sanhedrin 101b) – alluding to the ancient Aggadah (tale,
midrash) as brought by Rashi (ad loc.): "This was in Egypt. They placed him in a
building instead of a brick. Moses said to the Holy One blessed be He, 'You have
done evil to this people' -- Now, if they don't have bricks, they put the Israelite
babies in the walls. The Holy One blessed be He replied: 'They are merely
destroying thorns, for it is revealed before Me that if they were to live they would
be complete villains. If you want, try and take one of them. Moses went and took
out Michah."

According to the rabbis, Michah should have been numbered with those who have
no share in the world to come, but he was not for one reason: because his bread
was available for passers-by (Sanhedrin 103a): thus we see that Michah showed
hospitality to Yonasan ben Gershom in his travels.

THE IDOL

The rabbis stated that all of the divine names in the chapter about Michah are CHOL
– they possess no holiness – with the exception of ch 18 v 31 (Shevuos 35b). What
this means is that the prohibition against erasing one of the seven principal names
of God does not apply to the divine names written in these two chapters, because
the names had been taken and applied to idolatrous gods.

Our text does not give any indication as to when the mysterious incident of
Michah's confession to his mother of his theft of silver and her dedication to idolatry
took place. The rabbis have handed down the tradition that Michah's idol came with
the Children of Israel out of Egypt and indeed that at the very moment they were
miraculously crossing the sea on dry land, the idol was going with them
(Tanchumah). This idolatry was like an alien germ hidden and deeply embedded –
"bricked up", as it were -- within the unconscious mind of Israel, ready to rise to
the fore and test the people in later times. It is bound up with the mystery of the
idolatry of the Mixed Multitude who went up with Israel out of Egypt. The disease
engendered by this germ manifested in various ways in the later history of the
people – such as in the idols that Jeraboam set up in Ephraim and Dan (the two key
locations in our present text), and those which king Menasheh (son of Hezekiah)
set up in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.

In chapter 17 v 5 we are told that "Michah had a house of god and he made an
EPHOD and TERAPHIM…" As discussed in the commentary on the story of Gideon,
the Ephod was the apron-like garment of the High Priest to which the breast-plate,
with its jewels inscribed with the names of the Twelve Tribes, were attached.
Michah's EPHOD was clearly intended as a replica of that of the High Priest (it would
have to be a good one to con the intelligent Israelites into believing, or at least
half-believing in it). In Genesis 31:19 the TERAPHIM are Laban's gods – i.e. some
kind of statuettes used for divination. Whereas the Holy Spirit that spoke through
the High Priest's breastplate was channeled through the URIM VE-THUMIM, it was
through the TERAPHIM that the fake spirit spoke to Michah's priest.

RaDaK on ch 18 v 5 offers two explanations of what the TERAPHIM actually were.

"Some say this was a copper instrument showing the divisions of the hours
whereby astrologers could determine the path of the stars. Others say that the
astrologers have the power to produce at known times a certain form (TZURA) that
actually speaks. And the sage R. Abraham Ibn Ezra has written that the most likely
explanation in his opinion is that the TERAPHIM were in the form of a human made
to receive the power of the supreme beings, and the proof is that the TERAPHIM
placed by Michal (when Saul's soldiers came searching for David) caused the
guards think it was David."

YEHONASAN BEN GERSHOM BEN MENASHEH

The mystery of the veiled allegory in our text is immeasurably deepened when we
learn from our rabbis that the opportunistic Levite who went up from Bethlehem
and found himself a fat livelihood as Michah's private Priest was none other than
the grandson of MOSES, although this is only hinted at allusively in the text. In ch
18 v 30 his YICHUS (pedigree) is given as YEHONASAN BEN GERSHOM BEN
MENASHEH. In the Hebrew written text on parchment, it is traditional to write the
NUN of MENASHEH "hanging" (TOLUI) above the line. If you remove this NUN from
MENASHEH you are left with the letters of the name MOSHEH. Rashi states on this
verse that it is out of honor for MOSHEH that the NUN was inserted to change the
name (and thus somewhat obscure the connection between Yohonasan and his
most illustrious grandfather). The Yerushalmi Talmud Berachos ch 9 indicates that
MENASHEH alludes to king Menasheh son of Hezekiah (as mentioned above) who
placed an idol in the very Temple. In other words, the same underlying disease was
manifested in a variety of forms in the history of the nation.

When the men of Dan pass through Mt. Ephraim on their search for new territory,
they come to Michah's house, "AND THEY RECOGNIZED THE VOICE OF THE LAD,
THE LEVITE…" (ch 18 v 3). Once again the Midrash of the rabbis opens a tiny chink
to hint at the profound depth that lies behind this mysterious allegory. "They said
to him, 'Aren't you a descendent of Moses…' He replied, 'I have a tradition from the
house of my father that a person should even hire himself out to AVODAH ZARAH
rather than become dependent on others.' [The Talmud comments:] He thought
this meant literal AVODAH ZARAH, idolatry, whereas the real intention was that one
should even take on a demeaning job like flaying animal carcasses – a work
(AVODAH) that is STRANGE, ZARAH, to oneself -- rather than depend on others…
Later on, when King David saw that he was very fond of money he appointed him
over the Treasuries, as it is written, 'and Shevu-el son of Gershom son of Menasheh
was officer over the treasuries' (Chronicles I, ch 26). Was his name Shevu-el then?
No, it was Yonasan, but this teaches that he RETURNED TO GOD (SHAV LE-EL) with
all his heart." (Bava Basra 110a).

So Yonasan was a Levite for whom the intended system of supporting the nation's
spiritual teachers through tithes (the Levitical MAASER) was evidently not working
in Bethlehem, forcing him to go off in search of opportunities for PARNASSAH,
livelihood, wherever he could find them!

This in itself is a reproof against the people of whatever time it was that this story
occurred: by failing to support their teachers by the Torah system of tithes, they
forced them to demean themselves and base their ministry on money, with all the
attendant evils.

THE TRIBAL PORTION OF DAN

In the commentary on Joshua ch 19 we have already discussed the fact that Dan
took tribal portions both in the center of the Land and in the north. (See Joshua
19:47). Dan's main portion was in the center, in what is today the Tel Aviv-Dan
region of Israel. This is where all the events in the story of Shimshon took place
(Judges 13-16). The place names that recur both in the story of Shimshon and in
that of Michah and the BNEY DAN – Tzor'ah and Eshta'ol – will be particularly
familiar to present-day residents of Israel who know the road connecting the
Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway with the town of Beit Shemesh, "BETWEEN TZOR'AH
AND ESHTA'OL".

It was population pressure and the limitations caused by the Philistine presence in
the south and center that led the BNEY DAN to search for more territory. The
peaceful, idyllic Sidonian town of LAYISH which their team of five surveyors found,
as described in Chapter 18, was located in the region of TEL DAN ("the mound of
Dan") in the north of present-day Israel amidst the sources of the R. Jordan
(Banyas etc.) The Sidonians were one of the Canaanite nations. The settlement of
the western Galilee by the tribe of Asher and the eastern Galilee by Naftali had left
the Sidonians of Layish isolated from their fellow Canaanites on the coast of
present-day Lebanon, and this is why there was no-one to come to their aid when
the BNEY DAN attacked them.
Rashi (on ch 18 v 27) states that LAYISH is the same as LESHEM mentioned in
Joshua 19:47. LESHEM is the name of the Jacinth-stone in the High Priest's breast-
plate – this was the stone of the Tribe of Dan! When they came to this town they
discovered a LESHEM stone, and they took this as proof that the location was
destined for them from heaven.

However, our narrative makes it clear that the BNEY DAN conquered their new
territory not through divine miracles of the kind we read about in Joshua but
through overwhelming military might against a people whose idyllic life had left
them totally ignorant of the art of war. We also find that the BNEY DAN exhibited
an extraordinarily overbearing, threat-laden attitude to both Yonasan the Priest and
his boss-manager Michah. To Yonasan their attitude was basically, "Shut up and
come with us", whereas they told Michah that if he made his voice heard he would
be killed.

Here we see how the enterprise of settling the Holy Land in order to live the life of
Torah had been corrupted into territorial expansionism based on brute force, and
legitimized with the veneer of religion through a "high priest" who was for sale to
the highest bidder. Religion had thus been high-jacked for mundane goals and
purposes, posing very perplexing issues for lovers of Moses' Torah.

RaDaK and Metzudos David (on ch 18 v 30) both argue that Yonasan and his sons
served as "priests" to the tribe of Dan only until the Ark was captured by the
Philistines from Shiloh in the days of Eli, and that this is the meaning of the phrase
"until the day of the exile of the land". However Rashi maintains that this fake
religion continued until the days of Sennacheriv, who exiled the Ten Tribes. Rashi's
view would link the idolatry delineated in our present text with the idolatry that
eventually led to the exile of Israel.

The Talmud states that the location of Michah's temple was only THREE MILES from
Shilo and that the smoke of the Altar of the Sanctuary would mingle with the smoke
of Michah's idolatrous altar. The Ministering Angels wanted to drive Michah out, but
the Holy One blessed be He said, "Leave him: his bread is available for all passer's
by" (Sanhedrin 103a). The mingling of the two columns of smoke indicates how
very fine indeed can be the dividing line between true and fake religion.

Chapters 19-20
The sorry tale of PILEGESH BE-GIV'ON, "the Concubine in Giv'on" and the civil war
to which it gave rise is one of the most shocking and gruesome in the whole Bible.

THE NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES OF ANGER IN THE HOME

A careful reading of our narrative makes it clear that the Children of Israel were
considered justified in wreaking a terrible vengeance on the "left-handed"
Benaminites – almost wiping out the entire tribe -- for refusing to hand over the
perpetrators of a barbaric gang-rape for punishment. Gevurah (force) was requited
with Gevurah. However the rabbis indicate that the entire affair came about only
through an excess of Gevurah on the part of the mysterious Levite man that lived
on the edge of Mt. Ephraim. In Talmud Gittin (6b) there is a discussion about the
cause of the domestic altercation that led to his concubine walking out on him. One
opinion is that he chastised her when he found a fly in his soup; another is that he
found a hair in "that place", and "these and these are the words of the Living God".
When he found the fly, which is merely disgusting, he was not that upset because it
was not necessarily her fault, but a hair in "that place" could cause him injury and
this was clear negligence on her part. Nevertheless, the Talmud concludes, "A man
should never make the members of his household excessively afraid of him,
because the husband of the Concubine in Giv'ah made her excessively afraid and
caused the death of tens of thousands of Israel ".

HOSPITALITY AND ITS OPPOSITE

In the previous story about Michah and his idol, we see that Michah was saved from
complete obliteration from the world to come because of his trait of hospitality.
Hospitality like that which Abraham showed to the three angels that he took for
idolatrous Arabs (Genesis ch 18) was intended to be one of the distinguishing traits
of his progeny: bringing strangers under the shelter of one's home is tantamount to
bringing them under the wings of the Shechinah! However, the horrible tragedy of
PILEGESH BE-GIV'AH came about through the very opposite of hospitality. The
Levite's Judean father-in-law from Beth Lehem – presumably anxious to re-endear
his daughter to the Levite – detained him more than necessary to the point that he
felt the need to break away and leave hurriedly even though it was too late in the
day for him to complete the journey before him.

The Levite refused to seek lodging for the night by turning into Jebus (=Jerusalem,
then occupied by the Canaanite Jebusites), because, as he said to his attendant,
"We shall not turn aside to a city of an alien people that are not from the Children
of Israel" (ch 19 v 12). Yet it was precisely the kind of abominable behavior he
EXPECTED from the Canaanites that he ACTUALLY ENCOUNTERED among the
Benjaminite-Israelite inhabitants of Giv'ah, despite the fact that he was a PILGRIM,
no less, on his way to Shilo (see RaDaK on ch 19 v 18)! He was not even asking for
full hospitality, i.e. food and drink, since he had plenty of bread, wine and animal
feed with him (v. 19). The one old man from Giv'ah who was willing to open the
doors of his home to this party of wayfarers knew all too well the actual nature of
his Benjaminite fellow-townsmen. The conversation between the Levite and the old
man (vv. 16-20) is reminiscent of the conversation between Lot and the angels who
came to visit him in Sodom (Genesis vv. 19:1-3). The old man knew that the men
of Giv'ah were already suffering from the Israelite vice of mingling with and
imitating the Canaanites. The threatening demand of the Giv'ites that he hand over
his guest for them to use for their perverse pleasure is exactly parallel to the
Sodomites' demand for Lot to hand over his guests (Genesis 19:4).

BRUTE FORCE

The men of Giv'ah are called BAALEY GIV'AH (ch 20 v 5) – the Mafiosi BOSSES of
the town. This appellation is reminiscent of the BAALEY SHECHEM in the time of
Avimelech the Judge (Judges ch 9 v 2), but whereas the Bosses of Shechem were
primarily interested in political power, those of Giv'ah were after perverse sexual
gratification of the kind that is the very opposite of the Covenant of Sinai. "…And
according to the deeds of the Land of Canaan to which I am bringing you, you shall
not do and you shall not go in their statutes" (Lev. 18:3).

That the Levite man could have thrown his PILEGESH "to the dogs" to save himself
and his host is in its way quite as repugnant as the Giv'ites' treatment of her as
nothing but a sex object to be tossed aside and abandoned after brutal abuse.
(Repugnant as all this is, the fact is that today, with very little ingenuity, anyone
can use the Internet underbelly to gain instant access to literally thousands of
websites devoted to gang rape fantasies and worse: all this obviously continues to
fascinate and excite a significant portion of the population until today.)
The horrible fate of the PILEGESH BE-GIVAH alludes perhaps to the "rape" of the
Shechinah by the forces of evil. The Levite man saw that it was fit to cut her body
into twelve parts and send them to each of the tribes to SHOCK them into action.
Indeed, the gang-rape murder in Giv'ah was a national scandal for the Israelites,
who immediately gathered in Mitzpah to take counsel. The Torah itself provides that
if a city of Israel turns aside to idolatry (as an IR HANIDACHAS, the "cast-aside
city"), the people are to make a careful enquiry into the affair and kill all the guilty
inhabitants, destroy their property and burn the entire city (Deut. 13-19). The
national gathering at Mitzpah was a most solemn affair judging a case that was
quite as serious for the people as IR HANIDACHAS.

THE ASSEMBLY AT MITZPAH

The site of GIV'AH itself is on a TEL (mound) north of Jerusalem between present-
day French Hill and Nevey Yaakov. The site of Mitzpah is somewhat further north,
just a little south of present day Ramallah. Mitzpah was an appropriate place for a
national gathering as this was there Joshua was victorious over the northern kings
of Canaan (Joshua 11:3) and, as RaDaK explains (ad loc.), Joshua probably set up
an altar there and inaugurated it as a place of national assembly and prayer
(Judges 11:11; 20:1; I Samuel 7:5).

So great was the unity of the tribes that the verse describing their armed forces'
advance on Giv'ah "AS ONE MAN, FRIENDS" (ch 20 v 11) was taken by the sages
as the foundation for their teaching that on the pilgrim festivals in Jerusalem the
usual stringencies of those who strictly observed all the laws of tithing were
somewhat relaxed to allow them to give credibility even to an AM HAARETZ
("ignoramus") who claimed to have separated Terumah, because KOL YISRAEL
CHAVERIM, "all Israel are friends" (Chagigah 26a).

The founder of the tribe of Benjamin had ten sons all of whom had families.
Benjamin's ten sons together with Joseph's two (Ephraim and Menasheh) made up
a total of twelve, giving their mother Rachel twelve "tribes" corresponding to the
Twelve Tribes of Israel. The Levites did not take part in the Israelite assault on the
tribe of Benjamin, and of course the latter were on the other side. Thus there were
Ten Tribes of Israel against ten "tribes" of Benjamin (see Rashi on ch 20 v 12).

Unlike Michah, who made a fake EPHOD and fake TERAPHIM which were used by
the BNEY DAN for divination, the Tribes of Israel in their campaign against
Benjamin turned to the legitimate High Priest wearing the authentic priestly
Breastplate for true divine guidance from the URIM VE-THUMIM. (That Pinchas the
High Priest was still alive at the time of PILEGESH BE-GIV'AH is proof that this
episode took place before the time of Shimshon.) There is a deep irony in the fact
that Judah was told to lead the campaign against Benjamin since in Egypt in the
time of Joseph Judah had taken personal responsibility for Benjamin's welfare
(Genesis 43:9, 44:32-3).

We see from our present narrative that the Children of Israel were indeed in
anguish about whether to make war against "the children of Benjamin my brother"
(ch 20 v 23) for refusing to hand over the perpetrators of the crime for appropriate
punishment. The Children of Israel did not go to war lightly and repeatedly
consulted the URIM VE-THUMIM to make sure that God approved of their path.

If God was with them, why did they lose so many of their own in abortive battles
before finally overcoming Benjamin? "God said to them: You have shown
zealousness against immorality but you did not show zealousness when it came to
Michah's idol (an affront to the glory of God)! It was because they did not show
zealousness with respect to Michah's idol, which they made no effort to uproot, that
the Benaminites succeeded in killing so many of them in their first, second and
third assaults, until the Israelites fell before the Ark of the Covenant of HaShem
seeking to repent and begging for an answer, and then He was reconciled with
them" (Pirkey d'Rabbi Eliezer).

THE MISSING BENJAMINITES

The commentators discuss the apparent discrepancy between the numbers of male
Benjaminites who went out to battle (=26,700, verses 16-17), the number of men
they lost (25,000, v 46) and the number that fled to Sela Rimon and survived (600,
v. 47. N.B. ALL the Benjaminite women were killed v. 48, leaving only these 600
men alive). RaDaK (on ch 20 v 15) suggests that of the missing 1,100 about a
thousand may have fallen in the earlier battles, but also refers to a most fascinating
Midrash that appears in some editions of Rashi (on v. 45): "Elijah revealed to the
author of MEGALEH AMUKOS that the other one hundred went and settled in Rome
and Ashkenaz (=Germany), and this is why Elijah (said by some to be from
Benjamin) was from among the inhabitants of Gil'ad (as in Eliyahu HA-GIL'ADI),
because they alone did not leave their land but stayed in their place." This Midrash
would tend to support the theories of those who maintain that from the earliest
times and afterwards some Israelites mingled with the populations of Europe,
creating a pool of Israelite souls exiled among the other peoples of the world.

Chapter 21
The Book of Judges concludes with a heartening story of national reconciliation and
healing which brought the Tribe of Benjamin back within the fold of the Twelve
Tribes, and indeed Benjamin went on to provide the first king of Israel – Saul -- as
well as Mordechai many generations later.

The behavior of the tribe of Benjamin in trying to protect the perpetrators of the
brutal rape-murder of the Concubine in Giv'ah showed that they had strayed way
outside the boundaries of the Torah code of civilized behavior. At their national
gathering in Mitzpah the other tribes thus put the Benjaminites into NIDUI, which
like HEREM is the state of being "driven out," excommunicated from the KAHAL, the
Assembly of Israel, just like MAMZERIM (illegitimate children), Moabites,
Ammonites and Gibeonites etc. who are not allowed to marry Israelite women (see
Radak on Judges 21:1). Since all the Benjaminite women had been killed, there
was nobody for the surviving 600 Benjaminites who had fled to Sela HaRimon (ch
20:47) to marry.

Yet the very severity of this sanction, which threatened to wipe out an entire tribe
from Israel, aroused a spirit of profound national soul-searching and collective
repentance in the whole nation who now gathered at the Sanctuary in Shilo (= Beit
El, Metzudas David on v. 2).

"If you want to know the power of the sanction of CHEREM, come and see it in
operation in the tribes that avenged the immorality of the tribe of Benjamin… They
took a solemn oath that ALL ISRAEL must follow them in prohibiting intermarriage
with Benjamin, as it says, 'For the OATH was great' (v. 5). This oath was the
CHEREM, and since the men of Yaveish Gil'ad were not with them at the Assembly,
they were liable to the death penalty" (Pirkey d'Rabbi Eliezer).

The town of Yaveish Gil'ad , whose inhabitants failed to attend the national
Assembly, was east of the R. Jordan about 30 km south east of Beit She'an,
presumably in the territory of Menasheh . The punitive slaughter of all its male
inhabitants and all females who were not virgins may seem very shocking, but its
practical outcome was to leave 400 girls for the surviving Benjaminites to marry.
(The subsequent connection between Benjamin and Yaveish Gil'ad became of
crucial importance in the time of King Saul, who with the Prophet Samuel mobilized
the whole of Israel to come to the town's rescue when threatened by the
Ammonites – I Samuel ch 12). Since there were 600 Benjaminite survivors, after
400 married, 200 were left without wives, leaving the Children of Israel in a
quandary since they had sworn not to intermarry with the Benjaminites (Judges
21:16-18).

THE MYSTERY OF TU BE'AV

The resolution of this national crisis came about through the mystery of TU B'AV,
the 15 th day of the month of Av, which enters allusively into our text (vv. 19-23).
This is the "festival of HaShem in Shilo from year to year…" (verse 19; Talmud
Taanis 30b). TU BE'AV, whose sanctity the rabbis compared to that of Yom Kippur
(Taanis ibid.) had become a national festival since the 40 th year of wandering in
the Wilderness. All the men who accepted the slander of the spies about the Land
had been condemned to die in the Wilderness, and for that reason throughout the
forty years of wandering, the entire nation used to dig graves and sleep in them on
the night of the anniversary of the sin, TISHA BE'AV (9 th of Av). Each year some
of the condemned generation would die while everyone else would climb out of
their graves in the morning and go on living for at least another year. In the
fortieth year of wandering they all slept in graves as usual but nobody died. They
thought they might have miscalculated the date and slept in graves the following
night, and the next… However by 15 th Av, the full moon showed that they had
certainly passed the 9 th of Av and no-one had died, indicating that the decree was
at an end.

This was why TU BE'AV became a national festival celebrating God's reconciliation
with Israel and signifying that His favor was with the new generation. God wants
Israel to multiply, and thus TU BE'AV is particularly propitious for ZIVUG – the
paring of male and female soul-mates together. TU BE'AV is exactly 40 days before
25 th Elul, the day when Creation began (for man was created on Rosh HaShanah,
1 Tishri, which is the sixth day of Creation). Since "forty days before a child is born,
a heavenly voice goes out proclaiming PLONY ("so-and-so") is matched with
PLONIS", we may infer that forty days before the start of creation (on TU BE'AV) all
the souls are matched with one another.

This is why TU BE'AV was a most propitious time for the remaining 200
Benjaminites to wait in the vineyards around Shilo as the maidens came out to
dance, and for each to "snatch" his bride (for "Benjamin is a wolf that snatches…"
Genesis 49:27, Tanchumah). This way none of the men of Israel violated their oath
not to GIVE their daughters to the Benjaminites, for the latter TOOK them for
themselves. The rabbis taught that it was TU BE'AV when the Israelites revoked the
CHEREM on Benjamin from that time on, darshening the wording of the original
oath, "not a man OF US shall give his daughter as a wife to Benjamin" to refer only
to those who were actually present but not to their descendants. On the same
occasion they also darshened from the verse in Numbers 36:6, "THIS is the matter
that God commanded regarding the daughters of Tzelaphchad" that the prohibition
of a woman marrying a man from a different tribe to avoid land inherited by women
passing from tribe to tribe applied only to that generation (Taanis 30b).

The relaxation of both decrees signified national integration and unity among the
Twelve Tribes, and the fact that the girls' dance circle at Shilo could take place
safely out in the open in the vineyards around the town without fear of rape despite
the absence of the strict separation between males and females that we normally
require showed that this was truly a "festival of HaShem" (v. 19), a celebration
LISHMOH in holiness and purity at which the new generation of pure, young
Israelite men and women could find and link up with their BASHEIRT (destined
soul-mate). The gross violation of this norm of purity that had occurred in Giv'ah
was thus atoned, and the Book of Judges ends on a note of national reconciliation
and healing, with all Israel going to their tribes, families and inheritances.

"In those days there was not a king in Israel and each man would do what was
right in his eyes" (Judges 21:25). Through his weave of stories and allegories in
this book, the Prophet has left it to us to draw the moral of his reproof and
understand why, without a king and without anyone of sufficient stature and
authority to tell the people what was truly right instead of what each one THOUGHT
to be right, Israel was in need of a prophet on the level of Moses – Samuel – to
bring them to a state of repentance and unity fit for the inauguration of their age of
national glory.
 Book of I Samuel
Chapter 1
The beautiful and evocative tale of Hannah and God's answer to her prayer and vow
with the birth of the prophet Samuel is familiar as the Haftara of the first day of
Rosh HaShanah (Gevurah, "might"), anniversary of the birth of Isaac (Gevurah)
and Shmuel the Levite (Gevurah). It was Shmuel – Samuel – whose Gevurah
brought about the appointment of Israel's messianic king.

Like the story of PILEGESH BE-GIV'AH, the story of the birth of Samuel begins with
a Levite from Mt. Ephraim, but whereas the Levite husband of the Pilegesh brought
great suffering to Israel, Elkanah brought great TIKKUN (repair). It is said that "the
sons of Korach did not die" (Numbers 26:11), from which we learn that "when
Korach descended into hell, a place was formed for them where they stood and
sang" (Megillah 14a). Elkanah was a grandson of a grandson of Korach. At a time
when the Israelites were neglecting to go up to Shilo for the thrice-yearly pilgrim
festivals, our rabbis teach that Elkanah made it his personal mission to go from
town to town – each year to new towns – encouraging the people to go up with him
to the Sanctuary, thus reviving the national consciousness of the divine plan for a
Temple "in the place that He will chose". It was in this merit that Elkanah, himself a
prophet, was worthy of his son Samuel. Hannah was one of the seven outstanding
prophetesses of Israel.

Kabbalistically, Elkana is the partzuf of ABBA ("Father", Chochmah, wisdom) and

Hannah is IMMA ("Mother", Binah, understanding, as alluded to by the Gematria of
her name, Hess 8 + Nun 50 + Heh 5 = 63 = the second Milui of HaVaYaH -- SaG
corresponding to Imma/Binah.) Elkana and Hannah had to come together in ZIVUG
to bring Shmuel – ZEIR ANPIN (Gevurah in relation to Abba) – into the world. (ARI,
Likutey Torah Shmuel). Thus it was Shmuel who played the key role in establishing
the kingdom, MALCHUS, by appointing Saul and then David as the first kings of
Israel. In the reign of David and his son Solomon, God's kingship was completely
revealed in the world (GADLUS of Zeir Anpin) through the successful establishment
of the earthly kingship which perfectly reflected and served the Kingship of God.

Samuel – Shmuel – was the last of the Judges and first of the Prophets who led
Israel. Thus in her prayer Hannah invoked "the Lord of Hosts", HASHEM TZEVAKOS
(I Samuel 1:11), being the first in Israel to use this appellation. The kabbalistic
writings teach that this name signifies the attributes of NETZACH and HOD, the
"breasts" from which the prophets suckle. Thus the later prophets from the time of
Shmuel onwards repeatedly invoke this Name.

Hannah's magnificent and profoundly allusive prayer was elicited through the
constant taunting of her rival, Peninah, who appears as the villain of the piece yet
is said by our rabbis to have acted purely LISHMOH in order to stir Hannah to
prayer. Hannah's whispered prayer is the very archetype of silent prayer and is
darshened in great detail in Talmud Berachos 31b as a lesson in many of the most
fundamental HALACHOS (laws) of prayer, in particular those relating to the daily
AMIDAH prayer.
As discussed in the commentary on Yiftah (Jephthah), Hannah is one of the
examples of those who vowed successfully. Her son Shmuel proved to be the "seed
of men" that she requested. Eli had been appointed judge on the very day that
Hannah came to the Sanctuary to pray ("And Eli the Priest YOSHEIV, was sitting, on
the chair…" v. 9, i.e. now but not before), and on that same day God granted
Hannah's prayer for a son – a son who was to come to prophesy the doom of Eli's
house. While Eli was a true Tzaddik who had received the tradition from the Beis
Din (court) of Pinchas and of Shimshon, he nevertheless showed that he was
lacking in RUACH HAKODESH – he mistook Hannah for a drunken woman, causing
her to say, "LO ADONEE" (v. 15), as if to say, "You are not my master!".

When the young Shmuel was brought to the Sanctuary as a two year old boy, he
already showed his child-prodigy Torah genius by darshening that the ox did not
need to be slaughtered by a Cohen specifically, unlike the ensuing sacrificial rituals,
which could only be performed by a Cohen – thereby incurring Eli's wrath for "ruling
in front of his teacher". Eli wanted to curse the boy to death, and when Hannah
protested, said he would give her a better son. Until Hannah cried out, "It was for
THIS lad that I prayed" (v 27; see Rashi on v 25).

"This lad" was to become the towering leader of Israel at a time of searing national
crisis within and from external enemies like the Ammonites and Philistines etc. – a
prophet who is mentioned in the same breath as Moses and Aaron: "Moses and
Aaron among His priests and SHMUEL among those who call upon His Name"
(Psalms 99:6).

* * * I Samuel 1:1-2:10 is read as the Haftara on the First Day of Rosh HaShanah
***

Chapters 2-3
HANNAH'S SONG

As mentioned in the commentary on the Song of Devorah (Judges ch 5), Hannah's

song is the seventh of the ten outstanding prophetic songs of all times. The tenth,
which we are now awaiting: will be sung when those in exile will come out of their
exile (Targum Yonasan on Shir HaShirim 1:1).

Hannah is counted as one of seven outstanding prophetesses (with Sarah, Miriam,

Devorah, Avigail, Huldah and Esther) enumerated with the 48 male prophets who
(besides the millions of other men and women who prophesied in Israel) delivered
prophecies that were relevant to all the generations (Megillah 14a).

As discussed in the commentary on the Song of Devorah, SONG connects together

and gives deeper meaning to the apparently disconnected happenings in this world.
Hannah turned her personal triumph over the taunts of her rival, Peninah, into a
song of triumph over God's victory over the enemies of Israel. The theme is how He
brings down those who are arrogant and raises those who lowly. Targum Yonasan
in his characteristically expansive rendering of a prophetic passage of this kind
specifies the enemies of Israel alluded to in these verses: the Philistines in time of
Samuel (v 1); Sennaherib king of Assyria in the time of king Hezekiah (v 2);
Nebbucadnezzar of Babylon, who destroyed the First Temple (v 3); Greece
(Macedonia) overcome by the Hasmoneans (v 4); Haman and his sons (v 5); Rome,
whose destruction will inaugurate the consolation of Jerusalem (v 6); The hordes of
Magog at the end of days.
So important is Hannah's song with its many proverbial expressions that in some
communities it is customary to recite this passage as one of the preliminary
preparations for the daily prayer service.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE

Hannah's song was over the birth of a son descended from Korach. In the
Wilderness, Korach (intense GEVURAH) had challenged Moses for apparently
putting his own family interests over the national interest by appointing his brother
Aharon as High Priest and founder of the line of Cohanim. Korach demanded that
ALL the Levites should have a share in the priesthood (Numbers ch 16). It was
God's rejection of Korach's rebellious challenge through the earth's opening her
mouth to swallow him and his band alive (Numbers ch 17) that led to the
subsequent reaffirmation of the priestly privileges in the Torah portion enumerating
the various gifts they received, including specified portions of sacrificial animals,
Terumah (the priestly tithe) etc. (Numbers ch 18). Yet while Korach went down to
hell, "the sons of Korach lived" and his descendants were later to sing on the
DUCHAN (platform) in the Temple. There is deep irony in the fact that now, in the
generation of Eli, it was Korach's descendants – Elkanah and Shmuel – who were
sent to reprove Eli's own sons, the descendants of Aharon, for abusing their priestly
privileges. Indeed in the time of David, Shmuel reorganized the entire basis of the
priestly and Levitical service in the Temple, establishing the rota-system whereby
the various priestly and Levitical families took turns to serve there week after week
throughout the year.

Eli's sons had become examples of precisely the kind of prosperous, fat, arrogant
workers of evil that Hannah in her song had praised God for bringing down and
humbling. "They did not know the Lord" (ch 2 v 12): "They had cast the yoke of
Heaven from upon them – they said, 'There is no kingdom in Heaven'" (Toras
Cohanim, Tzav). "And Yeshurun became fat and he kicked" (Deut. 32:15). Eli's sons
were abusing their priestly privileges for their own pleasure and self-
aggrandizement.

The service of the priests was intended to atone for Israel through the ritual
consumption by the priests of specified sacrificial portions. However, Eli's sons were
eating the meat for their own gratification, thereby shamefully exploiting the people.
The Midrash (Toras Cohanim, ibid.) delineates their exact sin: (1) They took more
than their fair assigned share of the SHELAMIM (peace) sacrifices, the meat of
which was supposed to be shared between the priest who offered it on the Altar
and the Israelite who brought it; (2) They took their priestly share by force even
before the HEILEV-fat of the animal and the KOMETZ-handful of the grain offerings
had been burned on the Altar – they consumed their own shares while leaving the
KOMETZ to the flies and the HEILEV to get spoiled out in the hot sun!

In addition, our text tells us "that they would sleep with the women assembled at
the entry to the Tent of Meeting" (verse 22). On this the Talmud states that anyone
who thinks they did so literally is mistaken. The Talmud explains that their sin was
to delay sacrificing the sacrificial birds brought by women who had either given
birth or who needed atonement for a morbid non-menstrual flow of blood (ZAVA).
This delay forced these women to stay overnight in the vicinity of the Sanctuary,
thus being unable to return home and be with their husbands that night. The sons
of Eli thus impeded their ability to "be fruitful and multiply", which was considered
as if they had adulterously slept with other men's wives (Yoma 9a; Shabbos 55b).

Eli's sons were thus guilty of "immorality" and despising the very Sanctuary ritual
and sacrifices over which they were appointed as priests. It was thus "measure for
measure" that God rejected them from the priesthood. Pinchas, the previous High
Priest and son of Aharon's third son, Elazar, had himself been rejected in favor of
Eli, who was from the descendants of Aharon's fourth son, Itamar. The rejection of
Pinchas came about because he had failed to go from city to city to reprove the
people, with the result that in the days of the Concubine in Giv'ah they abandoned
most of the commandments (see commentary on Judges 12). After Eli rose to be
High Priest instead of Pinchas, we see from our text that he did indeed reprove his
sons for their misdemeanors. However, he was at fault for not being more forceful.
Eli had shown himself capable of severely cursing the little boy Samuel for ruling in
front of his teacher (see commentary on Samuel 1), yet when it came to his own
sons he merely chided them when he should have dismissed them from the
priesthood. This was why Eli was considered guilty of putting his own family dignity
before the honor of Heaven and for this reason his descendants were fated to die
young and to be in the humiliating position of having to practically beg for a small
coin and a loaf of bread… (v. 36). In the time of king Solomon, Eli's descendant
Eviatar was rejected from the priesthood in favor of Pinchas' descendant Tzadok.

SHMUEL RISES TO PROPHECY

According to rabbinic tradition, the "man of God" who came to reprove Eli (I
Samuel 2 vv 27-36) was none other than Shmuel's father Elkanah. In the
meantime, Shmuel was growing. We must remember that Shmuel was a boy of
only two years old when he first came to Shilo. Our text goes into precise details
about his clothing. First we are told that he went in a linen EPHOD (ch 2 v 18);
immediately afterwards we learn that his mother would bring him a "small coat"
(small because it was to fit a small boy) each time she came to Shilo for the
fesivals (v 19 – the boy was growing fast).

Shmuel's EPHOD was somewhat different from the EPHOD of the High Priest, which
had been imitated by Gideon in his time and by Michah, maker of the idol. RaDaK
(on v 18) provides a detailed explanation of the different kinds of garment to which
the word EPHOD refers in various different contexts in NaCh. Shmuel's EPHOD was
NOT an imitation of the High Priest's (Shmuel was a Levite). Shmuel's EPHOD was a
simple linen robe that was typically worn by those truly given over to divine service
regardless of their pedigree (cf. I Samuel 22:18; II Samuel 6:14).

The account of Shmuel's growth and his childhood clothing is bound up with the
mystery of the KATNUS ("smallness" or "childhood") of the divine Partzuf of ZEIR
ANPIN, who is nurtured and bedecked by IMMA (=Binah, "understanding"), and
thus Shmuel's wears a succession of garments corresponding to his spiritual growth.

THE GATHERING STORM

In those days the word of God was "precious" (YAKAR, ch 3 v 1) because it was so
rare. The ascent of Shmuel signified the revelation of a new level of prophecy out of
the "womb" of Imma -- a birth accompanied by great pangs of travail.

The commentators are at pains to point out that despite the apparent simple
meaning of the text (ch 3 v 3), Shmuel WAS NOT SLEEPING IN THE SANCTUARY
when the call to prophecy first came to him. Those familiar with the cantillation
notes (trope) will readily see that there is an ESNACHTA ("resting note") under the
word SHOCHEIV, "was lying", separating it from the next words "in the Sanctuary
of the Lord", which begin a new phrase. It was strictly forbidden for a Levite even
to enter the Sanctuary itself, let alone lie down to sleep there. Shmuel was lying
OUTSIDE the Sanctuary Courtyard by the gate, performing his Levitical guard duty.
The prophetic voice did indeed come forth form the Sanctuary, and REACHED
Shmuel in the very place where he lay despite the fact that it by-passed Eli. God is
perfectly capable of making His voice heard to one and not to another, regardless
of where they are situated (see Rashi on v. 3).

It is very noteworthy that when Shmuel first heard God's call, he thought it was Eli,
for "your fear of your teacher should be like the fear of Heaven". Before one can be
a prophet, one must first be the assiduous student of a Torah sage and a Tzaddik.
Yet now Shmuel was ready to ascend to a new level beyond that of his teacher:
from now on God would speak to Shmuel directly.

The fate of Eli and his sons was sealed. Shmuel's ascent to prophecy came on the
eve of a terrible storm that would be so shocking that "the two ears of all who hear
of it will ring and tremble" (v. 11). Shmuel, while modest, eventually showed
himself fearless in delivering his message to its intended recipient, Eli. God was
with Shmuel and all Israel from Dan to Beer Sheva knew that he was God's faithful
prophet.

Chapter 4
Samuel was now nationally known throughout Israel as the PROPHET, but as yet he
could not really be said to be the nation's LEADER because the people did not take
counsel with him in face of the crisis caused by Philistine expansionism. It was on
their own initiative that they went out to war instead of first repenting, and when
they suffered their first serious defeat on the battlefield, they sent to take the Ark
from Shilo without consulting either Eli or Samuel. They were still afflicted with the
malady of the age of the Judges, doing what was right in their own eyes without
seeking counsel from the wise.

THE ARK OF THE COVENANT

The Ark was Israel's most sacred national treasure, containing the fragments of the
Tablets of Stone received by Moses on Sinai, the Second Tablets hewn by Moses,
and the authoritative Torah Scroll that Moses had written. Jacob in his dream on
the Temple Mount in Jerusalem had seen a SULAM ("ladder", Gematria = 130)
connecting heaven and earth. 130 is also the Gematria of SINAI – for the Torah
given on Sinai connects heaven and earth when we embrace that Torah and take it
into our hearts and our very lives. Jacob dreamed that the Torah – the Ark of the
Covenant with its precious contents given at Sinai – would eventually rest on the
very spot where he had laid his head, the Foundation Stone around which the
Temple Holy of Holies was built to house it. The purpose of the Giving of the Torah
on SINAI was that the Torah should be at the very center and foundation of the
Temple, from which it should shine to all Israel and to all the world. In the time of
Eli, the Sanctuary in Shilo was the precursor of the destined Temple in Jerusalem.
But before Samuel could pave the way for the building of this Temple, the Israelites
first had to suffer a catastrophe in order to learn the awesome meaning of the Ark
and the Covenant to which it bore testimony.

"And the people came to the camp and the elders of Israel said, Why has God
smitten us this day before the Philistines…?" (ch 4 v 3). The elders pretended to be
righteous, beating their breasts in mock self-recrimination, but they did not truly
repent because they did not seek out the true reason for their defeat, which was
their acceptance of the corruption of the priesthood and the resulting corruption of
the spiritual life of the people, a malady delineated in the previous two chapters.
Even though it was the people themselves who had complained about the
irregularities practiced by Eli's two sons, Pinchas and Hofni, they did nothing about
them, and indeed they suffered from a related malady, because it is clear from the
ensuing narrative that they thought that carrying out the EXTERNALS of religion is
sufficient without embracing God INTERNALLY with all their heart.

Israel had witnessed the power of the Ark of the Covenant in the time of Moses in
the war against the Midianites, and again in the time of Joshua at the splitting of
the Jordan and the fall of Jericho. Now in their struggle against the Philistines, they
thought that it would be sufficient to take the Ark out to battle and let its "magic"
"work" for them automatically without their having to break their own hearts and
repent completely. However God was to teach both the Israelites and the Philistines
that the Ark is not a magic box-of-tricks that does whatever you want. The Ark is
testimony to God's infinite power to make or change the laws of nature at will –
according to what HE wants.

When Pinchas and Hofni brought the Ark to the Israelite camp, the people sounded
a great TERU'AH ("blasting" ch 4 v 5), but this was not the TERU'AH of repentance.
The Philistines were disconcerted by the Israelite trumpeting, sensing that the
Israelite God had come into their camp. The Philistines evidently believed in divine
power, but erred in thinking that it is wielded by a plurality of forces that can be set
against each other and overpowered. The Philistines thought they could beat down
God by asserting their macho virility (v 9) – and God, who is very patient with
sinners, allowed them to carry on thinking so by granting them victory, since the
decree had already been passed against Pinchas and Hofni.

The Prophet in his unflinching reproof teaches us through our text that the
responsibility for Israel's national malady lay with its corrupted leadership, and this
is why Pinchas and Hofni were killed in the battle.

"AND A BENJAMINITE MAN RAN FROM THE RANKS" (v 12)

The rabbis teach that this man from the tribe of Benjamin was none other than
Israel's future king Saul – who distinguished himself by his heroism this day,
despite Israel's crushing defeat at the hands of the Philistines, by snatching the
Tablets of Stone from the hands of the Philistine strong-man, Goliath, who had
taken them when they captured the Ark. According to tradition, Saul ran anywhere
from 60 to 180 miles on this one day in order to bring the Tablets back to Shilo and
to tell Eli the terrible news.

Saul had a particular interest in this struggle against the Philistines as their very
power over the Israelites was rooted in Abraham's oath to the Philistine king
Avimelech not to betray the latter's descendants to the third generation (Genesis
21:22-31). Abraham's gift of seven lambs to Avimelech led to a decree against
seven of Abraham's righteous descendants to fall at the hands of the Philistines.
These were Samson, Pinchas and Hofni, and… Saul himself together with his three
sons, who were destined to fall on the battlefield at Mt Gilboa.

Saul now sought to break the news of the disaster to Eli as gently as possible, but
Eli, although not perfect, was truly a Tzaddik and while he was unmoved by the
death of his own sons, which had already been prophesied to him, the news of the
capture of the Ark was such a shock that he fell backwards to his death –
BACKWARDS to requite his having failed to look FORWARDS to the new generation
of priests, his corrupt sons, whom he should have chastised.

The Philistines soon arrived in Shilo, sacking and destroying the Sanctuary, which
had stood for 369 years.
Eli's daughter-in-law, Pinchas' widow, found the right term for the disaster in calling
her son EE-KAVOD, "the opposite of Glory" (v 21) – since the Glory of Israel had
gone into exile with the capture of the Ark of the Covenant.

Chapter 5
THE ARK TAKES CARE OF ITSELF

Eli died of shock at the capture of the Ark because he knew that he and his sons
were at fault, having been charged with its safe-keeping. However, at the crossing
of the Jordan Israel had already seen that it is not man who carries the Ark but
rather the Ark that carries those who carry it.

The Philistines erred in equating the One God of the Ark of the Covenant with one
of their own gods. Little is written about the nature of the Philistine god Dagon
except that it was represented by the form of a MERMAN, like a human from the
torso upwards and like a fish from the torso downwards (DAG in Hebrew = "fish").
In this the Philistine god was apparently similar to various other mythological gods
such as the Sumerian-Babylonian "Enki" and the Greek-Roman "Triton". The
Philistines may have believed that their god had power over the earth and the sea.
Our text suggests that they believed that there were limits to the power of the God
of Israel since they evidently thought He had exhausted all His plagues on the
Egyptians (ch 4 v 8).

The first time God toppled the statue of Dagon, the Philistines wanted to think it
was CHANCE and they put it back in its place (ch 5 v 3). When God broke off
Dagon's head and hands and cast them on the threshold, they did not cease to
believe in idols but instead superstitiously attributed the "accident" to some power
contained in the threshold (v 5). It was then that God showed the Philistines that
His plagues were by no means exhausted on the Egyptians, and that He had the
power to afflict them in their most private parts of all. Like Pharaoh in the time of
Moses (who went down to the river to relieve himself at a time when nobody could
see him), the Philistines liked to deny that they had human toilet needs, but now
they were forced to confront their human vulnerability in the most painful way
possible.

When Avimelech kidnapped Sarah, the Midrash tells that he and all his household
were afflicted by having all their bodily cavities of excretion stopped up so that all
the waste was held back clogged up inside them. A similar punishment now afflicted
all the Philistines in the succession of towns where they tried to keep the kidnapped
Ark. They kept moving the Ark from town to town, "testing" God to see if it was
really the cause of their troubles.

The first blessing a Jew makes every day is ASHER YATZAR… "Who formed man in
wisdom and created in him many orifices and hollows. It is revealed and known
before Your throne of Glory that if one of them is opened [when it should be closed]
or one of them is stopped up [when it should be open] it is impossible to survive
and stand before You for even one hour…"

The T'CHORIM – hemorrhoids or "piles" – with which the Philistines were plagued
were so terrible that these virile "men" suddenly found themselves staring death in
the face to the point that they wanted to send the Ark straight back to the
Israelites. This was in fulfillment of Moses' words: "And it was when the Ark
traveled, and Moses said, Arise HASHEM and your enemies will be scattered and
those that hate You will flee from before You" (Numbers10:35).
 Chapter 6
The stay of the Ark of the Covenant among the Philistines for SEVEN months was
another penalty for the SEVEN lambs that Abraham had given king Avimelech
(Bereishis Rabbah 54).

The story of the return of the Ark by the Philistines to Beth Shemesh subtly
contrasts the attitude of the Philistines towards it with that of the Israelites who
received it, serving as a reproof to the latter for failing to show the proper respect.
(A similar lack of respect is often visible in present-day places of "worship".)

The Philistines consult their priests and magician-diviners as to a fitting way to

return the Ark that had created such havoc in their land (a terrible infestation of
mice) and in their very innards (the hemorrhoids). (According to one Midrash the
mice jumped up into their anuses and pulled out their innards, making this plague
no less striking than those of Egypt.) The priests and magicians answer that the
Philistines must SHOW that they understand that the plague was from God by
offering GOLDEN MICE and GOLDEN HEMORRHOIDS. "Then you shall be healed,
and HE WILL BE KNOWN TO YOU – why would He then not turn his hand away from
you" (ch 6 v 3).

Nevertheless the Philistines did not quite believe in God's supreme power. They
believed in a variety of divine powers and knew of the wrath of the gods, which
they sought to propitiate, but they also believed in luck and chance. This was why
they set up the test of the cow-drawn wagon to see if the plague might not have
been chance. "And you will see, if it goes up by way of his boundary to Beth
Shemesh, He did this great evil to us, but if not, we shall know that it was not His
hand that plagued us, it was a CHANCE that occurred to us" (v. 9).

The test was set up to be as difficult as possible. Two nursing cows were brought to
draw the wagon laden with the heavy wooden gold-covered ark and its contents of
stone together with the golden Cherubim together with the box of golden mice and
golden hemorrhoids, while their suckling calves were held back in the house behind
them. The last thing a nursing cow that has never had to work wants to do is to
turn her back on her new-born calf and drag an exceedingly heavy wagon in the
opposite direction.

VA-YISHAR-NAH HA-PAROS, "AND THE COWS SANG" (v. 12)

Rashi on this verse states that the Hebrew word VA-YI-SHAR-NAH is

"ANDROGYNOUS" i.e. a grammatical hybrid of masculine (the prefix –YI- indicating
masculine 3 rd person plural) and feminine (the suffix -NAH, indicating feminine 3
rd person plural). Without Rashi's comment, the obvious PSHAT for anyone familiar
with Hebrew grammar is that the word is not ANDROGYNOUS at all, but that the
root is YISHAR, as in YASHAR, "straight", and here we simply have the feminine 3
rd person plural form. I.e. the two milking cows WENT STRAIGHT. However, by
telling us that the word is indeed ANDROGYNOUS, Rashi is pointing to the deeper
DRUSH, based on the root SHAR – "sing". Not ONLY did the two mother cows SING,
but so did their MALE YOUNG, and this is why the grammatical form is both
masculine and feminine!!!

The miracle of the singing cows is greatly celebrated in Torah lore (Talmud Avodah
Zarah 24b), and – for Rabbi Nachman lovers – is alluded to in his story of the
Exchanged Children, where the king's true son eventually gains possession of a
vessel that when placed on an animal, causes it to sing.
The Rabbis indeed asked why the remarkable mouths of these cows were not
included in the list of Ten Things that were created at the very end of the Sixth Day
of Creation in the twilight just as the first Shabbos was beginning (Avos 5:8). They
answered that it is because the mouths of the cows are INCLUDED in the MOUTH
OF THE ASS which opened up to speak to Bilaam (Numbers 22:28). There the
ATHON, wife of the HAMOR, "donkey" representing HOMRIUS, material physicality,
spoke out the letters of Aleph Beis from Aleph to Thav – A-TH-oN (the long Nun,
which stretches from the top of the line down way below the bottom, signifies the
50 Gates of Understanding). When the Philistines returned the Ark, this HOLY
VESSEL caused the very cows to SING DESPITE THEMSELVES – despite their
longing for their young and not to have to drag this heavy wagon.

As discussed in the commentaries on the songs of Deborah (Judges 5) and Hannah

(I Samuel 1-2), the level of SONG (BINAH) reveals that all creation is governed
providentially by the One Unified God, whose commandments to the world are
engraved on the Stone Tablets contained in the Ark of Testimony. Just as the Ark
miraculously carried those who carried it over the waters of the Jordan, so it
compelled the very cows to sing songs of praise to God.

The idolatrous Philistine captains walked after the cart watching all this in
amazement, and they knew the power of God and His holy Ark, but the Israelite
men of Beth Shemesh were too busy with their wheat harvest to pay more than
casual attention to the passing spectacle (v. 13). The Talmud (Sotah 35a) says that
the men of Beth Shemesh were smitten (v 19) because (1) they kept harvesting
even as they prostrated to the Ark when they should have stopped everything in
face of this miracle, and (2) they made up a scurrilous rhyme asking the Ark who
made it angry and what came to reconcile it.

The rabbinic discussion about whether only 70 men died but that they were
equivalent to 50,000, OR did 50,000 die who were the equivalent of the 70
members of the Sanhedrin (Sotah 35b) illustrates that such numbers given in the
Biblical text need not necessarily be taken literally but are given for DRASH. In any
event the men of Beth Shemesh suffered an extremely painful blow that came to
teach the true, terrible AWESOMENESS of the Ark of the Covenant, which signifies
God's very presence among us. This is a double edged sword, causing the righteous
to rejoice while the wicked and rebellious suffer God's wrathful intolerance of evil.

So important was this KIDDUSH HASHEM, Sanctification of God's name, that –

surprising as it may seem – the very BOX with the GOLDEN MICE and GOLDEN
HEMMORHOIDS offered by the Philistines was kept SIDE BY SIDE with the Ark of
the Covenant in the Sanctuary in Jerusalem throughout the period of the first
Temple, until they were put away, together with the flask of Mannah made by
Aaron in the Wilderness, the flask of the anointing oil, Aaron's staff and the
flowering almond branch by king Josiah (Talmud Yoma 52b). As we prepare
ourselves to see them again soon in our times, let us learn from this text a lesson
in the proper attitude of respect and honor we must show to God's holy Ark.

Chapter 7
The men of KIRYATH YE'ARIM who came to take up the ark from BETH SHEMESH
did show the proper respect for the Ark, taking it to the house of Avinadav, who
dedicated his very son Elazar to guard the Ark with due honor. Present-day Beit
Shemesh and Kiryat Ye'arim (Telstone) are considered close to the sites of the
ancient settlements mentioned in our text.
The twenty year period mentioned in our text (ch 7 v 2) as the duration of the Ark
's stay in Kiryath Ye'arim extended well beyond the days of Samuel. The Talmud
(Zevachim 118b) states that for ten of these years, Samuel himself reigned, then
Samuel reigned jointly with Saul for one year, after which Saul reigned for two
years by himself. Samuel died four months before Saul. Thereafter David reigned in
Hebron for seven years before he went up to Jerusalem , and it was then that he
took up the Ark from the house of Avinadav (II Samuel ch 6).

For this entire period of twenty years "the whole House of Israel SIGHED after God"
(ch 7 v 2). The absence of the Sanctuary and its holy Ark caused deep yearning.
The period described in the remainder of our present text, Chapter 7, covers most
of Samuel's ten years of ministry, in which he physically traveled from center to
center (ch 7 v 16) bringing the people to the level of Teshuvah where they would
be ready for the kingship. In this ten year ministry Samuel succeeded in reversing
the blight of idolatry (vv 3-4) that had begun over three hundred years earlier after
the time of Joshua.

At Samuel's national assembly of all the people at the traditional gathering place in
MITZPAH, "they drew water and they poured before HaShem" (v 6): Jonasan in the
Targum renders this as: "and they poured out their hearts in repentance like water
before HaShem".

From verse 7 ("and the Philistines heard… and the officers of the Philistines went up
to Israel") we learn that whenever there is an arousal to holiness and repentance in
Israel, the forces of the other side (PHILISHTIM = 860 = 10 x 86, ELOKIM = severe
DINIM, Judgments) arouse to threaten Israel not to rebel against the yoke of This-
Worldly Materialism in favor of spirituality and service of God. Israel's fear of the
Philistines shows how they had subjected their very selves to Philistine rule.
However, now they had Samuel the Prophet, who could call upon God and receive a
spectacular answer. Samuel slaughtered one female sheep (a "ruling of the hour"
permitting a FEMALE animal as an Olah burnt-offering on a BAMAH whereas the
Olah on the Sanctuary Altar must be MALE specifically Lev. 1:3), and as Samuel
offered up the sacrifice, God answered with a THUNDER that threw the attacking
Philistines into consternation, turning the tables on them and enabling the Israelites
to chase after and subdue them all the days of Samuel (v. 13).

It had been to EVEN HA-EZER that the Israelites had originally taken the Ark of the
Covenant from Shilo in attempting to defeat the Philistines in the time of Eli (ch 4 v
2) and it was there that the Philistines captured it. However EVEN HA-EZER was not
yet the name of the place (see Rashi ad loc) until Samuel set up the stone (EVEN)
commemorating God's HELP (EZER) until the present (ch 7 v 12). The stone came
to teach that God constantly watches His people, answering them as soon as they
POUR OUT THEIR HEARTS LIKE WATER in true repentance.

The name EVEN HA-EZER has a special significance to those who observe the Torah
in accordance with the teachings of the rabbis. This is because Rabbi Yaakov ben
Asher (author of ARBAA TURIM "The Four Rows", which provided the structure for R.
Joseph Karo's definitive SHULCHAN ARUCH law-code) chose EVEN HA-EZER as the
name of its fourth section, which deals with with all the laws of marriage, divorce
and family life as they apply until today. He chose EVEN HA-EZER as the name for
this section because God created WOMAN as man's "helper" (Genesis 2:20). Thus
the section of Shulchan Aruch called EVEN HA-EZER is the "foundation stone" of
man's life with his EZER, "helper", i.e. his wife. The story of Samuel's memorial
stone EVEN HA-EZER can be seen as a lesson to us that when we cast out our inner
idols and base the most intimate details of our family life on God's Torah as taught
in the laws of EVEN HA-EZER and with this POUR OUT OUR HEARTS LIKE WATER IN
TRUE REPENTANCE, we can live at peace with those around us, and even our worst
enemies will turn their backs and flee.

Chapter 8
VAI!!! IT WAS WHEN SAMUEL WAS OLD

The first word of Chapter 8 is VA-YEHI, "And it was…" "We have a tradition handed
down from the Men of the Great Assembly that wherever it says VA-YEHI, it is an
expression of pain – VAI: 'And it was when Samuel was old… and his sons did not
go in his ways'" (Megillah 10b).

When Eli had told Samuel that he MUST reveal his prophecy to him on pain of being
cursed, even though Samuel did in fact reveal it, nevertheless the threatened curse
had its effect, and Samuel, like Eli, suffered from having children who did not live
up to his own high standards (Maccos 11a).

As in the case of Eli's sons, the flaw in Samuel's sons was more subtle than might
appear from a superficial reading of our text. They may not have gone in Samuel's
ways but this does not mean they were crude sinners. Their flaw was that unlike
Samuel, they did not TRAVEL AROUND from center to center to judge the people.
Instead they both sat at home in comfort in Beer Sheva – in the extreme south of
the Land (when one of them at least should have set up in Dan in the north),
forcing all who sought justice to travel all the way there. They also allowed their
staff to take fat fees for legal services (Talmud Shabbos 56a). They "inclined after
gain" (ch 8 v 3) – they were criticized for DEMANDING the tithes due to them as
Levites instead of waiting for people to GIVE them (ibid.; cf. Hullin 133a).

THE PEOPLE REQUEST A KING

"Set a king over us to judge us like all the nations. And the matter was evil in the
eyes of Samuel" (vv 5-6).

" Israel had been given three commandments to fulfill after their entry into the
Land: to appoint a king over themselves, to build the Temple and to destroy
Amalek. If so, why were they punished when they asked for a king in the days of
Samuel? Because they asked out of anger and not for the sake of the mitzvah"
(Tosefta Sanhedrin ch 4).

The mitzvah to appoint a king is given in the Torah (Deut. 17:14-19), and Samuel's
whole mission was to establish the kingship, which would inaugurate a period of
divine glory and revelation through the Kingdom of God being reflected and
enhanced by the kingdom on earth.

However, from our present text we see that the people had not yet reached the
necessary level of understanding of the nature of the Torah kingship to be ready for
kings like David and Solomon. Israel would have to endure a painful process of
many years of war and civil strife in order to clarify the true meaning of the
kingship.

Our rabbis taught that the elders of the people did ask Samuel for a king in the
proper manner: "Give us a king TO JUDGE US " (v 5, i.e. to settle their disputes
and make peace). However, it was the impetuous "people of the earth" (AMEI
HA'ARETZ, ignoramuses) who were at fault, because it was they who said, "…and
we also shall be LIKE ALL THE NATIONS…" (v 20; Sanhedrin 20b). Some rabbis say
the people secretly hoped that with a king instead of judges they would more easily
be able to revert to idolatry, which indeed came about when Jeraboam ben Nevat
rebelled against king Solomon and established the kingdom of the Ten Tribes.

The people of Israel today could save themselves much war and strife by seriously
seeking to clarify for themselves the true purpose of having a sovereign state to
govern their affairs and the true reason for wanting Mashiach.

AND HE SAID, THIS IS WILL BE THE LAW OF THE KING" v 11

God Himself commanded Samuel to accede to the people's request – for the time of
the destined kingship had arrived – and ordered him to lay before them the laws of
the kingship. Samuel wanted to shock this nation of independent land-owning small
farmers into understanding the real implications of the Torah kingship by explaining
the king's power over the people in terms that would have immediate tangible
meaning for them. The king was going to be lord over the land, with the power to
requisition the flower of the country's youth, males and females, for the glory of his
court and to man his army, and the power to commandeer land, produce and other
resources for his domestic and military needs. We will see in Kings I in the
narrative about king Solomon how he did indeed use this power for the glory of God
– he built His Temple – and for the glory of Israel and the House of David. But
Samuel's warnings to the people that the king would be "tithing" (i.e. taxing) their
seed and orchards and flocks etc. were intended to let them understand that all this
would hit them hard where they would really feel it -- in their "pockets", as it were.

Samuel's address to the nation about the powers of the king is one of the primary
sources in the written Torah for the laws of the kingship (as is the section in Deut.
17:14-20). These laws are discussed in the Talmud in tractate Sanhedrin (20bff)
and are laid out in detail in Rambam (Maimonides), Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings
chs 1-5.

Chapter 9
ENTER SAUL

In I Chronicles 8:33 the name of the father of Saul's father, Kish, is given as NER
(= a "lamp") whereas here it is given as AVI-EL (I Samuel 9:1). "Saul attained the
kingship in the merit of his grandfather, who used to light lamps for the benefit of
the public. There were dark alleyways leading from his house to the Study House,
and he lit lamps in them to light the way for the public… His name was AVI-EL but
because he lit lamps for the general public, he merited to be called NER" (Vayikra
Rabba 9). In other words, it was in Saul's very blood to bring Israel to study the
Torah.

THE MYSTERY OF THE ASSES

The story of Saul's cross-country search for his father's asses and how it brought
him to the Seer who was to anoint him as king is another example of the heavily
veiled allegory of the Navie (Prophet). Again it is the holy ARI (Rabbi Yitzchak
Luria) who opens a chink in the veil with his teachings in Sefer HaLikutim on I
Samuel.

"Know that the asses (ATHONOS) correspond to the Ten Crowns of Impurity (the
Keters of the Ten Sefiros of the unholy side of creation). And because Jacob sent
asses to Esau, Esau's angel wrestled with him. The blow Jacob received on his right
thigh causing him to limp brought about the cessation of prophecy. When the text
says, 'And as to the asses… they have been found' (I Samuel 9:20), it means that
the KELIPOS ("husks", forces of evil) that were scattered around the world had
been 'found' – i.e. the source of their accusation against the holy side has been
discovered and it is possible to rectify them.

"The secret of Jacob's thigh – it was the right thigh – is that it alludes to the Sefirah
of NETZACH ("victory"), which was flawed by the Angel of Death (Samech Mem,
Esau's guardian angel). Now it is from the Sefirahs of NETZACH-HOD-YESOD that
prophecy comes, but when the prophetic spirit would descend and come to
NETZACH, there was an intervening barrier closing up the channels through which
the flow descends from NETZACH. For this reason 'The word of God was PRECIOUS
(YAKAR, "heavy") and no vision burst through' (I Samuel 3:1). Because Jacob
prostrated 22 times to Esau, NETZACH was very seriously flawed until BENJAMIN
came – he was not yet born when Jacob prostrated to Esau. For this reason
MORDECHAI (descended from Benjamin), rectified NETZACH and did not want to
bow down to Haman.

"And he [Esau-Amalek] kept his fury for ever NETZACH" (Amos 1:11). I.e. Esau's
fury is against NETZACH.

"The reason why Samuel is here called HA-ROEH, "the SEER" (I Samuel 9:9 etc.)
and not the NAVIE, "prophet", is because now was the time for Prophecy to be
rectified through the repair of NETZACH, but as yet the repair had not been carried
out. Samuel, who was a Levite (GEVURAH, "might") had the power to repair it with
Saul, who was from the tribe of Benjamin, BEN YAMIN ("son of the RIGHT") – for it
had been Jacob's RIGHT THIGH that was damaged.

" 'He will lead (YA'ATZOR) my people' (ch 9 v 17). The unusual word used here for
leadership, YA'ATZOR, has the connotation, "he will stop, put on a brake". God did
not say "he will RULE, (YIMLOCH)" because Saul was only able to put a temporary
brake on the flaw and stop the evil Kelipah from ruling over NETZACH any more.
But when Saul sinned with his failure to destroy the Amalekite king, the Kelipah
came back and held sway again. It was only David who would be able to rectify the
flaw in NETZACH. It was because Saul failed to rectify prophecy and holy spirit that
he was attacked by an impure spirit and accordingly was not answered through the
Urim VeThumim and the prophets. This was because his flaw lay in the sphere of
prophecy and holy spirit.

"In the feast that Samuel made with the meat of the sacrifice at the Bamah (ch 9
vv. 22ff) he was sure to give Saul the portion that had been specially set aside for
him – the THIGH of the animal – for this alluded to NETZACH, the "right thigh", i.e.
the wellspring of prophecy, for this was what Saul was intended to rectify. The
intention of Saul eating together with Samuel was to open the channel of prophecy,
which is why immediately afterwards Saul saw a band of prophets prophesying…"
(ARI, Sefer HaLikutim).

Chapter 10
In the light of the extracts from the ARI quoted in the commentary on the previous
chapter, teaching that Saul's essential mission was to rectify prophecy, the weave
of incidents involving prophets and prophetic locations as narrated in our present
chapter becomes a little more comprehensible.
"And Samuel took the flask of oil and poured it upon his head and kissed him" (I
Samuel 10:1). The oil is, of course, emblematic of the spirit flowing down from
above, yet the Rabbis pointed out that this was not Moses' SHEMEN HAMISHCHAH,
"anointing oil" but only aromatic APHARSAMON oil, and it was poured not from a
KEREN ("horn") but from a PAKH ("flask"). The SHEMEN HAMISCHAH was reserved
for the kings of Judah, and thus David and Solomon were both anointed with it
from a horn – and both saw their kingship established. However Saul, and later
Jehu, who were anointed only with APHARSAMON oil from a flask, did not see their
kingship established (Horayos 11b; Megillah 14a).

Samuel's foretelling Saul of his coming journey (ch 10 vv 2-9) involves locations
associated with Saul's illustrious ancestors Rachel, whose grave is mentioned
though Saul was not actually to visit it (see Rashi on v 2) and Jacob, who dreamed
his dream of the ladder at Luz - Beit El (v. 3). The "Hill of God" mentioned in v 5 is
said in Targum to be the location of the Ark of the Covenant. It was from there that
Saul would encounter a "band of prophets". RaDaK notes (ad loc.) that the
illustrious prophets of those times included Elkanah, Gad, Nathan, Asaph, Heyman
and Yeduthun. Thus Saul was being prepared for the kingship.

However, scarcely noticeable in verse 8 is Samuel's test to Saul. "And you shall go
down before me to Gilgal… and you shall wait seven days until I come to you…" In
order to help us understand where Saul's going down to Gilgal as referred to here
actually comes in the sequence of events in our unfolding narrative, the
commentators on this verse point out that Samuel is here referring to a visit to
Gilgal by Saul and Samuel that was to come only AFTER the renewal of the kingship
at Gilgal as described in in ch 10 vv 14-15 and ch 11 v 15. The story of the second
visit to Gilgal as referred to here is only told later on, in ch 13 vv 8-14 – where we
see that Saul failed Samuel's test. Here in our present text, Samuel is ordering Saul
to WAIT for Samuel on that second occasion and NOT to sacrifice, because Samuel
was coming to do that. However, as we shall see, Saul gave in to popular pressure,
and when Samuel did not arrive, offered the sacrifice himself. For this he was
deposed from the kingship. Prophecy is only possible when the student prophet is
absolutely obedient to his master.

As yet, however, the text contains few direct hints of the flaw that was to
undermine Saul's kingship. Here in our present chapter, we learn more of the
virtues for which he was chosen as king – his exceptional modesty and humility,
and his flight from honor, which actually caused honor to pursue him. Already in
the previous chapter (ch 9 v 5) we heard Saul tell his attendant that he wanted to
return home from searching for the donkeys lest his father "be worried about US" –
Saul humbly put himself on the same level as the attendant. Now we hear how
Saul's own uncle asked him what Samuel had told him but Saul modestly would not
tell him that he had been chosen king (v 16). The rabbis connected Saul's modesty
with his illustrious ancestress Rachel, who according to Midrash collaborated with
Laban and remained silent in order to make Jacob think he was marrying Leah so
that she should not be humiliated. And in the merit of Rachel and Saul, they had as
their descendant Queen Esther, who modestly "did not tell her lineage".

At the assembly of the nation at Mitzpah (vv 17-25) Samuel used the method of
lots to show the people that Saul had been chosen by God as their king (vv 20-21).
With characteristic humility Saul ran away and "was hiding by the vessels" (v 22).
Rashi's simple PSHAT is that the KELIM are the clothes and Saul was hiding where
the people left their cloaks before attending the assembly. However Rashi also
brings the Midrash that the KELIM refer to the Urim VeThumim of the High Priest:
Saul would only agree to accept the kingship if they consulted the Urim VeThumim!
"It is hard to rise to greatness, and as hard as it is to arise to it, so it is hard to
descend from greatness. For so we find by Saul: when he was told to arise to the
kingship, he 'hid by the vessels'. And when he was told to descend from the
kingship, he went after David to try to kill him" (Pirkey d'Rabbi Nathan 10:3).

When the skeptics questioned how this Saul could save them, the king was silent
and forbearing (ch 10 v 27 and ch 11 v 13). However, he was criticized for this.
While he was permitted to be personally humble and forbearing, he was not allowed
to compromise on the honor due to the king, as this would undermine the kingship.

Chapter 11
The first challenge of Saul's kingship was from the Ammonites. They had been
routed by Yiftach (Jephthah) but since that time the Philistines had been pressing in
on the Israelites from the south and west, leaving them seriously weakened and
unable to defend the Israelite settlements east of the Jordan. The Ammonites thus
succeeded in extending their hegemony northwards into the Gilaad at least as far
as Yavesh Gil'ad, which is about 60 km north west of present day Amman. The
name of this ancient settlement survives in the Arab name of the local waddi –
Yabbes, which flows into the R. Jordan. (The names of hundreds of other
settlements mentioned in TaNaCh are also evident in local Arab place-names,
attesting to the great antiquity of Israel's connection with the Land.)

The town of Yavesh Gil'ad was involved in the story of the Concubine in Giv'ah
(Judges ch 20) as the men of that town did not attend the National Assembly that
was called to discipline the Benjaminites, and were accordingly killed. It was their
400 surviving virgin female offspring who were married to 400 of the 600
Benjaminites who survived the war of the Tribes against them, and thus although in
the territories of Menasheh, the town was inhabited by Benjaminites who inherited
their wives' property.

The Ammonite king Nachash (="serpent") demanded that the inhabitants of Yavesh
must gouge out their own right eyes if they wanted to make peace with him. (This
is very reminiscent of the demands of Israel's present-day oppressors.) His demand
was intentionally humiliating (v 2). The rabbis teach that the "eyes" he wanted the
Israelites to gouge out were (1) their best slingers and archers, who are the
"delight of Israel's eyes" (2) the Sanhedrin, who are called the "eye" of Israel (3)
the Sefer Torah (Yalkut Shimoni).

"And the spirit of God burst into Saul as he heard these things…" (v 6). Now Saul
exhibited the GEVURAH of kingship and swiftly mobilized the entire nation for war
(vv 7-8). His tactics against the Ammonites, dividing his forces into three, are
reminiscent of Gideon's tactics against the Midianites (Judges 7:16). His surprise
attack brought about a God-given victory which showed all the people that he was
truly God's chosen king. Samuel therefore called all the people to Gilgal (for the
FIRST visit, not the SECOND, see above ch 10 v 8, which was to be Saul's test) in
order to "renew the kingship" (ch 11 vv 14-15). Although Saul had already been
chosen by the lottery and Urim VeThumim and acclaimed by the people, his
kingship was not established until after his victory over the Ammonites and this is
why the kingship was now "renewed" at Gilgal.

Chapter 12
* * * I Samuel 11:14-15 and 12:1-22 is read as the Haftara of Parshas Korach,
Numbers 16:1-18:32 * * *
Samuel's address to all Israel assembled in Gilgal to "renew the kingship" (ch 12 vv
1-25) displays an apparent ambivalence about the kingship. It is a Torah mitzvah
to appoint a king, yet Samuel castigated the people for asking for one even though
he himself appointed him. This is because Samuel saw that the people's conception
of the nature and purpose of the kingship as being primarily for the sake of what
today is called "national security" was inherently flawed. His intent in his address
was to correct their misconceptions.

A LESSON IN GOOD GOVERNMENT

"I have become old" (v 2). Samuel was only 52 when he died, but the rabbis said
that "old age jumped upon him" so that he should not see Saul's destined death in
his lifetime (Taanis 5b).

In his "retirement farewell" address to the whole people Samuel asked them to
testify to his impeccable integrity throughout the years he ruled, neither oppressing
nor exploiting the people and never taking bribes or twisting justice. The rabbis said
that Samuel was independently wealthy (Nedarim 38a) which should perhaps have
made him less susceptible to the temptations of corrupt government, yet even the
ownership of substantial wealth has not stopped numerous past and contemporary
government figures from flagrantly pursuing their private interests through their
endeavors in the "service" of the public. None of the assembled Israelites could
deny Samuel's integrity, "…and HE SAID [I am] a witness" (v 5) Based on the use
of the singular verb at the end of verse 5 where we would have expected the plural
– "and THEY (the people) said" – the rabbis taught that a BAS KOL (lit. "daughter
of a voice" – a heavenly "echo") proclaimed, "I AM THE WITNESS". Even Heaven
could testify to Samuel's absolute integrity. Perhaps the reason Samuel felt no need
to take from others was that he was truly wealthy – i.e. satisfied with his portion
(Avos 4:1) – which cannot be said for the power-hungry, wealth-seeking "leaders"
of today.

THE LESSONS OF HISTORY

The key point in Samuel's sweeping survey of the history of Israel is that in Egypt,
"your fathers CRIED OUT to God…" (v 8) and in the Land, after being "sold" to their
enemies, "they CRIED OUT to God and said, 'We have sinned…'" (v. 9). The lesson
is that when Israel turns to God, they are saved, but if they put their trust in some
powerful king or government or military strength alone, they are abandoned.

Samuel compares Moses, Aharon and himself in their generations to "Jerubaal,

Bedan and Yiftach" in theirs. Jerubaal is Gideon, while Bedan is Shimshon (Samson),
who was from the tribe of DAN (=BeDaN, "IN Dan"). Compared to Moses, Aharon
and Samuel the prophets, Gideon, Jephtah and Samson were KALEY OLAM,
"lightweights", yet Samuel mentions them together – teaching that even though
Israel's Torah leaders in the later generations may seem much less authoritative
than the outstanding giants of the past, we must still rely on our leaders if they
truly speak in the name of the Torah (see Rashi on v 11).

A RAINSTORM AT HARVEST TIME

"And Samuel CALLED to God, and God gave thunderclaps and rain on that day" (v
18). Samuel gave the people a most frightening, practical demonstration of the
great power of prayer in order to prove his point that the strength of the people of
Israel in the face of all their enemies lies only in CRYING OUT TO GOD.
In Israel the rainy season comes to an end in Adar (March) with only a few late
showers in Nissan (April), and by the time of the wheat harvest, which is after
Pesach during the months of Iyar-Sivan (May-June) any rain is a freak occurrence.
Indeed rain after Nissan is a curse (Taanis 12b) because it spoils the wheat.
Nevertheless, when Samuel called upon God, He answered him at once. Samuel's
purpose was to shock the people into understanding that their entire salvation
depended only on prayer. He was also was hinting to them that just as his few
words of prayer had the power to unleash a terrible storm, so too their few
wrongly-motivated words in requesting for a king could let loose a torrent of
destructive consequences (Me'am Lo'ez). We need to know what we should be
praying for (which we learn from the Torah), and then we need to pray for it.

Chapter 13
BEN-SHANAH SHA'UL BE-MOLCHO (ch 13 v 1). The literal meaning of the Hebrew
words is: "Saul was ONE YEAR OLD when he reigned", although the commentators
explain that the intent is that the "renewal of the kingship" described in the
previous chapter took place a year after Saul's induction as king. However, the
rabbis darshened from the literal meaning of these words that Saul was LIKE A ONE
YEAR OLD babe when he became king, because just as a baby is clean of all sin, so
a leader is forgiven all his sins on his induction (and from other verses they learned
that so too a sage on his induction and a bridegroom – and his bride – on their
wedding day are forgiven all their sins).

The same verse also states that Saul's reign over Israel lasted only two years (v 1),
at the end of which he died in battle against the Philistines. This may seem
surprising when we consider that the nineteen chapters from here to the end of I
Samuel seem to cover very great variety of incidents which one might have
expected to have taken place over a longer period of time. We should bear in mind
the timeframe as we proceed with our study of the later sections of this book.

ENTER JONATHAN

In verses 2-3 we are first introduced to one of the most noble characters in the
Bible, Saul's son Jonathan, who should have inherited the kingship, and who
displayed spectacular boldness and courage from the very start of his career by
assassinating the Philistine governor of the Benjaminite territories – emblem of the
foreign oppressor -- thereby triggering the Philistine war to quash the Israelite
"rebellion". Despite the fact that Jonathan "lost" the kingship to David, he showed
not the faintest trace of jealousy of his beloved friend, for whom he was ready to
endanger his very life.

RaDaK (on verse 2) notes that from the beginning of the book of I Samuel until ch
18 v 1 his name is written as YONASAN except for two occasions (ch 14 vv 6 & 8),
where it is written as YE-HO-NASAN, as it is from ch 18 v 1 onwards. In Hebrew the
difference is the result of the addition of only one letter – a HEH. The addition of
this letter, as in the change of Abram to Abraham and the addition of a YUD in the
name of Pinchas, indicates the attainment of a higher spiritual level.

THE PHILISTINE OPPRESSION

Chapter 13 illustrates the dire plight of the Israelites under Philistine "occupation"
in the times of Saul and Samuel. While the Philistines could field an army of 30,000
chariots and 6,000 horsemen and "people like the sand of the shore of the sea in
multitude" (v 5), the disorganized Israelite small farmers had been intentionally
disarmed by their foreign masters, who banned the Hebrews from engaging in any
kind of metalwork so as to be unable to make swords and spears (v 19). The
Israelites were forced to go down to the Philistines to repair their plows and other
agricultural implements (v 20) or else they had to make do with the most primitive
self-help methods to sharpen their instruments (v 21, see commentators).
[Ironically, contemporary Israel is one of the world's leading weapons
manufacturers, yet the nations of the world led by the country's closest ally
generally prevent Israel from actually using any of her sophisticated armory with
real effect, thus leaving the people of the country at the mercy of enemy rockets
and missiles etc.]

SAUL: FLAWED OR TOO PERFECT?

It is hardly surprising that most of the people felt completely helpless and went into
caves and holes, etc. (v 6) or emigrated to safer areas (v 7). Even when Saul
gathered his bands at Gilgal to wait for his SECOND meeting there with Samuel as
instructed by the prophet (see ch 10 v 8 and yesterday's commentary thereon),
people started deserting and scattering (ch 13 v 8). Saul had been commanded not
to sacrifice at Gilgal but to wait for Samuel to do so on the seventh day. However,
when Samuel did not arrive on the morning of the seventh day, Saul felt compelled
to stall the people's increasing restiveness by officiating at the sacrifice himself. He
was not at fault for serving at the Altar even though he was not a priest, because a
ZAR (non-priest) is permitted to serve at a BAMAH. (Indeed Samuel himself was
not a priest but a Levite.) Saul's error was to succumb to popular pressure and stop
waiting for Samuel, even though the latter had prophesied that he would arrive,
which he did, albeit late in the day. Samuel's delay was a very hard test for Saul,
but the Torah writes that the king "must not turn aside from the MITZVAH to the
right or the left in order that he may extend his days…" (Deut. 17:20), and since
the same passage previously states that he must "keep all the words of this
TORAH", we infer that the MITZVAH can only refer to the order of a prophet, which
is also from God (see Rashi on v 14). Unlike democratic politicians, the leader of
Israel must not pay attention to VOX POPULI but only to the word of God and His
prophets.

Paradoxically, the rabbis stated that Saul was deposed from the kingship not
because he sinned but because he was TOO PERFECT. "Rav Yehuda said in the
name of Shmuel, Why did the kingship of the house of Saul not endure? Because it
contained no reproach (i.e. Saul's pedigree was impeccable), for R. Yochanan said
in the name of R. Shimon son of Yehotzedek, A leader is only appointed over the
community if he has a box of unclean creatures hanging from his back so that if he
becomes too arrogant they can say to him, Take a look behind you." [Thus David's
great grandmother wasn't even Jewish as she was a Moabitess, and this was the
"box of unclean creatures" hanging over his back!!!] (Yoma 22b).

Despite having been told by Samuel that his kingship would not endure, Saul did
not flinch from carrying out his duty and going to war against the Philistines despite
the fact that NONE OF HIS PEOPLE HAD ANY WEAPONS (v 22). Only Saul and
Jonathan miraculously found weapons (Rashi on v 22), and with this they prepared
to face the Philistine hosts at Michmass.

Chapter 14
There are many mysterious twists and turns in this chapter's narrative about Israel
's war of rebellion against Philistine domination in the reign of Saul, which was
largely initiated by his bold and courageous son Jonathan. Despite the presence of
Achiyah the High Priest and the URIM VE-THUMIM with Saul, Jonathan did not wait
for an answer through this channel (which in any case was not forthcoming) before
setting of on what would have been a suicide mission were it not for his total trust
in God.

Jonathan was going to expose himself and his sole attendant to the entire Philistine
garrison and decide if he would remain stationary or advance based on their
reaction on seeing him. Jonathan's making a sign for himself in this way was
compared by the rabbis to Abraham's servant Eliezer's making a sign at the well as
to which maiden would be suitable as Isaac's wife (24:13-14). The question of
whether such signs are legitimate or proscribed as divination is discussed at great
length by RaDaK (on v 9). If the Philistines advanced towards Jonathan, he would
know that they were not afraid, but if they told him to come up to them he would
know that "the fear of God was in their hearts and they were afraid to move from
their place" (Rashi on v. 10).

Jonathan was not afraid to go into the very midst of the Philistines for hand-to-
hand combat despite the odds being so heavily weighed against him, for "there is
nothing to prevent HaShem from saving whether through a multitude or through a
little" (v 6). Jonathan's foray and his rapid massacre of the enemy garrison led to
the mass flight of the Philistine army in total disarray.

When Saul's watchers reported this, he sought divine guidance through the URIM
VE-THUMIM as to whether to chase after them (v 18), but there was no time even
to wait for an answer (having disobeyed Samuel at Gilgal, Saul was unable to elicit
answers through holy spirit any more) and the war against the Philistines started in
earnest. From v 21 we learn that Philistine domination had been so powerful that
many Hebrews were actually present helping their forces, but when the Hebrews
saw the success of the Israelite rebellion they went over to Saul. [Similarly in the
war of Gog and Magog it is prophesied that even Jews will come with the hordes of
Gog against Jerusalem but their hearts will go out to their Jewish brothers under
the siege, Zechariah 12:2, see Targum and Rashi ad loc.]

"AND SAUL PUT THE PEOPLE UNDER OATH (v 24)

The key to understanding some of the mysterious twists of this chapter is to

recognize that Saul wanted to bring the people to exceptional levels of spiritual
discipline, even under the exigencies of a war against an enemy they perceived as
being overwhelmingly powerful.

Thus Saul put the people under an oath not to eat until the evening – despite the
fact that they were engaged in a life and death battle! Jonathan, who was absent
when Saul declared the ban, tasted some "honey" (= cane sugar), and, when told
of the oath his father had imposed, was not afraid to express his true opinion that
Saul had gone too far (vv 29-30): "he has upset their minds and their salvation like
turbid waters" (Rashi on v 29).

At the end of the day the ravenous people flew upon the booty and took sheep and
cattle "and slaughtered them on the ground and the people ate upon the blood" (v
32). The rabbis offer various opinions about the nature of the "sin", with some
saying they did not allow the blood to drain properly from the meat before eating it
as required by the laws of Kashrus, and others saying that they offered SHELAMIM
(peace) offerings but ate the meat before the blood was sprinkled on the Altar.
Rashi's opinion is that they slaughtered mother animals and their young on the
same day, which the Torah forbids.
Saul's emergency measure of setting up a BAMAH Altar and sacrificing even at
night (which is not permitted in the Temple but was permissible on such a BAMAH)
was intended to rein the people's animalistic lusts as part of his campaign for
heightened self-discipline.

Failing (again) to get an answer from the URIM VE-THUMIM about taking the war
into the Philistine areas (v 37) Saul realized there was a flaw that had to be
exposed, and he resorted to casting lots in order to discover where it lay. The
perfection of Saul's governmental ideals is expressed in his declaration that even if
the fault lay with his very son he would kill him (v 39). Why Saul received no
answer from the URIM VE-THUMIM despite the fact that Jonathan at worst violated
the oath UNWITTINGLY since he had not heard it (as v 27 testifies) is explained by
Rav Saadia Gaon (brought in RaDaK on v 45). He suggests that if Saul had received
an answer despite the fact that his son was somehow at fault, this would have
made people feel Jonathan was getting preferential treatment as son of the king
whereas someone else would have been punished for violating the king's ban. The
public would then not have become aware that Jonathan had not even been present
when the ban was declared. Since Saul was not answered by the URIM VE-THUMIM,
he was forced to cast lots to establish where the problem lay, and when Jonathan
was "caught" the people were forced to investigate what really happened and thus
they all found out that Jonathan had indeed not been present and was quite
innocent.

"AND WHEREVER HE TURNED HE CAUSED TERROR" (v 47)

The closing section of Ch 14 summarizes the many-fronted wars waged by Saul in

his brief two year reign, and introduces the names of his family members and Chief
of Staff, several of whom play leading roles part in the narrative in the chapters to
come.

Saul is a very paradoxical figure, but without doubt he was a man of outstanding
GEVURAH. He fought on so many fronts, and "wherever he turned he caused
terror" (v 47). An illuminating comment based on this verse is found in Talmud
Eiruvin 53, where Ravina states that "David revealed his MASECHTA (the tractate of
Torah that he learned), and his kingship endured, for 'those who fear You see me
and rejoice' Ps 119:74, while Saul did not reveal his MASECHTA and his kingship
did not endure, 'and wherever he turned he caused terror'." This seems to suggest
that David (like his descendant, Hillel) reached out to the people and spoke on their
level, while Saul, who was "head and shoulders above everyone else" (see ch 10 v
23), wanted to bring the people up to his own high levels of stringency (like Beis
Shamai) – and this was why his kingship did not survive.

Chapter 15
The account of Saul's war against Amalek and its tragic consequences is familiar as
the Haftara of Shabbat Zachor immediately before Purim, when we remember
Amalek's evil, murderous and entirely unprovoked attack on the Israelites as they
came out from slavery in Egypt.

The mitzvah to extirpate of Amalek is one of the three that Israel were commanded
to carry out on entry into the Land, together with the appointment of a king and
the building of the Temple. Amalek's continuing war against Israel was a war
against the very name of God Himself, which this KELIPAH (husk) seeks to hide
from the consciousness of the world, and thus it must be removed in order for the
glory of God to shine to perfection from His Temple in Jerusalem.
 "AND NOW LISTEN TO THE VOICE…" (v 1)

Saul had already deviated once from Samuel's instructions when the prophet told
him not to sacrifice at Gilgal but to await his arrival (ch 10 v 8). Now Saul was
given one last opportunity to redeem himself and his kingship – but he failed, and
the decree against him was sealed. God finally rejected him completely and gave
the kingship "to your companion who is better than you" (=David; ch 15 v 28). It
was only many generations later that Saul's descendant Esther came to the throne
in Shushan when Vashti was displaced and the king gave her royal position "to her
companion who is better than her" (Esther 1:19), and Esther rectified Saul's fault
by working with Mordechai to destroy Haman the Aggagite-Amalekite.

Samuel gave Saul exact instructions to destroy not only the Amalekite men, women
and children but even their animals. (Rashi on v 3 states that the Amalekites were
masters of witchcraft and changed themselves in such a way that they resembled
animals – which is somewhat reminiscent of the kind of media wizardry of our day
that causes humans to seem and behave like animals.) However, after Saul's
victory over the Amalekites, "and Saul and the people had pity on Agag and on the
choice of the flocks and cattle etc." (v 9). Rashi (on vv 5 and 24) explains that it
wasn't just that they said what a pity it would be to kill all these fat cattle. "And he
struggled in the VALLEY (NACHAL)" (v 5) Rashi explains to mean that Saul went
through a deep inner debate about the justice of killing innocent men when the
Torah itself commands us to atone for spilt blood and avoid further bloodshed
through the mitzvah of the EGLAH ARUFAH, breaking the neck of a heifer, which is
performed in a VALLEY (Deut. 21:4). It was not just the mass of the people who
questioned the justice of the Prophet's command – it was no less than DO'EG HA-
EDOMI, the outstanding Torah scholar of the time, who was so great that he was
equivalent to the whole people (see Rashi on v 24). Do'eg is portrayed by Rabbi
Nachman of Breslov as the archetype of the brilliant, constipated Torah scholar who
is all intellect without heart (Likutey Moharan I, 61) – Do'eg was later responsible
for Saul's persecution of David, and here we find that Do'eg's advice brought about
the collapse of Saul's kingship.

When Samuel questioned why Saul spared the flocks, the latter was quick to
provide extensive rationalizations – he talked too much – and Samuel put a stop to
this, telling him that his rebellion against the words of God's prophet was quite as
bad as the very sorcery that Saul tried to stamp out in Israel, and that his
excessive talk was as bad as the divination he prohibited (v 23). "Does God receive
pleasure from burnt offerings and sacrifices as from listening to the voice of God?"
(v 22).

"The eternal of Israel (NETZACH YISRAEL) will not lie and will not repent" (v 29).
As explained by ARI (see commentary on Samuel 9) this verse was said precisely
because Saul's flaw was in the Sefirah of NETZACH, from which the prophets
"suckle", and since NETZACH WILL NOT LIE OR REPENT, the decree against Saul
was now sealed and unchangeable. As soon as he heard the decree, Saul
acknowledged his sin – but it was too late. From this time on, despite his great
GEVURAH Saul was almost like a ghost of a king, and we are left with feelings of
deep mourning – like those of Samuel – about how a character so noble and
exalted could fall. Saul had erred with an excess of kindness – but when kindness is
bestowed upon those who are evil, such as Amalek, it turns into the worst cruelty.
 Chapter 16
THE ANNOINTING OF DAVID

We find little in our text about Saul's greatness and good qualities despite his
perfection and outstanding saintliness (CHASSIDUT), while we find a great deal
both in the Bible and in the words of the sages (Berachos 4a) about David. This is
because Saul's soul is rooted in the World of Concealment (Nekudas Tzion, Yesod of
Imma, the "World of the Male"), while that of David is from the Revealed World
(Yesod of Nukva = Nekudas Tzion ViYerushalayim). For this reason, Saul was
modest (hidden) and he calls David "my son" and became his father-in-law.

Saul's root lay in the Yesod of the Kings of Edom who died (see Genesis 36:37: the
SIXTH king of Edom was called SHA'UL). Thus Saul "reigned… and died…" His
kingship, being from the world of TOHU ("devastation"), could not endure. David,
on the other hand, is rooted in the world of TIKKUN ("repair"), and for this reason
his kingship endured. (ARI, Likutey Torah I Samuel 17).

God commanded Samuel to go to the house of Yishai to anoint his son as king, but
although Samuel had said "I am the seer" (ch 9 v 19), even he was unable to SEE
who was really MASHIACH, "for it is not as man sees, for man sees according to the
eyes but God sees into the heart" (v 7). From the outside, Yishai's first-born Eliav
seemed outstanding, but God knew that he was given to lose his temper (ch 7 v
28) and was not fit to be king.

Nobody could have imagined that Yishai's "small" shepherd son was the one,
because Mashiach is necessarily clothed in darkness and mystery and surrounded
by the most powerful opposing forces, including even those who are apparently
very wises, and even those who are closest to him.

David is nothing less than the reincarnated soul of ADAM (ADaM=Adam-David-

Moshe). As we read the beautiful narrative about this most breathtakingly
enchanting of all the Biblical heroes, we must constantly bear in mind that while the
stories show us the HITZONIUS ("externality"), the true PNIMIUS ("inner face") of
David is to be found in his immortal TEHILIM (Psalms), which are the very
foundation of the spiritual life of Israel until today. A substantial part of the prayer
services in the Siddur (Jewish prayer book) is made up of Psalms, and it was these
songs that were and will be sung in the Temple in Jerusalem. David taught the
mankind the true path of RETURN and REPENTANCE (Psalm 51:15).

It is said that Samuel was terrified when he saw that God's chosen was ADMONI
("ruddy", from the root Edom, v 12) – saying that this one too was a shedder of
blood like Esau (=Edom) – until Samuel saw that this came "with beauty of the
eyes". The "eyes" of Israel are the Sanhedrin: everything David did, including all
the wars and bloodshed, were carried out in accordance with Torah law and the
guidance of the Sages (Bamidbar Rabba 63:8).

When David stepped forth, the very oil jumped out of Samuel's horn to anoint him.
This was Moses' anointing oil, which was kept by the Ark in the Sanctuary, from
where Samuel took it to anoint Israel's true king.

As soon as David was anointed, Saul became afflicted by an "evil spirit" – the
penalty for his having failed to obey the voice of the holy spirit that spoke through
Samuel ordering him to wipe out all Amalek. The intention of that "one of the lads"
who advised Saul to take a musician to play to him was far from pure. This was
Do'eg HaEdomi, the "unique ONE" among Saul's "lads", Do'eg the brilliant trouble-
maker. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 93b) shows how every one of his words to Saul (v
18) was designed to bring him to jealousy of David. "He knows music" – "he knows
how to ask". "Mighty" – "he knows how to answer". "a man of war" – "that knows
how to give and take in the war of the Torah". "and HaShem is with him – "THE
HALACHAH IS LIKE HIM!!!" "And when Do'eg told Saul that 'HaShem is with him –
which was not so in Saul's case – he became disheartened and became jealous of
him" (Sanhedrin ibid.)

Yet the pure, innocent David came from the world of TIKKUN and was therefore
able to heal Saul. "And he would play WITH HIS HAND" (v 23). His HAND = YaD,
made up of the letters YOD (10) and DALETH (4) = 14. For Koheleth (Ecclesiastes)
speaks of the 14 good times and 14 bad times. David would play only in the 14
good times. This is because David is the mystery of the waxing moon, which grows
from the slenderest crescent to fullness in the first 14 of the 28 days in which the
moon can be seen each month. The YAD (14) with which David played derived from
the 4 letters of HAVAYAH plus the 10 letters of the Milui of HAVAYAH = 14 = YaD.
David's power to heal and repair comes from his pure radiation of the light of
HaShem.

Chapter 17
The story of David and Goliath must be one of the most famous and inspiring of all
biblical tales and has been illustrated countless times (see Shulchan Aruch Orach
Hayim 307:20).

Targum on ch 17 v 8 brings out the force of Goliath's taunts against Israel. "I am
Goliath the Philistine from Gath that killed the two sons of Eli the Priest, Pinchas
and Hofni, and I captured the Ark of the Covenant of HaShem and brought it to the
house of Dagon my idol… and in every battle that the Philistines waged I went out
at the head of the army and was victorious in battle and I cast down dead corpses
like the dust of the earth… and as for you, Children of Israel, what might has Saul
son of Kish from Giv'ah that you appointed king over you done for you? If he is a
mighty hero, let him engage in battle, and if he is a weak man, choose someone
else to come down against me".

If the Philistines represented the ultimate of unholy GEVURAH (PHILISHTIM = 860

= 10 x ELOKIM), Goliath was the very epitome of this utter concealment. According
to rabbinic tradition, HORPAH who is mentioned as Goliath's mother (II Samuel
21:16ff and commentators ad loc.) was none other than ORPAH, daughter-in-law of
Naomi, who when her sister-in-law Ruth, David's great grandmother, converted,
refused to do so.

ARI explains that Ruth and Orpah parallel Rachel and Leah. Leah was marked out
for the unholy Esau (SITRA ACHRA) but had the ability to attach herself to the side
of the holy (Jacob, SITRA DI-KEDUSHAH), which she took, thereby becoming the
"chariot" of the World of Concealment while Rachel was the "chariot" of the World
of Revelation. Like Leah, Orphah could have attached herself to the Side of Holiness
had she converted, but she refused, turned her back (OREPH) and instead became
consort of the Angel of Death. All of the holiness contained in Orpah went to Ruth,
while all the unholiness contained in Ruth went to Orpah. Thus Ruth was blessed to
be LIKE RACHEL AND LEAH (Ruth 4:11). Orpah on the other hand opened herself
indiscriminately to all the Philistines (see Rashi on ch 17 v 23) and from in between
them all came forth Goliath, who is therefore called "the man in between" (ch 17 v
4). The unholy side is the evil mirror-image of the side of the holy, and thus Goliath
is on the side of the unholy what David is on the side of the holy. (ARI Likutey
Torah on I Samuel ch 17).

Rabbi Nachman of Breslov explains that the "greaves of brass (NECHOSHES) on his
legs" (ch 17 v 6) allude to the God-concealing ideology which attributes everything
to natural causes (the "legs") that Goliath represents. This is the ideology of the
serpent (NACHASH). (Likutey Moharan Vol II, Torah 4:7-8).

According to natural law and science it was completely ridiculous that a tender,
inexperienced youth like David could conquer a mighty giant like Goliath who was
armed to the teeth. This was why David's brother Eliav was so angry with him for
coming to join the "action" on the battlefield (v 28), and Saul too could not believe
that David could be victorious. However, David had already conquered "the lion and
the bear" (actually there were 3 lions and 3 bears according to the Midrash brought
by Rashi on v 34). These wild animals allude to the evil philosophers of materialism
and natural cause who have preyed upon Israelite souls, turning them into atheists
(see Likutey Moharan loc. cit.).

"And David said to the Philistine, You come to me with a sword and a spear and a
javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord of Hosts…" David's purpose
was that "all this Assembly shall know that it is not with the sword and the spear
that God saves…" (v 47).

The shepherd's satchel in which David took his stones alludes to MALCHUS. The
"five stones" are CHESSED-GEVURAH-TIFERET-NETZACH-HOD. He took them from
the NACHAL = YESOD. David made these attributes into a unity – one stone. This is
the EVEN SHELEMAH RETZONO – "a perfect stone [is] His will" (Proverbs 11:1),
alluding to God's WILL, which has power over EVERYTHING, including all the
powerful natural causes that Goliath flaunted.

The stone with which David killed Goliath is bound up with the mystery of the stone
that Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream, which was hewn out without hands and
which struck the great statue he had seen, causing it to collapse and be ground up,
signifying the destruction of the empires that subject Israel heralding the
everlasting kingship of Heaven (Daniel 2:34 & 44-5).

David showed that despite seemingly overwhelming odds, God's WILL rules over
everything. David is the secret of prayer, in which we pray that "He should carry
out our will as His will". David's conquest over Goliath was his first lesson to Israel
in the power of prayer.

But Mashiach cannot be revealed more than momentarily each time. No sooner had
David conquered Goliath than the MACHLOKES – the controversy and opposition
that attended him throughout his life – began to develop in earnest. The verses in
Chapter 17 vv 55-8 in which Saul starts enquiring who David really is are
interpreted in the Talmud (Yevamos 76b) as alluding to the dispute about whether
David's Moabite pedigree on Ruth's side even allowed him to enter the Assembly of
Israel since "a Moabite shall not come to you in the Assembly of the Lord" (Deut.
23:4). Once again it was the sinister Do'eg who stirred up the trouble. While Saul
and Avner opined that only a Moabite was forbidden to enter but not a Moabitess,
Do'eg argued that the same reasoning could be used to permit a MAMZERA
(illegitimate female) into the Assembly since the verse apparently only forbids a
male MAMZER… (Deut. Ibid. v. 3). With Saul and Avner silenced, a cloud of doubts
and questions settled over the little shepherd David.
 Chapter 18
DAVID AND JONATHAN

"And the soul of Jonathan was bound with the soul of David" (ch 18 v 1).

The ARI (Likutey Torah I Samuel 18) explains: Jonathan's love for David was "more
wondrous than the love of women" (II Samuel 1:26). For it was from Jonathan that
the flow of blessing (SHEFA) came to David, because the first three letters of
Jonathan's name are Yud-Heh-Vav, the first three letters of the Tetragramaton, the
"essential" name of God, while the last three letters are NaTHaN, "he gave",
indicating the MASHPIAH, who influences another. The gematria of NaThaN is 500,
because Jonathan's soul was rooted in Tiferet of the Kings that Died (Genesis
36:31-39), and Tiferet receives the influence of Binah, "understanding", whose Fifty
Gates each contain 10 Sefiros: 50 x 10 = 500. Being rooted in the Seven Kings that
Died, Jonathan's kingship could not endure. Understanding that his role was to give
over his influence to David, he embraced his destiny with love and "made a
covenant" with him, giving him his coat and all his symbols of royalty – his sword,
bow and belt (ch 18 v 4).

THE CYCLE OF JEALOUSY AND HATRED

The song of the women who came out dancing with instruments to hail Saul could
have been construed as an honor to Saul – that while Saul only needed to go out
with thousands to conquer the Philistines, David had to go out with tens of
thousands. However, when a person has already been "bitten" by an evil spirit, he
tends to construe everything negatively, and thus Saul took the women's song as
an insult to his honor, and from that time on the poison of his jealousy of David
festered and grew.

"And it was on the next day that an evil spirit from God swelled in Saul, and HE
PROPHESIED in the house" (v 10). The Hebrew word VAYIS-NABEI is from the
same root as NAVIE, a "prophet", but here Targum Yonasan renders it not as "he
prophesied" but "he went mad" (VE-ISHTATI). For without the perfect discipline
required of the prophet, his prophetic spirit easily turns into madness. "A prophet
and a madman both speak in hints that are not understood" (Rashi ad loc.).

Saul's jealousy was only increased when he saw that David was divinely protected
from all his efforts to spear him, making Saul afraid and even more full of hatred.
Saul's mix of jealousy, fear and hatred is very reminiscent of similar syndromes
found in many Jews who have gone more or less off track in relation to those who
remain genuinely faithful to the Torah pathway, whose joyous determination and
success cause them profound vexation and irritation. Just as Saul tried every
method, direct and indirect, of killing David, so too some lapsed Jews are tireless in
their efforts to thwart the Torah community – and they will fail just as Saul failed to
harm David.

Saul's stratagems to try to get David killed are reminiscent of the kinds of
stratagems often used today by those in positions of great power in order to get
their enemies knocked off indirectly or seemingly by accident.

Saul hoped that by dispatching David to bring the foreskins of 100 Philistines as the
"dowry" for his daughter, he was sending him to a quick death – yet with typical
loyal obedience, dauntless courage and great alacrity, David brought back DOUBLE
the number of foreskins. Cutting off the enemies' foreskins may seem to be a
particularly gruesome way of humiliating them and taking vengeance – though the
same was practiced on Israel by their enemies (see Rashi on Deut. 25:17). Perhaps
a less gruesome modern equivalent would be the endeavors of contemporary
outreach workers to outdo each other in removing the mental and emotional
"foreskins" from as many irreligious Jewish hearts as possible and turning them into
BAAL TESHUVAHs!

Chapter 19
The vicious cycle of Saul's jealousy and hatred for David deteriorated into a mad
paranoia that had him telling all his ministers and servants and even Jonathan to
kill him. Jonathan succeeded in temporarily mollifying Saul, who exhibited all the
symptoms of severe mood-swing. The fact that Saul's son Jonathan and his
daughter Michal continued to show the utmost loyalty to David proves that they
saw clearly that he was completely guiltless. David did nothing to provoke Saul: all
the suffering that came upon him was sent to him from God to prepare him for
leadership, for the broken heart of one who has suffered is filled with compassion
for others who are suffering. David gave expression to his pain and search for
fortitude in God in his Tehilim (Psalms), which speak for all Israel and are our
greatest source of solace in face of the jealousy of the nations.

When indirect methods of assassination did not work, Saul sent a squadron of
messengers directly to David's house to capture him in order to kill him. In this
Saul was criticized for being even worse than Jezebel, who was not Jewish (she was
the daughter of idolatrous priests) yet when she sent to Elijah saying "At this time
tomorrow I will make your soul like the soul of one of them [i.e. the prophets she
had already killed]" (I Kings 19:2) she at least gave him a day's notice so that he
had the opportunity to flee. (Yalkut).

The present-day Israeli government does indeed normally give advance notice to
Arab terrorists of their intent to conduct bombing operations against specific hide-
outs etc. thereby enabling the occupants to flee or take other precautions. However
this same government tends not to display a similar indulgence when sending
police in to deal with protesting Jewish settlers, haredim, disenchanted Ethiopian
immigrants, etc. Thus it is that those who show kindness where it is unwarranted
end up showing cruelty where it is unwarranted.

THE TERAPHIM

After Michal let David down through the window to escape, she put the TERAPHIM
in his bed to seem like a body together with a goatskin to seem like hair, so that
Saul's guards would think it was David. When Jacob fled from Laban, Rachel took
her father's TERAPHIM (Genesis 31:19), which were clearly idolatrous statues. In
the case of the TERAPHIM taken by Michal, most of the commentators agree that
they were some kind of statue or mannequin in human form but bring a variety of
interpretations as to what such a statue was doing in the house of David. RaDaK
(on v 13) states that it is quite unthinkable that David would have had any kind of
idolatrous statue in his house and inclines to Ibn Ezra's opinion that these
TERAPHIM were a diagrammatic emblem of the human form that could be used for
channeling angelic power. According to this interpretation, Michal would have used
them to bring some kind of protection against Saul's messengers. Metzudas Tzion's
explanation is that while some TERAPHIM were indeed idolatrous statues, others
were made by devoted wives in the form of their husbands so that they could look
upon them lovingly…
 PLANNING THE TEMPLE

David fled to Samuel, who had anointed him king. And at this moment of supreme
crisis, when his very life was hanging in the balance, how did David occupy himself
with Samuel? The rabbis said that in this one night when he fled from Saul, David
learned more from Samuel than a seasoned student could learn from his teacher in
a hundred years. They could find nothing better to do than determine the site of
the Temple and lay plans for its building. [Similarly, in the 1720's, at the very
height of the persecution of the 22 year old R. Moshe Chayim Luzzatto, Ramchal,
by the rabbis of Italy and Germany, he could find nothing better to do than write
MISHKENEY ELYON, "Secrets of the Future Temple", explaining the meaning of the
form of the Third Temple as prophesied by Ezekiel ch's 40ff.]

"And he and Samuel went and they sat in NOYOUS" (v 18). The rabbis taught:
"What connection does NOYOUS have with Ramah? What the text means is that
they sat in Ramah and engaged in the BEAUTY (NOYO) of the world. [The Hebrew
word BE-NOYOUS in vv 18 and 19 is written in the parchment – KSIV -- differently
from the way it is pronounced – KRI. The KSIV has the connotations of both
BEAUTY and BUILDING.] They said that since the Torah writes that 'you shall go up
to the place' (Deut. 17:8), it must be that the Temple is higher than all the land of
Israel and the Land of Israel is higher than all the lands, but they did not know the
exact site of the Temple, so they brought the book of Joshua. In all the descriptions
of the territories of the tribes it says the border 'goes down… and goes up…' but in
the case of the territory of Benjamin it is written that 'it goes up' but not that 'it
goes down' (Joshua 15:8). They said that from this we can infer that this is the
proper place of the Temple. They discussed whether to build it in Eyn Eytam, which
is high, but they said they should go down just a little, as it is written, 'He dwells
BETWEEN HIS SHOULDERS' (Deut. 33:12)" (Talmud Zevachim 54b).

The presence of Samuel and his students, the "sons of the prophets" engaged in
such exalted prophecy brought even Saul to the level of true prophecy. In verse 23
the word VAYISNABEI is rendered by Targum Yonasan as referring to true
prophecy: "also on him there dwelled the spirit of prophecy from HaShem". Saul's
stripping off his clothes and falling "naked" (v 24) does not mean that he was
literally without any clothes, but that in his prophetic ecstasy he removed his royal
robes – for at this moment of truth and prophetic lucidity, he knew then that David
was the true king of Israel.

Chapter 20
"BUT A STEP BETWEEN ME AND DEATH"

David had barely escaped being killed with Saul's spear by stepping aside at the
crucial moment. He felt himself to be in extreme danger from Saul, and the present
chapter narrates the final test which Jonathan set up to see if Saul intended the
worst or not.

The constant danger attending the Messianic king is reflected in the epithet given to
Mashiach in the Talmud, "BAR NOFLI" (Sanhedrin 96b). While on one level this
alludes to how the future Mashiach will raise the FALLEN (NAFAL) Tabernacle of
David, it also indicates that Mashiach is all but a NEFEL – an "abortive foetus" that
has only a slender hairsbreadth chance of surviving. David almost had no life at all,
except that Adam gave him 70 his own allotted 1000, and thus Adam lived only 930
years. Mashiach is in constant danger because of the fierce opposing forces that
ever seek to swallow him up. Only by hiding himself in the baffling depths of
concealment and secrecy can Mashiach survive.
Jonathan too was in great danger from his demented father, who indeed tried to kill
him (ch 20 v 33). However Jonathan knew that David was truly destined to be king
and therefore swore an eternal covenant to help and protect him, in exchange for
which David was duty bound to protect Jonathan and his family. [David paid a
heavy price for violating this covenant when he took half of Saul's son
Mephibosheth's estate and gave it to the latter's servant Tziva, see II Samuel
19:30: as a result, a heavenly voice declared that David's kingdom would be
divided between his grandson Rehaboam and the rebel Jeraboam.]

THE NEW MOON

Verses 18-42 of our present text are familiar as the special Haftara read in place of
the regular Shabbos Haftara whenever Rosh Chodesh (the New Moon) falls on the
following day, i.e. the Sunday, for "tomorrow is the New Moon" (v 18).

David (=MALCHUS, Kingship) is bound up with the mystery of the Moon, which
wanes steadily after the 15 th of the month until it disappears completely at the
very end of the month, and cannot be seen again until a very slender crescent
appears on the western horizon for a few minutes after the sunset of the last day of
the month. The appearance of the "new" moon heralds the arrival that night of
Rosh Chodesh, the first day of the new month, and from then on the moon steadily
waxes day by day – corresponding to the steadily growing light of Mashiach after its
initial total concealment. The constant renewal of the moon is a sign of the ever-
renewed vitality of Mashiach (and thus when we bless the new moon after Rosh
Chodesh in the ceremony of KIDDUSH LEVANAH, "Sanctification of the Moon", it is
customary to recite three times "David king of Israel is alive and enduring".)

Jonathan used the sign of the three arrows at his secret tryst with David (vv 20-22
and 36-39) because in relation to David's MALCHUS, the "receiving" attribute,
Jonathan is rooted in the mystery of YESOD, the MASHPIA, the giver of influence,
which is allusively called the KESHES, the "bow", connoting both the 3-colored
rainbow and the archer's bow. YESOD, the power of procreation, "shoots like an
arrow".

The news was not good and David had to flee. Saul was so paranoid that he
besmirched his own wife in accusing Jonathan of being illegitimate and therefore
favoring Saul's enemy. But Jonathan knew the truth and took God as his witness
that his covenant with David would be eternal.

Chapter 21
After the destruction of the Sanctuary in Shilo in the days of Eli the Priest, the
Sanctuary was re-established in the city of Nov, which was entirely given over to
Cohanim (priests). Achimelech, who ministered as the High Priest in the Sanctuary,
is identical with Achiyah mentioned in I Samuel 14:3 (see also 22:9).

David was in flight from Saul when he came to Nov – alone and unarmed, and
apparently starving to the point of being in mortal danger. Numerous halachic
questions surround David's eating of the "holy" bread in the Sanctuary since
Achimelech stated that there was no "profane" bread (=CHULIN) available. RaDaK
(on v 6) offers his father's opinion that the bread that Achimelech gave David was
from the loaves of a TODAH (thanksgiving) offering, which are permitted to a ZAR
("stranger", non-Cohen) as long as he is ritually pure (and this is why Achimelech
tactfully checked that David had not been with his wife recently, which would have
made him defiled with TUM'AS KERI, vv 5-6). However, RaDaK evidently prefers
the more obvious though halachically difficult PSHAT of this passage, adopted by
the Talmudic sages (Menachos 95b), which is that the "holy bread" that Achimelech
gave David was actually the LECHEM HAPONIM ("showbread") from the Golden
Table in the Sanctuary. Twelve new loaves were placed on the Table each Shabbos,
while the loaves that had sat there for the previous week were removed and
divided up between the High Priest (who took six loaves) and all the other priests
(who shared the rest; see Leviticus 24:5-9.)

The priests were only allowed to eat the showbread AFTER the incense in the
golden spoons that sat on the table side by side with the bread all week had been
burned on the Altar (as the AZKARA, "memorial" Lev. 24: 7 – for the Altar had no
share in the showbread itself). This is the meaning of David's words to Achimelech
(v 6) "and it is by way of profane" – i.e. the incense had ALREADY BEEN BURNED,
thereby releasing the bread for consumption. David went on to say, "…even if today
it had been sanctified in the ministering vessel" (ibid.) meaning that in any case,
even if this was the new bread that had only just been sanctified for putting on the
golden table, he would still have been permitted to eat it because of SAKONAS
NEFOSHOS – a danger to life. All the commandments of the Torah (except for the
prohibitions against idolatry, murder and fornication) are suspended if there is a
danger to life.

RaDaK also explains why Achimelech could not provide David with any other bread
despite the fact that there must have been bread somewhere in the city of Nov.
Nov was a city of priests, whose main food is Terumah. The penalty for a ZAR who
eats Terumah is death at the hands of heaven, and although David would have
been permitted to eat Terumah because of SAKONAS NEFOSHOS, it is preferable,
where there is a choice, to feed the person in danger with the less serious of two
prohibited items. While a ZAR is also forbidden to eat the Showbread, doing so
does not carry the penalty of death at the hands of heaven like Terumah.

Thus it was that David, although not a Cohen, tasted from the LECHEM HAPANIM,
the "bread of the inner face", which remained hot on the Sanctuary Table for over a
week from the day it was baked before Shabbos until the time the priests ate it on
the following Shabbos (v 7 as explained in Menachos 96b). The heat of the bread is
the same as the heat of the sun which God took out of its "scabbard" after Abraham
circumcised himself and sat at the door of his tent "in the heat of the day" (Gen.
18:1). Circumcision strips off the thick concealing outer ORLAH foreskin from the
world, exposing and revealing the inner PNIMIUS ("interiority") that governs
everything. The "heat" of the sun of revelation burns up all God's enemies (see
Likutey Moharan I, 30:9).

The Talmud (Menachos 95b) comments on the enormous good that comes from
feeding a needy person even a mouthful. If Jonathan had had the good sense to
provide David with a couple of loaves of bread when he fled, the priests of Nov
would not have been slaughtered, Do'eg the Edomite would not have been driven
out from the life eternal, and Saul and his three sons would not have been killed.

As it was, David, who was starving and in mortal danger, had no choice but to stop
at the Sanctuary to eat the LECHEM HAPONIM, and while there he was seen by the
sinister DO'EG, who as discussed previously is emblematic of Torah brilliance
turned perverse. Thus he was called an Edomite, not only because Edom was the
name of his town, but also because he was jealous of David, who was called
ADMONI ("ruddy"), and because he ruled that the priests of Nov should be
massacred, that David's wife could be given to another man and that Agag should
not be killed – he turned everyone's face red with shame in face of his "brilliant"
rulings and tried to consume David's merits like the red thread that swallows up the
merits of Israel (Yalkut). The text states that Do'eg was "NE-ETZAR before
Hashem" (v 8) – i.e. he was "detained" at the Sanctuary in Nov. NE-ETZAR also
carries the connotation of "was closed up, constipated" – the Sages taught that
Do'eg did not purify his body of waste when he studied, and this was the reason for
his perversity (See Likutey Moharan I, 61.)

THE BENEFITS OF MADNESS

In a further intensification of mystery and darkness, David was forced to flee to the
territory of Israel's very enemies, the Philistines (v 11). The Midrash states that the
attendants of Achish king of Gath were Goliath's brothers and wanted to avenge his
blood by killing David. However Achish answered that Goliath himself had
challenged David to kill him. If so, they replied, Goliath's stated condition was that
whoever overcame him would rule the Philistines, in which case Achish should step
down in favor of David. This is why they called David "king of the land" v 12.

David – who was MASKIL ("intelligent") in all his ways (ch 18 v 14) – could not
understand why God created madmen, until he found himself in mortal danger in
Gath and discovered that the best cover was to make it appear as if he was crazy.
The Midrash states that Achish's wife and daughter were both mad and would rant
inside his house while David would rant outside. This is why Achish asked, "Am I
lacking in madmen?" (v 16). David's true inner face in this moment of crisis is
expressed in the Psalm he wrote at the time: Psalm 34, "David's prayer when he
changed his personality before Avimelech and he sent him away and he went".
Avimelech was a generic name for the Philistine king just as Pharaoh was the
generic name of Egyptian kings (RaDaK on ch 21 v 11).

Chapter 22
Realizing he was unsafe with the Philistines in Gath, David went east to Adulam
(where his ancestor Judah had also gone when he "went down" from his brothers
Gen. 38:1). Adulam and nearby Ke'eela, which are among the places David went to
escape as narrated in the present chapter and the earlier part of the next, are
located in the hilly region a little south of present-day Beit Shemesh. Meanwhile
Saul was in Giv'ah, a little to the north of the present-day Jerusalem suburb of
Ramot, which is immediately south east of Ramah ("Nebie Samuel"), where Samuel
lived. The town of Nob was further east, near the road to Ramallah.

There in Adulam the charismatic David attracted a bedraggled band of what may
have somewhat resembled today's Baal Teshuvahs, each in their tight corner with
their debts, physical and spiritual, and each bearing their own pack of sorrows!!!

From Adulam David went east of the Dead Sea into Moab, where he had a family
connection with the king through his convert great grandmother, Ruth, who was
daughter of Eglon king of Moab. Realizing that Saul was out to destroy him and his
whole family, David sought to find a safe place in Moab for his parents, but as Rashi
brings on v 4, the hoped-for haven was safe only while David was in Metzudah, but
afterwards the king of Moab killed his mother, father and all his brothers except for
one.

It was the prophet Gad who told David not to dwell in Metzudah but to return to the
Land of Israel to his native tribal territory of Judah (v 5). Unlike Saul, we see that
David had scrupulous respect for the prophets and carried out their words to the
letter. Likewise, he consulted with the Urim ve-Thumim on all critical questions and
– unlike Saul – received answers from God, as we see in the ensuing narrative.
The Midrash states that Giv'ah and Ramah mentioned in v 6 as where Saul was
located at this time are actually two separate places, and that Saul was physically
in Giv'ah, but he lived there in the merit of the "Tamarisk (ESHEL) in Ramah",
namely the prophet Samuel, who did not cease to pray for him (Rashi on v 6).

Nevertheless, the divine decree against Saul was sealed and he descended ever-
deeper into his paranoid delusions, seeing conspiracies against him from all around.
In Saul's eyes David was a MOREID BE-MALCHUS, a "rebel against the throne", a
national traitor, particularly now that he was evidently attracting a growing
following from among the disaffected.

"AND DO'EG ANSWERED…" (v 9)

Once again the sinister brilliant Torah sage Do'eg steps in to further stir the pot of
evil by disclosing that he had seen David at the Sanctuary and that Achimelech the
High Priest had fed and armed him. Do'eg's telling on Achimelech – which led to
Achimelech's death and that of all the priests of Nov – is seen as the archetype of
RECHILUS – "tale-bearing", one of the main categories of LASHON HARA, "evil
speech". Even if the story is true, it is forbidden to tell it to anyone when this is
likely to lead to any kind of harm to the person involved.

From the interchange between Saul and Achimelech (vv 12-15) we learn that the
main issue was why Achimelech had consulted the URIM VE-THUMIM for David.
Do'eg maintained that only the king was allowed to consult the URIM VE-THUMIM,
making Achimelech guilty of high treason, but the majority of the Sanhedrin
followed the tradition that "they may be consulted for the king, the Sanhedrin, and
for an individual who is needed by the community", and David came into the last
category since his victory over Goliath. The other members of the Sanhedrin at this
time were Avner and Amasa: they are the "runners" standing by the king in v 17:
these are "the king's servants", who "DID NOT WANT TO PUT FORTH THEIR HANDS
TO STRIKE THE PRIESTS OF HASHEM". They were not willing to strike because they
did not believe it was justified.

Since Do'eg was in the minority, when Saul challenged him to strike the priests and
he did so, he became a ZOKEN MAMRE, an elder who maintains his ruling in face of
the majority of the Sanhedrin, who incurs the death penalty (Deut. 17:12). The
Midrash tells that Do'eg ended up forgetting everything he had ever taught his
students, who realized he was "ruling the pure to be impure and the impure to be
pure" and put chains on his legs and dragged him away (Midrash Yelamdenu).

The consequence of Do'eg's evil words was that he ended up personally killing 85
Cohanim "bearing the linen EPHOD" (v 18, i.e. each was WORTHY to be High Priest)
– from this we see Do'eg's strength – as well as the entire population of Nov, men,
women, children and suckling babes, oxen, donkeys and sheep. In other words,
Saul's regime, having FAILED to carry out God's command to completely destroy
Amalek, now vented its frustration on the Israelites – the very holiest of them! In
the words of Koheles (Ecclesiastes 7:16-17) "Don't be too righteous…" (in sparing
Amalek) "…and don't be too wicked" (in destroying Nov; Talmud Yoma 22b). [The
present day Israeli high court and successive governments since Oslo have
mirrored this behavior – also on the basis of a chronic campaign of malicious
slander – in favoring the enemies of the Jews while victimizing the settlers, the
haredim and anyone who stands up for Toras Moshe and the Halachah, which is
according to David.]

Psalm 52 gives expression to David's response to Do'eg and his slander.

 EVIATAR BEN AVIMELECH

Only one son of Avimelech escaped the massacre of the priests of Nov and fled to
David, who received him with his characteristic noble eloquence: "he that seeks my
soul seeks your soul" (v 23), which can be understood to mean either "he who
seeks to kill…" or "he who seeks the good of" both of us (Targum, Rashi). Thus the
bond between the kings of Judah and the priesthood – which began when Aaron
married Elisheva sister of Nachshon prince of Judah (Exodus 6:23) – was further
strengthened in preparation for the building of the Temple.

Chapter 23
David was fleeing from his life against a murderous enemy, but as soon as he heard
that Philistine marauders were fighting his brothers in Ke'eela and stealing all their
hard-earned harvested produce (ch 23 v 1), he lost no time before consulting the
new High Priest's URIM VE-THUMIM, not to ask if it was right to strike the
Philistines – this he knew – but whether he would succeed. He repeated his
question twice, not because he doubted the answer the first time, but in order to
reassure his disheartened men (vv 3-4).

David went to Ke'eela and delivered the city but in spite of his courageous
campaign on their behalf, the "bosses" of Ke'eela showed treacherous ingratitude in
their willingness to hand him over to Saul, who was mobilizing the entire nation for
war against David. Again consulting the URIM VE-THUMIM, David vacated Ke'eela,
and went with his expanded following of 600 men to the Wilderness of Zif. Thus the
action now moves eastwards from Ke'eela, an inhabited agricultural area which, as
stated in the commentary on the previous chapter, is a little south of present-day
Beit Shemesh, into the mountainous wilderness region south east of Hebron in the
direction of Arad. Saul "sought him all the days, but God did not give him in his
hand" (v 14), and the one who was closest to Saul – Jonathan – never let his filial
duty to his father make him lose sight of the truth. Jonathan, and even Saul himself
(perhaps unconsciously) knew that David would rule (v 17).

[David is at the opposite end of the spectrum from (LE-HAVDIL) Bin Laden, but if
you are willing to make a certain gestalt flip, does the spear-wielding Saul and his
army's chase after David in the wild mountains of Zif somehow conjure up images
of the US president and army's long fruitless search in the mountains of
Afghanistan/Pakistan for the elusive, charismatic Koran-touting rebel -- if he
actually exists?]

The people of Zif's betrayal of David by reporting his whereabouts to Saul is the
subject of Psalm 54, which shows David's dauntless faith in God. Saul welcomed
the men of Zif as being "blessed to HaShem", but although Saul spoke the
LANGUAGE of faith and prayer, in ACTUALITY he used only TACHBULOS, man-
devised strategies, while God was not with him but with David. Saul was rapidly
closing in on David (v 26), but at the critical moment a MAL'ACH ("MAMASH" says
Rashi on v 27, an "actual" angel) came to tell Saul that the Philistines were
invading the entire country. Saul was divided in his own mind as to whether to go
off to fight the national enemy or continue pursuing his own perceived demon-
enemy (Targum and Rashi on v 28), which is why the place was called SELA
HAMACHLOKES ("the rock of conflict"). Similarly the present-day Israeli
government is unable to make up its mind whether to fight the country's real
enemies of continue persecuting Jews who are loyal to Israel and its Torah.
 Chapter 24
Saul's massive military pursuit of David now moves to the wilderness of Ein Gedi,
an area of enchanting natural beauty familiar to many visitors to the "Dead" Sea
area, some of whom may in a quiet, still moment have caught sight of the nimble,
exquisitely graceful but very shy mountain goats (ibex) that are to be found in the
hills and rocky crags (v 2).

When Saul modestly entered the recesses of a cave to attend to his bodily needs, it
would have been permissible for David to kill him since "if someone is coming to kill
you, you should kill him first" (Sanhedrin 72a based on Exodus 22:1). David must
have been very tempted and his men were encouraging him, yet even after merely
cutting the corner of Saul's garment, David was smitten by his own heart (v 5) –
the sign of a truly humble Tzaddik who after doing something even only mildly
improper feels deep contrition. David then "tore his men apart with words" (v 7),
showing that he would not allow himself to be swayed by "public opinion", unlike
Saul, who listened to the people when they told him to spare the Amalekite king
and flocks.

When Saul, having sinned by doing so, had gone after Samuel, "he took hold of the
corner of his coat and it was torn" (ch 15 v 27). The text there is ambiguous and it
is not clear whose coat was torn, Saul's or Samuel's (see Rashi ad loc.), but either
way Samuel took it as a sign that "God has torn the kingship of Israel from you
today": he gave Saul a sign that whoever would tear the corner of his garment
would rule in his place.

David's speech of self-defense before his persecutor, Saul (vv 9-15) is another
example of David's outstanding nobility and eloquence. He would not set his hand
against Saul even when he had the opportunity: he knew and trusted that God
would vindicate him and that "as the proverb of the ancients says, Wickedness
proceeds from the wicked and my hand shall not be against you". The "proverb of
the ancients" (v 13) refers to the Holy Torah, which states that God Himself brings
death upon the wicked (Exodus 21:13, see Rashi there and on our verse, I Samuel
24:13; see Talmud Maccos 10b).

When Saul heard the actual VOICE of David (v 16), it was a "reality check" that
temporarily put to flight the paranoid madness that constantly fed him with
demonic fantasies about his imagined persecutor and his evil designs. The actual
presence of David had from the beginning had the power to cure Saul of his evil
spirit and bring him back to sanity and lucidity (see ch 16 v 23). For while Saul's
soul was rooted in OLAM HATOHU, the "world of devastation", David was rooted in
OLAM HATIKUN, the "world of repair", and he therefore brought healing wherever
his true influence was felt. However, as soon as Saul left David's healing presence
and went back to his home, his madness came to the fore again.

Chapter 25
Samuel had become old prematurely (ch 8 v 1) and he died at the age of only 52,
in order that he should not see the first king that he had anointed die in his own
lifetime. The death of Samuel thus opened the way for the death of Saul, which
came only seven months later. David therefore now stood on the very threshold of
kingship. Samuel was buried at his home in Ramah, and the hilltop mosque that
marks his tomb is a prominent landmark until today and is clearly visible to
travelers on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway near the entrance to Jerusalem.
 NAVAL

It is necessary to bear in mind throughout the narrative of Saul's reign that it lasted
a total of only two years (see ch 13 v 1) and that the events described followed
very closely on the heels of one another. Since Samuel had been born on Rosh
HaShanah (the New Year) in answer to Hannah's prayer, he died on the same day,
because God "completes the years of the Tzaddikim" to the very day. The rabbis
dated David's request to Naval for sustenance to the eve of the same Rosh
HaShanah (see Rashi on v 8), and thus Naval's "heart failure" (v 27) occurred on
the morning of Rosh HaShanah, the Day of Judgment, and his death ten days later
came on Yom Kippur, when God's decree is sealed if the sinner does not repent.

Naval's town of Ma'on and the "Carmel" where his affairs were concentrated (v 2)
were both in the mountainous area west of Ein Gedi, some way to the southeast of
Hebron . Thus the Carmel in our present text cannot be identified with Mt Carmel in
the north of Israel by Haifa, the site of Elijah's challenge to the priests of Baal
generations later.

The Judean Carmel was a grazing region where Naval evidently became extremely
prosperous: he is depicted as the archetype of the wealthy, selfish, arrogant,
mean-eyed villain. The ARI states that the soul of Laban was incarnated in Naval:
the Hebrew letters of the two names are identical. There are many parallels
between Laban's attitude to Jacob and Naval's to David. Our text counterpoints the
paradigm case of the EVIL EYE against the messianic David, who had "beautiful
eyes and good vision" (ch 16 v 12). David's intrinsic nature was to see and reveal
goodness everywhere, while his worst enemies (Saul, Do'eg and now Naval) had
the opposite nature and saw only negativity and evil all around them. [The
conceptual interrelationship between the evil eye and the death of the heart on the
one hand and messianic goodness on the other is analyzed by Rabbi Nachman in
Likutey Moharan I, discourses 54 and 55.]

When David sent his emissaries to Naval he told them to open with a beautiful
blessing for Naval's future prosperity and peace (v 6): this is included in the
passages of blessing customarily recited on Saturday night after the departure of
the Shabbos. Despite his gracious overture to Naval and despite the fact that David
was indeed his relative since Naval was from the Judean house of Caleb (v 3),
Naval contemptuously brought up the issue of David's "tainted" Moabite lineage and
snidely dismissed him as yet another of the rash of upstart servants who in recent
times had taken to rebelling against their masters (v 10, see Rashi).

David and his men had heroically helped and supported Naval's shepherds, as
testified by one of Naval's own "lads" (v 15-16), yet Naval found it offensive that he
should be asked to give any of HIS OWN bread, HIS water and HIS succulent fresh
meat "to men that I have no idea where they come from" (v 11). Many of the Jews
forced to demean themselves by going from door to door to beg funding for needy
Torah institutions from some of the rich "fat cats" of today can testify from personal
experience that Naval's attitudes still persist.

"And David said to his men, Let each one gird his sword, and each one girded his
sword and David too girded his sword" (v 13). Naval's contemptuous refusal to help
David and his "servant" smear made Naval a MOREID BE-MALCHUS (rebel against
the kingship) because all Israel now knew that Samuel had anointed David to be
king (RaDaK on v 13). Yet although this was a capital case, David girded his sword
only AFTER asking his men to do so. From this we learn that in capital cases before
a Beis Din (rabbinical court) the head of the court states his opinion only AFTER all
the other judges have stated theirs, starting with the most junior. For if the head of
the court were to state his opinion first, none of the other judges would have the
audacity to openly disagree with him (Sanhedrin 36a).

AVIGAIL

A bloody massacre was averted only through the shrewdness and presence of mind
of Naval's wife Avigail, who is counted as one of the seven outstanding
prophetesses of Israel together with Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Huldah and
Esther (Megillah 14b). In our present text we see that Avigail prophesied the
imminent death of Naval when she said that all David's enemies should end up like
him (v 26).

Just as Laban's daughters Rachel and Leah had no illusions about the character of
their father (Genesis 31:14-15), so Avigail, despite being married to Naval,
preserved her integrity and knew exactly how despicable he was. Matching David
himself in the eloquence and subtle, tactful delicacy with which she deflected the
threatening storm, Avigail saved him from unnecessary bloodshed that would have
put a dark stain on his kingship.

Avigail's blessing to David, "Let the soul of my master be bound up with the bond of
life" (v 29) alludes to the life eternal, and a slightly modified version is customarily
included in the form of the initial letters of each of the Hebrew words in the phrase
"Let the soul be bound up with the bond of life" (TAV NUN TZADE BEIS HEH) as the
last line of inscriptions on Jewish gravestones or dedications in memoriam. Likewise
Avigail's curse that the soul of David's enemies should be "shot from the sling"
(ibid.) is the foundation for the concept of the KAF HAKELAH (the "pouch of the
sling") from which the souls of the wicked are slung by vengeful angels from one
end of the universe to the other and back again (Talmud Shabbos 152b).

Naval had what today would be called a massive heart attack on hearing the news
of the gift given to David (one wonders if the epidemic of heart disease among
today's fat and wealthy is related). Naval lingered for 10 days but still did not
repent, and he died on the day of God's sealing of His judgments, Yom Kippur.
David subsequently took the outstanding TZADDEKES-prophetess Avigail as his wife,
as well as Achino'am from Jezre'el (who interestingly has the same name as Saul's
wife, see ch 14 v 50). How Saul could have given his daughter Michal, who was
already married to David, to Palti ben Layish, and how David could have taken her
back afterwards is the subject of extensive discussion in the Talmud and
commentaries (Sanhedrin 19a; see RaDaK on v 43) but we will have to leave the
intricacies of this discussion for some other time!

Chapter 26
The men of Zif now betrayed David to Saul for a second time, and the king –
instantly forgetting his earlier repentance and contrition – hurried off with 3000
choice soldiers in pursuit of his bugbear. The ensuing action once again took place
in the barren mountain wilderness area southeast of Hebron towards the "Dead"
Sea area.

If David had spared Saul's life only the one time when he went to relieve himself in
a cave, as narrated in Chapter 25, it could have been seen as some kind of fluke.
However, his doing so a second time – even though he knew beyond any shadow of
a doubt that Saul was out to kill him – makes it clear that David's forbearance
stemmed from true nobility and perfect integrity. David "SAW that Saul was coming
after him to the wilderness" (v 3) – his very SOUL saw it – yet he had the utmost
respect for the sanctity of the kingship and for the authority of his own teacher,
Samuel, who had anointed Saul. Even when the latter was literally delivered into
his hands, David would not strike God's anointed.

Saul and all his men were all FAST ASLEEP. While it is said of David that, like a
horse, he never slept for longer than it takes to breathe sixty breaths (Berachos 3b)
– which is typical of the true Tzaddik, who is constantly awake, alert and advancing
in his service – Saul and his top ministers had ceased moving forward and had
fallen into deep spiritual slumber and complacency.

On entering Saul's camp together with Avishai, David initially invited his companion
to take the king's spear and water flask (v 11). However, David evidently did not
trust Avishai not to give way to his desire to kill Saul and therefore David took them
himself (v 12) in order to be able to prove his loyalty to Saul by showing him that
he had stood right by the sleeping king yet still did not kill him.

It was a veritable "slumber of God" that had fallen upon Saul and his men. One
Midrash tells that David was actually saved by a stinging wasp. It is said that the
stinging wasp was one of three creatures the purpose of whose creation had always
puzzled David, the other two being the madman and the web-spinning spider.
David had already discovered the benefits of madness when he used feigned
madness for self-protection during his first stay with Achish king of Gath (ch 21 v
13). He discovered the benefits of spiders' webs when once forced to hide in a cave,
over the entrance to which a spider spun a web, making those searching for David
assume he could not have entered the cave. Now, as he entered the circle of Saul's
sleeping henchmen, Avner moved his leg in his sleep, barring David's exit. Had
anyone woken up while David was thus trapped, he would have surely been killed.
There was no way for him to escape – until God sent a wasp that stung Avner in
the leg, causing him to move his leg again while remaining fast asleep, thereby
making a gap in the circle that enabled David to escape (Midrash). God was
protecting David at every step of the way, but it was through the minute details of
His all-encompassing providence that David had to learn to believe it.

After snatching the spear and water flask and making his getaway, David called to
Avner, chiding him for sleeping while supposedly being on duty "guarding" God's
anointed. When Saul woke up and again heard the VOICE of the noble, saintly
David, his sanity and lucidity returned once again and he knew that he had sinned
(v 21). So great was David's power of TIKKUN that whenever Saul actually came
into direct contact with him, his madness was immediately dispelled.

Among David's complaints to Saul were that accursed men were seeking to "drive
me out today so as not to be attached to God's inheritance, saying, Go serve other
gods" (v 19). The rabbis asked, "Who ever told David to go and serve other gods?
Rather, this comes to teach you [since they were trying to force David to live
outside the Land of Israel, which he considered tantamount to "serving other
gods"] that everyone who dwells outside Land is as if he had worshiped idols"
(Talmud Kesubos 110b). I quote this not to upset readers who live outside of Israel,
but only to encourage you to think carefully what your purpose is in being there.

Saul relented and said he would do David no further harm (v 21) – and indeed the
dire situation caused by the imminent massive Philistine war gave Saul no further
opportunity to go after David even if he had wanted to. Nevertheless, while "David
went on his way"(v 25) – continuing to ascend constantly, rising from level to level
– "Saul went back to his place" (ibid.): not only was he not moving forwards, he
was going backwards!
 Chapter 27
Saul's end was rapidly approaching, and with it the dawn of David's kingship. In the
period of barely more than four months before Saul was killed and David became
king, the latter took one of those mysterious twists that characterize the dark clock
of concealment which accompanies the revelation of Mashiach by going across to
the Philistines and appearing to collaborate with them.

[Could this mean that the puzzling behavior exhibited by certain "Neturey Karta"
adherents in turning out for marches in London and Washington to demonstrate
AGAINST Israel and FOR the "Palestinians" – which thoroughly disgusts many of
their fellow Jews – is actually in some sense a sign of the imminence of
Mashiach??? Likewise many Jews to the left and far left of the political spectrum
can also be found supporting Israel's sworn enemies, but perhaps it is because they
are so assimilated and hardly identify as Jews that they do not arouse the same
disgust.]

Thus David now returned to the territory of the Philistines to stay with Achish king
of Gath . On his earlier visit he had felt so insecure that he resorted to feigning
madness and fled soon afterwards (ch 21 vv 13ff and ch 22 v 1), but now he was
no longer alone as he had been before. This time he arrived with an army of 600
men as well as his entourage of wives, and moreover, it was common knowledge
that Saul and the whole army of Israel "abhorred" him (v 12) and had been chasing
after him, and this was enough to persuade Achish that David was not a danger to
the Philistines.

Achish gave him the city of Tziklag where he could reside with dignity, but David
preferred to spend his time operating as a kind of Israeli undercover agent,
ostensibly protecting the Philistines from their enemies in the desert regions of the
Negev but actually campaigning against Israel's own endemic enemies, including
Amalek. David was wise enough to kill off all he fought against so that there would
be no survivors to come and tell Achish what was really going on. Thus Achish
thought he had David "in his pocket" (v 12), but the Philistine king was merely
deceiving himself.

Chapter 28
"And it was in those days that the Philistines gathered their camps to go to war
against Israel …" (I Samuel 28:1).

The Philistines were mobilizing for what they intended as a full-scale invasion of the
very heartland of Israel. It is noteworthy that David's imminent ascent to the
kingship of Israel came at a moment of direst peril for his own nation in their very
homeland – the Philistines certainly intended to enslave them -- and that precisely
at this time of supreme crisis God's anointed king was actually present with one of
the enemy Philistine rulers, ostensibly "helping" him! This mysterious twist may
indicate that in our times too the arrival of Mashiach will be signaled by a situation
of dire threat to the connection of the people of Israel with their land, and that
Mashiach himself may turn out to be somewhere that no-one would ever have
expected him to be.

The Philistine assault was focused in the area between the Jezreel valley (between
Haifa and the central mountain chain) and the valley of Beit She'an (south of Lake
Tiberias west of the R. Jordan). Canaanite settlements still survived in these valleys,
and the Philistines, entering from the Mediterranean coastal regions of the Land,
evidently intended to foment a Canaanite revolt against the Israelites and then
march southwards into the central mountain chain in order to overwhelm and
subjugate the Israelite settlements of Mount Ephraim (present day Shomron) and
the mountains of Judea, which were the heartland of the country.

While Saul's pursuit of David had been concentrated in the territories of Benjamin
and Judah, he now marshaled his army, which comprised forces from all the Tribes
of Israel as well as the king's standing army. This was a national war. Saul camped
on the slopes of Mt Gilboa near the town of Jezreel, which was the key to the
control of the Jezreel valley and the road to the valley of Beit Shean and Israelite
settlements on the east bank of the Jordan.

Prior to this critical battle Saul fully understood the seriousness of the situation.
After only two years as king he could see that the entire future of Israel as a free
nation in their land was threatened. After having killed the High Priest and a whole
city of Cohanim, Saul could not expect any answers about his fate through the Urim
Ve-Thumim, or from prophets or experts in asking "dream questions" (a skill that is
known to certain kabbalists until today).

There is deep pathos in the picture of Saul on the night before his death in battle
turning to the very kind of forbidden sorcery that he had spent the two years of his
reign trying to eradicate from Israel. (Although the narrative about Saul's reign
concentrates primarily on his persecution of David, we can infer from various hints
in our text that he succeeded in organizing Israel's first standing army and also
sought to continue Samuel's work of weaning the people from idolatry and occult
practices. Although Saul was afflicted by an evil spirit in relation to David, this
should not be taken to imply that he was not sane or fit to govern in other
respects.)

The Torah states clearly that "any man or woman that has in them an OV… shall
surely die…" (Leviticus 20:27, see also Deut. 18:11). The BAAL OV – "master of the
Ov" – is a sorcerer who uses special rituals and incantations accompanied by
certain bodily movements to divine the future by eliciting a low, almost inaudible
voice allegedly coming from some dead soul to whom questions may be addressed
(see RaDaK on v 24 for a detailed analysis of the different opinions among the
sages about the Baal Ov).

Members of the Sanhedrin were expected to be familiar with the various different
forms of witchcraft, sorcery and divination and to understand exactly what is
prohibited by the Torah. It is not that the Torah views such practices as
inefficacious: the Torah recognizes that God has placed the power of witchcraft in
the world, just has He has placed many other kinds of impurity in creation for His
own inscrutable purposes. It is just that despite their possible efficacy, the Torah
has forbidden Israel to resort to such methods.

Somewhat paradoxically, RaDaK (on v 7) states that the surviving female BAALAS
OV that Saul's men found for him in EYN DOR (="the eye of the generation") was
none other than the wife of Tzefaniah, mother of AVNER – who was Saul's own
chief of staff, and who was according to rabbinic tradition one of the two men who
accompanied Saul on this eerie mission. After all Saul's cleansing efforts, impurity
remained so close to the throne!

She did what she did, "And the woman saw Samuel and she screamed with a great
cry and the woman said to Saul why did you deceive me?" (v 12). How did she
know that the man who had come to consult here was Saul? The rabbis explain that
the woman knew her disguised questioner must be the king because normally dead
souls would rise up from beneath the earth feet first, while Samuel arose head first
in honor of the king (Tanchumah). "And the woman said, "I saw ELOHIM ascending
from the earth". While ELOKIM is one of the names of God, ELOHIM can also mean
mighty angels or human judges (cf. Genesis 6:4 and Exodus 22:8). Here, since the
verb OLIM is plural, it cannot refer to God. The rabbis stated that it refers to
Samuel and a companion – no less than Moses – whom Samuel brought with him
because when he was suddenly disturbed from his eternal rest he thought he was
being raised for the final judgment and wanted Moses to testify that there was not
a commandment in the Torah that he had not fulfilled (Chagigah 4b).

The news was very grim for Saul, yet Samuel still told him that "tomorrow you and
your sons will be WITH ME" (v 19) – i.e. within Samuel's own MECHITZAH
(boundary of holiness) in Heaven (Rashi ad loc.), which at least meant that
although Saul and his sons were being taken from OLAM HA-ZEH ("this world")
they would have a glorious OLAM HA-BA ("world to come") in virtue of their great
saintliness. Saul had sinned but he was still an outstanding tzaddik whose tragic
end should make us weep.

Despite having been told that he was to die the next day, Saul – to his credit – did
not flinch from the call of duty. "When Avner and Amasa, his two companions,
asked him what Samuel had said to him, Saul replied that he had told him he would
be victorious and that his three sons would ascend to greatness. Said Reish Lakish:
At that moment the Holy One blessed be He called to the ministering angels and
said, See what a creature I have in my world. Normally a man won't even take all
his sons to a party for fear of the evil eye, but this one knows he is going to be
killed in battle yet he still takes his sons out to war and rejoices in the Attribute of
Justice!" (Midrash Rabbah Vaykra 26).

Chapter 29
Meanwhile David was ready to go out with king Achish and the Philistines to war.
We are not told how David intended to act as a "fifth column" in the war in order to
subvert the Philistine plans. However, in the event he did not have to do so because
Achish's Philistine co-patriots were much more suspicious than he was of David and
told him to send David away. Thus the latter was saved from having to take part in
a battle against his Israelite brothers and he returned to the land of the Philistines
while the Philistines went up to Jezreel to fight Saul.

Chapter 30
Due to the suspicions of the Philistines that David was a fifth-columnist, Achish king
of Gath had sent him away while Achish himself marched northwards together with
the rest of the Philistine armies to Jezreel for the coming onslaught against Saul
and his forces (chapter 29 v 11).

Our present chapter thus narrates how David returned to the Negev to Tziklag, the
city Achish had given him (which was between Gaza and Be'er Sheva in the region
of present day Netivot, north of Ofakim) only to find that the city had been sacked
by the ever-opportunistic national enemy of the Israelites, the Amalekites, who
took advantage of Israel's present disarray to kidnap all the women and children
that David and his men had left behind. It was only through God's mercy on David
that the women and children were not killed despite the fact that David himself had
left no survivors on his undercover missions against the Amalekites and the other
tribes of the southern wilderness regions (ch 27 v 9, see RaDaK on ch 30 v 1).
As yet, however, David and his men had no information about the fate of their
kidnapped women and children and could only fear the worst. This was a critical
moment for David because the people wanted to lynch him out of grief and anger at
David's "antics" in going off with Achish in the first place, which had left the
unguarded women and children exposed to the kidnapping. The people's readiness
to stone David is reminiscent of the people's readiness to stone Moses when they
found no water in the wilderness at Rephidim, which was also one of the locations
where Amalek attacked (Exodus 17:4).

"And David was in very sore straits… but David strengthened himself in HaShem his
God" (v 6). This was typical of the noble David, who immediately called for the High
Priest to bring the Urim VeThumim to ask if he should pursue the Amalekites (v 7-
8).

It was through divine providence that David and his men found the starving
Egyptian slave of an Amalekite who because of weakness had been left by his
master to die in the wilderness – typical of hard-hearted Amalekite mercilessness.
David found the Amalekites feasting and drinking in celebration of their predations
(cf. the celebrating bands trying to get up the mountain in Rabbi Nachman's story
of the Spider and the Fly). David was able to restore all those who had been
kidnapped and take all the Amalekite booty and kill all the Amalekites except for
400 young men who rode off on camels and escaped (v 17).

The Midrash comments that these four hundred survived in reward for the fact that
the four hundred men that Esau brought with him against Jacob (Genesis 32:6) all
slipped away and are not mentioned again in that narrative. They went off because
they had the good sense not to want to get scorched by the burning coal of Jacob
(Bereishis Raba 75). This Midrash seems to imply that the four hundred who
escaped in David's time were incarnations of the four hundred who slipped away in
the time of Jacob – indicating that history constantly revolves in interrelated cycles.

Thus Saul's career as king had begun with his unsuccessful search for his father's
ATHONOS ("donkeys") which according to ARI allude to the husks of Amalek (see
commentary on I Samuel ch 9), while David initiated his career as king with the
restoration of all that was lost to the Amalekites – because David's constant trust in
God earned him His aid.

DIVIDING THE SPOILS

The Amalekites had been looting the Philistines as well as the Israelites (v 16),
leaving an enormous booty to be divided up among David's victorious forces.

"And every evil and worthless (BELIYA'AL) man spoke up from among the men who
had gone with David and said, 'We shall not give any of the spoil to those who did
not go with us'" (v 22). These "evil and worthless" men exhibited exactly the same
kind of mean-eyed selfishness as Naval, who is described with exactly the same
epithet of BELIYA'AL (ch 25 v 25): in not wanting to share any of the booty with
those who were too weak to go out to war, they violated the fundamental Torah
value of collective social welfare, which saves us from the cruel inequality that
comes when the strongest take all.

"And it was from that day AND ABOVE that he made it as a statute and a judgment
for Israel …" (ch 30 v 25). The unusual phrase "from that day AND ABOVE (VO-
MAALAH)" where we would have expected "from that day ONWARDS" alludes to the
fact that sharing the spoil equally between those who fought and those who stayed
at home was not instituted by David himself but revived from the ancient practice
of Abraham, who after his victory in the war of the four kings against the five
(Genesis ch 14) insisted that those who had stayed guarding the equipment should
take a share in the booty just like those who had gone out to fight the enemy (ibid.
v 24; see Rashi on I Samuel 30:25). In everything David did, he followed the Torah.

"And David came to Tziklag and he sent from the booty to the elders of Judah …" (v
26). Thus David consolidated his leadership over his own tribe of Judah as he
prepared to become the new king of Israel.

Chapter 31
The ascent of the Messianic David to the kingship came at a moment of cataclysmic
national crisis. First the Philistine forces killed Saul's three sons, and their archers
then cornered Saul. Seeing that the end was at hand Saul was deeply fearful of the
Philistines, and knowing the vengeful cruelty they were sure to display against him,
he preferred to end his own life first.

RaDaK (on verse 5) points out that Saul did not sin in killing himself despite the
fact that the Torah writes, "But I will require your blood for your souls" (Genesis
9:5), which means "I will require your blood if you kill yourselves". Nevertheless,
Saul did not sin because he had already been told by Samuel that he was going to
die in the battle and moreover, once he saw that he was surrounded by the
Philistine archers and would be unable to escape, it was better that he should kill
himself than allow himself to be abused by the uncircumcised Philistines (cf. Yalkut
Shimoni on Genesis ch 8 Remez 61).

DISASTER

The death of Saul and his three sons on Mt Gilboa and the routing of the Israelite
forces left the nation in total disarray. The Israelites in the Jezreel valley region and
on the east bank of the Jordan felt so threatened by the Philistines that they simply
abandoned their cities and fled, leaving the enemy to occupy strategic areas of the
Land.

Manifesting a blood-thirsty vengefulness that also typifies the Palestinians who

have adopted their name in modern times, the Philistines gleefully mutilated the
bodies of Saul and his sons, taking his skull to the temple of their god Dagon (I
Chronicles 10:10) and hanging his body on the fortified wall of Beit She'an.

The Israelite inhabitants of Yavesh Gil'ad (who were from the half tribe of Menashe
that took their portion east of the river Jordan) had a special motive for their daring
exploit in rescuing Saul's body and those of his sons from where the Philistines
were exhibiting them on the wall of Beit She'an. This was because Saul's very first
act as king had been to come to the rescue of the inhabitants of Yavesh Gil'ad when
they had been presented with an impossibly cruel ultimatum by Nachash king of
Ammon (I Samuel ch 11 vv 1-11).

Because of the kindness of the men of Yavesh Gil'ad (CHESSED SHEL EMES – TRUE
kindness), God said, "You have dealt kindly with Saul and his children, so shall I
give your reward to your children. In time to come, when the Holy One blessed be
He is destined to gather in Israel, the very first He will gather in will be the half
tribe of Menasheh, as it is written, 'Mine is Gil'ad and Mine is Menasheh'" (Pirkey
d'Rabbi Eliezer 17). [A little over a week before the writing of this commentary, it
was reported in the Israeli media that about 250 members of Bney Menashe flew
from the remote areas of eastern India near the border with Bangladesh where
they have been living for thousands of years and made Aliyah to Israel! This is
surely a sign that the ingathering of the Ten Tribes is happening before our very
eyes!]

With the respectful burial of Saul's bones, the First Book of Samuel ends on the
theme of the honor that must be shown to the king even after his death – for this
book has traced the steady transition from a state in which "each man did what was
right in his own eyes" to one in which Israel had a kingship.

"And Samuel was dead" (ch 28 v 3). The rabbis asked how this squares with the
tradition that Samuel wrote the book called by his name. They answer that the
Book of Samuel (including what we call II Samuel, which tells the story of the
kingship of David, whom Samuel had anointed) was completed by Gad the Seer
and Nathan the Prophet (Bava Basra 15a).
 Book of II Samuel
Chapter 1
The norm today in the political life of most nations is that after a regime-change,
the new ruler does everything possible to smear and destroy the reputation of his
predecessor.

Thus the Amalekite lad who came to announce to David that he had killed his
greatest persecutor assumed that David would rejoice in the news. Not so: despite
David's being surrounded by bloody conflicts on every side, he never lost sight of
his noble aspiration for true peace and reconciliation.

The Amalekite says "I CHANCED to be on Mt Gilboa…" (v 6). This is because Amalek
denies the unity of God and His ubiquitous providence. Accordingly for him,
everything is pure chance (cf. Deut. 25:18: Amalek "CHANCED upon you" – same
Hebrew root as here). However Saul, who had already fallen on his sword and was
in his death throes, realized that the presence of the Amalekite at this critical
moment was no chance. The king asked the Amalekite to finish him off before the
Philistines could get to him and abuse him (v 9 see Rashi) – as if Saul knew that he
had to execute the divine judgment upon himself for his failure to wipe out Amalek
when charged to do so by the prophet. The Amalekite stripped Saul of "the crown
on his head and the ornament on his arm" (v 10) – i.e. his head and arm TEFILIN –
and brought them to David expecting a rich reward.

But far from rejoicing over Saul's death, David immediately rent his garments
mourning over the slain head of the nation's Sanhedrin and his son Jonathan,
David's dearest friend. He publicly eulogized them, and wept and fasted until the
evening, after which he swiftly meted out fitting justice upon the head of this
Amalekite, who had shown no respect for God's anointed king.

DAVID'S LAMENT

It was Saul who had "lost it" in persecuting David, but despite the pain and
suffering David had endured at his hands, he never wavered in the slightest from
his loyalty, love and devotion for his master, God's anointed king, who had been
head and shoulders above the rest of the nation in sanctity and righteousness.

David's immortal lament for Saul and David is the very height of sublime eloquence,
expressing his pain at the death of two outstanding heroes who had been
unflinching in their war against the uncircumcised Philistines and their idols. It was
as if the "high places" of Israel had become an Altar of atonement through the
slaying of these warriors: "How are the mighty fallen!" (v 19).

The phrases of verse 23 of David's lament are included in the AV HARACHAMIM

prayer in memory the Jewish martyrs in all ages recited in the Synagogue on
Shabbos after the conclusion of the reading of the Torah and Haftara just before
ASHREI.
"Daughters of Israel, weep for Saul, who clothed you in scarlet…" (v 24). "Rabbi
Yehudah says these are the actual daughters of Israel, for all of whose needs Saul
provided when their husbands went out to war… Rabbi Nehemiah says, The
Daughters of Israel are the sages of the Sanhedrin, and they should cry because
when Saul would hear the explanation of the reason for a law from the mouth of a
Torah scholar, he would rise and kiss him on his mouth!" (Talmud Nedarim 31b).
Thus we see the greatness of Saul, the warrior king who organized Israel's first
army so humanely and who showed constant honor, love and devotion to the Torah.

Chapter 2
Through the Urim Ve-Thumim of the High Priest, God told David to go up to Hebron
to rule over Judah. It was necessary for David to reign for seven years in Hebron (v
11): this was because David is the "fourth leg" of the Throne of Glory, the three
other legs being the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Before David – the
RECEIVING vessel of Malchus – could reign over all Israel, he first had to attach
himself to the Patriarchs (buried in the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron) and receive
from them the spiritual influence that he would bestow upon the people. David had
to be in Hebron for SEVEN years, because the attribute of MALCHUS consists of
SEVEN Sefirot of Building (Chessed, Gevurah, Tiferet, Netzach, Yesod, Hod and
Malchut) and each had to receive the influence of the three Patriarchs.

Although as yet David reigned only over his native tribe of Judah, he still acted as
king over all Israel, as illustrated in his magnanimous message to the men of
Yaveish Gil'ad who had buried the bodies of Saul and his son. "And now strengthen
your hands and be men of valor, for your lord Saul is dead, and the house of Judah
have anointed even me as king over them" (v 7). Metzudas David (ad loc.) explains
that David was guaranteeing the men of Yaveish Gil'ad that he would be help them
no less than Saul if they came under attack from Israel's enemies.

CIVIL WAR & NATIONAL RECONCILIATION

The people of Israel were teetering on the very brink of civil war. Avner ben Ner
had been Saul's commander-in-chief as well as his first cousin, and Avner now saw
it as obvious that Saul's successor should be his surviving son Ish-Bosheth (the
Hebrew name means Man of Shame – shame in the sense of deep modesty, a
virtue greatly treasured by Saul.) It is a Torah law that when a king is anointed, he
gains the kingship for himself and his children for ever, because the kingship is
hereditary" (Deuteronomy 17:20, Rambam, Laws of Kings 1:7). Although Avner
surely knew that David had been anointed as king by Samuel, the rabbis teach that
Avner darshened from God's promise to Jacob that "KINGS will go out from your
loins" (Genesis 35:11) (a promise that was given when only Benjamin still
remained to be born) that at least TWO kings were destined to come from the tribe
of Benjamin, i.e. Saul and Ish-Bosheth (see RaDaK on v 8).

Ish-Bosheth emerges as a weak and rash-minded figurehead. Avner first took him
to Machanayim, a strategic town east of the River Jordan (safe from the Philistines)
on the very boundary between the territories of the tribes of Gad and Menasheh.
Although the places to which subsequently Avner took his candidate for the
kingship are enumerated in only a single verse – v 9 – in fact the spread of Ish-
Bosheth's regime took place in successive stages over a period of several years.
Gil'ad is the collective name for all of the Israelite territories east of the Jordan. The
ASHURI most probably refers to the territory of the tribe of Asher in the western
Galilee, while the successive spread of Ish-Bosheth's regime southwards to Jezreel,
Mt Ephraim and the territories of Benjamin brought his kingship to the very
heartland of Israel .
Just as Saul's commander-in-chief Avner was also his close relative, so too David's
commander-in-chief, Joab son of Tzeruyah, was his own nephew: Tzeruyah was
David's sister (I Chronicles 2:16). A superficial reading of our narrative may leave
the impression that Avner on the one side and Joab and his brothers on the other
were some kind of swash-buckling warriors, but in fact their internecine battles
were not necessarily purely physical but also spiritual: embedded in our present
narrative is the prehistory of the later MACHLOKES (conflict) over the general
contours and details of the Halachah as conducted among the Tannaim (sages of
the Mishneh) and Amoraim (sages of the Talmud).

Thus when Avner invited Joab to allow twelve representatives of each side to
engage in a gladiatorial struggle to the death, "each one took hold of his fellow's
HEAD" (v 16). This seems to indicate that this was on one level an intellectual
battle between potential representatives of the Twelve Tribes for spiritual dominion
over the nation.

"For the race is not won by the swift" (Ecclesiastes 9:11). Asa'el was reputed to be
so fleet of foot that he could run over the very tips of the ears of corn in a field
without breaking them. Even so, his swiftness did not help him on the day he
chased after Avner (Koheles Rabbah 9). The latter offered him to make an
honorable getaway, but when Asa'el refused, Avner speared him through the rib
into his liver and gall bladder and killed him.

This put Asa'el's brothers Joab and Avishai into the role of GO'EL HA-DAM, "avenger
of the blood" (Deut. 19:12 etc.) of their slain brother. This in itself threatened the
nation with a vicious spiral of bloodshed (vv 24-25) but Avner had the good sense
to make an overture for peace – "Shall the sword devour for ever?" (v 26) – and
although he himself had initiated the bloody violence (v 14), Joab still agreed to call
a halt for now, and the two parties returned to their respective bases.

"And the light shone to them in Hebron" (v 32): with the Messianic king now
installed in Hebron, there was hope that despite the potential for a protracted
bloody civil war, it would indeed be possible to forge true peace and national
reconciliation.

Chapter 3
Before continuing with the account of the decline of the house of Saul, our text (vv
2-5) lists the sons who were born to David during the seven years that he reigned
in Hebron. Of these sons, Amnon, Avshalom (Absalom) and Adonoiah all play
leading roles in the ensuing narrative of the life of David.

In verse 3 we learn that Avshalom – who was later to rebel against and almost
snatch the very kingship from his father – was David's son from Ma'achah daughter
of Talmi ("Ptolemy"?) king of Geshur. The rabbis teach that Ma'achah was captured
in war (I Samuel 27:8 refers to David's campaign against the Geshurites) and was
thus in the category of EISHES YEFAS TO'AR, the "beautiful captive woman" that
her Israelite captor is permitted to marry under certain conditions (Deuteronomy
21:11). However, written directly after this mitzvah in the Torah is the law of BEN
SORER U-MOREH, the "rebellious gluttonous son" (ibid. vv 18-21), who must be
stoned to death. Avshalom is the prime exemplar of the case of the rebellious son
born to the YEFAS TO'AR.

The rabbis taught that EGLAH the wife of David mentioned in v 5 is none other than
Michal daughter of Saul, whom he betrothed with 100 Philistine foreskins and who
was beloved to David like a favorite calf (cf. Judges 14:18 where Samson alludes to
his wife as a calf).

DECLINE OF THE HOUSE OF SAUL

The civil war between the House of Saul (Benjamin) and the House of David
(Judah) was part of a protracted historical process which began in the time of
Joseph in Egypt when Judah stepped forward to become protector and guarantor of
Jacob's youngest son, Benjamin (Genesis 43:9; 44:18ff). Benjamin was unique
among the twelve tribal founders inasmuch as he was the only "Sabra" – he was
the only one of Jacob's children who was actually born in the Land of Israel
(Genesis 35:16). Home-born Israelis are called Sabras after the prickly, thick-
skinned desert cactus fruit that is so sweet and refreshing inside! The tribe of
Benjamin showed their prickly nature in their war against the other tribes in the
aftermath of the gang-rape of the Pilegesh in Giv'ah (Judges chs 19-21), while Saul
showed similar tough-skinned Gevurah ("might") throughout his reign.

Nevertheless, as explained by the ARI, the House of Saul was rooted in Olam
HaTohu, the "World of Devastation", and their kingship could not endure, for the
TIKKUN ("repair") was to come about only through the House of David. Indeed,
later on, it was only through identifying himself with Judah that Saul's Benjaminite
descendant Mordechai – known as HeYehudi, "the Judah-ite" (Esther 2:5)– was
able to rectify Saul's flaw by destroying Haman the Amalekite. (YEHUDAH has the
connotation of denying idolatry, see Likutey Moharan I, 10.) The conflict between
the House of Saul and the House of David was later expressed in the conflict
between Beis Shamai and Beis Hillel.

The fall of the House of Saul in David's time came about through the rashness of
his son Ish-bosheth, who vented his suspicions that Avner was involved with Saul's
concubine. If this was true, it was forbidden by Torah law (Rambam, Laws of Kings
2:1-2), which prohibits anyone else marrying a dead king's widow (see RaDaK on II
Samuel 3:7). Avner greatly resented these suspicions after he had resolutely stood
up for the House of Saul, and this gave him a strong motive to go to make peace
with David and bring over the rest of Israel to support his kingship.

David made his acceptance of Avner's overtures conditional on the return of his
wife Michal, whom Saul had given to Palti son of Layish (I Samuel 25:44). As
indicated briefly at the end of the commentary on the above-referenced chapter,
the halachic ramifications of Michal's "marriage" with Palti are very complex as
normally a woman who marries a second husband is thereafter forbidden to return
to her previous husband (Deut. 24:4), although Saul had no right to take Michal
from David and give her to another man. In any event, the rabbis taught that
Paltiel understood that he was not free to be with Michal as a husband, and that he
drove a sword between himself and her in bed in order to remind himself that if he
so much as touched her the sword of divine punishment would be unleashed
against him. Paltiel's going out after Michal weeping (I Samuel ch 3 v 16) is
darshened as referring to his weeping over having lost the great mitzvah of
abstention from a tempting but forbidden relationship that was now being taken
from him (see Rashi ad loc.).

Although Avner had a personal motive for ceasing to support the House of Saul, he
showed great courage and true statesmanship in setting national unity above any
partisan interests he may have had as Saul's commander-in-chief.

When Avner visited David in Hebron to talk about national reconciliation, Joab was
absent fighting and pillaging the Philistines. On hearing of these negotiations on his
return, Joab suspected that Avner had ulterior motives and had come to Hebron to
spy on David and check out the weak points in his regime (v 25). Joab had good
reason to mistrust Avner, who had killed Joab's brother Asa'el as told in ch 2 v 23.

Thus Joab and his brother Avishai were under Torah law in the role of GO'EL HA-
DAM, "avenger of the blood". Joab succeeded in assassinating Avner by waylaying
him inside the gate of Hebron. The "gate" alludes to the Sanhedrin, where Joab
challenged Avner as to the legality of his killing of Asa'el. Avner is said to have
replied that he was justified in doing so since Asa'el had been pursuing him and
thus came into the category of a RODEIF ("pursuer"). Joab replied that where
possible a person being pursued should strike the RODEIF only hard enough to
deflect him but not to needlessly kill him. Avner replied that he had not been able
to aim sufficiently accurately, at which point Joab asked him how come he was able
to aim for Asa'el's fifth rib. Avner had no reply to this.

The text states that Joab took Avner aside "to speak to him BASHELI". This unusual
Hebrew word has the connotation of "innocently" – indicating that Joab did not let
Avner understand what he was intending to do. The rabbis state that Joab asked
Avner a complex halachic question (which as deputy leader of the Sanhedrin in the
time of Saul, Avner had the authority to answer). The question was how a girl with
a stump-arm can carry out the mitzvah of HALITZAH (removing the sandal of her
dead husband's brother if the latter does not want to perform the levirate marriage
with her, see Deut. 25:9). Avner crouched down to demonstrate how such a girl
could release the straps of her brother-in-law's sandal using her teeth, at which
point Joab took his opportunity to drive his sword into Avner's fifth rib to avenge his
brother's blood. [In Exodus 3:5, God's command to Moses to REMOVE his shoes
uses the word SHAL, "take off", which according to the drush is alluded to in the
word BA-SHEL-I in our present verse. See RaDaK on II Samuel 3:27.]

David immediately dissociated himself from the assassination of Saul's commander-

in-chief, and went on to curse Joab very severely, although the latter remained his
commander-in-chief almost to the end of David's life. It is ironic that the curses
called down upon Joab and his descendants by David – who as king embodies the
attribute of MALCHUS, associated with severe Judgment – were all visited on
David's own descendants. Rehaboam was a ZAV (a man suffering a morbid flow
from his member); Uzziah was a leper; Asa went with a stick because of illness in
his legs; Josiah died at the sword while Jehoachin was lacking bread. These curses
fell on David's descendants because David intended to kill Joab and should not have
cursed him as well (RaDaK on v 29).

A king does not normally attend funerals (Rambam, Laws of Mourning 7:7; Laws of
Kings 2:4) but David made an exception in the case of Avner to demonstrate
publicly that he had had no hand whatever in his assassination and wanted to avoid
any further escalation of the civil war and on the contrary was anxious to bring it to
a close. David's statesmanlike behavior indeed found favor in the eyes of all the
people (v 36) and contributed greatly to the resolution of the conflict.

Chapter 4
With the death of Avner, the House of Saul was further weakened, and besides
Saul's son Ish-bosheth, the only surviving member of any significance was the
young son of Jonathan (who had been Saul's "crown prince") – MEPHI-BOSHETH,
who as a child escaping from the Philistines after Saul's defeat had fallen and
become lame. Mephi-bosheth appears again in the narrative later on (ch 9 etc.).
The perpetrators of the bloody daytime assassination of Saul's son Ish-bosheth
during his afternoon rest thought that their act would win them favor in the eyes of
David, whom they perceived as being no different from the normal run of new
rulers, who are anxious to "neutralize" all possible rivals.

However David's eyes were always to God (v 9), and he had no more patience for
this kind of murderous criminality than he had shown to the Amalekite who prided
himself on having dispatched Saul (ch 1 v 15-16). David had no intention of
founding the kingship that was to lead to the building of the Temple and the
establishment of the Sanhedrin by its side upon the bloody assassinations of all
perceived opponents. (It would greatly benefit the world if today's political
assassins would learn the lesson.) David made a gory public example of the killers
of Ish-bosheth in order to deter others, and had the severed head of Ish-bosheth
buried in the grave of Avner in Hebron. The site of the grave of Abner is just a few
minutes walk from the graves of the Patriarchs in Hebron and can be visited until
today.

Chapter 5
With the death of Ish-Bosheth there was no other serious contender for the
kingship besides David, who had already won the love of the nation when he killed
Goliath. There was no prophet of the stature of Samuel to publicly "crown" David
similarly to the way in which he had publicly appointed Saul, but everyone knew
that in his lifetime Samuel had already anointed David, and the latter's public
acceptance by all the Twelve Tribes (ch 5 vv 1-3) was the final seal on his kingship.

"AND THE KING AND HIS MEN WENT TO YERUSHALAYIM" (v 6)

David was in Hebron when he was accepted as king by all the tribes. His very first
move without delay was to go to Jerusalem. In our present text, it says that David
"AND HIS MEN" went up to Jerusalem, making it appear that David's main support
was coming from his existing following. However, this was not at all the case: in I
Chronicles 11:4 speaking of the move to Jerusalem, it says, "And David AND ALL
ISRAEL went…" In other words, ALL ISRAEL were now David's men: he was king
without any opposition. (The overall purpose of the Book of Chronicles is not merely
to repeat historical narratives but primarily to establish the primacy of the House of
David, yet it does contain numerous parallel accounts of the events described in
Samuel I & II and Kings I & II, often with important supplementary details.)

It was now necessary to conquer the citadel of Jerusalem from the Jebusites,
because the Israelites had a tradition that Zion would be the capital city of the
kingdom of Israel and that it would only be captured by one who was king over all
Israel. Until that time no-one had been truly king over all Israel, because Saul's
kingship did not endure (RaDaK on verse 6).

As discussed in the commentaries on Joshua and Judges, "the children of Judah

were NOT ABLE to drive out the Jebusite inhabitants of Jerusalem" (Joshua 15:63)
NOT because they did not have the power to do so but because they were still
constrained by the oath of Abraham to Avimelech (from whom the Jerusalem
Jebusites were descended) not to harm his grandchildren or great grandchildren.
This oath had been extracted by the Canaanites in exchange for agreeing to sell the
Cave of Machpelah to Abraham – his first acquisition of property in the Holy Land .

When David tried to enter Jerusalem, the Jebusites taunted him that he would have
to remove "the blind and the lame" (v 6). One explanation of this is that the
Jebusites had placed their idols on the walls of their city for protection – idols are
called "blind" because "they have eyes but they do not see" and "lame" because
"they have legs but they do not walk" (Psalm 115:5 & 7). The Midrashic explanation
is that the Jebusites had placed great copper statues on the wall – one of them
blind to represent Isaac (Genesis 27:1) and another lame to represent Jacob
(Genesis 32:31) – with scrolls coming out of their mouths inscribed with Abraham's
oath to Avimelech. However, since the oath was limited to his grandchildren and
great-grandchildren, it had already expired and David was free to capture the city. I
Chronicles 11:6 relates that it was Joab who actually succeeded in getting up onto
the fortified wall and destroying the idols ("detested by the soul of David" v 8). The
Midrash relates that he got up onto the wall by driving a tall poplar tree into the
ground outside the city, pulling its top branch down onto the ground, climbing up
on David's head and using the tree as a kind of catapult to shoot himself up onto
the wall (see RaDaK on vv 6-8).

Something as important as the capture of Jerusalem – eternal City of David from

which the word of God will ever go out to the whole world – could not but come
about with a great leap!

"AND DAVID KNEW…" (v 12)

David knew that God had given his kingship a firm foundation when he saw his
miraculous success over Israel 's endemic enemies. The gift by Hiram king of Tyre
of timber together with craftsmen in wood and stone to build David a house was a
sign of the growing international recognition of the House of David that would
culminate in the time of Solomon, whose Temple Hiram also helped to build and to
whom all the kings of the earth came to pay their respects.

Although Solomon is mentioned in our present chapter in the list of David's sons
born in Jerusalem (v 14) the circumstances of his birth are narrated in detail later
on.

"AND THE PHILISTINES HEARD…" (v 17)

Although the Philistines had defeated the Israelites at Gilboa and subsequently
occupied many of their abandoned cities, they do not appear to have made serious
efforts to press their military advantage thereafter: perhaps they saw the conflict
between the House of Saul (Avner and Ish-bosheth) and the House of David as one
that would automatically weaken the Israelites, and in any case, when in flight from
Saul, David had ACTED as some kind of "ally" of the Philistines, or at least of Achish
king of Gath.

But now that David had taken Jerusalem from the Canaanites, causing a great
arousal of holiness, it was inevitable that there should be a corresponding arousal
of the forces of unholiness (for "God has made the one against the other" Eccles.
7:14). Similarly, the ingathering of Israel to their land in the last few hundred years
has been accompanied by a steadily growing arousal of enmity on the part of those
who see themselves as the successors of the Canaanites and Philistines.

From the accounts in our present text and other texts in II Samuel and I Chronicles,
it can be inferred that in David's reign there were three major battles between the
Israelites and the Philistines with a number of secondary skirmishes. The first two
battles took place in EMEK REFA'IM ("valley of the giants") which is south west of
the Citadel of Jerusalem and which is familiar to those who know the present-day
Jerusalem, being the name of one of the city's most important arteries leading from
the Baka district, where the old Jerusalem Railway Station is located, to the
southern suburbs. This road actually runs through the valley after which it is named.
The south west end of EMEK REFAIM joins Nachal Shorek, through which the
railway passes on the way to Beit Shemesh.

It would appear that the Philistines came up from their habitations in the coastal
and lowland regions through Nachal Shorek in order to advance on Jerusalem and
were massed in Emek Refa'im when David -- on the instructions of the Urim
VeThumim – successfully struck them and destroyed their idols (vv 17-21). This
defeat did not deter the Philistines, who advanced a second time (vv 22-25). This
time the Urim VeThumim answered David that he was NOT to attack them "until
you hear the voice of treading on the heads of the mulberry trees" (v 24).
According to the Midrash, the Philistines were within four cubits of the Israelites but
still David would not allow them to advance even if it meant they would die ("better
to die righteous and not die wicked"). This showed enormous faith in God (unlike
Saul, who did not carry out God's words to the last detail), and at last the Israelites
saw the mulberry trees waving – protective angels were walking on the foliage –
and successfully attacked the Philistines (Yalkut Shimoni).

Chapter 6
David's foremost goal was to build the Temple in Jerusalem in fulfillment of Jacob's
prophetic dream of the Ladder on that very site. The Hebrew word for "ladder" is
SULAM, the letters of which have the same numerical value as those of SINAI – for
the very center point of the Temple was the EVEN SHESIYAH ("Foundation Stone")
upon which Jacob had rested his head, and this was the destined resting place of
the ARON – Ark of the Covenant – which contained the Tablets of Stone Moses
received at Sinai. The Temple is not only a place of worship but one from which
Torah is to shine forth to all the world.

Thus after the conquest of Jerusalem, it was now necessary to bring the Ark of the
Covenant up from Kiryat Ye'arim (= Baaley Yehuda in v 2) where it had remained
ever since it had been brought up there from Beit Shemesh after its return from
captivity among the Philistines (I Samuel chs 6-7).

DAVID'S ERROR

"David erred in something that even little school-children know, that the Ark must
be carried ON THE SHOULDERS OF THE LEVITES (Numbers 7:9) and not on a
wagon. However, David said "Your statutes have been SONGS to me in the house
of my sojourns" (Psalm 119:54) – this was considered somewhat too light-hearted
an attitude to God's laws, and David was penalized by making the mistake of
transporting the Ark on a wagon, thereby indirectly causing the death of Uzza when
he thought it was about to fall and put out his hand to steady it" (see Rashi on v 3).

This harsh blow on what was supposed to be an occasion of consummate national

joy (parallel to the deaths of Aaron's sons Nadav and Avihu on the day of the
consecration of the Sanctuary in the wilderness, Leviticus 10:1-2) made David's
face "change into a charred oven-cake" (Sotah 35a) – he was ashen with fear of
God. By putting out his arm to "steady" the Ark, Uzza betrayed a fundamental
misconception – that man needs to protect the Ark, whereas the truth is that the
Ark protects itself. It appears that man carries the Ark, but in fact the Ark carries
those who carry it – and the same applies to the entire Torah. While it appears that
we have to "carry" the Torah through our observance of its commandments, in fact
the Torah carries us every day of our lives.
On the great blessing that came to Oveid-Edom when the Ark was in his house for
three months (his wife and eight daughters-in-law each had sextuplets, which is
why he had a household of 62 = 8 sons + 9 x 6 babies, I Chronicles 26:8) the
Talmud comments: If this is the reward of one who takes in the Ark, which neither
eats nor drinks, how much more is the reward of one who gives hospitality to a
Torah sage in his home and gives him to eat and drink…" (Berachos 63b).

MUSIC AND DANCE

Many secrets of the Temple music are embedded in this chapter, which enumerates
some of the Temple instruments. When the Philistines returned the Ark in a wagon
drawn by nursing cows, contrary to nature the cows and even their calves began to
sing – because the Ark creates music everywhere: the music of God's providence,
where everything is interconnected. Likewise David accompanied the taking up of
the Ark to its resting place in the eternal city of Jerusalem with ecstatic music and
dance.

David's own dancing was far superior to that of any dervish, yet it elicited the
sarcastic derision of his wife Michal, Saul's daughter, who saw it as undignified.
Similarly since the beginnings of the Chassidic movement, which gave birth to an
explosion of fervent devotion accompanied by much dancing, some have tended to
look scornfully upon the "antics" of the Chassidim as lacking in dignity. (Thus when
Rabbi Avraham Kalisker, who had been outstanding student of the Gaon of Vilna,
became attached to the Baal Shem Tov and began dancing for joy in the streets of
Vilna, the Gaon never spoke to him again – yet Rabbi Nachman, who saw R.
Kalisker in the latter's old age, described him as the only truly perfect Tzaddik he
had ever seen.)

The House of Saul were indeed modest in the extreme, and the rabbis in the
Midrash said that Michal told David that no one in her father's house would let so
much as a tiny portion of a hand or foot be exposed. However, David replied that
her father's house ignored the glory of Heaven and were mainly concerned with
their own glory, while his dancing was purely to glorify God (see RaDaK on v 20).
Let us abandon our concerns about our own dignity and take a lesson from David
about how to throw ourselves into the service of God with true fervor.

* * * The sections in II Samuel 6:1-23 and 7:1-17 are read as the Haftara of
Parshas Shemini, Exodus 9:1-11:16 * * *

Chapter 7
* * * The sections in II Samuel 6:1-23 and 7:1-17 are read as the Haftara of
Parshas Shemini, Exodus 9:1-11:16 * * *

"AND IT WAS WHEN THE KING SAT IN HIS HOUSE…" (v 1)

"…And God gave him rest from all his enemies roundabout" (v 1). David's victory
over the Philistine invaders at the battle of Emek Refa'im (ch 5) brought to an end
the wars that had afflicted the Israelites in their own home territories since the
beginning of the period of the judges. Although David still fought many wars (as we
see in Chapter 8), from now on all the battles were in enemy territory, and this was
the "rest" that God gave David "from all his enemies roundabout".

The Torah commands that "when He will give you rest from all your enemies
roundabout and you dwell securely. And it shall be that the place that the Lord your
God shall choose to cause His Name to dwell therein ..." (Deut. 12:10) – that place
"…shall you search out" (ibid. v 4).

From these verses David learned out that as soon as peace came to the Land, it
was a sign that it was time to fulfill the mitzvah to build the Temple. David felt
uncomfortable living in his own magnificent house built with timber sent by Hiram
of Tyre while the Holy Sanctuary in Giv'on was merely a temporary structure and
the Ark newly brought up to Jerusalem had no proper home. (Those who live in
extravagant homes while the Temple remains in ruins should take note.) David
therefore consulted Nathan the prophet – for all David's actions were based on the
guidance of the prophets or the Urim VeThumim – and Nathan felt that the logic of
David's understanding of the passage in Deuteronomy was compelling and told
David to go ahead.

Notwithstanding this logic, Nathan's INTUITION proved incorrect, and God sent him
PROPHECY that very night telling him to put the brakes on David. The rabbis taught
that David was so eager that without this immediate prophecy he would have
started building the Temple at once and David was the type who could well vow not
to eat or drink until it was completed (cf. Psalm 132:2). Since David was not
destined to build the Temple, he would have lost out badly had not God
immediately sent Nathan to stop him (see RaDaK on v 2 & Rashi on v 4).

Nathan's prophecy centers on the appointment of David and his offspring for ever
as the true royal house of Israel (vv 8-11), and prophesies the birth of Solomon, to
whom God would be a "father" while he would be God's "son" and would actually
build the House to His Name (vv 12-15). In verse 12 God announces to David that
"I will establish your seed after you THAT WILL COME FORTH FROM YOUR LOINS…"
This is the sign that the son who would build the Temple was not Absalom or
Adoniyah since they had already been born in Hebron, while the builder of the
Temple had yet to come forth from David's loins. The story of the mysterious chain
of events whereby the soul of the wisest man that ever lived came into the world
will begin in chapter 11.

"AND KING DAVID CAME AND SAT BEFORE HASHEM…" (v 18)

In response to Nathan's eloquent prophecy about the glorious destiny of the House
of David, the king "sat before HaShem" – i.e. he sat in meditation and prayer
before the Ark of the Covenant (only kings of the House of David are permitted to
sit in the AZARA, which is the main Temple courtyard, while all others, including
even the High Priest, must stand) – and there he poured forth his equally eloquent,
humble prayer of praise and thanks and his supplication for future divine protection.

"AND THIS IS THE TORAH OF ADAM…" (v 19)

While David's literal meaning in these words may be understood to be that he

humbly recognized that his destiny as spelled out in Nathan's prophecy was fit for a
great man and not a lowly one such as himself (Metzudas David, RaDaK), his words
also imply that he was granted a vision of all the future generations just like Adam
(Rashi on v 19), and also that David was comparable to Moses (RaDaK on v 19).
Just as Moses was the greatest of the prophets, so David was the greatest of the
kings. Moses took Israel out of Egypt while David released them from servitude to
the nations. Moses split the Red Sea, while David split the waters of Aram
Naharayim (Psalms 60:2). Moses gave Israel the Five Books of the Torah, while
David gave us the Five Books of Psalms… (RaDaK ibid.)
David's prayer, with its many memorable phrases (v 23 is included in the Shabbos
afternoon Amidah prayer) concludes with his supplication for God's future blessing
and help – all to enhance the glory of His Name.

David had been planning the Temple since his initial flight from Saul (I Samuel
19:18 as darshened in Zevachim 54b). From this time on he studiously gathered in
all the booty from his wars to Jerusalem, as described in the next chapter, in order
to amass all the necessary materials to enable Solomon to build the Temple without
delay on ascending to the throne.

Chapter 8
In the last decades the Jewish people have witnessed the alarming tendency for
historians to rewrite and revise established history in order to suit later opinions
and points of view. Thus holocaust denial has been a favorite theme of anti-Semitic
writers and publicists until this very day, while the actual history of the birth and
growth of the Jewish YISHUV ("habitation") in the land of Israel hundreds of years
before the Zionist Congress of Basle and the 1917 Balfour Declaration until today
has been totally distorted by the Arabs and their supporters in the mass media and
academia worldwide.

Likewise it appears that the true greatness of the Israelite empire and sphere of
influence as established by David and Solomon, which stretched "from the river
[Nile] to the river [Euphrates]" and endured for much of the period of the later
kings, was long ago willfully erased from the annals of history as presented by the
chroniclers of the nations. Yet despite what seems to have been deliberate
revisionism on the part of Israel's enemies, it is possible to reconstruct a picture of
the true extent and nature of this glorious empire with its sphere of spiritual and
cultural influence from various passages in II Samuel, I & II Kings and Chronicles,
including our present chapter.

All of the wars described in this and the ensuing chapters took place outside the
boundaries of the Israelite's existing habitations. METHEG HA-AMAH in verse 1 is
identified by the commentators with Gath (see RaDaK on v 1), which was the
leading Philistine city since it was the only one whose ruler was called "king" (such
as MELECH Achish) as opposed to "captain" (SEREN). Gath was indeed part of the
tribal territory of Judah but had for centuries fallen under Philistine occupation until
the time of David.

His campaign in Moab and the harsh punishment he meted out there (v 2) were in
revenge for the killing of his parents by the king of Moab (see Rashi here and on I
Samuel 22:4).

The people over whom king Hadad-ezer (vv 3ff) ruled were Arameans –
descendents of Noah's son Shem – who originally dwelled in eastern Turkey and
Armenia and subsequently migrated in waves southwards into Mesopotamia and
westwards from the Euphrates in the direction of the Mediterranean. The Arameans
comprised a number of different streams (including the family of Abraham's brother
Nahor and of Laban and Bilaam), and their language, Aramaic, was the lingua
franca of the entire region. Laban's agreement with Jacob as described in Genesis
31:44-53 was a covenant demarcating their respective spheres of influence.

It was only during the period of the Judges that the Arameans migrated into what is
now Syria and Lebanon, where they rapidly built up their city-based principalities
into strong metropolises that wielded power over extensive belts of territory.
Throughout the period of the kings of Israel, the Arameans were one of the main
scourges from which the nation suffered.

From various verses in our present text and in the parallel account in Chronicles we
can piece together a picture of David's wars against Hadad-ezer, whose home-base
of Tzova was in the BIK'A ("valley") of Lebanon, while his sphere of influence
extended to Damascus . David's breaking the legs of the Aramean horses (v 4) was
designed to make it impossible for them to use their main military resource in
future as well as to avoid taking the horses for himself, which would have violated
the Torah prohibition against the king's "multiplying horses" (Deut. 17:16). David
placed Israelite garrisons in the Aramean territories in Lebanon and Syria, thereby
turning them into Israelite colonies (v 6). These territories (including the Golan
heights) had large Israelite populations throughout the periods of the First and
Second Temples and well after the Jewish exile from Israel. In the language of the
Mishneh and Talmud, these territories are collectively called "Suria" (= Syria). Had
David conquered them AFTER completing the conquest of all the territories
comprising the actual Promised Land, Syria would also have been incorporated into
the Land and all of the MITZVOS TOLUYOS BA-ARETZ (agricultural and other
commandments that apply in The Land) would also have been applicable in Suria.
However, since David's conquest of Suria came BEFORE the conquest of all of the
Promised Land, these laws do not apply there in full but only partially. The roots of
the present conflict between Israel and Syria over the Golan Heights and Lebanon
lie in David's conflicts with the Arameans millennia ago.

As indicated earlier, David transported all the gold, silver and copper and other
booty captured in his wars to Jerusalem in readiness for the building of the Temple.

"And David made a NAME when he returned from striking Aram …" (v 13). The
rabbis taught that the NAME that made David famous among all the surrounding
nations came in virtue of his unique behavior in his foreign wars (long before the
"Geneva Convention"). Whereas other nations would leave their slain enemies lying
on the battlefield for the vultures to eat, David had his generals BURY them with
dignity (see I Kings 11:15), just as the Israelites are destined to bury the fallen
hordes of Gog and Magog in time to come (Ezekiel 39:13).

David's placing of garrisons in the territory of the Edomites and his turning them
into a subject nation (verse 14) signifies the end of the World of Devastation in
which the kings of Edom (= the "broken vessels" of Sheviras HaKelim) ruled before
there was a king over the Children of Israel (Genesis 36:31), thereby initiating the
order of TIKKUN (repair). "And David ruled over all Israel …" (v 15).

"…And David practiced justice and charity to all his people" (ibid.) It was precisely
this "justice and charity" that constituted the repair. The Talmud asks what kind of
justice it is that involves charity – surely strict justice and kind charity are opposite
attributes? The answer is that a legal PESHARAH ("compromise" = WIN/WIN) is a
judgment that is sweetened with kindness and charity (Sanhedrin 49a). Instead of
fighting one another, people were willing to make concessions, and this is what
leads to true peace within the nation.

Chapter 9
The rabbis advised to "be careful of the government, because they only reach out
to a person to serve their own need and appear to show him love only so long as
they have benefit from him but do not stand up for him in his hour of hardship"
(Avos 2:3). King David showed himself a notable exception to this mode of
government, displaying his truly royal nature in searching for any surviving
members of the House of Saul that he might be able to help despite the fact that he
had nothing whatever to gain from showing them favor.

David remained loyal to the covenant he had struck with Jonathan at the very
beginning of their acquaintance (I Samuel 18:1-3) and which had been renewed
several times with both Jonathan (I Samuel 23:18) and Saul himself, to whom
David had promised that he would never cut off his seed (I Samuel 24:21-2).

Tzeeva, the "servant of the House of Saul" whom David called for information about
surviving members of Saul's family, evidently had the status of EVED KENA'ANI, a
"Canaanite slave", who according to the law of the Torah remains a slave unless his
master frees him and who is part of his master's estate, passing on his death into
the possession of his inheritors (see Leviticus 25:44-6 and RaDaK on II Samuel
9:2). Unless he or she is freed, the Canaanite slave is not permitted to marry a free
Israelite and enter the Kahal ("Assembly"), but is nevertheless a member of the
Covenant and is bound by all of the commandments that Israelite women are
obliged to fulfill. (Thus the Canaanite slave must observe Shabbos, eat kosher,
share in the Paschal lamb, etc. but does not wear Tefilin or pray the set daily
prayer services etc.)

With the death of Saul and his three sons in the war against the Philistines and the
subsequent assassination of his fourth son, Ish-bosheth, the only male survivor of
Saul's house was the son of his first-born Jonathan – Mephibosheth -- who had
been a small child at the time of the Philistine war and who while being evacuated
by his nursemaid had fallen and injured both legs, leaving him permanently lame
(II Samuel 4:4, see RaDaK there). His lameness is symbolic of the collapse of
Saul's house.

It appears that Saul's family estate now legally belonged to king David because
Saul's son Ish-bosheth was MOREID BE-MALCHUS, a "traitor against the kingship",
since with Avner's encouragement he had acted as king despite the fact that all
Israel knew that Samuel had anointed David to be king after Saul. Under Torah law,
the estate of a traitor falls to the crown, and thus David's kindness to Mephibosheth
lay in returning the estate to the family, which he was not legally obliged to do (see
RaDaK on v 7). David thus appointed Tzeeva as APOTROPUS ("adult executor" or
"guardian") over Saul's estate for the benefit of the young Mephibosheth. Tzeeva
and Mephibosheth will enter the narrative again in II Samuel ch 16.

Chapter 10
After the death of Nahash king of Ammon, David wanted to "practice kindness" with
his son Hanoon – i.e. to send a delegation to comfort him in his mourning –
because "his father practiced kindness with me" (v 2). Nahash's "kindness" to David
lay in taking in the one member of his family who survived when the king of Moab
killed all the others after David had taken them there when he fled from Saul (I
Samuel 22:1-6; see Rashi on II Samuel 10:2).

The Torah commands Israel not to seek out the peace and goodness of the
Ammonites or Moabites "all your days forever" (Deut. 23:7) because far from
hospitably coming out with bread and water to help their Israelite cousins in their
journey from Egypt through the wilderness to their land, they even hired the
Aramean Bilaam to come and curse them.

The rabbis criticized David for showing kindness to those who were intrinsically
unkind, pointing out that it led only to a humiliation for David and his delegation
that escalated into a full scale war (see RaDaK on ch 10 v 2). [Similarly,
contemporary attempts to appease angry terrorists and their supporters have only
led to escalating terror and violence.]

The new Ammonite king's advisors convinced him that David – whom they
presumably perceived as a menacing expansionist – was seeking to spy on them in
order to prepare to incorporate them into his growing empire.

In view of the history of Jewish costume in the last few hundred years, it is
interesting to note that the humiliation which the Ammonites chose to inflict on the
Israelite delegation was to shave off their beards and cut their garments in half
over the buttocks. Similarly, in 19 th century Germany, the first acts carried out by
Jews wanting to dissociate themselves from traditional European Jewish culture
were the removal of their beards and the drastic shortening of their coats, turning
them into jackets that barely covered their buttocks, earning for Jews of German
origin until today the nickname of YEKERS ("short jackets").

Realizing that their blatant provocation of David was likely to elicit a very firm-
handed military response, the Ammonites repeated their ancestral ploy of calling in
help from Aram . Since the times of Bilaam, the Aramean clans had spread
westwards from Mesopotamia into the territories of modern-day Syria and Lebanon,
and the Ammonites summoned Aramean mercenaries from there to attack David's
forces from the rear when they advanced against the capital city of Ammon .

HOW DAVID'S MEN MADE WAR

The serious military crisis in which David's commander-in-chief Joab found himself
in the war with the Arameans and Israel's other enemies is reflected in Psalm 60.
The Ammonites intended to coordinate with the Arameans in order to stage a pincer
attack on the Israelite forces, who saw the war closing in on them "from in front
and from behind" (v 9). It is noteworthy that Joab did not merely raise his hands to
God and hope for the best: first he carried out his HISHTADLUS ("effort in the world
of practical action"), dividing the Israelite forces into two, sending his brother
Avishai against Ammon while he himself marched against the Arameans, who
because of their numbers and training were the more serious threat. Only after
making a pact of mutual support with Avishai (v 11) and giving him a powerful "pep
talk" on being courageous "for the sake of our people" (that they should not be
captured) and "for the sake of the cities of our God" (that they should not be
sacked) did Joab then entrust the outcome of their efforts into the hands of God (v
12).

This trusting believer's way of making war met with a positive outcome, and the
Arameans fled from Joab while the Ammonites fled from Avishai (v 13-14). Hadad-
ezer, the king of Aram Tzova (in the BIK'A of Lebanon) now sent for Aramean
reinforcements from east of the Euphrates, but David went out against them with
the entire Israelite army and forced the Arameans into submission (v 19). This
gave David's kingdom supremacy in the entire region, opening the way for the
conditions of peace in which the future builder of God's Temple in Jerusalem could
be born through the mysterious chain of events that is the subject of the ensuing
chapters.
 Chapter 11
"AND IT WAS AT THE RETURN OF THE YEAR…" (v 1)

Unlike traditions whose saints are presented as totally flawless halo-wearing

supermen, the Torah does not seek to hide the sins of even a Moses or a David.
The Torah testifies that Moses sinned once – and once only – by striking the rock
for water instead of speaking to it, for which he was strictly penalized by not being
allowed to lead the Children of Israel into their land (Numbers 20:12; Deut. 32:51).
Likewise the prophet does not spare even David, the Messianic king, who is not
some kind of perfect angel having no connection with the material world but a real
man of flesh and blood with very human desires and impulses. David is Messiah not
because he never sinned but because having sinned, he acknowledged his wrong-
doing and repented completely, and then went on to teach all mankind the path of
true repentance.

If David sinned, it was not the kind of gross carnal sin that average people stumble
into time and again. In the words of the rabbis, "Anyone who says that David
sinned is simply mistaken" (Shabbos 56a). We cannot expect to understand the
true nature of what for David on his level was a "sin", any more than we can clearly
understand anything else about the fathomless depths of the soul of Messiah. It
was in order for David to teach the world the path of repentance that there was
some kind of heavenly necessity for David to sin. Before trying to get a glimpse of
where his sin may have lain, let us first understand what it was NOT.

Rabbi Nachman of Breslov remarked that someone who does not understand why
the Land of Israel had to be in the hands of the Canaanite nations before it came
into the hands of the Children of Israel will also not be able to understand why
Batsheva had to be married to Uriah the Hittite before she was married to David
(Sichos HaRaN). From these words, we may infer that Batsheva was intended for
David – for it had been prophesied to him already that he was destined to have a
son who would build the Temple (II Samuel 7:12-13), and only a unique woman
could mother the wisest man that ever lived. (Batsheva proved her strength of
character in various ways, see I Kings 1:15ff; moreover, the Midrash says she had
no compunction about chastising Solomon even after he became king.)

The greatness of the TIKKUNIM ("repairs") that were destined to result from the
union of Batsheva with David was such that the two could only come together in a
manner overshadowed with darkness and mystery. David's sin was not the common
man's sin of going into a woman who is NIDDAH ("menstruant"), because Batsheva
was purifying herself in the Mikveh ("ritual pool") at the very moment when David
saw her (v 2). Nor does the fact that the text makes it appear she was married to
Uriah the Hittite mean that she was simply in the category of EISHES ISH ("a man's
wife"). Although on the surface it looks as if David was guilty of adultery, this is not
so. In David's time it was the practice of all men prior to going out to war to give
their wives a GET ("bill of divorce"). The purpose was to ensure that if the husband
went missing in the war, his wife would not become an AGUNAH ("anchored
women", unable to marry anyone else) and that if he was killed and left no children,
she would not be subjected to the humiliation of YIBUM or HALITZAH (levirate
marriage). Soldiers could thus wholly throw themselves into fighting the war
without having to worry what might happen to their wives if they lost their lives.
The formula of the GET followed the standard formula of a GET AL TENAI
("conditional divorce") that made the divorce retroactive to the time of the giving of
the GET in the event that the husband died in the war (Rashi on v 4; Talmud
Kesuvos 9b; Rambam, Laws of Divorce ch 8).
When Batsheva informed David that she had conceived, he sent for Uriah and
ordered him to go into Batsheva (v 8) so that when the child was born Uriah would
think it was his own, which would help cover up the scandal. It was only when
Uriah refused to go into Batsheva while his brother Israelites were fighting a war
that David contrived to have him killed. The death of Uriah in the war would cause
his GET to Batsheva come into effect retroactively, as explained above, meaning
that at the time of David's relations with her she was technically NOT a married
woman.

If the sin was NOT that Batsheva was a Niddah or a married woman at the time of
the relations, what was it??? Did David sin in ordering Joab to send Uriah to a
battle-position in the continuing Ammonite war in which he would certainly be
killed? Our rabbis teach that Uriah was indeed guilty of a capital offense in refusing
to carry out David's order to go into Batsheva. This made him MOREID BE-
MALCHUS ("a traitor to the kingship") the penalty for which is death.

Where David sinned was in contriving for Uriah to be killed in such a way as to
make it seem that he was merely a war casualty, whereas in fact David should have
taken Uriah before the Sanhedrin and had him publicly condemned to death
(Shabbos 56a). However David did not want to do this as it would have drawn
public attention to the questionable circumstances of his relations with Batsheva.

It was not that Batsheva was not meant for David and that he took what was not
his. The sin was that having caught a glimpse from his roof-top of the mother of
Solomon, he took her by force and tried to hide what he was doing instead of
waiting for God to bring her to him in the course of time. In this respect there is a
certain parallel between David's sin and that of Moses' impatiently striking the rock
for water instead of speaking to it.

Chapter 12
The real meaning of Nathan's reproof for David personally is not even our business.
The average individual cannot expect to grasp the exact nature of David's sin. The
prophet's reproof to the saintly David is directed at US, the average readers, who
are to learn from it how to recognize our own sins and how to repent in order to
rectify them. From verse 4, which successively refers to the rich man's visitor as a
HEILECH ("passer-by"), then an ORE'AH ("visitor") and finally an ISH ("man of
stature"), the rabbis learned out that the nature of the evil inclination is first to
drop in casually as a passer-by, then to install himself within us as a long-term
guest, until he finally takes over the entire house and acts as the BAAL HABAYIS
("owner of the house"; Succah 52b).

Nathan the prophet used the parable of the rich man's taking the poor man's lamb
in order to prompt David to see for himself where his sin lay and how he should be
punished. Had Nathan simply asked David to consider his behavior and ask himself
if he had done anything wrong, the king may have tried to rationalize away his
actions. Instead, Nathan told David a graphic story about somebody else's gross
behavior and asked him to give a quite impartial evaluation of this kind of behavior
that would not be colored by the need to justify himself. Rabbi Nachman (Likutey
Moharan I, 113) teaches that this is the method whereby God consults sinners
about how they should be punished. If He were to ask them directly about their
own behavior, they would never give an impartial reply and would always judge
themselves too leniently. He therefore shows them someone else's behavior which
is parallel to their own and then asks them how they judge it. According to their
evaluation of the other person's deeds and how they should be penalized, so God
judges and penalizes their own, and this is the meaning of the rabbinic statement
that "a person is punished with his knowledge (MI-DAATO) yet without his
knowledge" (SHELO MI-DAATO)" (Avos 3:16). We should be very careful when
looking at and judging the behavior of others in case we are unknowingly being
invited to decide our own fate.

In angrily demanding that the rich man pay fourfold, David sealed his own fate: he
suffered by losing four children – Batsheva's first baby, Amnon, Tamar and
Absalom (Rashi on v 6).

"Why have you despised the word of God to do evil in His eye?" (v 9). As explained
above, the evil was not that Batsheva was already married or that she was not
intended for David. The evil was that while knowing Batsheva was intended for him,
David still contrived to take her using subterfuge. If Batsheva had not been
intended for David, why after punishing him with the death of the baby did God
allow Batsheva to conceive and bear a child of whom our text states that "HaShem
LOVED him" (v 24)? According to the Midrash based on the KSIV "HE called" and
the KRI of "SHE called" in v 24, it was not Batsheva but God Himself who called the
child's name SHLOMO, which is also the Name of God throughout Song of Songs. If
David's relationship with Batsheva was inherently evil, how could it be that the one
who built God's very Temple was born as a result?

David acknowledged that he sinned (v 13), and he fully repented: Psalm 51 is

eloquent testimony to the depth and sincerity of David's repentance and his ability
to turn the very sin into merit by using it to teach others the path of repentance.
Whereas king Saul's sins led to his deposition from the kingship, David's kingship
was not undermined by his sin, which indeed added a new dimension to David's
Torah, showing that even a Tzaddik can sin and that even a Rasha (wicked person)
can repent.

With the birth of Solomon (who does not enter the narrative again until the very
end of David's life), the protracted war against the Ammonites came to an end with
David's capture and destruction of the capital city and his cruel punishment of the
Ammonites (v 31). This was particularly severe because the Ammonite god alluded
to in verse 30 ("the crown of MALKOM") and in the KSIV of verse 31 (MALKON as
opposed to the KRI of MALBEIN) is none other than MOLEKH, whose worship
through passing children through the fire is strictly proscribed by the Torah
(Leviticus 18:21, see RaDaK on II Samuel 12:1).

How David could have placed the crown of an idol on his own head when the
appurtenances of idolatry are normally strictly forbidden is explained by the rabbis
as having been made possible through the prior nullification of the Ammonite idol
by a non-Israelite (Talmud Avodah Zarah 44a). How David could have balanced a
such a heavy crown on his head (it weighed a talent of gold) is also discussed by
the rabbis, some of whom say that it had a magnet in it that caused the crown to
be self-suspended in the air! This is by no means the least of the weighty mysteries
embedded within the fathomless allegory of these chapters.

Chapter 13
After David's sin in taking Batsheva, Nathan the prophet had told him: "For so says
God: behold I will raise up evil against you from your HOUSE" (I Samuel 12:11).
Immediately afterwards and for the rest of his reign, David was afflicted with a
succession of intrigues, scandals and rebellions from within the royal household
itself. The rabbis said: "Harsher is the effect of bad upbringing of children in a
man's house than even the war of Gog and Magog" (Talmud Berachos 7b). The
rabbis learned this from king David's expression of pain in Psalm 3, "A song of
David when he fled from Absalom his son", while there is no similar expression of
pain in Psalm 2, which speaks of the war of Gog and Magog.

The rape of Absalom's sister Tamar, narrated in our present chapter, set off the
chain of events that eventually led to Absalom's later rebellion against David, in
which the latter came very near to losing the throne. After we heard in the previous
chapter about the birth of Solomon, what we see in the ensuing episodes in David's
life is how three of Solomon's older brothers excluded themselves one after the
other from the succession. In raping and then rejecting Tamar, Amnon, who was
David's first-born son from Achino'am the Jezreelitess (II Samuel 3:2), earned him
Tamar's brother Absalom's implacable hatred, resulting in Amnon's death. It was
David's rejection of Absalom in the aftermath of his killing of Amnon that led him to
rebel and try to seize the throne. Later on, at the very end of David's life, his fourth
son Adoniyahu tried to take the throne but was thwarted. Thus all other serious
contenders to the throne were rejected from the succession in favor of Solomon,
who was born out of the highly questionable union of David with Batsheva. Having
tried to cover over his own private scandal, David now had to face a succession of
public scandals.

According to Torah law, Amnon would have been permitted to marry Tamar,
because according to rabbinic tradition, Tamar was born from David's first union
with Ma'achah, daughter of Talmai king of Geshur (II Samuel 3:4). Ma'achah was a
YEFAS TO'AR (the "beautiful captive woman", Deut. 21:11), with whom an Israelite
warrior is allowed to have relations one time when he first captures her, but
thereafter he must abstain from all further physical relations with her until he
converts her and marries her as his full wife. Ma'achah had conceived Tamar from
her first union with David (and thus Tamar was not "born in holiness" and was not
an Israelite woman but had to convert), while Tamar's brother Absalom was
Ma'achah's son from David AFTER Ma'achah's conversion and formal marriage,
making Absalom a home-born Israelite.

Amnon, who was David's son from his first wife, Achino'am, was still permitted to
marry Tamar despite the fact that they both had the same father, because Tamar's
mother was in the category of a captive slave woman when she conceived Tamar,
and "slaves have no YICHUS" (pedigree), i.e. even the closest incest prohibitions do
not apply to freed slaves who convert even when biologically related with the
exception of the prohibition of a son marrying his mother or her immediate blood
relatives. The same technically applies to all gentile converts (Rambam, Laws of
Forbidden Relationships 14:13). Thus even though it was known that David was
Tamar's biological father, it still was halachically permitted for Amnon to marry her.

The rabbis taught: "In any case where love depends on something in particular,
when that something is no longer present, the love also goes away, whereas when
love is not conditional upon anything, it never goes away. What is an example of
love that depended on something? The love of Amnon for Tamar, while the example
of unconditional love is that of David and Jonathan" (Avos 5:16).

Despite the permissibility of Amnon's marrying Tamar, this was not what interested
him. He was infatuated with her beauty – she was, after all, the daughter of a
YEFAS TO'AR – and just as David had taken Batsheva by force, so Amnon contrived
to take Tamar by force.

Rambam writes (Hilchos Yesodey HaTorah, "Foundations of the Torah" 5:9): "If
someone has set his eyes on a woman and becomes so sick as a result that he is in
mortal danger, even if the doctors say he will not be able to be cured until he has
relations with her, he should die and she must not be allowed to have relations with
him even if she is unmarried. One may not even permit him to speak with her from
behind a barrier, and he should die rather than be permitted to speak to her in
order that the Daughters of Israel should not be HEFKER ('free for anyone to grab')
resulting in the breakdown of the incest prohibitions."

Thus it was very evil for David's nephew Yonadav to advise Amnon to contrive to
get Tamar to prepare him BAGELS (boiled-fried doughnuts) as a cure for his
sickness in order to be alone with her and rape her. Yonadav was "very wise" (v 3)
– "to do evil" (Avos d'Rabbi Nathan 9:4).

Unfortunately cases of cruel rape have today become so common that they have
ceased to cause shock and horror. However in earlier, more innocent times, the
Biblical account of Amnon's rape and subsequent betrayal of Tamar was considered
so shocking that in the days when the Bible was publicly studied in the Synagogues
and a METURGEMAN ("translator") would explain the text to the assembled people
in the Aramaic vernacular, he would refrain from publicly translating the story of
Amnon and Tamar (Rambam, Laws of Prayer 12:12). The only time the story would
be read publicly was in the Temple, when it was read to the SOTAH (a wife whose
loyalty had been called into question) to show her that sexual impropriety can take
place even among royalty in order to encourage her to confess (Rambam, Laws of
Sotah 3:2).

The only one who comes out clean from this story is Tamar herself, who was a
model of modesty. As an unmarried girl she would normally stay cloistered in the
home and it was precisely because Amnon knew he would never catch her alone
that he manipulated his father into ordering her to come to him to tend him in his
illness.

The rabbis say that after having raped her, the reason why Amnon suddenly hated
her more intensely than he had ever loved her was because during the act he
caught his member on one of her hairs and it was partially severed, disqualifying
him from entry to the Assembly (Deut. 23:2; Sanhedrin 21a).

Thus Tamar was ruined and Amnon was ruined, and "when king David heard all
these things it made him very angry" (v 21). Our rabbis taught that at that very
hour, king David and his BEIS DIN ("court") decreed the laws prohibiting YICHUD
("being alone together in private") between men and women even where both are
unattached and not forbidden to one another through incest prohibitions (Sanhedrin
21a; Rambam, Issurey Bi'ah 22:3).

Thus we see how a Biblical passage – the story of Amnon and Tamar – throws light
upon the reason for an institution that is one of the pillars of Torah sanctity and
modesty. Although the prohibition against YICHUD is MI-DERABANAN ("instituted
by the rabbis"), it is necessary to understand that the "rabbis" who instituted it
were not some kind of dark-coated medieval clerics: they were none other than
king David and his BEIS DIN!

Tamar's brother Absalom had good reason to feel aggrieved over the despicable
treatment of his sister by Amnon, but instead of making a public complaint to the
king over the matter, he hid his feelings and now contrived to take vengeance on
his older half-brother. We learn in the next chapter (ch 14 v 25) of Absalom's
perfect physical beauty – he too was the son of the same YEFAS TO'AR as Tamar –
and through his endearing presence combined with his skill in manipulation, he
succeeded in persuading David to send Amnon to take part in Absalom's
forthcoming sheep-shearing celebrations (ch 13 v 27). It is interesting that
Absalom ordered his servants to kill Amnon while the latter was drunk with wine,
because Absalom himself was a Nazirite (ch 14 v 26) and was not allowed to drink
wine himself.

The public assassination of the king's oldest son during a sheep-shearing

celebration caused consternation among the other members of the royal household,
who fled on their mules (see Bartenura on Mishneh Kil'ayim 8:1), while Absalom
fled to his mother's native country of Geshur, where his grandfather was the king.

CHAPTER 14
David longed for Absalom even more than a normal father longs for a son, because
David was king of Israel, and while Solomon's wives later "led him astray", David
surely hoped that his own fulfillment of the Biblical commandments, including that
of marrying the YEFAS TO'AR, would lead to the glorification of God and bring
righteous gentiles into the community. All the time that Absalom was back in his
mother's native, idolatrous Geshur, it was an affront to the very kingship of heaven
that David hoped to establish on earth.

THE WISE WOMAN OF TEKO'A

Joab had already been in trouble with David over the very same kind of cycle of
bloodshed and revenge that now afflicted the king, since Joab had killed Avner in
revenge for his having killed Joab's brother Asa'el, thereby invoking David's curse
for continuing the bloody war against the House of Saul.

Seeing that David was torn with longing for Absalom, Joab wanted to persuade the
king to re-instate him but felt unable to approach him directly (it cannot have been
easy to try to counsel a king David). Joab therefore turned to the mysterious
Woman from Teko'a in order to take Nathan the Prophet's method of clothing
reproof in allegory one step further. In Chapter 12 we saw how Nathan told David
the story of the Rich Man who stole the Poor Man's only lamb in order to reprove
him over his having taken Batsheva. Now Joab calls on a wise woman (rather
differently from the way Abner had taken Saul to the woman who raised the ghost
of Samuel) and Joab coaches her in pretending to be involved in a saga carefully
calculated to touch David's compassionate heart. The appearance of this Wise
Woman is reminiscent of certain other mysterious women who appear in the Bible
having the good sense to take dramatic action in order to reverse serious cycles of
violence in Israel . Another case is that of the woman who stopped the rampages of
Avimelech son of Gideon by smashing his head with a millstone (Judges 9:53): that
woman was specifically mentioned by Joab himself in II Samuel 11:21.

The town of Teko'a is in the territory of Judah south of Jerusalem a short distance
east of Efrat/Bethlehem. Teko'a was noted for its wonderful olive trees, and
because the locals habitually consumed the excellent olive oil, wisdom was found
among them (Menachos 85b).

The main point of the claim of the woman of Teko'a to David was that even though
one of her fictitious sons had killed the other, it was not legal for other members of
the family – as GO'EL HA-DAM ("avenger of the blood") – to continue the bloody
cycle by killing the killer, because as she pointed out, "there was no one to save
between them" (v 7) i.e. there had been NO WITNESSES to the original killing (see
RaDaK on v 6). She implied that the only reason why the other family members
wanted to kill the killer was to eliminate all her late husband's direct heirs and
thereby get their hands on his estate!
Having presented her parable in the form of the case of her two purported sons and
manipulated David into swearing he would save the "killer" (v 11), the Wise Woman
of Teko'a went on to use her artful eloquence to show David that Absalom should
likewise be reinstated without being punished for the killing of Amnon, because
there had been no witnesses to prove that he was responsible. "For we shall surely
die, and like the waters that are drawn down towards the ground and cannot be
gathered again, so God will not take bribes but He thinks up thoughts so that even
one rejected will not be rejected by Him" (v 14). The Wise Woman of Teko'a was
appealing to David to leave Absalom alone and let God decide whether he deserved
punishment or not. Having sworn to her, David could not backtrack from his oath
and agreed to allow Joab – whose hand he quickly recognized in all this – to recall
Absalom to Jerusalem, although he would not admit him into his presence.

The return of the aggrieved Absalom laid the ground for his subsequent rebellion
against David, for which he patiently and skillfully prepared by nagging Joab
repeatedly for several years to give him admission to David. When Joab did not
respond, Absalom showed his manipulative skills by telling his servants to burn
Joab's barley crop (v 30), forcing him to go to David to plead for Absalom's
reinstatement, to which David agreed.

In verse 27 of our present chapter we learn that Absalom had three sons, while in
II Samuel 18:18 we are told that he had none. The rabbis reconciled this apparent
contradiction through the tradition that Absalom's sons died as a punishment for his
burning Joab's crops, because "anyone who burns his neighbor's crops does not
leave a son to inherit him" (Sotah 11a).

Chapter 15
Verse 7 of our present chapter dates Absalom's rebellion "AT THE END OF FORTY
YEARS". This cannot mean at the end of forty years of David's reign, since he
reigned for only forty years altogether while the ensuing narrative deals with
numerous events that took place after the quelling of the rebellion. Thus our rabbis
stated that this verse means "forty years from the time the Children of Israel first
asked Samuel for a king" (Talmud Temurah 15a). For one year thereafter Samuel
reigned jointly with Saul, after which Saul reigned alone for 2 years. "At the end of
forty years" thus brings us to the thirty-seventh year of David's reign, three years
before he died.

The closing years of David's reign were thus wracked with troubles, of which
Absalom's rebellion was one of the most serious, coming very close to succeeding.

Absalom was the archetype of the self-seeking, power hungry narcissist whose evil
eye was turned against his father's kingship (see Likutey Moharan I, 55). Absalom
built his power-base in precisely the same way as a populist politician, telling
everyone exactly what they wanted to hear. He would give everyone who was
aggrieved and disenchanted the feeling that he was totally on his side and would
give him his full support, subtly smearing the established regime as being
indifferent to people's suffering (vv 3-4). Like present day political campaigners,
Absalom literally went around hugging and kissing the crowds (v 5).

This was how "Absalom stole the heart of the men of Israel ". "Stealing the heart"
is the same as what in rabbinic literature is called GENEVAS DA'AS, "stealing the
mind" by craftily deceiving other people into thinking exactly what one wants them
to think. The Talmud comments that Absalom "stole" THREE hearts: that of his
father David, that of the Beis Din (the court of law) and that of all Israel , and he
therefore died having THREE stakes driven into his heart Sotah 9b).
Absalom deceived his unsuspecting father into allowing him to go to Hebron , the
very heartland of Judah , where he staged a carefully contrived plot to spring a
sudden coup d'etat on everyone. Rashi (on v 11) brings a midrash from the
Jerusalem Talmud Sotah stating that Absalom asked David to give him a written
slip ordering any two men that he invited to go with him to do so. Absalom kept
showing the same slip to more and more pairs of men, until he ended up with a
most impressive band of men following behind him.

Absalom's greatest "catch" was Achitophel, who emerges as another mysterious,

sinister, outstanding Torah genius somewhat reminiscent of Doeg HaAdomi in his
power to cause harm. Not only was Achitophel the leading sage and counselor of
the time, whose advice to Absalom – had it been followed – would certainly have
led to the defeat of David. Even more surprising is that Achitophel was actually the
grandfather of David's own wife, Batsheva! Batsheva's father, Eli-am (II Samuel
11:3), was the son of Achitophel (II Samuel 23:34). The rabbis taught that it was
Achitophel's own MAZAL ("destiny") that deceived him into siding with Absalom.
Achitophel thought that he himself was going to be king, and intended to trick
Absalom into killing David in order that Achitophel would be able to condemn him in
the Sanhedrin and thereby depose him. What Achitophel did not understand was
that the kingship was not destined to come to himself but to his daughter
Batsheva's son Solomon.

DAVID'S FLIGHT

Absalom's "coup d'etat" put David in extreme danger. Realizing that Absalom's flaw
was that of turning MALCHUS, "kingship" into ARROGANT SELF-SEEKING, David
took refuge in the opposite quality of supreme humility, taking his entire household
on foot from Jerusalem into self-imposed exile.

David evidently did not believe that he had the power to overcome Absalom's
nation-wide rebellion even in his own capitol city. Instead he made for the east
bank of the Jordan (Gil'ad) where the Israelite population owed a debt of gratitude
to David for providing them with security through his successful campaigns against
the neighboring peoples of Mo'ab and Ammon.

David went into exile accompanied by a sizeable contingent including his "mighty
warriors (ch 16 v 16), "all the KEREISY ('archers') and all the PELEISI ('slingers')"
and "six hundred men that came on foot from Gath ", who may have been Philistine
mercenaries. The rabbis state that the KEREISY and PELEISI actually allude to the
Urim VeThumim (Talmud Berachos 4a): even in his hour of dire crisis, David sought
guidance only from God. The rabbis teach that David first turned to Eviatar the High
Priest to ask guidance from the Urim VeThumim, but Eviatar received no answer
and was thus deposed from being High Priest. This was in accordance with God's
decree, as Eviatar came from the rejected line of Eli the Priest, who was descended
from Aharon's fourth son, Ithamar. It was then that Tzadok, who was from the line
of Aharon's third son, Elazar, became High Priest (RaDaK on v 23).

David ordered Tzadok to take the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem, where in
fact the priests would be able to spy on Absalom for David's benefit. And "if I find
favor in the eyes of God, he will bring me back and show me the Ark and its resting
place. And if He says thus, 'I do not desire you', here I am, let Him do to me as is
good in His eyes" (vv 25-26). Thus David surrendered himself to God completely,
praying that He should thwart Achitophel's counsel (v 31).
 Chapter 16
Even in his hour of supreme crisis, David had certain allies and helpers who proved
themselves true friends in his time of need.

One who was less than truthful, however, was Tziva (ch 16 v 1), who certainly
owed a debt of gratitude to David for having appointed him manager/director over
all the estates of Saul for the benefit of the late king's only surviving grandson,
Mephiboshes, as told in I Samuel ch 9. When Tziva now arrived in the wilderness
with badly needed supplies of food for David and his men, he answered David's
question about the whereabouts of Mephiboshes by accusing him of having stayed
in Jerusalem with the intention of using the upheaval caused by Absalom's rebellion
to take back the throne for the House of Saul. According to the rabbis, this was
LASHON HARA (unwarranted slander) on the part of Tziva, yet David accepted it
(Talmud Shabbos 56a). Under the influence of this slander, David awarded
Mephiboshes' estate to Tziva (which is presumably exactly what the latter intended),
but later Mephiboshes was to come to David to argue that he was innocent (II
Samuel 19:25).

THE CURSES OF SHIMI BEN GERA

Shimi ben Gera , who came out cursing David in his flight and throwing stones and
mud on the king and his men, was far from being some lowly foul-mouthed ruffian.
He was a prominent member of the family of Saul as well as head of the Sanhedrin
(Rashi on ch 16 v 10). He execrated David as "a man of blood" (v 7), accusing him
of having engineered the deaths of Saul's son Ish-Bosheth and his commander-in-
chief, Avner as well having killed in order to take Batsheva (see RaDaK on v 7).

Shimi ben Gera's insults were intended to further increase David's pain and
humiliation, yet when Avishai asked David for permission to strike him down, David
refused, teaching that even though this humiliation was coming to him through the
instrumentality of a human being, in fact it was God who had put Shimi ben Gera
up to it and that it would be better for David to bear the humiliation with patience
than to rebel against God's chastisement. It is indeed a great level to be able to
discern the hand of God in the suffering that comes to us through other people.
David prayed that God would see his humble resignation and pay him back with
goodness in exchange for bearing these curses (v 12).

HUSHAI THE ARCHI

Various characters enter our narrative about whom we have little or no

supplementary information from other sources. Among these are Hushi HaArchi (ch
15 v 32), who was apparently one of David's leading advisors yet succeeded in
entering into Absalom's innermost circle of advisors as David's "plant", and in that
position he was indeed able to thwart Achitophel's counsel, thus saving David's
kingship from collapse (Yalkut Shimoni).

ACHITOPHEL'S ADVICE

When Achitophel advised Absalom to go into his father's concubines, he was not
telling him to commit an actual sin. Under the Torah laws of forbidden incest
relationships, for Absalom to have relations with his father's concubines was not
technically a sin, because it is only a woman who is formally married to a father
that is forbidden to his son: the prohibition of marrying a father's wife does not
apply to a woman RAPED or SEDUCED by the father (ANUSAS or MEFUTAS AVIV)
and the PILEGESH ("concubine") comes into this category (Yevamos 11:1, see
RaDaK on II Samuel 12:11).

The reason why Achitophel advised Absalom to go into his father's concubines was
because only a public demonstration of this order would convince the people that
Absalom was fully determined to carry his rebellion through relentlessly to the very
end. Had people thought that he was not serious, they would have abandoned him.
The Torah law of kings forbids anyone except the new king from taking the wives of
a former king for himself. Going into David's concubines was thus Absalom's way of
publicly asserting his ascent to the throne, which was an act so treasonable that
David would never be able to make peace with him.

Chapter 17
Having advised Absalom to go in to his father's concubines in order to force an all-
out conflict, Ahitophel now offered his second piece of advice – that Absalom should
send him with a strong army to hunt down David IMMEDIATELY before he had a
chance to get far away and muster more forces. Ahitophel promised a swift,
decisive operation that would avoid unnecessary bloodshed – and his advice would
have been accepted and would undoubtedly have proved effective except that "God
commanded to thwart the counsel of Ahitophel" (v 14), for God was with David,
despite chastising him so sorely.

As we read in ch 15 vv 32ff, David had planted his other outstanding advisor, Hushi
Ha-Archi, in Absalom's court, and Hushi skillfully undermined Ahitophel's plan for
IMMEDIATE action by proposing a far larger operation LATER ON, thus gaining time
for David to make his escape from the Jerusalem region. Carefully reminding
Absalom of David's great strength and courage and raising specters of a set-back
for the pursuers that could radically demoralize Absalom's army, Hushi appealed to
his vanity in proposing that the entire nation should gather so that he would be
able to march proudly at the head of a great Israelite army (see Rashi on v 11).

This idea was highly attractive to Absalom, who went cold on Ahitophel's idea of
going off himself immediately to finish the job in a low-profile way. Thus while
Absalom began to dream of his coming glory, Hushai sent inside information from
Absalom's court using the sons of the two high priests as runners. Having heard
Ahitophel's advice to go in hot pursuit, Hushai urged David to make as quick a
getaway from the region as possible in case Absalom changed his mind again.

Having much earlier in his life had to flee from the persecutions of King Saul, David
once again found himself in flight – this time to escape his own son! Chapter 15 vv
23-30 traced David's escape from the city of Jerusalem prior to Absalom's arrival
there. David had then crossed over the Kidron Valley (directly to the east of the
Temple Mount) and climbed up the Mount of Olives (from where he could still gaze
back upon the Tent of the Ark of the Covenant). Chapter 16 then narrated his
journey to Bahurim, a Benjaminite town a little south of Jerusalem, from which
Shim'I ben Gera went out to curse and stone him. During this time Absalom had
arrived in Jerusalem and went into David's concubines, after which Ahitophel
wanted to go straight after David. This was when Hushai advised David to flee the
Jerusalem area altogether, and David now went eastwards past Jericho to the
Jordan, which he crossed as told in our present chapter v 22. He then advanced
northwards into Gil'ad (the generic term for the territories of the tribes of Reuven,
Gad and half Menasheh east of the Jordan) to the city of Mahanayim .

The mark of a wise man is that he sees what is developing (Avos 2:9), and
Ahitophel saw that with his own advice unheeded, Absalom would be unable to
overcome the mighty warrior David. Ahitophel realized that as soon as David was
restored to the kingship, he himself would be first in the firing line for treason. He
therefore went to his home in Gilo (after which the present-day south-Jerusalem
suburb of Gilo is named owing to its proximity to the original town), delivered his
last will and testament to his children (telling them to keep out of MAHLOKES,
"conflict", not to rebel against the kingship of the House of David, and to use the
sign of a clear summer's day on the festival of Shavuos to know that the wheat
crop will be successful, Bava Bastra 147a) and then hanged himself.

David's escape to Gil'ad forced Absalom to take his forces out of the Land of Israel
proper to the less favorable territories east of the Jordan, where David was
receiving reinforcements and abundant supplies of food (vv 27-29).

Chapter 18
In Mahanayim, David marshaled his forces and followed the classic strategy known
from the times of the judges of dividing them into three. David was ready to go out
to battle (v 2) but the people would not hear of this, advising him to stay in the city
to pray for their success.

We suddenly see a picture of David at the age of 67 – the old king – no longer
going out to battle but yielding to the will of the people and watching over their
fortunes from the city.

David's love and compassion for Absalom despite his having rebelled and now being
in hot pursuit of him – defy reason, just as does the love of any father for a
miscreant son. David no doubt saw to the very roots of Absalom's soul and still
hoped a way could be found to rescue him from the hell awaiting him because of
his rebellion, so that, in the words of the Wise Woman of Teko'a, "even the rejected
shall not be rejected from Him" (II Sam. 14:14). Thus David begged his generals to
go easy with Absalom if they found him (v 5).

"And the war was in the Forest of Ephraim" (v 6). Rashi (ad loc.) asks, "How come
Ephraim had a forest on the east bank of the Jordan when the only tribes who
received a share there were Gad, Reuven and Menasheh? The answer is that one of
the conditions on which Joshua gave the tribes their portions in the Land was that
anyone from any tribe could graze their flocks in any forest. The forest in question
was near to the territories of Ephraim except that it was on the other side of the
river Jordan, and they used to graze their animals there, which is why it was called
the Forest of Ephraim ."

From the description of the forces gathered on both sides, we can build a picture of
the magnitude of this civil war between David and his supporters on the one hand
and Absalom and all Israel, including Judah, on the other. As Absalom's
commander-in-chief to replace Joab (who was with David), he had appointed
Amasa, who was married to David's OWN SISTER (ch 17 v 25, where Nahash =
Yishai/Jesse, who was so called because he was one of the four who died not
because of sin but purely because of the "bite of the serpent": Nahash = "serpent",
Talmud Bava Basra 17a).

Despite Absalom's impressive line-up of all Israel and the leaders of Judah, God
was against him and his forces were ravaged by the wild animals of the forest
(Targum on v 8).
One of the most famous scenes in the Bible is the specter of the mule-riding
Absalom getting his Nazarite's long hair hopelessly entangled in the branches of a
great tree, leaving him "suspended between heaven and earth as the mule passed
on from under him" (v 9). Had Absalom taken his sword to cut his hair, he might
have escaped, but only at the cost of violating his Nazirite vow. The rabbis stated
that he drew his sword and saw Gehennom open underneath him! (Sotah 10b
brought by Rashi on v 9). The very hair about which Absalom had been so vain now
proved to be his undoing! (RaDaK on v 9)

David – the distraught, loving father – had pleaded with his generals to go easy on
his rebel son, but Joab had no patience for the aged king and his illusions that
Absalom might somehow be rehabilitated. Joab knew that Absalom would be a
terrible danger to David as long as he was alive. When the soldier who found
Absalom refused to kill him, Joab himself went and drove three stakes into his heart
(in revenge for Absalom's having stolen the hearts of David, the Law Court and all
Israel) while Joab's ten attendants (corresponding to the ten concubines of David
whom Absalom went into) finally put him to death.

Yad Avshalom – the Monument of Absalom mentioned in v 18 -- is identified with

the famous, impressive and much-photographed carved stone monument that can
be seen in the Kidron valley until today.

The news of Absalom's death, which spelled the end of the rebellion, had to be
taken to David, but Joab knew that he would take it very hard, and in trying to
dissuade the swift-footed priest Ahima'atz from going to tell the king (vv 19-23),
Joab teaches that one should avoid telling bad news and always strive to relay good
news.

Chapter 19
"And the king raged" (v 1). David was beside himself with grief over the loss of
Absalom, whom he still loved in spite of everything. The rabbis state that with the
first seven of his eight repetitions of "My son, my son" (verses 1 & 5), David
elevated Absalom's soul from all seven levels of hell, and with the eighth, he
brought him to the life of the world to come (Sotah 10b brought by Rashi on v 1).

David's grief put a complete damper on the joy that should have accompanied his
restoration to the kingship, and when the people returned to Mahanayim from the
battlefield, they slunk back into the city feeling like exposed thieves.

Joab, who had born the main brunt of the actual battle against Absalom, had no
patience for David's orgy of grief over a son who had not only rebelled against him
but had almost killed him. Joab berated the king for "loving your enemies and
hating those who love you" (v 7). Joab threatened David with a far worse rebellion
if he refused to pull out of his mourning and pacify the people. David acceded and
held his peace against his ever-more assertive commander-in-chief, but already
had in mind to replace him and immediately prior to his own death ordered
Solomon to take vengeance on Joab (I Kings 2:5-16).

With the collapse of Absalom's rebellion, the tribes of Israel and the tribe of Judah –
neither of which had exactly given their support to David – now began bickering
over who should have the honor of restoring him to the kingship. The people were
returning to their senses, realizing that David had been the national savior while
Absalom had contributed nothing and was now dead (v 10). Nevertheless, as we
will soon see, these new-found feelings of loyalty to David were to prove short-lived,
showing the people's great fickleness.

David sent Tzadok and Eviatar, (who had been serving as High Priests concurrently
after Eviatar's failure to elicit an answer from the Urim Ve-Thumim) to sue for
reconciliation with his own tribe of Judah after their having gone after Absalom.
True to character, David particularly sought reconciliation with Amasa, despite his
having served Absalom as commander-in-chief (ch 17 v 25). David now wanted to
appoint him as his own commander-in-chief in place of Joab.

As the tribe of Judah accompanied David back across the Jordan into the Land of
Israel proper, he was greeted with a succession of delegations. First came Shimi
ben Gera , the Benjaminite who had cursed and stoned David on his flight from
Jerusalem (ch 16 vv 5ff) and who now wanted to apologize in order to save his own
skin. Joab's brother Avishai wanted to kill Shimi ben Gera, but once again David
dissociated himself from the "trigger-happy" sons of Tzeruyah and forgave Shimi –
though he later instructed Solomon to take vengeance on him (I Kings 2:8-9). The
Midrash states that David saved Shimi because he saw with holy spirit that
Mordechai was destined to come forth from Shimi's loins and save Israel from
extermination. From Esther 2:5 we see that Mordechai was descended from Shimi!
(Yalkut Shimoni).

Following Shimi came Tziva, the servant of the House of Saul whom David had
appointed executor/manager of Saul's estates for the benefit of his grandson
Mephiboshes, and who had slandered Mephiboshes to David claiming that he failed
to join David in his flight because he was hoping to seize the throne for himself (ch
16 vv 1-4). The lame Mephiboshes now came to greet David literally disheveled
because of his consternation over David's plight, and claiming that Tziva had
deceived him. When David ordered that the estate be divided between Tziva and
Mephiboshes, a heavenly voice declared that his own kingdom would therefore be
torn apart and divided between his grandson Rehaboam and the rebel king of the
Ten Tribes, Jeraboam (Talmud Yoma 22b).

Barzilai the Gil'adite who escorted David across the Jordan had no need to make
any apologies to David, having been one of his chief supporters when he fled to
Mahanayim (ch 14 v 27). Yet when David invited Barzilai to accompany him back to
Jerusalem and live in the court, Barzilai argued that he was too old to enjoy the life
of the court because he longer felt any taste in his food and couldn't hear the
singing properly. The Talmud cites Barzilai as the exemplar of senility but states
that senility jumped on him prematurely owing to excessive self-indulgence (he
mentioned the female singers) yet is not inevitable in old age, citing the case of an
old maid in the house of R. Judah the Prince who even at the age of 92 still
regularly checked the taste of the food as it cooked in the pot (Talmud Shabbos
152a).

Having crossed the Jordan into the Land of Israel proper, David arrived in Gilgal,
where arguments broke out between the men of Israel (the Ten Tribes) and the
men of Judah over whether the latter had been justified in being the first to escort
David back. Considering that neither side had given David their support against
Absalom, their arguments seem somewhat fatuous: each side was hurt and ruffled
over being upstaged by the other, and the Israelites' protestations of loyalty to
David soon proved disingenuous when they angrily went after Sheva ben Bichri
instead, as narrated immediately afterwards.
 Chapter 20
"And all the men of Israel went up from going after David and went after Sheva ben
Bichri" (v 2). Although the rebellion of Sheva ben Bichri, who was a relative of King
Saul, takes up far less of the narrative than that of Absalom, David considered it to
be potentially far more serious (v 6).

There is some evidence of cracks in the unity of David's supporters. Having sent his
new candidate for commander-in-chief, Amasa, to muster the tribe of Judah, David
soon discovered that Amasa had no intention of rushing into action because he
failed to bring troops within the three day time-limit he had been given. David
immediately dispatched Joab's brother Avishai against Sheva ben Bichri. Joab saw
this as a further step towards his own displacement and personally went out with
the troops after the rebels, intending to take matters into his own hands. Meeting
the unsuspecting Amasa on the way, Joab once again demonstrated his "trigger-
happy" attitudes and killed him in vengeance for his having supported Absalom and
in order to secure his own position.

With David's men in pursuit, Sheva ben Bichri advanced towards the north of Israel ,
arousing all the tribes against David as he went. The town of Aveil Beis Ma'achah
where Joab caught up with him (v 14) is near the northern border of present-day
Israel between Metulla and Kfar Giladi, while the "Beirim" whom he recruited to his
cause (ibid.) are thought to have lived in the town of Biryiah immediately north of
Safed.

THE WISE WOMAN OF AVEIL BEIS MA'ACHAH

Once again a mysterious wise woman suddenly appeared just in time to save Israel
from needless bloodshed by calling to Joab from the walls of Aveil Beis Ma'achah as
he laid siege to the town in order to capture Sheva ben Bichri. The sages identified
this wise woman with Serah, daughter of Asher the son of Jacob, who is credited
with having sung to Jacob that Joseph was still alive and with having helped Moses
discover where Joseph's coffin had been hidden in the Nile when the time came to
take it up out of Egypt. Serah daughter of Asher was among those who entered the
Land with Joshua, and would now have been very many hundreds of years old.
Those who find their belief being stretched beyond limits may rationalize that the
ancient SPIRIT of the wise Serah spoke through the lips of the mysterious wise
woman of Aveil Beis Ma'achah. "ANOKHI SH'LOOMEY EMOONEY YISRAEL" – "I am
from among the complete believers of Israel" (v 19). This woman was the inner
soul of the long-suffering people, appealing to Joab for an end to the cycle of
bloodshed. She wanted him to understand that the inhabitants of the town
harbored no traitorous feelings against David. In her words to Joab in v 18 – "Let
them surely ask in Aveil and they would certainly make peace" – she alluded to the
Torah law that when an Israelite army makes war against a gentile city, they
should first offer them peace (Deut. 20:10). How much more so, then, should Joab
invite the Israelite inhabitants of Aveil to make peace!

The wise woman persuaded the inhabitants to deliver Sheva ben Bichri to Joab
because otherwise the entire town would be killed. Normally if someone threatens
to kill all the members of a group unless they hand over one of their number, it is
forbidden to do so, because "we do not cast off one soul in order to save another".
However, "if the designated individual deserves the death penalty like Sheva ben
Bichri, they should give him over, though we do not issue such a ruling from the
outset. However, if he does not deserve the death penalty they should all die rather
than hand over a single Israelite soul" (Rambam, Yesodei HaTorah 5:5).
With the delivery of Sheva ben Bichri's head to Joab, the revolt was at an end and
now that David's kingship was reestablished, our text concludes by enumerating his
principal officers.

Chapter 21
Our present chapter is highly opaque allegory which can be unraveled only partially
with the help of the Midrash of the Rabbis.

"And there was famine in the days of David for three years" (v 2). As the narrative
draws towards the conclusion of the history of David, it shows how he settled all
outstanding accounts in his lifetime. David understood that the cause of the famine
lay in some national moral flaw and sought out God to show him what it was.

According to the rabbinic interpretation of v 1 as brought by Rashi, the flaw related

to Saul but had two somewhat different sides to it. On the one hand, Saul had
never been properly buried and eulogized because of the national panic that
followed his defeat by the Philistines. This was a flaw in the honor due to the
kingship. On the other hand, Saul himself had caused a flaw through his "killing" of
the Gibeonites. The Gibeonites were the Canaanite inhabitants of the town of
Gibeon , who had tricked Joshua and the princes of the Tribes into making an oath
to protect them even though they were forbidden to make a covenant with the
Canaanites (Joshua ch 9). On discovering the trick, Joshua turned the Gibeonites
into a caste of Temple wood-hewers and water-drawers, but he was unable to
nullify the oath of protection because of the desecration of God's Name that would
be caused by Israel's failure to keep an oath even if extracted by trickery.

Some rabbis held that when Saul slaughtered the Cohanim (priests) of Nov for
aiding David (I Samuel ch 22), this cut off the livelihood they provided to the
Gibeonites, which was considered tantamount to killing them. Other rabbis held
that during the massacre in Nov, Saul actually did kill two Gibeonite hewers of
wood, two drawers of water, an attendant, a manager and a scribe (Rashi on v 1).
Either way, this was considered a breach of Israel's oath of protection of the
Gibeonites, and now the Gibeonites demanded justice. They were in the position of
GO'EL HADAM ("redeemer of the blood") of their fallen compatriots – and they were
implacable. They demanded to be given seven members of Saul's household to kill
in vengeance for the seven dead Gibeonites, and because of their cruel insistence,
verse 2 says that "the Gibeonites were not from the Children of Israel" – implying
that they lacked the three defining characteristics of Israel: compassion,
bashfulness and kindness (Talmud Yevamos 79a).

David agreed to give over seven members of Saul's house in order that justice
should not only be done but should also be seen to have been done. Although our
text states that five of the seven were the sons of Michal, Saul's younger daughter,
our rabbis taught that they were actually the sons of his older daughter Meirav,
since it was she and not Michal who was married to Adri-el (v 8, see I Samuel
18:19). However, since Michal foster-mothered these children after the death of
Meirav, they were accounted as Michal's children, teaching the great merit of
fostering orphans (Talmud Sanhedrin 19b).

The Torah forbids leaving the bodies of hanged criminals overnight, let alone for six
months (Deut. 21:23), but in this case a great KIDDUSH HASHEM ("Sanctification
of God's Name") came about when gentile passers-by saw the bodies and asked
why they were there. When they were told that they had been hanged to make
amends for Saul's breach of the Israelite covenant with the Gibeonites, the gentiles
were so impressed by the Israelite respect for their oath that 150,000 converted (1
Kings 5:29, Talmud Yevamos 79a).

Through the righteousness of Saul's concubine Ritzpah daughter of Ayah in camping

out by the bodies and driving away the predatory vultures, the bodies were
preserved intact for over six months from the time of the barley harvest (Nissan)
until the rains came (Heshvan). The downfall of rain after three years of famine
showed that the flaw had been rectified (Metzudas David on v 10), and the bones of
the seven members of Saul's house were taken for burial together with the bones
of Saul and Jonathan. The state funeral that was now held for the latter rectified
the affront to their honor in not having been properly buried and mourned
immediately after their death on the battlefield.

We may thus infer that although Saul fell because he failed to extirpate Amalek,
this did not make him a "bad" king. On the contrary, Saul had been an outstanding
Tzaddik, a mighty warrior and a savior of his people, and the establishment of
David's kingship was only complete when the proper respect was shown to Saul and
any remaining flaws were rectified. As for the Gibeonites, while Joshua had banned
them from marrying into the Assembly of Israel only when the Temple stood, David
added to the ban and forbade them to marry into the Assembly even when there
was no Temple (RaDaK on v 1). Because of their display of cruelty, they were thus
permanently excluded from the Assembly of Israel.

"And there was more war with the Philistines" (v 15). "And it was afterwards that
there was more war in Gov with the Philistines" (v 18). "There is no before and
afterwards in the Torah": these wars with the Philistines had taken place earlier in
David's reign (Rashi on v 18) and are mentioned here in order to complete the
story of the killing of the four giant sons of "Harafa" (="the giantess"), whom the
rabbis identified with Orpah, daughter-in-law of Naomi and sister-in-law of David's
great grandmother, Ruth (Talmud Sotah 42b; see commentary on I Samuel ch 17).
These four giants allude to impure kelipos ("husks") which Mashiach has to crush.

"…and David was faint. And Yishbi in Nov…" (vv 15-16). Some rabbis said that the
actual name of this giant was Yishbi BeNov, while others said that David had to face
Yishbi BECAUSE OF NOV – i.e. because he himself had been responsible for Saul's
slaughter of the priests of Nov since he had fled to the Sanctuary there, causing the
priests to be accused of treason. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 95) has a lengthy and
very colorful aggadah about David's mysterious encounter with Yishbi, in which he
was very nearly killed. Through a kind of telepathic message, Avishai realized that
David was in extreme danger and went rushing off to save. On the way he
succeeded in killing Orpah, which devastated Yisbhi, and Avishai then rescued
David through the invocation of God's name.

Although verse 19 attributes the killing of Goliath to "Elhanan ben Ya'arei Orgim",
the Rabbis identify the latter with David himself, who was said to be "son of the
forests of the weavers" because his family wove curtains for the Temple, which is
called a "forest" (Rashi on v 19). Since we know from I Samuel ch 17 that it was
David who killed Goliath, the use of another name for him in our present passage is
an indication that cryptic verses such as this were included in the text for the sake
of the midrashic teachings that derive from them.

Chapter 22
"And David spoke the words of this song on the day God saved him from the hand
of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul" (v 1). David had enemies all around
him throughout his life, but none of them was more formidable than Saul, because
of his very saintliness. Nevertheless, God saved David from all his enemies, and at
the end of his days he sang this paean of praise over his complete delivery.

Our present text is virtually identical with Psalm 18 except for a number of very
minor differences in phraseology. This is the song of the soul of Mashiach, which
endures the most terrible protracted danger and darkness, being subjected to the
breaking waves of death itself and the terrifying floods of wickedness (v 5).
Nevertheless, God is his "rock, fortress, refuge, mountain, shield, horn of salvation,
high place, place of succor and savior from HAMAS" (v 3) [HAMAS=violent injustice,
as in the case of present-day HAMAS.] David fortifies himself with expression after
expression signifying his unshakable faith in the rock-solid saving power of God.

Out of his pain, Mashiach CRIES OUT to God, and God HEARS and RESPONDS. All
of the elements of creation surge forth to protect Mashiach: the EARTH rages and
foams with volcanic fury (v 8). The skies rage with smoke and FIRE (v 9). God rides
and swoops on the wings of the WIND=AIR (v 11) and swathes Himself with thick
clouds of WATER (v 12). All creation fights on behalf of the soul of Mashiach, for
whom the very Red Sea had split (v 16, see Rashi).

David testifies that God saved him because of his great purity and righteousness.
He has the attributes of the three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who are
alluded to in verse 26. God himself teaches David how to fight and conquer all his
enemies. This is because "I hate those who hate You" (Psalms 139:21). David
hated falsehood and loved God's Torah (Psalms 119:163). It is this that brings
David victory until all the world will come to serve him – for to serve Mashiach is to
work for the glory of God.

This song is David's, but it is said for every one of us, giving expression to the
Messianic "point" contained within each one of us, which prompts us to pursue
justice and righteousness for the sake of God and for the repair of the entire world.

* * * II Samuel 22:1-54 is read as the Haftara of Parshas Ha-azeenu, Deuteronomy

32:1-52, and also as the Haftara on the Seventh Day of Pesach * * *

Chapter 23
"AND THESE ARE THE LAST WORDS OF DAVID" (v 1)

This verse is rendered by the Targum as: "These are the words of the prophecy of
David that he prophesied about the end of the world and the days of comfort that
are destined to come…" David testified that his words came not through his own
wisdom and intelligence but through "prophecy" – holy spirit. This final prophecy of
David (vv 1-7) is very dense and highly allusive. In effect it is David's own self-
composed "epitaph" summarizing his status and achievements. In the same breath
he calls himself "David son of Yishai" and "the anointed one of the God of Jacob " (v
1), as if to say that prophecy never left him from the time that he was David the
lowly shepherd until he became God's anointed Mashiach (Metzudas David).

"Says the man that was raised up (HOOKAM ' AL)" (v 1). The Talmud darshens that
David raised (HEIKIM) the yoke ('OL) of repentance, because having repented even
after his serious sin with Batsheva, he showed the wicked that anyone can repent
no matter how serious his sins (Avoda Zara 5a, Yalkut Shimoni). The word ' AL in
the verse has the numerical value of 100 (Ayin 70 + Lamed 30), corresponding to
David's institution of the requirement to recite 100 blessings every day. (These
include all the daily morning blessings, the blessings over Psukey DeZimra and over
the morning and evening Shema, the thrice-repeated Shmonah Esray, the blessings
before and after eating, etc.) David instituted these blessings in order to rectify the
ignorance of the people of his generation about the Temple that had to be built
(Bamidbar Rabbah 18) – for the Temple is "built" out of prayers and blessings. This
ignorance was the root cause of the terrible plague described in the next chapter.
David's whole concern was to prepare for the Temple, and he merited being the
"sweet singer of Israel" (v 1): it was the songs of David that were sung ever after
in the Temple services.

As ruler over his people, David was unique, because the purpose of his rule was to
instill in everyone the fear of God (v 2). God made an eternal Covenant with David
because David based his own life and that of his household only upon the Torah
(Rashi on v 3).

"THESE ARE THE NAMES OF THE MIGHTY WARRIORS OF DAVID" (v 8)

Our text's registry of David's mighty warriors and some of their outstanding
exploits is also extremely dense and highly allusive. These were not merely sword-
wielding fighters in the literal sense: they were mighty warriors of the Torah,
forerunners of the Tannaim and Amoraim of the Mishneh and Talmud. Verse 8
which speaks of "Adino Ha-Etzni" is interpreted as alluding to David himself, who
would sit with the utmost wisdom in the Sanhedrin and was ROSH HASHOLISHI
(lit.="leader of the three") in the sense that he was first in beauty, wisdom and
might (Rashi) as well as being head of the chain (SHALSHELES) of the three
patriarchs (RaDaK), i.e. David is the fourth "leg" of the throne. The name Adino Ha-
Etzni alludes to the way David would "delight himself" (ME-ADEN) like a worm
whilst studying the Torah yet harden himself like a mighty tree (ETZ) when going
out to fight in war.

The leading mighty warriors of David are listed in sets of three. In verses 9, 13, 18,
19, 22, 23 and 24, the words SHELOSHAH (=3), SHELOSHIM (=30) and
SHALISHIM (="captains", as in Ex. 15:4) keep recurring. While "the text does not
depart from its simple meaning", the arrangement of David's warriors in sets of
three also alludes to the way in which the attribute of Malchus, the "receiving
vessel", is built through receiving a balance of the influence descending to it from
the hierarchy of triads of attributes above it.

The mysterious exploits of Shamoh ben Ogei in the field full of lentils (v 11) are
midrashically connected with the three captains who came to David during his wars
against the Philistines and who, in response to his craving for water from the wells
of Bethlehem, risked their lives to bring him the water despite the presence of the
Philistine garrisons there. The midrash teaches that what David wanted was Torah
(=water) from the Torah wellsprings at the gate (=Sanhedrin) of Bethlehem. The
Philistines were hiding behind sheaves of lentils in the field, and David wanted to
know if he was permitted to destroy sheaves that belonged to Israelites in order to
"flush out" the enemy. Even though, as king, he was permitted to do so without
asking, "he did not want to drink from the waters" – he did not want to have any
benefit from his fellow Israelites if there was even a question about its legality (see
RaDaK on v 16).

Benayah son of Yehoyadah (v 20) was later to become Solomon's commander-in-

chief. His smiting of the "two mighty lions of Moab" is explained allegorically to
mean that he was so outstanding in Torah wisdom that he had no equal in either
the first or second Temples. (Ariel is an allusion to the Temple, which was built
through the efforts of David, who was descended from Ruth the Moabite – Berachos
18b).
There is merit in simply reading the names of David's warriors as listed in this
chapter, since these were the outstanding Tzaddikim of his generation, who
prepared the way for the building of the Temple.

Chapter 24
This very mysterious chapter is a fitting climax to the story of David, because it
describes the chain of events that led him to discover the site of the Temple, to the
preparation for whose building his entire life had been devoted.

Rashi on I Kings 3:7 provides a detailed chronology of the last twelve years of
David's life from the birth of Solomon onwards. Solomon had been born
immediately prior to Amnon's rape of Tamar, two years after which Absolom held
the sheep-shearing celebration at which he had Amnon assassinated. Thereafter
Absolom spent three years in exile in Geshur before returning to Jerusalem for two
years before his rebellion. This was followed by the three years of famine that were
rectified through the reburial of Saul's bones together with those of his 7
grandchildren slain by the Gibeonites (II Sam ch 21:1). This was in the tenth year
after the birth of Solomon.

It was thus in the eleventh year after Solomon's birth that David ordered his count
of the population, while in the twelfth year – which was the last year of David's life
– he reorganized the priestly Temple duty-rota, after which he died. (Solomon was
12 years old when he came to the throne.)

David's census was apparently carried out for "military" purposes since the
numbers given in verse 9 are of "sword-wielding men", but this also alludes to the
"sword" of prayer. It is not clear exactly what David had in mind when he insisted
on holding a census despite the fact that the Torah expressly teaches that Israel
must not be counted directly in order not to suffer a plague (Exodus 30:12). From
David's later contrition for having sinned (v 10) it is clear that he knew very well
that it was wrong to count the people. The fact that he was able to persuade
himself to do so indicates that he allowed himself to fall prey to some kind of
rationalization that justified the census. The mind can play tricks on even the
greatest of people. It was evidently through this rationalization which God planted
in his mind that He "incited" David to sin (v 1). It is said that He did so in
retribution for David's having introduced the same concept when he much earlier
said that God had "incited" Saul against him (I Samuel 26:19). The paradox is that
despite the fact that the census was a mistake and led to a terrible plague, it did,
nevertheless, lead indirectly to David's discovery of the site of the Temple in
Jerusalem .

Joab was opposed to the census, arguing eloquently that Israel can be greatly
blessed numerically by God without having to count them – Joab's blessings for
Israelite population growth are compared favorably with those of Moses (Deut.
1:11). Joab's opposition to the king here is noteworthy since he actually rebelled
against him at the very end of David's life one year later. Yet in spite of his
reservations, Joab journeyed around the entire Israelite settlement east and west
of the River Jordan. From Jerusalem he crossed over to the east bank of the Jordan
and started his mission in the city of Aro'er , the southernmost settlement of the
Reubenites. There "he camped" (v 5) – i.e. he took his time, hoping all along that
the king would relent. Then he worked his way up northwards through the
territories of Gad and Menasheh in Gil'ad, before going up to Dan (in the north of
present-day Israel), further north to the "new" settlements in Syria and the BIK'AH
(valley) of Lebanon, and then westwards to the Mediterranean coast, where he
counted the Israelite populations in Sidon, Tyre and all the settlements further
south, returning thereafter to Jerusalem. We thus have biblical evidence of Israelite
settlements in Syria and Lebanon back in the time of David.

As soon as Joab returned with his report, David was smitten with remorse and
contrition for having counted Israel – because Israel are beyond the concept of
number, which is finite. Putting a "number" on Israel puts finite limits on the people
and their ability to receive blessing. Souls cannot be counted, because each one is
totally unique and has infinite potential. Counting the people lays them open to the
Evil Eye, which views abundant blessing with mean-eyed hostility.

It was the prophet Gad who brought God's grim decree to David: until the very end
of his life, David conducted himself in all his affairs in accordance with the prophets,
unlike Saul, who had disobeyed them. Gad offered David three alternatives in order
to expiate his sin: seven years of famine, three months of defeat in war or three
days of plague. (Similarly, David had said that Saul would die in one of three ways,
I Samuel 26:10). In a famous verse that is part of the Tahanun supplications in the
daily prayers (v 14), David threw himself upon God's mercy – reasoning that
famine would hurt the poor more than the rich and war would hurt the weak more
than the mighty, while a plague would strike indiscriminately, thus spreading the
suffering more fairly (RaDaK on v 14).

"Through the very wound, God sends the medicine". The plague was mercifully
short – less than the three days originally announced by the prophet (v 15, RaDaK),
and when David saw the angel with his sword drawn over Jerusalem, he prayed for
compassion. According to the midrash on v 16 (BA-AM RAV, lit. "with many
people"), the dead included Avishai son of Tzeruyah (Joab's heroic brother): the
loss of a sage who was the equivalent of more than half (ROV) of the Sanhedrin
brought atonement (Berachos 62b). With this, the Angel stopped the slaughter –
and David saw that the Angel was standing by the side of the Threshing-floor of
Aravna (RaDaK on v 16). Aravna was the "Jebusite" Prince of Jerusalem – though
not one of the Canaanite Jebusites, but a Philistine descendant of Avimelech in the
time of Abraham. According to Metzudas David (v 16), he was a righteous convert.

Since it is prayers in the Temple that save Israel from plagues and other evils,
David knew that the site at which he prayed successfully for the cessation of the
plague was none other than the location of the Temple, which God had promised He
would choose from among the territories of the tribes (Deut. 12:14).

Aravna was willing to GIVE David the site to build his altar together with the ox for
the sacrifice and the wood to burn it (v 22) but David protested, "I shall surely
ACQUIRE them from you for a PRICE and I will not offer up to the Lord my God
burnt offerings that cost nothing" (v 24). There is a discrepancy between the fifty
shekels of SILVER mentioned as the price here and the sum of SIX HUNDRED
shekels of GOLD mentioned in I Chronicles 21:25. This is resolved through the fact
that David collected fifty golden shekels from each of the twelve tribes to buy the
site of the Temple ("from all your tribes" Deut. 12:4; 50 X 12 = 600) while he paid
for the ox and wood for his altar with fifty silver shekels (Talmud Zevachim 116b).

Just as Abraham had PURCHASED the Cave of Machpelah as the burial place of the
patriarchs with GOOD MONEY, similarly David PURCHASED the site of the Temple
with GOOD MONEY, which means that all those who claim that Hebron and the
Temple Mount do not belong to the people of Israel are guilty of blatant slander.

"The rabbis taught that all the thousands who fell from the plague in the days of
David died because they did not demand the building of the Temple. If people who
had never had a Temple built or destroyed in their lifetimes fell in the plague
because they had failed to demand the Temple, how much more are we, who have
already had a Temple and had it destroyed, obligated to demand the rebuilding of
the Temple. Therefore the elders and prophets instituted the planting of prayers
three times daily in the mouths of Israel for the return of the Divine Presence and
Kingship to Zion and the order of Your service to Jerusalem, Amen." (Radak on v
25).
 Book of I Kings
Chapter 1
Although the Book of Kings is divided for convenience into I Kings and II Kings, it is
really all one book spanning a period of over four hundred years from the last days
of David and the golden age of Solomon's glory through the split of his kingdom
into two and the succeeding eras of decline, revival and further decline leading
eventually to the exile of the Ten Tribes, the destruction of the First Temple and the
exile of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin to Babylon. The simple moral of the Book
of Kings is that only through faithful obedience to the Torah of Moses can the
people of Israel survive and flourish in their Land.

DAVID'S LAST DAYS

David never had a moment of rest and tranquility from the beginning of his career
until the very end of his life, when new troubles broke out with the attempted
seizure of the throne by Adoniyahu. Old age had jumped upon David – he was only
seventy years old – because of the long series of exhausting wars he endured. The
coldness from which he suffered is said to have resulted from his having been
chilled by the specter of the sword-wielding angel he had seen in Jerusalem at the
time of the plague, while his inability to be warmed even when covered with
garments is attributed to his having shown disrespect for clothes when he tore the
corner of King Saul's garment (I Chronicles 21:30; Talmud Berachos 62b). David's
"coldness" also signifies his ascent to a supreme level of contemplative
understanding, for "Cold of spirit is the man of understanding" (Proverbs 14:27).

Our text attributes Adoniahu's rebellion to a pedagogical failure by David, who

never properly disciplined his handsome, personable son, who went in the ways of
Absalom (v 6). David's commander-in-chief Joab supported Adoniahu's bid for the
throne because he knew that David was angry with him for having killed Avner,
Amasa and Absalom and would make sure that Solomon took revenge on him if he
ever came to the throne. Eviatar the Priest had taken refuge with David when Saul
killed the priests of Nov and had served as High Priest thereafter until the time of
Abasolom's rebellion, when he failed to elicit an answer from the Urim Ve-Thumim
and was deposed in favor of Tzadok. Eviatar was from the ill-fated house of Eli the
Priest who had been rejected from serving in the Temple that Solomon was to build,
and thus Eviatar had an interest in siding with Adoniahu.

The reason why Nathan the Prophet rather than Gad intervened on behalf of
Solomon was because Nathan himself had prophesied to David that Solomon would
reign (II Samuel 7:12; I Chronicles 22:9). It is said that when Batsheva's first child
from David died, she refused to agree to any further relations with David unless he
swore to her that her child would reign – in order to dispel the aura of scandal that
surrounded David's marriage with her (II Samuel 12:24; I Kings 1:17).

Batsheva concluded her demand to David to fulfill his oath to her by pointing out
that if he failed to assert Solomon's rights to the throne and Adoniahu reigned, "I
and my son Solomon will be LACKING". The use here of the Hebrew word HATA'IM,
which in other contexts is translated as "sinning", throws considerable light on the
Torah concept of HEIT, "sin". The root HATA is explained by Rashi (on v 21) as
"missing the mark", as when an archer misses his target. In other words, if we "sin",
we FALL SHORT of what we could and should have attained.

THE ANOINTMENT OF SOLOMON

God had given the kingship over Israel to David AND HIS SEED forever, and
according to the Torah law of kings, a son who succeeds his father as king is not
normally anointed because the kingship is his by inheritance (Talmud Shekalim
16a). However, David saw that it was necessary to have Solomon ceremonially
anointed in the presence of the High Priest together with the Urim Ve-Thumim as
well as the prophet Nathan and David's new Commander-in-Chief Benaya ben
Yehoyada in order to publicly reject Adoniahu's counterclaim to the kingship.

Riding on David's own mule was itself a sign that Solomon was king, since nobody
but a new king is permitted to use any of the appurtenances of the previous king.
(Since a mule is a hybrid of a horse and donkey, it would normally be forbidden to
ride on one because of the prohibition of KIL'AYIM, "forbidden mixed species", but
there is a tradition that David's PERED was a unique animal dating from the six
days of creation, Yerushalmi Kil'ayim 8:2). Solomon was anointed with the
anointing oil prepared by Moses in the Wilderness. The ceremony took place at the
spring of Shilo'ah, which is also called Ha-Gihon from the Hebrew root GI-AH
meaning "to flow, be drawn", signifying that Solomon's kingship would continue
forever. Benaya was not afraid even in David's presence to bless Solomon that he
should be even greater than his father, because Benaya knew that "a man is not
jealous of his son's success" (Rashi on v 37). Thus David gave over the throne to
Solomon in his own lifetime with great joy (compare the opening section of Rabbi
Nachman's Story of the Seven Beggars), and Adoniahu was put under house arrest.

* * * The passage in I Kings vv. 1-31 is read as the Haftara of Parshas Chayey
Sarah Gen. 23:1-25:18 * * *

Chapter 2
DAVID'S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

David called Solomon and reminded him of the inevitability of death: "I am going
the way of all the earth…" (v 2). In his final will and testament to his son, David
instructed him to follow the essential formula for all Israelite success: to go in the
ways of God and guard His statutes and commandments "as written in the Torah of
Moses" (v 3).

SETTLING OLD SCORES

Joab had been David's loyal commander-in-chief almost to the very end, staying
with him even during the supreme challenge of Absalom's rebellion (though it is
said that Joab very nearly went after Absalom). Nevertheless, David was unable to
forgive Joab for having assassinated Saul's commander-in-chief Avner precisely
when David wanted to bring an end to the civil war with the House of Saul, and also
for having killed his own beloved son Absalom contrary to his specific orders as well
as assassinating Absalom's commander-in-chief Amasa. Yet despite the fact that
Joab had wielded the sword of Judgment even more implacably than David, he was
head of the Sanhedrin and a most formidable Torah sage as well as a man of
kindness who made his home like a wilderness in that it was constantly open to all
the poor people (see Rashi on v 34). Thus David did not want to wreak vengeance
on Joab forever. When he told Solomon, "Do not bring his hoary old age down to
She'ol=Hell", what he meant was that Solomon should ensure that Joab would not
die a natural death in order that his being killed in this world should atone for him,
save him from hell and bring him to the life of the world to come (Rashi on v 6).

While Barzilai the Giladite and his sons had supported David when he fled from
Absalom and were to be rewarded, Shimi ben Gera – head of the Sanhedrin and a
leading member of the tribe of Benjamin – had come out cursing and stoning David
in his flight. His curse is described as NIMRETZETH ("extremely strong"): the letters
that make up this Hebrew word are the initial letters of all the unpleasant names
that Shimi ben Gera called David: NO'EF ("adulterer"), MOAVI ("Moabite", i.e. a
"sheigitz"), ROTZEAH ("murderer"), TZORER ("persecutor"), THO'EYVA
("abomination"). David said to Solomon that Shimi is "WITH YOU" (v 8), because –
paradoxically – Shimi, an outstanding Torah sage, was actually Solomon's TEACHER
(Talmud Berachos 8a).

ADONIAHU'S PLOT

It is said that David never had relations with Avishag the Shunamite (I Kings 1:4),
and accordingly she was not technically forbidden to Adoniahu as his father's
concubine. Nevertheless it was seditious of Adoniahu to ask Batsheva to intercede
with her son Solomon to give him Avishag, because "a private individual is
forbidden to have any benefit from the scepter of the king". By requesting Avishag,
Adoniahu was plotting to get his foot inside the door of the kingship.

Solomon displayed all the proper KAVOD ("honor") to his mother Batsheva when
she innocently went in to put this request to him (v 19). The Midrash states that
when Solomon "placed a chair for the mother of the king", this was actually for "the
mother of the kingship", i.e. David's great grandmother Ruth who was still alive
(Bava Basra 91b; Rashi on v 19). Yet with all his show of maternal respect, the
young Solomon (who was only 12 years old at the time, Rashi on I Kings 3:7) was
far from being a tender softie and understood much more clearly than his own
mother the real implications of Adoniahu's little request, sending his commander-
in-chief Benaya to dispatch him as a traitor.

EVIATAR

As indicated in the commentary on the previous chapter, Eviatar the former High
Priest was "sent home" by Solomon (v 26) not only because he had joined
Adoniahu's rebellion but also because the time had come to build God's eternal
House in Jerusalem, while the line of priests descending from Eli (who traced their
lineage to Aaron's fourth son Ithamar), had because of their corruption been
deposed from serving in the Temple in favor of the priests who came from the line
of Aaron's third son, Elazar, and his son Pinchas.

JOAB'S FLIGHT TO THE ALTAR

On hearing the reports of how Solomon was settling scores with those who had
fallen foul of his father David, Joab fled to the Sanctuary Altar, whose power to give
succor to unwitting killers is learned from the verse in Exodus 21:14: "When a man
intentionally plots against his neighbor to kill him craftily, even from My altar shall
you take him to die". This verse indicates that the Altar has the same power as the
Cities of Refuge to give succor to unwitting killers.
Joab's killing of Avner, Amasa and Absalom had in fact been intentional and
Solomon would have been permitted to have him taken from the Altar and killed.
The rabbis discussed at length what Joab had to gain from being killed at the Altar
rather than being executed after due trial as a traitor. They answered that while
those executed by the court are buried in a special "criminals" section of the
cemetery, by being killed at the Altar Joab could be buried in his family plot
together with his ancestors. Although the text states that he was buried in his
home "in the wilderness", it would be ridiculous to take this literally, and the phrase
is darshened as explained above – that Joab's house was open to the poor like a
wilderness – and also as indicating that after his death Israel was left like a barren
wilderness (RaDaK on v 34).

By putting Shimi ben Gera under permanent house arrest and making him swear to
remain there, Solomon craftily contrived to ensure that Shimi would be responsible
for his own death when circumstances would arise – as they surely would – to
induce him to leave his home. Despite Solomon's having sent Benaya to perform
yet another in his series of bloody executions of David's foes, the text states that
"the kingship was established in the hand of Solomon" (v 46) in order to indicate
that he was not punished for this and that his kingship was ordained by God.

* * * I Kings 2:1-12 is read as the Haftara of Parshas Vayechi, Genesis 47:28-

50:26 * * *

Chapter 3
SOLOMON'S MARRIAGE TO PHARAOH'S DAUGHTER

Our chapter opens with the very surprising news that Solomon married the
daughter of the king of the very nation that had ignominiously enslaved and been
forced to release Israel hundreds of years earlier. Rashi (on v 3) notes that the
verses in this chapter are not in historical sequence, for Solomon's dream in Giv'on
(vv 5ff) took place at the very beginning of his reign, whereas it was not until three
years afterwards that he made his marriage alliance with Pharoah. This was directly
after the death of Solomon's teacher, Shimi ben Gera (narrated out of sequence at
the end of the preceding chapter in order to complete the account of Solomon's
settling David's outstanding scores). From the proximity of verse 1 of our present
chapter to the last verses of the previous chapter, our rabbis taught that as long as
his teacher was alive, Solomon did not make this questionable move of
intermarriage, deducing that a person should always live close to his teacher in
order to stay on the right track (Rashi on v 1).

Solomon's move was questionable because the Torah states that "you shall not
intermarry with them [i.e. the other nations]" (Deut. 7:3). Some rabbis held that
intermarriage would only be forbidden if the non-Israelite party to the marriage
does not convert, but others held that converting them in order to marry is also
forbidden. Another factor raising questions about Solomon's move is the tradition
that no converts were accepted in the times of David and Solomon because the
prestige of Israel was so great that potential converts would all have had ulterior
motives. However the Talmud explicitly states that this did not apply to the
daughter of Pharaoh, who had enough wealth not to need to marry Solomon for
money (Talmud Yevamos 76a).

A further question is how Solomon could have converted and then married an
Egyptian woman when the Torah states that an Egyptian convert may not enter the
Assembly until the third generation (Deut. 23:9). However, this objection is
countered by a tradition (not accepted halachically) that the referenced verse
applies only to an Egyptian male but not to a female (which would make the law of
the Egyptian parallel to the law forbidding a Moabite but not a Moabitess from ever
entering the Assembly.

Despite the many questions that surround it, we do not find Solomon's marriage to
Pharaoh's daughter criticized in our text as being intrinsically sinful: verse 3 does
implicitly criticize Solomon for sacrificing at many high altars but does not criticize
him for marrying Pharaoh's daughter. It was only in his old age, when Solomon
took many wives, that he was criticized for allowing them to turn his heart aside
from God.

It stands to reason that the exact intent of the supremely wise Solomon in
marrying the daughter of Israel's former persecutors would be beyond the ability of
simple people like ourselves to grasp. Since PHARAOH represents the OREPH ("back
of the neck", same Hebrew letters as Pharaoh) of creation as opposed to its inner
face, the conversion of his daughter by Solomon and her integration into the holy
edifice that he was building was a "coup" similar to the conversion of Batya, the
daughter of Pharaoh who drew Moses out of the water. The "daughter of Pharaoh"
represents the source of all the different kinds of worldly wisdom (which are her
"handmaidens"). By "converting" and "marrying" her, Solomon was perhaps very
daringly and ambitiously striving to deepen and enhance the revelation of God's
unity on all levels of creation. If so, it was apparently still over-ambitious, because
Solomon proved unable to hold his "catch" within the bounds of holiness, and
indeed he himself strayed beyond them. In retribution, said the rabbis, at the very
moment when Solomon married Pharaoh's daughter, the angel Gabriel (GEVURAH,
"might", withholding and concealing) descended and drove the first stake into the
sea in the very place where more and more sediment eventually collected to form
the foundation of what was to become Israel's nemesis: the city of Rome (Talmud
Shabbos 56b).

"AND SOLOMON LOVED GOD" (v 3)

Prior to his heart-enticing marriages with foreign women, Solomon passionately

followed the Torah of his father David. If he was criticized, it was only for
"sacrificing in the high places". This was actually permitted as long as the Temple
was not built in Jerusalem. Since the sacking of the Sanctuary of Shilo by the
Philistines in the time of Ely and the slaughter of the priests of Nov by Saul, the
Sanctuary with the vessels of Moses had been in Giv'on, except for the Ark of the
Covenant, which David had taken to Jerusalem. Whereas David had sacrificed only
at the "great" Altar in Giv'on (this was the copper Altar made by Moses) or at an
altar that he erected before the Ark in Jerusalem, Solomon also sacrificed in other
high places (until the building of the Temple), and while this was still permitted, it
was seen as a deviation from David's path and as needlessly delaying the building
of the Temple in Jerusalem (Rashi and RaDaK on v 3).

THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON

Whereas David's kingship was founded on the sword of prayer and faith – he had to
fight throughout his life – Solomon's kingship was founded on the very WISDOM
and UNDERSTANDING which he had the good sense to request when God offered
him anything he wanted. At the tender age of 12 (Rashi and RaDaK on v 7) when
many intelligent youngsters tend to be highly arrogant, the wise young King
Solomon had the humility to understand he would need divine help in judging the
busy, quarrelsome Israelites – for kingship (MALCHUS) is founded on Judgment
(MISHPAT=TIFERES, the center column, balance) and the repair of Judgment
depends upon BINAH, "understanding". Solomon thus asked God to "give Your
servant a LISTENING heart" (v 9) in order to HEAR and UNDERSTAND, while God
responded even more generously by giving him a heart that was WISE as well as
UNDERSTANDING (v 12). CHOKHMAH, "wisdom", is the ability to GRASP, know and
remember what one learns, while BINAH, "understanding", is the ability to
ANALYZE what one knows in order to make new inferences, "understanding one
thing from another" (RaDaK on v 12).

When Solomon awoke from his dream he knew that his request had been granted,
because "he heard a bird chirping and understood its language, and he heard a dog
barking and he understood what it was saying" (Rashi on v 15).

COT DEATH: WHOSE IS THE LIVING CHILD?

Solomon's first dramatic demonstration of his divinely-granted powers of judgment

came with the arrival of the two "whores" who were quarreling about which of their
two babies died and to whom the surviving child belonged.

The Talmudic teacher Rav held that these two "whores" were actually spirits. Rabbi
Simon in the name of R. Yehoshua ben Levi said they were literally prostitutes. A
third opinion, offered by unnamed sages, is that they were actually a mother-in-law
and her daughter-in-law (Shir HaShirim Rabbah 1:10).

This third opinion immeasurably sharpens the dispute between them on the
assumption that the aggrieved mother who started pleading before the king saying
that she had been the first to give birth (vv 17-18) was the mother-in-law. If the
second woman – her daughter-in-law, who gave birth three days later – lost her
husband AFTER the birth of her mother-in-law's baby and subsequently lost her
own baby (an only child), it would mean that according to the law of the levirate
marriage she would have to marry her mother-in-law's baby, the brother of her
dead husband, her YAVAM, since with the death of her own baby her dead husband
left no living issue. In any event she would have to wait thirteen years until her
mother-in-law's baby became a legal adult in order to either carry out the mitzvah
of YIBUM by marrying his dead brother's widow or release her from their bond
through HALITZAH, "removal of the brother-in-law's sandal" (see Deut. 25:5ff).

Having to wait for thirteen years as a stranded AGUNAH before she could regularize
her status would give the daughter-in-law a very strong incentive to take her
mother-in-law's baby as her own, because if she could make it appear that her
dead husband did have surviving issue this would release her from the bond of
YIBUM with any of his brothers. Likewise, it would not bother her in the least if the
king sliced the living child in half, because if he was indeed the sole surviving
brother of her dead husband, his death would automatically release her from any
bond of YIBUM in the absence of any YAVAM, leaving her free to marry anyone she
wanted.

Before Solomon delivered his judgment, he first made sure to repeat the claims of
each woman in his own words (v 23) to make it clear that he had understood
exactly what they were saying. In this he provided a model for every good DAYAN
("judge"), who must review the claims made by the rival claimants before
delivering judgment.

Solomon's brilliant bluff ordering a sword to be brought immediately elicited the

natural motherly compassion of the true mother and exposed the lying baby-thief
for what she was. "And all Israel heard the judgment that the king decided and
they were in awe before the king, for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him
to do judgment" (v 28).
 * * * The passage in I Kings 3:15-28 and 4:1 is read as the Haftara of Parshas
Miketz, Genesis 41:1-44:17 unless this parshah is read on Shabbos Chanukah * * *

Chapter 4
"AND SOLOMON WAS KING OVER ALL ISRAEL" (v 1)

David had been king over Judah in Hebron before he was accepted as king over all
Israel. It is a tribute to David's lifelong struggle that the entire nation was now able
to unite in accepting one king. They did so because they saw Solomon's divinely-
bestowed wisdom and everyone rejoiced in his kingship (Rashi on v 1).

Listed first and foremost among Solomon's officers is the Priest – because the
entire national agenda was now focused on building a functioning Temple. Solomon
had scribes to write down his governmental decisions and dispatch them for
execution; he had a MAZKIR (lit. "one who makes you remember") i.e. a
"secretary" to make records of events and archive them. Like Saul and David,
Solomon had his commander-in-chief. Listed among his officers is also "the king's
friend" – presumably one who was likewise very wise indeed and with whom
Solomon doubtless loved to fathom the depths of wisdom.

THE TWELVE PROVIDING OFFICERS

Solomon's kingship is portrayed as a model of good order, in which twelve

NETZIVIM, "appointed officers", were in charge of collecting all the provisions,
materials and other needs of the royal household and army from twelve regions
into which the Land of Israel was divided. These regions did NOT correspond to the
territorial portions of the Twelve Tribes, which were uneven both in area and in the
kind of land they comprised. Rather, these twelve regions represented a fair
division of the entire land into portions each one of which could sustain the royal
household for one of the twelve months of the year (Radak on v 8).

The twelve months of the year correspond to the twelve possible permutations of
the holy "essential" name of God, "HaVaYaH" (YKVK). These are discussed at length
in SEFER YETZIRA, the earliest kabbalistic text, attributed to our father Abraham.
This was certainly known to Solomon (whose Proverbs contain certain allusions to
the wisdom of Sefer Yetzirah).

Just as the "sun" of the Name of HaVaYaH (=Zeir Anpin) shines month by month
with different permutations to the "moon" of MALCHUS, "kingship" (=Nukva), so
King Solomon (MALCHUS, the receiving vessel of Zeir Anpin=Chochmah) received
his PARNASSAH ("livelihood") from TWELVE different regions of Eretz Israel, which
itself corresponds to the Partzuf of Malchus.

"Judah and Israel multiplied like the sand of the sea in multitude, eating and
drinking and rejoicing" (v 20). "In the time of Solomon they were blessed with the
fruit of the womb and they multiplied, as did the fruits of their animals and their
land, and they ate and drank and rejoiced, for they had no fear of any enemy"
(RaDaK on v 20).
 Chapter 5
SOLOMON'S EMPIRE

Abraham had been a truly international figure, having traveled throughout the
"Fertile Crescent" from Babylon to Aram Naharayim, throughout the Land of Israel
and down into Egypt. Jacob too traveled to Aram and to Egypt. However, since the
time of the entry of the Israelites into their Land, their main preoccupation had
been to battle against their immediate neighbors – the Canaanites, Philistines,
Moabites and Ammonites – in order to maintain their hold over the Promised Land.

It was through the victories of David over all Israel's enemies that an entirely new
international vista opened up in the time of Solomon, whose "empire" or "sphere of
influence" extended over the entire swathe of territory promised to Abraham "from
the river of Egypt to the Great river, the Euphrates" (Genesis 15:18; cf. I Kings 5:1
& 3).

Our text evokes Solomon's opulent royal lifestyle (vv 2-3) including his ownership
of multiple thousands of horses (v 6), which despite being prohibited to the king by
the Torah (Deut. 17:16) remain a mark of royalty until today. While the various
nations that comprised Solomon's empire paid taxes and gifts, this was not an
exploitative colonial empire or one that kept its grip through military force alone.
For "he had PEACE on all sides around" (v 4) – a situation that modern Israel can
only envy, having experienced no peace for a single moment since the inception of
the state and for years and years before it.

Our text testifies that the very key to Solomon's influence over this great area of
territory as well as over the neighboring foreign powers lay in his unique, God-
given WISDOM, which "exceeded the wisdom of all the children of the east and all
the wisdom of Egypt. And he was wiser than every man (ADAM), than Eitan the
Ezrahi and Heyman and Khulkol and Darda the sons of Mahol…" While the simple
explanation is that these last names are those of the leading Levite Temple singers
of the time, the Midrash identifies "every man" with ADAM, Eitan with Abraham,
Heyman with Moses, Khulkol with Joseph and Darda with the Generation of the
Wilderness (DOR DE'AH, "generation of KNOWLEDGE), who were "children of
forgiveness" (MEHILA).

Most of the narrative in the book of Kings portrays Solomon and his achievements
from the outside, but his true wisdom shines forth in his surviving literary creations
alluded to in verse 12: Proverbs, Song of Songs and Koheles (=Ecclesiastes). Most
translations render ALAPHIM and ELEPH in this verse as "thousand(s)", but Rashi
relates them to the same root as in ULPAN meaning "education": the verse thus
speaks of three EDUCATIONAL ORDERS of Proverbs (the expression MISHLEY
SHLOMO appears three times in the book of Proverbs); these, together with Song
of Songs and Koheles constitute the FIVE orders of Solomon's "song". According to
the simple meaning of ELEPH as 1,000, Rashi brings the Midrash that Solomon
taught three thousand parables on every single verse of the Torah and gave 1,005
explanations of each parable (see Rashi on vv 11-12). "He spoke about the trees
from the cedar in Lebanon to the hyssop that comes out of the wall" (before God,
the highest and the lowest are equal, Bamidbar Rabba 13). According to Rashi this
verse means that not only did Solomon understand the healing properties of all the
different trees and plants and exactly how to cultivate them, but that he also
explained why the purification of the leper involves the cedar and the hyssop (Lev.
14:4). "He spoke about the animals and birds and creeping creatures and fish…" (v
13): not only did he understand all their different qualities, but also why the
SHECHITAH of animals requires the cutting of both the windpipe and the gullet,
while that of birds requires the cutting of only one, and why locusts and fish do not
require SHECHITAH at all… (Rashi on v 14).

HIRAM KING OF TYRE

The tragic history of modern Lebanon has overshadowed the one-time greatness of
this very beautiful country with its once very extensive forests. While Sidon was
established by the firstborn son of Canaan (Gen. 10:15), the city of Tyre to its
south was an immensely powerful city state built up by the Phoenicians, whose
prosperity was founded on the magnificent tall trees out of which they built the
ships they used to develop a trade empire throughout the Mediterranean area and
beyond.

While Hiram king of Tyre is a legendary figure (particularly in the lore of

freemasonry, where he is seen as the "father" of the Temple), Ibn Ezra (on Genesis
1:10) views Hiram as the generic name of all the kings of Tyre just as Pharaoh was
the generic name of all the kings of Egypt . In later Biblical times Tyre saw
Jerusalem as a dangerous rival and hoped to benefit from its destruction (cf.
Ezekiel 26:2, "I shall be filled from her destruction"), but the Hiram who befriended
King David and King Solomon was – from the testimony of our text – a believer in
the One God who (unlike the nations of today) REJOICED when he heard that
Solomon wanted to build Him a Temple in Jerusalem (v 20).

Hiram struck a Covenant with Solomon (v 26) inaugurating the first ever venture in
international cooperation to build God's Temple. Hiram provided the timber and
stone that were the building materials for the Temple in return for very ample
supplies of choice wheat and olive oil that were the specialty of Israel. The lumber
was tied up to form rafts that were floated down the Mediterranean from the coast
of Lebanon to the point nearest to Jerusalem on the Israeli coast. From there it was
transported by land to the site of the Temple. The 70,000 "porters" and 80,000
"excavators" who extracted and transported the massive stones for the Temple
were GERIM GERURIM – would-be converts who were not admitted into the
Assembly of Israel (as no full converts were accepted in the time of Solomon, see
commentary on I Kings ch 3) but were nevertheless allowed to participate in the
enterprise of building of God's House of Prayer for all the Nations.

Chapter 6
The building of the Temple commenced in the fourth year of Solomon's reign, 480
years after the Exodus from Egypt and 440 years after the people's entry into the
Land. The actualization of this project to join Heaven and Earth took a total of
seven years (vv 37-8).

In his work on the "Secrets of the Future Temple " (Mishkeney Elyon) the
outstanding 18 th century Kabbalistic sage R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto explains that
creation has two roots: the "revealed root" of HOKHMAH ("wisdom") and the
"concealed" root of KETER ("the crown"). The two roots are alluded to in the first
letter of the first word of the Torah, the Beis (=2) of Bereishis, "In the beginning".

"Know too that the sin of Adam spoiled everything and caused all perfection to
become concealed, with the result that the world was not even able to return to its
previous state [i.e. the level of Wisdom] except in the days of Solomon, when the
Temple was first built. Thus it is written: 'And God gave wisdom to Solomon' (I
Kings 5:26). For then Wisdom was revealed in all its beauty and radiant glory,
enabling all the lights to shine with great strength and joy. In those days, on every
level in all the worlds there was only holy power and delight the like of which had
never been seen. Even so, because everything was based only on Wisdom and did
not reach the ultimate goal [of Keter], this peace and tranquility came to an end
and the Temple was destroyed. But in time to come, when the hidden beginning I
mentioned [Keter] is revealed, the happiness will be far, far greater, and it will
never cease" (Ramchal, Secrets of the Future Temple).

Although Ramchal's work – which explains in detail the "sacred geometry" that
underlies the design of the Temple – is primarily concerned with the FUTURE
Temple as depicted by Ezekiel (chs 40ff), the principles on which it is based apply
also to the Temple of Solomon, all of whose chambers, walls, gates and courtyards
in all their various dimensions allude to and EMBODY IN STONE the various divine
attributes as they relate to one another.

Besides the information about Solomon's Temple contained in our text, we have
detailed supplementary information in Maseches MIDDOS, the Mishnaic Tractate of
"Measurements", which deals with the design of the Second Temple, which was
mostly modeled on the first. The rabbinic commentators wrote entire treatises
about the structure of the Temple.

The Temple had very distinctive features, such as its windows, which were "wide
open from the outside but closed and narrow on the inside" (v 4). This was because
the Temple had no need for the light from the outside, since it was lit from within
(both by the Candelabra and by the spiritual light that shined in it): on the contrary,
light emanated FROM the Temple windows OUTWARDS.

Another distinctive feature was that as the very center of world peace, the Temple
was a place where it was not fitting for the sound of metal hammers and axes to be
heard (v 7) since metal is the material of weapons of war. All the stones were cut
and dressed outside the Temple, and Solomon also miraculously found the Shamir
worm, which would silently eat its way across a stone so as to split it just as it had
cut the stones of the gems in the High Priest's breastplate in the days of Moses.
(This is not a worm that is easy to find; Sotah 48b, Gittin 68a).

Most distinctive of all was that the survival of the Temple was entirely conditional
upon Israel's keeping the Torah, as God promised to Solomon (vv 11-13): "If you
go in My statutes and carry out My laws… I shall dwell amongst the Children of
Israel and I will not abandon My people Israel."

The main Temple building, a structure of 60 x 20 cubits (on the inside) was divided
into two unequal parts: the HEIKHAL (40 x 20) containing the Menorahs
(Candelabra) Show-bread Tables and Incense Altar, and within, the Holy of Holies
(20 x 20) containing the Ark of the Covenant with the wooden figures of two
Cherubs overlaid with gold standing with their wings outstretched over it and filling
the entire inner chamber. Across the entire front of the HEIKHAL stood the OULAM
("Vestibule").

Around the walls surrounding the Heikhal and Holy of Holies on three sides were a
series of cells banked up in three stories one on top of the other. These cells may
have been used to store the Temple treasures. Esoterically, they allowed the SHEFA
(divine influence) emanating from within the Temple to be concentrated intensely
prior to its flowing outwards to nourish the outside world.
The ceiling and roof of the Temple were made of wood, and its stone walls were
entirely paneled with wood from top to bottom. The wood (which alludes to the
TREE of life) was carved with the forms of cherubs, palms, garlands and flowers. All
the walls and all the carvings were overlaid with gold, as was the ceiling and the
floor, the effect of which must have been absolutely stunning.

Through God's providence, we have reached the description of the building of

Solomon's Temple just as we are celebrating the festival of Chanukah in
commemoration of God's miracles for Israel in the Second Temple. In the merit of
our studies, may He quickly bring peace to our troubled world and speedily build
the Temple we are now awaiting, from which the love and fear of God will spread
forth to all the world.

* * * The passage in I Kings 5:26-32 and 6:1-13 is read as Haftara of Parshas

Terumah, Exodus 25:1-27:19 * * *

Chapter 7
The account of the building of the Temple is interrupted briefly at the beginning of
our present chapter in order to describe the building of Solomon's royal palace,
which took thirteen years. According to most opinions Solomon did not build his
own palace until AFTER the completion of the Temple, which took only seven years:
Solomon displayed commendably greater alacrity in building for God's glory than he
did for his own, yet his palace too was clearly very magnificent. The "House of the
Forest of Lebanon" (v 2) was a cool, airy, most elegantly proportioned summer
house with rows upon rows of windows. It was the many wooden columns that
made it seem like a forest [which was perhaps conducive to Hisbodedus]. In the
same complex was the king's throne-room where he sat in judgment (v 7) as well
as his own private apartments (v 8). From verse 12 we see that the walls of
Solomon's palace were built in the same style as those of the Temple (see
Metzudas David on this verse), indicating that great thought was lavished on the
harmonious appearance of the Holy City of Jerusalem.

HIRAM THE CRAFTSMAN

Some Bible readers have assumed that the Hiram mentioned in our present chapter
(v 13) is identical with Hiram king of Tyre mentioned in ch 5 vv 15ff, but this is
highly unlikely. Hiram the craftsman was an Israelite whose father was from the
tribe of Naftali while his mother was from the tribe of Dan (see II Chronicles 2:13).
He was living in the prosperous city of Tyre , where perhaps the opportunities to
apply his expertise had been greater than they were in his native tribal areas
before the time of Solomon.

Hiram the craftsman is compared with Bezalel, who constructed the Sanctuary in
the Wilderness – prototype of the Temple in Jerusalem. One of the reasons why
Hiram's tribal origins are specifically mentioned is to show that Rachel was
answered when she prayed, "With great wrestlings (NAFTULEI) have I wrestled with
my sister" (Genesis 30:8). Bezalel, builder of the wilderness Sanctuary, was from
the tribe of Judah (Leah's son) – yet he could not build it alone and had to have
help from Oholiav, who was from the tribe of Dan (son of Bilhah, RACHEL's
handmaiden). Likewise Solomon (Judah-Leah) required the help of Hiram, who was
from the tribe of Naftali, also Rachel's foster-son through Bilhah. Thus the
Partzufim of Rachel and Leah were both involved in the construction of the
Sanctuary and the Temple.
Chapter 6 described the construction of the Temple buildings themselves out of
stone (Malchus), wood (Tiferes) and gold (Binah). Our present chapter describes
the ornaments and vessels of the Temple, which were made out of copper/bronze
(Nechoshes), corresponding to Netzach and Hod, the "legs" (cf. Daniel 2:32).

Thus the account of Hiram's work begins with the two great columns named Yachin
("He will establish") and Bo'az ("in Him is strength") that stood on the two sides of
the entrance to the OULAM ("Vestibule") of the Temple building. These columns,
with their very beautiful ornate "crowns", are the "legs" supporting the Temple ,
channeling its light downwards.

The copper "Sea" of Solomon was an enormous circular copper pool supported by
twelve copper oxen and containing sufficient water to fill 150 Mikvehs ("purificatory
ritual pools"). The Cohanim-priests would immerse here before beginning their
service in the Temple. As our text states, the pool had a diameter of ten cubits, and
"a line of thirty cubits would go around it" (v 23). In various Talmudic discussions
involving the ratio of the diameter of a circle to its circumference, this verse is cited,
although the commentators do point out that the figure of thirty cubits given here
is only approximate, since the actual ratio is "Pi" – 3.14 (Eiruvin 14a Succah 8a
etc.).

The MECHONOS and KEERAYIM described in vv. 27ff were respectively the bases
and lavers from which the priests drew water to ritually wash their hands and feet
prior to Temple service (Ex. 30:17-21).Verse 26 describes how the MECHONOS –
the bases on which the lavers stood and could be wheeled around – were engraved
with cherubs, lions and palms KE-MA'AR-EESH VE-LOYOS SAVIV. The standard
biblical translations do little justice to the mystery of this verse, where MA'AR has
the connotation of attachment, as does the word LOYOS. Rashi commenting on the
same word LOYOS in v 29 states that they were "a kind of male and female
attached one to the other". This clearly relates to the basic mystery of the Temple,
which is the attachment of the Holy One blessed be He with His Indwelling Presence
– the Shekhinah. This gives special point to the Gemara (Yoma 54a), which tells
that "when the alien foreigners entered the Sanctuary and saw the Cherubs
embracing one another, they took them out into the market place and said 'Is this
what these Israelites, whose blessing is a blessing and whose curse is a curse, keep
busy with?' Immediately they despised them, as it is written, 'All those who
honored her despised her because they saw her nakedness (ERVASAH, from same
root as MA'AR)' (Lam. 1:8)."

As our text narrates, all these copper vessels were cast in the Jordan valley, where
the earth was particularly suitable for making the earthenware moulds into which
the molten metal was poured (RaDaK on v 46). There was so much copper that it
was simply impossible to calculate the exact quantity (v 47).

Verse 49 tells us that Solomon made TEN golden Menorahs (Candelabra). He did
not put away the Menorah made by Moses in the Wilderness, but arranged five of
his new ones on each side of that of Moses, which stood to the south of the
Sanctuary. Although they are not mentioned in our present text, we learn from II
Chronicles 4:8 that Solomon also made TEN Showbread Tables, which were likewise
arranged on each side of Moses' Showbread Table, which stood to the north of the
Sanctuary (see RaDaK on I Kings 8:6).

All Solomon's innovations in the Temple were based on specific instructions which
he received from his father David, "everything in writing from the hand of HaShem
upon me" (II Chronicles 4:8): everything in the Temple was based upon prophecy.
"And all the labor was complete (VA-TI-SHLAM)" v 51. "VA-TEHI-SHALOM – 'it was
all PEACE': Not one of the craftsmen that built the Temple died or became sick
during the work and none of their tools ever broke" (Psikta Rabasi 6).

* * * The custom of the Sefardim is to read I Kings 7:13-26 as the Haftara of

Parshas Vayakhel Exodus 35:1-38:20 * * *

* * * The custom of the Ashkenazim is to read I Kings 7:40-50 as the Haftara of

Parshas Vayakhel, Exodus 35:1-38:20 * * *

* * * In years when the first and last days of Chanukah fall on Shabbos, I Kings
7:40-50 is read as the Haftara on the second Shabbos of Chanukah * * *

Chapter 8
With the completion of all the work it was time to inaugurate the new Temple.
Solomon brought up the Ark from where David had taken it to rest temporarily on
Mount Zion, and he brought up the Sanctuary from where it had been in Giv'on
ever since the destruction of Shilo and Nov. Some of the Sanctuary items that
would no longer be in use were now honorably hidden away in GENIZA, presumably
under the Temple Mount, which Solomon apparently designed with an intricate
secret subterranean network.

A new stage had arrived in the revelation of God's glory with the completion of the
Temple rooted in HOKHMAH, "wisdom". Now that everything was complete and in
place, the Glory of God, His Indwelling Presence, "came down", as it were, into the
building.

It was then that Solomon, who was then 23 years old, addressed the entire nation
of Israel assembled at the Temple, after which he turned to the Altar, got down on
his knees and raised his arms to the heavens to offer his most eloquent prayer for
God to bless His House and fulfill its intent. Many phrases from this prayer are
incorporated into the prayers and supplications in the Siddur and Selichos etc.

Having erected the building, Solomon now came to teach its true function and
purpose – to reveal how God governs the whole of creation with direct providence
over every detail (HASHGACHAH PROTIS). It is a revelation of the complete unity of
God when people pray in the Temple or even "through" it from a great distance
away, because embodied in the actual courtyards and buildings and vessels of the
Temple are attributes of God, attached to one another in unity KE-MA'AR-EESH VE-
LOYOS SAVIV.

Thus Solomon details the many different needs for which people must pray. Verses
31-2 speak of people's prayers for justice in the face of wrong-doing they have
suffered from others (including adultery, which can take a man's wife from him or
vice versa and destroys the sanctity of the family, and is specifically alluded to here,
see Rashi).

Verse 33 teaches that it is our own sins that cause our enemies to strike us, and
that we must repent and pray for salvation. Verse 35 deals with drought; verse 37
with famine, which may be caused by bad winds, crop failure, locusts etc., and with
illness. Verse 38 teaches that each person must pray about the afflictions he feels
in his own heart and that he must understand that "You give to a man according to
all his ways". This implies that if we are unworthy, we cannot expect God to answer
our prayers (though in His mercy, He may!)
From vv 41ff we learn that God will also listen to the prayers of the NOCHRI, the
non-Israelite, who hears of His great Name and comes to pray at the Temple.
Indeed Solomon asks God to "do according to all that the NOCHRI cries out to You
in order that all the peoples of the earth should know Your Name to fear You…" (v
43). The NOCHRI may not understand that God does not always answer the
undeserving – he may not even realize that he is undeserving, and if he receives no
answer from God at the Temple he may not blame it on himself but on the Temple.
This is why Solomon asks God to answer the NOCHRI for the sake of His great
Name (Rashi on v 43).

From verses 46-50 we learn that even when Israel are in exile and captivity far
from their Land, their prayers to God are efficacious when they pray to God "by
way of their Land that You gave to their fathers, the city that You chose and the
House that You have built for Your Name" (v 48). This implies that everyone should
direct his or her prayers to God through the Temple in Jerusalem, no matter where
in the world they are. (This is why Jews turn in the direction of the Temple to pray
the daily AMIDAH prayer.)

According to the Rabbis, the inauguration of the new Temple took place in the
month of Tishri from the 8 th to the 14 th of the month and was followed
immediately by the celebration of the festival of Succos. This was such an
important event that according to most opinions, fasting was suspended that year
on Yom Kippur in order for the people to partake of the SHELAMIM (peace
offerings) – see RaDaK on v 65.

May we very soon know what it is to celebrate HANUKAS HABAYIS, the

inauguration of the new Temple that we are eagerly awaiting.

* * * I Kings 7:51 and 8:1-21 are read as the Haftara of Parshas Pekudey, Exodus
38:21-40:38 * * *

* * * In Diaspora communities, II Kings 8:2-21 is read as the Haftara on the

Second Day of Succos, and I Kings 8:54-9:1 is read as the Haftara on the Festival
of Shemini Atzeres * * *

Chapter 9
"MY EYES AND MY HEART WILL BE THERE..." (v 3)

The entire face of Israel was changed with the completion of Solomon's Temple and
his other magnificent building projects in Jerusalem together with the development
of a network of international diplomatic and trading links that brought a flood of
gold, silver, exotic woods, spices and other luxuries into the Land.

Solomon took the first twenty-four years of his reign to build the Temple and his
palace, while David had previously reigned for forty years. This means that it was
little more than sixty-five years since Saul had become king at a time when the
Israelites were so poor and technologically dependent on the Philistines that they
didn't even have blacksmiths of their own to repair their farm implements (I
Samuel 13:19-22).

For almost five centuries since their entry into the Land, the Israelites had been a
nation of small farmers living a very simple life. Now suddenly, through the genius
of Solomon the peace-maker and bridge-builder, Israel and its glorious capital of
Jerusalem were at the very center of the economic and cultural life of the entire
Fertile Crescent and way beyond. The nation that once slaved to build store cities
for Pharaoh (Exodus 1:11) now had helot slave nations of their own to build them
"store cities, cities of chariots and cities of horse riders and whatever fancy that
Solomon fancied to build in Jerusalem and Lebanon and in all the land of his rule" (I
Kings 9:9). In a sense Solomon's marriage with Pharaoh's daughter can be seen as
his attempt to wed and subordinate the material grandeur represented by Egypt to
the Torah of Israel.

The question was whether he could succeed – or would the pull of materialism turn
Israel aside from their adherence to the Torah. Therefore God's message to
Solomon when He appeared to him for the second time following the completion of
his building projects (v 1) was strictly conditional: "IF you will go before Me… I shall
establish the throne of your kingship over Israel forever" (vv 4-5). At the very
moment when the Temple had just been consecrated, God was already threatening
that it would be destroyed if Israel were to go astray and that the people would
then become an international byword for the terrible consequences of sin (vv 7-8,
cf. Deut. 29:17-27).

In certain ways the test faced by Solomon and the Israel of his times was similar to
the test faced by modern Israel since the reestablishment of the Jewish settlement
in the Holy Land within the last few hundred years and particularly since the
establishment of the State. At the time of the War of Independence in 1948 the
Israeli army was a makeshift affair that was victorious not because of superior
weaponry but through a combination of heroism and divine miracles, as in the
times of Saul and Jonathan. Less than 20 years later in June 1967 the Israeli army
saw stunning successes in the space of only six days, extending the tiny country by
many times its original size. Since then Israel has attained a prosperity and
technological sophistication unimaginable only sixty years ago, and is at the center
of an international nexus of diplomatic and commercial relations. However in the
eyes of many, this very material success has been accompanied by a tragic decline
into decadence, corruption and loss of national vision. Can Israel reverse this
decline and return to the Torah ideals that give meaning and purpose to its
existence?

The way to reverse this decline is given in our text: "My eyes and My heart will be
there..." (v 3). Targum Yonasan renders this verse: "My Indwelling Presence
(=eyes) will dwell in it IF My will (=heart) is done". "My will" is the Torah: the
moral of the Prophet is the same as the moral of the Torah in whose voice he
speaks: "And it shall be if you will surely listen to My commandments…" (Deut.
11:13; Second paragraph of Shema).

SOLOMON'S COVENANT WITH HIRAM

Solomon's treaty of peace, cooperation and reciprocal trading with Hiram of Tyre is
emblematic of the international diplomatic policy through which Solomon laid the
foundations for Israel's prosperity.

It is therefore somewhat strange to discover that Solomon "gave" Hiram twenty

cities in the Galilee which found no favor with the latter, who contemptuously
dismissed the region as being "barren" or "fruitless" (vv 11-13; KAVUL literally
means "chained", implying that the land was full of bogs from which it was hard to
pull up one's feet when trying to walk there). How Solomon could have "given"
even a small part of Israel 's God-given inheritance to a foreign king is explained by
some commentators with reference to a parallel passage in I Chronicles 8:2, which
says that it was Hiram who gave Solomon a number of cities that were then
populated with Israelites. This would indicate either that Hiram returned the cities
given by Solomon, or that each country's making some of its land available to the
other was some kind of reciprocal leasing arrangement. Some say that Solomon
intentionally gave Hiram inferior land so that he would not be able to make use of it.
Despite the "diplomatic rumpus" caused by Solomon's unattractive gift, Hiram
continued lavishing friendship upon his wise Israelite ally, sending him huge
amounts of gold (v 14) and cooperating in ambitious naval ventures that brought
even more gold and exotic treasures into Israel (vv 26ff; cf. ch 10 vv 11 etc.).

SEEDS OF LATER TROUBLES

The very account of Solomon's glory includes references to factors that were later
to prove disastrous. Verse 20-21 describe how the remaining Canaanites "whom
the Children of Israel were unable to drive out" were effectively transformed into
disenfranchised serf helots who performed menial labors for their masters
(somewhat reminiscent of Israel's Palestinian workforce of today) while the
Israelites were a free elite manning the king's army and government. While our
present text voices no explicit criticism of this arrangement, it is clear from
elsewhere that it was the Israelite failure to drive out the Canaanites that was the
root cause of their later exile, because they adopted the Canaanite idolatries.

Similarly Solomon's building of the MILLO in Jerusalem for the daughter of Pharaoh
(v 24) was one of the root causes of the later rebellion of the Ten Tribes under
Jeraboam. The MILLO was a large area by the city which David had left vacant in
order to provide space for the pilgrims who came up for the foot festivals to pitch
their tents. Solomon FILLED IN (Heb. MILA) this area with earth in order to build
homes for Pharaoh's daughter's servants and attendants, causing great popular
resentment among the home-born Israelites over the requisitioning of land left for
their benefit for the sake of a foreign princess. It was precisely over this that
Jeraboam reproved Solomon (ch 11 v 27).

Chapter 10
THE VISIT OF THE QUEEN OF SHEBA

Many beautiful legends have been woven around the visit of the Queen of Sheba to
Jerusalem as described in our present chapter. Solomon's development of the ports
of Etzion-Gever by EYLOTH (=present day Eilat) and his joint naval ventures with
the sea-faring experts of Hiram's Tyre opened up not only the Red Sea and
surrounding coastal regions of present-day Somalia, Ethiopia, Arabia and Yemen
but also gave access to the Indian Ocean and many far-off, exotic sources of luxury
goods.

Some commentators identify Sheba with India (cf. Gen. 10:7), but rabbinic
tradition identifies it with present-day Ethiopia, which would agree with Ethiopian
folklore.

The Talmud states: "Whoever says that the Queen of Sheba was a woman is simply
mistaken; what is MALKHAS Sheba? It is the kingdom (MAMLEKHES) of Sheba!"
(Bava Basra 15b). Some people have taken this to mean that the Biblical account of
the visit of the Queen of Sheba is nothing but an allegory about some kind of
cultural exchange between King Solomon and some far-off nation. However this
misconception is dispelled by the comment of Maharsha (ad loc.) that all the
Talmud means here is that the Queen of Sheba was not merely the wife-consort of
a King of Sheba but that she was actually a Queen in her own right.
The riddles posed to Solomon by the Queen of Sheba as elaborated in the
Midrashim have exercised many minds throughout the generations. "And King
Solomon gave to the Queen of Sheba all her desire that she asked" (v 13). Rashi
(ad loc.) comments that what Solomon gave her was nothing but a lesson in
wisdom, adding that to satisfy her desire, he had relations with her and she
conceived a child whose descendant was Nebuchadnezzar, who was to destroy
Solomon's Temple four hundred and ten years after it was built. Once again
Solomon's ambitious ventures in trying to join the holy with the unholy sowed the
seeds of later destruction.

SIX HUNDRED AND SIXTY SIX TALENTS OF GOLD

The information that the total sum of Solomon's annual income of gold was six
hundred and sixty-six talents of gold (v 14) is likely to be somewhat chilling to
those who have been exposed to the various occult teachings that associate 666
with great evil. Rashi (ad loc.) explains that this sum was made up of 120 talents
given by Hiram, another 120 talents given by the Queen of Sheba, and a further
420 talents brought by the ships of Tarshish from Ophir. "And as for the other six, I
don't know where they were from" (Rashi). Other commentators point out that it
was this very wealth that proved to be Solomon's undoing, and that 666 is the sum
of the numerical value of the Hebrew letters in the word TASSUR (Tav 400, Samach
60, Vav 6, Reish 200), "turn aside", as in the verse, "And you shall not TURN ASIDE
(TASSUR) from all the things that I am commanding you today" (Deut. 28:14, cf.
Deut. 17:11).

SOLOMON'S THRONE

Another theme around which many fabulous legends have been woven is Solomon's
amazing throne (vv 18ff). One of the main sources for more details about this
throne is the Second Targum on Esther 1:2, which provides a complete description
of the many different figures of animals that adorned this throne and their various
ways of dealing with intruders, false witnesses who came to testify before Solomon,
etc. Among the various kings who were said to have later unsuccessfully tried to sit
on this throne were Pharaoh Necho, Nebuchadnezzar, Achashverosh and Alexander
the Great. Rabbi Elazar the son of Rabbi Yosse said that he had seen the shattered
remnants of this throne in Rome. (See also Rabbi Nachman's tale of the Exchanged
Children, which alludes to this throne at the climax of the story.)

The six steps of the throne mentioned in our present text correspond to the Six
Orders of the Mishneh – for despite his excesses, Solomon based his kingly
authority only on the Torah as handed down through the oral tradition. Solomon's
throne was the earthly representation of the heavenly Throne of Glory, and
according to tradition was adorned with a wolf side by side with a lamb, a leopard
with a kid goat and a calf with a lion (cf. Isaiah 11:6) indicating that through
faithful adherence to the wisdom and judgments of the Torah, perfect Messianic
peace can reign.

Chapter 11
"AND KING SOLOMON LOVED MANY FOREIGN WOMEN" (v. 1)

Foreign "women" – in the form of the religions, worldviews, philosophies, arts,

sciences, cultures and lifestyles of the other nations – have had an irresistible allure
for many Israelites in generation after generation despite the solemn Torah
injunctions against their pursuit. It is surely impossible for ordinary people to
understand precisely what the wisest man that ever lived really intended in going
after so many foreign women, but Rabbi Nachman of Breslov – who also attained
supreme heights of wisdom – teaches that reliance on wisdom alone is intrinsically
dangerous:

"When a person follows his own mind and clever ideas, he can fall into many pitfalls
and errors and come to great evil. Tremendous damage has been caused by such
people, like the infamous great villains who, through their intelligence and cunning,
have led the entire world astray" (Likutey Moharan II, 12). For Rabbi Nachman, the
very essence of Judaism is simplicity: "Throw aside all wisdom and clever ideas and
serve God with simplicity. Make sure that your deeds are greater than your wisdom,
because the main thing is not study but its practical application. This obviously
applies to most ordinary people's clever ideas, which are mere folly, but it even
applies to genuine wisdom. When it comes to serving God, even a person whose
head is filled with genuine wisdom should set it all aside and serve God simply and
innocently" (ibid. II, 5).

The Talmud indicates that Solomon did not necessarily actually marry the "many
foreign women" that he "loved": he is considered to have done so only because he
permitted himself to become entranced by them (Yevamos 76b). "Everyone who
says Solomon sinned is simply mistaken, as the verse says, 'His heart was not
perfect with HaShem his God like the heart of his father David' (v 4): this means
that he was not wholehearted with God like David, but HE DID NOT SIN. Then how
are we understand the verse that says, 'In the time of Solomon's old age his wives
inclined his heart after other gods' (ibid.)? They inclined his heart, but he did not
actually follow after" (Shabbos 56b).

The Torah forbids the king from marrying too many wives "lest his heart turn
astray" (Deut. 17:17). According to the Talmud, Solomon's flaw lay in believing
that he was so saintly that he had the power to flout the Torah and multiply wives
while remaining immune to their allurements (Sanhedrin 21b). The rabbis said that
Solomon himself did not actually build the idolatrous temples listed in vv 7-8, but is
only credited with having done so because he did not protest when his wives built
them (Shabbos 56b). Perhaps his multi-cultural enthusiasm was so great that he
IMAGINED he had brought these foreign women under the wings of the Shechinah
while willfully blinding himself to the fact that they never truly emerged from the
idolatrous attitudes from which he hoped to wean them.

"And God spoke to Solomon…" (v 11). According to RaDaK, God spoke to Solomon
through the same prophet who enters the narrative later in our present chapter (vv
29ff) – Ahiyah HaShiloni. According to tradition, Ahiyah was a Levite and had been
a boy at the time of the Exodus from Egypt. He had heard Torah from Moses and
later received Torah from David and his court (Rambam, Introduction to Mishneh
Torah). Not only was Ahiyah the teacher of Elijah the Prophet (ibid.); his soul also
came regularly to teach Rabbi Israel the Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Chassidic
movement (Shevachay HaBesht).

The prophet's grim message to Solomon was that because he was divided in his
own heart, the very kingdom itself would be divided and torn into two so soon after
the establishment of the House of David and the building of God's Temple in
Jerusalem. The glorious age of Solomon's international empire and Israelite cultural
hegemony proved to be very short-lived indeed. Yet the House of David's loss of
their rule over all the tribes of Israel was different from the collapse of the House of
Saul, for while the latter disappeared completely, the House of David always
retained the loyalty of Judah and Benjamin, and is destined to regain its rule over
all Israel in the end of days. Indeed Ahiyah's prophecy to Jeraboam that God would
afflict the seed of David "BUT NOT FOR ALL THE DAYS" (v 39) is taken as a promise
that eventually Judah will once again be reunited with Ephraim and the Ten Tribes
(RaDaK).

Serious trouble did not break out until after the death of Solomon, but already in
the twilight years of his reign God's providence was at work preparing the
adversaries who would come to test and try the House of David. Isaac had long
before told Esau that whenever Jacob would fall from his level and give Esau cause
to resent his having received the blessings, "you shall break his yoke from upon
your neck" (Genesis 27:40). Thus the very first "satan" against Solomon was the
Edomite prince Hadad, who had escaped to Egypt during David's campaign against
Edom and who was willing to give up a life of royal splendor in Egypt in order to stir
up his remaining people against the Israelite "occupiers" (vv 14-22). At the same
time Razon was at work in the Syrian provinces of Aram to undo their subjugation
by David (v 23f).

Most serious of all was the rupture between the Kingdom of Judah and the Ten
Tribes under the leadership of Ephraim, the consequences of which are with us until
today and the first premonition of which also came in Solomon's lifetime. Unlike the
prophet Samuel, who physically anointed David as king during the lifetime of Saul,
Ahiyah HaShiloni did not actually anoint Jeraboam son of Nevat as king over the
Ten Tribes. His dramatic ripping of the "new garment" (v 29 – whether it belonged
to Ahiyah or Jeraboam is unclear, RaDaK) and giving ten of the twelve shreds to
Jeraboam was intended to indicate that Jeraboam had the power to lead the Ten
Tribes but not that he necessarily had to rebel.

Although Jeraboam later became the archetype of those who lead others into sin,
he started off as "a mighty man of valor" (v 28): he was one of the outstanding
Torah sages of all time. "Jeraboam's Torah had no flaw" (Sanhedrin 102a). The
reason why he and Ahiyah are described as having been "alone in the field" is
because "all the other Torah scholars were like the grass of the field in comparison
with them" (ibid.). As the officer in charge of tax collection from the tribe of
Ephraim, Jeraboam was energetic and efficient. According to the sages, his main
flaw was his pride. "God said to Jeraboam: 'If you will only repent, I, you and the
son of Jesse will stroll in the Garden of Eden.' Jeraboam asked, 'Who will be at the
head?' When God said, 'The son of Jesse will be at the head,' Jeraboam replied, 'I
don't want to'." (Sanhedrin ibid.)

Chapter 12
The rumblings that began to be felt in the last years of Solomon's life broke out into
the open as soon as he died. Evidently knowledge of Ahiyah's appointment of
Jeraboam as leader of the Ten Tribes had become public, and he was seen as the
one person who could redress the people's grievances over the heavy yoke of the
monarchy. Jeraboam's public criticism of Solomon over requisitioning parts of
Jerusalem for Pharaoh's daughter's household (ch 11 v 27) put him in the status of
a MOREID BEMALCHUS ("state traitor") whom the king sought to kill, but Jeraboam
escaped to Egypt, where the new king Shishak was probably only too happy to give
protection to a potential counterweight to the expansionist House of David (ibid. v
40). With the death of Solomon, the people recalled Jeraboam from Egypt,
indicating that their resentment was already seething.

Solomon's successor Rehaboam showed the same kind of inexperience as many

new rulers heady with their first taste of power: he thought the best way to
suppress popular resentment would be through a resolute display of heavy-
handedness. One wonders if the yoke about which the Israelites were complaining
was purely economic – they were being taxed heavily, but it was to pay for the
army to maintain the peace – or was it perhaps the yoke of halachic stringency
represented by the House of David? (Solomon and his court had introduced a
number of new "rabbinic" enactments to safeguard Torah law, such as EIRUVEY
HATZEROS on Shabbos etc.) If so, one might see a parallel between Rehaboam's
response to the hankering for greater laxity on the part of the Israelites and the
response to the laxity of many of their coreligionists by those sectors of the Torah
community who seem to be taking refuge in a fortress of ever greater stringencies,
which often merely increase the rebelliousness of those outside the fortress.

When Rehaboam told the very people who were hoping for greater laxity that "my
father chastised you with whips but I will chastise you with scorpions" (v 14) he
surely did not realize that he was with his own mouth sealing the decree against
the House of David. It was under the sign of the Scorpion that Jeraboam began the
rebellion of the Ten Tribes: "And Jeraboam made a festival in the EIGHTH month on
the 15 th day of the month". The eighth month is Marheshvan, coinciding with the
astrological sign of Scorpio (Heb. AKRAV). Ever since, the month of Marheshvan
has been a period when the sting of exile has often been particularly painful. This
month is also especially associated with Rachel, mother of Joseph (Ephraim):
Rachel's YAHRTZEIT ("death anniversary") is on 11 th Marheshvan. Rachel was
Jacob's favorite wife, his IKAR BAYIS ("essential house"): the Hebrew letters IKaR
Beis are the same as AKRAV.

The two golden calves that Jeraboam set up in Beith El and Dan in order to
discourage people from going up to the Temple in Jerusalem "became a sin" (v 30)
but they were not set up as idols from the very outset. If they had been, it is highly
unlikely that the super-intelligent Israelites would all of a sudden have simply bent
the knee to the very kind of idols the Torah loudly proscribes. RaDaK explains that
in order to "compensate" people for not being able to go up to Jerusalem to
experience the Shechinah in the Temple, Jeraboam set up these golden calves
much in the same way as Aaron the Priest made the Golden Calf in the wilderness
as a kind of visible sign of the Shechinah in the absence of Moses (RaDaK on vv 28-
29).

Rabbi Nachman of Breslov taught that the idolatry surrounding these golden calves
was not something simple and primitive but was supported by theoretical
underpinnings and rationalizations that were so deep as to be totally overwhelming
and convincing to most ordinary people. Out of mercy for the world God has
arranged it so that the literature justifying this idolatry has been totally erased in
order to save people from its allure (Likutey Moharan II:32). Not only is the ox one
of the animals of the divine chariot, which by representing in gold the perpetrators
of this idolatry were separating from the divine unity, turning it into a power of its
own. The root of the word EGEL is also related to the root IGUL, a "circle" or "cycle",
alluding to the great cycle of creation (cf. the comparison of an angel to an "ox",
EGLA, in Taanis 25b).

Chapter 13
David and Solomon had been the spiritual as well as temporal leaders of the people,
but with the split in the kingdom the spiritual authority of the kings was
undermined, and from now on the voice of truth and reproof came from the
prophets.

The "man of God" who came from Judah to Beit El was Ido the Prophet (Sanhedrin
89b; cf. II Chronicles 9:29). At the very beginning of the rebellion of the Ten Tribes,
Ido already prophesied that a king of Judah would later arise who would destroy the
idolatrous altars of Israel (verse 2). This was the saintly King Josiah, who lived
three hundred years later and came to the throne at the tender age of eight years
old, bringing the people of Judah to one final flowering of repentance and national
revival a generation before the destruction of the First Temple. Josiah was one of
six who were given their name before they were even born (the others being
Ishmael, Isaac, Moses, Solomon and Melech HaMashiach – Yalkut Shimoni #200).
Josiah was mourned by the prophet Jeremiah as "the breath of our nostrils,
HaShem's anointed Mashiach" (Lam. 4:20; II Chron. 35:25).

The length of the time between Jeraboam's building of his idolatrous altar and its
final destruction by King Josiah 300 years later shows God's great patience. This is
also illustrated by the fact that even as Jeraboam served at his idolatrous altar in
defiance of Heaven, nothing whatever happened to him until the moment when he
tried to seize Ido the Prophet. This was when Jeraboam's hand "dried up" (v 4),
showing that God avenged the honor of the Tzaddik more than He avenged the
affront to His own honor (Rashi ad loc.).

Ido had been instructed not to eat or drink in Beit El because it is forbidden to enter
a city of idolaters except for the purpose of giving them a warning: it would have
created the wrong impression if people had seen the prophet enjoying himself in
the course of his mission, and if he had left the city by the same route he had taken
to get there, it would have given unnecessary prestige to the road leading to the
city.

"And a certain old prophet dwelled in Beit El" (v 11). Some rabbis identify this
prophet with Michah or Jonathan son of Gershom the son of Moses (Judges 17-18;
RaDaK on I Kings 13:11). Those who find it hard to believe that Michah and/or
Jonathan could have lived so long may prefer to think that perhaps the soul or spirit
of Michah/Jonathan was somehow incarnated again in this old prophet. Targum
Yonasan (on v 11) states explicitly that he was a FALSE prophet, yet our text
indicates that he was a sociable fellow. Despite the fact that he lied (v 18) when he
told Ido that he had been prophetically instructed to feed him bread and water, he
momentarily attained true prophecy in the merit of having showed hospitality: "We
see the greatness of giving someone a little refreshment from the fact that it
caused the Divine Presence to rest even on the prophets of Baal" (Sanhedrin 104a).

For eating this bread and water in defiance of his own prophetic instructions, Ido
was punished with death at the hands of Heaven (i.e. by the lion), because the
Torah states that "whoever will not listen to the words of the prophet who speaks in
My name, I shall require it of him" (Deut. 18:19). If this applies to one who hears
true prophecy from another, how much more does it apply to the one who receives
the prophecy himself (RaDaK on v 18; see Rambam, Hilchos Yesodey HaTorah 9:3).

The lion killed Ido yet did not eat him or even his donkey (v 24), showing that God
exacts retribution with the utmost accuracy and fairness. The prophet had defied
His word and had to pay with his life, yet since he was a Tzaddik in all other
respects his body was left intact, as was the donkey he had ridden upon in his
lifetime. Ido's body was laid to rest in the grave which the old prophet of Beit El
had prepared for himself, and when he died he too was buried there at his side.
This gave the false prophet protection three hundred years later when King Josiah
had all the graves of the prophets of Baal dug up (II Kings 23:17-18).

Even though Jeraboam had directly witnessed God's providence when his hand
dried up on his altar, and he doubtless heard how Ido was killed by the lion, this did
not deter him from his rebellious path. He now established his own alterative
priesthood, "and this thing became a sin to the house of Jeraboam, even to cut it
off and to destroy it from off the face of the earth" (v 34). Jeraboam was "cut off"
in this world and "destroyed" in the world to come: this verse is the foundation of
the rabbinic teaching that Jeraboam was one of those who had no share in the
world to come (Sanhedrin 101b).

Chapter 14
Jeraboam originally had the soul of Joseph, but it left him when he sinned, as it is
written, "And he sinned with the Baal and he DIED" (Hosea 13:1; ARI, Sefer
HaLikutim on I Kings ch 11). Despite his dogged obstinacy, Jeraboam was so
distressed by the illness of his son (ch 14 v 1) that he sent his wife to Ahiyah the
Shiloni, who had been the one who originally told him that he would reign over
Israel. The rabbis said that Ahiyah had become blind on account of having raised a
wicked disciple (Bereishis Rabba 65). This blindness did not prevent Ahiyah from
seeing the terrible decree that was hanging over the house of Jeraboam and which
initiated the bloody history of violent regime change that afflicted the kings of
Israel ever after.

"AND REHAV'AM THE SON OF SOLOMON RULED IN JUDAH " (v 21)

For the whole of the remainder of the book of Kings (Parts I and II) until the exile
of the Ten Tribes a few generations prior to the destruction of the First Temple, the
narrative swings back and forth repeatedly from the exploits of the kings of Judah
to those of the kings of Israel and back again in order to give a full account of what
happened in each generation during those tumultuous times.

According to the time-frame of the rabbinic Midrash SEDER OLAM ("Order of the
World"), which is based on a combination of tradition and acute analysis of all the
years enumerated in the biblical texts, Solomon came to the throne in the year
2928 (= -836 B.C.E.). He started building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign,
and the 410 years that it stood are counted from the year in which the building
commenced, 2928 (-832 B.C.E.). The First Temple thus stood until the year 3338 (-
422 B.C.E.). Solomon's son Rehavam came to the throne in 2964 (-796 B.C.E.) and
reigned until 2981 (-779 B.C.E.), initiating the period in which even Judah strayed
ever deeper into idolatry (vv 22-3) and sexual immorality (v 24).

When Joseph had been ruler of Egypt, he sucked all the wealth of Egypt and the
surrounding countries into the coffers of the Egyptian kings (Gen. 41:57 and 47:14).
When the Children of Israel came up out of Egypt, they took all this wealth with
them (Exodus 12:36). It remained in Israel's hands until the time of Rehav'am,
when "Shishak king of Egypt went up to Jerusalem and took the treasures of the
House of God and the treasures of the House of the king…" (v 26). According to the
rabbis, this wealth was subsequently seized by Zerach king of Kush, from whom it
was taken back by King Asa who sent it as a bribe to the king of Aram . It was
taken back again by King Jehoshaphat, and remained in the hands of Israel until
the time of King Ahaz, from whom it was taken by Sennacherib, from whom it was
taken in turn by the Babylonians, the Persians and the Greeks, from whom it was
seized by the Romans, who took it to Rome, where it remains until today (Pesachim
119a).

Chapter 15
With the death of Solomon's son Rehav'am, the latter's son Aviyam (also called
Aviyah – II Chron. 13:1) became king of Judah. Our text states that Aviyah
followed in the sinful ways of his father Rehav'am, who "did evil for he did not
prepare his heart to seek out HaShem" (II Chron. 12:14). Yet despite the recurrent
failings of the kings of Judah, David's line was never extirpated: this was his reward
for his outstanding and unwavering loyalty to God. Although there were many ups
and downs in the history of the House of David, all were part of the long-drawn out
process of BIRUR ("sifting and selection") that is to lead eventually to the final
ascendancy of MELEKH HAMASHIAH.

The exact nature of the evil for which the various kings are criticized in the Bible is
often hard to pin down definitively and can sometimes only be inferred from the
most subtle of hints in the text, some of which are elaborated in the Talmud and
Midrashim. Our most important source for a wider perspective on many of the
laconic comments contained in our present text lies in the parallel account of the
exploits of the kings of Judah and Israel in the Book of Chronicles, which often
provides crucial supplementary details.

Thus our present text passes over Aviyah's war against Jeraboam in complete
silence, but it is described in great detail in II Chronicles ch 13, which records
Aviyah's public call to the tribes of the northern kingdom to submit themselves
again to the hegemony of Judah on the grounds that Judah alone had remained
faithful to the Torah tradition under which only the Levites and the Cohen-priests
descended from Aaron were authorized to minister to God in Jerusalem and
nowhere else. On the face of it Aviyah's speech seems impeccably righteous, yet
the Midrash Seder Olam points out that he scathingly denounced the prophet
Ahiyah HaShiloni as one of the "worthless people" who supported Jeraboam (II
Chron. 13:7); he also publicly castigated the tribes of Israel for keeping the golden
calves (ibid. v 8) – yet after all his criticisms, the Midrash says that when he came
to Beit El and saw them, he almost joined in worshiping them, which is why he was
"hit" by Jerabo'am's armies even though he eventually subdued them (ibid. v. 20,
see Rashi ad loc.)

"AND ASA DID RIGHT… LIKE DAVID HIS FATHER" (v 11)

King Asa is the first example of the various righteous descendants of King David
(such as Hezekiah and Josiah etc.) who succeeded in bringing about a greater or
lesser spiritual revival during their reigns. Although our text (v 10) states that Asa's
mother was Maachah daughter of Avishalom, the commentators agree that she was
actually his grandmother, the wife of Rehav'am and mother of Asa's father Aviyah
(see v 2). It is unclear whether she was actually the daughter of David's rebellious
son Absalom, but this is quite possible as she bore the name of Absalom's mother.
In the time of Asa she was the Queen Mother, and she had evidently played a
prominent role in spreading idolatry in Judah (v 13), having set up a MIFLETZES.
Until today this Hebrew word literally means a "monster", but the sages (Avodah
Zarah 44a) darshened it as a compound of MAPHLIA ("wondrous", "astonishing")
and LEITZANUSA ("mockery"). According to Rashi (on v 13) she attached a large
phallus to her idol and made daily use of it as a dildo.

Despite the fact that she was the Queen Mother and Asa's own grandmother, the
king displayed his Davidic righteousness in showing no compunction about
removing her from her royal position and grinding up her monster and casting it
into a valley where nobody would have any benefit from the dust.

Our text notes that in spite of Asa's whole-heartedness with God, he did not
remove the BAMOTH ("high places"). It is necessary to bear in mind that
throughout almost the entire turbulent 410 year history of the Kingdom of Judah,
the Holy Temple actually functioned every day and remained the main focus of the
people's spiritual life. Ever since the inauguration of the Temple in Jerusalem, it had
been forbidden to offer sacrifices to HaShem anywhere else: this is an explicit
Torah prohibition that carries the penalty of KARES (early death and spiritual
excision, see Lev. 17:3ff). The sages associated the practice of sacrificing at a
BAMAH with pride and arrogance, as if the celebrant was reluctant to submit to the
authority of the Cohen-priests and wanted to be his own priest. The fact that for
most of the period of the kings of Judah the BAMOTH were not eliminated indicates
that the blemish of pride and arrogance persisted behind this outer display of
religiosity and devotion.

Our present text does not mention the invasion of Judah by Zerah HaKushi ("Zerah
the black man") during the reign of Asa (II Chron. 14:8ff). This was apparently an
invasion from the south west by hordes of Nubians and Libyans, which Asa
heroically repelled with the same faith and trust in God displayed by the Judges
(ibid. v 10). Unfortunately Asa failed to display similar faith and trust when
confronted by a serious blockade on Judah by Ba'sha king of Israel (our present
chapter v 17). Asa took the Temple and royal treasures and sent them to the king
of Aram as a bribe to make trouble for Ba'sha on his northern flank in order to force
him to dismantle his blockade against Judah (vv 18-21). The ploy worked, but Asa
was severely castigated for paying a foreign king to attack his Israelite brothers.
According to Seder Olam this war took place thirty-six years after the death of
Solomon. Solomon had married Pharaoh's daughter in the fourth year of his reign
and lived for another thirty-six years. The decree of the division of his kingdom was
originally intended to last only thirty-six years after his death, and had Asa trusted
in God alone to save him from Ba'sha's blockade, the rabbis said that he would
have been able to restore his hegemony over all the tribes of Israel. His bribing of
the king of Aram was a lapse of faith that lost him the opportunity to restore
David's united kingdom, which will not return until the coming of Mashiach (see II
Chronicles 16:7ff, Seder Olam).

Asa sought to build a strong Judah, and even called bridegrooms from their
marriage celebrations and Torah scholars from their study halls in order to fortify
its cities (I Kings 15:22; see RaDaK). For the sin of interrupting the studies of the
scholars – the supporting "legs" of the Torah – Asa was punished with illness in his
legs (this is said to have been an extremely painful "podagra" or gout, which felt
like needles pricking into raw flesh, Sota 10b), but instead of going to the prophets
to find out what he needed to correct, Asa went to the doctors instead – and found
no cure (II Chron. 16:12).

Chapter 16
The concluding section of Chapter 15 turned from the history of Judah to that of the
northern kingdom, summarizing the brief two-year reign of Jeraboam's son Nadav,
who in fulfillment of Ahiyah's prophecy was overthrown in a bloody coup while
campaigning against the Philistines (who despite having been routed by David were
now able to raise their heads again as God's staff of chastisement on account of the
Israelite idolatry).

The Biblical narrative about the succession of bloody military coups and regime
changes that characterizes the history of the northern kingdom may make the
leading actors seem like nothing more than a bunch of brutal gangsters. In order to
correct this impression, we would do well to note the comment of our rabbis that
the wicked king Jeraboam was able to expound the book of Leviticus in one
hundred and three different ways, while Ahab – who prostrated to the Baal in Sidon
and built Temples for Baal and Ashera worship in Shomron (vv 31-3 in our present
chapter) – could expound Leviticus in eighty-five different ways (Sanhedrin 103b).
It would appear that these wickedly wise leaders must have had the power to
totally entrance their Israelite constituencies with the profoundest kabbalistic
theorization, despite the fact that the Israelites had always shown themselves to be
exceptionally sharp and critical people.

Ba'sha had destroyed Nadav and with him the entire house of Jeraboam. Ba'sha
was succeeded by his son Eylah, but this inept drunkard was killed in another coup
after only two years (v 9), and the coup leader, Zimri – an army general – went on
to wipe out the whole house of Ba'sha. Zimri's rule lasted no more than seven days
(v 15) as it did not find favor with the people, who preferred another general --
Omri – who was busy fighting the Philistines ("security is everything"). Omri left off
fighting the Philistines and laid siege to Tirzah – a town about 10 kilometers north
of Shechem (Nablus) that had served as the capital of the northern kingdom since
the days of Jeraboam (see I Kings 14:17). After an initial division among the people
as to whether to go after Omri or his rival Thivni son of Ginath (v 21), the Omri
faction gained sway and after the death of Thivni, Omri ruled over all the Ten Tribes.

"Why did Omri attain the kingship? Because he added one great city in the Land of
Israel " (Sanhedrin 102b). This was Shomron (verse 24 in our present chapter),
which was about 15 kilometers north east of Shechem and which subsequently
became the royal capital of the northern kingdom. Archeological remains found at
the site of Shomron attest to the very great magnificence and cultural
sophistication of this capital city of the kings of Israel.

Omri continued in the path of Jeraboam, refusing to allow the Israelites to go up to

the Temple in Jerusalem (until just before the exile of the Ten Tribes, heavily
armed police were posted on all the paths leading to Jerusalem with instructions to
break the bones of anyone who tried to go up). Yet even the evil of Jeraboam was
exceeded by Omri's son Ahav, who added to the existing worship of Jeraboams
golden calves the new element of Baal worship imported from the Canaanite city-
state of Sidon , the daughter of whose king – the accursed Jezebel – Ahab took as
his wife.

If Ahab "did evil IN THE EYES OF GOD more than all that were before him" his evil
was apparently not seen at the time by most of the human Israelites: this
paradoxical figure, who was like a brother (AH) and a father (AB) to all his people,
was a lover of the Torah – he could darshen Leviticus in 85 ways – and a supporter
of Torah scholars. He knew and spoke with Elijah the Prophet, and no less than
Jehoshaphat king of Judah entered into a marriage alliance with him, marrying his
sister. Yet despite all this, "he wrote on the gates of Shomron, 'Ahab denies the
God of Israel'" (Sanhedrin 102b) – "and he therefore has no share in the God of
Israel" (ibid.).

The ultra-sophisticated spiritual decadence into which Israel had sunk by the time
of Ahab was epitomized by the rebuilding of Jericho despite Joshua's severe curse
against anyone who would dare to do so (Joshua 6:26). Jericho was in the territory
of Benjamin, who had remained faithful to the House of Judah – which indicates
that Ahab himself was not necessarily the initiator of this despicable project; rather,
it was Ahab's influence that created the climate in which it could come about. It is
said that after Hi-el of Beit El, who rebuilt Jericho, lost all his sons one by one
because of Joshua's curse, King Ahab and Elijah the Prophet went to visit him as he
sat in mourning, and it was there that they had the conversation in which Elijah
delivered the grim prophecy with which the following chapter opens (Rashi on I
Kings 17:1).
 Chapter 17
To raise the people from the deep spiritual decline into which they had fallen in the
time of Ahab required a figure of outstanding stature. Opinions differ as to which
tribe Elijah came from: some rabbis said he was from the tribe of Gad, which
inherited Gil'ad. Others darshened from I Chron. 8:27 that he was from the tribe of
Benjamin, while others identified him (or his soul) with Pinchas son of Elazar the
Cohen (pointing to Elijah's request in v 13 to the widow of Tzorphath to give him
the first portion of her dough, corresponding to the priestly Hallah, Numbers 15:20-
21).

Elijah received the Torah tradition from Ahiyah HaShiloni and gave it over to
Yehoyada HaKohen and as well as being master of all the subsequent great
prophets of Israel (Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Introduction). After Elijah's ascent
alive to Heaven in a chariot of fire, he became a legendary figure, making repeated
miraculous appearances at moments of dire crisis.

"And through a prophet [Moses] God brought Israel up from Egypt, and through a
prophet [Elijah] they were protected" (Hosea 12:14). While Moses was the agent of
God's redemption of Israel from Egypt, Elijah will be His agent to redeem them in
time to come (Malachi 3:23). There are numerous parallels between Moses and
Elijah. Both are called "the man of God"; both ascended to Heaven; Moses killed
the Egyptian while Elijah killed Hi-el (who built Jericho, Midrash on Hosea 13:1).
Moses was sustained in exile by a woman (Tzipporah) while Elijah was sustained by
the widow of Tzorphath. Moses fled from Pharaoh while Elijah fled from Jezebel.
Both fled to a well (Ex. 2:I5; Kings 19:3). Moses brought about supernatural
miracles (Numbers 16:29) and so did Elijah by stopping and starting the rains. God
passed by both (Ex. 34:6; I Kings 19:11) and both heard "the voice" (Numb. 7:89;
I Kings 19:13). Both came to Horeb (Ex. 3:1; I Kings 19:8) and both were hidden
in a cave (Ex.33:22; I Kings 19:9). Moses assembled Israel at Mount Sinai, while
Elijah assembled them at Mt. Carmel. Moses uprooted idolatry (Ex.32:27) while
Elijah killed the prophets of Baal (I Kings 18:40) and so on (Midrash Pesikta
Rabbasi).

"AND HE SHALL SHUT UP THE HEAVENS AND THERE WILL NOT BE RAIN"
(Deut. 11:17)

The rabbis darshened from the SEMICHUS ("immediate proximity") of Elijah's

stopping of the rains (ch 17 v 1) to the account of the death of the sons of Hi-el,
who rebuilt Jericho, that Elijah and Ahab both went to visit Hi-el in his mourning.
When Elijah said that Hi-el's sons had died because he had defied Joshua's curse in
rebuilding Jericho, Ahab asked how it was possible that God would uphold the curse
of the student (Joshua) while not fulfilling the curse of the master (Moses) who had
said that if Israel turned aside to serve idols, God's anger would burn and He would
shut up the heavens – yet idolatry was rampant in the time of Ahab and it still
rained regularly (see Rashi on v 1).

It was as a rejoinder to this insinuation that everything is governed by chance and

that there is no divine judgment or providence that Elijah brought about a drought
through the power of his own words, showing that God gives over the very keys of
creation into the hands of His prophets. Elijah hoped that drought and famine would
chastise the hearts of the arrogant idolaters of the time and bring them to humble
themselves before God. [The current protracted drought in Eretz Israel is also
causing us to fear and turn to God. Pray for rain!!!]
Immediately after making his decree, Elijah had to flee – the wicked Jezebel, who
obviously called the shots in Shomron, had instigated a reign of complete terror,
killing all true prophets, in an effort to efface the Torah from the hearts of Israel.

When God commanded the ravens – the cruelest of birds – to nonetheless bring
bread and meat to Elijah (which they are said to have taken either from the kitchen
of Ahab, or more likely from that of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, which was more
kosher), it was a hint that it was time for Elijah to have mercy on the people and
soften his harsh decree. Rabbi Nachman teaches that the radical change the ravens
made in their normally cruel attitudes is emblematic of the change every Jew must
make in his normally selfish ways in order to force himself to give charity. When a
person gives charity because he is naturally generous-hearted, this is not a real act
of service. Charity is only service when we break our instinctive cruelty and
selfishness in order to help others – and such charity opens up all the gates of
holiness (Likutey Moharan Pt. II Discourse 4).

The widow of Tzorphath who courageously gave Elijah her last remaining food even
at the height of a famine is symbolic of Knesset Israel – the Assembly of Israel –
who had descended to the very bottom in the time of Ahab, yet were restored
through the spiritual power of the prophet. Thus the widow's son (identified with
the prophet Jonah) was if not actually clinically dead at the very least no longer
breathing (v 17) when Elijah performed his miraculous resuscitation. The prophet's
ability to revive the lifeless lad is a sign that God's Redeemer will save Israel from
even the worst decline.

Chapter 18
Out of compassion for His suffering people God sent Elijah to bring down the rains.
The dire famine forced the very king himself to go out in search of forage for the
animals (v 5), which shows the tenderness of Ahab's Israelite heart compared to
that of his foreign wife, who had instigated a murderous rampage against God's
prophets.

Even more surprising than this compassionate trait of Ahab's is the fact that as
officer over his royal household he had appointed none other than the saintly
prophet Obadiah, whom the Biblical text praises even more than Abraham since of
the latter God said "I know you fear God" (Gen. 22:12) while Obadiah is described
as having "feared God VERY MUCH" (I Kings 18:3; Sanhedrin 39b). Obadiah was a
righteous proselyte who originated from Edom, and he was so great that he alone
of all the prophets was allowed to prophesy the downfall of Edom in the end of days.
"Why did Obadiah attain prophecy? Because he hid one hundred prophets in a
cave" (Sanhedrin ibid.)

When Obadiah encountered his master Elijah, he told him, "There is not a nation or
kingdom to which my lord [Ahab] has not sent to seek you out… and he made the
kingdom and the nation swear that they could not find you" (v 10). From the fact
that Ahab had enough leverage over all the kingdoms and nations that he could
force them to take an oath, the rabbis learned that Ahab presided over a global
empire or sphere of influence. "Three kings ruled over the whole dome of the
globe: Ahab son of Omri, Nebuchadnezzar and Ahashverosh" (Megilah 11a). The
mere fact that later historians have turned a blind eye to if not intentionally tried to
efface the fact that there was an extensive Israelite sphere of influence in Biblical
times should not deceive us into underestimating its greatness.

"How long will you go limping between the two opinions" Elijah asked the people (I
Kings 18:21). To raise the people from their spiritual collapse, a KIDDUSH HASHEM
(Sanctification of God's Name) of the greatest magnitude was required. As
discussed in the commentary on I Kings 16, since the building of the Temple in
Jerusalem it was forbidden to sacrifice on any outside BAMAH ("altar") on pain of
KARES (early death and spiritual excision). Elijah's decision to sacrifice on Mount
Carmel was HORA'AS SHA'AH, a one-time legal ruling necessitated by the spiritual
peril facing the nation. Elijah was not entirely uprooting the prohibition against
sacrificing outside the Temple from the Torah (which would have been a sign of
false prophecy) but simply suspending it for one time (Rambam, Hilchos Yesodei
HaTorah 9:3) for the very purpose of HEALING THE ALTAR (v 30). "He built an altar
in order to remind Israel that God's Altar should have their foremost attention in
their hearts and should constantly be mentioned on their lips, because it had been
destroyed and its name and memory had become defunct as far as the Ten Tribes
were concerned [ever since Jeraboam made the golden calves]" (Rashi on v 30).

Initially Elijah told the prophets of Baal to CHOOSE (v 25) one of the oxen (both
were twins from the same mother that since birth had been together constantly in
the same manger), but when it came to it, the false prophets "took the ox WHICH
HE GAVE THEM" (v 26). Why did he have to GIVE it to them? The Midrash tells that
after Elijah and the false prophets cast lots for their oxen, the ox that fell to the lot
of the false prophets ran to Elijah and took shelter under his cloak, refusing to
move because his twin brother was going to sanctify heaven while he himself would
be sacrificed to an idol. Only when Elijah assured this ox that God's name would be
sanctified equally by both of them did it agree to go to the false prophets, and this
is why it says "WHICH HE GAVE THEM". It is said that the false prophets hid Hi-el
(builder of Jericho) under their altar with instructions to secretly light a fire at the
requisite moment, but he was bitten by a snake and died before he could do so.

The great miracle that all the people witnessed when fire came down from heaven
to consume Elijah's sacrifice caused them to fall on their faces declaring "HASHEM –
He is God! "HASHEM – He is God!" (v 39). This phrase is solemnly repeated at the
very climax of the concluding Yom Kippur NE-EELA service and on other occasions
when we wish to affirm and accept upon ourselves the yoke of the Kingdom of
Heaven.

I Kings ch 18 vv 1-39 is the Haftara to Parshas KI THEESA (Ex. 30:11-34:35) read

around Purim time.

Chapter 19
* * * I Kings 18:46 and 19:1-21 is read as the Haftara of Parshas Pinchas,
Numbers 25:10-30:1 * * *

With the rout of the prophets of Baal on Mt Carmel Elijah had brought about a
tremendous KIDDUSH HASHEM ("Sanctification of God's Name"). Even Ahab was
impressed, but the implacable Jezebel was unshaken and intended to use
repressive terror to undo the results of Elijah's feat, swearing by her gods to kill
him (v 2).

Elijah understood that now was not the time to "press the hour" and insist that God
should overthrow the regime immediately, for "whoever tries to press the hour, the
hour presses him" (P'skika Zuta Gen. 27). Instead Elijah fled, just as Jacob had fled
from Esau and Moses from Pharaoh. Elijah had tried to use drought and famine
followed by the miracle on Mt Carmel to bring Israel to repent, but now he was
overwhelmed with a terrible sense of failure and he wanted to "resign" from his
ministry and leave it to God to redeem His people. Elijah went out into the
wilderness without any food or water, and crouching under a solitary broom-tree
that afforded scarcely any shade, he begged God to take his life.

God miraculously provided Elijah with sufficient refreshment to sustain him for forty
days and nights – parallel to the forty days and nights that Moses did not eat when
he ascended to Heaven to receive the Torah – and Elijah retraced the steps of the
Master of the Prophets in reaching "the Mountain of God in Horeb", i.e. Mt Sinai,
where Elijah entered into the same cleft in the rock from which Moses had seen
God's glory (Ex. 33:22).

"And he said, I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts…" (v 10). Elijah's
zeal for God was like that of Pinchas, whose soul he bore, and of whom God had
testified that "he turned My wrath away from the Children of Israel in that he was
ZEALOUS for My sake" (Numbers 22:11). Feeling that he had failed in his mission,
Elijah was now asking God Himself to avenge the breach of His Covenant and the
destruction of His Altar and the killing of His priests.

Without yet giving Elijah any answer, God told him to stand at the opening of the
cave where, as a reward for his zeal God "passed before Him" to let him see His
glory. Targum Yonasan explains that the "great and mighty wind", "earthquake"
and "fire" (vv 11-12) were successive revelations of great "camps" of angels – the
agents through whom God controls the creation. (RU'ACH and ESH are respectively
the air and fire elements, while RA'ASH is not necessarily only an earthquake but
also alludes to the water element: Targum renders RA'ASH as ZIYAH, which also
has the connotation of sweating: from the sweat of the Chayos comes the River
Dinoor.)

In a lesson to all spiritual seekers at all times, our text teaches that the true glory
of God was not in these sensational pyrotechnics but in the tranquil silence of the
"still, small voice" that came afterwards (v 12). When we search for God, we must
listen with the utmost attentiveness to the almost imperceptible voice of truth that
speaks so softly deep down in the heart and soul.

Metzudas David explains that God took Elijah through this "performance" to show
him that He wants to show kindness rather than arousing all His anger and coming
against His creatures with hurricanes, earthquakes and fire. In asking him again,
"What are you doing here Elijah?" (v 13) God was saying "Are you still here to ask
for vengeance?" It was when Elijah repeated his complaint about the breach of the
Covenant and his implicit request for vengeance (v 14, cf. v 10) that God told him
to anoint another prophet in his place (v 15), in effect saying, "I can't take your
prophecy since you are making accusations against My children" (Rashi ad loc.).

It is said that for having accused the Children of Israel of abandoning the Covenant
(i.e. ceasing to practice circumcision) while seven thousand still remained faithful (v
18), Elijah was penalized by having to attend every BRIS MILAH ("circumcision")
ceremony performed ever after by those who go by the name of Israel. For this
reason it is customary to prepare the "Chair of Elijah" at every circumcision and to
place the baby upon it for a moment immediately prior to the performance of the
operation, invoking the spirit of Elijah to inspire the child and everyone else present
with his spirit of purity and zeal.

In accepting Elijah's request to resign his ministry God told him to anoint (1) Haza-
el as king of Aram (2) Jehu son of Nimshi as king over Israel (3) Elisha son of
Shaphat as successor to himself (vv 15-16). To appreciate the significance of these
prophecies, it is necessary to understand that Elijah himself did NOT personally
anoint either Haza-el or Jehu. It was Elijah's disciple Elisha who anointed both of
them (II Kings 8:9ff and 9:2ff). Since on Elijah's return from the wilderness he
immediately encountered and anointed Elisha (our chapter v 19), he realized that
the third element in God's message was fulfilled before the first and second and
thereby inferred that Elisha would be the one to anoint Haza-el and Jehu later on as
his "agent" (RaDaK). Haza-el proved to be a far crueler adversary against Israel
than the kings of Aram who preceded him, while after the death of Ahab Jehu
overthrew and massacred his entire house in a bloody coup, taking Israel deeper
into sin and idolatry.

In this way God relieved Elijah of his public ministry (though he continues to serve
God and intervene, visibly or invisibly, at all kinds of junctures) and He took back
the providence into His own hands, as it were, while appointing Elisha to succeed
Elijah. It was not that Elijah had never seen Elisha before: according to tradition, it
was Elisha who poured the water into the trough when Elijah called for fire from
Heaven to consume his sacrifice (I Kings 18:34-5). However Elijah now placed his
mantle over Elisha for a moment (v 19) as an invitation to full ordination as his
successor. Elisha was already presiding over twelve pairs of plowing oxen – a sign
that he was to be appointed as prophet and reproof-giver to the Twelve Tribes of
Israel (RaDaK). Delaying only to bid his parents and friends farewell, Elisha went
after Elijah "and ministered to him" (v 21) – for "ministering to Torah scholars is
even greater than learning the Torah itself" (Eliahu Rabbah 5).

Chapter 20
The wars of Aram against Israel narrated in our present chapter are NOT the war
that God foretold to Elijah (ch 19 vv 15 &17), which came a generation later.
Nevertheless, ever since the end of King Solomon's reign the Arameans had been
organizing to throw off the yoke of subjugation that King David had laid upon them.
The endemic Aramean envy and hatred of Israel dated back to Laban and Bilaam,
who epitomize the use of crafty intelligence and wisdom to HIDE Godliness. Behind
the account of their war against Israel as told in this chapter lie allusions to the way
in which the KELIPAH (husk) of Aram (corresponding to the vernacular language –
"Aramaic" – and mundane intelligence) seeks to "hijack" the holy wisdom of the
Torah for its own purposes.

Thus Ben-Haddad king of Aram came against Israel with THIRTY-TWO kings
(corresponding to the thirty-two pathways of wisdom rooted in the twenty-two
letters and ten vowels of Hebrew).

The rabbinic interpretation of Ben-Haddad's provocative ultimatum to King Ahab

(vv 3; 6, see Sanhedrin 102b) is that he did not only want Ahab's silver and gold
and wives and children but "all the MAHMAD – delight – of your eyes". This is an
allusion to the Torah, whose teachings are "more delightful – NE'HMADIM – than
purest gold" (Psalms 19:11). Ben-Haddad wanted to have the Torah surrendered
into his own hands in order to reinterpret and falsify it in any way he chose. The
amazing thing is that Ahab – the Baal and Ashera-worshipper – was perfectly
willing to give up everything else but BALKED at the idea of giving up the Torah to
the point that he was ready to go to war rather than submit. Ahab called all the
elders of Israel (v 7), who certainly included the seven thousand who were still
faithful, and the entire nation agreed to flout Aram, which shows that they were far
from being crude idolaters who were in flight from their whole tradition. "For what
reason did Ahab merit to rule for 22 years? Because he gave honor to the Torah,
which was given with 22 letters" (Sanhedrin 102b). Verse 9 contains 22 Hebrew
words.
It was surely in the merit of the Israelite zeal burning in King Ahab that a true
prophet informed him that God would deliver the Arameans into his hand (v 13).
The prophet told him that instead of sending out his entire army to fight them, the
king should dispatch only the "young men of the princes of the provinces" (v 14).
These were the children of the princes of Ahab's subject states, whom they were
forced to send to his capital as "collateral" to ensure that they would not rebel. The
fact that there were 232 of these children again points to the great extent of Ahab's
sphere of influence, which the Arameans were now trying to undermine. In addition,
232 is significant as the sum of the gematrias of the four chief MILU'IM ("fillings")
of the name of HaVaYaH – 72, 63, 45 and 52. Moreover, this figure encompasses
all the 231 "Gates" through which the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet are
permuted with one another to make up the words of the Hebrew language (see
Sefer Yetzirah and commentaries).

Through a series of miraculous deliveries, God proved that Aramean military might
was nothing in the face of Torah spirit. To disabuse the Arameans of their illusion
that the God of Israel had power only in the hills, He lured them out to the valleys,
where Israel smote 100,000 of them in one day (alluding to the destruction of a
complete array of the Ten Sefirot of impurity, each consisting of sub-arrays and
sub-sub-arrays). After the survivors fled to Aphek (which is a few kilometers east of
the southern tongue of the Kinneret, Lake Tiberias), collapsing fortifications killed
another 27,000 (corresponding to the 22 basic letters of the Hebrew alphabet
together with the five "final" letters, a total of 27, each of which contains its own
arrays and sub-arrays of the Ten Sefirot).

Ben-Haddad fled but he knew as well as Israel's Arab adversaries know until today
that the Israelite heart is tender, merciful and forgiving and that he would only
have to say a few soothing words to the king against whom he had just unleashed
two major wars in order to be able to enter into a "peace process" with him (vv 31-
34). God had maneuvered Ben-Haddad into His trap (v 42) but Ahab let the
Aramean king get away, much as recent Israeli governments have almost never
lost an opportunity to allow the country's enemies to get away with their endless
aggressions and provocations. God's prophet told Ahab that his misplaced
kindheartedness would cost him his life and cause enormous national suffering, but
Ahab did not want to listen and rushed off home in a furious temper.

Chapter 21
The sorry story of the murderous expropriation of Naboth's vineyard by King Ahab
put the final seal on his fate and that of his dynasty. Many people permit
themselves to believe in what they please while claiming themselves to be quite as
moral, if not more so, than those who seek to uphold the law of God's Torah. Ahab
first allowed himself to go after the gods of the other nations. Now we see how his
willingness to violate what may seem to be the least serious of all of the Ten
Commandments – coveting the property of others (Exodus 20:14) – drew him into
a spiral of sin that led him to violate at least half of them.

What could be wrong with gazing at something belonging to somebody else and
merely wishing it was mine?

In the words of Rambam: "The appetite for wealth brings one to desire the property
of others, and this brings a person to robbery. If the owners refuse to sell their
property even after being offered much money and put under heavy pressure, if
they seek to prevent the covetous person from robbing them, it can bring him to
actual bloodshed. Go out and learn from the story of Ahab and Naboth" (Laws of
Robbery 1:11).
The Torah law of kings does permit the king to expropriate the private property of
his subjects for certain purposes (I Samuel 8:14), but most rabbinic opinions hold
that Ahab had no legal right to take Naboth's vineyard, which is why he had to
resort to framing Naboth in order to grab it.

The text makes it seem that Ahab himself only sulked when Naboth refused to give
over his ancestral portion to the king, while it was really the wicked Jezebel who
egged Ahab into taking action to have Naboth killed in order to get the vineyard.
Nevertheless, kings are not allowed to let their wives rule over them – that had
been the cause of Solomon's undoing – and they certainly cannot be forgiven when
they carry out crimes at their wives' behest. As a result of his covetousness
(contrary to the Tenth Commandment), Ahab allowed false witnesses to stand up
and accuse a righteous man of blasphemy and high treason (contrary to the Ninth
Commandment). Through this false testimony, Naboth was murdered (contrary to
the Sixth Commandment) and Ahab stole his vineyard (contrary to the Eighth
Commandment. And by also killing Naboth's children (II Kings 9:26, cf. Likutey
Moharan I, 69) it was as if Ahab had stolen his very wife (contrary to the Seventh
Commandment). In this way Ahab violated all of the five commandments between
man and man on the second of the Two Tablets.

It is noteworthy how as Jezebel sets up the framing of Naboth she does so with the
utmost piety, calling on the elders of Naboth's city to call a public fast (v 9) as an
opportunity for soul-searching and the investigation of the sins of the people. She
takes care to have Naboth framed not only for high treason against the king (for
which, most conveniently, his property is by Torah law confiscated by the crown)
but also for blasphemy!

What is clear from this chapter is that the Ten Tribes had not merely fled the Torah
in some simple sense so as to sink totally into some completely alien idolatry. With
all their dalliance with the gods of the nations, they still saw themselves as
following the Torah path: Torah observance and Torah violation were most subtly
intermingled. Only through the clear vision and judgment of the true prophet is it
possible to try to disentangle them and see things the way they really are.

"Have you murdered and also inherited" Elijah asked Ahab (v 19) in words that
could with justice be repeated to numerous "kings" and leaders of our own times.
Elijah prophesies the bloody destruction of the house of Ahab and Jezebel – after
which, in yet another twist to the story of this very complex, subtle character, we
see that Ahab is truly chastised and repents, putting on sackcloth, fasting and going
barefoot!

Chapter 22
"And they stopped for three years: there was no war between Aram and Israel " (v
1). It was symptomatic of the times that there was no longer such a thing as peace,
but only a temporary cessation of war – very similar to the way things are today.

Another of the surprises in our story is that Yehoshaphat king of Judah was actually
in alliance with the idolatrous Ahab. Yehoshaphat was indeed married to Ahab's
sister in an alliance forged by their respective parents, Asa king of Judah and Omri
king of Israel. Whereas the earlier kings of Judah had tried to regain their
hegemony over the rebellious Ten Tribes through force, the policy of Asa and
Yehoshaphat was to stretch out the arm of friendship – what in modern terms is
called "outreach". In certain respects the alliance of the Kingdom of Judah and that
of Israel in the times of Ahab and Yehoshaphat bears comparison with the alliance
between the secular Zionists who established the State of Israel and the
mainstream of Torah observant Jews without whose support it would probably have
collapsed long ago.

Another factor that has a contemporary ring is that the bone of contention between
Israel and Aram (= Syria) was "Ramoth Gilead" (v 4) – none other than the Golan
Heights!

In the tradition of David his father, Yehoshaphat wanted to consult prophets before
going out to war. When Ahab assembled four hundred of his own prophets, all of
whom foretold victory using exactly the same words, Yehoshaphat felt extremely
uneasy, but he was too polite to tell Ahab directly that he thought they were a
bunch of false prophets: he merely asked if there was no true prophet present.
Ahab's prophets remind one of the kinds of present day think tank experts and
news commentators who act as soothsayers to the general public while the world
falls apart all around us.

The true prophet Michayahu son of Yimlah who was now called upon to prophesy
has already appeared without being named in Chapter 20 vv 13, 28 and 35ff, where
he previously prophesied to Ahab. In Ch 20 vv 42 he had prophesied that Ahab's
soul would be taken in payment for his having freed Ben-Haddad king of Aram ,
and this was why Ahab hated him.

In a prophecy of Ahab's coming death, Michayahu told of his vision of Israel

"scattered on the mountains like a flock that has no shepherd" (v 17) – a vision
that seems to apply until today!!! Michayah depicts the heavenly court in judgment
over Ahab. The "spirit" that steps forward in v 21 offering to trick Ahab into going
to war is said to have been the spirit of Naboth. The rabbis say that despite Ahab's
idolatry, his fate was hanging in the balance because he was generous with his
money and gave support to Torah scholars. What tipped the balance was his sin of
taking Naboth's vineyard, which sealed Ahab's fate.

Through the spirit of falsehood that spoke on the lips of his soothsaying prophets,
Ahab was drawn out to war against Aram , in which an innocent archer (said to be
Naaman, the king of Aram 's commander-in-chief, II Kings ch 5) shot the arrow
that killed him. Despite being mortally wounded Ahab ordered his chariot driver to
prop his body up in the chariot so that the Israelites should not see that he was
dying and loose heart, and Ahab was praised for this final act of heroism.
 Book of II Kings
Chapter 1
The Book of Kings is conventionally divided in printed Bibles into Parts I and II for
the sake of convenience, but in handwritten parchment scrolls of Sepher Melakhim,
it is all one continuous book. The division in the printed Bible at this point is
relatively arbitrary since it happens to come near the middle of the book (and it
actually comes in the middle of a parshah=paragraph of the Hebrew text). However,
the subject matter at the beginning of II Kings is a direct continuation of the
narrative at the end of I Kings telling how Ahab's son Ahaziyahu came to the throne
of Israel and continued in exactly the path of his father and mother.

"And Moab rebelled against Israel after the death of Ahab" (v 1). After their
subjugation by King David, the Moabites had been a client state within the Israelite
sphere of influence and paid Ahab 100,000 sheep annually in tribute (II Kings 3:4).
When the Moabites rebelled, the new king literally FELL THROUGH THE FLOOR – i.e.
through a thin wooden lattice-work screen that covered an aperture in the floor of
his upper storey chamber (Metzudas David) through which one could presumably
look down unseen at what was going on below. Apparently the king tripped over it
and fell through – showing further how weak were the foundations of Ahab's
dynasty!

The king must have been seriously injured. True to form, he sent not to an Israelite
prophet to find out his prognosis (he probably feared the answer he would receive)
but to priests of the cult of ZVUV, the "fly" god of the Philistine city of Ekron .
(Similarly, in recent generations many alienated Jews have been searching for
spiritual meaning in every tradition except their own.)

For an Israelite king to do such a thing was a serious affront to the honor of the
God of Israel and His prophets, and this itself sealed the sick king's fate. In what
was to be the last public mission of his ministry, Elijah the Prophet was sent to
intercept the king's envoys and tell them to tell him he was going to die.

When the king heard the news and asked his envoys to describe the man who told
them this, they said he was "a man of much hair with a belt of leather girded
around his loins" (v 8). The abundant hair alludes to the exalted heights of Elijah's
perceptions of God (each SE'AR, "hair", is a SHA'AR, "gateway" of apprehension).
His "girded loins" indicate his supreme moral purity and sanctity: the "leather" was
said to have come from the ram of Isaac (Gen. 22:13). On hearing these signs, the
king immediately knew the prophet's identity and sent a captain with a squadron of
fifty soldiers to order him to come down from his mountain to the palace in
Shomron.

The captain brusquely ordered the prophet to go down, as if the honor due to his
king was greater than the honor due to God's prophet. God Himself sent fire to
burn up the captain and his fifty men in order to avenge the insult to the prophet,
and lest the king should interpret this as a mere coincidence, He did the same to
his second captain and squadron of fifty. Only the more respectful attitude of the
third captain mollified Heaven sufficiently to send prophecy to Elijah to appear
before the king and castigate him directly. For "Those who honor Me shall I honor,
but those who despise Me shall be despised" (I Sam. 2:30). Now that the kings of
Israel had gone astray, their moral authority was discredited, while God himself
would vindicate the authority of His true prophets.

With his fate sealed, Ahaziahu died, and, having no children, was succeeded by his
brother Jehoram son of Ahab. This initiated a period in which the kings of Israel and
Judah both had the same name, since Yehoshaphat king of Judah had also called
his son Jehoram.

Chapter 2
Elijah had already asked to be relieved of his ministry of zeal and fire (I Kings 19:4),
and now he was taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire. The narrative of Elijah's
ascent in our present chapter contains many teachings about the nature of
prophecy. Elijah tried to persuade his disciple Elisha not to follow him, but Elisha
knew prophetically that his master was to be taken from him (vv 3, 5) and refused
to leave his side. The other prophets who came out to meet them also knew that
Elijah was about to ascend to heaven (ibid.) – for the departure from earth of
TZADDIK HADOR, the "righteous leader of the generation", was an event of the
greatest significance even though ordinary mortals may have been quite unaware
of it.

Elijah's journey with Elisha took them to some of the key spiritual sites in the Land,
including the first Israelite encampment after their original entry, Gilgal (also
having the connotation of GILGUL, reincarnation) and Beth El, where Abraham and
Jacob had prayed long before Jeraboam made his golden calves.

The "sons" of the prophets who came out of Beth El and Jericho (vv 3, 5) were not
necessarily their biological offspring but rather the students of the prophets, "and
from here we learn that students are called children, and likewise it says, And you
shall diligently teach them to your children (Deut. 6:7), and just as students are
called children, so the teacher is called a father, as it says, And Elisha watched and
he called, My father, my father… (II Kings 2:12; Sifrey Va-etchanan 6).

The fact that there were bands of students of prophecy in Beth El and Jericho
"teaches you that there was not a city in Israel that did not have prophets – and
the reason why their prophecies were not recorded is because only those
prophecies that were required by subsequent generations were written down while
those that were not required by subsequent generations were not written down"
(Yalkut Shimoni). The fact that the prophets of Jericho , speaking to Elisha about
Elijah, called the latter "YOUR master" and not OURS indicates that they were as
wise as Elijah (Tosefta to Sotah).

Going in the reverse direction from the Israelites on their entry into the Land, Elijah
went from Jericho to the River Jordan, which he split miraculously with his "mantle".
"It would appear that Elijah had been informed through prophecy that he would be
taken on the east bank of the Jordan – perhaps he was taken in the very place
where Moses our Teacher was gathered in to the place of His glory, for the level of
Elijah was very close to the level of Moses" (RaDaK on v 1).

If the students of the prophets are their "sons", Elisha asked of Elijah as his parting
gift to be given "a double portion of your spirit upon me", alluding to the "double
portion" of the firstborn son (Deut. 21:17). We do indeed see in the ensuing
narratives about Elisha that he performed double the miracles of Elijah. Everything
that Elisha did, he did in the power of his master, and this power came into him
precisely because he was present when Elijah ascended the chariot of fire drawn by
horses of fire.

RaDaK (on v 1) explains (on the level of PSHAT, the simple meaning of the text)
that the "storm wind of Heaven" with which God raised Elijah (v 1) was an invisible
RU'ACH which lifted the prophet up into the air taking him up through the will of
God to the "sphere of fire" where all his garments except for his mantle were
burned up and where his flesh and bones were consumed, while his spirit ascended
to God who gave it. According to this explanation, the Chariot of Fire that appeared
to Elisha came to teach him that with the ascent of Elijah the "chariot of Israel and
its riders" had gone up from upon Israel. However, despite this literal interpretation
of the text, RaDaK continues: "The opinion of the masses and the opinion of our
sages is that God took him alive into the Garden of Eden together with his body just
as Adam had been before his sin…"

On the level of SOD (mystery) Rabbi Nachman teaches that while only the lower
soul of the Tzaddik is revealed through his life and works in this world, the higher
soul exists concurrently in the upper world. When the time comes for the Tzaddik to
leave this world, his upper soul "descends" into this world in the form of the
"chariot of fire", and because of the close bond between the upper and lower soul,
the latter leaps out to join and reunite with the upper soul which then ascends back
to the upper world. The descent of the upper soul is accompanied with an
enormous revelation of wisdom and knowledge which the Tzaddik pours forth on his
last day. Those of his students who are present at the time of his ascent receive a
great share of this light because their souls have the same root as the Tzaddik. But
whereas the Tzaddik's time has come to leave the world and he ascends, the
students' time has not yet come and they therefore remain in this world but with
the greater wisdom – the "double share" – they received from their master at the
moment of his ascent, as in the case of Elisha (Likutey Moharan I, 66).

Back again to the level of PSHAT, Elisha's rending of his garment on the departure
of his teacher is the foundation of the law that any student must rend his garment
in two and never repair it when he looses his outstanding Torah teacher, and the
same applies to all the community on the death of the Head of the Sanhedrin
(Rambam, Laws of Mourning 9:2).

Having inherited his master's mantle, Elisha was now the leader of the generation,
and the new spirit that had entered into him was immediately visible when he too
used Elijah's mantle to split the Jordan and return to the Land of Israel. On seeing
this, the other prophets immediately prostrated and submitted to his authority.
Their asking Elisha to send out a search party to find Elijah (vv 16-17) after having
previously prophesied that he was going to be taken away (vv 3, 5) was understood
by the rabbis to indicate that from the moment Elijah ascended, holy spirit
increasingly departed from the prophets and there was no longer much holy spirit
in Israel (Rashi on v 16).

Elisha also inherited the passionate zeal of Elijah, and while he miraculously healed
the waters of Jericho for the prophets, he showed no compassion on the "small
lads" who came out from Beth El mocking his "baldness" (they were complaining
that he had left the land bald by taking away their livelihood since previously they
earned money by importing water from elsewhere). The commentators teach that
they were called NA'ARIM ("lads") because they were ME-NUAR-IM ("stripped
bare") of Mitzvos! Elisha saw that these were souls that would never produce any
good even in the generations to come and this was why he cursed them (Rashi on v
23; Sotah 46b). For "Those who honor Me shall I honor, but those who despise Me
shall be despised" (I Sam. 2:30).

Chapter 3
"And Jehoram son of Ahab ruled over Israel … in the EIGHTEENTH YEAR OF
JEHOSHAPHAT king of Judah" (v 1). This verse appears to contradict the verse in II
Kings 1:17 which says that Jehoram son of Ahab came to the throne in the SECOND
YEAR of the reign of JEHORAM son of Jehoshaphat. A further problem is that the
death of King Jehoshaphat has already been recorded at the end of I Kings 22:51,
while our present chapter relates how Jehoshaphat joined Jehoram in his war
against the rebellious Moabites.

The apparent inconsistencies are resolved through the rabbinic teaching that when
Jehoshaphat agreed to join Ahab in his war against Aram at Ramoth Gilead (I Kings
22:4-5), it was decreed that Jehoshaphat should die in the battle as did Ahab.
However, just as the Aramean forces were about to kill him, Jehoshaphat screamed
out in prayer to God and was miraculously saved (ibid. vv 32-3) and in virtue of his
repentance, he was granted another seven years of life. Jehoshaphat was greatly
humbled, and gave over the throne to his son Jehoram in his lifetime (II Chron.
21:3).

The narrative of the war of the kings of Judah, Israel and Edom against Moab is
positioned here in order to continue the cycle of stories of the miracles performed
by Elisha. A careful count of these miracles reveals that they number a total of
sixteen – double the eight miracles performed by Elijah, in fulfillment of Elisha's
request to receive a "double portion" of his master's spirit (ch 2 v 9; see Rashi on
ch 3 v 1).

Elisha had given up his livelihood and abandoned his family in order to follow Elijah
(I Kings 19:20). Elisha's ministry continued through the reigns of five kings of
Israel until his death in the time of Jeho'ash son of Jeho'ahaz ben Jehu (II Kings
13:14ff), and according to the Midrash Seder Olam, it lasted for more than sixty
years – longer than that of any other of the prophets of Israel. Unlike his master
Elijah, who was somewhat of a "loner" spending much of his time secreted away in
Hisbodedus, Elisha not only traveled from place to place but also dwelled for
extended periods in a variety of locations, where he taught the "sons of the
prophets" and spread Torah – we find Elisha visiting Gilgal, Jericho, Mt Carmel,
Shunem and Dothan in the Land of Israel as well as the wilderness of Edom and
Damascus outside the Land. From ch 4 v 23 we learn that it was customary for
Elisha's disciples to join him for Sabbaths and New Moons, somewhat like the way
the latter-day Chassidim travel to their Rebbes for Sabbaths and festivals.

The rebellion of the Moabites has already been recorded at the beginning of II Kings
1:1 but only now in Chapter 3 do we hear of the campaign by Jehoram king of
Israel to subdue them. He was joined not only by Jehoshaphat king of Judah (who
was still trying to cooperate with the kingdom of Israel as a means of "Torah
outreach") but also by the king of Edom, which was still subject to Judah and
rebelled only after the death of Jehoshaphat.

Campaigning in the arid wilderness areas east of the Dead Sea , these three kings
almost lost their entire armies because they found no water. The situation was
critical and was saved only by Elisha, who went with them not to join the battle but
because he had been ordered to do so prophetically in order to perform a miracle
for Jehoram in the hope that it would bring him to repent (RaDaK on v 11). At the
height of the crisis, when Jehoshaphat king of Judah characteristically asked to
consult a prophet, the servant of the king of Israel who pointed to Elisha described
him as "having poured out water over the hands of Elijah" (v 11). According to the
Midrash, it was Elisha who had poured the water all around Elijah's altar on Mt
Carmel in his contest with the prophets of Baal (I Kings 18:34-5), and "his ten
fingers became like fountains filling the entire trench with water" (Rashi and RaDaK
on II Kings 3:11).

The true prophet thus flows with the waters of Torah, and in Elisha's merit, God
miraculously filled the dry valley in the wilderness of Edom with wells brimming
with water. Initially Elisha did not want to even look at the sinful king of Israel, and
in his anger the spirit of prophecy left him, for wisdom and prophecy cannot dwell
side by side with anger (Pesachim 66b). It was only when Elisha called for
musicians to play joyous music that the spirit of prophecy dwelled with him again (v
15), teaching that "the Shechinah does not dwell through sadness and lethargy but
only through the joy of a mitzvah, as it is written, Take for me a musician…"
(Shabbos 30b).

Confronted with miracle after miracle performed by God in favor of the Israelites,
the king of Moab turned to his astrologers and asked them what was the secret of
the Israelites' success. When they told him that their first patriarch Abraham had
been willing to sacrifice his very son to God, the Moabite king took his own firstborn
son and offered him up AL HACHOMAH (v 27). This is literally translated as "on the
wall", but since the word CHOMAH is spelled here without the letter Vav and can be
read as CHAMAH, "the sun", we learn that this sacrifice was to the sun-god whom
the Moabites worshiped (Rashi and RaDaK ad loc., Sanhedrin 39b). The king of
Moab 's sacrifice caused "great anger" against Israel (v 27) because they too had
taken to worshiping idols and no longer showed the same willingness to sacrifice all
for God as Abraham.

Some have compared the Moabite king's willingness to slaughter his first-born son
for the sake of victory to the Jihadi willingness to send out suicide bombers in all
directions. However the comparison is not quite accurate as research indicates that
the typical profile of the suicide bomber is one of a chronic depressive social reject
who has very little to lose by giving up his life for the sake of 72 virgins in
"paradise". Nevertheless, the lesson Israel should learn from the suicide bombers is
that the way to dissipate God's "great anger" is not by throwing away our lives in
an orgy of destruction but by heroically offering all our strength and vitality on the
altar of God's service every day.

Chapter 4
The first part of this chapter (vv 1-37) is familiar as the Haftara of Parshas Vayera
(Genesis 18:1-22:24) telling of the announcement of the birth of Isaac, which is
paralleled by Elisha's promise to the woman of Shunem that she would bear a son
(II Kings 4:17).

The miracle of the oil performed by Elisha for "a certain woman" as narrated in the
opening section of this chapter (vv 1-7) is, like the ensuing story of the birth, death
and revival of the son of the Shunemite woman (vv 8-37), a very heavily veiled
allegory that is explained at length by ARI (Sepher HaLikutim on Kings 2:4) in
terms that are incomprehensible without an extensive knowledge of the Kabbalah
and the Hebrew language. While the rabbis of the Midrash identify this "certain
woman" as the widow of the prophet Obadiah, who was unable to repay to Jehoram
son of Ahab the debts and very heavy RIBIS ("interest") incurred by her late
husband in supporting the persecuted prophets of God (I Kings 18:4), ARI explains
that she represents Rachel/Shechinah, whose vessels are empty owing to the sins
of Israel, which make it impossible to elevate the scattered sparks and "pay back
the debts".

In the case of Elisha's miracle for the woman of Shunem, ARI explains that his
purpose was likewise to release and redeem the souls of Israel from sin. "And it
was on THAT DAY" (v 8): this refers to Rosh Hashanah, the Day of Judgment. This
was when Elisha "passed over to SHUNEM", which literally refers to a town in the
Jezreel Valley, but which, according to ARI, is emblematic of the treasury of all the
souls – for on Rosh Hashanah it is decreed who will die and who will come to life…
The purpose of the Shunemite woman was to bring a very elevated soul into the
world – according to Zohar her son was the prophet Habakuk (cf. v 16, "you will
embrace – HOVEKES – a son").

Returning to the level of PSHAT, the "simple meaning", we see that the Shunemite
woman excelled in the virtue of HOSPITALITY to a Torah scholar, and "everyone
who hosts a Torah scholar in his home and gives him benefit from his possessions
is accounted as if he had offered the daily Temple CONTINUAL OFFERING" (=TAMID,
the last Heb. Word in v 9; see Talmud Berachos 10b). The Shunemite woman
created a miniature Sanctuary in her own home (v 10). The "bed" corresponds to
the Ark of the Covenant, the "table" to the Showbread Table, the "chair" to the
Incense Altar and the "lamp" is the Menorah. Through her hospitality to Elisha, the
Shunemite woman gave birth to one of the great prophets of Israel, demonstrating
that even when it is difficult or impossible to go up to the Temple, through creating
a sanctuary of in our very homes and our private lives, we can draw holy spirit and
prophecy back into the world.

Chapter 5
The last few verses of the previous chapter (I Kings 4:42-44) together with the first
18 verses of the present chapter are the Haftara of Parshas Tazria (Lev. 12:1-
13:59), most of which deals with the laws of TZORA'AS ("leprosy").

The salvation that God had given to Aram through Na'aman was that he had been
the archer who innocently shot King Ahab at the battle of Ramoth Gil'ad (I Kings
22:34; Rashi ad loc.). As a result of his military distinction, Na'aman became
arrogant (Bamidbar Rabah 7) and was afflicted with TZORA'AS, a skin and hair
affliction that is a manifestation on the surface of the body of the inner flaws of the
soul. An Israelite girl taken captive by a band of Aramean marauders was telling
her mistress that her husband could surely be cured by visiting the wonder-Rebbe
miracle worker, Elisha the Prophet. (His name, EL YISHA, means "God will save").

The king of Aram now sends to Jehoram king of Israel saying "Heal my captain" –
which is somewhat as if a present-day Iranian leader were to send a message to
the Israeli prime minister saying, "We will nuclear bombard your country unless you
heal Mr X". King Jehoram – a complex character who was perhaps nearer to source
than the present-day Israeli prime minister – rent his very garments in despair:
how could he personally turn to Elisha, even though he knew God did miracles for
him? Jehoram was too ashamed to ask the prophet to pray, knowing that he
himself would not listen to him and stop worshiping Jeraboam's golden calves
(RaDaK on v 7).

Elisha now sanctified the Name of Heaven through the miraculous healing of
Na'aman. The latter was expecting Elisha to come out like a white-robed guru and
wave his hand to heal him. However the way the Tzaddik actually healed him was
by giving him a simple piece of advice – to bathe seven times in the River Jordan.
The advice of the Tzaddik is so easy but yet so hard!!! Na'aman was insulted,
considering the Amanah and Parpar rivers much better. RaDaK (on v 12), cites a
comment in the name of his father that Na'aman was saying he already washed
every day. In modern terms, he felt he was scrupulously hygienic and couldn't
understand how merely washing in the River Jordan had the power to remove the
inner moral filth that lay behind the deceptive appearance of his impeccable
exterior bodily cleanliness.

After the miracle, Na'aman wanted to "pay", but Elisha adamantly refused: to have
accepted "payment" for God's miracle would have been a terrible HILLUL HASHEM,
"Desecration of the Name", which would have undermined the entire KIDDUSH
HASHEM Elisha had brought about. Na'aman asked to be given two mule-loads of
holy earth from the Land of Israel in order to build an altar to God in his home city.
(Although it is forbidden for an Israelite or sacrifice anywhere except on the Temple
Altar in Jerusalem, it is permitted for a Noahite to offer animal sacrifice to God
elsewhere if it is performed in the correct way according to Torah law.)

The negative side of Elisha's NA'AR – his "attendant" or, in modern terms, his
GABBAI – has already appeared in ch 4 v 27, when he tried to push the Shunamite
woman away from Elisha when she came to beg him to intercede on behalf of her
son. It is said that when Elisha told him to hurry on ahead without talking to
anyone in order to lay the prophet's staff on the boy, Gehazi showed the staff to all
passers-by, cynically asking if it really had the power to resurrect the child.

Now the appetite for wealth overcame him, which unfortunately tends to happen
among certain Gabba'im whose eyes pop out at the vast wealth they see in many
pockets of the world outside of the Torah kingdom – wealth that owing to the
selfishness of many of its owners rarely percolates within the Torah community to
ease the economic plight of its Torah scholars. Taking money from Na'aman for
Elisha's miracle under false pretences (v 22) and then hiding it away for himself (v
24) was an outrageous HILLUL HASHEM, which was the very opposite of what
Elisha wanted, and this is why through the mystery of exchanges and payment for
everything, he "transferred" the TZORA'AS of Na'aman on to Gehazi so that he
would no longer be able to keep the blemishes of his soul hidden.

Chapter 6
Chapter 6 continues narrating the miracles of Elisha. The occasion for the first one
told here – making metal float on water (vv 1-7) – was the planned expansion of
Elisha's Beis Midrash ("study hall"), which was necessary because Gehazi's way had
been to drive students away, while after his rejection by Elisha many students
arrived making the classroom cramped (Rashi on v 1). Some students had gone to
the Jordan to cut down wood for the expansion project when the metal head of the
borrowed axe of one of them fell off its handle into the water. This was a disaster
for the impecunious student, who did not have the money to pay. Asking to see the
place where it happened, Elisha cut a piece of wood and with supernatural ingenuity
cast it under the water, where it entered into the hole in the axe-head where the
handle fitted and thereafter floated up to the surface bringing the axe-head with it.
The reason why Elisha could not use the existing wooden handle is that for miracles
to happen, there has to be something new (RaDaK on v 6).

The next miracle (vv 8ff) took place when Elisha repeatedly gave King Jehoram
advance information about planned Aramean marauder incursions into his territory
without the use of satellite pictures, phone tapping, listening devices etc. but purely
through prophetic clairvoyance to the point where, as one of his servants
(Na'aman?) told the king of Aram, "Elisha the prophet that is in Israel will tell the
king of Israel the things you say in your bedroom" (v 12). Examples of similar kinds
of RU'AH HAKODESH, "holy spirit", are told in the case of outstanding Tzaddikim
like Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai (in Zohar), the ARI (in Shevachey HaAri), the Baal
Shem Tov (in Shevachey HaBesht) and Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (in Chayey
Moharan/Tzaddik) etc. In our own generations many stories about the Lubavitcher
Rebbe, Baba Sali and other great Tzaddikim attest to their foreknowledge of
dangers to individuals and communities as well as their ability to see things in other
parts of this world and in many other worlds.

Elisha's "leaks" so infuriated the king of Aram that he sent troops to capture him.
Seeing the Aramean forces surrounding the town of Dothan, where Elisha was
visiting, terrified his attendant – until the prophet assured him that "more are they
who are with us than those who are with them" (v 16). As in the case of stories of
how the Baal Shem Tov and other Tzaddikim would sometimes open the eyes of
some of those around them to the worlds they themselves could apprehend, Elisha
asked God to open the attendant's eyes so that he could see the "horses and
chariots of fire all around Elisha" (v 17).

Rather than praying that the Aramean squadron should just drop dead, Elisha
asked that they should be struck with a "blindness" which enabled him to
hypnotically direct them away from himself in the small town of Dothan until they
came bang into the center of the capital city, Shomron, where they were naturally
greatly outnumbered by the Israelite forces on their home territory. Seeing the
captured Aramean squadron in his capital city, King Jehoram was ready to kill them,
but Elisha would not allow this, telling him instead to feed and water the captives
and send them home – so that they could tell everyone about the miracle.

This brought the period of mere Aramean marauding to a close (v 23), convincing
them that more serious measures were called for against the stubborn Israelites.
"And Ben-Haddad king of Aram gathered all his camp" – this was a major
mobilization – "and laid siege to Shomron" (v 24). The terrible famine that ensued
in Shomron brought things to the stage where the curses Moses had called down
upon those who rebel against the Torah (Deut. 28:53) were actually fulfilled when
the most refined of women were reduced to eating their own children (our chapter
vv 28-9). Hearing this greatly shocked King Jehoram, who rent his garments and
put on sackcloth (v 30) – and went on, like today's HILONIM ("the secular"), to
blame all his problems on the Torah community as embodied in its leader, Elisha
son of Shaphat (="he judged"). [In present-day Israel they blame everything on R.
Eliashiv.] The furious king now sends a squadron to go and put a quick end to the
prophet, but Elisha – who has perfect foreknowledge of the advancing contingent –
tells his students to block their way, leaving us at the end of Chapter 6 with a "cliff-
hanger" wondering what is going to happen next.

Chapter 7
At the height of the murderous famine in Shomron, with the king of Israel's envoy
standing at Elisha's door with instructions to kill him as if he was responsible, the
prophet announces that by the same time tomorrow there will be a complete
turnabout, with cheap flour in abundance for the people and even cheaper barley
for their animals. On hearing this, the king's foremost aide cynically expresses total
disbelief, at which Elisha prophecies that the aide will see it with his eyes but not
eat (v 2). This is how God pays "measure for measure": since the king's officer did
not believe that God had the power to send a miracle, he would not have any
benefit from it, and indeed, as we learn at the end of the chapter, he was trampled
to death by a stampede of starving people surging forward to get food (vv 17-20).
"And there were four men – lepers – at the entrance of the gate" (v 3). According
to tradition, these were Gehazi, who had been cursed with leprosy by Elisha,
together with his three sons, who were afflicted because they had complicity in
their father's embezzlement since they knew about it (RaDaK on II Kings 5:27).
They were at the gate, just outside the city, as it is written, "he [the leper] shall sit
alone outside the camp" (Lev. 13:46; Rashi on v 3).

They realized that if they were to stay there by the besieged city they would die of
starvation, whereas if they were to go over to the camp of the Aramean besiegers
there was a chance they might survive. From this the rabbis learned that a person
living in a city struck by famine should get up and leave even if it is not certain that
he will survive elsewhere (Bava Kama 60b). When Gehazi and his sons came to the
Aramean camp, they discovered that all the Aramean forces had fled, abandoning
their tents, horses, donkeys and all their food and wealth. This was because God
had "played with their minds", making them hear sounds of a great army, which
they imagined must be Hittites and Egyptians hired by the Israelites against them.

King Jehoram could not believe that the Arameans had simply fled and feared that
they wanted to lure his forces out of the city into an ambush. However, he was
persuaded to send a small force to check, because even if the force were to be
killed by the Arameans, they would be no worse off than those left in Shomron,
who would in any case die of famine. The reconnaissance party discovered that the
Arameans had indeed fled east of the Jordan in total disarray. The starving
inhabitants were able to come out of Shomron to the Aramean camp and take food
for themselves and their animals in unbelievable abundance, just as Elisha had
prophesied, while the king's aide, who had expressed his disbelief, witnessed the
miracle but lost his life in the rush for food.

Verses 3-20 of this chapter are the Haftara of Parshas Metzora (Lev. 14:1-15:33)
dealing with the laws of purification from leprosy.

Chapter 8
Even miracles of such an order did not persuade King Jehoram of Israel to change
his path, and Elisha now prophesied that God had called for seven years of famine
to chastise the hearts of the Israelites. Elisha sent the righteous Shunemite woman,
whose son he had revived, together with her entire household to dwell in the
territory of the Philistines. According to the rabbis, in the first year of the famine,
the Israelites who remained in their own territories ate everything they had left in
their homes. In the second year they ate everything left in their fields. In the third
year they ate the meat of their kosher animals, in the fourth year, they ate the
meat of their unkosher animals. In the fifth year they ate the meat of mice and rats
and such like; in the sixth year, they ate their sons and daughters, and in the
seventh year they ate the flesh of their own arms (Taanis 5a).

These chastisements obviously moved something in Jehoram's heart since after the
seven years we find him asking Gehazi to tell him about the miracles performed by
his master Elisha (v 4). Just as Gehazi started talking about how Elisha had revived
the Shunemite woman's son, there she was with her son! She had come to the king
to complain that in her absence, robbers had taken over her house and fields. The
rabbis commented that her sudden appearance just as Gehazi started talking about
her came to prevent him from saying any more, because God does not like to hear
praise from the mouths of the wicked (Vayikra Rabbah). Gehazi was punished
because he referred to Elisha by name (v 5) instead of respectfully saying "my
master" (Sanhedrin 100a).
King Jehoram restored the woman's property, showing that he was fair-minded. But
fair-mindedness alone was not sufficient for a king of Israel, who was supposed to
lead his people to faith in the One God. This was why Elisha immediately went to
Damascus , where his mission was to anoint a king over Aram who would be far
more cruel to Israel than the present king, Ben Haddad. The rabbis say that
another reason for Elisha's visit to Damascus was to try to bring Gehazi to repent.
Gehazi had gone there to seek out Na'aman and ask him for some big favor in
return for having taken on his leprosy. Far worse, Gehazi had "dropped out" of
Torah, using the occult arts he must have learned in the school of Elisha to make
Jeraboam's golden calf appear to hang in mid-air (through the use of some kind of
magnet effect), and carving a sacred name in its mouth to make it say the first two
of the Ten Commandments: "I am…" and "You shall have no other gods besides
Me…" (Exodus 20:2-3). Gehazi told Elisha that he had heard from him that one who
sins and makes others sin is not given the possibility of repenting, and he therefore
declined his overtures (Sotah 47a).

It was because of such stubbornness on the part of the Israelites that Elisha had to
appoint a new king over Aram who would be a far harsher "rod of chastisement".
This was Haza-el, and his anointment by Elisha was in fulfillment of the prophecy
sent to his master Elijah years earlier when the latter had begged God to revoke his
ministry (I Kings 19:15). The present king of Aram , Ben-Haddad, was seriously ill,
and on hearing of Elisha's presence in his capital, sent Haza-el to "consult the
oracle" – Ben-Haddad well knew of Elisha's outstanding prophetic powers. In his
cryptic prophecy to Haza-el, Elisha hinted that he himself would kill his master and
take over the throne (RaDaK on v 10). Elisha wept over the evil that Haza-el would
later perpetrate against Israel as their rod of chastisement. When Haza-el returned
to the sick Ben Haddad, it would appear (although the text is somewhat
ambiguous) that it was he who took a thick blanket steeped in cold water and
placed it over the king's face – ostensibly to cool his fever but actually to chill him
or suffocate him to death (RaDaK on v 15).

The war that Haza-el stirred up against Israel (v 28) was to prove the undoing not
only of the House of Ahab but also of the king of Judah, as we shall see in the
ensuing chapters. Thus our text now moves back to the House of Judah, telling of
the reign of Jehoram son of Jehoshaphat (vv 16-24) and that of his son Ahaziahu
(vv 25-29). Both of these two kings of Judah were literally married into the House
of Ahab: Jehoshaphat had been married to the daughter of Omri king of Israel,
Ahab's sister. Jehoshaphat had married his son Jehoram off to Ahab's wicked
daughter Athalia (who is described in v 26 as the daughter of Omri but was actually
his grand-daughter), and thus Ahaziahu king of Judah was Ahab's son-in-law and
brother-in-law of Jehoram king of Israel.

The marriage alliance of the kings of Judah with the House of Ahab was originally
intended as a form of "outreach" to bring the kingdom of the Ten Tribes back under
the hegemony of the House of David, but it did not in fact bring the kings of Israel
to repentance. [Similarly the "alliance" of the establishment rabbinate of Israel and
the religious political parties with the secular Zionists who control the country has
not brought the latter nearer to the Torah but if anything has served only to give
them legitimacy without actually changing them.]

Judah was sliding deeper into sin, yet God did not want to destroy them for the
sake of David His servant (v 19). Nevertheless more and more troubles were
breaking out on every side. It was in the reign of Jehoram king of Judah that the
Edomites rebelled after eight reigns in which they had remained subject to Judah (v
20, see Rashi). Jehoram's son King Ahaziahu together with his brother-in-law
Jehoram king of Israel went out to war against the Arameans (v 28) and they got a
heavy beating (v 29). It was Ahaziahu's sick visit to his wounded brother-in-law
King Jehoram that led to his downfall together with the downfall of the House of
Ahab, as we will read in the following chapters.

Chapter 9
When the prophet Elijah had asked to be relieved of his ministry, God had told him
to do three things: anoint Elisha as his successor, appoint Haza-el as king of Aram
and anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king of Israel (I Kings 19:16). In the previous
chapter we saw how Elisha carried out Elijah's instructions to appoint Haza-el as
king of Aram . Now the time had come for him to fulfill the third part of Elijah's
prophecy and anoint Jehu as king of Israel in order to take vengeance on the House
of Ahab for their idolatry and criminality.

Jehu ben Nimshi was in fact the son of a man called Jehoshaphat (not to be
confused with Jehoshaphat king of Judah) and Nimshi was Jehu's grandfather, but
he is usually known as Jehu ben Nimshi. He was one of the leading military officers
of Jehoram king of Israel, who had been campaigning against the Arameans in
Ramoth Gil'ad (in the Golan Heights ) and who had gone to Jezre'el to recuperate
from wounds he had sustained in the war. Jehu and his fellow officers were still in
Ramoth Gil'ad when the young prophet sent by Elisha – according to tradition, the
prophet Jonah (Rashi on v 1) – arrived to carry out his secret mission, which was
highly dangerous as he was appointing Jehu to instigate a mutiny against the king.
Taking Jehu into an inner chamber, Jonah delivered his prophecy and fled.

"THE DRIVING IS LIKE THE DRIVING OF JEHU BEN NIMSHI…" (v 20)

Jehu was evidently a man of great strength with his own brand of zeal for God, and
with the new power that came from his anointment by the prophet, he soon won
over his fellow officers and quickly master-minded a surprise assault on King
Jehoram as he lay recuperating in Jezre'el. As Jehu rode with his band of men
towards Jezre'el, the city watchman saw them in the distance. Before the
watchman could identify them, the king sent out successive horsemen to find out
who they were and what they wanted. But instead of coming back, they joined the
advancing party. Reporting this, the watchman said, "The driving (MINHAG) looks
like the driving of Jehu ben Nimshi, for he drives (YINHAG) with madness" (v 20).

Not only does this phrase graphically depict the kind of man Jehu was. It might also
fairly be applied to certain crazy customs (MINHAG=custom) that various people
practice with religious fervor as if they were Torah from Sinai when in fact they
have nothing to do with true MINHAG YISRAEL as recorded in the Shulchan Arukh
and other authoritative compilations. Since the Bible is telling us that there is a kind
of driving (MINHAG) that is crazy, this should prompt us to examine our own
religious MINHAGs ("customs") with great care to check that we are not diverging
from the authentic MINHAG AVOSEINU ("practice of our ancestors").

When King Jehoram himself came out towards Jehu together with his brother-in-law,
Ahaziah king of Judah, who had been "visiting the sick", Jehu's arrow struck
Jehoram between the arms and through his heart. The sages said that this was
MIDDAH KENEGED MIDDAH, "measure for measure", because he had hardened his
heart and stretched out his hands to receive RIBIS ("interest") on loans which
Ahab's righteous chamberlain Obadiah had taken in order to support the true
prophets (II Kings 4:1; Shemos Rabbah 31). Jehoram's body was thrown out from
his chariot into the Jezre'el field that had been the ancestral portion of Naboth,
whom Jehoram's father Ahab had had killed in order to seize his vineyard (I Kings
ch 21).
After killing Jehoram, Jehu now went on to "cleanse" Israel of the sinful House of
Ahab. First he killed Jehoram's brother-in-law and ally, Ahaziah king of Judah
(vv27-8), who had also followed the path of Ahab and is said to have scratched out
divine names from the Torah and replaced them with the names of idols (Rashi on v
27; Sanhedrin 102b).

Next Jehu turned his attention to the queen mother, Jehoram's mother and Ahab's
widow, the accursed Jezebel, who was in Jezre'el. When she heard that Jehu was
on his way, she slapped on her make-up, did up her hair and called to him from her
window, hoping to allure the man who had just killed her husband into marrying
her. However, Jehu had sufficient zeal not to pay attention to her enticements and
had her pushed out of the window – following the method of the Sanhedrin in
casting those condemned to SEKILAH ("stoning") from an upper storey. In
accordance with Elijah's prophecy, which Jehu had heard from Jonah (v 10), the
dogs ate up Jezebel's body, leaving only her skull, feet and hands. It is said that
these were saved because when a wedding party would pass by her house, she
used to take ten steps out into the street to greet them, waving her hands and legs
and shaking her head (Rashi on v 35; Pirkey d'Rabbi Eliezer 17). Knowing that a
woman as wicked as Jezebel nevertheless received a reward for some slight
gestures she made to carry out the mitzvah of making a bride and groom happy
should encourage us to throw ourselves body and soul into the performance of
God's commandments.

Chapter 10
In order to complete his "cleansing" of Israel, Jehu ben Nimshi now went on to
destroy all vestiges of the House of Ahab. He persuaded the leading denizens of
Shomron to slaughter the seventy sons of Ahab (which is somewhat reminiscent of
Avimelech in the time of the Judges having the seventy sons of Gideon killed,
Judges 9:5). By cleverly thereby implicating the denizens of Shomron in his own
coup (v 9) Jehu widened his support base and began seeking out remaining
members of the House of Ahab's power-base.

On his way from Jezre'el to Shomron, Jehu encountered a large band consisting of
forty-two brothers of Ahaziah king of Judah, all of whom were caught up in the
Ahab network into which their brother Ahaziah was intermarried. These too Jehu
slaughtered, and then advanced into Shomron itself.

"AHAB SERVED BAAL A LITTLE; JEHU WILL SERVE HIM A LOT" (v 18)

Gathering all the people together, Jehu declared: "Ahab served Baal a little; Jehu
will serve him a lot" (v 18). The introduction of Baal worship had been Ahab's own
innovation (I Kings 16:30-33) – previously the kings of Israel had only encouraged
the worship of Jeraboam's golden calves. Jehu himself did not intend his words
literally. He was putting on a front in the hope of pulling off a brilliant coup. By
making all the Baal worshipers of Shomron think the new king was on their side
and that they had nothing to fear, he intended to lure them all out of the woodwork
and bring them together for what was billed as the Baal celebration of all time in
order to be able to destroy them all in one great massacre.

Jehu did indeed succeed in his immediate objective, but nevertheless his words
proved to be a snare that led to his downfall. He had been anointed to be king over
Israel. Had he gone all the way in eliminating idolatry from Israel, he could have
brought them back to the Torah and under the hegemony of the House of David,
which could have brought Mashiah. But having said, "Jehu will serve [the idol] a
lot", he was ensnared by the words of his own lips.
In the words of Rabbi Nachman: "Never let a word of wickedness leave your mouth.
Don't ever say you will be wicked or commit a sin, even if you mean it as a joke
and have no intention of carrying out your words. The words themselves can be
very damaging. They can compel you to fulfill them even though you did not mean
them seriously. This was what caused King Jehu's downfall, because he said, “Ahab
served Baal a little, but Jehu will serve him very much” (II Kings 10:18) . When
King Jehu said these words, he had no intention of committing idolatry. He said
them only to trick the Baal worshipers, as explained in the following verse. Yet
these words were his downfall, because he later came to commit idolatry. From this
the Talmud learns that “a covenant is made with the lips” (Sanhedrin 102a) . You
should therefore be very careful about what you say" (Sichot Haran #237).

In spite of his great display of strength in eradicating the Baal worship that had
plagued Israel for two generations, Jehu could not bring himself to uproot the
worship of Jeraboam's golden calves. This was "out of anxiety that the kingship
would revert to the House of David, which is what Jeraboam had been afraid of"
(Rashi on v 29, I Kings 12:26). For without the golden calves, Israel would have
turned their hearts back towards God's chosen House in Jerusalem.

In the merit of Jehu's mighty deeds he earned the kingship for himself and his
offspring to the fourth generation (verse 30), but because he did not repent, God
chastised Israel by sending Haza-el king of Aram to create an "intifada" which was
initially focused particularly on all the Israelite territories east of the River Jordan (v
33). This was the beginning of the end of the hold of the Ten Tribes on their
ancestral portions, leading eventually to their exile.

Chapter 11
Athaliah – the wife of King Jehoram of Judah and the mother of King Ahaziah of
Judah, whom Jehu ben Nimshi had slain when he came to Jezre'el – was the
daughter of King Ahab of Israel. She had brought the plague of Ahab into the Holy
City of Jerusalem itself in the form of a functioning temple to Baal complete with a
high priest bearing the pleasant-sounding name of Matan, "giving". Athaliah ruined
part of the structure of Solomon's Temple and pillaged its treasures to bring them
to her own temple of Baal (II Chron. 24:7). RaDaK (on II Kings 12:5) states that
through her influence there was an overall weakening in public support for
Solomon's Temple to the point where the income from the people's half-shekel
contributions was insufficient to cover the daily sacrifices, which were suspended
for a time. [Athaliah's conception of Jerusalem would probably correspond to that of
the contemporary secularists who take pride in its shopping malls, sports stadiums,
theaters and multi-religious character, while the Temple of God lies in ruins.]

When Athaliah realized the implications of the death of her son Ahaziah king of
Judah at the hands of Jehu ben Nimshi, she made a bloody attempt to assert the
supremacy of the House of Ahab over Jerusalem itself by wiping out all descendants
of King David (v 1) with the goal of ruling all by herself, which she did for six years.

At this fateful moment the entire future of the House of David until Mashiach hung
in the balance, and his line would have been wiped out completely but for the
heroism of Yehosheva daughter of Jehoram king of Judah and paternal sister of the
slain King Ahaziah. Taking his one remaining son, the infant prince Jo'ash, she hid
him and brought him up in HADAR HA-MITOTH, the "chamber of the beds" (v 2).
This was certainly with the cooperation of the High Priest, for according to tradition,
HADAR HA-MITHOT was none other than an upper storey above the Temple Holy of
Holies (Rashi, RaDaK on v 2). The Holy of Holies is called by this allusive name in
accordance with the verses in Songs 1:13, "He lies between my breasts" and ibid.
1:16, "also our couch is green". (See Rambam, Hilchos Beis Habechirah 4:3 on the
place of this upper storey in the Temple structure.) This would indeed have been an
ideal place for concealing the baby prince from the tyrannical Athaliah since it was
strictly off bounds to all – the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies only once a
year on Yom Kippur, while the upper storey was checked for maintenance purposes
only at very long intervals, and in any case from the following chapter it would
appear that the Temple was not maintained at all during the time of Athaliah.

It was for the boy prince Joash hidden away above the Holy of Holies that King
David had prayed in Psalms 27:5: "For He will hide me away in his Tabernacle, He
will conceal me in the secrecy of His Tent" (Rashi on v 2).

When Joash was seven years old, the initiative to restore the kingship of the House
of David came from Yehoyada the High Priest, an outstanding Tzaddik who showed
the zeal of a Pinchas in extirpating the plague of Athaliah. (The long-established
bond between the priesthood and the royal tribe of Judah dated back to the
marriage of Aaron the High Priest to the sister of Nahshon ben Aminadav, the
prince of Judah, Exodus 6:23.) In a daring coup against a woman who had certainly
greatly strengthened her power-base in six years of tyranny, Yehoyada mobilized
all the priests in Jerusalem, using the classic stratagem employed by many of the
Judges in dividing his "forces" into three, this time to surround and protect the new
boy king at his surprise "unveiling" and coronation in the Temple. The creative
boldness of Yehoyada in overthrowing Athaliah equaled that of Jehu seven years
earlier in destroying the priests of Baal in Shomron (see previous chapter), but
because Yehoyada was a true Tzaddik, his enterprise (unlike that of Jehu) did not
backfire. "And he brought out the king's son and put upon him the crown and the
testimony" (v 12) – the "testimony" is the Torah scroll, which the king "must read
all the days of his life" (Deut. 17:19). After Athaliah was put to death, Yehoyada
renewed the Covenant that bound the king and the people together in the service
of God.

It is clear from the present chapter that there was a very sizeable "grass roots" of
AM HA'ARETZ (v 14) – "ordinary" members of the tribe of Judah – who were faithful
to the House of David and everything it stood for and who were only too happy to
support the High Priest's initiative against Athaliah and her idol-based regime. They
all came up to destroy the temple of Baal and its priest (v 18), after which the new
king was conducted to the royal palace, the people rejoiced, and the city became
calm (v 20).

Chapter 12
King Joash ruled for forty years, and he "did right in the eyes of God all his days as
Yehoyada the priest instructed him" (v 2). This verse must be understood in the
light of II Chronicles 24:17, from which we learn that after the death of Yehoyada
(at the ripe old age of 130), "the leaders of Judah came and prostrated to the king;
then [AZ] the king listened to them". The leaders of Judah reasoned that if this
man had survived being brought up in the Holy of Holies, of which it is said that
"the stranger who draws near shall die" (Numbers 18:7), he must be divine – and
they began to worship him like a god. [One wonders whether some
overenthusiastic followers of certain contemporary leaders may not be making a
similar mistake.] Not only did Joash stray into idolatry; he became so enraged by
criticism that he had Yehoyada's son, the prophet Zechariah, who stood up in the
Temple to castigate him, murdered on the spot (II Chron. 24:21) – for generations
his blood boiled in the Temple courtyard where it had been shed, refusing to
subside, until Nebuchadnezzar came and destroyed the Temple.
Despite the negativity of these later developments, they followed a most important
period while Yehoyada was still alive in which the king and the priests not only
renovated the Temple but also made important innovations in its management,
some of which endured for a long time thereafter. These innovations were centered
on the reorganization of the financing of the Temple maintenance and its day-to-
day running through the annual half-shekel contributions of the people and their
other dedications.

Thus the closing verses of the previous chapter (II Kings 11:17-20) together with
the better part of our present chapter (vv 1-17) are the Haftara of Shabbos
Shekalim, the first of the four special Shabbosos during the six weeks leading up to
Pesach, when in addition to the usual weekly parshah we also read MAFTIR from
Exodus 30:11-16 on the half-shekel Temple "poll tax" on the population. (Shabbos
Shekalim comes either immediately before or on Rosh Chodesh Adar, late
Feb./early March.)

King Joash came to the throne only 155 years after the building of Solomon's
Temple, which in the days before the kinds of emissions and pollutants in the
atmosphere today was not long enough to case a marked deterioration in the stone
and timber building. It was largely the ravages of Athaliah (II Chron. 24:7) that had
caused damage to the Temple structure, giving rise to the urgent need for BEDEK
HA-BAYIS, "checking" of the Temple to see what was required to restore it to its
rightful glory. Besides the need for maintenance of the building, there was also a
need for funds to cover the expenses of the regular sacrifices each day, on
Sabbaths, New Moons and festivals etc. As discussed in the commentary on the
previous chapter, it appears that for a time during the rule of Athaliah, the regular
sacrifices may have been suspended as the system for collecting the funds to pay
for it had fallen into disuse.

Initially Jo'ash called on the priests to collect all the income from the annual half-
shekel contributions and other dedications for use on the Temple renovation project.
Since each priest had his own circle of Israelites who would give him their tithes,
the initial idea was that the priests themselves should collect the funds for the
renovation work from their regular supporters (v 6). However, by the twenty-third
year of Jo'ash's reign the work had still not been done and the king apparentlhy
suspected that the priests were filching off the money for themselves (v 8). This
was not so – the priests had been saving the contributions until there was a large
enough sum to complete the work (RaDaK on v 8) – but to avoid all suspicion, the
priests were perfectly content to agree to a new system in which the public made
their contributions directly to the Temple, placing their coins in a chest placed
conveniently in the Temple courtyard (v 10). This new system became the basis for
the system of half-shekel collection that is described at length in the Talmudic
Tractate Shekalim.

The money collected in the time of Joash was used initially to restore the Temple
building (vv 12-13). According to v 14 the money was NOT used for Temple vessels
and musical instruments etc. but this contradicts II Chron. 24:14, from which we
can infer that these were purchased AFTER the building restoration was complete
(Kesuvos 106a; RaDaK on v 14).

From verse 16 we learn that the financial affairs of the Temple were all based on
trust (which makes a refreshing change from today, when almost nobody can or
will trust anyone else).
From verse 17 the rabbis teach that Yehoyada darshened that the KOHANIM priests
were allowed to have personal benefit from the skins of animals sacrificed on the
Temple Altar as OLAH (burnt) offerings (Temurah 23b, see Rashi on v 17).

"THEN HAZA-EL KING OF ARAM ROSE UP…" (v 18)

"Then – AZ – Haza'el rose up…" This happened because "then (AZ) the king listened
to them" (II Chron. 24:17) – i.e. to the leaders of Judah who wanted to worship
him as an idol. This is what gave strength to Haza'el as God's rod to chastise the
House of David after his many years of chastising Israel. Now he took the Philistine
town of Gath, which King David had taken for himself more than a hundred and
fifty years earlier.

Haza-el wanted to advance on Jerusalem itself, but Jo'ash bought him off using the
Temple treasures (v 19) thereby undoing much of what had been achieved during
the lifetime of Yehoyada the High Priest.

In II Chron. 24:24 we learn that Haza-el made a second attack on Jerusalem, in

which he succeeded in doing considerable damage, "and they carried out judgments
on Jo'ash", who was severely wounded. He was killed in a conspiracy by two of his
servants whose mothers – according to II Chron. 24:26 -- were respectively a
Moabitess and an Ammonitess. The Moabites and Ammonites were descended from
Lot, and showed great ingratitude to Abraham, who had rescued Lot, when they
hired Bil'am to curse his descendants. It was thus MIDDAH KE-NEGED MIDDAH,
"measure for measure", that two servants from Moab and Ammon should take
vengeance on Jo'ash, who failed to show gratitude to Yehoyada the High Priest for
saving his own life as a child when he went on to kill his son Zechariah.

Chapter 13
After completing the account of the reign of Jo'ash king of Judah at the end of the
last chapter, the narrative now moves back to the kings of Israel who followed Jehu
ben Nimshi. In the merit of his uprooting of the house of Ahab (from the tribe of
Ephraim), Jehu (from Menasheh) earned the kingship for himself and his offspring
to the fourth generation, while the Ten Tribes remained under the leadership of the
descendants of Joseph.

Jehu was succeeded by his son Jeho'ahaz, who continued in the path of Jeraboam.
This led to the continuing chastisement of Israel by Aram to the point that
Jeho'ahaz was left with a greatly depleted army (v 7). The pressure from Aram
brought even the idolatrous Jeho'ahaz to entreat God for help (v 4). "And God gave
Israel a savior, and they went out from under the hand of Aram (v 5). As Rashi (ad
loc.) points out, this "savior" was in fact Jeho'ahaz's son and successor, King Jo'ash
of Israel , about whose exploits we hear later in the present chapter and in the next.

To those who are already feeling somewhat dizzy from the confusing succession of
names of the kings of Judah and Israel, the present chapter is likely to be even
more disorienting, because after its brief account of the exploits of Jeho'ahaz king
of Israel (vv 1-9) it moves on to those of his son Jo'ash and appears to conclude
the account of Jo'ash's life (vv 12-13) – yet immediately afterwards Jo'ash
reappears in the narrative (vv 14-19) and remains a central figure in the narrative
in the next chapter which speaks about the exploits of Amatziah king of Judah (ch
14 vv 1-16). Indeed verses 15-16 in the next chapter (ch 14) retell the death of
Jo'ash king of Israel in words almost identical to those in our present chapter vv
12-13.
Rashi (on v 13) offers an explanation for the apparent interpolation in our present
chapter of verses 12-13 speaking of the death of Jo'ash in between the verses that
speak about his idolatry and those that speak about the final illness of the prophet
Elisha: "I say that these verses were written only for the sake of making a break so
that the account of the death of Elisha should not follow on immediately after the
verse speaking about Jo'ash's idolatry".

"AND ELISHA WAS SICK WITH THE SICKNESS FROM WHICH HE WOULD
DIE" (v 14)

We may infer from this verse that Elisha also suffered previous illnesses, from
which he recovered. This in itself was a miracle – we should not take healing even
from colds and chills for granted! "Until the time of Elisha there was no such thing
as someone who was sick being healed – until Elisha came and begged for mercy
and was healed" (Bava Kama 87a). "Elisha suffered three illnesses: one after
setting the bears on the "young children" (II Kings 2:23-4); one after he rejected
Gehazi with both hands, and the one from which he died" (Sotah 47a).

It is striking that Jo'ash king of Israel, despite his involvement in idolatry, not only
visited Elisha on his deathbed but cried out to him in the very same words that
Elisha himself had used to his master Elijah: "My father, my father, chariot of Israel
and its riders" (v 14, cf. II Kings 2:12).

The prophet told the king to take arrows, open the eastern window (facing Aram )
and shoot arrows. The prophet cried: "An arrow of salvation for God and an arrow
of salvation against Aram …" (v 17). Elisha was teaching the king of Israel to shoot
ARROWS OF PRAYER. It was up to Jo'ash to decide how many he would shoot. He
shot three – perhaps he thought this would be a sufficient gesture – but he did not
understand that in order to accomplish decisive results, our prayers must be
repeated persistently time after time after time after time…

[The way in which Jo'ash king of Israel held back against enemies who were
determined to destroy his people is somewhat reminiscent of Neville ("Pinhead")
Chamberlain, Britain's prime minister until the first year of World War II and
architect of the abortive policy of appeasement of Germany: it was said of him that
when he would bang his fist down to emphasize a point, he would stop short of
actually hitting the table with it. Similarly, Israeli governments of recent years have
shown a pernicious indecisiveness and lack of determination against enemies who
make no secret of their desire to destroy the country completely.]

Elisha's death was followed immediately by incursions into the Land of Israel by the
Moabites – showing that it was the Tzaddik who had been protecting the land
during his lifetime.

When an Israelite funeral procession was disrupted by a Moabite incursion, the

startled coffin-bearers hurriedly threw the corpse into the cave in which Elisha was
buried. "And the man touched the bones of Elisha and came to life and stood on his
feet" (v 21). This was Elisha's second revival of the dead (his first was the
resuscitation of the son of the Shunemite woman, II Kings ch 4), showing that he
truly received a "double portion" of Elijah's spirit since the latter revived only one
dead person (I Kings ch 17; Sanhedrin 47a). Some rabbis said that the man who
was revived through touching Elisha's bones lived only briefly, walking away only to
drop again so that he was buried elsewhere (for "a wicked person should not be
buried next to a Tzaddik", Sanhedrin 47a). Others identified him as the father of
Shalom ben Tikvah, who was one of the great Tzaddikim of his generation and who
would sit at the gates of his city giving water to weary wayfarers, in the merit of
which holy spirit came into his wife, who was Hulda the Prophetess (II Kings 22:14;
see RaDaK on our present chapter v 21).

Jo'ash king of Israel was a mighty warrior, and through God's mercy on His people
for the sake of His Covenant with the patriarchs, Jo'ash succeeded in recapturing
cities taken by the Arameans, and he inflicted three major defeats on Aram
corresponding to the three arrows he had shot from Elisha's window.

Chapter 14
The narrative now moves back from the kings of Israel to those of Judah, telling the
story of Amatziah son of Jo'ash king of Judah. During his reign there were signs of
regeneration in Judah somewhat parallel to the revival seen in the same period in
the kingdom of Israel under Jo'ash, who, as we saw at the end of the last chapter,
took back cities that had been captured by Aram . After a period in which Amatziah
consolidated his own position in Judah following the assassination of his father (vv
5-6), he went on to campaign against the Edomites whose territories were to the
south east of the Dead Sea, and who had rebelled against Judah in the time of his
grandfather Jehoram king of Judah (II Kings 8:20). These territories included some
highly fertile areas with good supplies of water.

Commenting on the name Yokth-el given by Amatziah to the conquered Edomite

stronghold, Rashi (on v 7) states that it merely caused him grating (KIHUY) of the
teeth, because "after Amatziah came from striking the Edomites he brought the
gods of the children of Se'ir… and prostrated before them" (II Chronicles 25:14).
The worst god of all is pride and arrogance – and the over-confidence engendered
in Amatziah as a result of his victory over Edom led to his downfall when he
"overplayed his hand" against Jo'ash king of Israel (who ruled over TEN tribes).
When Amatziah began his campaign against Edom, he hired one hundred thousand
Israelite warriors to go with him (II Chron. 25:6) but on the instructions of a
prophet he told them to go home, and in anger they started despoiling the cities of
Judah . Amatziah took this as a causus belli and challenged Jo'ash king of Israel to
fight. Refusing to heed Jo'ash's warnings to stand down, Amatziah was badly
beaten in the battle of Beth Shemesh (vv 9-12) and Jo'ash entered Jerusalem, tore
down a major section of the city walls (v 13) and pillaged the treasures of the
Temple and the royal palace etc. (v 14).

Amatziah lived another fifteen years after this, but he no longer ruled in Jerusalem.
The people took his son Azariah=Uzziah as king, while Amatziah retreated to the
southern city of Lachish , where he was eventually assassinated.

Jo'ash king of Israel died soon after his attack on Jerusalem, and was succeeded by
his son Jerabo'am, who was third in the line of kings of the dynasty of Jehu ben
Nimshi. He is known as Jerabo'am II to distinguish him from Jerabo'am son of
Nevat who started the rebellion of the Ten Tribes against the House of David during
the reign of Solomon's son Rehav'am.

Jerabo'am II was a powerful warrior who restored Israelite hegemony over all the
ancestral territories east of the River Jordan and recaptured Aram "according to the
word of HaShem the God of Israel that He spoke by the hand of His servant Jonah
son of Amitai the prophet…" (v 25). This prophecy is nowhere recorded, but
according to tradition it was Jonah who had anointed Jehu (Rashi on II Kings 9:1).
Just as Jonah's prophecy of doom against Nineveh was overturned when the people
of that city repented (Jonah ch 3), so was the evil decree against Israel overturned
in the days of Jerabo'am II, and from having been like "dust for grinding up" under
the feet of Aram (ch 13 v 7) they were saved by Jo'ash, who retook all the
territories they had lost to Aram in the previous generations.

Chapter 15
AZARIAH (=UZZIAH) KING OF JUDAH

After Amatziah king of Judah was trounced by Jo'ash king of Israel and fled to
Lachish , the people of Judah appointed Amatziah's son Azaria as king, and he ruled
for fifteen years in his father's life-time. In II Chronicles 26 and in the prophecies of
Isaiah, Azaria is called Uzziah.

Our present text passes over in almost complete silence the great achievements of
Uzziah in his reign of over half a century (52 years). Just as Jerabo'am II of Israel
subjugated the territories that had rebelled against the kings of Shomron who
preceded him, so Uzziah restored the lowlands, coastal areas and south of the
country to Judah as they had been in the times of David and Solomon. He
established Judean sovereignty over the shores of the Red Sea, building Eilath
(Eilat) as a naval stronghold. At the same time as restoring Judah's boundaries,
Uzziah worked harder than any other king with the exception of David to develop
and populate settlements throughout his territories, as is attested by numerous
archaeological finds in the coastal plains and the Negev.

Just as our text passes over Uzziah's positive achievements in silence, so it does
not explain the reason for the sudden visitation of leprosy that afflicted him for the
rest of his life (v 5). This is explained in full in the parallel history in II Chronicles
26:16. It was perhaps his very success that led to a pride that brought him – with
the most righteous intentions – to offer incense in the Temple Sanctuary in defiance
of the strict Torah prohibition against any ZAR (non-priest) officiating as a priest at
any offering. As Uzziah stood in the Sanctuary burning incense, leprosy broke out
on his forehead and spread to his whole body.

It was on the very day that Uzziah offered incense in the Temple that Isaiah began
to prophecy (Isaiah 1:6 – the "death" of King Uzziah mentioned in that verse is a
reference to his leprosy). The stormy period of Uzziah's reign and those that
followed it until the destruction of the Temple (end of II Kings) is thus one whose
inner soul is opened up to us in the books of Isaiah and the great prophets who
followed him – Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Rambam (Introduction to Mishneh Torah)
traces the chain of transmission of the Torah from Elijah as follows: Elijah handed
the tradition to Elisha, who taught Yehoyada the High Priest (II Kings 11-12), who
taught his son Zechariah, who taught Hosea, who taught Amos, who taught Isaiah.

In our present chapter we learn that the leprosy-stricken Uzziah dwelled in HA-BEIS
HA-HOPHSHIS, "the House of Immunity". The Hebrew root HOPHESH means
freedom. This is because Uzziah was now freed from the duties and obligations of
kingship, and also because he built himself a house in the cemetery (for a leper is
forbidden to come into the camp – the city), and it is written, BE-MEISIM HOPHSHI,
"I am free among the dead" (Psalms 88:6; see RaDaK on our present chapter v 5).

THE LAST RULERS OF THE NORTHERN KINGDOM

Jehu ben Nimshi, who overthrew the House of Ahab, secured the kingship for
himself until the fourth generation. The bloody coup against his great grandson
Zechariah in full view of the public (v 10) was followed by a whole series of coups,
most, though not all of which were very short-lived, as we learn in verses 8-32.
The single most important geopolitical factor in this period was the rise of Ashur
("Assyria") as the major regional player in the Fertile Crescent. Ashur was situated
in the upper Tigris valley in the north of Iraq near its borders with present-day
Syria , Turkey , Kurdistan and Iran . What began as a small, aggressive, predatory
power turned into a major land empire that stretched southwards along the
Euphrates and westwards into northern Syria. The Assyrian rulers annexed many
lands and turned others into tributary states. They were particularly noted for their
use of the method of population transfer and exchange to uproot people from their
own ancestral territories and turn them into landless migrants with no real
attachment to the earth. This was precisely what the Assyrians did to the Ten
Tribes, sending them into an Exile the redemption from which is only beginning to
take place in our days.

There is some evidence that back in the days of King Ahab, when the Assyrians
were beginning their westward push into Syria, the three major powers in the
region – Aram , Hamath and Ahab's Israel – formed a military alliance to repel
them, and succeeded for the time being. But by the time of Menahem ben Gadi,
who ruled over Israel during the last ten years of the reign of Uzziah king of Judah,
the Assyrians under their king PHOOL were again pushing westwards (v 19), and
Menahem had to buy them off with a huge bribe that could be raised only through a
heavy tax on all his able-bodied men (v 20).

However, the merit of the Israelites was no longer sufficient to permanently stem
the Assyrian tide, and by the time of Pekah ben Remalliah, the Assyrian king Tiglath
Pilesser captured Gil'ad and the Galilee, sending their Israelite inhabitants into exile.
Until today historians debate where they went and where their descendants are to
be found today. (See the works of Yair Davidiy, such as "The Tribes: The Israelite
Origins of Western Peoples" for challenging ideas and insights on this subject.)

YOTHAM KING OF JUDAH

Yotham son of Uzziah "did right in the eyes of God according to all that Uzziah his
father did" (verse 34). Commenting on the almost identical verse in II Chronicles
27:2, Rashi states that Yotham followed only in his father's good ways, which
explains the statement by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (Succah 45b): "If Abraham our
father would take on himself all the sins of the generations up until his time, I
would take upon myself the sins of the generations from Abraham until myself, and
if Yotham son of Uzziah was with me, we could take on ourselves the sins from
Abraham until the end of the generations". As Rashi explains, out of all the kings
before and after him, Yotham is the only one to whom the text does not attribute
any sin whatever (making a most refreshing change from the rest of the story of all
the kings!) This is signified in his very name: YO (God), THAM ("pure, complete").

Despite Yotham's purity, in his days Judah began suffering from new aggressions
by Aram and the kingdom of Israel, and in the time of his son, Ahaz king of Judah ,
these developed into a major scourge.

Chapter 16
One of the great ironies and very deep mysteries that we find in the Bible is that
often the most righteous of fathers beget the most wicked of sons. In the ensuing
stories of the kings of Judah, we find that a Tzaddik – Yotham – had a son who was
a major Rasha ("villain") – Ahaz, while Ahaz had Hezekiah, who was a major
Tzaddik. Then Hezekiah had Menasheh, who was a major Rasha, though he
repented, and after the reign of Menashe's son Ommon, who was a Rasha, came
Ommon's son Josiah, who was a major Tzaddik.
At precisely the time that the kingdom of Israel was tottering as a result of its
devotion to foreign idolatry, Ahaz king of Judah felt compelled to introduce foreign
idolatry into his own kingdom and into the very Temple itself. As we learn in verse
3, "he also passed his son through the fire": in other words, he gave his son over to
the priests of Molech, which was considered the most serious of all the
abominations of Canaan and is severely prohibited in the Torah (Lev. 20:1-5). It is
said that it was Hezekiah who was passed by Ahaz through the fire.

The ensuing invasion of Judah by Aram in alliance with Israel is the subject of the
dramatic prophecy in Isaiah chapter 7.

Verse 6 in our present chapter is of great interest because it describes how the
Arameans recaptured Eilath (Eilat) at the southernmost tip of Judah 's sphere of
influence and drove the YEHUDIM out. For one thing, this is the first appearance of
this term in the Bible. Secondly, where the text (KRI) says "and Edomites came to
Eilath", the KSIV – the word as written in the parchment scroll – is AROMIM, which
not only includes the Arameans but also seems to allude to the Romans. This would
provide support for interpreting the numerous Biblical and rabbinic texts that speak
of Aram and its role at the end of days as alluding to Edom and their latter-day
descendants.

In order to ward off the Aramean and Israelite forces attacking him from the north
and in the south, Ahaz turned to Tiglath Pilesser of Ashur and submitted himself to
him as a subject nation (v 7), bribing him to attack Aram and Israel. That a king of
Judah felt forced to resort to this showed how dire things were on all levels.

Ahaz's ploy had two serious negative consequences. One was that when Ashur
knocked down Aram , it simply brought the Assyrians nearer to the Israelite
territories whose inhabitants they would shortly be taking into exile. Secondly, Ahaz
himself went out to pay his respects to Tiglath Pilesser king of Ashur in Damascus –
and discovered a new kind of (idolatrous) altar that so took his fancy that he
instructed his High Priest to make a copy of it in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem itself.
The remainder of our chapter describes the changes Ahaz made in the Temple in
order to accommodate his idolatry.

Chapter 17
Hoshe'a ben Elah, the last king of Israel, had, like his predecessors, come to power
through a violent coup (II Kings 15:25), but "he was not like the kings of Israel that
were before him" (our chapter v 2). This was because for the first time since the
days of Jeraboam ben Nevat, Hoshe'a ben Elah removed the armed guards that had
been posted on all the borders to prevent the Ten Tribes from going up to the
Temple in Jerusalem. (According to tradition, this happened on 15 th of Av, a day of
salvation and holiness, see commentary on Judges ch 21; Ta'anis 30b.) However,
now that there was no impediment to their going up to Jerusalem, the Israelites
could no longer hang the blame for their not doing so on their kings. Despite the
removal of the guards they still did not go up to Jerusalem – and this was what
finally sealed the decree of exile against the Ten Tribes in the days of Hoshe'a ben
Elah (Gittin 88a; Rashi and RaDaK on v 2).

The exile of the Ten Tribes took place in three stages (see Rashi on v 1). The first
was when Pilesser king of Ashur sent the inhabitants of the Galilee (Naftali) to
Ashur (ch 15 v 29). The second came eight years later, when he exiled the tribes of
Reuven and Gad. This prompted Hoshe'a ben Elah to plot with Sou king of Egypt in
the hope of changing the map of the entire Middle East by overthrowing Ashur, to
whom he ceased paying tribute. This brought Shalmanesser king of Ashur to arrest
and imprison him (v 4) eight years after the exile of Reuven and Gad, but the
remaining leadership of Shomron continued their resistance against the Assyrians,
leading Shalmanesser to lay siege to the city for three years (v 5). After the fall of
Shomron, the inhabitants were sent into exile by Sargon II of Ashur. The date of
the final exile of the Ten Tribes (according to the dating system of Midrash Seder
Olam) was in the year 3205 (-555 B.C.E.): this was 133 years before the
destruction of the First Temple and the exile of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin to
Babylon.

The Ten Tribes were exiled to a variety of locations, some in Mesopotamia and
others east of the River Tigris in the mountainous areas of Medea (located in the
great mountain chain of western Iran between Hamadan and Shiraz ). What
happened to them afterwards and where, if anywhere, they wandered are
mysteries to which no conclusive solution has been found until today.

The major part of our present chapter is in effect the "indictment" against Israel,
expressing the essential "moral" of the entire history contained in the Nevi'im
(Prophetic writings): Israel's possession of the Land of Israel is conditional on their
observance of the commandments of God's Torah, and it was their sins – in
particular their lapse into idolatry – that caused their exile from the Land.

"And the Children of Israel fabricated things that were not right against HaShem
their God" (v 9). Metzudas David (ad loc.) explains that "in secrecy they said things
about HaShem that are not fit to repeat, for they denied His knowledge of what
goes on in the world and His providential government". "For they said, HaShem
does not see us, for HaShem has abandoned the earth" (Ezekiel 8:12).

RaDaK in a lengthy comment on v 27 explains that the Israelites did indeed

continue to believe in HaShem even though they made the golden calves. They
made them only to serve as an intermediary between themselves and HaShem.
Thus we see that even the most wicked of the Israelites also sought out HaShem,
such as when Jeraboam begged the prophets to intercede on account of his
paralyzed arm and sick baby (I Kings 13:6; 14:2), or when Ahab agreed with Elijah
about the prophets of Baal (cf. also I Kings 20:42; 21:27), or when his son
Jehoram saw the hand of HaShem behind the danger hanging over his mission with
the kings of Judah and Edom against Moab (II Kings 3:10). It was not that they did
not believe in HaShem. Their flaw was to serve intermediaries.

THE SAMARITANS

"And the king of Ashur brought [people] from Babylon and from Kutah… and settled
them in the cities of Shomron instead of the Children of Israel …" (v 24). This was
part of the Assyrian policy of population exchange. However the new inhabitants of
these areas of the Holy Land did not yet know the "Law of the God of the Land" (v
26), which is God's Torah, and indeed, having seen the Israelite population expelled
from their land, they apparently thought that He had been unable to protect them
against the Assyrians – until they found themselves being terrorized by lions, and
the King of Ashur was compelled to send an Israelite priest back from exile in order
to teach them Torah. This priest allowed them to continue worshiping the gods they
had brought with them from their old homelands, while instructing them in the
most serious prohibitions of the Torah, such as those against incest (see RaDaK on
v 27).

It seems like MIDDAH KE-NEGED MIDDAH, "measure for measure", that people
who mixed in fear of HaShem together with idolatry came to replace the Israelites
of Shomron, who had done the same. The section in vv 24-25 on the practices of
the new residents of Shomron – the Samaritans – is important for our
understanding of the roots of the deep suspicion with which the rabbis viewed them,
so that even though they were GERIM ("proselytes") there were many rabbinic
ordinances limiting Jewish interaction with them, until after the discovery of an idol
in the image of a dove on Mount Gerizim, after which they were ruled to be AKUM,
idolaters, and cast outside the boundaries of AM YISRAEL.

Chapter 18
It was at this moment of extreme national crisis – when the link of Israel with their
Land and their very survival as a people were hanging in the balance following the
exile of the Ten Tribes and their assimilation into the surrounding peoples – that
Hezekiah succeeded his father Ahaz as king of Judah.

"In HaShem the God of Israel did he trust, and after him there was none like him
among all the kings of Judah or among those that were before him" (v 5).

The wicked, idolatrous Ahaz had left his son a kingdom torn apart and largely
wasted as a result of the incursions of the neighboring Philistines, Edomites and
Arameans etc. Hezekiah dealt a heavy blow to the Philistines (v 8) but in the It was
in the fourth year of his reign Shalmanesser king of Ashur laid siege to Shomron,
and its capture and the subsequent exile of the Ten Tribes made the looming threat
of Ashur against Jerusalem even more palpable and fearsome.

With the courage of a David, Hezekiah made a complete turnabout from the path of
his father, going so far as to drag Ahaz's very bones through the streets (56a). For
the first time since the reign of Solomon, Hezekiah finally removed the BAMOTH,
the "private altars" that had been forbidden ever since the inauguration of the
Temple in Jerusalem, and he cut down the Ashera tree-idol and even ground up the
bronze serpent made by Moses in the wilderness (Numbers 21:8-9), which by his
time had turned into the focus of a healing cult. This, together with his "hiding
away the book of remedies" (Pesachim ibid.), shows that he was determined to
take away the intermediaries people had relied upon (idols, medicines) and lead
them on the path of pure faith in HaShem.

"In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Ashur came up
against all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them" (v 14). Tens of
thousands of inhabitants of Judah were then exiled to Ashur. With Sennacherib
bearing down on him in Lachish to the south of Jerusalem, Hezekiah was in such
danger that at first he tried to buy him off (v 14).

But Hezekiah was a rebel, who wanted a free, independent Judah that would serve
God. His courage in defying the Assyrian superpower should serve as an example
for the true Israelites of today when they see how successive governments of the
state of Israel have turned it into little more than a client state of foreign powers
whose dictates are followed consistently even when they are clearly against the
interest of the Jews and contrary to the purpose and destiny of the Holy Land.

"And the king of Ashur sent Tartan and Rav Saris and Ravshakeh from Lachish to
King Hezekiah with a heavy force to Jerusalem …" (v 17). This was a major act of
psychological warfare intended to frighten and demoralize the inhabitants of
Jerusalem, who were effectively under siege, and to encourage them to capitulate
and agree to "transfer", i.e. exile. According to tradition, Ravshakeh was himself a
MESHUMAD, a "lapsed Jew" (see RaDaK on v 17, Rashi on v 22 and Sanhedrin 60a).
Standing at the walls of the city dramatically calling to Hezekiah's chief ministers to
capitulate, Ravshakeh intentionally addressed them in the Judaic vernacular so that
all the people could hear him as he emphasized the great might of Ashur and
mocked the flimsiness of Judah's remaining army, their trust in Egypt and their
very trust in HaShem.

A significant faction in Jerusalem were far from trusting that Hezekiah's courageous
stand against Ashur was going to be successful, and one of the three royal
ministers who stood on the ramparts of Jerusalem listening to Ravshakeh – Shevna
the Scribe – was in fact a fifth-columnist who later tried to open the gates of
Jerusalem to the Assyrians (RaDaK on v 18; see Isaiah 22:15ff).

Ravshakeh promised that if the people would give in willingly, the king of Ashur
would take them "to a land like your land" (v 32) – he could not say "to a better
land" because everybody listening would have known he was lying since there was
no better land than Judah – not even the "land of grain and wine" he mentioned,
namely N. Africa (Rashi on v 32). However, if the people were stubborn and refused
his offer, Ravshakeh threatened the full might of Assyria against them, and we are
left at the end of the chapter wondering how King Hezekiah will respond.

Chapter 19
On hearing from his ministers about Ravshakeh's blasphemy, King Hezekiah rent
his garments over the desecration of God's Name (Rambam, Laws of Idolatry 2:10).
As King David's worthy successor, Hezekiah's response to the Assyrian taunts was
to turn only to God – through his own prayers and through sending to Isaiah, the
prophet of the generation. Hezekiah's main plea in both his prayers and his
message to the prophet was that God should avenge the affront to His Name.

In response, Isaiah prophesied of Sennacheriv: "Behold I shall put a spirit in him

and he will hear a rumor and return to his land and I shall cause him to fall by the
sword in his land" (v 7).As Rashi (ad loc.) explains, this prophecy was fulfilled in
stages. The "rumor" that took Sennacheriv from Lachish near Jerusalem down to
Egypt and North Africa was that Tirhakah king of Kush had decided to stand up to
Ashur's sole world superpower aspirations. Sennacheriv went to fight against Kush
and its allies, Phut and Egypt , and he was victorious, taking all their treasures.
(RaDaK on v 7 explains that this was so that Judah would be greatly enriched with
booty when the angel finally struck Sennacheriv's army.) The next stage of the
prophecy – "he will return to his land" – was fulfilled after Sennacheriv lost his
entire army in one night (v 35) and fled, and the last stage – "I shall cause him to
fall by the sword in his land" -- took place when his own sons killed him (v 37).

Meanwhile Sennacheriv was still riding on the crest of his wave of success. From
the battlefields of N. Africa, Sennacheriv – swelled with pride – sent more
emissaries to Jerusalem in order to intensify his psychological warfare against the
tiny city under siege. The letters they brought were full of more ranting blasphemy
as Sennacheriv paraded his many victories, unaware that they had come only
because God had taken him as His rod and scourge against the nations for His own
holy purpose. Through Sennacheriv's policy of exiling people from their own
ancestral lands and moving them to areas with which they had no connection, he
"mixed up all the nations" (Berachos 28a; Yoma 54a etc.). This in itself was in
preparation for the eventual exile of Judah, just as "Joseph moved people from city
to city as a reminder that they had no more share in the earth, and he sent the
people of one city to another… His intention was to remove the disgrace from his
brothers so that people would not be able to call them exiles" (Rashi on Ex. 47:21).
Hezekiah took the letters from the hands of Sennacheriv's emissaries and after
reading them, went up to the Temple, where he "spread them out before God" (v
14). Of course God knows everything, but when Hezekiah spread out the letters, he
was teaching that when we pray, we should talk out everything that is on our minds
and weighing in our hearts. Setting everything out before God in detail is an
essential part of personal prayer.

Hezekiah's prayer vv 15-19 was a request to God to sanctify His name by thwarting
Sennacheriv now despite all his earlier successes over idolatrous peoples in order to
show that God alone rules and not idols of wood and stone. Hezekiah's argument is
somewhat comparable to that of Moses when he interceded for Israel after the sin
of the golden calf begging God not to destroy them so that the Egyptians should
not be able to say that He was unable to save them in the wilderness (Ex. 32:12).

Isaiah's prophecy (20-34) is an eloquent affirmation that everything is in God's

hands and that He raised up Sennacheriv and He will destroy him for the sake of
David and Jerusalem.

But Sennacheriv was still riding high. Having completed his successful campaign
against Kush and its allies, he again set his sights on Jerusalem and marched to
Nov (whose priests had been killed by Saul), where he was poised ready to attack
the nearby capital (Rashi on v 35). The outstanding miracle whereby his
overwhelming forces were simply struck down in one night by God's angel is
celebrated in the songs of the Pesach Seder night, on which it took place. The
sages commented that while Pharaoh had uttered his blasphemies himself so that
his armies were struck down at the Red Sea by God Himself, Sennacheriv's armies
were destroyed by God's angel (MAL'ACH) because Sennacheriv's blasphemies were
delivered by an emissary (MAL'ACH; Sanhedrin 94b-95a). It is said that his forces'
bodies were burned up from the inside but their garments were left intact around
them because they were from the descendants of Noah's son Shem, as it says,
"The children of Shem, Eilam and Ashur" (Gen. 1:22), and Shem together with his
brother Yapheth covered the nakedness of their father with a garment (Gen. 9:23).
For this reason God said to the Angel Michael, "Leave their garments and burn their
souls" (Gen. 9:23; Shemos Rabba 18:5).

Sennacheriv's ignominious end was his just deserts for his overweening pride and
arrogance.

Chapter 20
"In those days Hezekiah became mortally sick…" (v 1). Rashi (ad loc.) states that
this took place three days before the destruction of Sennaheriv's army: it greatly
adds to the drama of the mortally stricken king and his "great weeping" (v 3) when
we understand that it took place precisely as the overwhelming hordes of Assyrian
troops were encamped outside Jerusalem poised for their final attack. It looked like
the very end for Judah, the House of David and the entire enterprise that started
when Israel received the Torah at Sinai. There was an influential fifth column in
Jerusalem ready to open the gates to Sennecheriv. Everything depended on the
king – and the prophet was telling him "you are going to die…" – "in this world" –
"…and you will not live" – "in the world to come" (Rashi).

A lesser person might have resigned himself to his terrible fate, but not Hezekiah,
who said, "I have a tradition from the house of my father's father (=David) that
even if a sharp sword is resting on a man's neck, he should not hold back from
prayer" (Berachos 10a). "And he turned his face to the wall and prayed…" (v 2).
Rabbi Nachman explains that the "face" is the person's inner spiritual and
intellectual powers, while the "wall" is inside the stony heart, and that if our hearts
are dulled and insensitive, we must turn our minds and intellectual powers and
shine them into the heart (Rabbi Nachman's Wisdom #39).

Hezekiah prayed, "…please remember … that I did good in Your eyes" (v 3). From
here we learn the power of arousing our good points in our personal prayers and
Hisbodedus. The rabbis commented that Hezekiah was specifically alluding to his
having put away the Book of Remedies in order to take away material means of
healing so that people would have no other option but to pray, believe and trust in
God for healing. Now Hezekiah himself was faced with the challenge of life-
threatening illness – and his response was to repent completely and weep with all
his heart.

Hezekiah's miraculous healing through the power of complete repentance is the

archetype of Torah healing, and is discussed in detail in "Wings of the Sun: The
Torah Healing Tradition".

The Talmud (Berachos 10a) teaches that the "sin" that led to the terrible decree
against Hezekiah was that, having seen with holy spirit that he was destined to
have a wicked son – his successor Menasheh – he refused to marry. The prophet
castigated him for delving into Torah mysteries instead of carrying out the Torah
commandment to procreate. Hezekiah asked if Isaiah would agree to give him his
daughter in marriage so that they might produce righteous children, but Isaiah
answered that the decree had already been made, and Hezekiah undertook to have
children. In the merit of his complete repentance Hezekiah was granted healing and
another fifteen years were added to his life (v 5).

TURNING THE CLOCK BACK

While still mortally sick but having heard the prophecy that he was to live, Hezekiah
asked for a sign that he would indeed be healed and ascend to the House of God on
the third day (v 9). Isaiah offered him his choice of a sign: either the sun would go
forward by ten degrees on the special steps that were carefully positioned to serve
as a natural clock like the sundial, or else it would go backwards. Hezekiah
requested the harder option: that time should go backwards so as to have a ten-
hour longer day (v 11) and the prophet called out to God, who sent the sign. It is
said that on the day Hezekiah's idolatrous father Ahaz had died, the sun set ten
hours early to leave no time for any eulogies, and now, to compensate, it set ten
hours later.

Perhaps the miracle of time stopping still to make a longer day was a sign of the
extra time Hezekiah was given to live and strengthen Judah in preparation for the
decree of the destruction of the Temple and the exile to Babylon, which came about
as the end result of his son Menasheh's idolatry in Jerusalem. The decree was
irrevocable, but in Hezekiah's fifteen years of grace he was able to "stop the clock"
for the time being, as it were, in order to continue with his spiritual revival in Judah.

ENTER BABYLON

Babylon, the very cradle of "civilization" in the era after Noah's flood (Genesis ch
11), was among the cities subject to Ashur at the height of its power (II Kings
14:24). The destruction of Sennacheriv's army at the gates of Jerusalem brought
about the downfall of the Assyrian empire, enabling Babylon to advance to the
center of the world stage. Babylon was destined to be the rod of chastisement that
would complete the moralistic story of the Prophets with the destruction of
Jerusalem and the exile of Judah. Everything had started in Babylon. Abraham had
gone out from Babylon and the "furnace of the Kasdim" in search of the Promised
Land, and it was to Babylon that Judah would have to return in order to prove that
it is possible to observe and study the Torah even in exile.

Hezekiah's miraculous recovery was major news in the world of his time – it is said
that on the day that time stopped still, the king of Babylon got up from his long
post-breakfast/lunch sleep to find that it was morning. He thought it was already
the next morning and was furious with his attendants for having let him sleep for so
long, until they told him that the sun had gone backwards through the will of the
God of Hezekiah (Psikta 14; Rashi on v 12). It was on hearing this that the
Babylonian king Brodach Baladan ben Baladan (not to be confused with Bin Laden)
sent greetings to Hezekiah (v 12).

In the latter's great exhilaration in the aftermath of his own miraculous healing and
the sensational downfall of Sennacheriv's army, both of which took place on the
same day, he very injudiciously took his exotic Babylonian visitors on a detailed
tour of all his treasure-houses and inside the Temple itself, where he even opened
up the Ark of the Covenant and showed them the Tablets of Stone (Rashi on v 13).
It is most unwise to show all one's treasures to unknown strangers, and Hezekiah's
indiscretion planted the seeds of the Babylonian appetite for the Temple treasures
that resulted in their being looted when it was destroyed.

Chapter 21
KING MENASHEH

The account of King Menasheh and his 55 year reign as presented in our present
chapter is one of unmitigated negativity, making it appear that he undid everything
accomplished by his father King Hezekiah in the latter's whole-hearted return to the
authentic Davidic pathway.

Menasheh is portrayed as a voracious idolater who introduced every possible kind

of foreign idolatry into Jerusalem and into the very Temple itself, including not only
the Baal and Asherah worship followed by Ahab but all the "abominations of
Canaan", including Molech-worship and all the different kinds of forbidden
divination (v 6).

The divine warnings to Menasheh that the consequent fate of Jerusalem would be
one that would make the ears of all who heard it tingle (v 12) were delivered by the
prophets Nahum and Habakuk (Rashi on v 10), but the voice of Isaiah was silenced,
because Menasheh had him killed (Sanhedrin 103b). Thus among Menasheh's
crimes was that "he spilled very much innocent blood until it filled Jerusalem from
one end to the other (=PEH LA PEH, lit. 'mouth to mouth'" (v 16). In the words of
Yerushalmi Sanhedrin 10:2): "But how could any mortal fill Jerusalem with innocent
blood from one end to the other? What this verse means is that he killed Isaiah,
who was the equivalent to Moses, of whom it is said 'Mouth to mouth (PEH EL PEH)
shall I speak with him' (Numbers 12:8)".

Yet in spite of the unmitigated negativity of our present chapter, we should avoid
jumping to hasty conclusions about Menasheh. We should take a lesson from Rav
Ashi, the Babylonian Amora who was the redactor of the Talmud Bavli. One day he
was teaching his students the Mishnaic chapter "HELEK" (Sanhedrin ch 10)
discussing those who do and do not have a share in the world to come. Leaving off
the day's class just before Mishneh 2, which lists the three kings who have no share
in the world to come (Jeraboam, Ahab, and, according to one opinion, King
Menasheh), Rav Ashi concluded by saying, "And tomorrow we'll start off with our
friends (HAVERIM)" referring to the kings as if they were the same kind of people
as Rav Ashi and his fellow scholars. That night King Menasheh appeared to Rav Ashi
in a dream and said: "So you call us your friends and the friends of your father? Let
me ask you where on the loaf should one cut when making HA-MOTZEE (the
blessing over bread)?" "I don't know," replied Rav Ashi. "You never learned where
to cut the bread when you make HA-MOTZEE and you call us your friends? You cut
it where the crust is baked the most..." "Then why did you worship idols" asked Rav
Ashi. "If you had been there," replied King Menasheh, "you would have taken hold
of the bottom of your robe and come running after me" (Sanhedrin 102b).

In that mishneh, Rabbi Yehudah dissents from the opinion that King Menasheh had
no world to come on the grounds that the more detailed account of his reign in II
Chronicles chapter 33 tells us that he repented. Menasheh was undoubtedly taught
Torah by his father Hezekiah, and he heard the dire warnings of the prophets of his
day, yet nothing influenced him to repent except suffering. The remaining Assyrian
armies came to Jerusalem and captured him, taking him to Babylon where they put
him in a copper pot full of holes and lit an enormous furnace underneath. Targum
on II Chronicles 33:12-13 tells how after calling out to all his idolatrous gods in vain,
Menasheh finally cried out in pain to HaShem, and despite the protests of the
angels, God then cut a tunnel beneath the throne of glory to hear and accept his
repentance and prayer.

The remaining narrative in Chronicles tells how Menasheh was restored to the
kingship in Jerusalem , where he repented, removed his idols from the Temple ,
and told the inhabitants of Judah to serve HaShem the God of Israel. "And
Menasheh knew that HaShem is the God" (II Chronicles 33:13).

However, Menasheh's son King Amon, with the story of whose two-year reign our
chapter concludes, reverted to the ways of the old Menasheh and not only
worshipped all his idols but also burned the Torah and committed incest with his
own mother (Sanhedrin 103:6).

Chapter 22
After the evil of Menasheh and Amon, the reign of King Josiah comes as the last
burst of shining light before the inhabitants of Judah followed the Ten Tribes into
exile and the Temple of Solomon was destroyed.

The reign and the very name of the saintly Josiah had been prophesied at the very
beginning of the split between Judah and the Ten Tribes, when Jeraboam was
sacrificing on his idolatrous altar and God's prophet called to the altar saying,
"Behold a son is born to the house of David, Josiah is his name…" (I Kings 13:2).

How the eight-year old Josiah was able to turn from the corrupt ways of his evil
father and grandfather is unknown. Perhaps the penitent Menasheh (who died when
Josiah was six) saw his wayward son Amon and tried to do everything he could to
inculcate in his little grandchild, third in line to the throne, the truth of HaShem as
Menasheh now knew it.

Josiah's restoration of the Temple structure is reminiscent of that of his ancestor,

King Joash (II Kings ch 12), the Hebrew letters of whose name are contained in the
letters of the name YOSHIAHU (="Joash"). Joash's restoration of the Temple had
taken place 224 years earlier (RaDaK on v 4 of our present chapter). Since that
time the evil kings (such as Joash's son Ahaz and Menasheh) had seriously modified
and damaged the original Temple structure for idolatrous purposes, and even the
saintly Hezekiah cut down the golden doors of the Sanctuary to pay off Sennacherib
(II Kings 18:16). This was why the Temple was badly in need of repair, and its
restoration was emblematic of the tremendous spiritual revival that occurred under
Josiah, exemplified by the great national Passover celebration he held in Jerusalem,
as described in II Kings:21ff and II Chronicles ch 35.

Our present chapter describes how, in the course of the Temple renovations the
High Priest Hilkiah told the king's scribe, "I have found the scroll of the Torah in the
House of HaShem…" The "discovery" of this scroll has provided grist for the mills of
Bible commentators of all colors, not least those who have set themselves up as the
"Bible Critics", who gleefully point to this chapter in support of their claims that the
Five Books of Moses were (HAS VE-SHALOM) composed by a variety of later writers
to support their own interests, and that the scroll of Deuteronomy with its dire
warnings of destruction and exile which the priests now sent to the naïve young
king was in fact a scam because the priests were simply interested in keeping the
Temple going for their own sake.

To lovers of the Torah who revere and caress every letter of the sacred text in their
search for God's truth, these claims are patently absurd, as well as being negated
by the very text of the Book of Kings, where when King Amatziah killed the
assassins of his father Joash, he specifically did not kill their children "as is written
in the book of the Torah of Moses that HaShem commanded saying, fathers shall
not die because of their children and children shall not die because of their
fathers…" (II Kings 14:6). The words of Moses quoted here appear precisely in the
book of Deuteronomy (24:16), which was in the possession of King Amatziah two
hundred years before its "discovery" in the time of Josiah.

The authentic Torah commentators explain that because Ahaz and some of the later
wicked kings actually burned Torah scrolls, the priests were concerned that they
might try to seize the Torah scroll that lay by the side of the Ark of the Covenant,
which Moses had written from the mouth of God, and for this reason they hid it
away. Later generations no longer knew where it was until it was discovered during
the Temple renovations under Josiah (Metzudas David on v 8; cf. RaDaK at length
ad loc.).

Our sages had the tradition that the scroll found now in the Temple was rolled up
so that it opened at the curse in Deuteronomy 28:36: "HaShem will take you and
the king that you shall set up over you to a people that you did not know…" (Yoma
52b).

Hearing the reading of the curses of Deuteronomy so moved the tender young
Josiah that he sent to Huldah the Prophetess. The question is asked why he sent to
her since the Tzaddik of the Generation was now the prophet Jeremiah, who began
to prophesy in the thirteenth year of Josiah's reign, five years before the discovery
of the scroll (see v 3). According to some opinions, Jeremiah was then absent from
Jerusalem on his mission to try to restore the Ten Tribes, some of whom he did
indeed succeed in bringing home to the Land of Israel. Others say that Josiah sent
to Huldah because women are more compassionate (Megillah 14b).

Hulda was one of the descendants of Rahab the harlot (Joshua ch 2ff). The "second
quarter" where Huldah sat in Jerusalem – BA-MISHNEH (v 14 of our present
chapter) – was outside the gate of the Temple courtyard that was called after her
(Middos 1:3), where she taught the MISHNEH (Oral Law) to the elders of the
generation (Rashi on v 14). Until today the bricked up gate in the southern wall of
the Temple Mount is called Hulda's Gate, and those who meditate near this holy
spot may feel something of the spirit of the ancient prophetess.

With all her compassion, Hulda could not hide the decree of doom and destruction
hanging over Judah and Jerusalem, but could only assure the king that it would not
be fulfilled in his days. The wise, saintly king took her message to heart. Although it
is not recorded here, he took the precaution of hiding away the Ark of the Covenant
and the Torah scroll of Moses that lay with it (together with the flask of the Manna
and Aaron's rod) in the underground channels that Solomon had ingeniously built
into the structure of the Temple Mount (see II Chronicles 35:3 and Yoma 52b).

Chapter 23
* * * II Kings 23:1-9 and 21-25 are read as the Haftara in Diaspora communities
on the Second Day of Pesach * * *

The great cleansing performed by Josiah in the Temple, Jerusalem and its environs
shows the extent of the proliferation of idolatry in Judah in the previous generations.
As discussed in a number of earlier commentaries, the idolatries involved were not
just a matter of prostrating to some piece of wood or stone: they were backed up
by elaborate theologies and sophisticated astrology, divination, occult arts etc. We
get a picture of Jerusalem in the period just before Josiah as a kind of international
center of pantheistic multiculturalism. Our present chapter enumerates virtually
every kind of idolatry and divination proscribed in Torah sources. From v 13 we see
that the cult centers built around Jerusalem by Solomon's wives were still there.
Thus the flaw of idolatry that led to the destruction of the Temple had its roots in
the foreign marriages of the very king who built it, even if his original intention was
to bring the realm of the unholy under the dominion of the holy.

All these idolatrous cult centers were destroyed by Josiah in a mission of national
cleansing that even took him to Beit El and Shomron, the main idolatrous centers of
the fallen kingdom of Israel. Josiah's destruction of the altar of Beit El and its
priests was in fulfillment of the prophecy of Ido when Jeraboam first sacrificed there
(I Kings 13:2) and the false prophet who detained Ido after his mission was wise to
ask to be buried next to him, as his bones were thus saved from being dug up and
burned in the merit of Ido (ibid. vv 31-2; our chapter vv 17-18).

After all this cleansing, King Josiah held a jubilant Pesach in Jerusalem the like of
which had not been seen since the days of Samuel prior to the division of the
kingdom. Josiah struck a Covenant with the people to serve God faithfully and
follow His commandments (v 3).

Yet after all this: "But HaShem did not turn from the burning of His great anger
against Judah … over all the provocations with which Menasheh provoked Him" (v
26). Why did He not when under Josiah the people renewed the Covenant with
God? In the words of Metzudas David (ad loc): "Although Josiah repented with all
his heart and taught the people the ways of HaShem, secretly the people still held
to the provocations of Menasheh, wanting to serve idols just like him."

JOSIAH AGAINST PHARAOH NECHO

The campaign against Pharaoh Necho by Josiah was a literally fatal error which had
the same effect as the various schemes based on mistaken calculations that were
employed by the last kings of Judah who succeeded him, all of which simply
brought the destined exile closer.
By the closing years of Josiah's reign, the empire of Ashur was crumbling, and
initially the king of Judah showed great skill in taking advantage of the situation,
expanding the boundaries of his kingdom until in his eighteenth year he was able to
take his campaign of cleansing from idolatry up to Shomron itself, which had
previously been an Assyrian client state, and he ruled over all of the Land of Israel
(see II Chron. 34:33). He may also have held sway over territories east of the River
Jordan, as had Hezekiah in his time.

The decline of Ashur also filled Josiah's powerful southern neighbor Egypt with
renewed imperial aspirations. Egypt hoped that by lending a hand to the embattled
Assyrians against the rising star of Babylon, she herself would be able to establish
her own supremacy over the entire swathe of territory west of the Euphrates all the
way to Egypt (see Ch 24 v 7). Pharaoh Necho wanted to strike down the
Babylonians at Kharkhemish (today called Jerablus), a strategic stronghold in the
upper valley of the Euphrates near the present-day Syrian-Turkish border about
100 km north east of Aleppo. In order to advance to Kharkhemish, Pharaoh Necho
had to march his troops all the way along the coastal plain of the Land of Israel
before turning east some way south of Haifa in order to make his way inland and
up into Syria.

The rabbis stated that the reason why the saintly King Josiah went out to try to
stop him was because he sought to bring the Land of Israel to a messianic state of
peace where the promise would be fulfilled: "And no sword shall pass through your
Land…" (Leviticus 26:6). Josiah interpreted this verse to mean not only that no
enemy would come up against Israel but also that no foreign army would pass
through the Land even if they were only on their way elsewhere (see RaDaK on v
29).

In order to intercept Pharaoh Necho as he made his push from Israel's coastal strip
inland, Josiah went up to Megiddo, which is in the hills running along the south side
of Emek Yizre'el (by Route 65 about halfway between Um Al-Fahm and Afula).
There Josiah met his death, which was a disaster for Judah as he had no worthy,
righteous successor. Josiah's death was mourned in a special elegy composed by
the prophet Jeremiah (II Chron. 35:25; Lamentations ch 3).

Initially the people of Judah chose Yeho-ahaz to succeed Josiah even though he was
not his oldest son. The reason they ANOINTED him (v 30) was precisely because he
had at least one rival with stronger claims to the throne: it may be that the leaders
of Judah hoped that Yeho-ahaz would be a more assertive leader on the
international stage than his older brother.

Pharaoh Necho meanwhile had been temporarily successful at Kharkhemish and

came back to Egypt via Israel, where he installed Yeho-ahaz's older brother El-
yakim as king, renaming him Yeho-yakim. However, Egypt retained her influence
for no more than four years, after which Nebuchadnezzar struck Pharaoh, who
thereafter did not any more go out of his land, as we read in the following chapter.

Chapter 24
The last kings of Judah appear to have been divinely inspired to misread the new
geopolitical reality that was taking shape with the decline of Assyria, believing that
they could defy the rising star of Babylon by depending on Egypt, which also
wanted to thwart Babylon. In this way they deafened their ears to the message of
Jeremiah and the other prophets, who were consistently warning not to depend on
the "broken reed" of Egypt and not to meddle in international politics but rather to
accept the divine decree of exile and submit to Babylon (see Jeremiah ch 25). The
prophets also emphasized that if the king swore allegiance to a foreign power with
an oath in God's Name, he was obliged to keep his oath and forbidden to scheme
and rebel, which would be a desecration of the Name.

"But by the mouth of God it was against Judah, to remove him from before Him…"
(v 3). Pharaoh Necho was struck by Nebuchadnezzar and could not help Judah even
if he had ever wanted to. Yeho-yakim plotted against Nebuchadnezzar, who
captured him to take him to Babylon. During the journey Yeho-ahaz was tortured
and died. He was succeeded by his son Yeho-yachin, but the latter ruled no more
than three months in Jerusalem before being taken into exile by the Babylonians
together with a total of ten thousand "mighty warriors" (v 14) consisting of three
thousand of the choicest members of the tribe of Judah (including the greatest
sages and scholars, see Rashi ad loc.) and seven thousand members of Benjamin
and the other Ten Tribes who had returned from exile under Sennacheriv.

The exile of King Yeho-yachin, also known as Yehoniah, is the exile mentioned in
Megillas Esther (2:6) which eventually brought Mordechai and Esther to Shushan.
This was eighteen years before the destruction of the Temple. Those who accepted
the divine decree and moved to Babylon did so with dignity and soon succeeded in
establishing thriving communities devoted to Torah and prayer in their place of
exile.

As king over those who remained in Judah (where the Temple still stood for the
moment) Nebuchadnezzar now appointed Yeho-achin's UNCLE, who was the son of
Josiah and a brother of the late king Yeho-ahaz (see RaDaK at length on II Kings
23:29). The Babylonian king hoped that the new king would remain loyal, changing
his name to TZIDKIYAHU as if to say, "God will justifiably exact judgment against
you if you rebel against me". The new king swore allegiance, but even as he did so
he was already plotting to rebel.

Chapter 25
The grim closing chapter of the Book of Kings laconically records stage by stage the
destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem, the cruel fate of Tzidkiyahu king of Judah
and other leading figures of the priesthood and royal court, the exile of most of the
remaining population of Judea to Babylon and the final collapse of the last vestiges
of Judean independence with the assassination of Gedaliah son of Ahikam.

Our present text is supplemented by the parallel account in II Chronicles ch 36 and

in particular by the detailed narrative in Jeremiah chs 37-44 & 52, as well as in
various passages in Ezekiel, who prophesied in Babylon during the period of the
destruction of the First Temple. The full horror of the siege and capture of
Jerusalem and the subsequent exile is graphically expressed in Lamentations and
its accompanying midrashim as well as in many passages in the KINOS ("mourning
dirges") recited on the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple on Tisha Be-Av
(9 th of the month of Av, July-August).

Nebuchadnezzar began his siege of Jerusalem "in the tenth month on the tenth of
the month" (v 1). This is commemorated by the Fast of the 10 th Teves
(December-January), the tenth month counting from Nissan.

In verse 4 we learn that the city walls were breached "on the ninth of the month",
and in Jeremiah 52:6 we learn that this was in the fourth month (=Tammuz, July).
The Jerusalem Talmud (Ta'anis 4) brings an opinion that as a result of the great
distress and confusion at that time, the actual date was confused, and that the
breach in the city walls in fact took place on 17 th Tammuz, the same date as the
breach in the walls of Jerusalem by the Romans in the time of the destruction of the
Second Temple. These events are thus commemorated in the fast of 17 th Tammuz.

Rashi on v 4 tells us that King Tzidkiyahu had a secret tunnel that led from his
house to the plains of Jericho through which he tried to flee. However the Holy One
blessed be He arranged that a deer passed by over the opening of the cave outside
the city, and when some Babylonian troops chased after the deer they saw the king
and captured him, fulfilling the prophecy of Ezekiel, "And I shall spread My net
upon him and he will be caught in My trap" (Ezekiel 12:13).

Although we read in the previous chapter that Tzidkiyahu "did evil in the eyes of
HaShem" (II Kings 24:19), the rabbis said that in fact Tzidkiyahu was the saving
grace of his generation: "The Holy One blessed be He wanted to return the whole
world to formlessness and void on account of the generation of Tzidkiyahu, but
when he looked at Tzidkiyahu He calmed down. Then why does it say that 'he did
evil in God's eyes'? Because he had the power to protest against what the people of
his generation were doing but he failed to do so" (Sanhedrin 103a).

"And in the fifth month on the seventh of the month… he burned the House of
God…" (vv 8-9). The fifth month is Av. The parallel account in Jeremiah (52:12)
states that the burning of the Temple took place on the TENTH of the month of Av.
The rabbis resolved the discrepancy by explaining that the Babylonians entered the
Sanctuary on the 7 th Av and then ate, drank and desecrated and damaged the
Temple until the late afternoon of the 9 th , when they set it on fire, and it kept on
burning until it was completely destroyed on the 10 th (Taanis 29a). Since the
moment when the Temple was actually set on fire was the most serious, the fast
commemorating its destruction was fixed on the 9 th Av.

"And every GREAT house he burned with fire" (v 9): this refers to the study halls
and synagogues of Jerusalem, which were destroyed together with everything else
(Rashi ad loc.)

Many of the Temple treasures had already been looted in earlier raids (II Kings
24:13), including the gold with which Solomon had overlaid the carved wood
paneling that covered the Temple walls on the interior. The account of the bronze
vessels that were now looted, including Solomon's pool and the massive pillars with
their ornate capitals that flanked the entrance to the Sanctuary Vestibule (OOLAM)
echoes the account of how these glorious adornments were originally made by
Hiram four centuries earlier (I Kings ch 7) in order to enhance our understanding of
the magnitude of the disaster that now struck.

Unlike the Assyrians, the Babylonians did not go in for population EXCHANGE, but
simply exiled most of the Judean population to Babylon without importing other
peoples to occupy their former lands. Thus Judea was mostly left barren and empty,
except for "the poor of the land" who were left to be "vine-dressers and field-
workers" (v 12). According to the rabbis, these "vine-dressers" were in fact left to
collect the luxury balsam oil from Eyn Gedi and the surrounding areas, while the
"field-workers" continued to harvest the HILAZON snails whose blood was used in
the manufacture of TECHEILES blue-dye from the coastal strip from Tyre to Haifa
(Shabbos 26a).

The Babylonians left Gedaliah son of Ahikam as governor over the remaining Jewish
population in Judea. Gedaliah, who was a Tzaddik, followed the policy endorsed by
the prophets of accepting the decree of subjugation to Babylon and collaborating
with the occupying power. Because of this he was assassinated by those who
stubbornly persisted in the belief that they could still fight for Judean independence.
His assassination, which is described in greater detail in Jeremiah and which led to
the final collapse of the last vestige of Jewish semi-independence in Judea, is
commemorated annually by the Fast of Gedaliah on the 3 rd of Tishri (the seventh
month, September), immediately following the two-day Rosh HaShanah festival.

Our present chapter thus enumerates all the events that are commemorated in the
four annual fasts relating to the destruction of the Temple: 17 Tammuz, 9 Av, 3
Tishri and 10 Teves.

Only in the closing verses of this chapter (vv 27-30) is there any relief from the
overall gloom with the account of how immediately after the death of
Nebuchadnezzar, his son and successor Eveel Merodokh released Yeho-yachin (who
had been exiled and deposed from the throne of Judah in favor of Tzidkiyahu) from
prison. The Babylonian king gave Yeho-yachin food from his table. Thus the very
curse that King David had put on his commander-in-chief Joab – that his
descendants would be lacking in bread – was fulfilled on David's own descendant,
who depended for bread on the king of Babylon (Sanhedrin 48b).

May we speedily see the fulfillment of the prophecy of Zechariah that "the fast of
the fourth and the fast of the fifth and the fast of the seventh and the fast of the
tenth (months) will be for rejoicing and happiness for the House of Judah"
(Zechariah 8:19).
 Book of Isaiah
THE PROPHET ISAIAH

Isaiah's father Amotz was himself a prophet. According to rabbinic tradition, Amotz
was the brother of King Amatziahu (son of King Jo'ash) of Judah (Megillah 10b),
and thus Isaiah was a scion of the royal House of David. His Hebrew name
Yishayahu (="God will save") signifies the promise of salvation and consolation that
is the main theme of his prophecies. Isaiah's wife's name is unknown: she is simply
referred to as "the prophetess" (Is. 8:3). A number of their children are mentioned
in our texts and they were given names alluding to various aspects of Israel 's
national destiny (Is. 7:3; 7:14; 8:3).

Isaiah was one of the key links in the chain of the Torah tradition: he received it
from the prophet Amos and transmitted it in turn to the prophet Micah (Rambam,
Introduction to Mishneh Torah). Isaiah's prophetic ministry began on the day of the
great "quake" when King Uzziah entered the Temple Sanctuary to try to offer
incense (see Rashi on Isaiah 6:1 and on Amos 1:1) and continued throughout the
reigns of Yotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah into the reign of Menasheh (who killed him,
Yevamos 49b). Isaiah prophesied for longer than all the other prophets and is said
to have lived until the age of 120. He mainly prophesied before the king and his
ministers. He is considered the greatest of the prophets (Yalkut Shimoni). Isaiah
saw all that Ezekiel saw in his prophecy of the Divine Chariot, but while Ezekiel was
like a simple villager who once saw the king (because he prophesied outside the
land of Israel) and was so impressed that he told all the details, Isaiah was like a
man from the great capital (he prophesied in Israel): being accustomed to seeing
royalty, he was less overwhelmed by what he saw (Chagigah 13b).

In Isaiah's time the people were far from Torah observance, and King Ahaz
energetically promoted idolatry and licentiousness. There were no limits on people's
maltreatment of one another and corruption was rife. Isaiah repeatedly warned and
rebuked the people, asking them to remember God's great goodness to Israel in
each generation. Although he delivered many prophecies relating to the
surrounding gentile nations and their destined destruction, the majority of his
prophecies consist of consolation to Israel. All the harsh prophecies that Jeremiah
delivered against Israel were preceded and sweetened in advance by Isaiah's
prophecies of salvation (Eichah Rabbah 1). "What was unique about Isaiah causing
him to prophesy more than all the other prophets about Israel's destined future
wellbeing? It was because he accepted the kingship of heaven upon himself with
greater joy than the other prophets" (Tanna d'vei Eliahu 16).

Chapter 1
Although chosen as the introduction to his book, the "vision" contained in this first
chapter was not Isaiah's first prophecy – that is contained in chapter 6 (see Rashi
on verse 1 of our present chapter and on Isaiah 6:1). This opening prophecy was
given during the reign of Hezekiah, after the Ten Tribes had already gone into exile,
as indicated by the fact that it is addressed to Judah and Jerusalem (Rashi on v 1).
Of the four kings mentioned in the first verse, only Ahaz was truly wicked, yet even
in the reigns of the other righteous kings such as Yotham, "the people still acted
corruptly" (II Chron. 27:2) and they were not whole-hearted with HaShem. For this
reason Isaiah opened his rebuke with phrasing closely echoing that of Moses' last
rebuke to Israel, "HA-AZEENU! Give ear O heavens… and listen O earth…" (Deut.
32:1). The only difference is that Isaiah switched around the two verbs, calling on
the heavens to LISTEN and the earth to GIVE EAR. Thus both the heavens and the
earth had each heard both expressions and would be able to testify on Israel's day
of calamity that the people had been duly warned (see Rashi on v 2).

"I have reared and brought up children but they have rebelled against Me" (v 2).
God has remained faithful to Israel, elevating them above the other nations, but
they have failed to reciprocate and act accordingly. An ox knows its owner and does
not refuse to plow; a donkey knows who feeds it and does not refuse to carry its
load. But although Israel was "acquired" and became "owned" by God through His
redeeming them from Egypt, and although they were fed by Him with manna in the
wilderness, they did not show gratitude by observing His commandments (see
Rashi on v 3).

The people have been repeatedly smitten yet continue to repeat all the deeds that
have brought their blows upon them (Rashi on v 5). Vv 5-8 depict the national
malady in terms of an illness that has left the entire organism seething with painful
wounds that have not been softened with soothing oil – i.e. even the merest hint of
some thought of repentance was absent from people's hearts (Rashi on v 6).

"Your land is desolate, your cities have been burned with fire…" (v 7). The reign of
King Ahaz in particular had been catastrophic for Judah, which was ravaged by the
armies of Israel and Aram , while the Edomites attacked from the south east and
the Philistines captured the major towns in the lowlands (II Chron. vv 5-7 & 17-18
etc.). Likewise in our times, following the 1967 Six Day War and the return to
Israeli sovereignty of extensive territories making up the Promised Land, the
secularist orientation of the country's ruling elite has led to the unilateral surrender
of most of these territories, so that "as for your land, strangers devour it in your
presence" (v 7). As a result "the daughter of Zion" – the few remaining faithful
Jews – have been left abandoned and isolated (v 8). Were it not for God's mercy,
the entire nation would have suffered the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah (v 9).

"Hear the word of HaShem, captains of Sodom … people of Gomorrah" (v 10). The
prophet is complaining that the people have become as corrupt as the inhabitants
of Sodom and Gomorrah, who were legendary for their wickedness.

"Why do I need the multitude of your sacrifices…?" (v 11). At the same time as the
people were sacrificing at their own private altars and cult centers, they continued
bringing sacrifices to the Holy Temple on the festivals and new moons etc. In
verses 11-15 the prophet warns the people that the outward rote observance of the
Temple sacrificial rituals is meaningless and unacceptable to God without inner
devotion and penitence. "My Soul hates YOUR new moons and festivals" (v 14): the
people did not celebrate them in the name of HaShem but for their own personal
gratification. [Rabbi Nachman once quoted this verse to his followers when
criticizing them for holding too many festive gatherings when they should have
been devoting themselves to prayer and Torah study! Siach Sarfey Kodesh.]

"Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean…" (v 16). Verses 16-18 contain ten
expressions of purification and self-correction, corresponding to the Ten Days of
Penitence from Rosh HaShanah to Yom Kippur and to the ten verses relating to
Kingship, Remembrance and the sounding of the Shofar recited in the New Year
service (Rashi on v 16).

"Come now and let us reason together…" (v 18) – "you and Me, so that we will
know who has acted badly to whom, and if it is you who have acted badly towards
Me, I still give you hope that you may repent" (Rashi ad loc.). "But if you refuse
and rebel, you shall be devoured with the sword, for the mouth of HaShem has
spoken" (v 20) – "And where did He speak? 'And I shall bring the sword against
you' (Leviticus 26:25; Rashi on verse 20 of our present chapter).

Vv 21-23 depict the total corruption of justice that had become prevalent in the city
that was intended to be full of justice. Once it could be said that "righteousness
dwells in it" (v 21) – because "the morning Temple sacrifice atoned for the sins of
the previous night while the afternoon sacrifice atoned for those of the day" (Rashi
ad loc.). But now orphans were unable to persuade the judges to hear their cause,
and as a result the case of the widow never even reached the judges at all –
because having heard from the orphans how futile their efforts had been, the widow
would not even attempt to gain a hearing (see Rashi on v 23). Likewise today many
feel that the legal system has become so cumbersome that it is futile to seek
justice.

Even as the prophet warns that God will take vengeance on His enemies, he
promises that God will eventually restore Israel's true judges and counselors (vv
25-26). The phraseology of our thrice-daily repeated prayer in the twelfth blessing
of SHMONAH ESRAY, "restore our judges…" is based upon verse 26.

"Zion will be redeemed with justice and her penitents with charity" (v 27). Wealth,
military power and the like cannot bring about Israel's redemption, but only justice,
penitence and charity!

Isaiah chapter 1 vv 1-27 is read as the Haftara on Parshas Devarim on the Shabbos
before Tisha B'Av, which is known as Shabbos Chazon ("Shabbos of the Vision")
after the first Hebrew word of the text.

Chapter 2
"And it shall be at the end of days that the mountain of HaShem 's House shall be
established on the top of the mountains…" (v 2). Isaiah immediately follows his
prophecies of harsh retribution in the previous chapter with this beautiful
consolatory vision of the future restoration, which is also prophesied in nearly the
exact same phraseology in the prophecy of Isaiah's disciple Micah (4:1ff, see
RaDaK ad loc.).

"Wherever it says, 'At the end of days', this refers to the days of Mashiach" (RaDaK
on verse 2 of our present text).

"…HaShem's House will be established on the top of the MOUNTAINS" (v 2). The
simple meaning is that the Temple Mount will be exalted above all other mountains
and all the nations will give it honor and come there to serve God instead of the
gods they used to serve on all the high mountains (Metzudas David). However the
Midrash says that in time to come God will bring Mount Sinai, Tabor and Carmel
together and build the Temple upon them (Psikta), implying that the Temple is
bound up conceptually with the Giving of the Torah at Sinai and the miracles
performed for Deborah and Barak at Mt Tabor and for Elijah on Mt Carmel.
"Come, let us go up to the mountain of HaShem , to the House of the God of
JACOB" (V 3). The reason why the Temple is particularly associated with Jacob
rather than Abraham and Isaac is discussed at length in The House on the Mountain
by Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum based on Pesachim 88a).

"And he shall judge between the nations and decide among many people, and they
shall beat their swords into plowshares…" (v 4). "The judge will be King Mashiach:
If any war or claim arises between one nation and another, they will come before
King Mashiach for judgment because he will be master over all the nations and he
will decide between them and determine who is at fault. For this reason there will
no longer be any war between one nation and another, because he will make peace
between them and they will not need weapons and they will break them down in
order to make agricultural implements" (RaDaK on v 4).

Following this prophecy of Israel's glorious future, Isaiah returns to his reproof to
the nation (vv 5-8). The people have turned to foreign religions and taken foreign
wives, fathering alien children who take up all their attention (v 6). They are
obsessed with the pursuit of wealth and military might (v 7).

Vv 9ff evoke God's coming Day of Judgment, when all the haughty and arrogant
will be cast down. "This will be in the days of Mashiach, when all the nations will
gather together to fight against Jerusalem, and then they will see that neither their
silver or gold nor their might nor the multitude of their forces will avail them"
(RaDaK on v 9). "And HaShem alone shall be exalted on that day" (v 17) – "The
world will last for six thousand years, and for one thousand years it will be desolate,
as it says, 'And HaShem alone shall be exalted on that day'" (Talmud Rosh
HaShanah 31a).

"And the idols shall utterly be abolished" (v 18). RaDaK (ad loc.) comments: "Even
though idolatry has already ceased among the majority of nations today, there are
still people who worship idols in the Far East … but in the days of Mashiach all the
idols will be completely destroyed."

"And they shall go into the holes in the rocks and the caves of the earth for fear of
HaShem and for the glory of His majesty…" (v 19). On the fearful Day of Judgment,
people will be so ashamed of their lifelong obsession with materialism that they will
seek to hide themselves away. "On that day a man shall cast away his idols of
silver and his idols of gold" (v 20): with the coming of Mashiach, people will
understand that wealth is of no importance, because only Torah and good deeds
are of enduring value.

Chapter 3
"For behold, the Master, HaShem of hosts, will take away from Jerusalem and from
Judah the stay and the staff…" (v 1). RaDaK (ad loc.) explains: "The previous
section spoke of the retribution against the wicked and how they will be destroyed
in the days of Melech HaMashiach. The new section tells how He will now [i.e. soon,
prior to the days of Mashiach] carry out judgment against the wicked in Jerusalem
and Judah, and how all the great people among them will die through hunger or the
sword, leaving only the young and foolish. The prophet calls God 'the Master' in
order to inform them that He is in control and that it is in His hands to destroy and
to build, to give satisfaction or to make people hungry, but the wicked do not think
that He is the Master and that He watches over their deeds, for if they did they
would not sin and they would not go beyond the bounds of His commandments."
Vv 1-3 depict the coming loss of all the leaders and sages of Judah leaving only
fools and jesters to rule over them (v 4) which will destroy all the norms of respect
for elders and worthy members of the community (v 5). The dearth of true leaders
will cause people to turn to anyone wearing a smart coat appealing to him to lead
them (v 6), but he himself will know that he is unworthy: "I will not be a healer for
in my house is neither bread nor clothing" (v 7). The Talmud darshens this reply as
indicating his admission that he was never a regular student in the Beith Midrash
and therefore knows neither Bible nor Mishneh nor Gemara – and therefore lacks all
the qualifications for true leadership (Shabbos 120a). [Many feel that Israel today
suffers from a terrible dearth of quality leaders and wonder which of the current
candidates for leadership could possibly take the nation out of its predicament.]

The collapse of the social fabric and the crisis of leadership are the results of the
people's rebellion against HaShem in turning from His Torah (v 8). They do not
even deny their sins (v 9). The prophet cries out to them to correct the distortions
in their speech whereby "they call evil good and good evil" (see Isaiah 5:20):
instead they should declare and affirm that it is the righteous who are good and
who will eat the fruits of their works (verse 10 in our present chapter) while the evil
of the wicked will wreak vengeance upon them (v 11). But the people have turned
everything upside down, allowing children and women to rule over them, making all
their pathways crooked (v 12). These ruling women (NASHIM), on whom the
prophet elaborates later in this chapter (vv 15ff), may literally be women [as in
Israel today, where in the tradition of Golda Meir, the current speaker of the
Knesset, the Foreign Minister and even the President of the Supreme Court are all
women, in defiance of Torah law, Rambam, Hilchos Melochim 1:5]. Alternatively,
these NASHIM are NOSHIM, "those who have slipped" (cf. Gen. 32:32), i.e. men
who have fallen from Torah observance (see Rashi and Targum Yonasan ad loc.).

The prophet continues to put forward God's complaints against the corrupt
leadership that has consumed the "vineyard" – i.e. the rest of the people, robbing
the poor in their very homes (vv 14-15).

His main complaint is that "the daughters of Zion are haughty…", strutting with the
utmost immodesty and every kind of affectation in order to allure new partners in
their immorality (v 16). Because of this God will smite them on the crown with
leprosy (v 17) and remove all their ornaments and fancy clothing (vv 18-24).

According to rabbinic tradition (Midrash Rabbah Shemos 41:5), verses 18-24

enumerate twenty-four kinds of ornaments with which it was customary to bedeck
brides, and these twenty-four kinds of ornaments in turn correspond to the twenty-
four books of the Bible, which are the "ornaments" of those Torah sages who are
fully familiar with them. [The 24 books of the Bible are: the 5 books of Moses,
Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the Twelve, the 5
Megilloth, Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles.]

The association of the bridal ornaments with the books of Biblical wisdom suggests
that the criticism of the prophet against the "daughters of Zion" who used their
ornaments for pompous self-aggrandizement are directed against the kind of Torah
scholars who use their knowledge and proficiency as a "sword of arrogance" in
order to rule over others. These self-seeking scholars cause the corruption of
leadership, which in turn brings immorality (see Likutey Moharan II, 5:5-6).

Isaiah prophesies that "on that day" (v 18) – i.e. "in time to come, when the Holy
One blessed be He will come to restore Israel to His service" (Rashi ad loc.) God will
remove all these ornaments of pride and sweep away this entire false leadership
(vv 25ff).
 Chapter 4
Verse 1 of Chapter four is a direct continuation of the previous section, and brings it
to a conclusion: in the Hebrew text, a section break follows verse 1, and verse 2
opens a new section. Verse 1 is characterizing the sweeping nature of the disaster
that was to overtake the men of Judah and Jerusalem, which would leave so many
unattached and vulnerable woman that as many as seven women would all beg one
man to marry them without even having to take responsibility for their support,
just to remove their shame at being unmarried. [Midrash Eichah Rabbah 5:12 cited
by Rashi on v 1 explains that Nebuchadnezzar's invading armies were ordered not
to rape married women.]

"On that day…" (v 2) – "this is the day of salvation that will arrive with the coming
of the Redeemer" (RaDaK). "…the plant (TZEMACH) of HaShem will be beautiful…"
TZEMACH is one of the names of Mashiach (TZEMACH has the same gematria as
Menachem). After the great cleansing that will take place with the removal of the
wicked, "he that remains in Zion and he that remains in Jerusalem shall be called
holy, everyone in Jerusalem that is written for life…" (v 3). From this verse the
Talmudic rabbis learned that "In time to come, people will call out 'Holy' before the
Tzaddikim just as they do before the Holy One blessed be He" (Bava Basra 75b).
[Thus people refer to ARI HaKadosh, Rabbenu KaKadosh.] "And if you say that the
Tzaddikim who died before that time will have lost their glory, the verse says
'everyone who is written for LIFE', i.e. the life of the world to come, will be in
Jerusalem (Rashi on verse 3).

"And Hashem will create upon every dwelling place of mount Zion and upon her
assemblies [1] a cloud and [2] smoke by day and [3] the shining of a [4] flaming
[5] fire by night, for upon all [6] the glory shall there be [7] a canopy" (verse 5).
This verse speaks of seven canopies – each being one aspect of the "encompassing
light" that will radiate over each of the Tzaddikim in time to come (Bava Basra 75a;
Rashi on verse 5). Thus the righteous will have a tabernacle to protect them
against the streams of fire flowing down from the River Dinoor and the rains that
will come pelting down upon the wicked at the time of God's judgment (verse 6,
see Rashi ad loc.).

Chapter 5
"Let me sing for my Beloved – my Beloved's song about His vineyard" (v 1). The
metaphor of Israel as God's vineyard was introduced in Chapter 3 verse 14 and is
elaborated as a parable (MASHAL) in our present chapter vv 1-6, while the
NIMSHAL (that which is symbolized by the metaphor) is explained in v 7. The
prophet sings this "song" on behalf of his Beloved and as His emissary to His
beloved people, using terms of endearment in order to emphasize God's great love
for Israel despite the harshness of the allegory.

The vineyard was planted on a very fruitful hill: this is the Land of Israel . The vine
was the choicest species. In the Hebrew text, this is called a SOREK. The gematria
of Sorek is 606, alluding to the 606 commandments God gave to Israel in addition
to the Seven Universal Commandments of the Children of Noah, making a total of
613. Other Midrashic explanations see the choice vine as the Holy Temple (Succah
49a) or as the soul of Adam, which was planted in the Garden of Eden (see Rashi
on verse 7).
The tragedy of this vineyard is that after all the care invested in cultivating it, it
brought forth bad grapes, causing the owner to abandon it and leave it to go to
rack and ruin.

Vv 11ff: "Woe to those who rise up early in the morning that they may seek out
strong drink…" The object of the reproof implicit in the allegory of the vineyard that
went bad is the drunken rulers of the people, who drink and play music "but they
regard not the work of HaShem neither consider the operation of His hands" (v 12).
The "work of HaShem" specifically refers to the stars and constellations, the
wisdom of whose movements and seasons leads man to apprehend the glory of the
Creator (see RaDaK on v 12). Astronomy and the secrets of the heavenly cycles are
the very summit of Torah wisdom, but those who have the capacity to understand
them yet instead saturate themselves with drinking and feasting have despised the
work of God (Talmud Shabbos 75a). The same applies to those who neglect to
recite the blessings of YOTZER OHR before the morning SHEMA and MA'ARIV
ARAVIM before the evening SHEMA, both of which praise God for the luminaries of
the heavens (see Rashi on v 12).

"Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge" (v
13). The collapse of Torah knowledge among the people is the main cause of the
exile, leading to degradation (v 15).

In vv 18f the prophet further elaborates his complaints against the sinners, who
begin with thin cords of vanity and end up being tied and bound by their sins as
with the thick ropes of a cart (v 18). "They say, Let Him make speed and hasten
His work…" (v 19): the sinners heard the prophet's warnings of coming doom and
mockingly challenged Him to bring it speedily in order for them to test if it would
really come.

Verses 20-23 typify the culture of evil, in which moral language becomes twisted
out of its proper meaning in order to rationalize and justify the worst excesses. It is
because the people have despised God's Torah that they will be smitten with His
retribution (vv 24ff). "And He will lift up a banner to the nations from far…" (v 26).
This refers generically to all Israel's enemies and persecutors, but specifically to the
armies of Assyria, which in the time of King Hezekiah invaded and ravaged the
whole of Judea (RaDaK on v 29).

Chapter 6
"In the year of the DEATH of King Uzziah…" (v 1) As discussed in the Introduction
to the book of Isaiah (KNOW YOUR BIBLE Isaiah 1-2) and also in the commentary
on II Chronicles ch 26 dealing with the reign of Uzziah, Targum and all the
commentators agree that Uzziah's "death" refers to his being struck with leprosy in
punishment for trying to usurp the role of the priests by burning incense in the
Temple Sanctuary (II Chron 26:16-21). It was in that year that Isaiah's prophetic
ministry began despite the fact that the chapter in which it is described does not
stand at the beginning of his book. Yet it is clear that our present chapter marks
the beginning of his ministry, because it says: "Who shall I send and who will go for
us? And I said, here I am, send me" (v 8).

"…and I saw the Lord (A-D-N-Y) sitting upon a lofty and exalted throne…" The use
of the holy name of Lordship (ADNUS) indicates that Isaiah's vision was of the
Shechinah (Divine Presence) "seated" upon the "Throne of Glory". The "train" (i.e.
the lower levels garbing and hiding the upper levels) extended down to and "filled
the Sanctuary". RaDaK (on v 1) explains that "the Sanctuary" (HEICHAL) may
mean the Temple but can also refer to the heavens (cf. Psalms 11:4).
"Serafim stood above Him" (v 2) – "Serafim were ministering on high before Him"
(Targum). "These are the holy angels that exist forever" (RaDaK ad loc.). The
"wings" of the Serafim refer to the causal nexus through which these angels
accomplish their missions: "wings are the cause of the fastest of all kinds of
movements" (RaDaK). While Ezekiel, prophesying after the destruction of the
Temple , saw the Chayos with only four wings, Isaiah, prophesying while the
Temple was standing, saw the Seraphim with six wings (Hagigah 13b). Rashi (on
our verse) explains that each Saraph hid his "face" with two wings so as not to gaze
in the direction of the Shechinah, hiding his legs with two wings out of modesty, so
that his whole body should not be visible before his Creator. The "flying" that was
the function of the third set of wings refers to the actual service that each Saraph
performed. The Hebrew word for "wing" is KANAF, which has the connotation of
covering, hiding and concealing (cf. Is. 30:20). I.e. the prophet perceived an outer
garb that both revealed yet at the same time concealed the inner essence. "And
this whole vision was a prophetic vision through the apprehension of the intellect
and not through any apprehension outside of the intellect [i.e. not through sensory
perception] for these angels that he called Seraphim have neither faces nor legs
nor wings… He called them Seraphim because he saw them in his prophetic vision
in the likeness of burning fire, and this was in order to reveal the sin of the
generation – for they were liable to complete destruction" (RaDaK ibid.).

"And one cried to another and said…" (v 2) – "They ask permission from one
another so that not a single one should begin [the heavenly chant] before all the
others, thereby making himself liable to be burned, but rather, they all begin
together, as it says in the blessing of YOTZER OR, 'all of them answer the
Sanctification TOGETHER'" (Rashi ad loc.). All the angels are in complete unison in
their praise of God, for all creation is a unity.

The formula with which the heavenly angels praise God as revealed here in Isaiah
was adopted as the formula with which Israel daily sanctify Him at the height of the
communal repetition of the Amidah prayer in the KEDUSHAH ("Sanctification") at
every morning, afternoon and Musaf service in fulfillment of the commandment in
Leviticus 22:32, "And I shall be sanctified amongst the Children of Israel".

"Holy, holy, holy is HaShem of hosts…" "Holy" (KADOSH) means "separate".

HaShem completely transcends His entire universe. "It mentions 'Holy' three times
corresponding to the three worlds: [1] The supernal world of the angels and souls;
[2] The intermediate world of the heavenly spheres, stars and planets; [3] The
lower world – i.e. This World, the most glorious member of which is man. The
prophet says that He is holy, exalted and elevated above all three worlds…
Yonasan's Targum, which says 'Holy in the supreme heavens, the house of His
indwelling presence, holy upon earth, the work of His might, holy for ever and ever'
includes all the upper worlds as one, thereafter mentions the earth, this lowly world,
and finally says that just as this is true now, so it will be for ever" (RaDaK ad loc.).

"…the whole earth is full of His glory" – "for He created everything" (RaDaK).

"Then I said, Woe is me for I am ruined…" (v 5). Likewise Mano'ah, father of

Samson, was convinced that he and his wife would die after seeing the angel
(Judges 13:22).

"Then one of the Serafim flew to me with a live coal (RITZPAH) in his hand…" (v 6).
Touching the prophet's mouth with the coal was to cleanse him of having uttered
an evil report against Israel in saying "I am in the midst of a people of impure lips"
(v 5). Thus RITZ-PAH has the connotation of "smash" (=RITZ) "the mouth" (=PEH).
Likewise Elijah ate a "cake of coals" (RETZAPHIM, I Kings 19:6) on account of
having reported that Israel had broken the Covenant (Rashi on v 6).

It was the living coal FROM THE ALTAR that cleansed the prophet's mouth in
preparation for receiving the word of Hashem. Likewise, when we sanctify the way
we eat at our table (=the Altar) we are able to speak words of purity and wisdom.

"And He said, Go and say to this people, Hear indeed but understand not! And see
indeed but perceive not! Make the heart of this people fat and make their ears
heavy and smear over their eyes…" (vv 9-10). God was warning the prophet that
his rebukes and admonitions were liable to have the effect of making the people
even more stubborn. For when the sinner wants to sin, God withholds from him the
ways of repentance until he receives his punishment, as in the case of Pharaoh (Ex.
9:12) and Sichon king of the Emorites (Deut. 2:30; see RaDaK on v 9 of our
present chapter).

"…lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their
heart and return and be healed" (v 10): This verse expresses the three conditions
of Teshuvah (Repentance). It is not sufficient to "see with one's eyes" – to attain a
perception of God – without "hearing with the ears", i.e. seeking to contemplate,
grasp and internalize the perception in order to come to "understanding in the
heart", whereby the perception actually governs one's future actions. It is
repentance that brings true healing (Likutey Moharan I, 6).

"And I said, until when, O Lord?" – "How long will they harden their hearts and not
listen?" "And He said, Until the cities be wasted…" – "I know that they will not
repent until the punishments come upon them and they go into exile" (verse 10
with Rashi's explanations ad loc.).

"And if one tenth remain in it, then that shall again be consumed…" When this
prophecy was given in the reign of Uzziah, ten kings were yet destined to rule in
Judah prior to the exile: Yotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, Menasheh, Ammon, Josiah, Yeho-
ahaz, Yeho-yakikm, Yeho-yachin and Tzedekiah (Metzudas David, RaDaK). The
image of the oak tree and the terebinth repeatedly shedding their leaves (v 13)
expresses how all the sinners will be successively cast off with repeated refining
until only the trunk of the tree – the complete Tzaddikim who will return to God
with all their hearts – will be left (Rashi on v 12).

Chapter 7
"And it was in the days of Ahaz…" (verse 1). The prophecy in the previous chapter
was dated to the year that King Uzziah was struck with leprosy. Uzziah lived
another twenty-five years during which his son Yotham was regent. Yotham then
reigned in his own right for sixteen years, after which he was succeeded by King
Ahaz. The invasion of Judah by the armies of Retzin king of Aram and Pekah ben
Ramaliah king of Israel took place in the early years of King Ahaz (see II Chronicles
28:5-8 & 16). Thus we have now fast-forwarded over forty-one years from the
previous chapter to the present chapter, yet the two prophecies are thematically
linked because we now see Isaiah engaged in his mission of reproof despite the
stubbornness of his listeners.

"Ahaz son of Yotham son of Uzziah…" (v 1). "Why does the text trace Ahaz' lineage?
To explain why Retzin and Pekah were unable to fight against Jerusalem (as it says
in v 1) – because the merit of Ahaz' fathers Uzziah and Yotham protected him. The
ministering angels said to the Holy One blessed be He, 'This king is wicked', but He
said to them, 'His fathers were righteous Tzaddikim and I cannot stretch out My
hand against him'" (Rashi on v 1).

V 2: "And it was told to the House of David" – "Because Ahaz was wicked, it does
not mention his name" (Rashi; cf. v 13).

The narrative in II Chronicles 28 about the joint campaign against Judah by the
Arameans and the kingdom of Israel tells of the colossal blow they struck. Pekah
alone slew Judean 120,000 warriors in one day, and leading members of the Ahaz'
household were killed. This would explain why "his heart was moved and the heart
of his people as the trees of the forest are moved with the wind" (v 2).

"And HaShem said to Isaiah, Go out now to meet Ahaz, you and She'ar-yashuv
your son…" While the simple meaning is that She'ar-yashuv ("the remainder will
return") was Isaiah's son, Targum renders "the remainder of your students who
have not sinned and who have repented of sin" – i.e. Isaiah went out with his
students, who are called sons.

The specification of the precise location of Isaiah's encounter with King Ahaz – in
"the highway of the field of the washer (KOVEIS)" (v 3) – is explained in Talmud
Sanhedrin 104a as alluding to Ahaz' having tried to hide (KOVEISH) his face from
Isaiah out of shame. Because of this shame Ahaz merited not to be enumerated
among the wicked kings who have no share in the world to come.

The prophet reassured the king that Retzin and Pekah were nothing more than
smoking firebrands (wooden rods used repeatedly to turn the logs of a fire until the
rods are so thin that they are useless and are discarded). Rashi explains that "Ben
Tav'al" – whom they wanted to appoint as king of Jerusalem – was none other than
Pekah ben Remaliah himself: in the ALBAM cipher (where Aleph is replaced with
Lamed, Beis with Mem etc.) TaVAL = ReMaL[i]A.

But God said this would not come to pass. "Within sixty-five years Ephraim shall be
broken in pieces and no more be a people" (v 8). Rashi explains that the exile of
the Ten Tribes was to take place not sixty-five years after Isaiah's present prophecy
but rather, sixty-five years after the prophecy about it by his teacher Amos, which
was delivered two years before Uzziah was struck with leprosy (Amos 1:1). Uzziah
had lived for 27 years after that prophecy; Yotham and Ahaz then reigned for 16
years each, followed by Hezekiah, in the sixth year of whose reign the Ten Tribes
went into exile. 27 + 16 + 16 + 6 = 65.

Vv 10ff tell how God asked Ahaz to specify a sign of his own choosing that would
testify to the truth of the prophecy, but Ahaz disingenuously declined, excusing
himself on the grounds that he did not want to "test" God – "I don't want His name
to be sanctified through me" (Rashi on v 12; see RaDaK).

Accordingly God himself gave a sign: "Behold, the young woman is with child, and
she will bear a son…" This cannot be a prophecy of the birth of Ahaz' son Hezekiah
since he was already nine years old when Ahaz came to the throne (Rashi on v 14;
RaDaK on v 15). RaDaK states that the prophesied son was either a son who would
be born to Isaiah's wife or another son who would be born to Ahaz. The essence of
the prophetic sign was that by the time this son would have the intelligence to
distinguish between right and wrong – at about the age of three or four years old –
the threat to Judah from Aram and the kingdom of Israel would disappear. Indeed,
in the fourth year of the reign of Ahaz, by which time the newborn son would have
been three years old, the Assyrians conquered and exiled Aram, killing Retzin (II
Kings 16:9), while Pekah ben Remaliah was killed in the same year in a conspiracy
(ibid. 15:30).

It is perfectly obvious that it would have been quite pointless for Isaiah to have
offered Ahaz a sign that would only take place more than 400 years after his death
– yet this is exactly how some Christians try to explain this passage, claiming that a
prophetic allusion to the "virginal conception" of their founder is contained in the
words, "Behold, the young woman (ALMAH) is with child…" This interpretation is
based upon a severe distortion of the meaning of the Hebrew word ALMAH, which
cannot be a virgin since it is specifically used in Proverbs 30:19 to refer to a maiden
with whom a man has intercourse. ALMAH is simply the feminine form of ELEM
meaning a "young man" (I Samuel 17:56). RaDaK on v 15 cites a work called
Sepher HaBris (The Book of the Covenant) written by his father decisively refuting
such distortions of the meaning of our text.

"HaShem will bring upon you and your people and upon the house of your father
days that have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah, namely
the king of Assyria" (v 17). Isaiah had already alluded to the looming specter of
Assyria (Isaiah 5:25ff), which was soon to become a world empire that would
radically transform the geopolitical realities of the entire region. Yet although the
Assyrian armies would occupy all of Judah at the time of Sennacherib's siege
against Jerusalem , God would "shave them with a hired razor" (for which one only
pays money because it is very sharp, Metzudas David), miraculously decimating his
army and killing his officers and finally Sennacherib himself. Although the vineyards
of Judah would become prey to briers and thorns, its hills and mountains would
provide pasture for plentiful sheep and cattle bringing great blessing to the
inhabitants (vv 21, 23 and 25). God's miraculous providence over Judah even
amidst the worst ructions would prove that God is with us – IMMANU-EL.

Isaiah 6:1-13, 7:1-6 and 9:5-6 are read as the Haftara of Parshas Yisro (Ex. 18:1-
20:23) containing the account of the Giving of the Torah.

Chapter 8
Like the prophecy in the previous chapter, the present prophecy dates to the fourth
year of reign of King Ahaz, when Judah was under the most serious threat from the
invading armies of Retzin king of Aram and Pekah ben Remaliah king of Israel.

V 1: "And HaShem said to me, Take a great scroll and write on it in the pen of a
man: the spoil speeds, the prey hastens." The prophet was commanded to write a
document attesting to God's promise of salvation to Judah, because the kingdoms
of Aram and of Israel would soon fall prey to Assyria .

V 2: "And I took to myself faithful witnesses…" It is customary for a document to be

signed by a minimum of two valid witnesses. Although the simple meaning of the
verse is that Isaiah took as witnesses two men who were living in his time, the
Midrashic explanation is that he invoked two future prophets – Uriah, who was to
prophesy in the reign of King Yeho-yakim that "Zion will be plowed like a field"
(Jeremiah 26:20; Micah 3:12) and Zechariah, whose book is included in the Twelve
"minor" prophets, and who was to prophesy at the beginning of the Second Temple
period that "old men and women will yet sit in the streets of Jerusalem" (Zechariah
8:4). "What is the connection between Uriah and Zechariah? Uriah prophesied
harsh punishments whereas Zechariah offered consolation! This comes to teach
that the prophecy of Uriah testifies to the prophecy of Zechariah: Just as the
prophecy of Uriah has been fulfilled, so will the prophecy of Zechariah be fulfilled"
(Maccos 24b).
V 3: "I drew near to the prophetess and she conceived and bore a son." Rashi's
opinion (ad loc.) is that this son of Isaiah's is the same as the son whose birth was
prophesied in the previous chapter (Isaiah 7:14) and who was there called
Immanuel as a sign that God would be with Hezekiah when he would reign after
Ahaz and have to face Sennacherib. In the present prophecy, God tells Isaiah to
call this son by names indicating the imminent defeat of Retzin king of Aram and
Pekah ben Remaliah king of Israel. This was an aspect of His providence over
Hezekiah since the two invaders sought to bring the rule of the House of David to
an end.

V 5: "And HaShem spoke to me further…" The commentators explain that the

following passage alludes to a fifth column that was already present in Jerusalem in
the time of Ahaz, when Pekah ben Remaliah wanted to rule over Judah, and which
developed into a major threat in the time of Hezekiah, when Jerusalem came under
siege by Sennacherib and Shevna, who was Hezekiah's scribe (Isaiah 22:15 &
37:2), wanted to go out to him and capitulate.

"Because this people refuse the waters of Shiloah, which go softly, and rejoice in
Retzin and the son of Remalyahu" (v 6). The gentle waters of the Shiloah spring
(which is at the southern foot of the Temple Mount) allude to the House of David,
whose kings were anointed by their side. "Many of the inhabitants of Judah
despised the kingship of the House of David, which seemed weak in comparison
with the kingdom of Ephraim, and they wanted Pekah ben Remaliahu to be king"
(Metzudas David ad loc.). The Midrash explains that the people were disgruntled
with Hezekiah because he did not aspire to royal grandeur but contented himself
with a modest dish of vegetables before throwing himself into his Torah studies,
while Pekah would consume forty seahs of fledglings for dessert (Rashi ad loc.).

"And therefore the Lord will bring up against them the mighty multitude of waters
of the river – the king of Assyria" (v 7). Yet again Isaiah brings home the message
that the geopolitical realities of the entire region were being radically transformed
with the ascent of Assyria, which would sweep away Aram and the kingdom of the
Ten Tribes, and which would eventually "sweep through Judah" (v 8), i.e. in the
time of Hezekiah, when the Assyrians would reach the "neck" – Jerusalem –
destroying Shevna and his party of traitors as well before being miraculously
defeated, showing that God is with us: Immanuel!

"Take counsel together but it shall come to naught; speak a word, but it shall not
stand, for God is with us!" (v 10). Many customarily repeat this verse after each of
the daily prayer services as a powerful protection against the machinations of the
wicked.

V 11: "For HaShem spoke thus to me with a strong hand and warned me that I
should not walk in the way of this people." The "strong hand" with which God spoke
to Isaiah was the "hand" of prophecy (cf. Ezekiel 3:14). Rashi explains that His
warning to Isaiah was not to join Shevna and his party, which apparently enjoyed
the support of the majority in Judah, while Hezekiah and those who wanted to defy
Sennacherib were numerically in the minority. Although it is a Torah mitzvah to
follow the majority (Exodus 23:2), this only applies if they are righteous, but if they
are wicked they do not count (Rashi on v 12).

V 16: "Bind up the testimony, seal the Torah among My disciples." The simple
meaning of the verse is that God's salvation is promised to those who seal His
Torah in their hearts and those of their children and students. The Talmudic sages
also adduced this verse as alluding to King Ahaz' efforts to "seal" the Torah – i.e.
prevent its study – by closing down the children's cheders and the study halls
(Sanhedrin 103b).

V 17: "And I will wait for HaShem even though He hides His face from the House of
Jacob…" One of the hardest challenges of faith in the times of Ahaz and Hezekiah
was that Judah witnessed the catastrophe that befell the Ten Tribes with their exile.
This was the hiding of His face from the House of Jacob as prophesied in
Deuteronomy 31:18 – yet Isaiah had faith that He would not hide His face from
Judah if they would keep His Torah (see Metzudas David on v 17 and Rashi on v
18).

V 19: "And when they say to you, Consult the mediums and the wizards that
chirp…" The prophet warns people to reject all forms of divination and punditry and
put their faith only in the Torah and the true prophets.

Vv 21-23 prophetically depict the calamity that would befall the Ten Tribes when
they would be exiled by the Assyrians and would angrily curse their king and their
idols after they had let them down so badly, and would finally look upward to
search out Hashem (see Rashi on v 21). Verse 23 alludes to the three stages in
which the exile of the Ten Tribes took place. The first came in the fourth year of the
reign of Ahaz, when the Assyrians exiled the tribes of Naphtali and Zebulun. The
second came in Ahaz' twelth year, when they exiled the tribes of Reuben, Gad and
Menasheh living east of the River Jordan. The third and last stage came with the
exile of the remainder of the Ten Tribes in the sixth year of Hezekiah.

Chapter 9
"The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light" (v 1). This beautiful
prophecy, which is the direct continuation of that in the previous chapter delivered
in the fourth year of King Ahaz (there is no section break in the Hebrew text),
foretells the miraculous delivery of Jerusalem from the clutches of Sennacherib's
armies that was to take place twenty-six years later in the fourteenth year of the
reign of Hezekiah, as described in detail in the narrative portion of Isaiah chs 36ff.

V 2: "You have multiplied the nation and increased joy to it." The Hebrew word for
"to it" (LO) is written (KSIV) in the parchment scroll as LO with an Aleph (="not")
even though it is read (KRI) as if it were written with a Vav (="to it"). This indicates
that Hezekiah's joy was NOT complete, because shortly after the overthrow of the
Assyrians the prophet told him that his descendants would go into exile (Isaiah
39:6; Rashi on our verse).

"…they rejoice before You according to the joy in the harvest" (v 2). This alludes to
the fact that the overthrow of Sennacherib's armies took place on the night of the
sixteenth of Nissan, when the Temple Omer offering is harvested. Likewise,
Gideon's miraculous defeat of the Midianites generations earlier, mentioned in verse
3, had taken place on the same auspicious night (Judges 7:13).

"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given…" (v 5). Rashi (ad loc.) paraphrases:
"Even though Ahaz is wicked, the son born to him some years ago to be our king in
his place (=Hezekiah) will be a Tzaddik, and he will serve the Holy One blessed be
He and bear His yoke on his shoulders. He will study the Torah and observe the
commandments and take His burden upon his shoulders."

"…for the increase of the realm and for peace without end…" (v 6). Hezekiah had
the potential to be Messiah and Sennacherib's assault would then have been the
fulfillment of the destined assault of Gog and Magog on Jerusalem and the complete
repair would have been accomplished. However Hezekiah failed to sing a song over
the miracle and thus lost the chance to be Messiah. For this reason the Hebrew
word LE-MARBEH ("for the increase") in our verse is written in the parchment scroll
with a closed instead of an open MEM in the middle, even though the closed MEM is
normally reserved for use at the end of a word – to indicate that the opening for
Hezekiah to be Mashiach became closed (Sanhedrin 94a). We daily await the
coming of the Son of David to "establish and sustain the kingdom with justice and
charity from now and forever" (v 6).

Following his prophecy of the messianic delivery of Judah from Sennacherib that
would take place in the time of Hezekiah, Isaiah now returns to his prophecy of the
calamity that would overtake the Ten Tribes some time before this with their exile
by the Assyrians (verses 7-20).

"Therefore HaShem shall have no joy in their young men, neither shall He have
mercy on the fatherless and widows. For everyone is a flatterer and an evildoer,
and every mouth speaks obscenity!" (v 16). The Talmud learns from this verse that
"The sin of speaking obscenity brings on many troubles and harsh decrees"
(Shabbos 33a). Let us learn to purify our speech!

Chapter 10
"Woe them that decree unrighteous decrees…" (v 1). Chapter 10 is a new section in
the series of interrelated prophecies that started at the beginning of Chapter 7 with
the description of the attack on Judah by the kingdoms of Aram and Israel early in
the reign of King Ahaz, and which runs until the end of Chapter 12. In the earlier
sections Isaiah's message was that Judah did not have to fear these two kingdoms
because they would be conquered by Assyria, while in the section in Chapter 9 vv
7-20 he depicted the coming exile of the Ten Tribes.

The opening section in our present chapter (vv 1-4) explains the essential reason
why the Ten Tribes were exiled – because of the rampant injustice and the
oppression of the fatherless and widows which they practiced (vv 1-2). However,
they would find themselves helpless "on the day of visitation" with the "desolation"
that would come from afar (v 3). The Hebrew word for "desolation" is SHO'AH,
which is today used to refer to the Holocaust. In retribution for their injustice, they
would be imprisoned in exile and there die – "…but for all this His anger is not
turned away and His hand is still outstretched" (v 4). This is the same refrain as in
the previous chapter vv 12, 16 & 20.

Having concluded his prophecy about the exile of the Ten Tribes, Isaiah turns in vv
5-19 to their Assyrian conquerors, who after having been emboldened by their
earlier successes would in the reign of Hezekiah set Jerusalem as their target. While
it may seem that these prophecies deal with long past historical events, they are
highly relevant to us today because as our sages have taught (Sanhedrin 94a),
Sennacherib's advance against Jerusalem was the prototype of the destined attack
by Gog and Magog at the end of days, while Hezekiah's role was messianic. Isaiah's
teachings in these prophecies can thus provide us with timely lessons as to how we
should see and respond to the protracted campaign of the nations of the world
against Israel today.

"Woe Assyria, rod of My wrath…" (v 5): The prophet is teaching us that the nations
that rise up against Israel are nothing but God's rod of chastisement – and this is
exactly how we must view Iran , Syria , the "Palestinians", "Hizbullah" and all the
others who persecute Israel today. God sends them "against a hypocritical nation"
(v 6, cf. ch 9 v 16) in order to rebuke and chastise it, but they imagine that they
have the power and the license to cut off Israel completely. Thus Sennacherib
thought that Jerusalem would prove to be just one more nation for him to conquer
like all the idolatrous nations over whom God gave him victory. "Just as my hand
has reached the kingdoms of the idols, whose carved idols are from Jerusalem and
Shomron… so shall I do to Jerusalem and her idols" (vv 10-11). Interestingly, Rashi
(ad loc.) comments that "we learn from here that the wicked Israelites used to
provide the images of their idols to all the nations around them".

But God would not deliver Jerusalem into Sennacherib's hands, because he was
nothing but a tool to used to accomplish a specific purpose and then discarded.
"And it shall be after HaShem has performed his whole work upon Mount Zion and
on Jerusalem, I shall punish the fruit of the proud heart of the king of Assyria" (v
12). Rashi (ad loc.) explains that God's purpose in sending Sennacherib was to take
vengeance on the Ten Tribes and on the sinners in the cities of Judah that he
overran, and to cause such FEAR among the inhabitants of Jerusalem that they
would be humbled, repent and turn to God. I.e. it was NOT to destroy Jerusalem.
Likewise God's purpose in sending enemies against Israel and the Jews in our time
is NOT to destroy them but only to bring us to repent with all our hearts.

Having served his purpose, Sennacherib would be cut down in retribution for his
overweening arrogance, which is depicted in vv 13-14. But "shall the axe boast
against he that hews with it…?" (v 15). The prophet emphasizes that Sennacherib is
merely a tool in God's hand and can do no more than God gives him license to do.
"And the light of Israel shall be for a fire and his holy one for a flame…" (v 17).
Here the prophet explains what it is that will kindle the fire that will burn up
Sennacherib and his mighty warriors. The "light of Israel" is the Torah to which
Hezekiah devoted himself, while the "flame" is the righteous Tzaddikim of the
generation (Rashi ad loc.).

"And it shall come to pass on that day that the remnant of Israel and those of the
House of Jacob that escape shall no more rely upon the one that smote them…" (v
20). This verse begins a new short section of this prophecy (vv 20-23) depicting the
repentance that would come about as a result of the miracles God would perform
with the overthrow of Sennacherib. This would teach the nation to rely on Him
alone instead of turning for succor and support to the very nation that was striking
them. [Likewise we hope that Israel will soon be cured of the malady of placing its
hopes on an ally that constantly pursues policies which have the effect of
undermining the nation's security.]

In verses 24-32 Isaiah – prophesying in the fourth year of King Ahaz, twenty-six
years before Sennacherib's advance on Jerusalem – foretells that he would be
overthrown through a miracle that would bear comparison with the overthrow of
the Midianites in the time of Gideon and that of the Egyptians at the Red Sea (v 26).
"And it shall be on that day that his burden shall be taken away from off your
shoulder and his yoke from off your neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed
BECAUSE OF THE OIL" (v 27). On one level this "oil" refers to Hezekiah, God's
anointed king, but our sages darshened that it alludes specifically to the fact that
Hezekiah kindled oil in all the synagogues and study halls, bringing the people back
to the Torah. "What did he do? He stuck a sword over the entrance to the study hall
and said: Everyone who does not devote himself to the Torah will be stabbed with
this sword. They checked from Dan to Beersheba but could not find a single
ignoramus or a single boy, girl, man or woman who was not fully conversant with
the laws of purity and impurity" (Sanhedrin 94b).
Verses 28-32 describe the exact route that Sennacherib, inebriated with his own
arrogance, would take in his frenetic march from town to town in order to reach
Jerusalem. "This very day he will halt at Nov; he will shake his hand against the
mountain of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem" (v 32). "For the whole
journey he was burning to reach Nov while it was still day because his astrologers
had told him that if he would attack Jerusalem that day he would conquer it. But
when he reached Nov and saw from a distance how small Jerusalem was, he
ignored his astrologers, shaking his hand proudly: 'Did I amass all these armies just
for such a little city? Camp here tonight and tomorrow each man will cast his
stone.' But that very night the angel came and wiped out his entire camp. As
people say: If the judgment is delayed, the judgment is nullified." (Sanhedrin 95a).

Chapter 11
The concluding verses of the previous chapter (Isaiah 10:33-4) described how God
would "lop the bough" of Sennacherib's "tree" and cut down the "thickets of the
forest" (his mighty warriors) so that "Lebanon" (his armies) would fall through a
"mighty one" – the angel.

In contrast, the stem of the "tree of Jesse" – the House of David – will regenerate
and produce a new rod: Melech HaMashiach! "And a rod shall come forth out of the
stem of Jesse…" (v 1 of our present chapter). Rashi (ad loc.) explains why this most
famous and inspiring prophecy about the Messiah, whose coming we daily await, is
positioned immediately after the prophecy about the delivery of Jerusalem from
Sennacherib. "If you say that these consoling words to Hezekiah and his people
promising that they will not fall into his hand are all very well, but what will happen
to the Ten Tribes whom Sennacherib exiled to Halah and Habor etc. – perhaps all
their hope is lost? IT IS NOT LOST because in the end King Mashiach will come and
redeem them!" Thus verses 11-12 of this chapter specifically prophecy the return of
ALL THE EXILES from the various countries of their dispersal, including the lost Ten
Tribes.

"And the spirit of HaShem shall rest upon him…" (v 2). This and the coming verses
(vv 2-5) describe the attributes of King Mashiach. "Wisdom (CHOCHMAH) refers to
what a person learns and knows, whereas understanding (BINAH) refers to the
inferences he makes about what he has not learned on the basis of what he has
learned. Counsel (EITZAH) is one's understanding and habitual pursuit of the
proper way to act, particularly in interpersonal relations" (RaDaK ad loc.). "And his
delight shall be in the fear of HaShem…" (v 3). The Hebrew word here translated as
"delight" has the connotation of fragrance and smell, expressing Mashiach's subtle,
intuitive grasp of who is good and who is evil without needing to see or hear. Unlike
today's corrupt system of "justice", which favors the wealthy and mighty against
the poor and weak, Mashiach "will judge the poor with righteousness and decide
with equity for the meek of the earth" (v 4). He will "strike the earth with the rod of
his mouth" (v 4) – he will not need to use armed force in order to assert his
authority but will do so through the power of his words. "And righteousness shall be
the girdle of his loins" (v 5). Targum (ad loc.) renders: "And the Tzaddikim shall be
round about him".

"And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb…" (v 6). RaDaK (ad loc.) comments that
some explain that in the time of Mashiach the very nature of the wild animals will
change and revert to what it was at the beginning of creation, when they did not
consume one another (for if they had, the weaker species would never have
survived). However, others explain all this as an allegory in which the predatory
animals symbolize the wicked oppressors while the lamb, the cow, the calf and the
kid symbolize the meek of the earth, and in the time of Mashiach there will be
peace on earth and men will not harm their fellows… RaDaK dissents from the
opinion that the nature of the wild animals will change throughout the world but
maintains that in the Land of Israel they will do no harm, as promised by Moses: "I
shall cause evil beasts to cease from the land" (Lev. 26:6). RaDaK (on v 8 of our
present chapter) continues: "In the days of Mashiach the serpent's hatred for man
that was decreed after Adam's creation will cease in all the land of Israel, and
wherever the people of Israel go, no serpent or wild beasts will harm them".

"They shall not do harm and they shall not destroy on all My holy mountain, for the
earth will be filled with the knowledge of HaShem as the waters cover the sea" (v
9). It is the knowledge of God that dispels the cruelty that rules in its absence. "The
'sea' (Hebrew, YAM) refers to the place that contains the waters, while the waters
fill it so that the bottom of the sea is not seen" (Metzudas David ad loc.). We know
that the bottom of the sea is uneven, having its own "hills" and "valleys". From
above the waters will be seen covering the sea uniformly in the sense that
everyone will be filled with the knowledge of God, but just as the bottom of the sea
is uneven, in some cases people's understanding will be shallower and in others it
will be deeper (Rabbi Gedaliah Koenig ztz"l).

"…and his resting place shall be glorious" (v 10). "Most kings are ashamed to be at
rest, as if it is a sign of weakness not to challenge some other nation, but
Mashiach's very tranquility will enhance his glory because all will show him
obedience" (Metzudas David).

Verses 11-12 depict the return of the exiles of Israel from all their places of
dispersal. The medieval commentators explain that the "isles of the sea" (v 11)
refer to the Greek islands, which were probably an early stopping place for many of
the Israelite exiles, but with hindsight we can understand that these islands must
also include Britain, Ireland, the Americas, Australia and New Zealand etc. which
are also "isles" in relation to the Europe-Africa-Asia land mass.

"And the envy of Ephraim shall depart…" (v 13). With the coming of Melech
HaMashiach the historical rift between the House of David and the Ten Tribes under
the leadership of Ephraim will be healed.

"But they shall fly upon the shoulders of the Philistines westwards…" (v 14).
Instead of ignominiously retreating from Gaza, in the time of Mashiach Israel will
conquer it. "They shall lay their hand on Edom and Moab " (ibid.) RaDaK (ad loc.)
comments: "Even though they are not identifiable today as nations – because only
Israel have maintained their separate identity from the nations through the Torah,
while the other nations have all become mixed up and are either Moslems or
Christians – when it mentions Edom, Moab and the children of Ammon, it means
their lands and those who dwell in them today." The inheritance of these lands by
Israel will be the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham in Genesis 15:19 (see
Rashi ad loc.).

Chapter 12
"And you shall say on that day, I will give thanks to HaShem although You were
angry with me…" In the Hebrew text there is no section break between the end of
the previous chapter and the beginning of this chapter: they are one continuous
prophecy. Here the prophet foretells the new consciousness that will dwell in the
people of Israel with the coming of Mashiach. Retroactively they will understand the
purpose of their checkered history of exile and persecution, which was to refine
them and bring them to repent. They will come to a new level of trust in God and
His saving power (v 2). "And you shall draw waters with joy from the wellsprings of
salvation" – "You will receive a new teaching – for He will expand their hearts
through the salvation that will come to them and all the secrets of the Torah that
were forgotten during the exile because of the troubles will be revealed to them"
(Rashi).

* * * Isaiah 10:32-12:6 is read as the Haftara in Diaspora communities on the

Eighth Day of Pesach * * *

Chapter 13
Following Isaiah's prophecy about the fall of Assyria in chapter 10, his prophecy
against Babylon in this and the following chapter begins a cycle of prophecies
against the various peoples that surrounded and oppressed Israel, including Egypt,
the Philistines, Moab and Tyre. The cycle begins with the retribution against
Babylon because of the great power and prestige of Nebuchadnezzar's empire at its
height and the fact that he destroyed the First Temple.

The prophecy against Babylon opens with God's call to the warriors of Medea and
Persia to gather for war against Babylon (vv 1-5). It was Darius of Medea together
with his son-in-law, Cyrus of Persia, who eventually captured Babylon and killed
king Belshazzar exactly seventy years after Nebuchadnezzar's rise to power. The
fall of Babylon, as prophesied in our present chapter, came over ONE HUNDRED
AND NINETY YEARS after the death of King Ahaz of Judah, which is given as the
date of the prophecy in the next chapter (Is. 14:28), indicating that the prophecy in
our present chapter was said before that. In Isaiah's time Babylon had not even
attained global stature, yet the prophet already saw that she would knock out
Assyria (which came about when Nebuchadnezzar captured Nineveh) and finally –
190 years later – be knocked out herself.

"I have commanded my sanctified ones…" – "These are the Persians, who are
sanctified and marked out for Gehennom" (Berachos 8b).

Vv 6-8 depict the terrible fear that will fall on the inhabitants of Babylon. "Howl, for
the day of HaShem is at hand: it will come like destruction (SHOD) from the
Almighty (SHA-DAI)" (v 6). This Divine Name (which should be pronounced
SHAKKAI except in prayer or when chanting the Hebrew Bible text) reveals the
power of the Sefirah of Yesod, which channels Godly power into the world. The play
on words in the Hebrew text indicates that the attribute of Yesod, expressed by
SHA-DAI, includes the vengeful power of destruction (SHOD) in retribution for
wickedness.

Vv 9-18 depict God's anger against Babylon and the terrible punishment destined to
come upon them. "All the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not
radiate their light…" (v 10). RaDaK (ad loc.) explains that the prophets speak
figuratively and talk of a person struck by some trouble as sitting in darkness so
that the sun and the stars do not shine upon him. The vengeance against Babylon
was primarily on account of its overweening arrogance (v 11).

"But I shall make a man more honored than finest gold…" (v 12). Rashi explains
that this verse alludes to Daniel, who was called by Belshazzar to his feast in order
to explain the meaning of the "writing on the wall" and whose holy spirit was
revealed to all when he said that it signified the fall of Babylon, which took place
that very night (Daniel ch 5).
"Therefore I shall shake the heavens and the earth shall quake and move from her
place…" (v 13). This verse reveals that God "shakes the heavens" BEFORE the earth
quakes. From here we learn that God does not exact retribution from a nation
without first exacting retribution from its guardian angel in the higher world (Rashi).
The same idea also comes out from the verse in the following chapter: "How are
you fallen out of the heaven, O bright star, son of the morning" (Is. 14:12). The
"star of the heaven" is NOGAH (=Venus), Babylon's guardian angel (see Rashi on Is.
14:12).

Verses 19-22: The lot of the once glorious Babylon will be total destruction and
devastation. Its ruins, haunted only by wild animals, will be enduring testimony to
God's stern, relentless justice.

Chapter 14
V 1: "For HaShem will have mercy on Jacob…" The fall of Babylon, about which
most of the present chapter continues to prophesy, would itself be a salvation for
Israel because Cyrus of Persia, who succeeded Darius the Mede one year later,
began his reign by permitting the exiles from Judah to return to Jerusalem under
Zerubavel, and they started to rebuild the Temple.

"…and He will yet chose Israel and set them in their land…" (ibid.) This refers to the
future redemption, which will be complete (Rashi on verse 1).

"And it shall come to pass on the day when HaShem will give you rest… and you
shall take up this proverb against the king of Babylon " (vv 3-4). Nebuchadnezzar
was proverbial for his cruelty: anyone who entered his prison was never released to
go back home (v 17). But now his ignominious end would make him a byword for
God's retribution against the proud. With his demise, feelings of joy and relief
would come to all the nations (v 8).

Vv 9-17: Hell itself would shudder and tremble with the arrival of Nebuchadnezzar.
Isaiah's depiction of all the amazed shadows in hell, the souls of the dead kings and
mighty of history, as they wonder over the fall of the mighty Nebuchadnezzar,
opens a tiny chink for us into the netherworld, where the souls of the wicked seem
to be imprisoned in a never-ending time warp.

"And you said in your heart, I shall ascend to the heavens… I shall sit on the Mount
of Assembly, on the flanks of the north" (v 13). The "Mount of the Assembly"
alludes to the Temple Mount, Israel's meeting place on the pilgrim festivals. The
choicest part of the AZARAH (central Temple courtyard) was the north, where holy
of holies sacrifices had to be slaughtered. It was because Nebuchadnezzar dared to
set his hand against God's Temple that he came to such an ignominious end.

Vv 18-19: "All the kings of the nations lie in glory… but you are cast out of your
grave like an abhorred branch…" Rashi (on v 19) tells that when Nebuchadnezzar
was reduced to the status of a wild beast (as told in Daniel ch 4), his son Eveel
Merodach became regent, but after Nebuchadnezzar returned to the throne, he put
Eveel Merodach in prison. When Nebuchadnezzar died, the people released Eveel
Merodach and asked him to become king, but he refused, fearing that his father
was not really dead and that if he returned to the throne he would kill him. In order
to prove that Nebuchadnezzar was dead they pulled him out of his grave – in
fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy.
The contemporary relevance of the present prophecy about Nebuchadnezzar's fall
may become clearer if we reflect that Saddam Hussein of Iraq – who is known to
have considered himself the reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzar – also met a highly
ignominious end. He was actually filmed being hanged after some years of
imprisonment following his capture while hiding in an underground pit. Likewise the
bloodshed and destruction that have overtaken Iraq since the invasion of the
country in 2002 seem to be a latter-day fulfillment of these ancient prophecies
about the calamity that would befall Babylon.

24-27: The prophesied fall of Assyria, which actually came about in Isaiah's own
time in Hezekiah's fourteenth year, would be proof that God's word would later be
fulfilled against Babylon as well.

Verses 28-32 make up a complete prophecy in itself about the retribution that was
to come upon the Philistines. The specific dating of this prophecy to the year of the
death of King Ahaz suggests that the previous prophecies about the fall of Babylon
and Assyria were delivered prior to this. Ahaz practiced blatant idolatry in Judah
and was punished by being beset by enemies. The earlier chapters of Isaiah (chs
7ff) spoke about the invasion of Judah by Retzin king of Aram and Pekah ben
Remaliah king of Israel. We also learn in the Book of Chronicles (II Chron. 28:18)
that the Philistines rebelled against Judean dominion in the lowlands and coastal
region in the time of Ahaz. The present prophecy, dating from his death and the
ascent to the throne of his son the righteous Hezekiah, foretells that "out of the
serpent's root shall come a viper" (our present chapter verse 29). The "serpent"
refers to Ahaz, while the viper – which is much more dangerous – refers to
Hezekiah, who "smote the Philistines to Gaza and her borders from the watchers'
tower up to the fortress city" (II Kings 18:8, see Rashi on our verse).

We look forward to the re-fulfillment of this prophecy against the Philistines in our
time, when the fire of violence and destruction that today emanate from Gaza will
be extinguished forever "and the firstborn of the poor [i.e. the people of Israel , see
Rashi] shall feed and the needy shall lie down in safety" (v 30).

Chapter 15
"The burden of Moab …" (v 1). In this chapter and the next, Isaiah continues his
series of prophecies about the fate of the main biblical nations with a prophecy over
the coming exile of the Moabites that is almost a lament.

"My heart cries out for Moab …: (v 5): Rashi (ad loc. comments): "The prophets of
Israel are not like the prophets of the nations of the world. Bila'am sought to uproot
Israel for no reason, while the prophets of Israel mourn over the punishments of
the nations."

The Moabites were descended from the incestuous relations between Abraham's
nephew Lot and his oldest daughter after the destruction of Sodom (Gen. 19:33-
38). The mountainous strip of land east of the Dead Sea above Sodom to which Lot
had fled became the inheritance of the children of Moab , while the children of
Ammon, born from his relations with his second daughter, inherited the territories
further north, east of the River Jordan, around the present-day Jordanian city of
Amman .

The territories of the Moabites, lying largely on a plateau 4,300 feet above the level
of the Dead Sea, consisted of steep but fertile hills that provided excellent pasture
for their many sheep and cattle as well as abundant grain and wine. Thus although
this region of the south of the modern kingdom of Jordan is not particularly famous
or noteworthy today, in ancient times it was the center of a thriving kingdom with
its own idolatrous religion and culture and a mighty army.

Although "cousins" of the Israelites, the Moabites were traditionally hostile to Israel
in the times of Moses, the Judges and Kings. In this they were seen as the epitome
of ingratitude because Abraham had taken Lot from Haran and saved him from
captivity by the four kings, and in Abraham's merit Lot was saved from the
destruction of Sodom. Yet not only did the Moabites not help Israel; they sent
Bilaam to curse them and made war against them in the time of the Judges and
Kings. When Sennacherib took the tribes of Reuben and Gad through their territory
into exile, the Moabites mocked them saying they were simply returning to the
other side of the river (Euphrates) from which their ancestor Abraham had come
(see Rashi on v 7 of our present chapter).

The Moabites' final expression of ingratitude was when they came to assist
Sennacherib when he laid siege to Shomron for three years (see Rashi on Isaiah
16:14). In retribution, many of the Moabites themselves were taken into exile by
Sennacherib, and any that were left were later exiled by Nebuchadnezzar.
According to rabbinic tradition, the Moabites became completely assimilated with
the other nations and all trace of them was lost (Rambam, Hilchos Issurey Bi'ah
12:25), although Jeremiah prophesied that at the end of days God will return the
captivity of Moab (Jeremiah 48:47).

Vv 1-4 depict the destruction of the cities of Moab when Sennacherib would take
their inhabitants into exile, and the mourning that would ensue.

Vv 5-6: Isaiah laments their destruction. The nation that was like a fat, prosperous
three-year old heifer would flee screaming over their own devastation. "For the
waters of Nimrim shall be desolate, for the hay is withered away, the grass fails,
there is no green thing" (v 6): From this verse we can understand how lush and
prosperous were the pastures of the Moabites at the height of their greatness.

Vv 7-9 explain the cause of their destruction because of their historical failure to
support Israel (see Rashi on v 7, of which a synopsis was given above) and how
Nebuchadnezzar – the "lion" referred to in verse 9 – would complete their
desruction.

Chapter 16
Vv 1-4: The reason for Moab's punishment is that they did not help and support
Israel. This is alluded to in verse 1, "Send the lamb to the ruler of the land… to the
mountain of the daughter of Zion ". Meisha king of Moab had been subject to King
Ahab of Israel, to whom he used to send one hundred thousand sheep (II Kings
3:4), but after the death of Ahab, he rebelled. Isaiah is saying here that the
Moabites should have sent lambs to the Temple in Jerusalem, and had they done so
in the time of Hezekiah they would have been saved from exile, but because of
their failure to do so they would be punished.

"Take counsel, execute judgment, make your shadow as the night in the midst of
the noonday: hide the outcasts, betray not the wanderer. Let My outcasts, O Moab,
dwell with you" (vv 3-4). Here Isaiah asks the Moabites to give succor to the
Israelites when they would later try to escape from Nebuchadnezzar's armies by
taking refuge in their territory. If they would do so they would avoid exile, but since
they would not, they would be exiled.
V 5: "And in mercy a throne will be established and he shall sit upon it in truth…"
Our commentators interpret this verse as an allusion to the throne of Hezekiah (see
Rashi ad loc.). This was greatly strengthened after the overthrow of Sennacherib,
which came after he had already exiled the Moabites. The House of David itself was
descended from the Moabite princess Ruth, daughter of King Eglon, who was King
David's great grandmother. Ruth embodied the spark of holiness that came down
from the line of Abraham's nephew Lot. When she converted, the vital spark for
whose sake Moab was kept alive left it, and thus the kelipah (husk) – the remaining
people of Moab – fell away into exile, while the throne of David was simultaneously
strengthened.

Vv 6-11: The arrogance of Moab. Their destruction is compared to that of a fruitful

vine.

"Therefore my heart shall moan like a lyre for Moab" (v 11). Again the Israelite
prophet shows his great compassion for the suffering of the nations with this
metaphor evoking the plaintive melody of the lyre.

V 12: The Moabites' prayers to their gods will not help them.

Vv 13-14: Prophecy on the looming calamity that would strike Moab after their
three years in the service of Sennacherib besieging Shomron like wage laborers: its
glory would be cast down and the tiny remnant would be left with no power.

Chapter 17
"The burden of Damascus …" (v 1). The opening short prophecy in Chapter 17 vv 1-
3 continues the series of prophecies about the downfall of the nations surrounding
and oppressing Israel by foretelling the calamity that was to befall the Aramean
kingdom centered in Damascus (v 1). However after mentioning Damascus, verse 2
of this short prophecy immediately turns to Israel, for Aro'er mentioned in this
verse was a city in the territories captured by Moses east of the Jordan (and thus
part of Israel) that was built up by the tribe of Gad (Numbers 32:34). Then verse 3
prophecies the destruction of the fortress of Ephraim (Shomron).

The intertwining of the fate of Aram with that of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes
arose because, as we learned in Isaiah ch 7, Retzin king of Aram in alliance with
Pekah ben Remaliahu king of Israel both invaded Judah in the reign of King Ahaz.
As discussed previously, Aram and the Ten Tribes were both eventually exiled by
Sennacherib before his advance on Jerusalem, and it is about their joint fate that
Isaiah is prophesying in these verses (see Rashi on v 2). Rashi (loc. cit.) also cites
a Midrash telling that while Damascus had 365 streets each with their own idol,
each of which was worshipped one day of the year, the idolatrous Israelites
established a center in Aro'er where they imported and worshipped all 365 idols
every day of the year.

Verses 4-6 prophecy how the glory of the House of Jacob would become lowly with
the exile of the Ten Tribes. Just as a reaper picks all the best, so Sennacherib
would exile all of them at one time, "gleaning" and capturing anyone trying to
escape. Verse 5 specifies that this reaper harvests in Emek Repha'im ("Valley of the
Giants") which is immediately south of Jerusalem, emphasizing that Sennacherib's
armies would overrun all of Judah and only Jerusalem itself would hold out against
his siege. As a result, only a few remaining impoverished berries would be left:
these allude to King Hezekiah and the loyal Tzaddikim besieged in Jerusalem (Rashi
on v 6).
"On that day shall a man look to his Maker…" (v 7). The effect of Sennacherib's
siege on Jerusalem would be to bring the Tzaddikim inside the city to a level of
complete TESHUVAH (repentance) to the point where they would give up all forms
of idolatry (v 8).

Verse 9 depicts the devastation in the land of Israel after the exile of the Ten Tribes
followed by Sennacherib's invasion of Judah , while verse 10 explains the sin of
forgetting God that caused this to happen. Verse 10 and then verse 11 speak of the
strange kinds that would grow when the people would plant. This alludes to the way
that Israel in exile would intermingle and intermarry with the other nations and
produce mixed stock not like the pure breed God intended (see Rashi on vv 10-11).

Verse 12 starts a new section continuing on from the previous section by foretelling
the miraculous destruction of Sennacherib's armies that would take place in one
night. "Woe to the multitude of many peoples…" (v 12). On this Rashi makes a very
important comment: "An attribute that runs through all the generations is that the
whip with which Israel are beaten ends up being beaten itself, and therefore when
the prophets prophesy the punishment of Israel at the hands of the nations, they
immediately afterwards prophesy the punishment of the nation used to punish
Israel" (Rashi on v 12).

"Woe to the multitude of many people who make a noise like the noise of the
seas..." (v 12). Midrash Tanchuma comments: "Israel are compared to the sand, as
it says, 'The number of the Children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea' (Hosea
2:1) while the nations are compared to the sea, as it says in our present verse. The
nations take counsel against Israel but God weakens their might… In the case of
the sea, the first wave says, 'Now I will rise up and flood the whole world' but when
it reaches the sand it bends and is broken. Yet the second wave does not learn
from the first. Pharaoh rose up against Israel but God cast him down, just as he
then cast down Amalek, Sichon, Og, Bilaam and Balak – but not one of them
learned from the previous one!"

"And behold, in the evening trouble, and before the morning they are no more" (v
14). Here Isaiah prophecies the miraculous destruction of all Sennacherib's armies
in one night by the angel – paradigm of the destined destruction of the armies of
Gog and Magog at the end of days. "This is the portion of them that spoil us" (v 14)
– "One portion was received by Sennacherib and another portion will be received by
Gog and Magog when they come to plunder us" (Rashi ad loc.).

Chapter 18
"O land of buzzing wings that fly beyond the rivers of Kush …" (v 1). RaDaK (ad
loc.) comments: "After having prophesied the salvation that was to occur in the
days of Hezekiah, Isaiah follows it immediately with the great salvation that is
destined to come about in the days of Moshiach." This is the overthrow of the
forces of Gog and Magog. Once again the overthrow of Sennacherib is compared to
the overthrow of Gog and Magog. Just as the overthrow of Sennacherib actually
took place, so will that of Gog and Magog.

Many people take the phrase "beyond the rivers of KUSH" to refer to Africa – Kush
is usually taken to refer specifically to Ethiopia. However Targum Yonasan renders
KUSH as HODOO (India), which is in agreement with one opinion in the Talmud
(Megillah 11a commenting on Esther 1:1) and would also be in agreement with
those today who point to the energetic sea-faring and colonizing activities of the
ancient Ethiopians along the Arabian and Indian coastlines and see African ancestry
in important peoples of the Indian subcontinent. If the forces of Gog and Magog are
to come from BEYOND THE RIVERS of India, could this refer to China???

The "buzzing wings" in verse 1 are interpreted by Targum as referring to the sails
of the ships in which the hordes of Gog and Magog will travel, swifter than eagles.
These and the light papyrus vessels mentioned in verse 2 could seemingly allude to
aircraft or even missiles??? Rashi explains that the "messengers" in verse 2
[U.N./Quartet envoys?] are traveling to see if "a nation tall and smooth, a nation
awesome from their beginning onward…", i.e. Israel , have really returned to their
land after such a lengthy exile. This nation has suffered time and time again in their
history (see commentators on v 2) and now Gog and Magog come to attack them.
From verse 3 we see that the entire world will be watching and witnessing this
cataclysmic event, knowing full well that Israel have come home.

Verse 4 begins a new subsection of this prophecy about the war of Gog and Magog.
In Isaiah 62:1 God says "For the sake of Jerusalem I SHALL NOT BE QUIET until
her righteousness goes forth like radiance and her salvation like a burning torch."
But here God says "I SHALL BE QUIET and look on in My dwelling place": we may
infer this can only be after Jerusalem has been saved, when God's presence will
again rest in the Holy Temple (see Metzudas David on verse 4 of our present
chapter).

"For before the harvest, when the blossom is past and the bud is ripening into
young grapes, he shall both cut off the springs with pruning hooks and take away
and cut down the branches" (v 5). In a lengthy comment on this verse, RaDaK
explains that Gog and Magog will steadily gather strength with more and more
nations joining them, as it says, " Persia, Kush [Pakistan? China?] and Phut with
them" (Ezekiel 38:4), and they are therefore likened to developing vine fruits. But
just as they are about to reach complete ripeness, when they will have invaded and
exiled half of Jerusalem (as prophesied in Zechariah 14:2), God will miraculously
strike them all down. "They shall be left together to the predatory birds of the
mountains…" (v 6). This is as prophesied in Zechariah 14:12ff and in Ezekiel ch 39.
The fallen armies of Gog and Magog will be left unburied in the hills of Israel for a
whole year (Eduyos 2 commenting on verse 6 in our present chapter), after which
they will be brought to burial.

"At that time a gift (SHAI) shall be brought to HaShem of Hosts…" (v 7). "The
nations of the world are destined to bring a gift to King Masiach, as it says, 'Until
SHILOH will come' (Gen. 49:10) – do not read this as SHILOH but as SHAI-LO, a
gift to him" (Yalkut Shimoni).

Chapter 19
"The burden of Egypt …" (v 1). The prophet continues his series of prophecies about
how the various nations that surrounded and oppressed Israel would fall, foretelling
in this and the following chapter the downfall of Egypt. The classical rabbinic Bible
commentators (Rashi, Metzudas David and RaDaK) take this prophecy of the
coming downfall of Egypt to refer not to the End of Days (although End of Days
prophecies may be embedded in it) but rather to the disaster that struck Egypt at
the hands of Sennacherib at the time of his campaign against Jerusalem. On his
way to Judea he heard that Tir'hakah king of Kush (= Ethiopia) was coming to
make war against him and went down to fight against Kush and Egypt, conquering
both of them. Sennacherib then returned to Judea bringing their captured
populations with him in chains (RaDaK on Isaiah 20:1; see Rashi on verses 4 & 18
of our present chapter).
According to this interpretation, the "swift cloud" upon which HaShem rides to come
into Egypt (v 1) would be the army of Sennacherib, sowing panic and civil strife
among the Egyptians (vv 2-3).

"And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and dried
up…" (v 5). This and the following verses (vv 5-10) depict the calamity to Egypt as
a colossal ecological disaster in which the waters of the Nile – upon which the
country is completely dependent, having no rainfall – dry up causing all the
vegetation, food crops and flax etc. to wither and the fish that were an essential
part of the national diet (cf. Numbers 11:5) to disappear. However the opinion of
RaDaK (on v 5) is that all of this is an allegory, and that precisely because of the
great importance to Egypt of the Nile, the prophet depicts the destruction of the
country wrought by Sennacherib as if the flow of the river had ceased.

"Surely the princes of Tzo'an are fools, the counsel of the wise counselors of
Pharaoh has become brutish…" (v 11). The Egyptian defeat at the hands of
Sennacherib is portrayed as a massive blunder on the part of its ruling elite. This
would appear to be because they sought to contain the rising star of Assyria in the
hope of restoring Egyptian primacy over the entire region. Like drunkards reeling in
their own vomit (v 14) the Egyptian princes and sages misread the geopolitical
situation and misled their own people, taking them out to a war that would prove to
be disastrous.

"And the land of Judah shall be a trembling to Egypt: everyone to whom it is

mentioned shall be afraid because of the counsel of HaShem of hosts…" (v 17).
RaDaK (ad loc.) explains that those Egyptians remaining in their own land would be
stunned when they would hear of the downfall of Sennacherib's armies at the very
gates of Jerusalem, and having witnessed the destruction of Egypt at his hands
they would know that only HaShem could have cast him down and that their own
downfall could only have been brought about through His counsel.

"On that day five cities in the land of Egypt will speak the language of Canaan …" (v
18). To explain this verse, Rashi cites Seder Olam (ch 23), which states that after
the fall of Sennacherib, King Hezekiah arose and released all the captives from
Egypt and Kush that the Assyrian king had brought with him in chains to Jerusalem.
They then took upon themselves the kingship of Heaven [i.e. the Seven Universal
Laws of the Children of Noah] and returned to their own lands, building an altar to
HaShem in Egypt in fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy in verse 19. RaDaK (on v 18)
explains that because Mitzrayim and Canaan were brothers (Gen. 10:6) and the
land of Canaan fell to Israel, the Egyptians viewed the Israelites as aliens. But after
witnessing the miracles done for them they would speak their language as if it was
the language of their own brother – the "language of Canaan " – because they
would then see the Israelites as brothers. [The Talmudic sages saw in the prophecy
of an altar to HaShem in Egypt an allusion to the altar of Beit Honyo built there by
Honyo, the son of Shimon HaTzaddik, Menachos 109b).

Vv 20-22 prophesy the great sanctification of the Name of HaShem that would
come about through the recognition by the Egyptians of His dominion and saving
power. When the Egyptians would repent and pray to God, He would heal them.

"On that day there shall be a highway from Egypt to Assyria… and Egypt shall serve
with Assyria" (v 23). The Egyptians would know God's power from having heard
what had happened to Sennacherib's armies, while the Assyrians would know it
through their firsthand experience of the blow dealt to them by God's angel
(Metzudas David).
"On that day Israel shall be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst
of the land…" (v 24). Rashi (ad loc.) explains: "At that time there was no other
people in the world more important than Egypt and Assyria, while Israel were lowly
in the days of Ahaz (king of Judah) and Hosea ben Elah (the last king of Israel),
and the prophet says that through the miracle that would be performed for
Hezekiah the name of Israel would be magnified and they would be as prestigious
as any one of these kingdoms on account of the blessing and greatness they would
enjoy."

"Whom HaShem of Hosts shall bless saying, Blessed be My people [from] Egypt and
the work of My hands [from] Ashur, and Israel My inheritance" (v 25). The
insertions in this translation of the present verse reflect the commentary of Rashi
(ad loc.) who explains that the verse means that God chose Israel for His people
when they were in Egypt, and that they would become "the work of His hands" as a
result of the mighty deeds He would perform against Assyria, because through the
miracles they would witness they would repent and it would be as if God had made
them anew just now so as to become His inheritance.

Chapter 20
According to the rabbinic sages, Sargon king of Assyria is Sennacherib, who had
eight names (Sanhedrin 94a). Tartan was the name (or title) of one of his chief
officers, whom he sent to campaign against Ashdod while he himself fought against
Egypt and Kush before returning to Judea for his abortive assault on Jerusalem (see
RaDaK on verse 1 of the present chapter).

"At that time HaShem spoke by the hand of Isaiah son of Amotz saying, Go and
loose the sackcloth from off your loins and put off your shoe from your foot. And he
did so, walking naked and barefoot" (v 2). According to Metzudas David (ad loc.)
the reason the prophet was instructed to "loose the sackcloth" from off his loins is
because he had been wearing it as a sign of mourning over the exile of the Ten
Tribes, which had taken place some years earlier. Now he was instructed to display
an even more demonstrative sign of calamity by going naked and barefoot like a
captive. As explained in verses 3-4, this was as a sign that Egypt and Kush would
be carried into captivity.

RaDaK (on v 2) states that we cannot take the words "he did so and went around
naked and barefoot" literally, because it is unthinkable that God would command
the prophet to do such a thing (just as God did not literally command the prophet
Hosea to take an immoral woman as his wife, Hosea 1:2). Rather, Isaiah received
this "command" in his prophetic vision, and saw himself in his vision going naked
and barefoot.

"And they shall be afraid and ashamed on account of Kush, their expectation and of
Egypt, their glory, and the inhabitant of this coast land shall say on that day…" (vv
5-6). The "inhabitant of this coast land" (the literal meaning of the Hebrew is
"island") refers to the people of Israel, specifically those in Jerusalem who were
counting on Egypt and Kush to come to their rescue from the clutches of
Sennacherib. Witnessing their terrible downfall, they would finally understand that
they were broken reeds and that without the help of God no-one on earth could
save them.
 Chapter 21
"The burden of the wilderness of the sea…" (v 1). The first twelve verses of this
chapter make up a prophecy against Babylon falling into two sections: vv 1-5 and
6-11. Babylon is called the "wilderness of the sea" because she was conquered by
Persia and Media, which are to her northeast across the "wilderness", and in order
to reach her they had to go towards the YAM, "the sea", i.e. westwards (RaDaK on
v 1). Despite the fact that Isaiah has already prophesied the fall of Babylon (Is.
13:1ff), he returns to this again and again because of the great evil she perpetrated
against Israel (RaDaK ibid.).

The prophecy against Babylon is "harsh" because this "traitor" and "plunderer" will
herself be betrayed and plundered (v 2).

"Therefore are my loins filled with anguish…" – "This prophet is compassionate and
mourns over the retribution of the nations" (v 3 and Rashi ad loc.).

In verses 4-5 the prophet depicts in brief stabbing images the scene that would
take place on the night that Belshazzar would make his feast, thinking he had
defeated the Persians, only to see the "writing on the wall" and be killed that very
night, as told in Daniel ch 5.

"For thus has the Lord said to me: Go, set a watchman; let him tell what he sees"
(v 6). The simple meaning of this and the following verses is that the prophet is
relating how the Babylonians would set a watcher on the ramparts of the city out of
fear of the invading Persians and Medians, and that he would cry out that they were
coming. However, the Midrashic explanation is that God was already telling Isaiah
that he would appoint a "watchman" – i.e. a seer or a prophet – who would
complain about the length of the bitter exile under Babylon. This was the prophet
Habakuk, who traced a circle in the ground and declared that he would not step out
of it until he received an answer from God as to why the wicked prosper (Ta'anis
23a, see KNOW YOUR BIBLE commentary on Habakuk 1 & 2). Habakuk was
eventually granted a vision of the destruction of Babylon under Belshazzar, and
Isaiah alludes to Habakuk's vision, in which the "watcher" riders on a camel and a
donkey: these symbolize Persia and Media. The "lion" who cries in verse 8 is the
prophet Habakuk. The gematria of ARYEH = 216 = HABAKUK (Rashi ad loc.). The
watchman declares that Babylon has fallen. He repeats it twice – because "Babylon
has fallen and is destined to fall again" (Targum). Perhaps we are witnessing the
destined future fall of Babylon in our times as Iraq tears itself to pieces. Babylon is
trodden underfoot like corn on the threshing floor (v 10).

"The burden of Dooma…" (v 11). This opens a new short prophecy of two verses
(vv 11-12). Rashi (on v 11) identifies Dooma with Edom , while Metzudas David
and RaDaK (ad loc.) both state that the people of Dooma are descendants of
Ishmael (cf. Gen. 25:14), saying that the destroyer of their land will come from
Se'ir.

The literal meaning of the words of the prophecy indicate that the fearful people of
Dooma, who are under attack, appoint a watchman and anxiously ask him if
enemies are coming in the night (v 11). In verse 12 the watchman replies that
even after the morning arrives, another fear-filled night will follow and that the
people will continue asking anxiously (RaDaK on vv 11-12). [All this is reminiscent
of present day high terror alerts.] However Rashi explains the Midrashic
interpretation of the verses: The prophet is crying out to God over the burden of
the rule of Se'ir (Edom), asking the Guard (=Shomer Yisrael, the Guardian of Israel,
Psalms 121:4) what will be of this long "night". God answers that He has the power
to shine the light of morning to Israel while causing the darkness of night to fall
upon the wicked Esau at the end of days, and God tells the people of Israel: If you
seek to quicken the end, return and repent (Rashi on vv 11-12; cf. RaDaK ad loc.
and Yerushalmi Taanis 3b).

"The burden of Arav (= Arabia)" (v 13). The simple meaning of the prophesy is that
the people of Arav would be forced to lodge as fugitives in the forest, desperately in
need of water and bread from anyone who would have pity on them. Midrash
Eichah darshens that the exile of the Dedanim would take place because of their
lack of compassion, for while God provided their ancestor Ishmael with water in the
desert, the DEDANIM refused to give water to the thirsty Israelites when they went
into exile despite the fact that they were their cousins (BNEY DODIM; see Rashi on
vv 13-14). Thus KEDAR (v 16) was one of the sons of Ishmael (Gen. 25:13) and
therefore a cousin of Jacob, who was the son of Ishmael's brother Isaac.

Chapter 22
"The burden of the Valley of Vision …" (v 1). The "Valley of Vision" is Jerusalem –
the "valley" about which the majority of the prophecies prophesy (Rashi ad loc.).
Verses 1-14 of this chapter prophesy the fall of Jerusalem at the hands of
Nebuchadnezzar.

"What ails you now that you have all gone up to the roofs?" (v 1). One
interpretation is that when the enemy would come against Jerusalem, all the people
would climb onto the roofs to see what was happening and to mobilize for war. The
Midrash tells that before the destruction of the Temple the priests went up onto the
roof and handed back the keys to heaven (see Rashi ad loc. and Taanis 29a). The
prophet foretells that the fate of those who would starve in the siege would be
worse than that of those who would be killed in battle (v 2). "All your rulers have
fled together…" (v 3): this alludes to the night-time flight of King Tzedekiah and his
ministers, which led to his capture (Rashi ad loc.).

"Therefore I said, Look away from me: I will weep bitterly…" (v 4): God Himself
mourns secretly over the plight of His people.

"And He bared the covering of Judah, and you looked on that day to the armor of
the house of the forest" (v 8). The "covering of Judah" was the Temple, which the
people thought would protect them. But God allowed it to be destroyed – because
instead of repenting, the people looked to the armor that was stored in the Temple
treasury ("the house of the forest", cf. I Kings 10:16-17), putting their faith in arms
and armaments, as depicted in the coming verses, which describe how the people
defiantly fortified the city in preparation for a siege.

Vv 12-14: God called for mourning and repentance – but instead, the people ate,
drank and celebrated, "for tomorrow we die". It was because they showed no
qualms of conscience over the imminent destruction of the Temple that God refused
to grant them atonement except through their death. Our sages learned from verse
14 that if a person publicly desecrates the Name of HaShem he cannot secure
complete atonement through repentance alone but only with his death (Yoma 86a).

The closing section of our present chapter in verses 15-25 is a separate prophecy in
itself against "this steward Shevna who is over the house". As discussed in KNOW
YOUR BIBLE Isaiah ch 8, Shevna was the leader of a "fifth column" in Jerusalem in
the time of King Hezekiah. He is specifically mentioned in Isaiah's narrative about
the siege of Sennacherib as having been one of the Hezekiah's envoys sent to the
ramparts of Jerusalem to speak with Sennacherib's spokesman Ravshakeh (Isaiah
36:3). There the text calls Shevna the "scribe" while El-yakim son of Hilkiah is
described as being "over the house" (meaning either the king's chamberlain or
perhaps the chief Temple officer). However in our present chapter, it is Shevna who
is said to be "over the house" (v 15). RaDaK (on v 20 of our present chapter)
conjectures that Shevna was initially the king's chamberlain but that he was
demoted to the position of scribe while El-yakim was appointed "over the house" as
prophesied in vv 20-24 of our present chapter.

At the height of the siege of Jerusalem, Shevna, as Hezekiah's "scribe", put on an

outward display of loyalty but was secretly bent on treachery. The Hebrew word for
"steward" in verse 15 – SOCHEN – has the connotation of one who is given over to
a life of pleasure (Rashi ad loc. cf. I Kings 1:2). From v 16 we can infer that Shevna
had prepared a magnificent mausoleum for himself with the kings of Judah (Rashi
ad loc.). Apparently he intended to break out of Jerusalem and go over to the side
of Sennacherib, expecting that he would be appointed king in place of Hezekiah.
The Talmud relates that Shevna shot an arrow to the Assyrian camp with a
message that he and his party were in favor of capitulation while Hezekiah was
defiant. However, after Shevna left Jerusalem the angel Gabriel closed the city
gates, preventing any of his followers from leaving, and when Shevna came alone
to Sennacherib's camp the king had him tied to horses tails and dragged over
thorns (Sanhedrin 26a-b).l

In Rabbi Nachman's teaching in Likutey Moharan II:1, Shevna is seen as the

archetype of the false leader while El-yakim ben Hilkiah is the archetype of the true
Tzaddik.

Chapter 23
"The burden of Tzor…" (v 1). In this chapter the prophet foretells and laments the
terrible coming destruction of the great sea-trading city of TZOR. According to the
simplest and most obvious interpretation of this prophecy, TZOR refers to the city
of Tyre in Lebanon, which under King Hiram had showed favor to Israel in the days
of King David and King Solomon but which later betrayed her. The identification of
TZOR in this chapter with Tyre is endorsed by Rashi (on verse 5) on the grounds
that the prophesied fall of Tzor is said to bring shame to Sidon , which is not far
north of Tyre on the Lebanese coast.

However Rashi also mentions the opinion of Rabbi Elazar ben Pedath (brought in
Midrash Tanchuma Va-era ch 13) that the prophecy in this chapter is directed
against Edom-Rome, whose great fall in time to come will strike terror into people's
hearts like the terror inspired by the fall of Egypt at God's hands. This comparison
between the impact of fall of Tzor and that of Egypt is contained verse 5:
"According to the report as to Egypt, so will they will tremble at the report of Tzor".
Rashi (ad loc.) lists "Ten Plagues" that according to various verses in the prophets
will befall Edom, each corresponding to one of the Ten Plagues in Egypt. Rabbi
Elazar ben Pedath's opinion is founded on the opinion of Rabbi Eliezer, that "every
place in the Bible text where TZOR is spelled CHASSER ("defective", i.e. without the
letter VAV in the middle, as in our present text), it refers to the kingdom of Edom,
while every TZOR that is spelled MALEH ("full", i.e. WITH the VAV) refers to the city
of Tyre (Tanchuma loc. cit.). The root TZAR, without a VAV, means a trouble or
oppressor, while the root TZOR with a VAV means to form or create.

Regardless of whether this prophecy applies only to the city of Tyre [which in recent
times has distinguished itself mainly by giving shelter to Hizbullah terrorists while
firing missiles into Israel] or also to EDOM, which is today still desperately clinging
to the last vestiges of its ascendancy, the calamity portrayed is one of cataclysmic
proportions. A city that was a teeming, busy, prosperous international trading
center (vv 2-3) is cast down only to see many of its finest young men and women
destroyed as if they had never existed (v 4), while the remaining inhabitants flee
into exile in all directions (vv 6-7). The calamity is from God alone in order to take
vengeance on Tzor for its arrogance (vv 8ff).

In verse 12 God tells the inhabitants of Sidon to migrate to Kittim, which means
Italy (see Targumim on Numbers 24:24). This seems to suggest a kinship between
the people of ancient Tyre & environs and the city of Rome, which was a relatively
recent habitation in the time of Isaiah. Verse 13 seems to indicate that Tzor itself
was originally established by the Chaldees (KASDIM) under the auspices of Assyria ,
the irony being that they would now come to destroy it.

"And it shall come to pass on that day that Tzor shall be forgotten for seventy years
like the days of ONE KING…" (v 15). Despite her one-time majesty, Tzor will be
cast down for seventy years. This was the number of years that King David lived.
Metzudas David suggests that it was because Tyre had made a covenant of
friendship with David but later betrayed Israel that she had to suffer seventy years
of devastation corresponding to the years of the life of David, in order to
understand that her punishment was divinely decreed.)

"Take a lyre, go about the city, you harlot that has been forgotten…" (v 16). When
a forgotten harlot wants to get back into business, she goes around singing to
attract people's attention. So too Tzor after her seventy years of devastation would
again begin to go around hiring herself out to the all the kingdoms of the world (v
17) – except that all her gains will be "sanctified to HaShem" (v 18) for at the end
of days, the profits from Tzor's trade will flow to Jerusalem, where they will be
consumed by the Tzaddikim after the coming of Melech HaMashiach (Rashi,
Metzudas David & RaDaK ad loc.). The "stately clothing" (MEKHASSEH ATEEK)
which the Tzaddikim will enjoy at that time refers to the secrets of the Torah and
the reasons for the commandments, which are things that the Ancient of Days
(ATEEK) has covered over (KEESSAH) (Pesachim 118a).

Chapter 24
"Behold HaShem makes the land empty and makes it waste…" (v 1). The very
terrible prophesy of devastation, exile, grief and mourning contained in this chapter
(vv 1-12) is considered by many of the commentators to refer to Israel – including
both the Ten Tribes and the people of Judah. Thus Rashi (on v 1) states: "This is a
prophecy of retribution against Israel, because Isaiah delivered a prophecy of
consolation [in the closing verses of the last chapter and in v 14ff of the present
chapter], but prior to its fulfillment they would see great trouble. Therefore he said
to them: It is not to you that I am saying you will inherit it, because God will empty
you out of the land. Only those of you who will be left on the day of redemption
shall raise their voices and exult, as it says later in the prophecy in verse 14, and it
is to them that I delivered the good prophecy."

Another opinion, however, proposed by RaDaK (on v 1 and v 5 etc.) is that this
prophecy refers to the earth as a whole and to the devastation that will strike the
nations at the time of the redemption of Israel. Rashi and Metzudas David likewise
apply the closing prophecies of doom (vv 17ff) to the nations.

"And it shall be as with the people, so with the priest, as with the servant, so with
his master…" (v 2). In a secure, stable society, people show respect for worthy
notables, but when a whole population is taken into exile, the captor makes no
distinction between the honorable and the lowly, herding them all together
indiscriminately (see Rashi on v 2). The Talmud points out that lack of respect for
those of status had already become a feature of life in Jerusalem prior to the
destruction of the Temple. "Rabbi Yitzchak said: Jerusalem was only destroyed
because small people and great people were equated with one another" (Shabbos
119b). Today things seem even worse: the small people have seized control while
the truly great are treated like the dust of the earth!

"The earth also is defiled (CHANPHAH) under its inhabitants" (v 5). The root here
translated as "defiled" means to flatter and act hypocritically. The earth is said to
act hypocritically when it produces weeds and empty pods instead of edible crops.
This prophecy implies that when Israel and the nations defy the Torah, it generates
an ecological catastrophe causing freak crops. [And often the beautiful-looking
produce on the supermarket shelf also turns out to be tasteless and nutrient-
deficient, another example of hypocrisy.]

"For they have transgressed Torahs, they have changed the law; they have broken
the eternal covenant" (v 5). If this prophesy refers to Israel, it is referring to the
transgression of the two Torahs, the written and the oral (Metzudas David). If it
refers to the nations of the world, it refers to their persecution of Israel in excess of
what God decreed, thereby violating the covenant of brotherhood that should have
existed between Esau, Ammon, Moab and Ishmael and their close relative Israel
(RaDaK on v 5; cf. Amos 1:10).

Vv 6-12 portray the ecological collapse that will occur, destroying all rejoicing and
happiness.

After all this devastation, only a few will be left to rejoice in God's salvation: they
will be like the few remaining olives and grapes left on the trees and vines after the
harvesting is over (v 13) – yet they will raise their voices and sing, just as Israel
sang and praised God's mighty acts after the splitting of the Red Sea (Targum on v
13).

"Therefore glorify God in the regions of light…" (v 15). Targum renders: When light
will come to the Tzaddikim, give glory to God.

"From the corner of the earth we have heard songs, glory to the Tzaddik…" (v 16).
Rashi renders: "We have heard from behind the PARGOD [the screen that conceals
God's court from man] that songs are destined to arise from the corner of the earth.
And what are those songs? 'Glory to the Tzaddik' – the Tzaddikim are destined to
arise and endure." The "corner of the earth" alludes to the rebuilt Temple: "From
the Holy Temple joy will spread to all the inhabitants of the earth" (Targum ad loc.).

"…and I said, a secret [is revealed] to me, a secret [is revealed] to me! Woe to me!
Traitors have dealt treacherously; traitors have dealt very treacherously" (v 16).
Rashi (ad loc.) explains: "Woe to me that two secrets are revealed to me, a secret
concerning retribution and a secret concerning salvation, and the salvation will
remain far off, coming only after plundering enemies will come – plunderers after
plunderers and robbers followed by more robbers. The Hebrew text contains five
expressions of betrayal, referring to Babylon, Media, Persia , Greece and Edom , all
of whom will subjugate Israel prior to their redemption".

The Hebrew word RAZI in verse 16 means not only "my secret" but also has the
connotation of leanness – because the terrible prophecy that Israel's final
redemption will be accompanied by harsh retribution caused the prophet's flesh to
shrink in horror (see RaDaK on v 16).
"Fear and the pit and the trap are upon you O inhabitant of the land" (v 17). "This
refers to Edom, Ishmael and the other nations, who are the dwellers in the land
and the lords over it, while Israel are in exile among them. The prophet is saying,
Do not think that Israel alone will be in trouble, for all of you too who think you will
be the lords and dwellers of the earth will be made to move out of it, and each and
every nation will move from its place, but Israel will be saved from the trouble and
the Tzaddikim will be written for life while you will not escape" (RaDaK ad loc.).

"He who flees from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit, and he who comes
out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the trap" (v 18). "One who escapes
from the sword of Mashiach ben Yoseph will fall to the sword of Mashiach ben David,
and whoever escapes from this will be caught in the trap in the war of Gog" (Rashi
ad loc.).

"And it shall be on that day that God will punish the host of the high ones on high
and the kings of the earth on the earth" (v 21). First God will cast down the
guardian angels of the nations from heaven, and then He will throw down the
nations themselves (Rashi ad loc.). When a people's genius and culture decline, the
people itself declines.

"And they shall be gathered together as prisoners are gathered in the pit" – This is
the pit of hell (v 22, see Rashi ad loc.).

"Then the moon shall be confounded and the sun ashamed…" (v 23) – "Those who
worship the moon shall be confounded and those who bow to the sun will be
humbled" (Targum). People will know that God rules over everything, including the
laws of nature.

Chapter 25
"HaShem, You are my God, I will exalt you; I will praise Your name…" (v 1). The
closing sections of the previous prophecy (Is. 24:16-23) depicted the overthrow of
the nations in the war of Gog and Magog, when God will assert His rule in
Jerusalem and restore honor to His elders, the righteous. Our present chapter
begins with the response of these elders, who will acknowledge God for having
done wondrously in gathering them in from their scattered places of exile among
the nations to the Land of Israel and for having cast down the armies of Gog and
Magog on its hills (RaDaK on verse 1 of our present chapter). Rashi (ad loc.)
explains that God's "counsels of old in faithfulness and trust" refers to His covenant
with Abraham in the Covenant between the Pieces (Gen. ch 15) when He promised
him that his descendants would possess the Land.

Vv 2-5 depict God's overthrow of the cities and strongholds of the nations at the
end of days, and how this will bring them to fear Him. The closing words of verse 2
tell how God will make "a palace of strangers to be no city; it shall never be built".
Targum renders: "…the temple of the deity of the nations in the city of Jerusalem
shall never be built." One wonders if prior to their overthrow at the end of days, the
nations will attempt to build an idolatrous temple in Jerusalem, only to be thwarted
by God, as seemingly implied by the Targum.

Vv 6ff specifically refer to the overthrow of the armies of Gog and Magog when they
gather to campaign against Jerusalem. The nations will come expecting that
Jerusalem will be as easy to conquer as oil and bone marrow, but the oil and bone
marrow will turn into pure lees and waste (Rashi, Metzudas David and RaDaK on v
6). Everything will turn from one extreme to the other.
"And He will destroy in this mountain the covering that is cast over all the people
and the veil that is cast over all the nations" (v 7). Targum explains that the
"cover" and the "veil" that are cast over all the nations refer to their leader and
ruler, who until his overthrow covered them protectively [like a seemingly
benevolent world dictator?]. RaDaK (ad loc.) brings an explanation in the name of
his father, that the "covering" (LOT) alludes to "the people who cover their faces"
[reminiscent of masked Islamic terrorists???].

"He will destroy death for ever…" (v 8). This verse with its promise of resurrection
and eternal life is recited at Jewish funerals and is often inscribed on monuments to
the dead. RaDaK (ad loc.) explains that in time to come "chance death" (MEESAH
MIKREES) will disappear but not "natural death", defining "chance death" as the
kinds of killings that Israel have endured at the hands of the nations during their
exile. However, Rashi (ad loc.) states that God will "hide and conceal death from
Israel eternally", which suggests that there will be no more death of any kind for
Israel . The Talmud asks how our present verse, "He will destroy death for ever",
can be reconciled with the prophesy that "a youth shall die at the age of a hundred"
(Isaiah 65:20), answering that death will be destroyed entirely in the case of Israel,
while the people of the nations will live long but will eventually die (Pesachim 68a).

"And it shall be said on that day, Behold our God, THIS (ZEH) is the One in whom
we hoped and He has saved us, THIS (ZEH) is Hashem for whom we hoped, let us
rejoice and exult in His salvation" (v 9). It is not unusual when using the word THIS
(ZEH) to POINT in the direction to the person or thing to which one is referring.
"Rabbi Elazar said: In time to come, the Holy One blessed be He will make a dance
circle of the Tzaddikim and He will sit among them in the Garden of Eden, and each
and everyone will POINT WITH HIS FINGER, saying, Behold our God, THIS is the
One in whom we hoped…" (Ta'anis 31a). The "finger" of each Tzaddik alludes to his
perception of God.

"For in this mountain shall the hand of HaShem rest, and Moab shall be trodden
down in his own place" (v 10). This verse implies that God's overthrow of the
armies of Gog and Magog will take place at Mount Zion, while the Moabites will be
overthrown in their own country. RaDaK (on v 10) explains that today the nations
are mixed up and it is impossible to know which is Ammon, Moab or Edom etc. and
this will also be the case at the time of the war of Gog and Magog. But while these
three nations will be saved from the hand of the king of the north (Daniel 11:21),
they will not escape from the hand of God in the war of Gog and Magog. For even
though they are unrecognizable and mixed up with one another, it is possible that
certain known families among the nations come from these specific peoples. It is
also possible that the prophet gives the name Edom to those who dwell in the land
of Edom , and the name of Moab to those who dwell in the land of Moab . The
reason why he mentions Moab here is because Moab will aid the nations coming
from the north to attack Jerusalem together with Gog and Magog. Being close
neighbors of the land of Israel, the Moabites will help the oncoming armies by
preparing roads and they will give them their support, and this is why Moab is
mentioned specifically (see RaDaK on v 10).

Chapter 26
"On that day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah" (v 1). Just as Israel sang
to God after the miraculous overthrow of the Egyptians into the waters of the Red
Sea (Exodus 15) and just as Deborah sang after the miraculous defeat of Sissera
and his armies (Judges 5), so the Tzaddikim who survive the war of Gog and Magog
will sing the song and prayer to God contained in our present chapter. "The city is
our strength…" (v 1): Having put their faith in God's promise to dwell in His eternal
city in the end of days, the Tzaddikim will praise Him for saving them in the merit
of their faith and commitment to Jerusalem .

"Open the gates that the righteous nation that keeps faithfulness (SHOMER
EMUNIM) may enter in…" (v 2). The Talmud darshens: "Everyone who answers
AMEN with all his strength has the gates of the Garden of Eden opened up for him.
Read the word not as EMUNIM but AMENIM: he that guards (SHOMER) the Amens
(AMENIM) shall enter!!!" (Shabbos 119b).

"Trust in HaShem for ever, for the Lord God is an eternal rock" (v 4). Because of its
great importance as an affirmation of trust, this verse is included among those
recited in the daily prayer service after the KEDUSHAH DE'SIDRA (=UVA LE-
TZION…) following the repetition of the Amidah and ASHREY. The divine Name here
rendered as "the Lord" is the two-lettered name spelled Yod-Heh. The Talmud
explains that the Yod alludes to the Word to Come while the Heh alludes to This
World, stating that "Whoever puts his trust in the Holy One blessed be He will have
His protection in This World and in the World to Come" (Menachos 29b).

Our study today of Israel's future song of faith and trust as contained in our present
chapter is intended to inculcate this same faith and trust in ourselves and in our
dear ones, children and students in preparation for the coming trials of the war of
Gog and Magog, whenever this may come. Thus in the song we read already how
God will "bring down those who dwell on high, the lofty city" (i.e. the strongholds of
the nations, v 5), and how the "feet of the poor and the steps of the needy" shall
trample it down (v 6). The "poor" refers to Melech HaMashiach, who is "a poor man
riding on a donkey" (Zechariah 9:9), while the "needy" refers to Israel, "who were
needy until now" (Rashi on verse 6 of our present chapter).

The blatant injustice that is rampant in today's world is an apparent contradiction to

the rule of the God of Justice, and thus Israel prays to God to keep the Tzaddikim
on the path of righteousness (v 7), hoping throughout their bitter persecution
during their exile to see God's righteousness vindicated when He will overthrow the
wicked at the end of days (vv 8ff). When God's judgments finally strike the earth, it
teaches all its inhabitants to know and fear Him (v 9), whereas if favor is shown to
the wicked (personified in the figure of Esau), he will never learn righteousness (v
10, see Rashi ad loc.).

"HaShem, when Your hand is lifted up they will not see, but they shall see with
shame Your zeal for the people, the fire which shall devour Your enemies" (v 11).
"When suffering comes upon the wicked, they do not think that it comes from Your
hands, but they will see that it is Your hand at the time of the salvation, when You
avenge Your people and save them – they will be ashamed, because then they will
not be able to say it is chance, because they will see how a tiny people are saved
from many nations" (RaDaK ad loc.).

Vv 13ff: After their redemption from the armies of Gog and Magog , Israel will
recall how they were dominated by earthly masters throughout their long exile yet
they never applied God's Name to anything or anyone other than Him (v 13). "They
are dead, they shall not live…" (v 14). RaDaK (ad loc.) explains this as a reference
to the lifeless idols of the nations, while Rashi (ad loc.) takes it as a prayer that the
wicked should not live the life of the world to come and that the "shades" (REPHA-
IM) – i.e. those who weakened (REEPOO) their hands from the Torah and refused
to keep it should not arise.

"You have increased the nation [Israel], HaShem…" (v 15). "You have given them
increased Torah, greatness and glory, and the more You have increased them, the
more You are glorified, because they give thanks and praises before You over every
goodness, whereas this was not the practice of the nations, and for this reason You
have distanced them from before You…" (Rashi ad loc.).

"HaShem, in trouble they besought You, they poured out a silent prayer when Your
chastening was upon them…" (v 16). In their future song of salvation, Israel recalls
how their very suffering in exile caused them to seek out God through prayer.

Vv 17f depict the tribulations prior to the final redemption as the painful
contractions of a woman screaming as she is about to deliver. "It was as if we gave
birth to wind; no salvations were wrought in the earth, and it seemed as if the
inhabitants of the earth would not fall…" (v 18). Israel recalls how it seemed as if
all the pains and tribulations were for nothing, because no baby was born – there
was no redemption and no salvation. In the darkness of the exile it seemed as if
the wicked nations would never fall (see Rashi on v 18).

"The dead men of thy people shall live! My dead body shall arise…" (v 19).
"Previously he prayed that the wicked should not live, but here he prays that the
righteous should live" (Rashi). It is as if the prophet puts words into the mouth of
HaShem to decree the resurrection of the dead martyrs.

"Awake and sing, you that dwell in the dust, for your dew is as the dew on herbs…"
This verse alludes to the "dew" through which the dead will be resurrected. The
Hebrew words translated in the phrase "dew on herbs" are TAL OROTH. OROTH has
the connotation of "lights", while TaL, "dew" is spelled Teth Lamed (=39), alluding
to the sum of the numerical values of the letters contained in the expansion of the
first three letters of the Tetragrammaton: Yud-Vav-Daleth; Heh-Aleph; Vav-Aleph-
Vav. These are the higher spiritual powers or "lights" of the Holy One blessed be He
that will shine down to the NUKVA (Malchus) and revive the dead.

"Come My people, enter into your chambers…" (v 20). RaDaK (ad loc.) explains
that this verse contains the prophet's counsel to the people of Israel in the time of
the war of Gog and Magog. At that time Israel will be in dire trouble for a short time.
The prophet advises the people to seclude themselves in good deeds and complete
Teshuvah, for the anger will only be for a short moment and the good will be saved.
Rashi (ad loc.) explains that the "chambers" allude to the synagogues and study
halls in which Israel are to gather in their time of crisis, or to the inner chambers of
the heart in which each one should conduct his or her own deep self-reckoning.

Chapter 27
V 1: "On that day HaShem will with His harsh, great and mighty sword punish
Leviathan the slant serpent and Leviathan the crooked serpent and He shall slay
the dragon that is in the sea." RaDaK (ad loc.) states that this verse alludes to the
overthrow of the nations in the war of Gog and Magog. Rashi (ad loc.) explains that
"Leviathan the slant serpent" refers to Egypt and "Leviathan the crooked serpent"
to Assyria (both of which are mentioned explicitly at the end of this chapter, verse
13) while the "dragon that is in the sea" refers to Edom-Rome.

V 2: "On that day sing to her: A vineyard of foaming wine." After the future
redemption the nations will sing this song in praise of Israel . In Isaiah's earlier
allegory about Israel as God's vineyard (Isaiah 5:2), he had complained that
despite being tended so carefully, the vineyard produced bad grapes. In contrast,
at the time of the future salvation it will produce the best wine!
The following verses (3-6) are highly allusive. While our commentators interpret
them in a variety of different ways, they are agreed that they refer to God's unique
protective providence over Israel during their exile and/or at the time of the
redemption. God may punish them, but He does not give vent to all His fury. Rashi
interprets these verses as God's appeal to Israel to repent in order to enable Him to
answer the attribute of Justice, which objects that Israel also sin and should thus be
treated no differently from the nations. If Israel will only repent, God will be able to
exact retribution from "those who make war against Me – that is, ISHMAEL" without
the attribute of Justice being able to protest (Rashi on v 4).

"Oh let him take hold of My strength that he make peace for Me" (v 5): God
appeals to Israel to take hold of His Torah, which is His "strength", for this will
assuage His anger and frustration at not being able to take vengeance on His
enemies, and He will then have peace from the attribute of Justice, which will no
longer be able to make accusations against Israel (see Rashi ad loc.).

In time to come, when Israel will repent, they will take root and flourish and fill the
earth with fruit (v 6).

Vv 7ff continue with God's "appeal" to Israel to repent, pointing out that He has
never smitten them in the same way as He has smitten the nations that have risen
up against them (v 7). Rather, He has contended with them only in a measured
way (v 8). For this reason all that is required of them in order to merit their
redemption is to destroy their idolatrous altars (v 9) because if they repent of
idolatry they will come to repent for all their other sins as well (RaDaK ad loc.).

"For the fortified city will be solitary…" (v 10). Rashi paraphrases: "For if they do
this [i.e. if Israel repents], the fortified city of ISHMAEL shall be solitary." It is
noteworthy that twice in his commentary on this chapter Rashi singles out Ishmael
as the chief contender against Israel at the end of days. "…There shall the calf
feed…" (v 10). Rashi (ad loc.) explains that this alludes to Ephraim, who is
compared to a calf (Jer. 31:17), and who will in time to come inherit the territories
that will be abandoned by Israel's enemies.

"And it shall come to pass on that day that HaShem shall beat out His harvest from
the strongly flowing river as far as the brook of Egypt…" God's ingathering of the
exiles is compared to the way a harvester beats the stalks and branches with a rod
in order to separate the berries and gather them together (Metzudas David). The
"strongly flowing river" is either the Euphrates (Rashi) or the River Sambation
(RaDaK), to the other side of which the Ten Tribes were taken into exile by the
Assyrians. From there they doubtless spread to many parts of the world, and from
all of these they will be gathered in.

"And on that day a great shofar shall be blown…" (v 13). The "great shofar" alludes
to the spirit of prophecy that will come into the world in the final redemption to
signal to the lost souls that the time of the ingathering has arrived. The prophet
promises that in the final redemption all of the lost members of Israel will be
gathered in from all their places of exile in order to worship God on the Temple
Mount.

Chapter 28
"Woe to the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim…" (v 1). After having
prophesied the final remedy – the ingathering of all the exiles, including the lost
Ten Tribes, at the time of the future redemption – the prophet turns to address the
people of his own generation, the "drunkards of Ephraim", the kingdom of the Ten
Tribes, who at this time stood on the very threshold of their coming exile at the
hands of the Assyrians. This took place during Isaiah's prophetic ministry, in the
sixth year of the reign of King Hezekiah.

"Behold the Lord has one who is mighty and strong…" (v 2). This alludes to
Sennacherib, who was to carry the Ten Tribes into exile.

"On that day HaShem of Hosts will be for a crown of glory and for a diadem of
beauty to the residue of His people…" (v 5). With the destruction of the sinners,
God's "crown of glory" would adorn the remaining Tzaddikim – i.e. Hezekiah and
the righteous among the people of Judah (see Rashi and RaDaK ad loc.). He would
teach them to practice true justice and give strength to those fighting the war of
Torah (Rashi on verse 6).

"But these also reel through wine…" (v 7). Here the prophet begins to castigate
those in Judah and Benjamin who behaved like the drunkards of Ephraim. "For all
tables are filled with vomit and filth…" (v 8). The rabbis cited this verse as referring
to the tables of those who eat but do not speak words of Torah during their meal
(Pirkey Avot 3:3).

"To whom shall one teach knowledge (YOREH DE'AH)?" (v 9). The prophet is
complaining that the people have strayed onto the path of evil and nobody is left
with sufficient understanding to grasp his message. The phrase YOREH DE'AH was
adapted as the name of the second of the four sections of the Arba'ah Turim ("Four
Rows") and Shulchan Aruch ("Arranged Table") codes of Torah law, dealing with the
laws of Kashrus, Family Purity, Ribis (forbidden interest) and many other important
areas of ISSUR VE-HEITER ("what is prohibited and what is permitted").

"For it is precept upon precept… line upon line… here a little and there a little…" (v
10). The prophet complains that the people are so intent on their own enjoyment
and so far from God's commandments that it is necessary to add fence after fence
to protect the law (Metzudas David ad loc.). Rashi (ad loc.) explains that for every
commandment that the prophet urged the people to fulfill in the name of HaShem,
they adduced a counter-commandment which they felt constrained to fulfill for the
sake of their idols.

"For with stammering lips and another tongue shall one speak to this people" (v 11)
– "Whoever speaks to them any word of prophecy or reproof seems to them like an
unintelligible stammerer" (Rashi ad loc.).

"For He said to them, this is repose – to give respite to the weary…" (v 12). God
wanted to teach the people the way to true tranquility and rest – by leaving the
poor and weak instead of robbing and oppressing them (Metzudas ad loc.) but
"they did not want to listen" (v 12) and therefore God would send them oppressors
who would impose their own commands on the people in retribution for their
neglect of God's commandments (v 13).

Vv 14ff warn the leaders of the people of how God would deal with them because of
their boasting that they had made a "covenant with death and an agreement with
hell" (v 15). It may be that Isaiah had in mind those fifth columnists in Jerusalem
like Shevna the scribe, who plotted to capitulate to Sennacherib thinking that this
would save them from death. [After the 1993 "Oslo Agreement" between the Israeli
government and the P.L.O. leading Torah scholars applied this verse to those in
Israel who thought they could make a protective covenant with terrorists. Thus the
Targum renders the phrase "we have made a covenant with death and an
agreement with hell" as: "we have made a covenant with a KILLER and we have
made peace with a TERRORIST (MECHABEL)".

"Therefore says the Lord God, Behold I am establishing for a foundation in Zion a
stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation" (v 16). This alludes
to Melech HaMashiach (Rashi) and to Hezekiah (Metzudas David & RaDaK). Just like
the corner stone is the foundation of the entire building, so the righteous Messianic
king is the secure foundation for every believing Israelite. "He that believes shall
not make haste" (v 16): "A true believer does not say that if it is true, he should
come quickly" (Rashi ad loc.).

The "covenant with death" made by the wicked would only be atoned through the
terror that would be unleashed by Sennacherib against Judah (vv 18ff). "For the
bed is too short for a man to stretch himself…" (v 20): the territory of Judah would
be too narrow to accommodate all of Sennacherib's armies (RaDaK ad loc.). The
work that God would do in the land of Judah would be "strange" (v 21) because He
would use an alien and merciless proxy, i.e. Sennacherib, to carry out His plan. The
prophet pleads with the people not to mock him for his prophecies (v 22).

Verses 23-28 present an allegory about how an expert farmer goes about his work,
sowing and later processing each crop in the way uniquely suited to it. God is the
"plowman" while Israel is the "land". The "plowman" prepared the "land" for sowing
by taking Israel out of Egypt with many miracles. But the work of plowing does not
continue for ever. As soon as the land is ready, it is time to "sow" the seeds. Thus
God gave Israel the Torah and the commandments, but different people are on
different levels and the different crops have to be tended in different ways in order
to bring each to perfection. The work of threshing (separating the grain from the
chaff) cannot go on for too long because if it does, all the berries will disintegrate.
It would be better for the people to imbibe the message of rebuke (the "threshing")
quickly instead of being stubborn and having to be beaten down continuously (see
Rashi and RaDaK).

"This also came from HaShem of hosts: He is wonderful in counsel and excellent in
wisdom" (v 29). Just as the "farmer" uses many subtle skills in producing a
diversity of good crops, so God exercises His providence in the most wondrous
ways in order to bring all the diverse souls to produce their crop of good deeds,
each in accordance with its own unique potential.

The Haftara of the first parshah in the book of Exodus, SHEMOS (according to the
custom of the Ashkenazi communities) consists of selections from the chapters
discussed in the present commentary: Isaiah 27:6-13; 28:1-13 and 29:22-23.

Chapter 29
"Ho Ariel! Ariel!" (v 1): Ariel, literally "the lion of God", refers to the Temple in
general and specifically to the Altar (cf. Ezekiel 43:16), because "the fire that came
down upon the Altar from heaven crouched upon it like a lion" (Metzudas Tzion on
verse 1). The Temple building itself – the back of which was narrow while the front
was broad – also resembled a lion (Tractate Middos 37a). The reason why King
David is mentioned in this verse is because it was he who discovered the true site
of the Altar (see I Chron. 21:18ff; RaDaK on our present verse).

The prophet is grieving over the coming assault on Jerusalem by Assyria, chastising
the people because "you add year upon year; the festivals will be cut off" (v 1). He
is warning that if they would not repent, the Altar would be destroyed and then
their sins would accumulate from year to year instead of being atoned through the
daily and festival sacrifices (Metzudas David). Sennacherib would lay siege to
Jerusalem, where the people would mourn the many that he would kill in the
surrounding towns of Judah. Then Jerusalem – surrounded by the bodies of the
dead – would itself be like an Altar surrounded by its slaughtered animals (v 2).
The people would have to suffer this because of the insincerity with which they
brought sacrifices to the Temple. Only the terrors of the siege of Jerusalem – which
the prophet depicts in verse 3 – would humble their hearts, and they would then
pray to God in a lowly, barely audible voice like that of a necromancer (v 4).

And as soon as the people would turn to God, "The multitude of your strangers
[=the enemy] shall be like small dust, and the multitude of the terrible ones shall
be like chaff that passes away, and it shall be in an instant suddenly" (v 5). Here
the prophet foretells the overthrow of Sennacherib's armies, who would be
consumed by the fire of God's angel and turned to ashes (Rashi ad loc.). The
enemy's vain ambitions of conquering Jerusalem would turn out to be as empty as
a passing dream (vv 7-8).

The fact that our commentators relate this prophecy to the overthrow of
Sennacherib, which took place over two thousand five hundred years ago, in no
way detracts from its relevance in our times, because Sennacherib's onslaught
against Jerusalem was the prototype of the destined assault against Jerusalem by
the armies of Gog and Magog at the end of days. Then too the people will have to
repent and call out to God from a position of abject lowliness in order to merit the
tremendous salvation that He will bring about at that time.

Verses 9-12 can be seen to address the bewildered Jews of today who suddenly
find themselves confronting a hostility from the nations not seen since the days of
the Holocaust, with daily-renewed threats to the survival of their tiny country. Many
seem to be as in a drunken stupor and a sleep, bereft of guidance from true
prophets and seers. "And the vision of all this has become to you as the words of a
book that is sealed…" The vision that applies to our times is indeed contained in
these prophecies in this very book of Isaiah, but it has become "sealed" and closed
up because of people's inability – or unwillingness – to see its relevance.

The prophet's rebuke is directed not only against those who do not observe the
Torah at all. Even more, he castigates those who give the outward appearance of
piety while in truth being far from true devotion. "For this people draw near with
their mouth and with their lips do honor Me, but they have removed their heart far
from Me and their fear of Me is like a commandment of men learned by rote" (v 13).
Each one of us must seriously consider how this rebuke applies to us and how we
can correct what we must correct. For the mindless, mechanical repetition of our
prayers out of mere habit without inner feeling and devotion leads to the loss of
wisdom and understanding (v 14).

It is a terrible mistake when people believe they can hide behind an outer façade of
piety while "secretly" following the devices of their own hearts, as if God is unaware
of their deeds. How can a mere creature imagine that He who created him does not
understand what is in his heart? (vv 15-16).

The people's complacency will lead to the complete overthrow of the world order
with which they are familiar (v 17), and only at that moment of supreme crisis will
the "deaf" finally hear the message of the books of the prophets and the eyes of
the "blind" see (v 18). The redemption that will sprout through the repentance
engendered by the attack on Jerusalem will bring joy to the meek and humble (v
19) while the wicked will be destroyed (vv 20-21).
The sight of the Children of Israel repenting at the end of days will be to the glory
of the patriarchs, whose descendants will again display heroic devotion to HaShem
just as their ancestors, bringing about a great sanctification of His Name (vv 22-24).

Chapter 30
The rebuke of the prophet in this chapter against the "rebellious children" who take
counsel and prepare plans to face the enemy without consulting true Torah sages
and prophets (v 1) is directly primarily against those who "travel to go down to
Egypt" (v 2).

RaDaK points out that we find nothing in any of our sources relating to the reigns of
Uzziah, Yotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah in which Isaiah prophesied that might indicate
that there was a party in Jerusalem seeking aid from Egypt against Assyria . There
was indeed such a party seeking Egypt 's help against Babylon several generations
later, prior to the destruction of the Temple in the time of King Tzedekiah, but it is
hard to interpret the present prophecy as referring to them since it explicitly
foretells the redemption from Assyria in the time of Hezekiah (see v 31). RaDaK
surmises that despite the absence of any explicit reference in the book of Kings or
Chronicles, such a party may well have existed in the time of King Ahaz or in that
of Hezekiah, who was faced with the challenge of dealing with a highly recalcitrant
leadership elite (see RaDaK on v 1).

The contemporary parallel to the ancient "pro-Egyptian" party in Jerusalem is

obviously the sizeable number of Jews today who believe that Israel is totally
dependent upon the favor of America and other temporal powers for its survival,
when the truth is that Israel's only true supporter is HaShem, and the only way to
elicit His favor and compassion is through repentance, prayer and the fulfillment of
His Torah. "And the strength of Pharaoh shall be for shame and the trust in the
shadow of Egypt for confusion" (v 3). The shuttle of treasure-bearing asses and
camels carrying bribes down to Egypt (v 6) is reminiscent of the endless shuttle of
briefcase-bearing Israeli officials trying to curry favor in Washington and other
capitals. "For Egypt shall help in vain and to no purpose" (v 7).

"Now go, write it before them on a tablet and inscribe it in a book, so that it may be
for time to come for ever and ever…" (v 8). The prophet states quite plainly that his
message applies to future ages – i.e. TODAY! The problem remains that we are
"children that will not hear the Torah of HaShem, who say to the seers, See not;
and to the prophets, Prophesy not to us right things but speak to us smooth things,
prophesy delusions" (vv 9-10). People prefer to hear how the pundits rate the
latest "Peace Plan" rather than hearkening to the prophet's call to repent!

The prophet warns that the people's recalcitrance will lead to calamity, and the
entire structure of trust and faith in temporal salvation would be smashed to
useless little bits (vv 12-14).

"For thus says the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In ease and rest shall you be
saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength – but you did not want
it" (v 15). If the people would only put their faith in HaShem and devote their main
effort to the fulfillment of His Torah, the path to redemption would be easy. But if
they stubbornly try to save themselves through worldly stratagems, "Therefore
HaShem will WAIT to be gracious to you…" (v 15). The redemption will surely come,
but only after a long period of hardship. "Happy are all who wait for Him" (ibid.) –
"i.e. who wait for the consolations He has promised, for not one word will be
unfulfilled" (Rashi).
Verses 19ff prophesy that the time will come when the Tzaddikim remaining in
Jerusalem will be answered by God. "And HaShem shall give you the bread of
adversity and the water of affliction, and your Teacher shall not be hidden any
more but your eyes shall see Your teacher…" (v 20). Rashi explains that God will
feed the people "the bread of adversity" "because you will not be attached to
worldly pleasures as you are now" and then "your Teacher" – i.e. "the Holy One
blessed-be-He, who teaches you how to succeed" – will no longer be concealed.
Targum on verse 20 renders: "And HaShem will bring to you the possessions of the
enemy and the plunder of the oppressor and He will no longer remove His
Indwelling Presence from the Holy Temple but your eyes will see My Shechinah in
the Holy Temple ".

"Your eyes shall see your Teacher" also applies to seeing the true Tzaddik in the
flesh. Thus Rabbi Judah the Prince said, "The reason I am sharper than my
companions is because I once caught sight of Rabbi Meir from behind. And if I had
seen him from in front I would have been sharper still, as it says, 'Your eyes shall
see your teacher'" (Talmud Eiruvin 13b).

In vv 23ff the prophet depicts the great blessing that will come into the world when
Israel will cast away their idols. "And the light of the moon shall be as the light of
the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold as the light of the seven days…"
(v 26). This verse depicts the radiant spiritual light that will shine when Israel will
repent at the end of days. The moon (the receiver, Malchus, the Shechinah) will
receive the full light of the sun (Kudsha Berich Hu, Zeir Anpin), and the "sun" itself
will shine 7 x 7 x 7 as brightly as the original light of creation, i.e. 343 times as
brightly (see Rashi and Targum on v 26).

Vv 27ff prophesy the downfall of Sennacherib's armies. "And the song shall be for
you like on the night of the sanctification of the festival" (v 29). The delivery from
Sennacherib was to come on the festival of Pesach, which is celebrated with song
(Rashi ad loc.). "For its hearth is ordained of old, it is prepared for the king" (v 33).
The "hearth" (TOPHTEH) refers to Gehennom, "because everyone who is seduced
(MIT-PHATEH) by his evil inclination falls there" (Rashi). A place in hell had already
been prepared for Sennacherib and his armies.

Chapter 31
"Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help…" (v 1). On the surface the prophecy
contained in this relatively short chapter seems simply to continue the theme of the
previous chapter, castigating those in Judah in the time of Ahaz and Hezekiah who
sought help from Egypt against the Assyrian threat instead of putting their faith in
HaShem.

Yet Rabbi Nachman of Breslov revealed that this chapter has a more timeless
significance and contains deep secrets about the future redemption, taking it as the
basis for one of his lengthiest stories, "The Prayer Leader" (see Rabbi Nachman's
Stories translated by R. Aryeh Kaplan, p. 350f). The plot of the story revolves
around a certain Country of Wealth where the people had made money and
material wealth the basis of a most elaborate system of idolatry. They were being
threatened by a mighty warrior, whom they sought to escape by seeking assistance
from another even wealthier country, but only the Prayer Leader proved able to
save them from the mighty warrior, taking them on a highly circuitous pathway in
order to cure them of their idolatry, as told at length in the story.

The Country of Wealth seems to symbolize our national establishment, which has
lapsed into the pursuit of wealth as an end in itself, believing that only through
material means is it possible to accomplish anything in this world while spurning
the pathway of the Torah, where the spiritual purpose of life is paramount. The
idolatry of materialism is prevalent among the secular Jewish "leadership" of today
both in Israel and the Diaspora. Whereas the true leadership of the Jewish people –
the rabbis of the Sanhedrin – are appointed only on account of their wisdom,
today's most prominent secular Jewish leaders owe their influence entirely to their
wealth – for if they did not have it, nobody would pay them the slightest attention.
The very respect these leaders are accorded proves that those who give it to them
and see them as their leaders are also entrenched in mental enslavement to the
idolatry of wealth.

It is obvious that the consensus among the materialistic secular Jewish leadership
of today is that Israel can only be secure with a strong army combined with vast
amounts of aid from its mighty "allies". This leadership not only ignores the Torah
but actively fights it. "Woe to those who go down to Egypt [=USA etc.?] for help
and depend on horses and trust in chariots… and they have not looked to the Holy
One of Israel and they have not sought out HaShem" (v 1).

"Yet He too is wise and will bring evil…" (v 2). The people use every kind of
sophistication in the material means they employ to protect themselves from the
threats they face, seeking "help from Egypt ". But God is wiser and He will thwart
all their efforts (see Metzudas David ad loc.). Likewise today we are all witnesses to
the fact that no matter what worldly means (military, technological, diplomatic,
economic, scientific, cultural etc.) Israel's secular leadership have used in the hope
of inducing the country's enemies to end their hostility, everything has always
ended in utter failure and Israel is today confronted with greater hostility than ever
throughout the world.

In order to show the futility of relying on worldly means while spurning God's Torah,
"When HaShem will stretch out His hand, the helper shall stumble and the one who
is helped shall fall down, and they shall all perish together" (v 3).

Verses 4-5 depict the might and speed with which God would in the end
miraculously intervene to save Jerusalem – as when He would wipe out the armies
of Sennacherib in one night, and as He will do at the end of days, when He will
overthrow the armies of Gog and Magog. His might is compared to that of a
fearless lion snatching its prey (v 4), while His speed is compared to that of
swooping birds (v 5).

"Turn to Him from whom you have deeply revolted…" (v 6). The prophet calls on
the people to cast aside their idolatry of wealth and worldly means, because in the
end they would have to anyway when faced with the dire threat of
Sennacherib/Gog and Magog: "for on that day every man shall cast away his idols
of silver and his idols of gold which your own hands have made to you for a sin" (v
7). When the time of crisis would arrive, everyone would see that the idols of this
world cannot help at all.

The overthrow of Sennacherib – like the future overthrow of Gog and Magog –
would come about not by means of the sword of a human being but through God's
miracles (vv 8). So said the prophet in the name of God, "whose hearth is in Zion
and whose furnace is in Jerusalem" (v 9). On one level the "hearth" and the
"furnace" symbolize the "fire" with which God would burn up the enemies at the
very gates of Jerusalem. On another level, they refer to the Temple Altar, in whose
honor God would carry out the miracle (RaDaK). The Temple Altar represents the
very opposite of the worship of wealth, for man takes his choicest produce and
animals (=wealth) only to burn them into nothing on the Altar for the sake of God,
in order to atone for his sins and to correct his spiritual flaws, which are themselves
rooted in the desire for wealth.

Chapter 32
"Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness…" (v 1). The opening verses of this
prophecy foretell the return of the rule of justice with the ascent to the throne of
the Messianic king. In the time of Isaiah this was to be Hezekiah, who would steer
the nation through the worst moments of Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem through
his great might in the fear of HaShem (see Rashi on v 2). It was precisely because
of his pursuit of justice and righteousness that the great salvation would take place
in his days (RaDaK on v 2). This prophecy also alludes to the future Mashiach.

"And the eyes of them that see shall not be turned away, and the ears of those who
hear shall hearken" (v 3). Earlier God had told the prophet that his words would
have no effect on the people except to "make their ears heavy and smear over their
eyes" (Isaiah 6:10). But in the great arousal of Teshuvah that would take place
under the shadow of Sennacherib and at the end of days under the shadow of Gog
and Magog, they will now see the truth and hearken to the prophet.

"The vile person shall no longer be called generous…" (v 5ff). A good part of the
work of Melech HaMashiach is the repair of language, which in the time of Isaiah
had been corrupted through flattery and glib sophistication just as it has been
corrupted in our times, when the vilest killers, robbers, oppressors, cheats and liars
parade on the stage of world leadership to the adulation of the compliant media.
But in the time of Mashiach the masks and veils will be removed and people will see
and talk about things in their true light (vv 5-8).

A new section of this prophecy begins in verse 9 calling upon the "women that are
at ease" and the "complacent daughters" to realize that very hard times lay ahead
and to prepare themselves for the horrors of exile and destruction (vv 11-13).
RaDaK (on v 10) writes: "It is possible to interpret this prophecy as referring either
to the future destruction of the whole of the land of Israel and the destruction of
the Temple in the days of Tzedekiah, or to the destruction of the Second Temple, in
which case the consolation in v 15, 'until a spirit be poured upon us from on high',
refers to the days of Mashiach. Or alternatively, this prophecy could refer to the
destruction of the cities of Israel and the exile of the Ten Tribes in the days of
Hosea son of Elah, and of the cities of Judah that Sennacherib captured, in which
case the consolation would refer to the days of Hezekiah, after the plague in the
camp of the Assyrians."

"…The fort and the tower shall be for dens for ever, a joy of wild asses, a pasture of
flocks" (v 14). Rashi (ad loc.) explains that the wild asses are Ishmael while the
pasturing flocks are Edom.

All this will last "until a spirit will be poured upon us from on high" (v 15) – this is
the indwelling spirit that will emanate from the Shechinah at the time of the
redemption (see Targum on this verse). "Then justice shall dwell in the wilderness
and righteousness in the fruitful field" (v 16). The "wilderness" refers to Jerusalem
during the time of the exile, while the "fruitful field" is the land of Israel, "which will
in those days be like a fruitful field" (Rashi ad loc.).

"And the work of righteousness (TZEDAKAH=charity) will be peace" (v 17). True

peace comes not through the machinations of crooked politicians but only by
sowing the seeds of righteousness and charity.
"And it shall hail in the downfall of the forest and the city shall descend into the
valley" (v 19). Rashi (ad loc.) explains that the Holy One blessed be He will rain
down "hail" upon the wicked, who are now built up with full cities thick as a forest.
In view of the contemporary world situation, it is noteworthy that Rashi specifically
identifies the "city" that "shall descend into the valley" as being the capital of
PERSIA (Rashi on v 19).

"Happy are you…" – Israel – "…who sow…" – i.e. acts of charity – "…over all waters,
sending away the foot of the ox and the donkey." The ox is Edom while the donkey
is Ishmael (Yalkut Reuveni).

Chapter 33
"Woe to the spoiler – you who have not yet been spoiled…" (v 1). This prophecy
can be interpreted as referring to the time of King Hezekiah, when Sennacherib was
the "spoiler" who as yet had not suffered the same fate as the many victims of his
conquests – until he was finally overthrown at the gates of Jerusalem. Equally this
prophecy can be interpreted as a future prophecy about the days of Mashiach,
when the king of Edom, the fourth empire in Daniel's vision (Daniel 2:40ff), will be
called "the spoiler" (RaDaK on verse 1 of our present chapter). Here the prophet
foretells that as soon as the mission of the "spoiler" – to bring Israel to repent out
of helpless fear – will have been accomplished, he will immediately be overthrown.?

This prophecy about the coming overthrow of the oppressor elicits a prayer and
affirmation of faith from the lips of the people in verse 2: "HaShem: be gracious to
us…" (v 2). The prophet then begins to depict the overthrow of the oppressor –
referring to Sennacherib and/or the armies of Gog and Magog: "At the noise of the
multitude, the peoples fled…" (v 3). Their booty will be left for Israel (v 4). The
miraculous salvation from an enemy that seemed invincible will show that God
alone reigns supreme – and then Zion will be filled with justice and charity, because
the greatness of the miracle will inspire everyone to follow this pathway (v 5, see
Metzudas David).?

"And your faith in your times [of trouble] shall be the stronghold of salvations,
wisdom and knowledge…" (v 6). Rashi explains that Israel's stronghold is the faith
they have in God during the hard times they have undergone, always waiting and
hoping for salvation. The Talmud (Shabbos 31a) darshens each of the six terms in
the first part of this verse as alluding to one of the six orders of the Mishneh: "Your
faith" refers to the order of ZERA'IM ("Seeds"), because it is a matter of faith to
pray to God and observe all the agricultural laws of the Torah before being able to
eat of one's harvest. "Your times" refers to the order of MO'ED, dealing with the
festivals. The "stronghold" is NASHIM, dealing with marriage, because one's house
is one's stronghold. "Salvations" refers to NEZIKIM, because the laws of damages
etc. bring salvation and peace between people. "Wisdom" refers to KODOSHIM
dealing with the Temple sacrifices, while "knowledge" refers to TOHOROS dealing
with the laws of ritual impurity and purification, for only with purity can there be
true knowledge and understanding.?

"Behold, the mighty ones shall cry outside; ambassadors of peace shall weep
bitterly" (v 7). Following the prophecy of salvation and consolation in the previous
verses, the prophet now speaks of the suffering that Israel would have to endure
prior to the overthrow of the oppressor – Sennacherib or Gog and Magog. Thus
Sennacherib overran the whole of Judah before his overthrow at the height of his
siege of Jerusalem. In vv 7-9, the "mighty ones" – celestial angels or earthly
messengers – weep bitterly over the spectacle of devastation in Judah because of
the attacking enemies.?
"Now I shall arise, says HaShem…" Precisely when all seems lost, God will intervene
to save His people.?

"You shall conceive chaff and you shall bring forth stubble; your breath is a fire that
shall devour you" (v 11). This is addressed to Israel's enemies, who advance
towards Jerusalem drunk with the thought of conquering it, but in fact this very
thought will be the cause of their downfall.?

"Hear, you that are far off, what I have done, and you that are near, know My
might" (v 13). God's miraculous salvation of His people will be a challenge to all to
acknowledge His supremacy. Rashi's thought-provoking explanation of the phrase
"you that are FAR OFF" is that it refers to "those who have believed in Me and
carried out My will from their youth", while "you that are NEAR" refers to "the
BAALEY TESHUVAH ('returnees') who have drawn close to Me anew" (Rashi on v
13). Perhaps Rashi is teaching us that veteran Torah-observers are in danger of
being "far off" if they imagine they are "near" while their practice is mechanical, but
that everyone can become "near" by renewing and refreshing their devotion at all
times.?

Verse 14 depicts the terrible consternation that will take hold of the Israelite
sinners under the looming threat of the oppressor – Sennacherib or Gog and Magog.
They will ask who can possibly still the burning fire of the enemies' hostility. The
prophet answers by depicting the pathway of integrity, honesty and the rejection of
evil that will bring the people to salvation (v 15). It is the man of righteousness
who will dwell securely on high as in a fortress, adequately provided with his bread
and water (v 16). The simple meaning of verse 17 is that the righteous will be
worthy of seeing the Messianic king – Hezekiah, or Melech HaMashiach – in all his
glory, but Targum explains that they will see the Indwelling Presence of the King of
the Universe, while simultaneously witnessing the descent of the wicked into hell.
"Your heart shall muse on terror: where is the scribe…?" (v 18). Rashi (ad loc.)
explains: "When you see the princes and sages of the nations who were rulers in
their lifetimes and now they are judged in hell, your heart will muse on terror and
you will say, Where is their wisdom and greatness, where is the one who was a
scribe in his lifetime and who used to weigh every question involving wisdom when
they asked his counsel on issues of government...?"?

Vv 19-20: The fierce oppressors with their stammering, incomprehensible language

will disappear from sight, while Jerusalem will remain, tranquil, serene and
unmovable.?

V 21: "A place of broad rivers and streams wherein no galley with oars will go…"
The future Jerusalem will be as if surrounded by rivers that no enemy will be able
to cross. This verse alludes to the "spring that will go forth from the House of
HaShem" (Joel 4:18; cf. Ezekiel 47:3), surrounding Jerusalem with the waters of
the knowledge of God, making it a haven of spirituality (see Rashi on v 21).?

"Your ropes have become loosened; they could not strengthen the socket of their
mast…" (v 23). Israel's enemies are here symbolized as warships whose rigging has
been entirely pulled down, leaving them immobilized as the helpless prey of Israel
(see Targum). At that time none of the inhabitants of Israel will any more have
reason to feel sick and burdened by the troubles of exile, because they will all be
forgiven their sins at the time of the redemption (see Rashi on v 24).?
 Chapter 34
"Draw near O nations to hear…" (v 1). RaDaK (ad loc.) states that "this prophecy
refers to the future destruction of Rome, after which the prophet foretells the
salvation of Israel (in chapter 35). He refers to Edom by the name of Batzrah (v 6)
because Batzrah had been a great city in the original kingdom of Edom (cf. Gen.
36:33, where Batzrah was the city of one of the kings of Edom). The kingdom of
Rome mostly consists of Edomites who adhere to the Christian religion, and even
though many other peoples have become mixed up with them, the emperor Caesar
was an Edomite and likewise all the kings who came after him in Rome."?

The prophet calls on the whole earth and all its inhabitants to attend to his
message of coming doom. Vv 2-3 foretell the terrible calamity that will befall the
nations, accompanied by the overthrow of their guardian angels in heaven (v 4).?

"For HaShem has a sacrifice in Batzrah" (v 6). The original Edomite city of Batzrah
was in the mountains of Moab east of the Dead Sea, in the southern territories of
the present-day kingdom of Jordan. Batzrah should not be identified with the latter-
day Iraqi city of Basra even though this is now proving to be a considerable
stumbling block to the British (Edomite?) army that is fighting there. Metzudas
David (ad loc.) suggests that BATZRAH is related to the word MIVTZAR, which
means a fortress, and that it is used here to refer to "the great city of Rome ".?

The collapse of Edom will lead to the fall of many other nations with them (v 7) in
vengeance for their persecution of Israel throughout history (v 8). Verses 9-10
depict the demise of Edom as a lasting ecological catastrophe that will serve as an
eternal warning to all humanity never to repeat their evil. Edom will be desolate
"from generation to generation" (v 10) because, as prophesied by Moses, God's war
against Amalek (= Edom) is "from generation to generation" (Exodus 17:16, Rashi
on verse 10 in our present chapter). Vv 11-15 depict how the ruins of Edom will be
the haunt of every kind of wild animal as well as of demons and demonesses. The
prophet promises that when people will witness this devastation in time to come,
they will look in the Book of HaShem – i.e. this prophecy – and see that not a
single detail will have been left unfulfilled (RaDaK).?

Chapter 35
"The wilderness and the arid land shall rejoice…" (v 1). This very beautiful prophecy
of the future glory of Israel and Jerusalem comes as the conclusion of Isaiah's
lengthy series of prophecies about the coming downfall of the nations, before
leading into the narrative portion of the book telling of Sennacherib's abortive siege
of Jerusalem , his downfall and the events that followed (chs 36-39).

The present prophecy of how the "wilderness" will burst into blossom comes in
contrast to the prophecy in the previous chapter (ch 34) about the utter
devastation that will befall Edom in the end of days. "We may interpret the
'wilderness' and the 'arid land' as referring to the Land of Israel, which was like a
wilderness from the day Israel went into exile from there, but now, with the
destruction of the land of Edom, Israel will rejoice and be glad, for with the
destruction of Edom, Israel will be restored" (RaDaK on v 1).

Every visitor to modern Israel is witness to the literal fulfillment of this prophecy in
our times with the influx of returning Jews to the land and the subsequent
transformation of the arid desert waste left after nearly two thousand years of
neglect into the greatest agricultural wonder of the world.
"…the glory of the Lebanon shall be given to her" (v 2). "'Lebanon' is the Holy
Temple " (Rashi ad loc.). [It is called Lebanon – LeV NuN – because the Temple is
the manifestation of the perfect unification of Chochmah-Wisdom, which consists of
32 Pathways=LeV, together with Binah-Understanding, which consists of 50
Gateways=Nun. LeV-Nun = Lebanon.]

"Strengthen weak hands and make firm tottering knees" (v 3). The prophet calls on
all the prophets of salvation to give encouragement to those who have fallen into
despair of ever being redeemed. Those of "fearful" (lit. "speedy") hearts (v 4) are
those who yearn for a speedy redemption and are thus full of sorrow over its delay:
they need not fear that it will not come because God – here called ELOKIM (alluding
to the attribute of Justice) – will surely avenge His people and execute justice
(Metzudas David ad loc.).

"Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf shall be
unstopped" (v 5). The "blind" and the "deaf" refer to Israel in the time of their exile,
suffering the taunts and insults of the nations while acting as if they do not see or
hear them (Metzudas David ad loc.; Rashi on v 6).

"And the parched ground shall become a pool and the thirsty land springs of water"
(v 7). When one sees an arid desert, it is almost impossible to believe that it could
be ever turned into a water-rich, fertile land. Yet Israel has witnessed such miracles
in our times, and this should strengthen our faith that all the other promises of the
prophets will be fulfilled.

"No lion shall be found there nor any ravenous beast" (v 9). These are the nations
that formerly oppressed Israel (Targum ad loc.). Thus the lion alludes to
Nebuchadnezzar, who destroyed the First Temple (cf. Jeremiah 4:7; see Rashi on
verse 9 of our present chapter).

"And HaShem's redeemed people shall return and come to Zion with songs and
EVERLASTING JOY ON THEIR HEADS" (v 10). This is a prophecy that Israel will be
restored to the spiritual level they attained at the Giving of the Torah prior to the
sin of the golden calf. In the words of the Talmud: "At the moment when Israel said
they 'We shall DO and we shall HEAR' (Exodus 24:7) – i.e. they would PRACTICE
the precepts of the Torah even before they would HEAR (=UNDERSTAND) their
meaning – six hundred thousand ministering angels came and attached two crowns
on the head of each Israelite, one corresponding to 'we shall do' and the other
corresponding to 'we shall hear'. But when Israel sinned, twelve hundred thousand
destroying angels descended and removed them, as it says, 'And the children of
Israel were stripped of their ornaments from Mt Horeb (Ex. 33:6). But in time to
come the Holy One blessed be He will restore them to us, as it is written, 'And
HaShem's redeemed people shall return… and EVERLASTING JOY (SIMCHAS OLAM)
on their heads' – i.e. the joy of yore that was on their heads" (Shabbos 88a).

Chapter 36
The narrative contained in the coming chapters (36-39) about Sennacherib's
assault on Judah and his siege of Jerusalem, Hezekiah's mortal illness and recovery
and his showing all his treasures to the emissaries from Babylon appears with
certain variations in II Kings chs 18-20 and also in a somewhat more abbreviated
version in II Chronicles ch 32.

The miraculous delivery of Jerusalem from the clutches of Sennacherib was

undoubtedly the most outstanding and dramatic event that occurred during Isaiah's
prophetic ministry. As discussed in our commentary on the earlier portions of Isaiah,
years earlier he had prophesied repeatedly that this would take place. The fact that
it actually did should greatly strengthen our faith that all his other prophecies and
consolations about the end of days will also be fulfilled. Sennacherib's attack was
the prototype of the destined future attack on Jerusalem by the armies of Gog and
Magog (see Sanhedrin 94a), and Sennacherib's overthrow is the sign that Gog and
Magog will also be overthrown.

"Sennacherib came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them" (v
1). In order to appreciate the full drama of Ravshakeh's psychological warfare
against the people of Jerusalem as told in this chapter, it is necessary to realize
that Sennacherib's armies had overrun and were occupying the entire territory of
Judah. Only King Hezekiah and the remnants of the population who were walled up
with him in the besieged city were holding out against the Assyrian world
superpower, which had already swallowed up all the other nations in the region.
Moreover, Hezekiah and his party, who with the support of Isaiah were in favor of
continuing their defiance, were in the minority, while Shevna and his "fifth column",
who were ready to capitulate, were in the majority (Sanhedrin 26a; see KNOW
YOUR BIBLE on Isaiah ch 22). Ravshakeh himself was a living testimony to the
apparent benefits of capitulation, for according to rabbinic tradition, Sennacherib's
henchman was a MOOMAR – an apostate, i.e. an Israelite who had embraced
idolatry (Sanhedrin 60a).

Vv 4-10: Ravshakeh contemptuously dismisses any notion that Hezekiah can

succeed in defying Sennacherib. Hezekiah's only possible ally, Egypt , is a broken
reed that merely pierces the hand of anyone who takes hold of it. And if Hezekiah
thinks his campaign of religious purification in Jerusalem will elicit God's favor, he
must realize that he does not even have two thousand riders, let alone two
thousand horses, to confront Sennacherib's vast armies, which had already overrun
all the rest of Judah with God's assent.

"Please speak to your servants in the language of Aram for we understand it and do
not speak to us in the Judean language in the hearing of the people that are on the
wall." Aramaic was the international diplomatic language of the time (as we find in
the books of Daniel and Ezra etc.) and would have been known to the king's
courtiers but not to the general populace. Since Ravshakeh had initially called to
Hezekiah's courtiers asking them to convey a message to the king (v 4), they did
not think that he was intentionally trying to sow fear among the people. They also
may have hoped that Ravshakeh might accede to their request because although
he was acting under orders from Sennacherib, as an apostate he may have had
some residual feelings in his heart for his native family (Rashi on v 11).

The courtiers' request to Ravshakeh to be more discreet had the opposite effect,
making him even more bombastic – for his intention was indeed to sow fear among
the people.

"Thus says the king of Assyria : Make an agreement with me and come out to me…
until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and
wine, a land of bread and vineyards." (v 16). Sennacherib was the first champion of
"population exchange", sending all the peoples he conquered into exile far away
from their native territories, thereby cutting their ties with their lands, which would
make them far less liable to revolt.

Ravshakeh described the land to which he proposed to exile them as "a land LIKE
YOUR OWN LAND". "Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai said, Ravshakeh was a fool, because
he did not know how to persuade. If someone wants to marry a woman and he
says, Your father is a king and I am a king, your father is wealthy and I am wealthy,
your father feeds you meat, fish and old wine and I will feed you meat, fish and old
wine, this is no inducement. What is an inducement? If he says: Your father is a
commoner but I am a king, your father is poor but I am rich, your father feeds you
vegetables and beans but I will feed you meat and fish… Even when Ravshakeh
came to recount the praises of the foreign land he was offering as an inducement,
he was unable to find anything derogatory to say about the Land of Israel!" (Sifri,
Ekev #1).

Ravshakeh's undoing came because of his arrogant confidence in Assyria's earthly

might. He bragged that just as the idols of all the nations that Sennacherib had
conquered had failed to save their peoples, so HaShem would be unable to save
Jerusalem. This was outright blasphemy, and since it came not from a heathen but
from an Israelite apostate, Hezekiah's courtiers rent their garments on hearing it
(Rambam, Laws of Idolatry 2:10).

Chapter 37
On hearing his ministers' report about Ravshakeh's blasphemies, Hezekiah was
obliged to rend his garments (Rambam, Laws of Idolatry 2:8). It is a sign of his
loyalty to the path of King David that in the face of the Assyrian threat, Hezekiah
immediately sent messengers to the prophet in order to know what to do.

Isaiah told the king's ministers that God would put another spirit into Sennacherib
"and he will hear a rumor and return to his own land" (v 7). Rashi (ad loc.) explains
that Sennacherib would hear the rumor IMMEDIATELY but that his return to his own
land would take place only LATER. This is what actually happened. As we read in
verse 9, Sennacherib heard a report that Tirhakah king of Kush (in Africa) was on
his way out to war against him, and he immediately turned south to march to Egypt
to fight him. It was then that he sent messengers to Hezekiah not to think that he
was abandoning his plan of capturing Jerusalem (vv 10ff). After defeating the
armies of Egypt and Kush Sennacherib did indeed return to Jerusalem laden with
plunder, and this was when "the angel of HaShem went out and smote the camp of
Assyria" as we read near the end of the present chapter (v 36), forcing Sennacherib
to return in disgrace to his land, where he was killed by his own sons (v 38).

The message Sennacherib sent to Hezekiah when he went to fight Tirhakah king of
Kush was filled with exactly the same kind of arrogant bombast that his henchman
Ravshakeh had spouted forth at the walls of Jerusalem, as described in the
previous chapter. Hezekiah took Sennacherib's letters and spread them out in the
Temple , where he skillfully used the Assyrian king's blasphemies to add strength to
his own appeal to God to deliver Jerusalem in order to show that He alone has
power, unlike the idols of wood and stone that had proved incapable of saving the
nations who worshipped them (vv 15-21).

God answered Hezekiah through the prophet Isaiah (vv 21-35), castigating
Sennacherib for his arrogance. "Through your servants you have taunted HaShem
saying, With the multitude of my chariots I have come up to the height of the
mountains, to the sides of Lebanon" (v 24). "The height of the mountains" is the
Temple Mount , while " Lebanon " refers to the Temple building (Rashi ad loc.),
which Sennacherib evidently had visions of destroying.

"Have you not heard long ago how I have done it, and from ancient times that I
have formed it?" (v 26) – "Why should you boast? None of these are your
achievements. It has been My decree for many years that you should be the one to
exact retribution from the nations, as it says, 'Woe Assyria, rod of My wrath' (Is.
10:5)" (Rashi ad loc.).

Precisely because of Sennacherib's arrogance, God would put His hook in his nose
and His bridle in his lips (v 29) in order to show him forcibly that he was nothing
but His instrument.

"And this shall be a sign to you: you shall eat this year such as grows of itself…" (v
30). In this verse the prophet is no longer addressing Sennacherib but Hezekiah,
telling him that the coming destruction of the Assyrian army and Sennacherib's
ignominious return to his land would be the sign of another miracle that would take
place thereafter. This would be that the people of Jerusalem and Judah would have
ample food to eat in the coming three years despite the fact that the Assyrian
armies had devastated their entire country and that during the siege of Jerusalem
cultivation of the land had been completely impossible (see Rashi on v 30).

Just as Isaiah prophesied, Sennacherib was forced to return to Nineveh . Rashi (on
v 38) explains that Sennacherib had vowed to his god that if he returned home
safely he would offer his two sons as a sacrifice, and this is what motivated them to
kill him before he could kill them!

Chapter 38
"In those days Hezekiah fell mortally sick…" (v 1). Rashi (ad loc.) states that
Hezekiah fell sick three days before the fall of Sennacherib's armies. The king's
mortal illness just as the armies of the world's greatest superpower were closing in
on his last remaining stronghold in the capital immeasurably increased the direness
of the peril facing his kingdom.

Isaiah's grim message that Hezekiah was to "die" (in this world) and "not live" (in
the world to come, Rashi on v 1) would have thrown any lesser person into
complete despair, but Hezekiah had an ancestral tradition that "even if a sharp
sword is resting on a man's neck, he should never hold himself back from prayer"
(Berachos 10a). "And Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall and prayed" (v 2).
The "wall" to which he turned is the "wall in the heart". He directed his "face" i.e.
the power of his mind, to this "wall" in order to break down all his inner barriers to
complete repentance.

As discussed in KNOW YOUR BIBLE on II Chronicles ch 33, the rabbis taught that
Hezekiah's flaw was that he had never married because he had seen with holy spirit
that his son Menasheh was destined to be a terrible villain. The act of repentance
that now saved Hezekiah's life was that he nevertheless took it upon himself to
marry and have children. There is a hint of this in Hezekiah's prayer of thanksgiving
after his recovery as recorded in our present chapter, when he said, "A father shall
make known Your truth to children" (v 19). We know that Menasheh was twelve
years old when he succeeded Hezekiah (II Kings 21:1), and since the latter lived
for another fifteen years after his illness, we may infer that Menasheh was born
three years after his recovery.

Hezekiah's recovery was not an unequivocal joy to him because it came not in his
own merit but in the merit of King David. Thus Isaiah said to him, "So says
HaShem the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer…" (v 5). For a full
discussion of the sign God gave to Hezekiah – turning the clock back ten hours –
see KNOW YOUR BIBLE on the parallel account in II Kings ch 20.
"The writing of King Hezekiah king of Judah when he was sick and he lived from his
illness" (v 9). Hezekiah's evocation of the suffering he endured in his illness (vv 10-
19) is somewhat reminiscent of Job's cries of pain over his suffering. Hezekiah was
aged only thirty-nine when he lay on what seemed to be his deathbed,
contemplating what he thought would be his complete excision from this world and
the next. His miraculous delivery filled him with faith in the resurrection: "The Lord
is upon them, they shall LIVE" (v 16). The Targum renders: "HaShem, You have
said of all the dead that they shall live, and before all of them you have revived my
spirit and brought me to life and sustained me".

"Behold, for in peace I had great bitterness" (v 17) – "When I was given the news
that there would be peace, it was nevertheless bitter for me, because my healing
was attributed to the merit of others – 'So said HaShem the God of DAVID YOUR
FATHER'" (Rashi on v 17). Rashi (ibid.) also offers a simpler explanation of
Hezekiah's bitterness – for when he heard the news of Sennacherib's coming
overthrow, he thought that he himself was going to die of his illness. This was what
made his appreciation of God's mercy in saving him all the greater. He would turn
his recovery into the occasion for songs in the Temple all the days of his life (v 20).

"And Isaiah said, Let them take a cake of figs and spread it on the festering sores
and he shall recover" (v 21). "This was a miracle within a miracle, because a fig
cake can turn even healthy flesh putrid, but here the Holy One blessed be He put
something that spoils into something that was spoiled – and it became healed!"
(Rashi ad loc.).

Chapter 39
King Hezekiah sang over his own delivery from the very threshold of death (chapter
38 vv 9-20), but he did not lead his nation in song over Jerusalem's miraculous
delivery from the clutches of Sennacherib. Had Hezekiah followed the example of
Moses and Israel, who sang to God after the overthrow of the Egyptians at the Red
Sea, he might have instilled in his people such faith in the Almighty's absolute
power over all things that the final redemption would have come and the
knowledge of God would have spread to all the nations, and then Hezekiah would
have been Melech HaMashiach. Our rabbis saw his failure to sing over
Sennacherib's overthrow as a fatal flaw (Sanhedrin 94a; see KNOW YOUR BIBLE
commentary on Isaiah 9:6) and our present chapter, Isaiah 39, traces the tragic
sequel to the delivery of Jerusalem and Hezekiah's miraculous recovery from mortal
illness, in which his subsequent lack of discretion sealed the fate of the First Temple
and of Judah. For despite the present respite, in only a few generations the Temple
would be destroyed by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar, who would take the
king and all the people into exile.

The astounding, totally unexpected blow that the tottering Assyrian superpower
suffered at the gates of Jerusalem surely caused great joy to the rulers of Babylon,
which was then at the beginning of its own ascent to world supremacy. Their
wonder at this freak occurrence was greatly enhanced by the fact that it was
accompanied by the freak "expansion of time" when God lengthened the day by ten
hours as a sign that Hezekiah would recover from his illness (see Isaiah 38:8).
Rashi (on v 1 of our present chapter) explains that the reason why Bal'adan king of
Babylon "heard that [Hezekiah] became sick and recovered" was because "he was
accustomed to eating at the third hour [9:00 a.m.] every morning, after which he
would then sleep until the ninth hour [3:00 p.m.]. On the day when the sun went
backwards for Hezekiah's sake, Bal'adan awoke from his sleep at the ninth hour
only to discover that it was morning. He wanted to kill all his servants, accusing
them of leaving him to sleep for a whole day and night until the following morning.
They explained to him that it was the sun that had gone backwards, and when he
asked who sent the sun backwards they said it was the God of Hezekiah" (see
Tanchuma Ki Tissa & Shekalim 14).

Perhaps we can detect in this Midrash a reference to the fact that the delivery of
Jerusalem and Hezekiah's freak recovery from the doors of death turned time
backwards in the sense that it gave a new lease of life to the kingship of the House
of David and the First Temple. The striking impression that these events made upon
the Babylonian court could have led to a tremendous sanctification of God's Name
in the eyes of all the nations had Hezekiah impressed upon their emissaries that
these miracles were conclusive proof of HaShem's supremacy over all creation. Had
he taken full advantage of this moment of grace, he could have brought about the
redemption.

Instead Hezekiah made a great feast for his Babylonian visitors and took them on a
grand tour of all his treasures, ignoring the caution of the rabbis that "blessing is
found only in something that is hidden from the eye" (Taanis 8b). It is great folly to
show all that is most precious to oneself quite indiscriminately to anybody and
everybody, because one never knows how the public flaunting of one's own
blessings might arouse the evil eye of others, who may have reason to be jealous
and to stir up accusations. "There was not anything that Hezekiah did not show
them" (v 2) – "even the Torah scroll" (Rashi ad loc.). In other words, Hezekiah
gave away all his secrets in the naïve belief that his visitors from the fresh little star
of Babylon were OK people.

Hezekiah was also considered foolish in the way he answered Isaiah's question as
to the identity of his visitors. He should have said, "You are the prophet and you
are asking me???" Instead he pompously told Isaiah that "they came to me from a
far-off land, from Babylon!" as if to say, They came from so far away just to see
ME!!! Hezekiah's answer was considered in the same category as Cain's answer to
God when He asked "Where is your brother?" (Genesis 4:9) and Bila'am's answer to
God when He asked "Who are these men with you?" (Numbers 22:9; see Rashi on
verse 3 of our present chapter).

Because of his one indiscretion in showing the accuser all his secret treasures,
Hezekiah lost out and the fate of the Temple and Judah was sealed, as Isaiah now
told him (vv 6-7). With stoic resignation, Hezekiah accepted the divine decree,
consoling himself with the thought that it was not to be carried out in his own
generation and that "there will be peace and truth in my days" (v 8).

Chapter 40
"Isaiah now returns to his prophecies about the future. The rest of the book from
this point on until the end consists of words of comfort. The preceding narrative
section about the overthrow of Sennacherib and Hezekiah's recovery from his
illness etc. (chs 36-39) was placed here to separate the earlier sections of the work
dealing with retribution from the coming consolations" (Rashi on v 1).

"Comfort, comfort My people…" (v 1). God is telling His prophets to give comfort to
His people (Metzudas David). In the Hebrew text, the verb NACHAMU is repeated
twice. In the words of the Midrash: "This is as if to say: Give her comfort, O you
beings of the supernal worlds, and give her comfort, O you beings of the lower
worlds. Let the living give her comfort and let the dead give her comfort! Give her
comfort in this world, and give her comfort in the world to come! Comfort her over
the Ten Tribes and comfort her over Judah and Benjamin! Jeremiah said, 'She shall
surely cry', doubling the Hebrew verb 'cry' (BAKHO TIVKHEH, Lamentations 1:2),
signifying weeping over the First Temple and weeping over the Second Temple.
Therefore the word 'comfort' is also repeated twice" (Yalkut Shimoni).

" Israel said to Isaiah: Isaiah our master, could it be that you have only come to
comfort the generation in whose days the Temple was destroyed. He replied: I have
come to comfort ALL the generations. It does not say, 'Your God HAS said' but
'Your God WILL say' (v 1; Yalkut Shimoni).

"…for her iniquity is pardoned, for she has received of HaShem's hand DOUBLE for
all her sins" (v 2) – "This refers to the double exile of Israel – the exile to Babylon
and the present exile. They also received 'double' because of their own sins and the
sins of their fathers" (RaDaK ad loc.).

"A voice cries, Prepare in the wilderness the way of HaShem…" (v 3). It is as if a
voice is announcing the making of a road to Jerusalem along which the exiles will
go in order to return (Rashi, Metzudas David, RaDaK ad loc.). "It is called the 'way
of HaShem' because it is He who leads the people as they leave their exile"
(RaDaK). "Every valley shall be exalted and every hill shall be made low" (v 4). On
the simple level, the effect of this is to make the homeward road flat and effortless!
On the level of allusion, the meek shall be raised up while the haughty shall be cast
down.

Vv 6-8: Man's kindness is evanescent and undependable, but God's word shall
stand forever: nothing will prevent the redemption and the ingathering of the exiles.

V 11: "He shall feed his flock like a shepherd; he shall gather the lambs with his
arm and carry them in his bosom" – "Just as a shepherd pastures his flock gently
and gathers in the lambs with his arm and not with a rod, so God will lead them
gently on their return from exile" (Metzudas David ad loc.).

The sublime passage in vv 12-26 evokes the unfathomable majesty of God's

omnipotent power and knowledge in contrast with the puniness of the nations and
their lifeless idols.

"Who has measured the WATERS in the hollow of his hand and meted out the
HEAVEN (=FIRE) with the span, and comprehended the DUST OF THE EARTH in a
measure… Who has directed the spirit (WIND, AIR) of HaShem?" (vv 12-13). These
verses allude to the FOUR ELEMENTS of creation, Fire, Water, Air and Earth – all of
which were created by God alone. The prophet mocks the nations, who are not
merely a drop (MAR) in the bucket but worse still, the bitter (=MAR) scum that
gathers at the very bottom (v 15, see Rashi ad loc.). Likewise Isaiah pours scorn
upon the nations' carefully wrought idols (vv 19-20).

"Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been told to you from the
beginning?" (v 21). "Do you not know?" – "From the careful application of reason
you should be able to know who is the Master of the World"; "Have you not heard?"
– "from a teacher or guide who investigated using his powers of reasoning"; "Has it
not been told to you…" – through a chain of tradition reaching back to antiquity"
(Metzudas David ad loc. cf. RaDaK).

"Have you not understood the foundations of the earth?" (v 21) – "The prophet is
saying that the earth does not have a foundation, because the heavens surround it
all around, and on what does it stand if not through the decree of the Almighty?"
(Metzudas David). In the same vein, RaDaK comments on v 28, "HaShem, the
creator of the ends of the earth": "This comes to make it known that He created the
earth as a round globe in the middle of the spheres that surround it all about, and
the earth is like the point at the center of a sphere. The Holy One blessed be He
makes her stand in the middle without any support, through His power alone, as it
says, 'He hangs the earth on nothingness' (Job 26:7). None of the 'ends of the
earth' are more inclined to one or other of the six directions, because the earth is
exactly in the middle on every side and from every direction".

"Lift up your eyes on high and behold who (MEE) has created these (ELEH)…" The
letters of the two Hebrew words MEE and ELEH make up the holy name of God,
ELO-HEEM (which should be pronounced ELOKEEM except when used in prayer).

"Why do you say… My way is hidden from HaShem…?" (v 27). "The prophet here
addresses Israel in exile asking why they believe that because of the length of the
exile their way must be hidden from God, as if He does not watch over them
providentially" (RaDaK ad loc.).

"Do you not know? Have you not heard… the everlasting God is never tired and
never weary!!! He gives power to the faint and to the powerless He increases
strength" (vv 28-9). "When God chooses, He will give strength and power to Israel
even though they are exiled, tired and weary" (RaDaK on v 29).

"But those who wait for HaShem will renew their strength; they shall mount up with
wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint" (v
31).

***

Verses 1-26 of this beautiful chapter make up the Haftarah of SHABBOS NACHAMU
(so called after the opening word of the chapter) – the Sabbath of comfort following
the fast of Tisha B'Av commemorating the destruction of the Temple .

Verses 27-31 of the present chapter together with ch 41 vv 1-16 make up the
Haftarah of Parshas LECH LECHA (Genesis 12:1-17:27).

Chapter 41
* * * The last five verses of the previous chapter (Is. 40:27-31) together with vv 1-
16 of the present chapter are read as the Haftarah of LECH LECHA (Genesis 12:1-
17:27 telling the story of Abraham's arousal to God and his war against the Four
Kings). * * *

"Keep silence before Me, O islands…" (v 1). The "islands" are the heathen nations
(Rashi ad loc.). God challenges them to hear what He has to say and then put their
case, as if before a judge, as to why they claim He does not have the power to
deliver His people from their hands (see Metzudas David ad loc.).

"Who aroused one from the east, whom righteousness met wherever he set his
foot…?" (v 2). This alludes to Abraham, founding father of the people of Israel,
whom God aroused in defiance of the prevailing idolatry of the time, and who
spread righteousness wherever he went despite the most colossal opposition. With
no more than a small band of followers, Abraham had the courage to go out to war
against four major kings despite the fact that they had already overwhelmed five
other kings – and won a spectacular victory that flew in the face of nature (Genesis
14:1-20). This could only be because it was brought about by HaShem, Who "calls
the generations from the beginning" (v 4) – i.e. He chose Abraham in the
knowledge that his offspring would be worthy to be the chosen people. And just as
He did wonders for Abraham at the outset, so He will be with his offspring in the
latter generations (see Rashi and RaDaK ad loc.).

The announcement of the coming redemption of Israel fills the nations with rage.
Thus verses 5-7 depict the nations gathering together to make war against them,
encouraging one another as if cooperatively making a great idol.

In verse 8, God turns from the nations to address Israel, now explicitly calling them
the "seed of Abraham My beloved". He encourages them by reminding them of their
noble origins and emphasizing that since Israel is "My servant", He will not cast
them away (v 9). The earth's "farthest corners" (ATZILE-HAH), from which God has
called Israel , allude to the highest spiritual "world", ATZILUS.

The essence of God's message to Israel is, "Do not fear, for I am with you" (v 10).
It may be that the nations are furious with Israel (as we see today in practically
every international forum), but God promises that in the end, "all those who were
incensed with you shall be ashamed and confounded" (v 11).

"Do not fear, you WORM Jacob…" (v 14) – "The family of Jacob is weak as a worm,
which has no power except in its mouth" (Rashi ad loc.). God promises that He will
turn this tiny nation, whose only power lies in the words of Torah and prayer which
they "chew" day by day, into a new (i.e. not blunt) threshing instrument (v 15) that
will be BAAL PIPHIYOTH – i.e. it will have an abundance of MOUTHS that will "grind
up" the mighty, powerful nations of the earth (see Targum on v 15).

""The poor and needy seek water…" (v 17). Rashi explains: "Here the prophet
prophesies about the end of days, when there will be 'not a hunger for bread nor a
thirst for water but to hear the word of HaShem… they will wander all over to seek
out the word of HaShem but they will not find it' (Amos 8:11-12). But when His
anger is assuaged, He will prepare them 'bread' and 'water' and cause His
Shechinah and His holy spirit to dwell in the mouth of their prophets" (Rashi on v
17).

"I will open rivers on high places…" (v 18). These "rivers" are the rivers of
understanding of Torah and prophecy that will flow in men's hearts, while the
"wilderness" that will turn into a pool of water refers to a place where hitherto no
Torah wisdom existed (see Rashi ad loc.). "I will plant in the wilderness the cedar…"
(v 19) – "There too I will put all kinds of wisdom, goodness and peace" (Rashi ad
loc.).

"In order that they [i.e. the nations] should see and know and consider and
understand together that the hand of HaShem has done this…" (v 20). Just as in
the generation of the founding father, Abraham, the nations were astounded at the
miracles God wrought for him against overwhelming odds, so at the end of days the
nations will see how God will redeem Israel.

V 21: "Present your cause…" In this and the following verses, God again turns to
address the nations, scornfully challenging their idolatrous prophets to try to
explain "the former things, what they were" (v 22) – i.e. what took place before the
creation of the world and for what purpose it was created (Rashi ad loc.) or to tell
"their latter end… what is to come", i.e. what will be in the end of days. Isaiah is
implying that his own prophecies foretell the future exactly as it will be, whereas all
the idolatrous prophets (not to speak of today's political pundits, commentators,
professors, world watch experts, think tank consultants, etc. etc.) are "nothing":
Behold you are of nothing and your work is of naught" (v 24).
Vv 25ff: "I have raised up one from the north and he has come…" Affirming the
emptiness of the predictions of the false prophets and pundits, Isaiah now foretells
exactly what will happen in the future. The prophecy contained in these verses may
be understood as foretelling how King Cyrus would come from Persia, which is to
the north and east of Babylon, to strike down the kingdom that destroyed the
Temple and exiled Israel . (This was to take place 162 years after the death of
Hezekiah, in the latter part of whose reign these prophecies of consolation were
delivered.) This prophecy may equally be interpreted as applying to the future
redemption, when the Ten Tribes – who were originally exiled to lands to the north
east of Israel – will return (see RaDaK on v 25). The inability of any of the heathen
prophets to foresee these amazing wonders shows their total emptiness.

Chapter 42
"Behold, My servant, whom I uphold…" (v 1) – "This is Melech HaMashiach"
(Metzudas David & RaDaK ad loc.). "…My elect, in whom My soul delights" (v 1) – "
Israel are called My elect" (Rashi ad loc.) "He shall not cry nor lift up his voice…" (v
2) – "He will not need to rebuke and prophesy to the nations, because they will
come to learn of their own accord" (Rashi ad loc.). "The islands shall wait for his
Torah" (v 4) – all the nations will listen to the Torah of Mashiach! (see Rashi ad
loc.).

In the very beautiful passage in verses 5-9, God addresses the prophet Isaiah
himself, messenger of the coming Mashiach: "I HaShem have called you…" (v 6) –
"When I formed you, My thought was that you should bring My people back to the
Covenant and shine to them" (Rashi ad loc.). The purpose of the prophet is "to
open blind eyes" (v 7) – "because they do not see My might and set their hearts to
return to Me" (Rashi ad loc.). "…To bring out the prisoners from the prison, and
them that sit in darkness out of the prison house" (v 7). The "prison" is exile, which
may be physical, or worse still, mental and spiritual.

"I am HASHEM, that is My name, and My glory will I not give to another…" (v 8).
The name of ELOKIM (translated as "God") has been taken by idol-worshippers to
speak of their gods, but the Name of HaShem, ("the Lord"), i.e. the
"Tetragrammaton", YKVK, is unique to the One Creator and it is impossible for the
idolaters to join their gods with Him under this name, for He is Master over all (see
RaDaK ad loc.). RaDaK adds: "Moreover, 'I will not give My glory to another' as I
have done until now because I have not yet executed judgment upon the wicked,
and for that reason they have not recognized Me and have gone astray after idols.
But after I bring Israel out of exile and perform the greatest wonders for them,
executing judgment upon the wicked, all the nations will recognize Me and know
that there is none besides Me" (RaDaK ad loc.).

Verse 10, "Sing to HaShem a new song…" opens a new prophecy continuing on
from the previous prophecy about how the nations will know HaShem in the future.
Now Isaiah tells all the nations to sing an entirely new and original song in the
future, when they will witness HaShem's might on behalf of Israel and recognize
that He alone is God (Rashi on v 10). The song will be "new" because the level of
Providence that will be revealed in the future will be different from anything ever
known before. Even the habitations of Kedar – the children of Ishmael – will see
that the God of Israel rules. "Let the inhabitants of Sela [the rock] sing" (v 11) –
"These are the dead, who will come back to life" (Rashi ad loc.).

V 14: "I have long time held my peace… now I will cry like a woman in travail…" For
the entire period of the long exile God has, as it were, "held Himself in" without
taking vengeance for the destruction of the Temple. But at the end of days He will
spring into action. "I shall destroy mountains and hills" (v 15) – "I shall kill kings
and rulers" (Rashi ad loc.). "And I shall bring the blind by a way that they knew
not…" (v 16) – "This refers to Israel, who were blind until now and did not look to
Me and follow the path of good, which they did not know how to travel" (Rashi ad
loc.).

In vv 18-25 Isaiah addresses Israel, who are deaf to the word of God and blind to
His commandments, calling on them from now on to listen and look (Metzudas
David on v 18). "Who is blind but My servant or deaf like My messenger that I shall
send? Who is blind as he that is perfect and blind as HaShem's servant?" (v 19).
Our commentators offer a variety of interpretations of this verse. RaDaK (ad loc.)
explains these as the words of the stubborn-hearted people, who are themselves
spiritually blind and deaf, yet think it is the prophet that is blind and deaf [just like
many of the non-observant regard the Torah-observant as cut off from the "real"
world]. Rashi comments on the words, "Who is blind as he that is perfect" – "If
someone among you was blind, he has already received his suffering and he is as
one who has been paid all that was owing to him and he will go out clean" (Rashi
ad loc.).

"Seeing many things, but you do not observe; opening ears – but no one listens" (v
20). The prophet continues to rebuke the people for their stubborn refusal to
understand and heed the messages contained in all that their eyes are seeing and
ears are hearing so as to repent. In this verse and those that follow he is
addressing the future generations until today, calling upon us to understand that if
we are imprisoned in the prison-house of exile, it is HaShem Who has "given Jacob
for a spoil and Israel to the robbers" for one reason only: because "we have sinned
against Him and they did not desire to follow His ways and they did not heed His
Torah" (v 24).

"Therefore He has poured upon him the fury of His anger and the strength of battle,
and it has set him on fire round about. Yet he knew not, and it burned him, yet he
laid it not to heart" (v 25). For exactly the same reason, Israel continues to suffer
until today from the burning fire of enemy hostilities. Let us ask ourselves if we
have laid this to heart and if we are drawing the necessary conclusions.

* * * Verses 5-25 of this chapter, together with the first ten verses of the next
chapter (Isaiah 43:1-10) are read as the Haftarah of the first Parshah in the Torah:
BEREISHIS (Gen. 1:1-6:8). * * *

Chapter 43
The end of the previous section (Is. 42:22-25) warned that because of the people's
sins God would pour out His anger upon them, sending war. But the new section
that opens with the first verse in our present chapter immediately promises that
God will nevertheless redeem them.

"When you pass through the WATERS, I am with you… when you walk through FIRE,
you shall not be burned…" (v 2). The "waters" refer to the Red Sea (Targum, Rashi
ad loc.). Just as God split the waters of the sea in order to save Israel from the
Egyptians, so He will save them from the "fire" in time to come. "'For behold the
day is coming, burning like an oven' (Malachi 3:19), and on that day I shall take
the sun out of its sheath to burn up the wicked, but you will not be burned" (Rashi
on v 2).
"Since you are precious in My eyes… I will give men for you and peoples for your
life" (v 4). The Talmud relates: "Once when Rabbi Elazar went into the restroom, a
heathen came in and pushed him aside. Rabbi Elazar stood up and left, after which
a serpent entered and pulled out the heathen's entrails. Rabbi Elazar then applied
to him the verse, 'I will give men (ADAM) for you…', saying, Read the word not as
ADAM but EDOM !" (Berachos 62b).

Vv 5-6: "From the east shall I bring your seed…" These verses mention all four
points of the compass, indicating that this prophecy refers to the final redemption –
because at the time of the first redemption only Judah returned from Babylon, but
at the end of days the Ten Tribes will return from all parts of the world. Addressing
the people of his time, Isaiah said, "I shall bring your SEED" – i.e. their
descendants. "…and GATHER you from the west": the word "gather" alludes to the
resurrection of the dead (see RaDaK on v 5).

"…Everyone that is called by My Name, for I have created him for My glory; I have
formed him, yea, I have made him" (v 7). According to the plain meaning of the
text, the prophet is saying that at the time of the final redemption God will gather
in ALL the Tzaddikim, for despite their troubles and exile, He will have prepared
everything necessary for their redemption. On the level of SOD, the verse affirms
that everything in creation exists for the glory of God (including even those things
that appear to contradict His existence), and the verse alludes to the four
Kabbalistic "worlds": ATZILUS ("My Name"), BERIYAH ("I have CREATED"),
YETZIRAH ("I have FORMED") and ASIYAH ("I have MADE").

Vv 9-13: "Let all the nations gather together…" God challenges the nations to step
forward and testify if their prophets have foretold the final redemption or any of the
earlier events foretold by the prophets of Israel before they occurred. The nations
are unable to testify – but Israel are God's witnesses, for God has revealed to them
what is to come in order that they should know Him and have faith in Him.

Vv 14-15: "Thus says HaShem your Redeemer… for your sake I have sent to
Babylon and will bring down all of them…" Isaiah prophesies that God would bring
the people into exile in Babylon but then redeem them, and this would be proof of
His providence and assurance that He will also redeem them at the end of days.

Vv 16-21: "Thus says HaShem, who makes a path in the sea…" (v 16). Again, this
alludes to the miracle of the crossing of the Red Sea. The "chariot and horse, the
army and the power" mentioned in v 17 refer to the Egyptians, who were
overthrown there. But if the redemption from Egypt is mentioned here, the point is
that it will be completely overshadowed by the future redemption, for "Behold, I will
do a NEW thing": the future redemption will be completely different in kind and
scale.

Vv 22-28: "But you have not called upon me, O Jacob…" (v 22). The prophet
returns to his rebuke of the people for failing to call out to God even in their
troubles. God would have preferred them to "weary" Him, as it were, with their
cries, but despite the undemanding nature of the sacrifices He instituted (such as a
measure of flour and incense spices that grew naturally in Israel) the people failed
to bring their offerings (as in the days of King Ahaz in which Isaiah prophesied,
when the Temple services were suspended) and instead they "wearied" God with
their sins (see Rashi & RaDaK on v 23). Yet despite all this –

"I, even I am He that blots out your transgressions for My own sake" (v 25). God
has forgiven Israel their sins in the past, and will do so in the future in order to
redeem them. This is not because of their own merit or that of their fathers but
only for God's own sake, so that His Name should not be desecrated in the eyes of
the nations should He destroy Israel because of their sins (Metzudas David).

"Your first father sinned…" (v 27). Some take this as referring to Adam, indicating
that the urge to sin is part of man's intrinsic nature (RaDaK ad loc.), while others
see a reference to Abraham, who questioned God's promise (Gen. 15:8, see Rashi
on our present verse). The closing section of this prophecy affirms that God sends
troubles to Israel because of their sins.

* * * Isaiah 43:21-28 and 44:1-23 are read as the Haftarah of Parshas VAYIKRA
(Leviticus 1:1-5:26) setting forth the Temple sacrifices, which are mentioned in Is.
43:23-24. * * *

Chapter 44
Following the warning that God punishes Israel because of their sins, He
immediately promises them that He will eventually send them very great benefit.
"And now hear Jacob My servant…" (v 1): God assures Israel that out of all the
nations, they alone are His chosen servant. "When a servant is good, even though
he may occasionally sin his master does not drive him out but instead he punishes
him. And eventually, after the servant has been punished several times, when he
repents and goes back to serving his master with all his heart, his master will do
him very great good" (RaDaK on v 1).

"One shall say, I belong to HaShem, and another shall call himself by the name of
Jacob, and another shall subscribe with his hand to HaShem and surname himself
by the name of Israel" (v 5). "Those who 'say they belong to HaShem' are the
complete Tzaddikim; those who 'call themselves by the name of Jacob' are the
small people, the children of the wicked; those who 'subscribe with their hand to
HaShem' are the BAALEY TESHUVAH ("penitents"), while those who 'surname
themselves by the name of Israel' are the converts" (Avoth d'Rabbi Nathan ch 36
citied in Rashi on verse 5 in our present chapter).

In vv 6-17 God's greatness is again contrasted with the vanity and emptiness of
man-made idols. The prophets of idolatry are unable to foretell what is to come:
only HaShem informs His people what will happen in the future, and they are His
witnesses (vv 7-8).

Verses 9-20 scornfully depict the folly of the idolaters' faith in their man-made idols,
ridiculing the way a man takes part of a log to warm himself and bake his bread
while using the rest to make an idol which he then worships. It might be said that
those who take even a true religion but exploit it for their own self-importance and
self-enrichment are in a similar category.

Vv 21-23: The idolaters do not understand that there is falsehood "in their right
hand" (end of v 20) but the prophet calls on Jacob and Israel to remember that
they are God's servants and not the slaves of idols. When Israel repent and are
redeemed, the very heavens and the lowest depths of the earth will burst into song
(v 23).

Vv 24-28: God will frustrate all the omens of the imposters and false prophets who
claim that Israel will never be redeemed. Well over a century and a half before the
destruction of Babylon at the hands of King Cyrus of Persia, Isaiah already called
him by name (v 28), foretelling that he would herald Judah's return to Jerusalem
and the rebuilding of the Temple. The fact that this prophesy of Isaiah was fulfilled
to the letter is our assurance that all his prophecies about the future redemption
will also be fulfilled to the letter.

* * * The passage in Isaiah 43:21-27 and 44:1-23 is read as the Haftara of Parshas
Vayikra, Leviticus 1:1-5:26 * * *

Chapter 45
Having mentioned King Cyrus of Persia in the last verse of the previous chapter,
Isaiah now begins to prophesy that he would conquer Babylon in order to allow the
people of Judah to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple.

"So says HaShem to His anointed, to Cyrus…" (v 1). The plain meaning of the text
is that God is addressing Cyrus, who as a king is called "anointed" (MASHIACH).
However, on the level of DRASH, He is addressing His truly anointed Melech
HaMashiach, complaining about Cyrus because God asked him to build the Temple
and gather in the exiles, but instead of doing the job himself, he merely gave
permission to the Jews to go up to Jerusalem and to build the Temple themselves
(Ezra 1:3; Megillah 12a). According to this interpretation, verse 4 in our present
chapter, "I have named you though you have not known Me", is a complaint that
God named Cyrus long before his birth (i.e. in this prophecy) yet he did not "know"
God in the sense that he did not do what God wanted, because he threw the whole
burden of building the Temple off his own shoulders (see Rashi on verse 4).

In calling on Cyrus, God reminds him that his mission is only "for the sake of My
servant Jacob and Israel My chosen" (v 4), "in order that they shall know from the
east to the west that there is nothing besides Me": the overthrow of Babylon will
show that nothing can stand before God.

"I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil…" (v 7). The
words of this verse, which are familiar because they are recited daily (except for
the omission of the phrase "create evil") in the YOTZER OHR blessing before the
recital of the morning SHEMA, indicate that God performs opposites simultaneously.
"I form the light…" – "for Israel " – "…and create darkness" – "for Babylon "; "I
make peace…" – for Israel – "…and create evil" – "for Babylon , i.e. the opposite of
peace" (Metzudas David & Rashi ad loc.). "Shower, O heavens, from above and let
the skies pour down righteousness…" (v 8) – "This means that great kindness and
salvation shall come to Israel, as if they will flow down from the heavens above"
(Metzudas David ad loc.).

"Woe to him that strives with his Maker…" (v 9). According to the context (Cyrus'
conquest of Babylon) this verse refers to Belshazzar king of Babylon , who made a
great feast using the Temple vessels (Daniel 5:1ff) and was killed the same night
by the combined forces of Darius the Mede and his son-in-law Cyrus. On the level
of DRASH, the verse is seen as an allusion to the prophet Habakkuk, who was to
complain about the length of Babylon's supremacy (Habakkuk 1:2-14). God is
saying, "Why does he come to quarrel with me, as if he thinks I am paying no
attention to the salvation of My people" (Rashi on verse 9 in our present chapter).

In vv 10-13 God challenges the nations to ask Him what is destined to happen to
Israel in the future, for He is certainly able to tell them since He created the earth
and man, the choicest of all His creatures, upon it. As if to demonstrate that God
can foretell the future exactly, verse 13 rounds off the section of the prophecy
about how Cyrus was to send the exiles of Judah home and enable them to rebuild
Jerusalem, while verse 14 begins a new section about another event that was also
still in the future when Isaiah delivered this prophecy, although it occurred long
before the Babylonian exile. "The labor of Egypt and the merchandise of Kush and
of the Seva'im, men of stature, shall come over to you… in chains they shall come
over…" (v 14). This was fulfilled when Sennacherib sought to advance on Jerusalem
but was suddenly forced to take a detour and march south in order to confront the
attacking armies of Kush and Egypt (Isaiah 37:9 etc.). After defeating them,
Sennacherib plundered all their treasures and brought them together with the
people of Kush and Egypt in chains to Jerusalem. There the angel wiped out the
Assyrian army in one night, after which King Hezekiah released the captives from
Kush and Egypt, who having witnessed God's spectacular salvation of His people
became true believers, as alluded to in verse 14 of our present chapter.

"Verily You are a God who hides Yourself…" (v 15). Rashi explains that the released
captives would say to God: "Verily you have given us to understand that in order to
collect the debts of Your people You hide yourself without showing Your power to
conquer, as if You do not have the power, but then, when Your compassion is
aroused, You show that You are indeed the all-powerful God of Israel and their
savior" (Rashi on v 15). These words should be a comfort to us today as we watch
Israel writhe and struggle in seemingly intractable difficulties, as if God is "hiding
Himself". But as soon as the time is ripe He will be aroused in all His might to save
them. Then all the idolaters will be ashamed while Israel's salvation will be eternal
(vv 16-17).

"For thus says HaShem Who created the heavens…" Again and again the prophet
recalls that God is the Creator of all the hosts of the heavens and earth. The reason
for this repeated emphasis is because many people in Isaiah's time, and likewise
many today, cherish all kinds of false beliefs about the universe, some holding that
a multiplicity of divine powers exist, while others believe that the universe had no
Creator but somehow always just existed (see RaDaK on v 18 and on Isaiah 42:5).

"I have not spoken in secret, in a place of a land of darkness; I did not say to the
seed of Jacob, Seek Me in an empty waste…" (v 19). Our commentators explain
that when God gave the Torah to Israel, He did not speak in secrecy because this
event was known to the entire world, and He did not ask Israel to keep the Torah
for no reward, because He promised in advance that they would be "a treasure… a
kingdom of priests" (Exodus 19:5-6; see Rashi and Metzudas David on our present
verse).

In vv 20ff God once again challenges the nations of the world to advance their
claims and arguments, scoffing at the idolaters and their inability to know the
future. In verse 22 God invites all of the nations to cast away their idols and then
they will be saved, while verse 23 (phrases from which are included in the ALENU
prayer recited three times every day) promises that in the end all will come to
acknowledge HaShem.

Chapter 46
"Bel bows down, Nevo stoops…" (v 1). Bel and Nevo are the names of the gods of
Babylon, which would be powerless to save those who worshiped them when
Babylon would fall. The idols would be carried off on animals' backs into exile.
(Rashi's interpretation of verse 1 is far more derogatory.) In contrast, Israel have
been borne, carried and supported by God since the very inception of the nation (v
3), and likewise He will bear and carry them "even to old age" (v 4): "Even when
you are old and your strength is spent and you have no merit, I will be the same as
I was and in My compassion and goodness I will save you and carry you " (Rashi ad
loc.).
In verses 5-7 God again mocks the idolaters for trying to equate their lifeless idols
with Him. In vv 8ff He calls on the sinners to remember that He alone has all the
power, and having foretold what will happen in the future, nothing will stop Him
from bringing it about. "Calling an eagle (AYIT) from the east, the man that
executes my counsel from a far country" (v 11). This alludes to Abraham, who
came from the east swift as an eagle to carry out God's counsel (AYIT is the
Aramaic for "counsel") and to whom He revealed the future exiles that would befall
Israel, promising that they would be redeemed (see Rashi on verse 11). Nothing
will prevent God from showing His righteousness and saving His people (vv 12-13).

Chapter 47
Having prophesied in the previous chapter about the collapse of the gods of
Babylon and about the salvation HaShem was to send to Israel with the destruction
of her empire, Isaiah now tells Babylon to prepare for her coming exile. He calls her
"the virgin daughter of Babylon" (v 1), because until her capture by Darius the
Mede and Cyrus king of Persia, she had never been subject to any other nation, like
a virgin who has not yet come into any man's domain (Metzudas David ad loc.).
Now Babylon was to sit in the dust "with no throne" (v 1) – because she would
never again sit on the throne of kingship over others (Metzudas David ad loc.).

It should be born in mind that Isaiah was prophesying the fall of Babylon well over
a century and a half before it took place, which was in the year 3389 (-371 B.C.E.
according to the dating system of SEDER OLAM), while the prophesies of
consolation contained in Isaiah from chapter 40 to the end of the book were
delivered either before or shortly after the overthrow of Sennacherib, which took
place 176 years earlier in 3213 (-547 B.C.E.). With the fall of the Assyrian empire
soon after this, Babylon was only beginning its ascent to world power at the time
when Isaiah was prophesying, yet he had already foretold that she would destroy
and plunder the Temple and take Judah into exile (Isaiah 39:5-7), and now he
foretells that in vengeance for this she herself would be destroyed.

The prophet emphasizes that Babylon would succeed in overcoming Judah only
because God was angry with His people and therefore delivered them into her hand
(v 6). Babylon was merely intended to be His instrument, but she went beyond her
brief, causing Israel unwarranted suffering, and this was the reason why she was to
be cast down. "You showed them no mercy; upon the aged you have heavily laid
your yoke" (ibid.).

Interestingly, the Midrash applies this verse to Edom as if "Babylon" is a term for
Israel's persecutors in general. "In time to come the Holy One blessed be He will sit
in judgment over the kingdom of Edom and ask them: Why did you subjugate my
children? Edom will reply: 'Did You not deliver them into our hands? God will then
say to Edom: Because I entrusted them to you, does that justify that 'you showed
them no mercy' (Isaiah 47:6)? 'Upon the aged (ZAKEN=elder) you have heavily laid
your yoke' (ibid.) – This refers to Rabbi Akiva, whom the Roman government
persecuted without end" (Tanchuma).

This Midrashic interpretation of the prophecy in our present chapter indicates that it
applies not only to Babylon but to all of Israel's persecutors throughout history. The
prophecy that the decree of "widowhood" and being "bereft of children" would
strike in one day (verse 9) clearly applies specifically to Babylon, which became a
"widow" (i.e. lost her king) and was "bereft of her children" (her population) on one
and the same day – the day when Belshazzar was killed and the population of
Babylon were taken into exile (Metzudas David on v 9). Yet other aspects of the
prophecy can also be seen to apply to Israel's persecutors until today.
The witchcraft and divination for which the Chaldeans were notorious, and which
the prophet derides in vv 9-15, must have been highly sophisticated since they had
so much confidence in them. "You have trusted in your wickedness; you have said:
No one sees me. Your wisdom and your knowledge have perverted you, and you
have said in your heart, I am and none else beside me" (v 10). While applying
specifically to Babylon, these words could equally well be seen to apply to the
present-day persecutors of Israel (such as Iran Hizbullah, Hamas, Al Qaeda etc.)
who put their trust in the wizardry of their secret military technologies with which
they plan to overcome their enemies and dominate the world. The prophet warns
them that as a result, "Evil will come upon you and you shall not know how to
charm it away… and ruin shall come upon you suddenly" (v 11).

"Stand now with your enchantments and with the multitude of your sorceries
wherein you have labored since your youth: perhaps you will be able to profit,
perhaps you will gain strength" (v 12). Here and in the following verses the prophet
mockingly challenges Israel's persecutors to see the self-destruction to which their
ingenious wizardry will lead.

The "astrologers", "stargazers" and "monthly prognosticators" mentioned in v 13

were the ancient equivalent of the contemporary pundits and think tank experts
whose job is to assess what the future holds in store. The simple meaning of the
last three Hebrew words of verse 13 indicates that these fortune-tellers may
provide information about "SOME of what will come upon you". These words are the
basis for an important teaching about the difference between the predictions of the
astrologers etc. and the prophecies of the true prophets. "In the case of the
astrologers and diviners etc. SOME of their predictions may come about but not all
of them, as it says, '[they inform about] SOME of what will come upon you' (Is.
47:13) – i.e. SOME of what will happen in the future but not ALL of what will
happen, and it might be that NONE of what they say will be fulfilled, whereas in the
case of the true prophet, ALL of his words are fulfilled" (Rambam, Hilchos Yesodey
HaTorah 10:3).

Chapter 48
Having foretold the destruction of Babylon in his prophecy in the previous chapter,
Isaiah now castigates the people OF Judah and Benjamin who would thereby be
redeemed from their exile, chiding them for being unworthy of redemption in their
own merit – for God would redeem them for His own sake. The people are CALLED
by the name of Israel (v 1) – outwardly they go by the name of God's chosen
people – but when they swear in the name of HaShem, it is not in truth but for
outward show. They CALL themselves the people of the Holy City (of Jerusalem)
and claim to depend on HaShem, the God of Israel, but these are mere words on
their lips but not what is truly in their hearts (RaDaK on v 2). Even so, God would
save them in order not to profane His Name, as the nations would otherwise say
that if this people are from His city and claim to put their trust in Him yet He still
does not save them, it can only be because He lacks sufficient power (Metzudas
David on v 2).

"And I told you from the beginning; before it came to pass I let you hear it, lest you
should say: My idol has done these things and my carved idol and molten image
has commanded them" (v 5). The prophet implies that it was not because of the
people's merit that he had to prophesy in advance what would happen to their
enemies. On the contrary, his need to do so was because otherwise they would say
that it was their own idols that overthrew them rather than acknowledging that it
was the work of HaShem, who had already foretold it from the start.
The prophet emphasizes that the patience God shows to Israel despite their
backslidings is only for the sake of His Name, and indeed He is to be praised for His
forbearance. "For My name's sake I will defer my anger and for the sake of My
praise I will show you patience" (v 9). Rabbi Nachman learns from this verse that
"praise" (i.e. our prayers) requires patience. When we offer our prayers to God, we
must have patience and WAIT for Him to answer instead of necessarily expecting
an immediate response (Likutey Moharan I, 2).

"Behold, I have refined you but not into silver, I have tried you in the furnace of
AFFLICTION" (v 10) – "This teaches that God considered all the good attributes that
He might bestow upon Israel and found nothing better for them than the affliction
of poverty" (Chagigah 9b). There is a widespread perception that Jews are rich, but
while some, particularly among the non-observant, may be extremely wealthy, the
lot of many striving to keep the Torah both in the past and until today has been to
have to struggle with the challenges of extremely limited resources. "When a
person refines silver he removes all the dross, leaving only pure silver, but I have
not done this, because if I did, very few would remain. Instead I afflict the wicked –
who are the dross – with illnesses or captivity or through the loss of their children
or the fruits of their cattle and their land etc. so as not to cut them off completely"
(RaDaK on v 10).

"If only you had hearkened to My commandments, your peace would have been as
a river and your righteousness as the waves of the sea; your seed would be as the
sand and the offspring of your belly like the fish of the sea…" (v 18). God will in any
event redeem Israel, but we could enable it to come about with so much less pain if
we will heed the voice of His Torah!

Chapter 49
Having uttered harsh prophesies about the future downfall of the nations (Assyria,
Babylon, Moab, Damascus, Egypt, Duma, Tyre and Sidon etc.), and having urged
his own people to repent without effect, Isaiah now rises to defend himself,
proclaiming that it is God who called him as His prophet, putting words sharp as
weapons in his mouth (vv 1-2).

"And He said to me, you are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified" (v 3).
God was telling Isaiah that because of his exemplary service, he is accounted as
the equivalent of all the throngs of Israel, whose national mission is to give glory to
God. "When a person regularly studies the Bible, reviews the laws of the Torah,
serves Torah scholars and conducts his business affairs with others in an agreeable
manner, what do people say? Happy is his father! See how beautiful are his ways
and how well-ordered are his deeds! Of him the verse says, 'And He said to me,
you are my servant, Israel , in whom I will be glorified '" (Yoma 86a).

"Then I said, I have labored for emptiness, I have spent my strength for
devastation and vanity" (v 4): In this verse, the prophet tells how he felt
apprehensive that he may not have found favor with God because he has rebuked
the people but they have not paid attention (Metzudas David). However in verse 5
God immediately reassures him that by seeking to bring Israel to repent he has
gained great honor in His eyes. In reward for his efforts, not only will he be a
prophet to the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Moreover, he will also be "a light to the
nations, so that My salvation may reach the ends of the earth" (v 6). "I shall add
another great gift for you, because I shall make you the prophet and harbinger of
the future redemption, which will be for a light to all the nations, because they will
all go in the light of HaShem and believe in Me, so that then My salvation shall
reach from one end of the earth to the other, for everyone will be saved through
God's salvation" (Metzudas David ad loc.).

God's promise to Isaiah about his reward is followed immediately in verse 7 by a

resounding prophesy that Israel's redemption will surely take place, despite the fact
that the prospect seems so far-fetched because they are so despised and abhorred
by the nations (as is the case today). Nevertheless, kings and princes will rise and
prostrate when they see how God will fulfill his promise to His chosen people.
Despite the seeming impossibility of the redemption, "Thus says HaShem: In a time
of favor I shall answer you and on the day of salvation I shall help you…" (v 8). We
ourselves can create this time of favor (RATZON) by carrying out God's will
(RATZON) through keeping His Torah (see Metzudas David on v 8). Verses 9-13
depict the spiritual liberation that the redemption will bring to those now
imprisoned in the darkness of exile, who will return from all corners of the earth.

Yet Israel finds it hard to believe in the promise of the future redemption. "But Zion
said, HaShem has forsaken me…" (v 14). God reassures them: "Can a woman
forget her suckling child…?" (v 15). Targum on v 15 amplifies the allusions
contained in the thrice-repeated concept of "forgetting" contained in this verse.
"Can a woman forget her son and not show love to the child of her womb? The
Assembly of Israel answers: If there is no forgetfulness before Him, perhaps He will
not forget how I made the golden calf! The prophet answers her: Even these may
be forgotten! Israel replies to the prophet: If there is forgetfulness before Him,
perhaps He will forget how I said at Sinai, 'We shall do and we shall hear'? The
prophet answers: God will surely not reject you!"

God has engraved Israel on the very palms of His hands, as it were, and can never
forget them. If the redemption is delayed, it is because "your destroyers and those
that lay you waste come forth from you" (v 17) – it is not God but rather the
wicked sinners of Israel who cause the destruction of Zion. [This is seen today in
the tireless efforts by Israel's secular political leadership with the full backing of its
judiciary, police, the media etc. to uproot Jews from their religious inheritance and
their own ancestral land.] Yet God promises that at the time of the ingathering of
the exiles, Zion will be astounded at the multitude of her children after having
thought that she was completely bereft (vv 18-23). The hundreds of thousands of
OLIM who have poured into Israel in the last sixty years and who continue to pour
in until today are living testimony to the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy of the
ingathering of the exiles as contained in these verses.

"Shall the prey be taken from the mighty or the captive of the victorious be
delivered?" (v 24). According to the Targum on this verse, "the mighty" refers to
Esau while "the victorious" refers to Ishmael, these being the joint oppressors of
Israel in the final exile (see Daniel 2:40ff and commentators there). Zion , still
faltering in her faith, asks if it is really possible that Israel will be delivered from
such powerful forces, and the prophet answers with a resounding affirmation that
God will indeed redeem us.

Chapter 50
"Thus says HaShem: Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement with which I
have sent her away?" (v 1). God is challenging the doubters in Israel who fear that
the length of the exile may be proof of the claim of the nations that He has
"divorced" Israel from being His chosen people in favor of the adherents of some
later religion. Those who find the yoke of the Torah burdensome often favor the
idea that Israel has been "divorced" (as promoted by "replacement theology") since
it appears to absolve them from any further obligations. However, the prophet
affirms that there has been no "bill of divorce" (=GETT), which means that the
original "marriage contract" (=KESUBAH), i.e. the Torah, is still fully binding.

Jeremiah was indeed to say of the exiled Ten Tribes, "And I gave her bill of
divorcement to her" (Jer. 3:8) but even this did not mean that they would never
return but only that they would not have their own king again, because in time to
come they will be united with Judah under the Davidic king Mashiach (Ezekiel
37:19). However, in the case of the tribe of Judah, Isaiah here is saying that there
never was any "bill of divorcement" whatever. If God has sent them into exile, it is
not as a husband finally divorcing his wife but only as one who temporarily sends
her from the house as an expression of anger over her behavior. "You have been
sold because of your sins and your mother has been sent away because of your
transgressions" (Isaiah 50:1; see RaDaK ad loc.).

God's complaint is that He has called the people to repent and serve Him, but they
have not responded. Otherwise He could have saved them from Exile just as he
"dried up the sea" when He split the Red Sea to save them from the Egyptians and
"made the rivers a wilderness" when He split the Jordan to bring them into the
Land of Israel (v 2; see RaDaK ad loc.). Likewise God will "clothe the heavens in
blackness and make sackcloth their covering" (v 4) when He casts down the
guardian angels of the nations prior to the overthrow of their peoples at the time of
the final redemption (Rashi).

The mass of Israel may have failed to repent, but in the very beautiful passage in
vv 4-9 Isaiah affirms his own unflinching steadfastness in the pursuit of his
prophetic mission despite the hail of blows and abuse he received at the hands of
the recalcitrant people. The prophet's words will surely resonate with anyone who
has ever tried to promote belief in God and obedience to His Torah among the
irreligious and irreverent. So certain was Isaiah of the truth of his prophecies that
he saw them as if they would be fulfilled very soon, vindicating him completely: "He
Who justifies me is NEAR" (V 8).

In the closing verses of the chapter the prophet invites all the nations to put their
trust in God and follow His ways (v 10, see Targum), but the nations refuse to
listen, thereby condemning themselves to walk in the burning heat of the fires they
themselves have kindled. In our days this would appear to apply to those stoking
the fires of war and terror in the Middle East and throughout the world.

* * * Isaiah 49:14-26, 50:1-11 & 51:1-3 are read as the Haftarah of Parshas EKEV
(Deut. 7:12-11:25), this being the second of the seven Haftarahs of consolation
read Sabbath by Sabbath after Tisha b'Av. * * *

Chapter 51
"Hear me, you that pursue righteousness…" (v 1). The prophet now comforts those
who continue to seek HaShem and strive to follow the path of righteousness despite
the lengthy exile: "Look to the rock from which you were hewn and to the hole of
the pit from which you were dug out. Look to Abraham… and Sarah…" (vv 1-2).
Based on the use of the metaphors of an inanimate "rock" and a "pit" to describe
Abraham and Sarah, the Talmud teaches that both were congenitally barren
(Yevamos 64a) – yet in their old age, after they had long despaired of ever having
a child, God miraculously sent them a son. Similarly, after having extended Israel 's
exile to the point where they will despair of being redeemed, He will finally deliver
them (RaDaK on v 2).
"For HaShem has comforted (NICHAM) Zion …" (v 3). Full consolation will come at
the time of the future redemption, but grammatically, the Hebrew verb NICHAM is
in the past tense, following the prophetic style in many other passages, for the
matter was clear to the prophet as if it had already happened (Metzudas David on v
3). God promises that in time to come the waste places of Zion will be transformed
into a garden of HaShem .

This transformation will be accomplished through the revelation of a new level of

Torah at the time of the redemption, the Torah of Mashiach: "For Torah shall go
forth from Me…" (v 4). " Melech HaMashiach will teach the nations to follow the
ways of HaShem, and the messianic Justice will enlighten the eyes of the nations in
their various disputes, and I will thereby bring calm and tranquility to each and
every nation, for they will no longer make war against each other" (Metzudas David
on v 4).

Despite the long exile, the prophet reassures us that God's righteousness is "near"
(v 5) and that He will judge the nations. "For the heavens shall vanish away like
smoke and the earth shall grow old like a garment…" (v 6). "The heavens" alludes
to the guardian angels of the nations in heaven, who will be worn out and thrown
into turmoil at the time of the redemption, while the "earth" refers to the governing
powers of the earth. But God's salvation of His people will endure for ever (Rashi ad
loc.).

The opening verse of the present section addressed those who "PURSUE
righteousness and SEEK OUT HaShem" (see v 1 above), but now the prophet
addresses "those who KNOW righteousness, the people that have My Torah IN
THEIR HEART" (v 7), urging them not be fear the degradation and insults to which
they are subjected by the nations during the lengthy exile, because all the nations
will be consumed like a moth-eaten garment (which is merely extraneous) while
God's salvation will last forever (v 8).

"Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of Hashem…" (v 9). The prophet now prays
to God to arouse the power of His mighty "arm", just as in the days of old when He
overthrew Rahav, the "crocodile", i.e. Egypt, causing the Red Sea to split to make a
path for His redeemed children (v 10). The phrase "Awake, awake!" in verse 9 was
woven into the LECHA DODI song with which it is customary to welcome the
Sabbath "bride" every Friday evening. Likewise included in LECHA DODI are a
number of other phrases of redemption from Isaiah's prophecy (e.g. Is. 51:17,
52:1 & 2 etc.).

The beautiful prophecy of redemption in v 11 also appears word for word in Isaiah
35:10.

"I, even I am He that comforts you…" (v 12). Israel have no need to fear their
oppressors, who are mere mortals, whereas their Savior is the Living God, who
assures them that their captive exiles will soon be released (v 14).

"And I shall place My words in your mouth and I have covered you in the shadow of
My hand, that I may plant the heavens and lay the foundations of the earth and say
to Zion, You are My people" (v 16). "My words" refers to the Torah, and thus the
Talmud learns from this verse that "everyone who engages in the Torah for its own
sake is considered as if he builds the heavenly and earthly palace, and he protects
the whole world and brings the redemption closer" (Sanhedrin 99b).

"Awake! Awake! Rise up, O Jerusalem …" (v 17). The prophet urges the people to
awaken from their spiritual slumber induced by the trials of the exile, for they have
already suffered double trouble – the desolation of famine and the destruction
wreaked by the sword (v 19). God promises that the poisonous cup of suffering will
be taken from the hand of Israel and given instead to be drunk by those who
oppress and humiliate her (vv 22-3).

Chapter 52
While Israel 's oppressors were compared to a worn-out garment eaten by moths
and worms (Is. 51:8), the prophet now calls on Zion and Jerusalem to don their
garments of glory – the Torah and the commandments. "For henceforth the
uncircumcised and the unclean shall no more come into you" (v 1). "The
'uncircumcised' refers to the kingdom of Edom, who are uncircumcised, while the
'unclean' refers to the kingdom of Ishmael , who make an outward show of purity
through washing their bodies, but who are really unclean because of their evil
deeds. And these two kingdoms have kept hold of Jerusalem from the day of the
destruction of the Temple, and they have both been fighting over it for a long time
now, each one conquering it from the other, but from the day of the redemption
and thereafter they will never pass through it again, as it says in Joel 4:17" (RaDaK
on v 1).

"For so says HaShem: You were sold for nothing and you shall be redeemed
without money" (v 3). "You were sold for nothing" – because of your sins – "and
you shall be redeemed without money" – through repentance (RaDaK ad loc.).

"How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of him that brings tidings of good,
that announces peace…" (v 7). "Three days before Mashiach comes, Elijah will come
and stand on the mountains of Israel and cry and mourn over them, saying,
Mountains of the Land of Israel, until when will you stand in a desolate land? And
his voice will be heard from one end of the world to the other. Afterwards he will
say, Peace has come to the world! Peace has come to the world, as it is written,
'How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of him… that announces PEACE'. When
the wicked hear this they will all rejoice and say to one another, Peace has come to
US! On the second day Elijah will come and stand on the mountains of Israel and
say, Goodness has come to the world! Goodness has come to the world! As it says,
'…that brings tidings of GOOD'. On the third day he will stand on the mountains of
Israel and say, Salvation has come to the world! Salvation has come to the world!
As it says, '…that announces SALVATION'. But when he sees what the wicked are
saying, '…He will say to Zion, Your God rules' – to teach you that the salvation is for
Zion and her children and not for the wicked" (Psikta Rabasi).

"Depart! Depart! Go out from there! Touch no unclean thing! Go out from the midst
of her; be clean, you that bear the instruments of HaShem" (v 11). The prophet
tells the exiles to depart their places of exile and separate themselves from the
unclean nations around them. "…you that bear the instruments of HaShem" – "Your
weapons of war will be the instruments of HaShem – His Torah and commandments,
and not the sword or the spear" (Metzudas David ad loc.).

"For you shall not go out with haste…" (v 12). Whereas at the time of the Exodus
from Egypt the Children of Israel were commanded to eat the paschal lamb "with
haste" (Exodus 12:11), in the future redemption they will leave their exile not "with
haste" – i.e. not in a state of confusion, like people who are in fear – but with calm
and confidence (Mechilta; see Metzudas David & RaDaK on our present verse).

"Behold, My servant shall prosper: he shall be uplifted and raised up and be very
high" (v 13). While Rashi, Metzudas David and RaDaK interpret the "servant" as
referring to the Tzaddikim of Israel in general, the Midrash interprets this as a
reference to Melech HaMashiach. "He shall be exalted…" – "more than Abraham,
who said, 'I have lifted up my hand'" (Gen. 17:22); "…and raised up…" – more than
Moses, who said, '…raise him up in your embrace' (Numbers 11:12); "…and be very
high…" – "higher than the ministering angels, of whom it is said 'they have height'
(Ezekiel 1:18)" (Midrash Tanchuma).

Just as the nations were appalled at the descent of Israel in the time of their exile,
so they will be amazed at their ascent at the time of the redemption (vv 14-15).

* * * Isaiah 51:12-23 and 52:1-12 are read as the fourth Haftara of consolation on
Shabbos Parshas SHOFTIM (Deut.16:18-21:9). * * *

Chapter 53
THE SUFFERING SERVANT

The present chapter is famous for its depiction of God's tormented servant, reviled
and persecuted by those around him, for whose sins he atones through his illness
and suffering.

"Who would have believed our report…?" (v 1). All of our classical Bible
commentators are agreed that these are the words with which the astonished
nations of the world will express their amazement when they see the future
greatness and glory of Israel as they will be revealed at the time of the redemption
(see Rashi, Metzudas David and RaDaK on v 1). The prophecy in our present
chapter thus flows naturally from the closing words of the previous chapter
describing the wonderment of the nations in time to come when they will see
Israel's ascent from such depths (Is. 52:14-15).

The nations will be astonished because Israel's future greatness will be the
complete negation of their perception of the "Golus Jew" – Israel in exile, "despised
and rejected of men; a man of pains and acquainted with sickness, like one hiding
his face from us; he was despised and we did not esteem him" (v 3).

"But in truth he has born our sicknesses…" (v 4). In time to come the nations will
arrive at the realization that Israel's very suffering throughout their exile came to
atone for the sins of the nations, protecting them from the evils that should have
come upon them. "But now we see that it was not because of their lowliness that
evil befell Israel but rather, they were wracked with suffering so that all the nations
would gain atonement through the suffering of Israel: the illness that was fit to
come upon us was born by Israel …. We used to think that Israel was hated by God,
but this was not the case: he was 'wounded because of our transgressions, bruised
because of our iniquities. He suffered in order that we might have peace' (v 5)"
(Rashi on vv 4-5).

RaDaK on verse 4 comments that the concept that anyone could gain atonement
through the suffering of another appears to contradict the principle that "a son shall
not bear the sin of the father and a father shall not bear the sin of the son" (Ezekiel
18:20). If so, how can one person gain atonement through another or one nation
through another? In the course of his lengthy discussion, RaDaK explains that when
the nations come realize that they believed in falsehood all along while Israel alone
adhered to the true faith, the nations themselves will reason that if Israel suffered
during their exile, it must have been to protect and atone for the nations. The
entire passage may also be read as an expression of wonderment and retroactive
understanding by the Israelite BEINONIM (intermediate, ordinary people) and
RESHAIM (the wicked) when they see the future vindication of the Tzaddikim who
remained loyal to God's Torah.

The simple meaning of this passage proves that the concept that a righteous
Tzaddik has the power to atone for others in his lifetime and through his death is
soundly based in Torah prophecy. In the words of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto
(Ramchal): "Suffering and pain may be imposed on a Tzaddik as an atonement for
his entire generation… Such suffering also includes cases where a Tzaddik suffers
because his entire generation deserves great punishments bordering on annihilation
but is spared via the Tzaddik's suffering… In addition there is a special higher type
of suffering that comes to a Tzaddik who is even greater and more highly perfected
than the ones discussed above… to provide the help necessary to bring about the
chain of events leading to the ultimate perfection of mankind as a whole" (Derech
HaShem II:3).

"He was cut off from the land of the living for the transgression of the people to
whom the stroke was due" (v 8) – "He was cut off and exiled from the land of the
living – this is the Land of Israel – for on account of the sin of My people (i.e.
Israel) this plague came upon the Tzaddikim among them (Rashi)."He let his grave
be among the wicked and gave himself over to death at the hands of the wealthy,
and there was no deceit in his mouth" (v 9) – "Rather than deny the living God, he
sacrificed his life whenever the wicked nations decreed death, causing [the Jews] to
be buried like donkeys, i.e. eaten by the dogs, and was willing to face every kind of
death at the hands of the wealthy rulers rather than undertake to perpetrate
injustice like all the nations among whom he lived. He would not accept idolatry"
(synopsis of Rashi ad loc.).

"But it pleased HaShem to crush him by disease: if his soul shall consider it a
recompense for guilt, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the
purpose of HaShem shall prosper in his hand" (v 10). The Talmud comments:
"Everyone whom HaShem favors, He crushes with suffering, as it says in this verse.
Could this be so even if the person does not accept it with love? No, because it says
'if his soul shall consider it a recompense for guilt (ASHAM)': just as the ASHAM
(guilt sacrifice) was only offered voluntarily out of the person's loving desire to
repent, so one must accept suffering with love. And if he does, what is his reward?
'He will see his seed, he shall prolong his days…'. And moreover, his Torah study
will endure in his hand, as it says, '…the purpose of HaShem shall prosper in his
hand'" (Berachos 5a).

Chapter 54
"Sing O barren one, you who did not bear…" (v 1). Immediately following Isaiah's
depiction of Israel as God's long-suffering servant comes this most beautiful
prophecy of their future glory in our present chapter vv 1-17. "…For more
numerous are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife" (v
1). The "desolate" refers to Jerusalem as she was before the redemption, while the
"married wife" refers to the daughter of Edom (Rashi ad loc.)

As in the case of some of Isaiah's previous prophecies about the redemption, the
present prophecy of joy over the great expansion of the population of Israel at the
time of the ingathering of the exiles (vv 3-4) – which has been and continues to be
fulfilled in our days – has contributed phrases to the LECHA DODI song welcoming
the Sabbath.

In vv 5-10, God consoles Israel over the pains of their exile in the way that a
husband conciliates the beloved wife of his youth following a brief display of anger,
reassuring them that nothing will ever cause God's faithful love to depart from
them or His covenant of peace to be removed.

"O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest and not comforted…" (v 11). Still suffering
from the ravages of the exile, Israel is not consoled, yet God promises that a most
glorious future awaits her. "And all your children shall be taught of HaShem and
great shall be the peace of your children" (v 13).

In verse 14 the prophet teaches the simple pathway to redemption: "Through

righteousness (TZEDAKAH, charity) you shall be established: keep away from
oppression, and then you shall not fear…"

"Behold, they may well gather (GOR YA-GUR) together, but not by Me: whoever
shall gather (GAR) together against you shall fall for your sake" (v 15). According
to this simple rendering of the verse, God is promising that even if the nations
gather to make war against Israel , they will fall. Targum refers this to the war of
Gog and Magog at the end of days. However, the Talmud darshens the same
Hebrew words of the verse differently, citing it as the scriptural basis for its
teaching that "converts will not be accepted in the days of Mashiach, just as
converts were not accepted in the days of David and Solomon" (Yevamos 24b). The
reason for this is that Israel 's great status in those times would give the gentiles
ulterior, impure motives for converting. The DRASH is based on the threefold
appearance in the verse of the root GAR, which not only means "gather" but also
has the connotation of "dwell", and a GER is a convert who comes to "dwell" with
Israel. Rashi (on Yevamos loc. cit.) explains the Midrashic meaning of the verse as:
"'One who comes to convert should dwell without Me' – i.e. during the time when I
am not yet with you, i.e. during the exile. 'Only he who dwells with you…' – i.e. in
your time of lowliness – '…shall rest (YIPOL, cf. Gen. 25:18) with you' i.e. in the
world to come."

"No weapon that is formed against you shall prosper…" (v 17). None of the
weapons that Iran, Hamas, Hizbullah or anyone else may dream up will ever
succeed in dislodging Israel from their God-given land.

* * * Isaiah 54:1-10 is read as the fifth Haftara of consolation on Shabbos Parshas

TI SEITZEI (Deut.16:18-21:9) * * *

* * * The passages in Isaiah 54:11-17 and 55:1-5 are read as the third Haftara of
consolation on Shabbos Parshas Re'eh, Deut. 11:26-16:17 * * *

* * * Isaiah 54:1-17 and 55:1-5 is read as the Haftara of Parshas NOAH (Gen. 6:9-
11:32). * * *

Chapter 55
"Ho all who are thirsty, come to water…" (v 1). "After the war of Gog and Magog
the nations will recognize that God rules over all and that there is none beside Him,
and then they will come to Jerusalem to learn God's laws and teachings… Water is a
metaphor for Torah and wisdom – for just as the world cannot survive without
water, so the world cannot survive without wisdom, and just as a thirsty person
craves for water, so the wise soul craves for Torah and wisdom… The Torah is also
compared to wine and milk. Just as wine makes the heart rejoice, so do words of
Torah. And just as milk keeps a baby alive and makes it grow, so words of Torah
keep the soul alive and make it grow" (RaDaK ad loc.).
"Why do you spend money for that which is not bread?" (v 2) – "Why should you
pay your enemies money without receiving bread?" (Rashi ad loc.) "Why do you
pay a high price to study alien systems of wisdom and philosophy that have no
benefit?" (Metzudas David ad loc.)

"Hear and your soul shall live" (v 3) – "Listen to Me and you will merit to stand in
the resurrection in the days of Mashiach" (Metzudas David ad loc.). "And I will
make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure loving promises of David" (v
3) – "This is Mashiach, for he will be called by the name of David… He will be the
teacher of the nations 'and he will judge between the nations and rebuke many
peoples' (Is. 2:4)" (RaDaK ad loc.).

"Seek HaShem while He may be found…" (v 6). Isaiah now addresses the people in
exile, calling on them to repent. They should seek God "while He may be found" –
i.e. "BEFORE the decree is finalized, while He is still telling you to seek Him out"
(Rashi). "…while He is NEAR" – "seek Him in such a way that He will be near, i.e.
when you seek Him WITH ALL YOUR HEART" (RaDaK). "Seek out the fear of
HaShem while you are still alive" (Targum).

"For My thoughts are not as Your thoughts…" (v 8) "My laws are not like the laws of
flesh and blood. In your world, if a man admits to a crime he is judged guilty, but
by My law, 'Whoever confesses and forsakes [his sins] shall be shown mercy'
(Proverbs 28:13)" (Rashi on v 8). "If a man commits an offense against his fellow,
he takes vengeance on him and will not forgive him, and even if he forgives him on
the surface he nurses a grudge in his heart… But I am full of forgiveness. And when
I forgive, I do so in truth, and no trace of the sin remains" (RaDaK on v 8).

"For as the rain comes down… and does not return there but waters the earth…" (v
9) – "The rain and the snow do not return to the skies through evaporation without
first watering the earth… Sometimes a person sends someone to do something but
the agent comes back without accomplishing his mission. But 'My word… shall not
return to Me empty'" (Metzudas David ad loc.).

"For you shall go out with joy…" (v 12). The redemption will bring great joy.
Moreover, joy – SIMCHAH – itself is the avenue that leads to redemption. "It is a
great mitzvah to be joyful always" (Rabbi Nachman of Breslov).

"Instead of the thorn, the cypress shall arise…" (v 13) – "In place of the wicked, the
righteous will rise up" (Rashi ad loc.). The "thorn" and the "nettle" refer to Haman
and Vashti, while the "cypress" and the "myrtle refer to Mordechai and Esther
(Megillah 10b).

Chapter 56
"Guard justice and practice charity, for My salvation is near to come…" (v 1). "Great
is charity for it brings the redemption closer" (Bava Kama 10a). "Great is Teshuvah
for it brings the redemption closer. Great is charity for it brings salvation closer"
(Yoma 87a).

"Happy is the man that does this… that keeps the Sabbath…" (v 2). "The Sabbath is
mentioned specifically at this juncture because the prophet is addressing the people
in exile, urging them to improve their ways in order to leave their exile, and the
best of all pathways is the observance of the Sabbath, while the exile from the land
came about because of the transgression of the Sabbath" (RaDaK on v 2).
"Whoever observes the Sabbath according to its laws, even if he worshiped idols as
in the days of Enosh, he will be forgiven… If Israel kept two Sabbaths according to
the law, they would be redeemed immediately" (Shabbos 118b).

"Let not the son of the stranger who has joined himself to HaShem say, HaShem
will surely separate me from His people, nor let the eunuch say, Behold I am a dry
tree" (v 3). The "son of the stranger" is a convert who does not have children after
his conversion; he is similar to a "eunuch" who has no children… Such a convert
may think that he will not be considered a member of HaShem's people either in
this world or in the world to come, and likewise the childless may think that if he
leaves no son after him it is as if he never came into the world and God takes no
favor in him, since God created the world for the sake of procreation…" (RaDaK on
v 3).

But quite the contrary, God promises that those childless "that will observe My
Sabbaths" (=the weekly Sabbaths and the Sabbatical years, RaDaK) will receive "in
My House and within My walls (=the Temple in Jerusalem) a place and a name
(YAD VASHEM) better than sons and daughters" (v 5). [The name YAD VASHEM has
been given to Israel's Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem .] Likewise God promises the
"children of the stranger" that "I shall bring them to My holy mountain and make
them joyful in My House of Prayer…" (v 7). "Just as a person brings a guest into his
home and receives him gladly, so God says, I shall command the priests to accept
them gladly when they come to convert, and they will rejoice when they see
themselves in the Temple courtyard year by year with the people of Israel"
(RaDaK).

"For My house shall be called the House of Prayer for all the nations (v 7) – "Not
only for Israel alone but also for those of the nations who convert" (see Rashi and
Metzudas David ad loc.).

"HaShem God who gathers the outcasts of Israel says, Yet will I gather others to
him, besides those of him that are already gathered" (v 8): "I shall gather in more
converts to be added to all the ingathered people of Israel " (Metzudas David).

"All you beasts of the field: come into the forest to devour all the beasts thereof" (v
9). "The beasts of the field do not have as much strength as the beasts of the
forest. The 'beasts of the field' refers to the gentiles who will not harden their
hearts but will convert. They shall 'devour' (win over?) those who harden their
hearts and continue their rebellion" (Metzudas David ad loc.).

"His watchmen are all blind: they are ignorant…" (v 10). This verse begins a new
section of five verses continuing until chapter 57 v 2 (notwithstanding the
conventional chapter break in printed Bibles, which violates the continuity of the
Hebrew text).

"After completing the previous prophecy of consolation, the prophet returns to

rebuking the wicked people of his generation" (RaDaK on v 10).

"The prophet began by saying, 'Seek out HaShem' (Is. 55:6) but the people do not
listen. He therefore now says: See how the prophets are crying to them to repent
for their own wellbeing, but their leaders are all like blind men who do not see what
is developing. They are like a watcher appointed to see if the sword is approaching
in order to warn the people, but he is blind and fails to see the sword coming, dumb
and unable to warn the people – like a dog appointed to guard the house but he is
dumb and does not bark. Likewise the leaders of Israel fail to warn the people to
repent… Just as dogs never know satisfaction, these 'shepherds' do not know or
understand what will happen at the end of days… 'Every one is out for his own
gain': They rob the rest of the people over whom they are appointed" (Rashi on vv
10-11).

Let us be the ones who hear the call of HaShem in order that our souls shall live!

* * * Isaiah 55:6-13 & 56:1-8 are read as the Haftara after the afternoon Torah
reading on public fast days. * * *

Chapter 57
"The Tzaddik has been lost, but no man lays it to heart…" (v 1). This verse follows
on directly from the passage of rebuke of the people that began in the closing three
verses of the previous chapter (Is. 56:10-12). The complaint here is that when
someone truly righteous is taken from the world, the people do not stop to ask
themselves why he should have died – what did he do to deserve it? (Metzudas
David on v 1). The prophet explains why: "For because of the coming evil the
Tzaddik is taken away" (v 1) – so that he should not have to suffer the pain of
witnessing it, going instead to a place of true tranquility and peace in the world to
come (v 2). Today these verses challenge us to consider seriously how, following
the passing of such towering Tzaddikim as Baba Sali, the Lubavitcher Rebbe and
certain others in recent times, the security of Israel and of Jews worldwide has
manifestly deteriorated, which should prompt us to do everything we can to further
our own TESHUVAH.

"But as for you, draw near, O sons of the sorceress, seed of the adulterer and the
harlot" (v 3). In the following passage (vv 3-14) the prophet castigates the people
for their "witchcraft" and "harlotry". Their "harlotry" is their turning away from
following the path of HaShem with all their hearts and instead putting their reliance
on men of flesh and blood in order to gain security. In Isaiah's time, the wicked
people in Jerusalem did not want to follow Hezekiah's pure Torah path, but
schemed instead to stave off the military threat from Assyria through bribes and
alliances with other powers etc. (v 9): these very schemes were part of the
"witchcraft". The same scheming continues until today by the secularized Jewish
and Israeli "leadership", who cannot bring themselves to return to the path of
Torah but instead devote themselves to never-ending stratagems purportedly
intended to increase Jewish and Israeli security, all of which have the opposite
effect. Whereas the people of Isaiah's time practiced literal child-sacrifice (v 5),
today people tend to sacrifice their children on the altar of television, popular
culture, materialism etc. instead of training them in the ways of Torah.

"You are wearied with the length of the way, yet you did not say, It is hopeless…"
(v 10) – "You have been busy with your needs, fulfilling all your lusts and
multiplying your wealth, but you did not say 'It is hopeless': you have not given up
all of this and said, 'I will not concern myself with all this any more but instead I
will put my heart into the Torah and mitzvos" (Rashi ad loc.).

"I will declare your righteousness, but as for your works, they will not profit you" (v
12) – "I constantly tell you things which – if you were to do them – would vindicate
you. But the works that you do contrary to My will shall not avail you in your time
of trouble" (Rashi). All the schemes of the wicked will be blown away by a mere
wind and a breath. But those who put their faith in HaShem and His Torah "will
possess the land and inherit My holy mountain" (v 13). This literally refers to the
land of Israel and Jerusalem. "And even though this passage specifically refers to
King Hezekiah, who trusted in HaShem and did not move from his place, it also
relates to every person. No matter how many people a person may gather to aid
him in his time of trouble, they will not help him, because gathering people of flesh
and blood in this world is wind and vanity. For 'the fear of HaShem is his treasure-
house', and one who trusts in Him will possess the land and inherit the Holy
Mountain in the World to Come, which is called the Land of the Living. The
stumbling-block of this world is sin, and its removal is repentance" (RaDaK on v 13).
Thus the passage continues: "And [the prophet, speaking in the name of HaShem,
Rashi] says: Bank up, build up, prepare the way, TAKE UP THE STUMBLING BLOCK
OUT OF THE WAY OF MY PEOPLE" (v 14).

"For thus says the high and lofty One… I dwell on high and in a holy place, yet with
him also that is of contrite and humble spirit" (v 15). This sublime depiction of
God's absolute transcendence combined with His limitless compassion is cited by
the rabbis as the proof from the Nevi'im or prophetic writings (besides other proofs
from the Torah and the Kesuvim) that "in every place where you find the greatness
of the Holy One blessed be He, there you find His humility" (Megillah 31a).

"For I will not contend for ever, neither will I always be angry, when the spirit shall
faint before Me, for I have made the souls " (v 16) – "If I bring suffering upon a
person, My burning anger against him shall not be for length of days nor my rage
forever, '…when the spirit shall faint before Me' – i.e. when man's spirit, which is
put in him from Me, 'faints' and he admits his sin and is humbled" (Rashi). The
word here rendered as "faints" also has the connotation of "swathing" and
"clothing" (Metzudas Tzion). This verse is a key scriptural foundation for the
kabbalistic teaching that the souls are garbs or garments through which Godliness
is revealed in the world.

"I create a new expression of the lips: Peace, peace, both for far and near, says
HaShem, and I will heal him" (v 19) – "Whereas until now the person suffered
troubles, leading everyone to raise doubts and questions about him, they will now
call out to him, 'Peace, peace'. Those who are far and those who are near are both
equal – the person who has habituated himself and grown old in My Torah and My
service since his youth [FFB] and the person who has just now recently drawn close
in order to repent from his evil way [BT]. 'I shall heal him' from his illness and his
sins" (Rashi ad loc.). [For those unfamiliar with the slang, FFB="Froom From Birth",
BT=Baal Teshuvah!].

"But the wicked are like the troubled sea which cannot be still…" (v 20) – "The
waves of the sea proudly swell up above, seeking to pass over the boundary of
sand that I have set as the boundary of the sea, yet when the wave reaches the
shore it is broken against its will. Its fellow-wave coming after it sees this but does
not retreat. Likewise the wicked man sees his companion suffering because of his
wickedness, yet he still does not repent. Just as the all the foaming and raging of
the sea is at its mouth, so the rebellion of the wicked is with their mouths" (Rashi
ad loc.). We all want peace, but God says: "THERE IS NO PEACE FOR THE WICKED"
(v 21). So much for "Peace Now"!

Chapter 58
God says to the prophet: "Lift up your voice like the shophar (KE-SHOPHAR) and
tell My people their transgressions" (v 1). Rabbi Nachman teaches that in order not
to degrade the people through his rebuke but rather to elevate and enhance them,
the Tzaddik must draw his voice of rebuke from the melody emanating from the
Garden of Eden. This melody is the "Simple, Double, Treble, Quadruple" Song of
the World to Come, which is alluded to in the word Ke-SHoPhaR. These Hebrew
letters are the initial letters of Pashut ("simple"), Kaphul ("double"), Shalush
("trebled"), Ravu'a ("quadrupled"; Likutey Moharan II, 8:1).
"…tell MY PEOPLE their transgressions…" – "these are the Torah scholars, all of
whose unintentional sins are counted as willful transgressions" [because they
should have known better]; "…and the HOUSE OF JACOB their sins" – "these are
the 'people of the earth' (AM HA'ARETZ), the unlearned, in whose case even willful
transgressions are counted as unintentional" (verse 1 as explained in Bava Metzia
33b).

"And they seek Me daily and desire to know My ways, LIKE a nation that did
righteousness…" (v 2). "The people seek to create an outward impression AS IF
they are righteous, but even when they ask the sages what are God's righteous
laws, it is not their intention to fulfill them" (Rashi on v 2).

In vv 3-6 the prophet castigates the people for practicing the outer rituals of
penitence – fasting, sackcloth and ashes, fervent swaying etc. – while failing to
abandon their sinful ways, their infighting, exploitation of the poor and weak etc.
This leads into the very beautiful passage in verses 7ff in which Isaiah depicts the
pathway of kindness and compassion that God wants us to follow.

V 7: "Is it not to share your bread with the hungry…" This verse speaks about
providing for the PHYSICAL needs of the hungry, poor and naked. Verses 8-9 then
enumerate SIX different blessings that will come to one who does so. Among them
are that "your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of HaShem shall gather
you in": this means that at the time of death, "the charity you did will go before
you to conduct you to the Garden of Eden, and the Glory of HaShem will gather you
in to the place where the souls of the Tzaddikim are hidden away" (Metzudas
David).

Verse 10 then speaks of a higher level of kindness: "If you draw out your soul to
the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul…" This means that "you bring forth your
good favor to the hungry person, SPEAKING WORDS OF CONSOLATION at the time
when you give him food". The continuation in verses 10-11 then enumerates
ELEVEN blessings that come to one who fulfills this higher level of kindness. Thus:
"Rabbi Yitzhak said: Everyone who gives a coin to a poor person is blessed with SIX
blessings, while one who uplifts him with kind words is blessed with ELEVEN
blessings" (Bava Basra 9b). "And He will make your bones strong" (v 11) – " Rabbi
Elazar said: This is the most excellent of blessings" (Yevamos 102b).

"If you restrain your foot from violating the Shabbos…" (v 13). The prophet here
concludes his depiction of the true pathway of repentance that God wants us to
follow by returning to the cardinal Mitzvah of the Shabbos. While the prohibition of
labor on Shabbos is contained in the Fourth Commandment (Exodus 20:8), the
observance of this holy day involves more than mere abstention from work. The
present verse is the scriptural foundation of the Shabbos laws relating to
celebrating the SPIRIT of the day – through abstaining from all business activities
even though they may not technically be counted as labors, by marking out the day
with a different, more relaxed way of walking than on weekdays, by not even
TALKING about business and mundane affairs, by enjoying special delights (food,
clothing, etc.) on Shabbos and so on.

"Then you shall you delight yourself in HaShem… and I will feed you with the
heritage of Jacob your father" – "The verse mentions Jacob because the heritage is
unique to his children as opposed to Ishmael son of Abraham and Esau son of
Isaac" (RaDaK). "This will be a heritage without any bounds, as it is written of
Jacob" 'And you shall break forth to the west and the east, the north and the
south…'" (Gen. 28:14; Rashi on our verse).
 * * * Isaiah 57 vv 14-21 & 58 vv 1-14 are read as the Haftarah after the morning
Torah reading on the fast of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The Haftara
teaches the kind of fasting and repentance that God desires. * * *

Chapter 59
"Surely HaShem's hand is not shortened so that it cannot save…" (v 1) – "After
finishing teaching them about the good deeds they should practice and how they
should turn aside from evil, the prophet now gives them further reproof over their
evil deeds. He says that their complaint against God in the previous chapter, 'Why
have we fasted but You have not seen…?' (Is. 58:3), is unfounded, explaining that
the reason why God has not seen your fasting or saved you from your enemies is
not because His hand has become short and cannot save you and not because His
ear does not hear… but because your sins have separated you from Him and this is
why it seems as if He does not hear and does not have the strength to save you.
Why? Because of your sins" (RaDaK on v 1).

"For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have
spoken lies, your tongue mutters wickedness" (v 3). "'Your hands' refers to the
judges; 'your fingers' are the judges' scribes; 'your lips have spoken lies' – these
are the lawyers; 'your tongue mutters wickedness' – these are the parties to the
law suit" (Shabbos 139a). The blight of litigation!

"No one calls in uprightness…" (v 4) – "There is no-one who calls out to HaShem
with uprightness and heartfelt intent" (Metzudas David).

"They hatch viper's eggs and weave the spider's web…" (v 5): The evil schemes
hatched by the wicked will lead only to the bite of the poisonous serpent, while all
that they seek to construct will be as flimsy as a spider's web, which is easily swept
away. Isaiah was directly addressing the wicked people of Judah in his time who
sought to gain security through their various machinations. However, his
prophecies are for all time and especially for us since we are now at the "end of
days". His depiction of the people's wickedness seems to apply directly to those
trying to build an Israel founded on military, technological and economic power
divorced from the Torah.

"The way of peace they know not…" All the peace plans and diplomatic gambits in
the world will never bring Israel peace without the Torah, "for all of her ways are
peace" (Proverbs 3:17).

"Therefore justice is far from us…" (v 9). In the previous eight verses the prophet
was addressing the complaints of the wicked and castigating them for their ways.
But the wicked of Israel and the righteous are all members of a single organism and
the flaws of one part cause the whole to suffer. Thus the prophet now embarks on a
lament in the name of the people as a whole. "Therefore justice is far from us" –
"We have been crying out over the outrageous injustice (HAMAS) of our enemies,
but the Holy One blessed be He does not execute justice and take vengeance"
(Rashi ad loc.). Thus Israel today is literally crying out about HAMAS, who
perpetrate daily rocket attacks on the country, yet nobody intervenes to stop them!
"…neither does righteousness overtake us" (v 9) – "The consolations of coming
goodness that He has promised us do not come and reach us" (Rashi ad loc.).

The prophet's lament becomes a confession that he puts into the mouths and onto
the lips of each one of us: "For our transgressions are multiplied before you…" (v
11). Even those striving to observe the Torah may not put all the blame for the
nation's troubles upon those who are far from the Torah. For we must all take
personal responsibility: "…and as for our iniquities, we know them" (ibid.).

"And the judgment is turned away backwards, and justice stands far off, for truth is
fallen in the street and upright dealing cannot enter" (v 14). The "judgment" that is
turned away backwards is "our vengeance against our enemies, which depends on
the Holy One, blessed be He. And 'His justice stands far off' – Why? Because 'truth
is fallen in our streets', and since the truth has stumbled on earth, likewise justice
and equity do not come from heaven" (Rashi ad loc.). Today it is the "street" – i.e.
the mass media – that have set themselves up as the arbiters of truth. No wonder
it has stumbled!

"And truth is absent, and he that departs from evil makes himself ridiculous" (v 15).
"In the generation in which the son of David will come, truth will be absent. What
does it mean that 'truth is absent (NE'EDERES)'? This teaches that it will turn into
flocks and flocks (ADARIM ADARIM; i.e. society is splintered into an ever-growing
multitude of groups each claiming a monopoly on truth). What does it mean that
'he who departs from evil makes himself ridiculous'? It means that everyone will
say he has gone mad" (Sanhedrin 97a). These are the symptoms of the threshold
of Mashiach! There may thus be a grain of comfort in the fact that today many of
the non-religious and probably all of the irreligious think that those who observe
the Torah are mad!

"And [HaShem] saw that there was no man, and was astonished that there was no
intercessor: therefore His arm brought him salvation and it was His righteousness
that sustained him"(v 16) – "When He will see that there is no pure, worthy man
among them in whose merit they can be redeemed, and when He will be astonished
that there is no-one among them who intercedes and prays for the redemption,
HaShem's right arm will save them, bringing the redemption without merit and
without an intercessor" (Metzudas David ad loc.). The Talmud learns from verse 16
in our present chapter and verse 21 in the following chapter that Mashiach will
come either in a generation that is entirely worthy or entirely guilty (Sanhedrin
98a).

RaDaK (on verse 16) seeks to reconcile the different opinions in the Talmudic
discussion on this question as follows: "The majority of Israel will repent after they
see the signs of redemption, and this is why it says, 'And he saw that there was no
man' – for they will not repent until they will see the beginning of the salvation. But
there will still be sinners and rebels among them and they will leave the exile
together with the majority of Israel, who will repent, but they will perish on the way
and they will not come to the Land of Israel … Even the majority will not repent
completely or pray to God wholeheartedly until they see the signs of redemption…
It makes no sense to say that there will be no righteous, good people in Israel who
will be fit for redemption – but they will not be sufficiently worthy for the entire
people of Israel to be redeemed in their merit. And thus when the rabbis said that
the redemption would come in a generation that is 'entirely guilty', this means the
majority – for there was never a generation in Israel that was entirely guilty
without having some righteous, good people. And even the guilty are not
necessarily liable to be wiped out; rather, they will simply unworthy to be
redeemed in their own merit."

"And He will garb Himself in righteousness (TZEDAKAH) like a coat of armor…" (v

17) – "His weapons will be of two kinds: weapons of charity and salvation for Israel
and weapons of vengeance against the nations" (RaDaK ad loc.). "Why does it say,
'He will garb Himself in TZEDAKAH (=charity) like a coat of armor'? Just as in a coat
of armor, each metal scale adds up to a great coat of armor, so in the case of
charity, all the separate coins join up to make a great sum" (Bava Basra 9b).

"They shall fear the Name of HaShem from the west… when affliction (TZAR) comes
like a river, which the spirit of HaShem will drive forth" (v 19). The Talmud
comments on this verse: "If you see a generation suffering from many troubles,
wait for him (i.e. Mashiach)" (Sanhedrin 98a). RaDaK explains that the "affliction"
that "comes like a river" refers to the armies of Gog and Magog, which the spirit of
God will destroy from the earth. "For even though the people of Israel will have
returned to Jerusalem before Gog and Magog come, when they do so Israel will say
that no redeemer has come to them since the nations are coming to make war
against them. When God then judges Gog and Magog with 'plague and blood and
driving rain and great hailstones…' (Ezekiel 38:22), Israel will say 'And a redeemer
has come to Zion …' (v 20 in our present chapter), for then all Israel will come back
to God in complete repentance" (RaDaK on v 19).

"And a redeemer shall come to Zion …" (v 20): This and the following verse of
redemption are recited in the daily morning services and Shabbos and festival
afternoon services etc. at the beginning of the prayer UVA-LEZION.

Chapter 60
The very harshness of much of the prophecy contained in the previous chapter was
perhaps intended to soften and humble our hearts in preparation for the sublime
prophecy of consolation contained in our present chapter. "Arise, shine, for your
light has come…!" (verse 1, phrases from which are incorporated in the LECHA
DODI song welcoming Shabbos).

"For the darkness shall cover the earth and thick darkness the peoples, but but
upon you HaShem will shine and His glory shall be seen upon you" (v 2). As we
contemplate the wanton violence, warfare, terror and crime in the world today
together with the licentious godless cultures that breed them, we may well feel that
this verse applies directly to our age. We may take comfort in the fact that we are
free to turn off the media and immerse ourselves in the study of God's Torah
(TaNaCh, Mishneh, Talmud, Halachah, Midrash, Kabbalah, Chassidut… endless
treasures), and in this way His light shines to us even in the midst of the
surrounding darkness that grips the world.

"Lift up your eyes round about and see: all of them are gathered and have come to
you…. Your sons shall come from afar…" (v 4). If we look back not only over the
last sixty years since the establishment of the state of Israel with the great waves
of Aliyah that followed, but also over the exponential growth of Aliyah in the five
hundred years since the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, we can see how this
prophecy of the return of the exiles has been and continues to be fulfilled. Today
over half of the world's Jews live in Israel. Despite all its many problems and even
the serious poverty of part of its population, Israel is in purely material terms one
of the wealthiest, technologically advanced and sophisticated countries in the world,
and the wealth of many nations flows into Israel in the form of imports,
investments, tourism etc. etc. as prophesied in vv 5ff. We eagerly await the day
when all the flocks of Kedar (=Arabia) will be gathered to be offered as sacrifices on
God's Altar in "the House of My glory" (v 7) – i.e. the coming Holy Temple!

V 8: "Who are these that fly as a cloud and as doves to their windows?" Who does
NOT come to Israel today by air, usually in planeloads of hundreds – just like flocks
of doves? How was Isaiah able to see this 2500 years ago?
"And the sons of strangers shall build up your walls" (v 10). A very large part of the
labor force in present-day Israel's construction industry is foreign.

"And your gates shall be open always by day and by night" (v 11). Flights arrive
day and night at Israel's "gates" – Tel Aviv day airport!

"The sons also of those that persecuted you will come bending to you" (v 14) –
"Those who were your persecutors during the exile will already be dead at the time
of the salvation, and their children will come to you bowing and they will fall before
you" (RaDaK ad loc.). It is a fact that descendants of some of Israel's worst
persecutors have been notable converts, such as those of Sennacherib and Haman,
and in our times a grandson of the Mufti of Jerusalem.

"Violence (HAMAS) shall no longer be heard in your land" (v 18). It appears that
present-day Hamas was brought into existence for the purpose of being wiped out
very soon in fulfillment of this prophecy.

"The sun shall no more be your light by day…. For HaShem shall be to you an
everlasting light…" (v 19). "Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai said: Throughout the forty
years when Israel were in the wilderness, not one of them ever needed the light of
the sun by day or the light of the moon by night. If the encompassing clouds of
glory radiated, they knew that the sun had gone down, while if they became white,
they knew that the sun had risen. One could look at a barrel and know what was in
it, at a pitcher and know what was in it [spiritual X-ray vision!!!] because of the
cloud of the Divine Presence that was among them. So too in time to come, as it
says, 'Rise, shine for your light has come…' (v 1) … 'The sun shall no more be your
light by day…' (v 19; Midrash Mechilta).

"And your people are all righteous forever…" (v 21) – This teaches that "All Israel
have a share in the world to come" (Sanhedrin 90a).

"I, HaShem, will hasten it in its time" (v 22) – "If they are worthy, 'I will hasten it';
if they are unworthy, 'in its time'" (Sanhedrin 90a).

* * * Isaiah Chapter 60 vv 1-22 is the sixth Haftarah of Consolation, read on

Shabbos Parshas KI SAVO (Deut.26:1-29:8). * * *

Chapter 61
"The spirit of HaShem, God is upon me, because HaShem has anointed me to
announce good tidings to the meek…" (v 1). RaDaK explains: "These are the words
of the prophet referring to himself. He means that the good tidings that he has
given in previous prophecies and that he will continue to give later on come to him
through the prophetic spirit of HaShem that rests upon him. God has sent him to
announce these tidings to Israel because they are destined to be in exile for a long
time, but they will find these consolations written and then they will not despair of
the redemption. For the consolations he has been sent to utter and transcribe come
from the mouth of HaShem, bringing good tidings to the exiles, who are meek and
broken-hearted, enduring the exile for HaShem's sake, whereas if they had wanted
to separate from His unity and from His Torah they would have become like one of
the nations in whose domain they live" (RaDaK on v 1).

The Talmud deduces from verse 1, "…to announce good tidings to the MEEK
(ANAVIM)", that the quality of ANAVAH, "meekness" and "humility", is the greatest
of all the righteous attributes, being higher even than CHESSED, "kindness" or
"going beyond the letter of the law" (Avodah Zarah 20b).

Among the consolations, God promises that He will give to the mourners of Zion "a
garland (PE'ER, "glory") in place of ashes (EPHER)" (v 3). After the destruction of
the Temple, bridegrooms no longer went out with garlands on their heads but
instead rubbed ashes in the place where the head Tefilin are worn (see Ta'anis 15b).
But very soon now the garlands will be restored and the true radiance of the Tefilin
will also shine forth.

Verses 4-6 promise that after lying desolate and in ruins for many long generations,
the Land of Israel and Jerusalem will be rebuilt (which has indeed happened and
continues to happen in our days), and that gentiles will serve as "shepherds",
"plowmen" and "vinedressers" etc. producing the nation's material requirements,
leaving the righteous of Israel to serve as HaShem's priests, whose task will be to
minister to the nations and teach them about the unity of God and His Torah.

"For I, HaShem love justice and hate robbery with a burnt offering…" (v 8). The
Talmud states: "A stolen LULAV (palm branch) is invalid for the performance of the
mitzvah of taking the four species on Succoth, because this would be a mitzvah
that came about through a sin, and it says He, 'hates robbery with a burnt offering'.
The matter may be compared to a king who was passing through the Customs
House and told his attendants to pay the customs dues to the customs officers.
They said, 'But surely the entire Customs belongs to you!' The king replied, 'From
me all travelers will learn not to evade the customs'. Likewise the Holy One blessed
be He says, 'I hate robbery with a burnt offering' – from Me all My children will
learn and keep themselves well away from robbery" (Succah 30a).

"I will greatly rejoice in HaShem… for He has clothed me with the garment of
salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness (TZEDAKAH)…" (v 10).
These are the words of Israel at the time of the final redemption, rejoicing over the
revelation of God's saving power and righteousness that will then occur in the eyes
of the entire world. Israel will then be the exemplar of righteousness and justice.

"For as the earth brings forth her growth and as the garden causes the things that
are sown in it to spring forth…" (v 11). These are not only metaphors for the way in
which God will cause His salvation to spring forth in the future redemption. The
words of this verse are also the basis for an important halachic Midrash relating to
the laws of KIL'AYIM (prohibiting sowing different kinds of seeds together, Lev.
19:19; Deut. 22:9). From them we deduce how many different kinds of vegetables
may be sown in close proximity in a small vegetable bed without infringing the
prohibition of KIL'AYIM (see Shabbos 84b and Mishneh Kil'ayim ch 3).

Chapter 62
"For the sake of Zion I will not hold My peace…" (v 1) – "These are the words of
HaShem while Israel are in exile" (RaDaK ad loc.). "I will not keep silent without
exacting retribution from the nations on account of the degradation they have
inflicted on Zion, which they destroyed down to the very foundation… I will not rest
until the justice I will perform for Zion will shine like a brilliant radiation and the
salvation I will send her will be seen by all like a blazing torch of fire" (Metzudas
David ad loc.).

God's favor for Israel at the time of the redemption is compared to a young man's
rejoicing over his new bride (v 5).
"Over your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen throughout the day and
throughout the night…" (v 6). The Talmud explains that these "watchmen" are
angels who constantly remind HaShem about the destruction of Jerusalem, calling
on Him to rebuild it (Menachos 87a). Targum Yonasan says that "your walls" are
the founding fathers, who "shield us like a wall" (see Rashi on v 6). Rabbi Nachman
of Breslov called upon all of us to take it upon ourselves to serve as these
"watchmen", particularly through the recital of TIKKUN CHATZOS, the Midnight
Lament over the destruction of the Temple, as well as our other prayers for
redemption at every possible juncture day and night. "…Give Him no rest until He
establishes and until He makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth" (v 7).

"Go through, go through the gates; prepare the way of the people…" (v 10).
Targum renders: "The prophet proclaims: Pass through and return through the
gates and turn the heart of the people to the path of righteousness. Announce good
news and consolations to the Tzaddikim who have removed from themselves the
negative thoughts produced by the evil inclination, which is like a stone that causes
people to stumble…".

May we soon see the day when "…they shall call them the Holy People, Redeemed
by HaShem, the city that is Sought Out and not forsaken" (v 12). Amen!

* * * Isaiah chapters 61:1-11, 62:1-12 & 63:1-9 are read as the seventh Haftarah
of Consolation on Shabbos Parshas NITZAVIM (Deut. 29:9-30:20). * * *

Chapter 63
"Who is this that comes from Edom, with crimsoned garments from Batzrah…?" (v
1). Verses 1-5 of this chapter are a prophecy about God's vengeance against Edom
in time to come. Edom's guardian angel in heaven will be "killed" first. In
destroying Edom , God is compared to a warrior taking vengeance on his enemies,
his garments red from the blood of the killing. It is as if someone is asking in
astonishment: Who this is? and God replies: "I that speak in righteousness, mighty
to save" – "I speak and promise to do justice for Israel , I have abundant power to
save them, as I have promised" (see Metzudas David & RaDaK ad loc.).

Based on this verse, the Talmudic sage Reish Lakish said: "The guardian angel of
Rome is destined to make three mistakes. The first is that it is only the city of
BETZER that provides refuge for killers (Deut. 4:43) whereas he will seek refuge in
Batzrah. The second mistake is that the cities of refuge are only for unwitting killers
whereas he killed intentionally. The third is that the cities of refuge are only for
humans while he is an angel" (Maccos 12a). [Maharal explains that by cutting off a
life every unwitting killer becomes attached to the overall power of evil, which is
the guardian angel of Edom (SAMA-EL), and thus becomes cut off and uprooted
from his place, except that he can be "absorbed" and find refuge under the
protection of God, who encompasses all existence including even a sinner. When
the great Day of Judgment comes, when God will remove the spirit of impurity from
the world (Zechariah 13:2), the overall power of evil will likewise beg to be left in
existence, seeing itself as the expression of God's attribute of Judgment. But the
overall power of evil is not a man (whose acts without full understanding and
responsibility) but rather an angel, which possesses complete knowledge and
understanding. Therefore BATZRAH, which alludes to the root of his power,
expressing a level of evil that goes beyond the proper limits of Judgment, will not
provide him with refuge in the way that the city of BETZER provides refuge to
human beings.]
The future destruction of the overall force of evil will be all God's work. "Of the
peoples there was none with me" (v 3) – "None of the nations will be able to stand
up against Me in war, for I shall have killed the heavenly angel" (Metzudas David).
When will this be? "For the day of vengeance is in My heart" (v 4) – "If a person
tells you when the final redemption will come, DO NOT BELIEVE HIM, as it says,
'For the day of vengeance is in My HEART'. If the heart has not even revealed it to
the mouth, to whom could the mouth reveal it???" (Yalkut Shimoni). "Rabbi
Yohanan said: To My heart I have revealed it but not to My limbs. Reish Lakish
said: To My heart I have revealed it but I have not revealed it to the ministering
angels" (Sanhedrin 99a).

"And I looked and there was none to help… therefore My own arm has brought
salvation to me…" (v 5) – "I looked to see if Israel had any merit that might help
and aid the redemption, but I did not find any merit in them… I was astonished
because there was no intercessor" (Metzudas David and Rashi ad loc.). This implies
that the final redemption will come about not through Israel's merit but because of
God's righteousness and compassion.

"I will recall HaShem's kindnesses…" (v 7). This verse begins a new section that
runs continuously without a break (in the Hebrew text) until the end of the
following chapter (Isaiah 64:11). The previous prophesy of the coming destruction
of Edom does not engender a mood of triumphant joy in Israel but rather one of
deep introspection, leading the prophet to consider God's kindnesses to the House
of Israel "which He has bestowed upon them according to His mercies" – i.e. not
because of our own righteousness (Metzudas David).

"In all their affliction, He was afflicted" (v 9). This rendering of the verse follows the
KRI (the way the words are READ in accordance with the Massoretic tradition) but
not the KSIV (the way the text is traditionally written in the parchment scroll). The
KSIV does not attribute the human feeling of affliction to the Holy One blessed be
He, Who transcends all such feelings, but rather it says, "In all their affliction, He
did NOT (LO, Lamed Aleph) afflict them," i.e. not to the full extent, because the
"angel of His countenance" (=Israel's guardian angel, Michael) protected them. The
KRI is far bolder, telling us that for all His transcendence, God DOES FEEL our pain
and torment ("the pain is LO, Lamed Vav, to Him" (see RaDaK on v 9).

"But they rebelled…" (v 10). The prophet wants the people to understand that it is
because of their own rebellion that God has sent their afflictions at the hands of the
nations: they have not come by chance (see Metzudas David ad loc.).

"Then he (= Israel) remembered the days of old, how Moses came to His people…"
(v 10). In exile Israel will remember the days of old when God sent Moses to
redeem them (see Rashi; Metzudas David ad loc). The prophet places a prayer on
the lips of the people: "Where (AYEH) is He that brought them up out of the sea (i.e.
the Red Sea) with the shepherd of His flock…" It is noteworthy that in asking the
key question, AYEH??? WHERE??? (see Likutey Moharan II:12) the people will not
only seek out HaShem but also Moses – the Tzaddik of the Generation – through
whose agency God will redeem them.

In verses 12-14 the prophet evokes the greatness of the miracle of the crossing of
the Red Sea, emphasizing the EASE with which the Children of Israel passed
through – like a horse galloping free in the wilderness or like an animal GOING
DOWN into a valley (as opposed to having to climb up with effort; see Rashi and
RaDaK on vv 13). He thereby creates a wistful longing for the miracles of the past
in preparation for the prayer for future redemption that he puts into the mouths of
Israel in verses 15ff. Verses 15-18 are included in the prayers of TIKKUN CHATZOS
(the Midnight Lament over the destruction of the Temple).

"For you are our father, though Abraham is ignorant of us and Israel (=Jacob) does
not acknowledge us…" (v 16). Notably absent from this verse is the second
founding father, Isaac. An aggadic Midrash in the Talmud tells that in time to come
God will turn to both Abraham and Jacob telling them their children have sinned
against Him, to see if they will intercede on their behalf, but both will reply that
they should be wiped out to sanctify His name. However, when He says to Isaac,
Your children have sinned, Isaac will reply, "MY children and not YOUR children???
Surely when they said, 'We shall do and we shall hear', You called them 'My
firstborn son'! Furthermore, how many years does a man live? Seventy! Subtract
the first 20 years, when a person is not liable to heavenly punishments. That leaves
50. Subtract 25 to take account of the nights. That leaves 25. Subtract twelve and
a half years to take account of all of the time spent praying, eating, in the
bathroom etc. That leaves twelve and a half years in which people may sin. If You
can bear all of them, all the better! And if not, I will bear half and You bear the
other half!!!" At that moment all Israel will say "For YOU (Isaac) are our father!!!
(Shabbos 89b).

Chapter 64
In this chapter the prophet continues with the introspective prayer which began in
the previous chapter (Is. 63:7). In the last verse of the previous chapter (63:19)
he prayed that God should again rend the heavens and descend as He did when He
came to save Israel from Egypt and to give them the Torah on Sinai, when the very
mountains melted (Rashi & Metzudas David ad loc.). In the first verse of the
present chapter (which is a direct continuation), He prays to God to show His power
to His enemies the way that fire burns up brushwood and makes water bubble
furiously. "As when You performed awesome wonders that we did not expect…" (v
2). The magnitude of the miracles of the Exodus and the Revelation at Sinai were
on a scale that the people could never have dared to hope for – and the prophet
artfully implies that miracles of the same order or greater are required for the final
redemption.

"For since the beginning of the world men have not heard nor perceived by the ear,
neither has the eye seen that a god beside You should do such a thing for him that
waits for him" (v 3). This rendering of the verse follows the plain meaning of the
Hebrew text. However the latter part of the verse can equally be rendered: "No eye
has seen, O God, besides You what He shall do to one who waits for Him". In the
words of Rambam: "Man does not have the power to understand the goodness of
the world to come clearly, and no-one knows of its greatness, beauty and power
except the Holy One blessed be He alone. All the benefits that the prophets foretold
for Israel relate only to the material benefits Israel will enjoy in the days of
Mashiach when dominion will be restored to Israel, but nothing whatever can be
compared to the goodness of the life of the world to come, and the prophets never
compared it to anything in order not to detract from it through an inadequate
comparison… For those who wait for Him, God will perform a goodness that no eye
of any prophet has seen and that no-one besides God has seen " (Rambam, Laws
of Teshuvah 8:7).

In vv 4-6 the prophet puts more words of prayer and confession into the mouths of
the people, mourning the loss of the truly righteous, which has left a people all of
whom are like someone unclean and full of sins, causing God to hide His
countenance from us.
"But now, HaShem, You are our father, we are the clay and You are the potter…" (v
7). Not only do we ask God to have compassion upon us like a father. We ask him
to CHANGE us for the better, just as a potter can change the shape of the vessel he
makes at will (RaDaK). As in the case of Is. 63:15-18, the prayer in the closing
verses of our present chapter (Is. 64 vv 7-11) is incorporated in TIKKUN CHATZOS.

Chapter 65
The closing verses of the previous section expressed the cry of pain of Israel in
exile over the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem, asking how God can hold
His peace and afflict us so greatly (Is. 64:8-11).

But in the new section that opens in the first verse of our present chapter, "It is as
if God replies to the exiles over their complaint, saying: How can I redeem you? Did
I not make Myself available to be sought out in your time of trouble? But this was
of no benefit, because the people did not ask and did not seek Me out" (Metzudas
David on v 1).

In vv 2-7 God gives further rebuke to the wicked of Israel , to whom He reached
out but who rebelled and went off on their own evil path, following their own
thoughts, for which they will be punished. The depiction of the people's idolatry and
necromancy in vv 3-4 could well apply to the period at the end of Isaiah's life early
in the reign of King Menasheh, who promoted idol-worship in Judah and ended the
prophet's ministry by killing him (Yevamos 49b). These verses also apply to the
sinners of Israel in later times, who by "eating the flesh of the swine" (v 4) "violate
everything forbidden by the Torah" (RaDaK ad loc.). The "broth of abominable
things… in their vessels" refers to every other kind of unclean food (ibid.). In earlier
times just as today, the self-important sinners of Israel thought that their own
"enlightened" pathway of assimilation with the nations set them apart from and
made them holier than their "unenlightened" brothers who still clung faithfully to
HaShem's Torah (v 5).

But God promises that it is precisely for the sake of His faithful servants the
Tzaddikim that He will redeem Israel. "Thus says HaShem: As the wine is found in
the grape-cluster and one says, Do not destroy it, for a blessing is in it, so will I do
for the sake of My servants and I will not destroy them all" (v 8). "He addresses the
exiles, telling them not to despair of the redemption… for even though I will pay
you back for the sins of your fathers by extending your exile on account of their
sins and yours, I will not abandon you. In any event I will take you out of the exile
and bring you back to your land after you have received your full punishment
(RaDaK on v 8). "And I will bring forth a seed out of JACOB" (v 9) – "Included in
'Jacob' are the Ten Tribes" (RaDaK ad loc.). God promises that His chosen servants
will eventually inherit the Land of Israel and Jerusalem (vv 9-10). However he
warns that the rebels who have turned to idolatry will be marked out for the sword
(vv 11-12).

The idolaters "set out a table for Gad and fill the cup of liquor for Meni…" (v 11).
Our commentators explain that Gad (="Fortune") was the name of an idol
representing a constellation (Rashi ad loc.) while Meni represented a different
constellation, or possibly Jupiter, or all of the seven main planets collectively (see
RaDaK ad loc.). However, if we open our eyes to the letters on the page of our
Bible before us, we can also see that this verse explicitly refers to the most
prevalent idolatry of all times until today, whose devotees may say "In God we
trust" (in the U.S.A. where this motto is printed on the dollar bill, they pronounce it
as "GAD") while in fact they offer their full libation-measure of worship to the god
called MONEY (which is as valid a transliteration of our Hebrew text as "Meni").
In verses 13-14 God contrasts the reward of the righteous in the world to come
with the shame of the wicked. "The matter can be compared to a king who invited
his servants to a feast without setting a time. The intelligent ones dressed up and
adorned themselves and sat at the entrance to the king's palace… but the fools
continued with their usual activities… Suddenly the king called his servants. The
intelligent ones entered beautifully adorned while the fools came in filthy. The king
was delighted with the intelligent ones and angry with the fools…" (Shabbos 153a).

God will then "call His servants by another name, so that he who blesses himself on
the earth shall bless himself by the God of truth (ELOKEY AMEN)…" (v 16). "For the
fear of God will be upon everyone and the earth will be filled with understanding,
and whoever on earth rejoices and takes pride will bless himself by the name of the
God of truth, i.e. he will rejoice that he is the servant of the God of truth and
faithfulness, who showed Himself reliable in keeping this promise, namely that 'the
former troubles will be forgotten' [for peace will reign]" (Rashi on v 16). Some
Breslover Chassidim may also be inclined to read a contemporary allusion into the
letters of AMEN, which are the same as those of the city of UMAN where Rabbi
Nachman lies buried!

"For behold I will create new heavens and a new earth…" (v 17). Rashi explains
that there will be a change among the guardian angels of the nations in heaven and
that the angels of Israel will then be supreme, and this will be paralleled on earth.
However Rashi also gives weight to the opinion of those who say that there will be
new heavens quite literally (MAMASH). Until this happens it would be foolish to
pretend to know exactly what these "new heavens" will be like.

In the new future order, "There shall no more be an infant who lives a few days nor
an old man that has not filled his days…" (v 20). RaDaK states that "at that time
they will not say of an old man that he has lived a full span until he is from three to
five hundred years old or more as in the first generations after the creation of the
world" (RaDaK ad loc.).

In verse 23 we learn that in time to come people will be blessed with exactly what
we pray for every day, "that we should not labor in vain or bring forth for
confusion" (from the words of the prayer UVA LE-TZION adapted from this verse).
People will live harmoniously with their children and children's children, and even
before they call, God will answer them (v 24, quoted in the fast-day ANENU prayer).

"The wolf and the lamb shall feed together and the lion shall eat straw like an ox…"
The Midrash explains that we find that Esau will fall at the hands of the children of
Joseph, as it says, "The house of Esau will be for STRAW and the house of Joseph a
FLAME" (Obadiah 1:18). However, we find no reference there to his falling at the
hands of the other tribes, who are compared to wild beasts. Therefore it says that
'the lion shall eat STRAW like the ox', teaching that those tribes that are compared
to a lion, i.e. Judah and Dan, will be just like Joseph, who is compared to an ox,
and together they will consume the one who is compared to straw (Rashi on v 25).

Chapter 66
"So says HaShem: The heavens are My throne and the earth is My footstool: where
is the house that you would build for Me and where is the place of My rest?" (v 1).
"Now he goes back to rebuking the wicked people of his generation, castigating
them over the sacrifices they bring at the same time as acting wickedly, just as he
chastised them at the beginning of the book (Is. 1:11): 'Why do I need the
abundance of your sacrifices?'" (RaDaK on verse 1 of our present chapter.). "The
heavens are My throne" – "I do not need your Temple" (Rashi). RaDaK explains
that the only purpose of the Temple was to provide a special place for the people to
come in order to pray and offer sacrifices – i.e. to rouse their hearts to God and
burn up all their evil thoughts like an object burned on the altar. If the people bring
their sacrifices while continuing to act wickedly, this thwarts the entire purpose of
the Temple (RaDaK ibid.).

Thus He castigates those who bring a fat ox after having beaten its owner and
stealing it, or any similar-kinds of ill-gotten "sacrifices", which are despicable in
God's eyes (v 3). He warns the hypocrites who make an outer show of piety while
following their own abominations that He will bring against them the thing they
most fear (v 3).

On the other hand, Isaiah's final message of comfort in the concluding, prophecy
here at the climax of his book is addressed to "those who tremble (HA-HAREDIM) at
His words" (v 5). These are the HAREDIM until today – not those for whom religion
is an outward show, but those who truly fear HaShem in their very hearts and take
the responsibility of keeping His Torah with the utmost seriousness, SHOMRIM
KALAH KE-CHAMURAH, observing the lightest commandment with the same care as
the most stringent.

Rashi's rendering of verse 5 is: "Hear the word of HaShem, those who tremble at
His words: your brothers, who have hated you and driven you out, have said, It is
through OUR greatness that God takes glory, for we are closer to Him than you.
However, the prophet replies that it is not as they say, but rather, we shall see
YOUR joy (i.e. that of the HAREDIM) while THEY (i.e. the sinners and enemies of
the HAREDIM) will be ashamed" (see Rashi on v 5).

This will come about at the time of the war of Gog and Magog and the final
redemption at the end of days. The war of Gog and Magog, which is the central
theme of the remainder of this closing chapter of Isaiah, is alluded to in verse 6: "A
voice of tumult from the city, a voice from the Temple , the voice of Hashem
rendering recompense to His enemies". Our commentators explain that this refers
to the time of Mashiach: the "enemies" are the armies of Gog and Magog, of whom
it is said that "HaShem will go out and fight the nations" (Zechariah 14:3; see
Metzudas and RaDaK on verse 6 of our present chapter).

Verses 7f compare the redemption of Zion (the Shechinah) to her "giving birth" to a
ZACHAR, a male: this refers to the future revelation of ZEIR ANPIN – the absolute
unity of God who has complete power over all creation. Thus verse 8 asks "Who
(MI) has heard such as this, who (MI) has seen such things?" alluding to the crown
of BINAH upon the head of ZEIR ANPIN.

"Shall I bring to the birth and not cause to bring forth?" (v 9) – "Do I bring a
woman to the birth-stool and not open her womb to bring out her baby? Could it be
that I would begin something and not be able to complete it?" (Rashi ad loc.).
"Surely I am the One who has put strength into the hands of all the nations – how
could it be that I will not put the power into YOUR hands?" (Metzudas David ad loc.).

Rejoice with Jerusalem… exult for joy with her, all you that did mourn for her" (v
10) – "From here we learn that all who mourn over the destruction of Jerusalem will
merit to see her in her time of joy, while whoever does not mourn over Jerusalem
will not see her joy" (Taanis 30b).

"For thus says HaShem: Behold I will extend peace to her like a river…" (v 12) –
"Peace from the nations, who will come from every corner to enquire after their
wellbeing, bringing them offerings… Just like a flowing river runs fast, so their glory
and wealth will come running to them" (RaDaK ad loc.).

"For behold HaShem will come with fire and His chariots like a storm…" (v 15) –
"He will come with the fury of fire against the wicked… for with the fire of hell He
will judge His enemies" (Rashi on vv 15-16). "The prophet is saying that He will
judge Gog and Magog with fire, as it says in the prophecy of Ezekiel (38:22), and
what it says there about how each man's sword will be against his brother is the
same as the sword of HaShem in our verse. This sword will be 'against ALL flesh',
as it says in the prophecy of Zechariah (14:2), 'I shall gather ALL the nations to
Jerusalem for war" (RaDaK on v 16).

Verse 17 tells us who will be the main components of the forces of Gog and Magog.
"Those who sanctify themselves and purify themselves in the gardens" are people
who present themselves as being pure and holy while in fact they are impure.
RaDaK (ad loc.) states that "these are the Ishmaelites, who purify their bodies and
perform frequent ablutions yet are impure because of their evil, filthy deeds. They
make a pretense of being pure but they are not". RaDaK states that "those who eat
the flesh of the swine" are "the NOTZRIM, because the Ishmaelites do not eat the
flesh of the swine. However those who eat 'the detestable thing and the mouse' are
the Ishmaelites since they do indeed eat them" (RaDaK on v 17.

The verse says that "together they shall perish" (v 17). RaDaK ad loc. comments:
"'Together', i.e. the Notzrim and the Ishmaelites, will perish in the war of Gog and
Magog, because these two empires hold sway in this world, and this is the fourth
empire in the visions of Daniel. They are both considered as one empire since
neither one has sole power in the world… I shall bring it about that all the nations
will come with Gog and Magog, in order that they shall see how My glory will be
magnified… God will bring it about and put it into their hearts to come, cf. Ezekiel
38:4 and Zechariah 14:12" (RaDaK on vv 17-18).

"And I will set a sign among them…" (v 19): "Fugitives will be saved from the war,
and I will leave them alive so that they may go to spread tidings in the remote
islands about My glory which they witnessed in the war, and even upon those
fugitives I shall put one of the signs [of the plague etc.] with which their
companions were judged so as to show far-off people, 'This is the plague with
which those who attacked Jerusalem were smitten'" (Rashi ad loc.).

On hearing this news, the inhabitants of these far-off places will themselves bring
the Israelites who still remain in their regions to the Land of Israel (v 20; see
RaDaK ad loc.).

"And I will also take from them for Cohanim (priests) and Levites" (v 21) – "That is
to say, even from among those who were sunk among the gentiles in far-off islands
[the British Isles, the Americas, Australia, Japan etc. etc.…???] and who did not go
up from the exile together with their brothers the House of Israel and who may
possibly have changed the religion somewhat, I will nevertheless take Cohanim and
Levites from them – i.e. those who were originally from priestly and Levitical
families: I will take them to be priests to minister before Me and Levites to sing and
play harps and lyres" (RaDaK on v 21).

"For as the new heavens and the new earth which I shall make are standing before
Me…" (v 22) – "It does not say here 'new heavens and a new earth' but rather 'THE
new heavens and THE new earth'. Even the heavens and earth that are destined to
be created in the future were already created in the Six Days of Creation, as it says
in Genesis 1:1: 'In the beginning God created ES Hashamayim ve-ES Ha-aretz', i.e.
the heavens that arose in thought and the earth that arose in thought" (Bereishis
Rabbah 1).

"…so shall your seed and your name stand" (v 22). "You in whose days the
redemption will take place should not worry lest your seed after you will go into
exile from their land and their name become lost because of exile. THIS WILL NOT
HAPPEN, because your seed after you will remain in the same state of goodness
and wellbeing that you will enjoy after the redemption UNTIL ETERNITY, like the
days of the heaven upon the earth. For the name of Israel will never be lost, and
they will never again be exiled from their land as the nations who come with Gog
and Magog against Jerusalem will think. They will intend to exile Israel and destroy
their name, and this is why it says that it will not be as they think, FOR YOUR SEED
WILL ENDURE LIKE THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH (RaDaK on v 22).

May HaShem make us worthy to see the day when "every new moon and every
Sabbath, all flesh shall come to bow down to the ground before Me says HaShem"
(v 23).

* * * Isaiah chapter 66 is read as the Haftarah when Rosh Chodesh (the New
Moon) falls on Shabbos. * * *
 Book of Jeremiah
Chapter 1
JEREMIAH SON OF HILKIYAH

Verse 1: Jeremiah was born in the town of Anathot in the territory of Benjamin
north of Jerusalem to a family of priests whose line went back to Eviathar and
Ahimelech who were banished to Anathot by King Solomon (Kings I, 2:27).
Although from a family of priests, it appears that Jeremiah may not have served in
the Temple sacrificial rituals, although Targum Yonathan (Jer. 1:1) describes him as
being "from the heads of the guard of the priests from among the AMARKALAYA
that were in Jerusalem". In the Temple, the AMARKALIM were officers no less than
seven in number who held the keys to the Temple Courtyard (AZARA; Rambam,
Laws of the Temple Vessels 4:17). RaDaK on Jer. 1:1 states that Jeremiah's father
Hilkiyah is the same as Hilkiyah the son of Shafan who found the Sefer Torah in the
Temple in the time of King Josiah (II Kings 22:8).

Vv 2-3: Jeremiah received Torah from the prophet Tzepahniah (Rambam, Intro. to
Mishneh Torah), and his outstanding student was Baruch ben Neriyah, who was the
teacher of Ezra. Jeremiah prophesied during the stormy final years of the First
Temple, from the thirteenth year of the reign of the great revivalist King Josiah in
the year 3298 = 462 B.C.E., through the eleven years of Jehoyakim and the eleven
years of Tzedekiah, the last king of Judah, who was exiled with the destruction of
the Holy Temple in 3338 = 422 B.C.E. Thus Jeremiah prophesied for 40 years. He
wrote the work called by his name and also the Book of Kings and Eichah
(Lamentations). It is said that the wise Ben Sira ("Ecclesiasticus") was Jeremiah's
son (SIRA has the same gematria as YIRMIYAHU).

THE RELUCTANT PROPHET

V 5: "Before I formed you in the belly…" – God showed Adam each of the
generations that were to come and their prophets" (Rashi). The soul of Jeremiah
was fore-destined for the awesome and terrible task of rebuking a people that
would not listen and who were heading for destruction. "…a prophet to the
NATIONS" – "to Israel, who are conducting themselves like the nations" (Rashi).
God told Moses He would establish a prophet like him over Israel: this was
Jeremiah, who like Moses rebuked Israel and likewise prophesied for forty years
(Rashi). While Jeremiah traced his lineage to Aaron the Priest, he was also
descended from Rahab the Convert.

V 6: "And I said, AHAH, O Lord God" – "this is an expression of YELALAH" (Rashi),

howling and mourning. "…behold I do not know to speak, for I am a lad" – "I am
not fit to rebuke them. When Moses rebuked them, it was near to his death and he
was already noteworthy in their eyes because of the many miracles he had wrought
for them…. But I am at the beginning of my mission – must I come to rebuke
them?" (Rashi).
Vv 7-8: God fortifies Jeremiah, telling him not to fear the people. God puts forth His
"hand" and puts prophesy into the mouth of Jeremiah. It is said that Jeremiah was
born on 9 Av, the date of the destruction of the Temple. The name YIRMI-YAHU
means "God elevates". In Jeremiah's time, God raised up the Attribute of Din,
Judgment, and an enemy arose who raised his hand against Jerusalem (Psikta
Rabah).

Jeremiah began his prophecy in the town of Anathot, rebuking the people over their
bad behavior and idolatry. However they mocked and abused him and his
detractors included members of his own family.

Vv 11-12: The almond rod. Almond in Hebrew is SHAKED, which means to be quick,
because the almond tree takes only 21 days to bring its fruits from their initial
formation to ripeness (Rashi) – symbolizing the speed with which the judgment was
to come.

Vv 14-16: The boiling pot heading from the north was a symbol of the coming
invasion by the Babylonians, who would bring all the families and kingdoms of the
north to sit at the gates of Jerusalem and carry out God's judgment.

V 18: Jeremiah's mission was to rebuke the entire people, "the kings of Judah , its
officers, its priests and the people of the land". He spared no one. He reproved
them over the idolatry that was rampant side by side with the outward observance
of the Temple rituals and feasts, over the robbery and oppression practiced by the
mighty and powerful, over the corruption of the priests and those who spoke in the
name of the Torah, and over the false prophets who were soothing the people into
complacency with rosy promises of peace and glory.

We may ask how the targets of Jeremiah's rebuke relate to ourselves and the world
around us. The idolatry that he castigated was far more sophisticated than being
merely a matter of bowing to wood and stone images. People worshiped the work
of their own hands, putting their entire trust and effort into intermediaries. Our
technological, money-based, pleasure loving, corruption-ridden world has become
little different: it is just that the idolatry is so hard to isolate and define, not least
because it surrounds us on all sides. Just as in Jeremiah's time, Israel and
Jerusalem are today faced with existential threats that are also a threat to the
future of Jews throughout the Diaspora. The lesson of Jeremiah is that if we will
repent and return to the true Torah of Moses, God will remove these threats and
bring about our redemption. The generation of Jeremiah closed their ears to his
rebuke and continued on their path to destruction. The question is whether we will
do differently and listen to the message of Jeremiah and have the courage to come
back to God in complete TESHUVAH.

• According to the custom of the Sefardim, Jeremiah 1:1-19 and 2:1-3 is read
as the Haftara of Parshas Shemos, Exodus 1:1-6:1.
• Jeremiah 1:1-19 and 2:1-3 is the Haftara of Shabbos MATTOS, first Shabbos
of the "Three Weeks" annual summertime period of mourning leading up to
the fast of TISHA B'AV (9 th Av) commemorating the destruction of the
Temple.
• On the following Shabbos (MAS'AY), second Shabbos of the Three Weeks,
the Haftara is Jeremiah Chapters 2 vv 4-28 (our next chapter) and 3 v 4
(Sephardim add Jer. 4:1-4).
 Chapter 2
Vv 1-3: After the harsh rebukes of the previous chapter, the prophet's beautiful call
for reconciliation in these verses, recalling Israel's going after God into the
wilderness, makes a fitting climax of consolation to the Haftara of the first Shabbos
of the Three Weeks.

Vv 4ff: The rebuke intensifies in the following passage, Haftara of the second
Shabbos of the Three Weeks. What did Israel find wrong with God after all His
goodness and miracles since the Exodus from Egypt?

V 8: Jeremiah spares no one. The highly respectable priests were not asking where
is HaShem. The very experts and teachers of the Torah did not know God. The
popular prophet-pundits speak in the name of idols and go after vanity.

Vv 10ff: The KITHEE'IM are the peoples in the lands of the west, specifically the
Romans (Metzudas David). KEDAR refers to the Arabs (Targum Yonasan). With
these identifications in mind today we might ask why it is that while the Christians
and the Muslims have in most cases not exchanged their faiths for Torah, why is it
that so many Jews today take little or no pride in their own ancestral heritage,
which is the source of all truth and wisdom.

V 13: The evil is twofold: (1) Abandoning God, the source of living waters; (2)
Hewing out broken pits – idols – that cannot contain water. The people of
Jeremiah's time had elaborate astrology-based religions, worshiping the stars and
planets. But these merely transfer the SHEFA ("influence") sent into the world by
God. Why worship the conduit instead of going to the source? (cf. Metzudas David).

V 18: The people of Jeremiah's time calculated that they could protect themselves
against the Babylonians by allying with Egypt and Assyria. Likewise the "leaders" of
contemporary Israel continue to play out the diplomatic game on the international
chessboard, searching for "peace" as if this is possible without repentance and
return to the Torah.

Vv 20-21: The prophet contrasts God's beneficence to Israel with their infidelity.
"And I have planted you as a noble vine (SOREK), wholly a seed of truth (EMES)".
The Hebrew word SOREK has the numerical value of 606. Together with the 7
Commandments of the Children of Noah, the total is 613, alluding to the 613
Commandments of the Torah (Rashi).

V 22: An interesting feature of contemporary civilization is its obsession with bodily

cleanliness combined with a widespread disregard for spiritual and moral
cleanliness.

V 24: Israel has the stubbornness of a wild ass. But those that seek her will find her
"in her month" – an allusion to the period of mourning of the Three Weeks
culminating in the first nine days of the month of Av, time of the Destruction of the
Temple (Rashi).

V 25: The people could save themselves the travails of exile through repentance,
but they feel they cannot repent because they are too far gone on their path of
idolatry and temporal alliances.

V 31: "O generation, SEE the word of HaShem…" It is said that Jeremiah took the
flask of Manna out from the Temple Holy of Holies and displayed it to the people to
show them that the Word of God could change everything and even provide
physical sustenance (Rashi).

V 32: Even in his rebuke, Jeremiah uses terms of endearment, seeking to remind
Israel of her true role as God's pure virgin bride in order to encourage and revive
her.

* * * The passage in Jeremiah 2:4-28 with 3:4 and, according to the Sefardic
custom, 4:1-2, is read as the Haftara of reproof on the second Shabbos of the
Three Weeks * * *

Chapter 3
Jeremiah chapter 3 verses1-5 are a direct continuation of the section that began in
chapter 2 v 29. The conventional chapter break after ch 2 v 37 violates the
continuity of this section. In the closing verses of chapter 2 the prophet rebuked
the people as a wife who abandoned her first husband to run after lovers (cf. 2:32
and 2:26). Now in ch 3 v 1 the prophet says that normally if a man divorces his
wife and she marries another man, she cannot return to her first husband. Yet, as
this verse concludes, despite Israel's having been disloyal, God still says, "Return to
Me".

Vv 4-5: God says, "If only you would from now on call me 'my Father…'" (v 4) but
(v 5) "…behold you (= Israel ) have spoken" – i.e. Israel has said, "We shall not
come back to You any more" (Rashi).

V 6: "And God said to me in the days of Josiah the king…" At that time –
approximately three quarters of a century after the exile of the Ten Tribes, God
instructed Jeremiah to try to bring them back (see v 11). The "backsliding Israel"
mentioned in the present verse alludes to the Ten Tribes, and the verse then
speaks of their sins prior to their exile (Rashi).

Vv 7-10: God had sent prophets (Amos, Hosea etc.) to the Ten Tribes asking them
to repent but they failed to do so and as a result were exiled. Now the prophet
castigates their "treacherous sister," namely Judah, who after having witnessed the
fate that befell the Ten Tribes, failed to draw the proper conclusion and to repent.
The prophet refers to the Ten Tribes as the "backsliding Israel" but uses a far
stronger term – "treacherous" – for Judah. This is because when the Ten Tribes
rebelled, they were the first and had not seen a previous example of rebels who
were punished. Judah, however, had seen what happened to the Ten Tribes yet still
did not take heed.

V 11: Israel (the Ten Tribes) is "more righteous" than Judah because they had no
previous example to learn from. In V 12 God instructs Jeremiah to go to the "north"
– the regions to which the Assyrians exiled the Ten Tribes – in order to bring them
back. Some members of the Ten Tribes did indeed return to Jerusalem in the
eighteenth year of King Josiah (Rashi on v 12).

Vv 13ff: God promises to restore Israel if they will only be aware of their sins and
repent.

V 16: "And it shall come to pass, when you are multiplied and increased in the land,
in those days, says HaShem, they shall say no more: The Ark of the Covenant of
HaShem…" – "What this means is that they will no longer say to one another, Let
us go before the Ark to pray there, because there will be so many people that the
place will not be able to hold them all and they will not all be able to go there."
(Metzudas David). At that time, "wherever they gather, holiness will dwell, and I
will dwell in their assembly as if it is the Ark" (Rashi). We may already be seeing
the fulfillment of this prophecy if we consider how, with the rapidly increasing
numbers of "returnees" in our times, assemblies at the Kotel (Western Wall of the
Temple), Rabbi Nachman's gravesite in Uman, that of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in New
York etc. are so thronged that many people wonder how they will be able to get
near. According to Rashi's comment, God's presence dwells with the people
wherever they are assembled for a holy purpose.

V 18: "In those days the House of Judah will go with the House of Israel …" "They
will join with them and be added to them to be one kingdom" (Rashi).

Vv 19-25: God does not want to put Israel together with the other "sons" – the
heathen nations, and for this reason gave them a beautiful land of their own. God
calls on Israel to return and sends the prophet words of confession and repentance
to put in their mouths (vv 22ff).

Chapter 4
Again and again the prophet repeats his calls to the people to repent.

V 3: The prophet tells the people to learn from farmers who plow their fields in the
summer in order to kill the roots of the weeds so that they will not grow and choke
the newly planted seeds in the winter. Likewise, the people should improve their
behavior before the evil comes upon them. It is no good to sow seeds among
weeds – i.e. to cry to God and expect an answer before cleansing oneself of one's
own evil.

Vv 4ff: The prophet begins to warn of the evil that will come if the people do not
repent.

V 7: "A lion has come up from his thicket" – this refers to Nebuchadnezzar
(Megillah 11a).

V 10: "And I said, AHAH O Lord God, You have greatly deceived this people and
Jerusalem, saying 'You will have peace'…" It was the false prophets who deceived
the people, lulling them into complacency with their promises of peace, with the
result that the people did not repent, laying themselves open to disastrous
consequences.

V 15: "For a voice declares from Dan and announces calamity from Mt Ephraim" –
This is the prophetic voice warning Judah that they will go into exile on account of
their continuing attachment to the idolatries that were practiced under the Ten
Tribes in Dan and on Mt Ephraim (cf. Rashi).

Vv 23-26: "I have seen the land, and behold it was waste and desolate…" The
words "I have seen" recur four times in these verses. The prophet foretells the
coming disaster as if he has already actually seen it.

V 27: "For thus says God: The whole land will be desolate, yet I shall not make a
full end" – Despite the grim message of coming calamity, God's compassion is
unending and He promises that the calamity will not be total because some of the
inhabitants of the land will survive and even though they will go into exile, they will
still be able to return and be restored in the future.
 Chapter 5
Vv 1-9 analyze the moral decay of the people that is bringing upon them the
coming calamity.

It is impossible to find a single trustworthy person in Jerusalem. People invoke the

name of HaShem, but they do so to swear falsely.

V 3: Even though God has struck and chastised the people, they are not affected:
they refuse to see the hand of God behind the blows they have received.

V 5: It is not only the common people that have descended so low, but even the
great people, who should have known better.

V 6: The "lion" alludes to the coming exile to Babylon; the "wolf" to Medea, and the
"leopard" to Greece, while those who survive servitude to these nations will be
"torn to pieces", i.e. by Edom (Rashi).

Vv 7-9: How can God not punish the people for their corruption and immorality?

V 10: The prophet calls upon the enemies to attack Jerusalem, yet even so, he tells
them not to make a full end to the people. Even in anger, God will show
compassion.

V 12: "They have denied HaShem…" The people deny that God watches over and
controls everything and they refuse to believe that God will requite their sins. They
are encouraged in this by their false-prophet soothsayers.

V 14: Jeremiah prophesies that precisely because of the people's denial of

providence, they will suffer the onslaught of the Babylonians. In v 15 Babylon is
called an "ancient nation" because the Babylonians were the first to rebel against
God with the building of the Tower of Babylon (Rashi).

V 18: Despite his grim prophecies, Jeremiah again and again promises that the
destruction will not be total, because of God's endless compassion.

Vv 22ff: God has set limits to the creation. Despite the great power of the sea, it is
unable to cross its boundaries and sweep over the sand to go inland. But Israel –
who were created with free will and commanded to observe boundaries in their
conduct – have crossed all the boundaries with their rebellion.

Vv 26-28: More than anything, the prophet castigates the people for their greed
and rapacity and the social injustices they perpetrate.

V 31: The moral degradation is the result of the false prophets prophesying that all
will be well. This has encouraged the priests (who should have taught the people
Torah) to rule with force, and the people have come to love the corrupt state of
affairs.

Chapter 6
Vv 1ff: Again the prophet visualizes the coming onslaught of the enemies, forcing
the people to take refuge in their fortified cities, and he depicts the herds of foreign
armies invading the country.
It must be understood that Jeremiah was prophesying at a time when the First
Temple was still standing and fully functioning. The corrupt establishment of the
priests and their false prophets clearly believed that they were immune from harm
because of their outward practice of the Temple rituals. Jeremiah's prophecies of
coming calamity flew in the face of the "political correctness" of the time, leading
him to suffer enormous opposition, abuse and even imprisonment, as we find in the
later portions of the book. We might better understand the intensity of the rage and
anger he aroused if we imagine how the established leaders of major present-day
powers would react to a "credible" prophet who stood up and started painting
pictures of their imminent destruction, striking terror into the hearts of the
populace. This is why Jeremiah says:

Vv 10f: "To whom shall I speak and testify that they may hear: behold, their ear is
stopped up and they are not able to hear; behold the world of HaShem has become
a matter of reproach for them in which they take no delight. Therefore I am full of
the fury of HaShem, I am weary with holding it in…"

V 14: Jeremiah is forced to tell people the truth, because the false prophets have
"healed" the wounds of the people by lulling them into complacency, promising
them "Peace! Peace! – but there is no peace!" This phrase rings as true as ever
today, as the secular leaders and pundits of Israel repeatedly promise peace but
Israel knows only hostility and war!

V 16: God appeals to the people to come to their senses and ask what would be the
good way to go, but the people refuse.

V 20: The people continue offering the Temple incense and other sacrifices, but God
takes no pleasure in the outer forms of service without the inner devotion of the
heart and soul.

Chapter 7
Vv 1ff: God instructs Jeremiah to enter the Temple itself and preach to the
worshippers there, telling them not to trust that the holy Sanctuary will provide
them with immunity from the coming onslaught. In verse 4, the phrase "the
Sanctuary of HaShem" is repeated three times, alluding to the three annual pilgrim
festivals (Rashi). Despite the fact that the people continued to observe the outer
forms of divine service as laid down in the Torah, nothing would save them from
calamity except a return to the Torah code of justice (vv 5ff). The people cannot
steal, murder, fornicate, swear falsely and worship idols and then enter the Temple
and call on God's name and expect to be saved.

Vv 12-14: Jeremiah asks the people to reflect that in the time of Eli the High Priest,
the presence of the Sanctuary and the Ark of the Covenant did not save Israel from
disaster at the hands of the Philistines owing to the corruption of Eli's sons (I
Samuel ch 4). Just as the Sanctuary in Shilo was destroyed, so even the Temple in
Jerusalem would not be spared unless the people repented.

V 16: God tells Jeremiah not even to pray on behalf of the people, because He will
not listen.

V 17-18: This is because the entire nation, men, women and children are swept up
in a frenzy of idolatry, making "cakes" (or windows? – Midrash) for the "queen of
heaven (MELECHETH HASHOMAYIM)". The identity of this idolatrous cult is the
subject of various opinions. Rashi holds that a particular planet was considered to
be the ruler of the heavens; Metzudas David holds that this was the sun. However,
RaDaK states that MELECHETH is not from the root of rulership but rather from
MELACHAH, the "WORK of heaven", i.e. ALL the stars and planets. Later religions
developed their own versions of thE cult of the "queen of heaven".

V 21: Having descended to such a level of degradation, the people would be better
off ceasing the Temple animal sacrifices and eating the meat themselves instead.

V 29: The people should be tearing out their hair in agony and consternation over
the evils perpetrated instead of continuing with the idolatrous cults they were
following.

V 31 refers to the practice of Molech-worship, in which fathers handed over their

children to the priests to be passed through the fire. This is one of the most serious
prohibitions of the Torah (Leviticus 20:2ff). It is said that King Ahaz had offered his
son Hezekiah to Molech, and the cult was evidently thriving several generations
later in the time of Jeremiah.

Chapter 8
V 1: "At that time, says God, they will bring out the bones of the kings of Judah …"
The rabbis commented that it is a good sign for a person when punishment is
exacted from him after his death, such as if he is left unlamented and unburied, or
if his body is eaten by a wild animal or gets soaked with rain during his funeral etc.
as this atones for his sins (Sifri).

V 3: "And death shall be chosen rather than life by all the remnant that will remain
of this evil family…" Even though the survivors will see how the dead are demeaned,
the pain of staying alive will be even greater and they would prefer to be dead
(Rashi).

V 6: Metzudas David renders this verse: "Could it be that they will fall through their
sins and be unable to arise (as if to say, does repentance not help a person to rise
from his decline?) If they return and repent, will not God also return from His
burning anger?"

V 8ff: The prophet castigates the people for believing themselves to be so wise and
so devoted to the Torah that this would protect them from calamity. Those very
"sages" will be put to shame and be broken and captured.

Vv 10-11 are almost an exact repeat of ch 6 vv 13-14. The prophet's way is to go

around and around, driving his points home.

• The section in Jeremiah 7:21-34, 8:1-3 and 9:22-23 is read as the Haftara
of Parshas Tzav, Leviticus 6:1-8:36
• The section from Chapter 8 v 13 until Chapter 9 v 23 depicting the coming
horrors of the invasion of the Babylonians is read as the Haftara on the Fast
of Tisha B'Av (9 th of Av) commemorating the destruction of the Temple.

Chapter 9
At the end of the previous chapter, having despaired of finding "medicine" to heal
his people, the distraught yet unfailingly eloquent Jeremiah poured out his tears
and grief over the casualties of the coming calamity.
Now, in Ch 9 v 1, he wishes he could go far away from his people into the
wilderness, because they are all adulterers – an assembly of traitors.

This introduces his analysis of the evils of the people. Because of their lies and lack
of awareness and knowledge of God, the social fabric has deteriorated to the point
where nobody can trust his own brother.

V 3: "For every brother ACTS SUBTLEY… (Heb. = AKOV YA'AKOV)". The intended
wisdom of Jacob and his descendants has turned into craftiness and treachery.

Vv 6-8: There is no way except for God to requite their sins.

Vv 9ff: Jeremiah is already weeping in advance over the devastation that he can
foresee coming to Judea and Jerusalem.

Vv 11-13: What is the essential flaw that has brought about such deterioration to
the point that the land will be destroyed? The answer is given in Verse 12: "And
HaShem said, Because they have abandoned My Torah that I put before them…"
Earlier in this chapter, God said, "…and Me they have not known" (v 2), yet this
was not what caused the destruction. Nor was it the people's idolatry, bloodshed
and adultery. It was their abandonment of the Torah, ceasing to study constantly.
"Would that they would have abandoned Me but continued to observe My Torah, for
if they had been occupied in the Torah it would certainly have brought them back to
Me" (Midrash).

Vv 16ff: A terrible new element would now enter the national life of Israel and leave
its stamp on the people and their religious culture until today: dirges and mourning.
These were not a constant part of the spiritual life of Israel in the times when they
still were faithful to God, but from the time of the destruction of the Temple and the
exile until today, KINOS ("lamentations", "dirges") have become part of the regular
prayer rituals because of the many disasters the people have suffered and the
continuing threats we face.

Vv 22-23: There is a natural tendency for people to be particularly proud of three

main endowments that God gives: (1) wisdom and intelligence; (2) strength and
power; (3) wealth. Yet for those who possess them, there is truly is nothing to be
proud about since they are all gifts of God, and in any case, they are all worthless
in the end without the pursuit of the knowledge of God and the concomitant
practice of kindness, justice and charity that this entails. Verse 23 concludes the
Tisha B'Av Haftara, which began in Ch 8 v 13.

Vv 24-25: The coming punishments will strike "all who are circumcised yet with the
foreskin". If a person is technically circumcised yet he "pulls the foreskin back on"
because his HEART is uncircumcised and he acts accordingly, his physical
circumcision will not help. All the uncircumcised nations will also suffer. The nations
listed in V 25 were all "neighbors of the Land of Israel and suffered in its wake soon
afterwards, as written in Ezekiel ch 29 and as detailed in Seder Olam" (Rashi on v
25).

Chapter 10
Vv 1-10: The prophet calls on Israel to cease their imitation of the nations and their
practice of divination through astrology – which makes it seem as if everything is
determined by the stars and that there is therefore no place for man to repent and
take his destiny in his own hands of his own free will. Jeremiah mocks the idols of
gold and silver which the people make, that have no power to either help them or
harm them. None is remotely comparable to HaShem, who rules over all the
nations. Verses 6-7 are recited in the Synagogue as part of the introduction to
SELICHOS (the supplicatory prayers recited during the period of repentance from
the beginning of Elul until Yom Kippur and at other junctures).

V 11 in the original, the text here breaks into the Aramaic language. Rashi (ad loc.)
explains that this verse is a message that Jeremiah sent to Yechoniah king of Judah
and the other exiles from Jerusalem who had already been taken to Babylon 18
years before the destruction of the Temple (cf. Esther 2:6), explaining to them how
to reply to the KASDIM (Chaldeans) in their own language when they would tell
them to worship idols.

Vv 12-16: Compared to the supreme power of God, the idols of the nations are
mere vanity, and they are not part of the portion of Israel , who are God's inherited
tribe.

V 17: It is because of God's very greatness that the people's sins are such a grave
affront, and thus the prophet advises them to gather in their wares from outside
the city and prepare for the inevitable siege.

V 18ff: God is going to sling the people out of their land. The prophet cannot stand
the prospect of the coming calamity, but he knows it is inevitable since the people
and their leaders stubbornly refuse to repent and seek out God.

Vv 23ff: The prophet knows that whatever is to happen is in the hands of God, and
he knows that punishment is inevitable. He prays that it should be measured with
restraint and not carried out in anger so as not to "diminish" and destroy the entire
people.

Instead, Jeremiah prays to God to pour out his wrath on the heathen nations, who
have never wanted to know Him or call upon His name, and who have repeatedly
persecuted the descendants of Jacob (see Metzudas David on v 25). On the Pesach
Seder Night following the recital of the main part of the Haggadah and the festive
meal, it is customary in every home to open the front door and solemnly recite
verse 25.

Chapter 11
Vv 1-8: God wanted to renew His Covenant with Israel. The "Covenant" refers to
the conditions of the Covenant as written in the Torah in Deut. Ch 28, see v 69
there, specifying the blessings for obeying the Torah and the curses for disobeying.
These were the detailed conditions of the Covenant that Moses had struck between
God and Israel at Horeb (Sinai), as recounted in Exodus 24:7 (see RaDaK on Jer.
11:1-2).

V 5: Israel 's ability to live in the "land flowing with milk and honey" that God has
given them is conditional on their observance of this Covenant.

Vv 9-10: However, Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem are in a conspiracy to

repeat the sins of the first fathers and not to listen to the Torah: they have
breached the Covenant.
V 11ff: Under the conditions of the Covenant itself, they must therefore be
punished with the curses it entails for disobedience, for instead of unifying God's
name they have followed a multitude of idols.

V 14: Once again, God tells Jeremiah not to pray on behalf of the people.

V 15: "What has My beloved to do in My house…? Israel is God's treasured nation,

but now that they have violated the Covenant, what business do they have to enter
His Temple? "They have caused the hallowed flesh to pass from upon you" – "they
have even ceased to practice circumcision (the sign of the Covenant) on their flesh,
whereby they were sanctified to Me" (Rashi).

V 16: Israel is compared to a beautiful olive tree because the leaves of the olive
tree are moist throughout the year (RaDaK). Having compared Israel to the olive
tree, the continuation of the verse uses corresponding images of the coming
destruction.

V 18 opens a new section (PARSHAH PETHUHAH): The prophet says that God has
informed him of the coming evil, and this is why he knows about it, and that He
then informed him of their evil deeds which were the cause of this decree. As we
see from the continuation, these were specifically the evil deeds of the people of
Anathoth, who were conspiring against Jeremiah.

V 19: "But I am like a docile lamb that is led to the slaughter." As God's prophet
Jeremiah had no choice but to warn the people of the coming calamity. Since they
did not want to hear, they wanted to kill him like a lamb being led to the slaughter.
"Let us destroy the tree with its fruit (BE-LACHMO)" Targum and Rashi state that
they wanted to put poison in his food – BE-LACHMO, "in his bread".

V 21: From this verse and also from and indications in the next chapter (v 5 as
explained by the commentators), it appears that at this point it was primarily the
men of Jeremiah's own town of Anathoth who were conspiring against him,
indicating that he was mainly centered there in this part of his career, (although in
ch 7 v 2 we did find that God told him to stand in the gates of the Temple in
Jerusalem and prophesy). RaDaK asks why in verse 18 Jeremiah said "God
informed me" (of the evil of the men of Anathoth) while from v 21 it appears that
the men of Anathoth openly told Jeremiah they would kill him if he did not stop
prophesying. RaDaK suggests that Jeremiah heard their threats yet did not believe
they would actually carry them out, but God knew that they were quite serious.

Vv 22f: As a result of their evil, the people of Anathoth were destined not to go into
exile but to be put to the sword.

Chapter 12
V 1: Now the raises a question about how God runs the world. "Why does the way
of the wicked prosper?" This can be understood as referring specifically to the great
success of Nebuchadnezzar, whom God would enable to destroy His Temple, or
alternatively to the apparent great success of the men of Anathoth (Rashi).

V 2: "You are near in their mouth but far from their kidneys!" We should all take
this verse to heart. We pray and offer lip-service to God regularly, but do we know
and feel Him inside us as we sift and sort out which way we will go at each moment
every day just as the kidneys constantly filter impurities from the blood?
V 3: The prophet asks God to help him against his enemies in Anathoth.

V 4: God's reply to Jeremiah: The afflictions that the land will suffer are on account
of the evil of its inhabitants, who say "He does not see our end" – i.e. "it is not
revealed to Him how we will end up" (Rashi). The people denied prophecy and
denied God's providence over creation.

V 5: "If you have run with footmen and they have wearied you, how can you
contend with horses…?" The "footmen" are Jeremiah's relatives, priests like himself,
and the men of his own city, who are coming to kill him (v 6). The "horses" are the
mighty leaders of Judah in Jerusalem. The "land of peace" is Anathoth while the
"thickets of the Jordan" are the high places near the river, the haunt of lions – the
leaders of Judah in Jerusalem . God is asking Jeremiah, "If your own relatives the
priests are coming to kill you, all the more will the leaders of Judah rise to kill you"
(Rashi). Metzudas David explains that Jeremiah did not yet know in practice the full
extent of the evil of the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, and therefore God
explained it to him through the metaphor of the footmen and the horses, thereby
indicating just how great was their evil. This could only be requited by bringing
Nebuchadnezzar against them.

V 7: It is because of the people's evil that God has given "the dearly beloved of My
soul" – Israel – into the hands of her enemies.

V 9: "Is My inheritance like a speckled bird of prey?" – "Are they like a bird of prey
that is filthy with blood, around which the other birds gather? Another explanation:
There is a certain bird that is colored, and all the other birds gather against it to eat
it because they hate it" (Rashi).

Vv 10-12 continue God's lament over the coming calamity that will afflict His
beloved people. It is noteworthy how expressions of love and affection for Israel are
mingled with the prophecies of the coming calamities. God chastises out of love.

Vv 14-17: Having prophesied about the calamity that would befall Jerusalem,
Jeremiah now prophesies against Israel's neighbors – these are Egypt, Ammon,
Moab, Edom, Tyre and Sidon: all of them were smitten around the time of the
destruction of the Temple, and all were later restored (Rashi on vv 14-15).

V 16: If members of these nations would convert, they would be built up together
with Israel (Rashi).

Chapter 13
ALLEGORY OF THE BELT vv 1-11:

"V 1: "Go and buy for yourself a linen belt…" – "The reason why Jeremiah was
instructed to put the belt on his loins was so that it would become full of sweat and
decay quickly" (Metzudas David).

V 4: "…and rise and go to the Euphrates…" – "The River Euphrates was the
boundary of the Land of Israel. This was an indication that when the people would
go out of the Land of Israel to Babylon, their pride would be broken" (RaDaK).

V 11: "For just as the belt is fastened to the loins of a man, so I fastened to Myself
the entire House of Israel and the entire House of Judah." The Midrash says: "Woe
to the wicked and those attached to them! Happy are the Tzaddikim and those
attached to them. In the generation of the flood, '…and He blotted out all existence
from man to animals…' If the men sinned, why did the animals and birds have to
suffer? Woe to the wicked and those attached to them, because the wicked bring
down punishment on themselves and all connected to them [including even the
animals and birds]… But see what is written of Hananniyah, Misha-el and Azariah
when they came out of Nebuchadnezzar's furnace: '…their cloaks were
UNCHANGED'! If the clothes that were attached to the Tzaddikim went into the fire
but were not harmed, how much more so will Israel be saved from the judgment of
hell, since they are attached to God, the 'Tzaddik of the Universe', Who is alive and
enduring, as it is written, '…as the belt is fastened to the loins of a man etc.'"
(Tanchuma).

ALLEGORY OF THE FLASK vv 12-14:

"The flask was to serve as an allegory for two things: (1) Just as "every flask is
filled with wine", i.e. the flask itself is filled, and the wine is even absorbed into its
earthenware walls, so the people would be filled with drunkenness on every side.
Drunkenness is a metaphor for a multitude of troubles, because just as a drunkard
is unconscious of what he does, so one afflicted by a succession of troubles is filled
with consternation and does not know what he is doing. (2) When a person strikes
one earthenware flask with another, the shards are scattered. Similarly, so there
would be conflict among the people because of their many troubles to the point that
even fathers and sons would be in conflict with each other, and they would be
destroyed not only by their enemies but by their own selves" (RaDaK on v 12).

Vv 15-17 call the people to repent while there is still time.

V 17: "And if you do not heed this, My soul will cry in its hidden chambers…" – "God
has a certain place where He weeps, and it is called 'the hidden chambers'. But how
can it be that God 'weeps' when Rav Papo said that sadness cannot be attributed to
God since it says, 'Spendor and glory are before Him, strength and JOY in His place'
(I Chron. 16:27)? There is no contradiction, because the tears are in the 'inner
chambers' while the joy is in the 'outer chambers'… (Talmud Hagigah 5b). Without
entering into the complex philosophical questions relating to whether and in what
sense tears and joy can be attributed to God, our verse and the Talmudic comment
in Hagigah do indicate that God somehow "grieves" over (and cares about) the
suffering men bring upon themselves. And in order that earth should reflect heaven,
up until recent times the inner circle of Tzaddikim of the "Heavenly Jerusalem"
(Yerushalayim shel Ma'alah) had a secret chamber hewn into the rocks near the
spring of Shiloah ("Silwan") with a door that could be locked, and they would go
there individually at appointed times in order to weep "in the hidden chambers"
over the exile of Israel.

On a positive note, the Midrash notes that verse 17 says that "the FLOCK of
HaShem will be captured" using the singular. Prior to the exile, the priests, the
Levites and the Israelites were separate castes or "flocks" but when they went into
exile they became ONE flock – their suffering brought them to unity (Yalkut
Shimoni).

Vv 18-21: Depiction of Judea suffering the throes of destruction:

V 18: "Say to the king and the queen mother, 'Humble yourselves, sit, for your
dominions have collapsed…'" The king in this prophecy refers to King Jehoiachin,
whom Nebuchadnezzar exiled to Babylon eighteen years before the destruction of
the Temple.
V 21: "…you yourself have trained them as rulers over you" – "You sent envoys to
the Chaldeans to bring back their idols from there in order to serve them, see
Ezekiel 23:16" (Rashi).

Vv 22-27 explain the reason for the punishment and destruction awaiting Jerusalem.

Chapter 14
Vv 1-6: Description of the coming drought and the cry of Jerusalem. The depiction
of the plight of the hinds and the wild donkeys adds even greater pathos.

Vv 7-9: The prophet prays and begs for mercy on the people. "If our sins have
testified against us…" (v 7): This verse is incorporated into the additional
supplicatory prayers (Tachanun) recited on Mondays and Thursdays.

V 8: God is called the "Hope (MIKVEH) of Israel ". "Rabbi Akiva said, Happy are you,
O Israel: before Whom do you purify yourselves, and Who purifies you? Your father
in Heaven, as it says, 'I shall sprinkle upon you pure waters and you will be
purified' (Ezekiel 36:25), and it says 'God is the hope (MIKVEH) of Israel': just as
the Mikveh pool purifies the impure, so the Holy One blessed be He purifies Israel"
(Yoma 85b).

Vv 10-12: God tells the prophet not to pray for the people, and that he will not
accept their fasting and offerings and other outer signs of repentance.

Vv 13-16: Jeremiah argues that the people are not to blame because they have
been led astray by the deceptions of the false prophets. God affirms the falsehood
of their soothing prophecies of peace and plenty and that they will suffer for their
deceptions, but this will not save the people from their fate.

Vv 19-22: Jeremiah prays to God not to abandon Israel. Vv 19-21 are recited as
part of the Midnight Lament over the destruction of the Temple (Tikkun Chatzos).

V 22: "Are there rainmakers among the follies of the nations (=the idols that the
worship)?" Despite having been told not to pray for the people, Jeremiah argues
that since none of the idols of the nations has any power to reverse the coming
terrible drought, Israel has no other recourse except to hope in God for salvation.

Chapter 15
V 1: "Even if Moses and Samuel were to stand before Me, I would have no desire
for this people." Rashi explains that Moses and Samuel both had to pray for mercy
for Israel, but were not able to do so before first bringing the people to repent.
Thus before Moses interceded for the people after the sin of the golden calf, he first
ground it down and had the worshippers killed (Ex. 32). Likewise, before Samuel
prayed for the people at Mitzpeh he first had them remove the idols from their
midst (I Samuel 7:4-5). Here God was saying to Jeremiah that since he did not
have the power to bring the people to repent, he should not try to pray for them.

V 2: Four punishments are mentioned in this verse: natural death, slaughter by the
sword, death from starvation and captivity. Each is more severe than the one
before it. From here the Talmud learns that there is no greater mitzvah than
redeeming captives (Bava Basra 8b).
V 4: These relentless punishments are "because of Menasheh son of Hezekiah king
of Judah, because of what he did in Jerusalem ". After the great religious revival
accomplished by his father Hezekiah, Menasheh filled Jerusalem with idols, even
bringing a graven image into the Temple, and he also shed innocent blood (Isaiah
the prophet). Targum Yonasan on our verse says the people were likened to
Menasheh because they refused to repent.

V 9: "She who gave birth to seven children is distressed…" This refers to the Ten
Tribes, who had already gone into exile on account of seven dynasties of wicked
kings: Jeraboam, Ba'asha, Omri, Jehu, Menachem, Pekach and Hosea ben Elah
(Rashi, Metzudas David). "…now I shall deliver their remnant to the sword…" The
remnant is Judah, whose exile came after that of the Ten Tribes.

V 10: "Woe to me, O my mother, that you gave birth to me, a man of strife…"
Jeremiah complains over his fate, because the people hated him for his reproofs.
Despite his never having acted wrongly, whether as a creditor pressing hard for
repayment or a debtor defaulting, he had to endure hostility from all directions.

V 11: God reassures Jeremiah that the destruction will not be total and that he
himself will survive and that even his enemies would ask him to pray for them (cf.
Jeremiah 21:2).

V 12: Despite this reassurance, the decree was irrevocable: "Can ordinary iron
smash northern iron alloyed with copper?" Even the strength of Jerusalem would be
no match for that of the Babylonians, who came from the north.

Vv 15-18: Jeremiah pleads with God to save him from his persecutors because of
his unflinching loyalty. "As soon as your words come to me, I devour them…" (v 16).
Despite the grimness and unpopularity of his prophecies, Jeremiah was always
ready and willing to receive them. He did not sit in the company of revelers (v 17)
– his only joy was in the word of God. He was isolated and "sat alone" (v 17) and
his pain was "everlasting" (v 18) because he saw no end to the relentless
opposition he faced, despite God's promises of protection.

Vv 19-21: God reassures Jeremiah and promises him greatness "if you bring forth
an honorable person (YAKAR) from a glutton" (v 20). The "glutton" is the evil
inclination, which seeks to devour everything good. YAKAR is the glorious soul,
which is held captive by the evil inclination. On the basis of this verse, the rabbis
taught: "Everyone who teaches Torah to the son of an ignoramus merits that even
if God makes a decree, He nullifies it on his account, as it says, 'And if you bring
forth an honorable person from a glutton, you shall be like My mouth'" (Bava Metzia
85a).

Chapter 16
Vv 1-4: Jeremiah prophesies that in the coming disaster the little children will
perish together with their parents.

Vv 5-8: God instructed Jeremiah not to go to comfort mourners as a sign that death
would be so commonplace that the few survivors would be unable to follow
conventional mourning practices for all the victims.

Vv 14-15: The grim prophecy of impending exile in v 13 is immediately followed

with a prophecy of comfort foretelling that in the end the exiles will return. The
rabbis relate this prophecy to the future redemption of Israel. Verse 14 appears to
imply that in time to come the Exodus from Egypt will no longer be mentioned
because even that great miracle will have been superseded by the miracle of the
future redemption. However the rabbis taught: "It is not that the Exodus from
Egypt will be uprooted from its place. Rather, the redemption from the later
oppressors will be the main thing, and the Exodus from Egypt will be secondary to
it" (Berachos 12b).

V 16: "Behold I shall send many fishermen… and afterwards I shall send many
trappers…" – "Just as the fisherman pulls up the fish from the place where it grows,
so these enemies will capture them in the city. And just as a fish taken out of the
water dies immediately, so I shall bring killers against them. And afterwards I will
send trappers against those who survive and against those who seek to flee from
the sword: they will capture them and send them into exile and captivity" (Rashi).

V 19 prophesies that at the end of days the nations of the world will return to God
and serve Him with one accord (Rashi, RaDaK).

Chapter 17
The first part of Jeremiah Chapter 17 (until v 14) is read in the synagogue in the
Haftara of Parshas BEHUKOSAI – a fitting match to the parshah that contains the
blessings and curses at the end of Leviticus. This Haftara actually begins with the
closing verses of Jer. Chapter 16 vv 19-20, which foretell how the nations will come
from the ends of the earth and reject the idols they have inherited from their
fathers. The opening verse of ch 17, "The sin of Judah is inscribed with an iron
pen…" is a continuation of the preceding verses, as if to say that since even the
heathens will eventually abandon their idols, the sin of Judah in going after idols, as
described in the ensuing verses, is even more serious (Metzudas David).

V 5: "Accursed is the man that puts his trust in man…" Following on from the
previous verses condoning the people's idolatry, this curse of those who put their
trust in man can be construed as a curse against those who put all their trust in
their own human efforts (turning human power into their idol) instead of trusting in
God and following His law. Thus Rashi gives as an example of putting one's trust in
man the farmer who says he will sow during the Sabbatical year in order to eat –
not trusting that God has the power to send livelihood even to those who leave the
land to lie fallow. The curse and blessing here in Jeremiah (vv 5-8) relate
thematically to those in Leviticus, which are built upon a structure of sevens of
which the Sabbatical year is an integral part. Later in this chapter, the section in vv
21-27 also centers on the concept of the Sabbath.

Vv 9-10: The heart is most deceitful, yet God knows the heart and gives each
person according to his ways.

V 11: Rooted in the people's idolatry of wealth and human power was their
exploitation and injustice – but according to the rule of "measure for measure",
they would lose all their unjust gain, just like the cuckoo bird tries to draw other
birds' chicks after her but cannot succeed for long.

V 12: RaDaK in the name of R. Saadiah Gaon interprets v 12 as the continuation

from the end of v 11, which tells how the unjust will fall. What they will fall from is
what is described in v 12 – God's Throne of Glory, from which the souls of Israel
are "hewn". From this verse the rabbis learned that the earthly Temple is directly
aligned to the Throne of Glory. Even in the midst of his reproofs and prophecies of
the coming destruction of Jerusalem, Jeremiah evokes its supreme sanctity.
V 14: "Heal me, HaShem, and I will be healed…" The Men of the Great Assembly
introduced this verse (changed into the plural, "heal US…") into the blessing for
healing in the Shmonah-Esray prayer repeated thrice-daily every weekday. As we
see from the ensuing verses, here in Jeremiah this prayer is a personal prayer for
himself as he struggles in the face of the recalcitrant people and in particular
against his detractors and opponents.

Vv 19ff: "Go stand in the gate…" Against the backdrop of growing conspiratorial
opposition to Jeremiah's prophecies, God instructs the prophet to make a very high
profile appearance at the main public gate of the city – where his words will reach
the ear of the "kings of Judah" (i.e. the king and his sons/heirs, RaDaK) as well as
the mass of the people. He was then to go to all the other gates of the city to make
sure the message would reach everyone.

As a walled city whose gates were locked at night, Jerusalem was halachically
RESHUS HA-YACHID, a "private domain" (Eiruvin 6b) with respect to the Sabbath
law prohibiting carrying of objects from RESHUS HA-YACHID to RESHUS HA-RABIM,
a "public domain" (such as a highway or unwalled public area). The purpose of
Jeremiah's standing at the gates of the city to deliver his rebuke about the people's
violation of the Shabbos laws was to emphasize that their principle offense was
their blatant violation of the prohibition of carrying from domain to domain on
Shabbos. The carrying of even a mere pin from inside the gate to outside or vice
versa might not appear to be an act of labor of any importance such as to make it
worthy of being forbidden on Shabbos. Yet the entire Oral Law relating to Shabbos
begins with this prohibition (Talmud Shabbos 2a), which is learned from the written
text in Exodus 36:6. There, "bringing" materials for the building of the Sanctuary is
mentioned in the context of the labors involved in its construction, all of which are
forbidden on Shabbos.

Jeremiah's rebuke about the violation of Shabbos in Jerusalem, which is echoed in

Nehemiah 13:15, is of supreme relevance today. The rabbis teach that "all who
keep the Shabbos according to its laws will be forgiven, even if they worshiped idols
as in the generation of Enosh" (Shabbos 118b). Jeremiah 17:24-26 provide Biblical
support for the rabbinic teaching that if Israel were to keep two Shabboses
according to the halachah, they would immediately be redeemed.

Chapter 18
Vv 1-12: Allegory of the Potter and its interpretation:

V 6: "Behold as clay in the hands of the potter, so are you in My hand, O House of
Israel". This verse, which is woven into the fabric of the PIYUTIM (liturgical poems)
of the Yom Kippur Kol Nidrey service, raises profound questions since it suggests
that man's evil inclination is in God's hands such that man may not always have the
power to control himself. If so, he could easily turn this into an excuse for his own
failures, giving an opening to the wicked to justify themselves (cf. Berachos 32a).
On the other hand, if the evil inclination is ultimately in God's hands, it does mean
that we have the ability to gain mastery over it if we constantly ask and entreat
God to give this to us.

Since God is the "potter" = YOTZER = "Creator", He has the power to make and/or
break everything. The entrenched establishment of the priests and the powerful
leaders of Judea wanted to believe that the holy city of Jerusalem was solid and
could not be destroyed. But Jeremiah's message was that the "pot" was all too
fragile, for (v 11) "thus says HaShem, behold I am fashioning (YOTZER) evil
against you…" because of the people's infidelity to the Source of living waters.
V 18: "They say, come let us devise plans against Jeremiah…" The more assertively
Jeremiah took his message of rebuke out to the people in the gates and public
places of the city, the more his enemies began to plot against him. Jeremiah knew
that they literally wanted to murder him (v 23) and prayed to God to punish them,
because he had only sought their good while they had dug a pit for him (v 20).

Chapter 19
Vv 1-15: Allegory of the Flask and its meaning:

Further to the allegory of the potter in Ch 18 vv 1ff, Jeremiah is now instructed to

carry out another highly public demonstration through the purchase of an
earthenware flask or bottle that he was later to smash, symbolizing how God would
break the people of Jerusalem because of their rebellion. This demonstration was to
be held in the presence of the elders of the people and the elders of the priests.
These surely included the outwardly pious bulwarks of the establishment who were
the most entrenched in their bad habits and the most resistant to Jeremiah's
rebukes and who were sure to find his present demonstration most provocative.

The demonstration was to be carried out at one of the greatest abominations in

Jerusalem, the "Valley of the son of Hinnom", which has given its name to the
Torah concept of "hell", and which in late First Temple times was the center of the
Molech cult involving child sacrifice, as indicated in v 5 of our present text. This
valley was immediately outside the "Dung Gate" of Jerusalem (Rashi), where the
inhabitants of the city would throw their broken pottery shards (for earthenware
pots, which are easily broken, were the "disposable crockery" of those times).

It was the Molech abomination that would be requited with the coming calamity,
which would bring a famine so severe that parents would eat the flesh of their own
children (v 9).

Jeremiah was to ceremonially smash the flask that he had purchased in order to
symbolize how God would smash the city and its inhabitants because of their
idolatry.

Vv 14-15: Having carried out his demonstration, Jeremiah returned to the city and
entered the Temple, where he publicly spelled out the message of doom.

Chapter 20
V 1: "And Pashhur son of Immer the Cohen heard…" This Pashhur is called by
Targum SAGAN, indicating that he was the deputy High Priest. He was clearly one
of the main pillars of the recalcitrant establishment and considered himself a
prophet, while perceiving Jeremiah as a fifth columnist whose prophesies of doom
were sure to discourage the common people from resisting the Babylonians. The
establishment priests and leaders were convinced that they could succeed in their
resistance as long as the public did not become demoralized. It would not have
been difficult to portray Jeremiah as a traitor since when Sennacherib laid siege to
Jerusalem in the generation of King Hezekiah, the prophet Isaiah had told the king
not to surrender despite Ravshakeh's attempts to demoralize the people (II Kings
19:6).

V 2: After beating Jeremiah, Pashhur had him put in "prison" (AL HA-MAHPECHES).
RaDaK explains that this was a kind of stocks or pillory in which the necks of the
prisoners were locked between timber beams. This was a gross assault on the
person of God's prophet.

V 3: On his release on the following day, Jeremiah fearlessly rebukes PASHHUR,

making a play on his name. Its positive connotations are PASH (Aramaic=great)
and HUR, "free" (as in BEN HORIN), but Jeremiah "changes the connotations
around" (cf. MAHPECHES, "turn around"), for the root PASHAH means "split
asunder", while SHAHOR means dark. SAHOR in Aramaic means "round about":
thus a multitude (PASH) of gathered (MAGOR) troops will surround Jerusalem
round about (MI-SAVIV) (Rashi, Metzudas David).

Jeremiah prophesies that Pashhur and all his household and friends will die in exile
in Babylon.

Vv 7ff: "You persuaded me, HaShem, and I was persuaded…" Jeremiah's

prophecies were laden with rebuke and doom. He surely did not want to be the
bearer of such evil tidings, yet God "persuaded him" to prophecy, and the prophet
was "persuaded". He was unable to hold back the fire that burned within him – he
simply could not contain it. He had to speak, even though his one-time "friends"
were now against him, waiting to pounce…

V 12: Jeremiah takes strength in the fact that God knows the truth and will
vindicate him and take vengeance on his enemies.

V 14: Even so, Jeremiah laments the day on which he was conceived. In doing so,
he was like Job, who also wished he had never been born (Job 3:3). "Said
Jeremiah: I am like a priest to whose lot it has fallen to administer the bitter waters
to a certain woman suspected of infidelity (SOTAH). When they bring the woman to
him and remove her veil, he takes the cup and lifts it to her and looks in her face
and realizes it is his own mother! He starts screaming, 'Woe is me! This is my
mother, that I always tried to honor and now I am disgracing her.' So too I face my
mother, Zion, about whom I hoped I could prophesy goodness and comfort, but
now I have to prophesy punishments" (Midrash).

The verse specifies that Jeremiah was conceived BY DAY, which is unusual since in
normal circumstances a Talmid Chacham is forbidden to have relations with his wife
by day. The rabbis taught that Jeremiah's father, Hilkiah, was forced to flee from
King Menasheh, who sought to kill all the prophets. Just before leaving, he went
into his wife, despite the fact that it was day, because in these extenuating
circumstances this was the only way to ensure that he would have progeny (Rashi
on v 14).

Chapter 21
Vv 1-2: Tzedekiah sends envoys to Jeremiah asking him to pray for salvation from
Nebuchadnezzar. (The first envoy – Pashhur son of Malkiyah – is NOT the same as
Passhur son of Imeir priest, who imprisoned Jeremiah as recounted in the previous
chapter, Jer. 20:1.). Our text gives no indication of the date when Tzedekiah – who
was the last king of Judah – sent requesting Jeremiah to pray, but this was
evidently AFTER the prophecies recorded in the next chapter (Jer. ch 22), since the
latter relate to the previous two kings of Judah as well as to Tzedekiah. Thus the
prophecies contained in these chapters are not necessarily in chronological order.

Vv 3ff: Jeremiah's answer to the king's envoys was the very opposite of what
Tzedekiah was hoping to hear. God would "turn around" the weapons in the hands
of Judah (v 4): their war efforts would "boomerang" against them, and God Himself
would fight against them (v 5-6) and the king, his servants and any survivors
among the people would fall into the hands of the Babylonians.

Vv 8ff: Jeremiah offered the people a choice – to resist the Babylonians and die, or
to capitulate, submit to the decree of exile and live. It was precisely this line that
made Jeremiah seem like a traitor in the eyes of the establishment of priests and
leaders of Judah who thought their resistance against the Babylonians could
succeed.

Vv 11-14: Despite his grim warnings, Jeremiah continues to hold out the prospect
that the king could still save Jerusalem if only he would bring his kingdom back to
the Davidic pathway of justice and mercy for the poor and oppressed (v 12). If not,
the entire city would go up in flames.

Chapter 22
V 1: "Go down to the palace of the king of Judah …" Verses 1-5 are a direct
continuation of the section that began in the previous chapter v 11 calling on the
king to return to the pathway of justice and mercy. The prophet promises that if he
would do so, the dynasty of King David would be securely established in Jerusalem
(v 4). This promise is parallel to that in ch 17 v 24ff promising the establishment of
the Davidic dynasty if the Sabbath would be properly observed in Jerusalem.

V 6: "Even if you are like Gilead to me or like the summit of Lebanon, I would
transform you into a desert…" Gilead is the name of the entire region northeast of
the River Jordan encompassing the kingdoms of Sichon king of the Emorites and Og
king of Bashan (=Golan Heights and surrounding areas). "Lebanon" is an
expression for the whole Land of Israel (Metzudas David). Regardless of the
importance of Jerusalem as the capital of the Holy Land, it would not escape God's
punishment.

V 10: "Do not weep for the dead… weep rather for the one who went away." Rashi
(ad loc.) explains that "the dead" refers to Yeho-yakim king of Judah, who died
outside the gates of Jerusalem as he was being dragged off into exile, while "the
one who went away" refers to Yeho-yachin, who was exiled to Babylon.

For fuller understanding of this prophecy, it will be helpful to review briefly the
sequence of the last kings of Judah (see II Kings ch 24). After the saintly King
Josiah died in battle at Meggido at the hands of Pharaoh Necho, the throne was
occupied successively by two of his sons, then by his grandson, and then by
another of his sons. (1) On Josiah's death, his son YEHO-AHAZ was crowned by the
people in Jerusalem and ruled there for 3 months until he was deposed and
deported by Pharaoh Necho, who replaced him with (2) Josiah's son EL-YAKIM,
whom Pharaoh renamed YEHO-YAKIM. Yeho-yakim ruled for eleven years and
initially submitted to Nebuchadnezzar but then rebelled, after which he was exiled
from Jerusalem and died. Yeho-yakim was succeeded by (3) his son YEHO-YACHIN
(=YECHONIAH), who ruled for three months before being exiled by Nebuchadnezzar
together with leading members of the people to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar then
appointed (4) Yeho-yachin's "uncle" MATAN-YAH, son of Josiah, whom
Nebuchadnezzar renamed TZEDEKIAH, and who ruled for eleven years until the
destruction of the Temple.]

V 11: "Shaloom son of Josiah" is Tzedekiah (cf. I Chronicles 3:15, where Shaloom
is called FOURTH on the throne out of the sons of Josiah (see Rashi on Jer. 22:11).
Vv 13ff: "Woe to him who builds his house without righteousness…" Rashi says that
this refers to Yeho-yakim (cf. v 18), who was wicked. Yeho-yakim is compared
unfavorably with his "father". This is Josiah (Rashi, Metzudas David), who "ate and
drank" – i.e. he lived in a royal manner – yet was humble and practiced justice.
Metzudas David suggests that Yeho-yakim practiced fasting and asceticism as if
they could atone for his wickedness. Targum Yonasan on this verse indicates that
Yeho-yakim is being unfavorably compared with his righteous forebear King David.

V 19: "…with the burial of a donkey will he be buried" – Yeho-yakim died outside
the gates of Jerusalem as he was being dragged off into exile for the second time,
and the Babylonians would not permit him to be buried.

V 20: "Cry out from all sides, because all your paramours have been crushed" –
Judah had looked to Egypt and Assyria to save them from the Babylonians, but the
latter defeated both of them.

Vv 24-30: King Yeho-yachin, who was taken into exile and imprisoned in solitary
confinement in Babylon, is singled out for a particularly harsh prophecy of
retribution. Since King Yeho-yakim left no heirs and King Tzedekiah's sons were
slaughtered in front of his eyes, the decree that Yeho-yachin would be childless (v
30) would have meant the end of the Davidic line. However, as discussed in the
commentary on Ezra ch 2, the decree was mitigated through a miracle in which the
exiled Sanhedrin in Babylon prevailed on Nebuchadnezzar's wife to persuade her
husband to allow Yeho-yachin – who repented in prison – to be with his wife, and
she gave birth to She'alti-el, the father of Zerubavel, who led the returnees to
Jerusalem and built the Second Temple. Thus verse 30 states that Yeho-yachin is "a
man that will not succeed IN HIS DAYS": in his own lifetime he did not succeed, but
he did so after his death as the decree was mitigated and his descendents were the
leaders of Judah.

Chapter 23
Vv 1-2: The "shepherds" are the last kings and leaders of Judah, whose failures
brought exile and dispersal upon the people.

V 3: God himself will eventually gather in the exiled "flock" at the end of days and
establish leaders who will bring about their restoration.

V 5 refers to King Mashiach: "and a king will RULE…" – unlike the kings in
Jeremiah's time, whose sovereignty was limited, King Mashiach will truly RULE
(RaDaK).

V 6: "In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely…" This verse
prophesies that the Ten Tribes will be restored in the time of Mashiach, unlike in
the time of the Second Temple, when they did not return (Metzudas David). "This is
the name people will call him: HaShem is our righteousness." The commentators
are at pains to emphasize that Mashiach will not be called by the Name of HaShem,
but that he will be described as the one in whose days HaShem will cause us to
become righteous (Rashi, Metzudas).

Vv 7-8: The future redemption and ingathering of the exiles will be so striking that
it will outweigh even the redemption from Egypt.

Vv 9-15: The glorious future that awaits Israel at the end of days can only come
about after the cleansing of the people through the tribulations of exile. But the
false prophets of Jeremiah's time were telling the people that the evil foretold by
the true prophets would not materialize and that they would not suffer, thus
encouraging them not to repent (see v 17).

Vv 10-11: If the land was full of adulterers, it was because of the influence of the
false prophets and the priests, who were "flatterers," telling people what they
wanted to hear rather than what they needed to hear.

Vv 13-14: "I saw fraudulence in the prophets of Shomron…" The false prophets of
the regime of the Ten Tribes had set a precedent that was later followed by the
false prophets of Jerusalem.

Vv 21-22: "I did not send the prophets, but they ran, I did not speak to them but
they prophesied." The false prophets were not sent by God: they were self-
appointed and pushed themselves forward with pure CHUTZPAH ("impudence"). If
they were true prophets, they would address the people with the unpopular
message that they had to repent.

V 23: "Am I a God only from nearby – says HaShem – and not a God from afar?" –
"Do I only see what is near to Me? Do I not have the power to judge the lower
realms that are far from Me? Do I not know their deeds?" (Rashi).

V 24: "Can a man hide in concealments…?" – "This can be compared to an architect

who built an entire city complete with all kinds of underground passageways, caves
and cellars. Afterwards the tax collectors went around the city. The people started
hiding their silver and gold in the underground cellars. But the architect said to
them, I built the city and I made the cellars – you want to hide from me???"
(Tanchuma).

V 25: "I have had a dream! I have had a dream!" The false prophets considered
their dreams, which were the products of their own imaginations, to have the status
of prophetic visions.

Vv 28-9: There is no comparison between the fantasies of the false prophets and
the Word of God, which is like fire, and like a hammer that smashes a rock, causing
sparks to fly in all directions. Rashi explains that true prophecy is compared to fire
because it comes through the attribute of GEVURAH (=might). "It was in my heart
like a raging fire" (Jeremiah 20:9). True prophecy is like a hammer that causes
sparks to fly in all directions, because every word and letter of true prophecy
contain infinite aspects of meaning and allusion, on all the levels of PARDES --
PSHAT (the "simple" meaning), REMEZ ("allusion"), DRUSH ("allegorical
significance") and SOD ("mystical, esoteric meaning).

Vv 33ff: "If this people, or a prophet or a priest, should ask you, What is the
BURDEN (MASA) of HaShem…" In numerous passages, prophecy is called a
BURDEN (cf. Zechariah 9:1; 12:1 Malachi 1:1 etc. etc.). The people made a
mockery of this, taunting Jeremiah by asking him what new burden of prophecy he
had received. God's answer is that the people themselves have become a "burden"
that He will cast off.
 Chapter 24
THE TWO BASKETS OF FIGS

V 1: Yechoniah (=King Yeho-achin) was taken into exile in Babylon eighteen years
before the destruction of the Temple. Thus the Temple was still standing when God
showed Jeremiah the vision of the two baskets of figs positioned ready to eat in
front of the Sanctuary. Yechoniah had gone into exile together with "the officers of
Judah and the ARTISANS (CHARASH) and GATEKEEPERS (MASGEIR)". The rabbis
explained that the ARTISANS and GATEKEEPERS were the outstanding Torah sages.
When one would begin to speak, this would cause all the others to become silent
(CHARASH), and if one closed and sealed matters (MASGEIR), nobody could open
up again (Gittin 88a; Sanhedrin 38a).

Vv 4-10: Interpretation of the vision. The "good figs" were the righteous sages who
submitted to the decree of exile and went peaceably to Babylon. God "put His eye
upon them for good" (v 6) and would eventually restore them to their land, as
happened in the time of Zerubavel and Ezra.

The "bad figs" were Tzedekiah and his officers and the remainder of the people who
stayed in Jerusalem or fled to Egypt. They believed that they had the power to flout
God's decree and resist the Babylonians, and they were harshly requited for their
rebellion.

Chapter 25
V 1: "The word that came to Jeremiah… in the fourth year of Yeho-yakim… that was
the first year of Nebuchadnezzar…" Rashi writes that this was the year in which the
decree was sealed that Judah would go into exile and that they would drink the cup
of anger. Prior to the sealing of the decree He told the prophet to rebuke the people
in order to give them the opportunity to repent in order to avoid the sealing of the
decree.

The saintly King Josiah had endeavored to promote collective repentance and
revival in order to avoid the coming calamity, but after his death at Meggido, Yeho-
ahaz, his son, who was the people's choice as his successor, was rapidly deposed
by Pharaoh Necho and replaced with Yeho-yakim, who appears to have been
outwardly ascetic and pious but was in fact wicked. It was in Yeho-yakim's fourth
year that Nebuchadnezzar rose to power. The latter is called God's "servant" (v 9)
in the sense that he was His chosen instrument to execute the judgment on Judah.
This was to affect all of the surrounding nations as well, since Nebuchadnezzar was
victorious over the two existing "superpowers" of the time, Egypt and Assyria, and
his forces swept over all the other peoples in the region as well, incorporating them
into his world empire.

Vv 3ff: "From the thirteenth year of Josiah… until today": Jeremiah recounts his
long prophetic ministry of 19 years in the reign of King Josiah and 4 under Yeho-
yakim, repeatedly calling on the people to repent.

Vv 8ff: It is because the people would not listen that the decree would be sealed
with the appointment of Nebuchadnezzar to mobilize "all the families of the north"
against Jerusalem.

V 10: "I shall eliminate from them…the sound of the mill and the light of the lamp".
The "mill" and the "light of the lamp" allude to the celebration of a circumcision of a
newborn baby boy, the hoped for result of the joy of bride and groom mentioned
earlier in the same verse. The mill would be used to grind the herbs for the
necessary medications, while the lamp would be kindled at the celebratory feast
(Rashi).

V 12: At the very beginning of Nebuchadnezzar's ascent to power, Jeremiah is

already prophesying that the dominion of Babylon would last only seventy years,
after which the land of the Chaldeans would become "eternal devastation".
[Present-day Iraq seems still to be in the grips of this prophesied "eternal
devastation".] When Belshazzar fell seventy years after Nebuchadnezzar's ascent,
many of the sages misunderstood Jeremiah's prophecy, thinking that with the fall of
Babylon the Temple would immediately be rebuilt. They were bitterly disappointed
when it was not, causing many to fall into despair. They did not realize that the
First Temple had not been destroyed until eighteen years after Nebuchadnezzar
came to power, and that it could not be rebuilt until after the elapse of seventy
years after its destruction. The rebuilding thus took place eighteen years after the
fall of Babylon with the ascent of Darius to the throne of Persia.

"TAKE THE CUP OF THE WINE OF ANGER…"

V 15: The "cup of the wine of anger" that the prophet was to take was the actual
prophecy he was now given about the coming "world war" that would bring not only
Jerusalem but all of the other surrounding nations into servitude to
Nebuchadnezzar. The prophet would "make the nations drink" from the cup by
delivering his prophecy to them, thereby sealing the decree. The divine blueprint
contained within the words of the prophecy would then begin to unfold through the
expansionist war that Nebuchadnezzar would unleash.

Vv 18ff: Nebuchadnezzar's whirlwind would not only destroy Jerusalem but would
throw the entire world of the "Middle East " and beyond into turmoil. The countries
and peoples mentioned in these verses include Egypt, the entire Arab peninsula,
the whole of the Promised Land "from river to river", the nations to its east ( Edom ,
Moab and Ammon) and north ( Tyre , Sidon , Cyprus ) as well as the Greek Islands
and present-day Turkey , Iraq and Iran .

V 26: "…and the king of Sheshach will drink after them" – Sheshach is Babylon . In
the AT-BASH cipher (where the letter ALEPH is replaced by TAV, BEIT by SHIN,
etc.) SHESHACH = BABEL (Rashi).

Vv 28ff: The surrounding nations may be unwilling to drink from the cup of anger
and get sucked into God's dealings with Judah and Jerusalem, but they will have no
option, for they too are not clean of evil.

V 30: "HaShem roars from on high…" – "The night-time consists of three watches,
and over each watch the Holy One blessed be He sits and roars like a lion, as it
says [in our verse] 'HaShem roars from on high…' [the word 'roars' appears 3 times
in the verse], saying, 'Woe to the children because of whose sins I have destroyed
My House and burned My Sanctuary and exiled them among the nations of the
world'" (Berachos 3a).

Vv 32-8: The prophet depicts the coming cataclysm that will fill the entire region
with the corpses of the slain. The shepherds – the leaders – will be horrified when
they find themselves engulfed in disaster with nowhere to flee, and the beautiful
places that once enjoyed peace will be devastated because of God's anger.
 Chapter 26
V 1: "In the BEGINNING of the reign of Yeho-yakim…" Rashi (ad loc.) notes that the
prophecy in the present chapter predates by four years the prophecy of the cup of
anger recorded in the previous chapter (Jer. 25:1-38), which came to Jeremiah in
Yeho-yakim's FOURTH YEAR. At the beginning of Yeho-yakim's reign, the new post-
Josiah regime was perhaps not yet bent on its path and there was still hope that
the people might repent.

V 2: "Stand in the courtyard of the House of HaShem…" Jeremiah was now to

confront the people in the most conspicuous of all places. He was to stand in the
middle of the nation's most holy site and state clearly that if they would not repent,
it would be destroyed just as the Sanctuary in Shilo had been destroyed by the
Philistines.

Vv 8ff: "The priests and the prophets and all the people seized him". It is evident
from this passage that there were different factions in Jerusalem. The priests were
clearly the most offended by the prophecy of the coming destruction of the Temple,
since their role in life was to serve as its functionaries. The establishment priests
had the backing of the false prophets, who were flattering the people with soothing
prophecies that all would be well. Jeremiah's prophecies to the contrary were
deemed traitorous and this is why the priests and false prophets wanted to have
him killed in order to eliminate his threat to their authority. They themselves,
however, were unable to execute him since they were subject to the king and his
ministers.

V 16: "The ministers and all the people then said…" The ministers and the people
were not convinced by the arguments of the priests and the prophets. By this time
Jeremiah had been a respected prophet for fifteen years and could not be
discounted so easily.

V 17: "Then some of the elders of the land arose…" This minority faction among the
elders still had the courage to express their dissent from the prevailing "politically
correct" opinions of the corrupt priests and false prophets, citing the prophecy of
Micah the Morashtite (identical with Micah of the 12 "Minor" Prophets) that Zion
would be "plowed like a field" (Micah 3:12). They pointed out that the appropriate
reaction to prophecies like that of Jeremiah was not to seek to kill the prophet but
to entreat God and repent as Hezekiah had done in response to Micah's words.

Vv 20-23: The fate of the true prophet Uriah at the hands of Yeho-yakim and his
henchman shows just how dangerous was Jeremiah's position in Jerusalem as he
took a position directly contrary to that of the king and the entrenched
establishment.

V 24: The name of Ahikam son of Shafan, who appears here as having saved
Jeremiah from the hands of the people, is also found in II Kings 22:12. There
Ahikam son of Shafan is mentioned as one of the contingent sent by King Josiah to
entreat God through the prophetess Huldah after the discovery of the Torah scroll
in the Temple. Having heard Huldah's prophecy of the calamity that would befall
Jerusalem surely strengthened Ahikam in the belief that Jeremiah's prophecies,
which foretold the same, were not untrue.
 Chapter 27
THE YOKE OF SUBJUGATION

V 1: "In the beginning of the reign of Yeho-yakim…" – "Three years before

Nebuchadnezzar ruled Jeremiah already prophesied that he would become king"
(Rashi).

RaDaK states that in this prophecy God informed Jeremiah that Tzedekiah would
rule after Yeho-yakim and Yeho-yachin, and He instructed him that when this would
come about, Jeremiah was to send his "straps and bars" (symbols of the yoke of
exile) to the kings enumerated in verse 3 and to tell them the contents of this
prophecy. It appears that after Tzedekiah became king, these kings send him
messengers to persuade him to join them in a collective rebellion against Babylon.
This was why Jeremiah was instructed to tell Tzedekiah and these other kings that
they must submit to Nebuchadnezzar if they wanted to survive. The rabbis stated
that when Nebuchadnezzar appointed Tzedekiah as king (after the exile and death
of Yeho-yakim), he gave him power over the other kings in the region. The purpose
of sending this prophecy to Jeremiah at the beginning of the reign of Yeho-yakim,
fifteen years before it would be actualized in the reign of Tzedekiah, was so that
Yeho-yakim would know that Nebuchadnezzar was destined to rule in order that he
himself should not put his trust in the king of Egypt, who had appointed him as king
of Judah (see RaDaK on Jer. 27:1).

V 2: "Make for yourself straps and bars and put them on your neck." Rashi states
that Jeremiah had these straps and bars on his neck for FIFTEEN YEARS from the
first year of the reign of Yeho-yakim until the fourth year of Tzedekiah, until
Hananiyah ben Azoor broke them (as related in the next chapter, Jer. 28:10).

V 7: All the nations would be forced to serve Nebuchadnezzar and his offspring for
the full duration of God's decree. Nebuchadnezzar's son was Eveel Merodach and
his grandson was Belshazzar.

V 9: "Do not listen to your prophets and your magicians and your dreamers and
your wizards and sorcerers…" Evidently it was only the priests and false prophets of
Judah who were in denial: the entire establishment of gurus and diviners in all the
surrounding nations could not accept that the whole face of the world as they had
known it until that time was destined to change decisively as a result of the
onslaught of the Babylonians.

V 11: Only the peoples that were willing to submit to Babylon would remain in their
own lands. All the others would be deported.

Vv 18ff: The false prophets of Judah were soothing the people by prophesying that
Babylon's ascent was only temporary and that the Judean exiles and Temple
vessels that had been taken there when Nebuchadnezzar exiled King Yeho-yachin
would soon be returned (see ch 28 vv 3-4). Jeremiah challenges the false prophets
to entreat God to avert the even greater disaster that he foresaw, in which all the
Temple treasures that still remained in Jerusalem would also be seized and taken to
Babylon.

Chapter 28
"And it was in that year, at the BEGINNING of the reign of Tzedekiah…" Rashi
states that this was in fact in the FOURTH year of Tzedekiah. This was the
"beginning" of his reign in the sense that in that year Tzedekiah visited Babylon to
appear before Nebuchadnezzar, who then appointed him over the other kingdoms
enumerated in the previous chapter (Jer. 27:3: Edom, Moab, Amon, Tyre and
Sidon). It was after this that the rulers of these kingdoms sent to Tzedekiah trying
to persuade him to join them in rebelling against Nebuchadnezzar. In the prophecy
in the previous chapter (Jer. 27:2ff) Jeremiah had been instructed that when this
juncture would arrive fifteen years after that prophecy was delivered, he was to
send his "straps and bars" to these kings as a warning not to rebel (see Rashi on v
1). It was then that the false prophet Hananiyah ben Azur directly challenged
Jeremiah in the Temple in front of the priests and all the people.

V 2: "Thus says HaShem of Hosts…" The false prophet uses exactly the same
phraseology that we find in the true prophets.

V 9: "When a prophet speaks of peace, it is only when the word of that prophet
comes about that it is known that that prophet was indeed sent by HaShem."
Jeremiah here states the basic rule as to how to determine if a prophet is true or
false (see Rambam, Hilchos Yesodey HaTorah 10:4). If a prophet prophesies a
disaster and the disaster does not come about, this in itself does not make him a
false prophet – because God could make a decree against a people and send the
prophet to warn them, but if the people repent, He might revoke that very decree
because His compassion has no limits. This happened in the case of Jonah's
prophecy that Nineveh would be overturned. The fact that it was not overturned –
because the people repented – did not turn Jonah into a false prophet. But if a
prophet says that something GOOD will happen and it does not, this proves that he
is a false prophet, because in His compassion God would never revoke a good
decree! Only when the prophet announces good tidings and they are actually
fulfilled does this show that he is a true prophet. [By this criterion all those Israeli
leaders and pundits who prophesied that peace would reign in the Middle East after
the Oslo agreement have been exposed as false, yet many of them still occupy
leading positions in the country.]

V 10: "And Hananiyah the prophet took the yoke from upon the neck of Jeremiah
the prophet and broke it." In imitation of the true prophets, the false prophet likes
to indulge in dramatic theatricals in order to emphasize his points.

V 14: "…And I have also given him the wild beasts of the field…" The rabbis tell that
Nebuchadnezzar rode on a lion and tied a crocodile around his head (Shabbos
150a).

V 17: "And Hananiyah the prophet died IN THAT YEAR in the seventh month." Rashi
points out that the "seventh month" (Tishri) is already part of the New Year,
making the verse seemingly contradict itself. Rashi tells us that in fact Hananiyah
died on the very eve of Rosh HaShanah, the New Year, but he instructed his sons to
bury him only after Rosh HaShanah and not before. This was in order to conceal the
fact of his death until after the New Year had begun so as to make it appear that
Jeremiah had prophesied falsely when he said that he would die in THAT YEAR, i.e.
the year of his prophecy.

Chapter 29
JEREMIAH'S LETTER TO THE EXILES IN BABYLON

In the previous chapter (Jer. 28) we saw how the false prophet Hananyah ben
Azoor was prophesying that the large contingent of exiles whom Nebuchadnezzar
had deported to Babylon with King Yeho-yachin would speedily be restored to
Jerusalem WITHIN TWO YEARS. Their deportation had surely been a nasty shock,
but with Babylon still at the beginning of its ascendancy – they were deported in
the second year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, eighteen years prior to the destruction
of the Temple – the recalcitrant establishment priests and false prophets in
Jerusalem were able to persuade themselves that the rise of the new superpower
would be very short-lived.

Hananyah was by no means the only one broadcasting this message and
encouraging Judah to resist the Babylonians. The present chapter (v 8) indicates
that numerous sorcerers and diviners among the exiles in Babylon itself were
saying the same thing, and three false prophets there are cited by name (vv 21ff
and v 24).

Jeremiah's message to the exiles was the direct opposite. V 5: "Build houses and
dwell in them, and plant gardens and eat their fruits…" Jeremiah advised the exiles
to come to terms with the fact that the exile in Babylon would last no less than
SEVENTY YEARS, as he prophesied in ch 25 vv 11-12 and repeats in the present
chapter v 10. [Many living today in the comfortable pastures of the Diaspora act as
if Jeremiah's instruction to dig in for a long exile still applies in our times. However,
the fact is that outstanding leaders of modern times, such as the Baal Shem Tov
and the Gaon of Vilna, urged their followers to go to live in the Holy Land .]

V 7: "Pray for the peace of the city to which I have exiled you and pray on its
behalf". Jeremiah here lays down one of the fundamental principles of Jewish life an
exile, that although living in a country that is not their own, they should still pray
for its welfare. This is reflected in the practice of reciting a special prayer during the
Sabbath morning service in Diaspora synagogues for the welfare of the host
country.

Vv 11: "For I know the thoughts I am thinking about you, says HaShem, thoughts
of PEACE…" Jeremiah wants the exiles to understand why they must submit with
resignation to their exile. This is because its purpose is to atone for their sins and
prepare them for the good end that God has in mind for them. They can only be
restored after they have been chastened by exile and have learned to repent and
search out God with all their hearts.

Vv 16ff: "For thus says HaShem to the king who sits on the throne of David and to
all the people that dwell in this city [Jerusalem]… I shall make them like detestable
figs…" In Jeremiah's vision of the Two Baskets of Figs (chapter 24), he had
contrasted the "good figs" – those members of Judah who submitted to the decree
of exile and went with Yeho-yachin to Babylon – with the "bad figs", the recalcitrant
rebels who defiantly remained in Jerusalem. Our present chapter supplements that
vision, explaining its implications in greater detail.

V 21: The rabbis tell that the false prophets Ahab son of Kolayah and Tzedekikah
son of Ma'aseyah each privately approached Nebuchadnezzar's daughter informing
her that he had received divine prophecy instructing her to submit to the advances
of his colleague. When she went and told this to her father, he exclaimed, "But
their God hates immorality!" He had her send them to him and told them that he
had asked Daniel's companions, Hananyah, Mishael and Azariah, who told him that
such an suggestion was forbidden. They said that they had received prophecy while
those three had not. Nebuchadnezzar replied that if so, Ahab and Tzedekiah should
be tested as those three had been by being thrown into the furnace, but they
retorted that Daniel's companions were three in number while they were only two,
which might be insufficient for a miracle. The king asked them to choose someone
else to be thrown in with them, and they chose Yehoshua the High Priest (see
Zechariah 3:2) hoping they would be saved through his merits. But while Yehoshua
was saved from the fire, they were burned to death! (Sanhedrin 93a).

Vv 24ff: The denunciation of Jeremiah by Shemaya the Nehelamite. It is clear from

this passage that members of the community of exiles in Babylon were busy trying
to influence the factions in Jerusalem and were in correspondence with them. It is
also apparent that the episode in which Pashhur the priest had Jeremiah confined to
prison and literally put in the pillory for his views (chapter 20) was not isolated but
part of a sustained campaign against him.

Chapter 30
V 2: "Write all the things I have spoken to you in a book." God's instruction to
Jeremiah to commit his prophecies to writing was in order that future generations
would be able to gain instruction from the events of the past as interpreted by the
prophet in order to apply the lessons to themselves. It states explicitly in the
present chapter that "in the end of days you will contemplate/understand it" (v 24).

Lest we become disheartened by Jeremiah's repeated prophecies of dire calamity

and protracted exile, the present chapter is a prophecy of comfort promising that in
the end God will return the captivity of His people and restore them to the Land
promised to their fathers (v 3). This prophecy is explicitly directed equally towards
Israel (=the Ten Tribes) and Judah (vv 3 & 4). The rabbinic commentators are in
agreement that it refers to the War of Gog and Magog and the future redemption
(Rashi and Metzudas David on v 3; RaDaK on v 7).

The ructions of this war will be so frightening that even the men will have their
hands on their loins like a woman wracked by the pain of childbirth (v 6).

V 7: "Woe! For great is that day with none to compare with it, and it will be a time
of trouble for Jacob!" Likewise Daniel (12:1) said, "It will be a time of trouble such
as has never been since the time they became a nation". But "HE WILL BE SAVED
FROM IT!!!" (Jeremiah 30:7).

V 10: "And you, do not fear, O My servant Jacob!" In the words of Rabbi Nachman,
"The whole world is a very narrow bridge, and the main thing is NOT TO BE
AFRAID!!!"

Vv 12ff evoke the dire situation of Israel at the end of days, without a true
champion to stand up for them and heal their wounds (v 13), abandoned by those
they trusted to help them (v 14). The main lesson that Israel must learn is that
their suffering is not arbitrary but has been sent by God to atone for their sins (v
15) and that He alone can save them.

Chapter 31
Verses 1-19 of this beautiful chapter of comfort, repentance and reconciliation are
read in the synagogue as the Haftara on the second day of Rosh HaShanah (the
New Year).

V 1: "The people that survived the sword found favor in the wilderness, as I led
Israel to its place of tranquility." This verse alludes to the Exodus and entry to the
Land: Israel survived the sword of the Egyptians, who conspired to kill their male
children, and that of the Amalekites and Canaanites, and were led to the Promised
Land. In the same way as Israel found favor in the past and God showed them His
eternal love with the redemption from Egypt, so too will He show them this love at
the time of the future redemption.

V 5: "For there will come a day when the watchers will call out on Mount Ephraim,
'Arise and let us go up to Zion …'" Whereas in the time of Jeraboam ben Nevat the
Ten Tribes did not go up to the Temple in Jerusalem, the time will come when
Ephraim will be restored to their territory and make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
The "watchers" (NOTZRIM) are those who guarded the Torah (Rashi, Targum
Yonasan). They will be the first to call to their brothers and sisters to repent.

Vv 7-8: In the future redemption God will gather in the exiles from the very ends of
the earth. "With weeping they will come…" (v 8) – this will be because of their
prayers and repentance (Rashi ad loc.). "For I will be a Father to Israel, and
Ephraim is My firstborn": the Ten Tribes submitted themselves to the leadership of
Ephraim, who was the son of Joseph – firstborn to Rachel. This verse indicates that
the Ten Tribes will return and be restored to their original glory.

V 9: "Hear the word of HaShem, O nations…" The entire world will recognize that
the restoration of Israel is the work of God alone.

V 10 is recited daily at the climax of the Blessing of Redemption (GEULAH) in the

evening service after KRI'AS SHEMA.

V 14: "Thus says HaShem, a voice is heard on high…" The future redemption will
come about in the merit of the indomitable spirit of Rachel, mother (or rather
grandmother) of Ephraim and guardian of all the Twelve Tribes. She can never
forget or abandon her exiled children. "Why is Rachel's voice heard above all
others? Because the patriarchs and matriarchs went before the Holy One blessed be
He to try to conciliate Him after Menasheh set up a graven image in the Sanctuary.
But He was not placated until Rachel entered and said before Him: Master of the
World – Whose mercy is greater, Yours or that of flesh and blood? Surely Yours is
greater. But did I not bring my own rival into my house? For Jacob worked only for
me, yet when it came to my wedding, they brought my sister under the canopy and
not only did I keep silent, I even revealed to her my secret signs to Jacob. So too, if
Your children have brought Your rival into Your house, You should keep silent!!! He
said to her: Your defense of them is well spoken, 'There is a reward for your
accomplishment'" (v 15; see Rashi & RaDaK on v 14).

Vv 17-19: The beautiful and moving depiction of Ephraim's repentance and

contrition in vv 17-18 is followed by God's promise in v 19 that He can never forget
His beloved child and will always love him.

V 20: "Make road markers for yourself…" Just as Judah was about to go into exile
with the destruction of the First Temple, the prophet instructs them to make "road
markers" so that they will be able to retrace their steps back to Jerusalem when the
time for restoration arrives. The "road markers" are the mitzvoth which the Jews
took with them into exile and continue to observe as a sign that one day they will
be restored.

V 26: "Behold, days are coming… when I shall sow the House of Israel and the
House of Judah – the seed of man and the seed of animal." Rashi explains that both
the good and the foolish among them will all be sown as God's seed. Targum
renders: "I shall establish them as the sons of man and give them success just like
an animal, which is not requited for its sins."
V 30: "I will strike with the House of Israel and the House of Judah a NEW
COVENANT." It is highly ironic that this verse, which plainly states that God will
renew His Covenant with the same House of Israel and of Judah with whom He
originally made it, was distorted by the exponents of "replacement theology" to
provide justification for their notion that the original Israel were displaced forever
and that the original Covenant was somehow replaced with a "New Covenant" or
"New Testament". However, it is perfectly clear from verse 32 that God's "New
Covenant" with Israel is none other than the Torah that He gave to Moses. What is
"new" about the Covenant is that whereas Israel "forgot" the Torah as a result of
the sin of the golden calf, in the future it will be written on their very hearts and, as
it states in v 33, everyone from the smallest to the greatest will know God without
having to be taught by others.

Vv 34-5: Just as the laws of nature are fixed and unchangeable, so it is impossible
that Israel could ever cease to be God's nation. This of course makes a complete
mockery of "replacement theology".

Vv 37ff: This passage describing the future expansion of Jerusalem necessarily

refers to the Final Redemption, because it was not fulfilled in the time of the
Second Temple (Rashi on v 39).

Chapter 32
Verses 6-27 of this chapter, which center on the theme of land purchase in Israel,
are read as the Haftara of Parshas BEHAR (Numbers 25:1-26:2), which gives the
laws of the Sabbatical and Jubilee years and the laws of the sale and redemption of
land that are bound up with them.

V 1: Following the prophecies of the future redemption in chapters 30 and 31,

which came to sweeten the bitter lesson of the prophesies of coming doom and
calamity addressed by Jeremiah early in the reigns of Yeho-yakim and Tzedekiah,
we now "fast forward" to the tenth year of Tzedekiah, just two years before the
destruction of the Temple. The Babylonians are laying siege to Jerusalem, and
Jeremiah is being held captive in the royal prison for prophesying that the city will
fall and that the king will be taken to Babylon.

With the noose steadily tightening and the day of doom and exile moving
inexorably closer, Jeremiah suddenly receives prophecy that his uncle Hanamel ben
Shaloom from his home town of Anathoth is about to visit him in prison in order to
ask him to redeem his field. This was in accordance with the Torah law: "If your
brother goes down low and sells from his inheritance, his redeemer – his closest
relative – shall come and redeem his brother's sale" (Leviticus 25:25). Sure enough,
Hanamel soon arrived, and Jeremiah paid out good money to redeem the field,
notwithstanding his own prophecies that all the people were soon to go into exile,
making matters of land ownership in the homeland seemingly completely irrelevant.

Vv 9-14: Jeremiah carries out a halachically perfect purchase of the field (with valid
witnesses, payment in silver, and a written, signed and sealed document of sale
specifying all the conditions of the transaction) and then instructs his own foremost
disciple, Baruch ben Neriyah (who taught Ezra) to place it in an earthenware
document case "so that they will endure for MANY YEARS" (v 14). The lesson
Jeremiah was teaching was that even though the situation in Jerusalem and Judea
was dire, with their captors encamped all around in siege, it was still fixed and
certain that in the end Judah would return and take possession of the land again.
Vv 16-25: Jeremiah's prayer is a beautiful and eloquent expression of the justice of
God's ways, giving each one according to his ways and according to the fruits of his
actions (v 19). He brought His people to their land, but they failed to heed His voice
and follow His Torah – and now the enemy is building ramps around the city walls
preparing to capture Jerusalem. And at this moment He instructs the prophet to go
and purchase a field???

Vv 28ff: God answers: "Is anything too marvelous for Me?" Rashi renders: "Is the
future hidden from Me?" Yes, the city is to be delivered to the Chaldeans: they are
here ready to execute the inevitable punishment to requite the people for their sins.
For they have indeed turned their backs on Him with their idolatry. Yet inexorable
as the decree of captivity and exile is, so is His promise to gather in their exiles and
restore them completely unchangeable.

V 39: "And I will give them ONE HEART and ONE WAY to fear Me, for their own
good and that of their children after them." We daily wait and hope for the
fulfillment of this prophecy.

Vv 42ff: The very evil that befell Israel with the destruction of the Temple and the
Exile is itself the guarantee that all the promised good will also come to them in the
end. Fields and properties will again be sold and purchased in accordance with the
law of the Torah in Benjamin and Judah and in all the other regions of the Holy
Land. Amen.

Chapter 33
A second prophecy now comes to Jeremiah while still imprisoned in the king's
prison, as in the previous chapter. This was in Tzedekiah's tenth year, one year
prior to the destruction of the Temple, with Jerusalem under siege and the
Babylonians encamped all around.

V 2: "So says HaShem its Maker, HaShem Who fashions it to establish it…" God's
goal is only to build and establish Jerusalem.

Vv 4ff: Just as in the earlier years of his ministry, when peace still reigned,
Jeremiah prophesied the opposite of peace – the coming of the sword and imminent
exile, so now, with the siege-ramps all around the city and the enemy preparing for
the slaughter of its inhabitants, Jeremiah prophesies the opposite of war:

Vv 6ff: "Behold, I am bringing it a remedy and a cure, and I shall heal them and I
shall reveal to them an abundance of peace and truth." With the calamity just
about to strike, Jeremiah sees way beyond it to the final redemption and the
restoration. Judah and the Ten Tribes will return (v 7) and they will be truly
cleansed of their sins and forgiven (v 8).

Vv 10-11: "There will again be heard… in the cities of Judah and the streets of
Jerusalem … the sound of joy and the sound of gladness, the sound of the groom
and the sound of the bride." These words are included in the last of the Seven
Blessings (SHEVA BRACHOS) recited before the groom and bride under the wedding
canopy (CHUPAH), and until today they are customarily sung joyously at the
conclusion of the marriage ceremony.

Vv 12f: "There will be yet again in this place which is now desolate… a cote for
shepherds who rest their flocks." Despite the surrounding devastation, Jeremiah
already sees the Israel of the future with their leaders pasturing the flocks of
people in all parts of the Holy Land.

V 15: "In those days and at that time I shall cause a sprout of righteousness to
sprout forth for David" – "This is King Mashiach, who will practice justice and
charity" (Metzudas David).

Vv 17-18: From these verses until the end of the chapter, the prophet eloquently
prophesies that the kingship of the House of David and the service of the Cohanim-
priests and Levites will never cease.

We learn from verse 24 that there were those among the people who saw how
calamity was overhanging the kings of Judah and the Temple priests and Levites,
and inferred that God had rejected them and was bringing the kingship and the
priesthood to an end, since the majority had already gone into exile and those
remaining were subject to other nations. This was causing demoralization among
the people to the point that some were ready to abandon the Torah and its
commandments (see RaDaK on v 24).

The beautiful prophecies that God's Covenant with the House of David and the
Priests and Levites can no more be nullified than the laws of heaven and earth are
thus an answer to such ideas, promising that in the end God will turn around the
captivity and show mercy.

Chapter 34
The little that we know about what was actually going on in Jerusalem in face of the
Babylonian siege and at the time of the destruction of the Temple mainly derives
from the laconic accounts given in the closing chapters of II Kings and II Chronicles
and from whatever we can glean from Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Our present chapter
provides a revealing insight into the psychology of the people in Jerusalem at the
height of the siege.

Jeremiah is sent to King Tzedekiah to prophesy that the city would fall to the
Babylonians and that he himself would be captured. Tzedekiah – to whose lot it fell
to be the last king of Judah and to witness the destruction of the Temple and exile
of the people in his time – is an elusive and intriguing figure. It is written that
Tzedekiah "did evil in the eyes of HaShem his God" (II Chron. 36:12) yet the rabbis
of the Talmud viewed him more favorably than his older brother and predecessor,
King Yeho-yakim, of whom we will get a close-up view in Chapter 36 (these
chapters are not in chronological order).

The rabbis said: "The Holy One blessed be He wanted to bring the entire world back
to desolation and devastation on account of Yeho-yakim, but He looked at the
members of his generation and His anger cooled. The Holy One blessed be He
wanted to bring the entire world back to desolation and devastation on account of
the generation of Tzedekiah, but He looked at Tzedekiah himself and His anger
cooled down. Then what does it mean that Tzedekiah 'did evil in the eyes of
HaShem'? It means that he had the power to protest [against what the people were
doing] but he did not protest" (Sanhedrin 103a). This implies that while Yeho-yakim
was wicked, Tzedekiah himself was a Tzaddik.

Thus we see in the present prophecy in vv 2-5 that Tzedekiah would be punished
by watching his city destroyed and by being taken into exile, yet he would not be
put to the sword but would die in dignity on his bed and would be mourned with
honor, unlike Yeho-yakim, who died outside the gates of Jerusalem while being
cruelly dragged along the ground into exile, and who was "buried with the burial of
a donkey" (Jeremiah 22:19). Furthermore, although Tzedekiah's eyes were gouged
out, he was left alive and outlived his captor Nebuchadnezzar (Moed Katan 28b).

Vv 8ff: The little that is known about the episode recounted here, in which prior to
the capture of Jerusalem the people freed their Hebrew slaves but then took them
back, is all contained in our present text, and we have no other recourse than to
make whatever inferences we can from the few hints it contains. The sources for
the Torah law of the Hebrew slave to which our present text refers are contained in
Exodus 21:2-6 and Deuteronomy 15:12-18. The Hebrew (as opposed to
"Canaanite") slave is an Israelite who has either stolen and cannot repay and is
therefore sold into slavery, or who has fallen to such poverty that he sells himself.
Under Torah law the Hebrew slave does not serve forever but goes free after six
years and given generous gifts on his release.

It would appear that the Hebrew slaves whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem
ceremonially freed were people who had become impoverished because of that
same economic exploitation practiced by the wealthy and powerful that was so
castigated by Jeremiah and the other prophets. These poor people had fallen deep
into debt, and when they had absolutely nothing left to give their creditors, the
latter would apparently simply enslave them.

From verse 8 we learn that it was King Tzedekiah who struck a covenant with the
people to release these slaves. It seems likely that the king understood that a
major act of collective repentance was required in order to stave off the
Babylonians. Whether it was his own initiative or was carried out on the advice of
the priests or prophets is unknown. Our text simply states that after having
released their slaves, the people soon relented (like the Egyptians) and quickly took
them back. Our text makes no mention of any protest over this by Tzedekiah,
which may be why the rabbis criticized him for not speaking out against his
generation's behavior.

Vv 18-20 speak of how God will requite the men that "have transgressed My
Covenant, who did not keep the words of the Covenant that they sealed before Me
through the calf that they cut into two and passed between its parts…" There are
two factors here. The Covenant which the people transgressed was the Torah,
whose laws of slavery they flouted. This Covenant between God and Israel was
indeed originally sealed with the offering of animal sacrifices (Exodus 24:5) and at
the original "Covenant between the Parts" between God and Abraham, the
precursor of the Sinaitic Covenant, the parties "passed between" the parts of
sacrificed animals (Genesis 15:10). However, the cut-up calf mentioned in our
present text, Jeremiah 34:18, was not sacrificed in honor of the Torah Covenant.
According to Rashi (ad loc.) after the people reverted and took back their slaves,
they all made a covenant to rebel against God and they cut the cow into two and
passed between its parts in order to signify their rebellion, as if to say that anyone
who violates this covenant would be cut apart like this cow.

* * * Jeremiah 34:8-22 followed by Jer. 33:25-26 are read as the Haftara of

Parshas Mishpatim (Exodus 21:1-24:18) * * *

Chapter 35
V 1: "The word that came to Jeremiah… in the days of Yeho-yakim…" While the
prophecies in the previous chapters dated from the final years of King Tzedekiah
shortly before the destruction of the Temple, the episodes recounted in Chapters 35
and 36 date from some ten to fifteen years earlier during the reign of Tzedekiah's
older brother and predecessor, King Yeho-yakim.

V 2: "Go to the house of the Rechavites…" The Rechavites were descendants of

Yeho-nadav (see II Kings 10:15), and were Kenites (see I Chronicles 2:55). These
were a tribe descended from Jethro. As converts, they did not have their own tribal
share in the Land of Israel but were originally given the right to occupy the
territories around Jericho temporarily prior to their passing to the tribe of Benjamin
after they lost part of their own territory with the designation of Jerusalem as the
national capital. According to tradition, the Rechavites left the Jericho area of their
own accord and went out into the wilderness of Judah (Arad) in order to study
Torah with Othniel ben Kenaz (see RaDaK on Judges 1:16).

As we learn from our present chapter vv 6ff, the Rechavites had an ancestral
tradition that they were not only to abstain from drinking wine but were also
forbidden to settle and cultivate the land. Rather, they were to live a nomadic
existence seeking only the life of the spirit (Torah). With the Babylonians and
Arameans now deployed throughout Judea, the Rechavites had come to take refuge
in Jerusalem.

Jeremiah was instructed to try to persuade the Rechavites to drink wine precisely in
order to show their tenacity in clinging to their ancestral traditions. This put the
men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem in a very poor light because they
themselves had abandoned their ancestral tradition – the Torah – and refused to
heed the warnings of the prophets to repent.

As a result the people of Judah and Jerusalem would be punished for their sins
while the House of the Rechavites would never be cut off. Not being cut off means
that their descendants would always be numbered among the members of the
Sanhedrin and the teachers of the Torah (Sifri Beha'aloscha).

Chapter 36
The fourth year of the reign of Yeho-yakim was some eighteen years before the
destruction of the Temple. It was then that Jeremiah was instructed to write down
his prophecies. According to the plain meaning of Jeremiah 36:2, he now wrote
down or arranged all his prophecies to date in a scroll. However the rabbis stated
that what he wrote down now was specifically the book of Lamentations, in which
he depicted in detail the terrible suffering that the people would endure with the
destruction of the Temple (Mo'ed Katan 26a; see Metzudas David and RaDaK on Jer.
36:2). According to the rabbinic view, it was Lamentations that Jeremiah was to
have read to the people in the hope that they would take the rebuke to heart and
repent.

Vv 4ff: Jeremiah read out his prophecies while his leading disciple, Baruch ben
Neriyah, transcribed them. Jeremiah was unable to go in person to the Temple,
since he was in prison. Instead he sent Baruch there to read the scroll to the people.
He did so on a public fast-day in the ninth month – Kislev – in the middle of Israel's
cold, blowy rainy season.

In seeking to reach the hearts of the people directly in the Temple, it appears that
Jeremiah may have been hoping to stimulate a popular movement of repentance
that would force the king and the leaders of Judah to soften, because it is clear
from the ensuing narrative that the main source of resistance lay in the royal court
and particularly in the person of the king himself.
Jeremiah's prophecies of disaster were sure to put fear into the hearts of the people,
and as such they were nothing less than seditious in the eyes of those in the court
who favored resistance against the Babylonians. On hearing what Baruch had to
say in the Temple, Michayahu son of G'maryahu promptly made a report to the
king's ministers of state (vv 11-13). It is noteworthy that almost all of the names of
these ministers (v 12) are classic Biblical names formed out of divine names and
epithets. The Judean establishment appeared highly pious from the outside: the rot
and spiritual corruption were on the inside.

Baruch was called before the ministers and read Jeremiah's scroll (v 15), striking
fear in the hearts of those who heard it. They questioned whether they should even
dare reveal its explosive contents to the king (v 16) and they advised Baruch and
Jeremiah to make themselves scarce (v 19). [It is not clear how Jeremiah was
supposed to hide himself since he was in prison; cf. v 26: "HaShem concealed
them".]

On hearing of the scroll, the king sent for it, and it was brought to him as he sat by
a log-fire to keep warm during the rainy season (v 22, see Rashi). According to
verse 23, it was only after hearing three or four verses that the king became
offended. According to the rabbis (Mo'ed Katan 26a), he was unmoved by the
opening prophecies of Lamentations concerning the weeping of Jerusalem, the exile
of Judah, and the mourning of Zion (Lamentations 1:2-4). It was only when he
heard that "her adversaries have become the head" (Lamentations 1:5), implying
that he would no longer be king, that he became enraged. Without compunction he
took a scribe's razor-blade and cut up the scroll, throwing it piece by piece into the
fire. In doing so the king blatantly flouted the strict prohibition against burning or
destroying holy writings (Rambam, Hilchos Yesodey HaTorah 6:8). The king and his
inner circle were unafraid, although some of his ministers tried unsuccessfully to
protest.

Yeho-yakim could burn the scroll but he could not prevent the looming disaster that
was to strike Jerusalem, and he himself was condemned to an ignominious death (v
30).

Chapter 37
V 1: "And King Tzedekiah son of Josiah ruled…" Episodes and prophecies of
Jeremiah from the latter years of the reign of King Tzedekiah have already
appeared in earlier chapters (chs 28, 32-34). However, the last two chapters (35 &
36) are not in chronological sequence since they go back in time to the reign of
Tzedekiah's older brother, Yeho-yakim. The latter reigned for eleven years, after
which he was succeeded by his son Yeho-yachin, who ruled for only 3 months
before being exiled to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar, who then appointed his uncle,
Tzedekiah, as king of Judah in his place.

The last chapter (36) showed the depths to which the royal house of Judah had
sunk in depicting Yeho-yakim tearing the true prophet's scroll of rebuke to shreds
and casting them into the fire. He was literally burning the Torah! After this
depiction of depravity, Rashi comments on our present verse (37:1): "Now the
prophet comes to relate how the punishments he had been prophesying until now
were actually fulfilled. With the arrival of the appointed time for his words to be
fulfilled, he tells how a new king ruled over Judah in place of Yeho-yachin son of
Yeho-yakim".
Vv 2-3: Tzedekiah's equivocal nature is brought out in these verses, which tell us
that he and his servants and the people would not heed God's words to Jeremiah,
yet the king still sent to the prophet asking him to pray for them.

V 5: "And the army of Pharaoh had left Egypt, and the Chaldeans who were
besieging Jerusalem heard the news about them and went up from Jerusalem."
Tzedekiah and his ministers clearly hoped that the Egyptian king was coming to
help them by advancing against the Babylonians. They may have believed that the
Babylonian withdrawal from Jerusalem was the harbinger of new miracles of an
order similar to the miracle performed in the time of King Hezekiah, when
Sennacherib and the Assyrian army suddenly withdrew from their siege of
Jerusalem and turned tail.

Vv 6-11: Jeremiah tells the king of Judah not to let the people deceive themselves,
for no such miracle was going to take place since Jerusalem was doomed to be
taken by the Babylonians and burned.

V 12: Jeremiah was in a most dangerous position in Jerusalem because of his

resolute defiance of the prevailing "political correctness" among the king's ministers.
At the time of the above prophecy Jeremiah was not in prison (see v 4), but he
very likely feared that he would soon be detained, and this may be why he wanted
to "slip out" (LA-HALEEK) of the city among the people and go to his home town of
Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin (RaDaK). Targum Yonasan and Midrash
darshen the word LA-HALEEK as suggesting that he wanted to divide his ancestral
possessions among the people and/or to collect his share of gifts to the priests.

V 13: The officer at the gate who detained Jeremiah was none other than the
grandson of the false prophet Hananyah ben Azoor (see Jer. ch 28), who before his
death left instructions to his offspring to do everything in their power to ensnare
Jeremiah (Rashi). The officer accuses Jeremiah of seeking to desert to the
Babylonians and betray his own people.

V 15: "The officers (SARIM) were enraged with Jeremiah and struck him…" These
officers were the king's ministers of state. As the ensuing narrative shows, the
power politics in Jerusalem on the eve of its capture were such that the faction that
favored rebellion and resistance against Babylon had the upper hand and
apparently had the power to intimidate the king himself.

V 17: When King Tzedekiah wanted to speak to Jeremiah, he had to do so in

secrecy. Tzedekiah seems to have understood very well how stubborn his ministers
were, and he knew that they were likely to take extreme measures to silence the
prophet. When he asked Jeremiah, "Is there word from HaShem?" it seems as if he
still hoped that the inexorable message of doom would somehow change. But the
message remained exactly the same: Jerusalem would fall and Tzedekiah would be
captured by the Babylonians. Even when in prison and in mortal danger, Jeremiah
did not flinch from telling the truth.

Chapter 38
Vv 1ff: Jeremiah's known line that the resistance would end in disaster and that the
people would be best advised to submit to the Babylonians enraged the dominant
faction in Jerusalem, who now call upon Tzedekiah to put the prophet to death
because he was demoralizing the people and weakening their will to resist.
V 5: "And King Tzedekiah said, Behold he is in your hands…" Tzedekiah appears to
have had a softer heart than his ministers, but he felt powerless to defy them. The
rabbis considered Tzedekiah to be a Tzaddik except that he did not stand up
against the wicked people in his generation (Sanhedrin 103a; cf. Rashi on II
Chronicles 36:12).

V 6: Jeremiah was lowered into the pit with ropes because the pit was so deep.

V 7: "And Eved-Melech the Cushite, a senior officer in the king's house, heard…"
The apparent meaning of the text is that the officer in question was called by the
name Eved-Melech ("servant of a king"), and that he was black (=KUSHI). However,
here, as in a number of other places where the word KUSHI appears in the Biblical
text (Numbers 12:1, Psalms 7:1, Amos 9:7), the rabbis darshened that a word
considered to have a somewhat pejorative connotation is intentionally used of
something very good and precious in order to deflect the evil eye (see Talmud,
Mo'ed Katan 16b). Thus the rabbis stated that in our verse, the "Cushite" alludes to
Tzedekiah, who was really a Tzaddik, and that the "servant of the king" was in fact
Jeremiah's disciple, Baruch ben Neriyah (see RaDaK on our verse). The Midrash
states that in reward for this act of heroism in saving Jeremiah's life (risking the
vengeance of the king's ministers), Eved-Melech the Cushite merited to be one of
the nine people who went into the Garden of Eden alive (Yalkut Shimoni on Genesis
5 #42).

V 10: It needed THIRTY men to pull up Jeremiah from the pit because they were all
so weakened by the famine caused by the Babylonian siege (Rashi).

Vv 14ff: "And King Tzedekiah sent and took Jeremiah…" Again, Tzedekiah is
anxious to hear what the prophet has to say, and he swears not to harm him or
hand him over to his enemies. Yet he is unable to heed the prophet's warnings and
submit to the Babylonians for fear that he would be handed over to those Judeans
who had already surrendered and then get lynched. Despite Jeremiah's
reassurances, Tzedekiah still would not heed the prophet's warnings for fear of his
own ministers. The king knew very well what they would do to Jeremiah if they
discovered that he had the king's ear, and he advised him to hide the contents of
their discussions from them.

Chapter 39
The narrative now reaches its climax with the story of the flight and capture of King
Tzedekiah and the exile of Judah to Babylon. A parallel account of the capture of
Jerusalem is also found in the closing chapter of Jeremiah (ch 52), which after
many intervening chapters about later events then rounds off the book with that
event in order to show God's justice in punishing the nation with destruction for
failing to heed the warnings of His prophets. However, the purpose of the narrative
in our present chapter and those that follow is not so much to recount the details of
the destruction as to trace what happened to those who survived, among whom
Jeremiah played as active a role as the one he played in Jerusalem before its
capture.

V 4: "And they fled and went out at night from the city by way of the king's garden
through the gate between the walls and he went out on the way to the Aravah."
The Aravah is the Jordan valley. Having inhabited Jerusalem for many hundreds of
years, the kings of Judah had had ample time to prepare for various contingencies,
and they had evidently had the foresight to prepare the long tunnel which –
according to tradition – Tzedekiah used from Jerusalem to the plains of Jericho in
the hope of making his escape. However, precisely as he was about to emerge from
the cave, God sent a deer which the Babylonian forces sighted and pursued. The
deer entered the cave and the Babylonians went after it – and saw Tzedekiah
coming out, and captured him (Tanchuma Numbers #9). This was in fulfillment of
the prophecy of Ezekiel: "I have spread out My net against him" (Ezekiel 12:13;
see Rashi on Jer. 39:4).

V 7: "And he blinded Tzedekiah's eyes…" – "Rava asked Rabbah bar Meri, Surely
this contradicts what was prophesied of Tzedekiah, that 'you shall die in peace' (Jer.
34:5). He replied in the name of Rabbi Yohanan that the latter prophecy was
fulfilled because Nebuchadnezzar died in his lifetime" (Mo'ed Katan 28b).

V 10: "But some of the poor people who owned nothing Nevuzaradan left in the
land of Judah …" The Babylonians exiled the upper classes of Judah in order to
destroy their aspirations for independence, but there were not bent on destroying
Judea and its agriculture completely.

V 11: "And Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon gave instructions concerning

Jeremiah…" Nebuchadnezzar understood better than the rulers of Judah that
Jeremiah was a true prophet, and treated him with great respect, as he did Daniel
and his companions.

V 14: From a careful analysis of the texts (cf. Jer. 40:1), RaDaK infers that initially
Jeremiah was taken by junior Babylonian officers from the "Courtyard of
Confinement" (the king's prison) together with the other exiles and like them put in
chains to be taken to Babylon. Only afterwards did these officers learn that
Nebuchadnezzar's chief officer, Nebuzaradan, had received special instructions from
the king to leave Jeremiah free to choose what he wanted to do, and they then took
him to Gedaliah son of Ahikam.

According to Rashi and Metzudas David, prior to the capture of Jerusalem Gedaliah
had gone over and submitted to the Babylonians on the instructions of Jeremiah,
and when the city was captured, Nebuchadnezzar appointed Gedaliah as governor
over the remaining inhabitants of Judea.

Chapter 40
V 1: "The word that came to Jeremiah… after Nevuzaradan sent him off from
Ramah… when he was bound in chains among all the exile of Judah and Jerusalem
…" The Midrash tells that Jeremiah wanted to accompany the exiles on the road to
Babylon and of his own volition stuck his own neck in among convoys of chained
exiles in order to empathize with them and encourage them (cf. Rashi on this
verse). According to the Midrash, the "word" that now came to Jeremiah was that
he was to stay in Judea and join Gedaliah – this teaching is derived from a careful
analysis of verse 5 of the present chapter, "He had not yet turned back [when he
was told], Turn back (VE-SHUVAH) to Gedaliah…" However, according to the simple,
non-midrashic meaning of V 1, the "word" that came to Jeremiah is the prophecy
that will be recounted below in Chapter 42 vv 7ff.

V 3: "…and HaShem brought it about and did as He said…" Coming from the mouth
of Nebuchadnezzar's chief officer, this shows that the destruction of Jerusalem was
not only a message for the Jews but a sanctification of God's name in the eyes of all
the nations.

Vv 6ff: Jeremiah joined Gedaliah at Mitzpah, where the latter now had his
headquarters as governor of the remaining poor farmers of Judea. The officers of
the forces who were "in the field" (v 7) were the Judean officers who had fled from
Jerusalem in the face of the Babylonians. They now gathered around Gedaliah, who
swore to them that as long as they submitted to the king of Babylon he would act
as a loyal intermediary with the Babylonians on their behalf and protect them from
any acts of vengeance. They were then joined by more Judeans who had fled from
the Babylonians to the surrounding territories of Moab, Ammon and Edom etc. Had
the surviving Judean officers been willing to heed Gedaliah and Jeremiah, a
remnant of Judah could have remained living peaceably in their land. But the tragic
assassination of Gedaliah and the survivors' refusal to heed Jeremiah led to the
final collapse of all vestiges of Judean independence.

Vv 13ff: Yohanan ben Kare'ach and the other officers of Judah warn Gedaliah that
Ishma'el ben Netanyahu had been planted in their midst by the king of Ammon in
order to assassinate him. Ishma'el was "from the seed of the kingship" (Jer. 41:1)
– i.e. from the royal family of Judah. According to the rabbis, he was the twenty-
fourth generation descendant of King David's son Yerahmi-el from his wive Atara, a
convert woman of royal origins (see I Chronicles 2:26). Ishma'el was jealous of
Gedaliah because of his appointment by the Babylonians as governor of Judea.

V 16: "And Gedaliah said… you are speaking falsely about Ishma'el." Gedaliah
rejected what today would be called "credible intelligence" because he was
unwilling to accept LASHON HARA, an "evil report" about Ishma'el. This might seem
meritorious, but Gedaliah made a mistake that proved to be literally fatal, trying to
be more virtuous than the actual Halachah. The prohibition of ACCEPTING an "evil
report" about someone means that we should not necessarily BELIEVE what people
may tell us about that individual. However, we are still entitled, and indeed duty
bound, to take all due precautions IN CASE what they say turns out to be true.
Thus the sages said, "Show him respect, but consider him suspect" (KABDEIHU VE-
CHASHDEIHU).

Chapter 41
THE ASSASSINATION OF GEDALIAH

V 1: "And it was in the seventh month…" Gedaliah was assassinated on Rosh

HaShanah (1 st Tishri, the seventh month) but because Rosh HaShanah is a festival,
the fast commemorating his death was not fixed on that day but was deferred until
the day after the festival, 3 Tishri (RaDaK). The "Fast of Gedaliah" is the "fast of
the seventh month" mentioned by the prophet Zecharaiah, who says that like the
other fast days commemorating the calamities associated with the destruction of
the Temple, in time to come it is destined to be turned into a festival.(Zechariah
8:19).

Rashi (on v 1) states that the "king's ministers" who collaborated with Ishama'el
ben Nathanyah in the assassination were motivated by jealousy of Gedaliah over
the fact that he had risen to greatness.

It may have been a tradition for people to gather with their leaders for the New
Year. Ishma'el and his band sat down to partake of the festival meal with Gedaliah
in order to lull him into thinking they had come in peace. They then proceeded to
murder him in cold blood together with all the Jews and the Babylonian officers who
were with him. This was an act of overt rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar, who had
appointed Gedaliah as governor of the remaining population of Judea . It was
certain to elicit harsh retribution from the Babylonians. It was their fear of such a
response that led the remaining Judeans to flee. This brought all vestiges of Jewish
life in Judea to an end and thus put the final seal on the decree of destruction and
exile.

V 5: "And men came from Shechem, from Shilo and from Shomron…" These men
came carrying flour offerings and incense in their hands because when they left
their homes they evidently intended to sacrifice in the Temple, not knowing yet that
it had been destroyed. On hearing the news of its destruction, they had torn their
beards, rent their clothes and cut themselves in mourning and they changed
direction and made their way to Mitzpah in the hope of joining Gedaliah. In killing
them it is clear that Ishma'el was bent on trying to destroy any possibility of a self-
governing Judean entity under the protection of the Babylonians.

V 9: It is ironic that the pit into which Ishma'el threw the victims of his massacre,
which signified the final destruction of the independent kingdom of Judea , was the
very pit that King Asa of Judah had constructed generations earlier in order to
protect the kingdom. This pit is not mentioned anywhere else in the Bible.

Vv 11ff: Yohanan ben Kareyah, who warned Gedaliah against Isha'el, now emerges
as the de facto leader of the bedraggled remnant of Judah that were still in Judea .
Nothing is written of the whereabouts of Jeremiah at the time of the actual murder
of Gedaliah. We learned earlier that Jeremiah had come to Gedaliah "and dwelled
with him among the people that remained in the Land" (Jer. 40:6). However it
seems unlikely that the prophet was with Gedaliah when Ishma'el came to kill him
as he would not have escaped. It is more plausible that he was with Yohanan ben
Kareyah and his band, with whom he stayed later even when they went against his
advice (see Jer. 43:7-8).

Yohanan ben Kareyah was convinced that the Babylonians would take severe
retribution against all the Judeans because of Gedaliah's assassination, and after
retrieving those who had been taken captive by Ishma'el, made his way with all his
party of remnants from Givon (which is north of Jerusalem) to Bethlehem (which is
to the south) with the intention of fleeing to Egypt.

Chapter 42
The plea made to Jeremiah by the captains of the remaining Judean forces and by
Yohanan ben Kareyah together with all the rest of the people to pray for them and
seek guidance as to what they should do next was far from being as innocent as it
appears. They knew that they wanted to flee to Egypt and they hoped for rubber-
stamp approval from the prophet, even though they swore to him solemnly that
they would obey him no matter what he would say. However, when it came to it,
they did precisely the opposite (Chapter 43:2).

V 7: "And it was at the end of ten days and the word of HaShem came to
Jeremiah." Prophecy rarely comes instantly, but only after intensive preparations by
the prophet. It took Jeremiah ten days to arrange his prayers and meditations in
order to put the question of destiny posed by the surviving remnant of Judah before
God and receive an answer.

Vv 10ff: Prior to the destruction of the Temple, Jeremiah had repeatedly counseled
the people to submit to the Babylonians and accept the decree of exile. But now
that God had executed His plan and caused the Temple to be destroyed in
atonement for the sins of the nation, the remnant of Judah could have remained in
their own land had they been willing to swallow their pride and accept the
Babylonian yoke. Jeremiah urged them to do this, but on no account to try to
escape the Babylonians by fleeing to Egypt. The people imagined that they could
avoid war and famine by going there, but this was entirely contrary to the Torah,
which in three places warns Israel not to return to dwell in Egypt (Exodus 14:13;
Deut. 17:16 & 28:68; see Rambam, Laws of Kings 5:7-8). Yohanan and his band
wanted to reverse history by seeking Jewish survival in exile in Egypt, but it was
impossible to go backwards. There was no alternative but to submit to the yoke of
the new blazing star of Babylon, the first of the four empires that were historically
destined to subjugate Israel in order to complete the entire cycle of repair and
rectification through which the nation will ultimately be restored. The purpose of
the later exiles was to smelt and refine the souls that remained faithful to the Torah,
whereas if the people returned to Egypt, they would revert to complete idolatry. As
we see in the continuation (Jer. 44:17), this was precisely the intention of those
who were traveling with Yohanan ben Kareyah. Jeremiah warned them that if they
went to Egypt, the very sword and famine that they feared would come upon them
and destroy them.

V 20: "For you have gone astray at peril of your lives, when you sent me to
HaShem…" – "Jeremiah saw on the people's faces that they were not willing to stay
where they were in Judea. Accordingly he told them that they had indeed made a
great mistake in sending him. Had they not done so, they would have been
unwitting transgressors. But now that they had sent him yet still intended to rebel
by going to Egypt, they would be willful sinners (Metzudas David).

Chapter 43
After the conclusion of Jeremiah's answer to the remnant of Judah that they must
remain in Judea and not seek safety in Egypt, where they would surely be
destroyed, the people brazenly accused him of prophesying falsely simply because
he had told them the opposite of what they wanted to hear.

V 3: "For Baruch ben Neiriyah has set you against us…" It is not clear why Yohanan
ben Kareyah and his band suspected Baruch ben Neiriyah, who was Jeremiah's
foremost disciple and who had played a most prominent role in Jeremiah's contacts
with the kings of Judah (Jer. 36:4ff and 38:7, see Rashi there). Metzudas David (on
Jer. 43:3) suggests that Yohanan's faction had had some dispute with Baruch and
suspected that he persuaded Jeremiah to urge them to remain in Judah in order
that they would fall into the hands of the Babylonians.

Vv 5ff Yohanan ben Kareyah and the captains of the remaining Judean forces now
took the entire band of remnants to Egypt, blatantly defying Jeremiah just as the
people of Jerusalem and the leaders of Judah had time after time ignored his
warnings and violated his counsel ever since the beginning of his ministry, causing
their own destruction through their own obstinacy.

V 8: "Then the word of HaShem came to Jeremiah in Tahpanhes…" Despite the fact
that the people had willfully flouted his authority, Jeremiah did not abandon them
to their folly but accompanied them down to Egypt, hoping that he might yet
persuade them to relent.

Jeremiah prophecies that the remnant of Judah that fled to Egypt would not escape
Nebuchadnezzar there, because he would come and defeat the Egyptians and
destroy the very idolatrous temples in which the Judeans wanted to worship the
stars.
 Chapter 44
Jeremiah knew that the hearts of the Judean fugitives to Egypt were inclined to
idolatry (unlike those who submitted to Nebuchadnezzar and went into exile in
Babylon, where Tzaddikim like Daniel and his companions remained faithful to
HaShem throughout the exile).

Jeremiah appeals to the Judeans in Egypt to internalize the lesson that it was the
idolatry of the inhabitants of Judea and Jerusalem that had led to their destruction,
and that the same fate would befall those who reverted to idolatry in Egypt. The
prophet warns the people that that they would all die by the sword or by famine.

Vv 15ff: The people blatantly defy Jeremiah and answer that they have every
intention of following the cult of the "queen of the heaven". [As discussed in the
commentary on Jer. 7 vv 17-18, some consider this to have been the cult of a
planet that was considered to be the ruler of the heavens; others hold that this
itself was the cult of the sun, cf. Jer. 43:13. Yet others consider it to have been a
cult involving all the stars and planets.] The people argue that far from their pursuit
of this cult having CAUSED of their troubles, it was the very insufficiency of their
devotion to it that was the real cause of their troubles, while their pursuit of it had
brought them only blessing.

It is noteworthy that the men sought to defend the cult because their wives were
heavily involved in it (v 15) whereas the women were convinced that they had the
full support of their husbands in following the cult (v 19). [One wonders whether
there is not a parallel in the present era in the phenomenon whereby pressure from
feminist women (some of whom are apparently involved in a certain kind of
Shechinah-cult = Meleches HaShamayim???) has caused the male "rabbis" of the
Reform and Conservative movements to overthrow millennia of Torah tradition in
calling women to the reading of the Torah, appointing female "rabbis", etc. etc.],
The entire cycle that ended with the destruction of the Temple began when King
Solomon allowed himself to be drawn after the idolatries of his foreign wives. Now
the complicity of the remnant of Judah in their wives' idolatry in Egypt was to lead
to their final destruction.

Vv 20ff: Jeremiah again warns the people that it was the idolatry of the inhabitants
of Jerusalem and Judea that caused their destruction, and that likewise it would
cause the destruction of the fugitives to Egypt. The tiny remnant that would escape
the sword and return to Judea would then know whose words would stand – those
of the prophet or those of the people. The sign of the truth of Jeremiah's prophecy
would be the imminent defeat of Pharaoh Hofra of Egypt at the hands of the
Babylonians.

Chapter 45
The prophecy of the defeat of Pharaoh Hofra by the Babylonians with which the
previous chapter ended was directed to the remnant of Judah who had fled to Egypt
in order to show them that their trust that they would find security and prosperity
in that land was entirely misguided. The above prophecy marked the conclusion of
Jeremiah's prophecies about the destruction of Jerusalem and the fate that was to
overtake the remnant of Judah in Egypt.

The present short chapter (Jer. ch 45) consists of a prophecy directed specifically to
Jeremiah's leading disciple, Baruch ben Neiriyah. This predates by many years the
prophecies in chapters 37-44, which were delivered in the reign of Tzedekiah, the
last king of Judah, at the height of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, and after the
destruction of the Temple, when the remaining inhabitants of Judea fled to Egypt.

Jeremiah had already foreseen the destruction of the Temple and the exile years
before they came about. As we learned in Jer. ch 36, in the fourth year of the reign
of King Yeho-yakim, eighteen years before the destruction of the Temple, Jeremiah
had already composed the book of Eichah, "Lamentations", in which he depicted the
coming calamity in graphic detail. He sent Baruch ben Neiriyah to read it in the
Temple, and it came to the attention of the king, who tore the scroll to shreds and
burned it.

Witnessing the stubborn rejection of his master's prophecies by the king and his
ministers must have been a harsh lesson for Baruch, who had sought in Jeremiah a
teacher in prophecy as Moses had been to Joshua and Elijah to Elisha, yet who now
heard only that disaster was inevitable and that the wellsprings of prophecy would
dry up.

V 3: "You said, Woe is me now! For HaShem has added grief to my pain. I am
weary in my sighing and I find no rest." The "sighing" from which Baruch felt weary
alludes to the breathing discipline that was the foundation of the elaborate
meditations practiced by the students of the prophets in order to attain holy spirit.
These meditations consisted of holy names and letters intoned in lengthy sequences
(as brought down in the writings of the medieval kabbalist, Rabbi Avraham Abulafia
and as discussed by R. Aryeh Kaplan in "Meditation and the Bible"). Yet despite his
"sighing", Baruch could find no "rest", MENUCHAH. MENUCHAH alludes to the
indwelling of the Divine Presence (Shechinah), causing prophecy (cf. Numbers
11:26, "the spirit RESTED" upon them"; see Rashi on Jer. 45:3).

Vv 4-5: God's message to Baruch was that a vast upheaval was in progress
bringing destruction and suffering throughout the world, and that at such a time he
could not expect to attain the tranquility of holy spirit. "And you seek out great
things (=prophecy) for yourself???" Baruch should be grateful that he would at
least escape this upheaval with his life. In the words of the Midrash, "The Holy One
blessed be He said to Baruch, If there is no vineyard, there is no need for a fence;
if there is no flock, there is no need for a shepherd. I only reveal Myself to the
prophets for the sake of Israel " (Mechilta).

Baruch ben Neiriyah went to Babylon, where he taught Ezra and the other
outstanding prophets and sages who led the Men of the Great Assembly. Ezra
remained in Babylon as long as Baruch was alive, and only after his death did he go
up to Jerusalem.

Chapter 46
"I HAVE GIVEN YOU AS A PROPHET TO THE NATIONS" (Jeremiah 1:5)

Chapters 46-51 consist of Jeremiah's prophecies about the punishment and

destruction that would befall the nations neighboring on the Land of Israel – Egypt,
the Philistines, Moab , Ammon , Edom and Syria – culminating with his prophecy of
the fall of Babylon (chs 50-51).

Our present chapter contains the first of Jeremiah's prophecies about the nations.
He begins with Egypt, which was the first oppressor of Israel. The prophecy falls
into two main parts:
(1) Chapter 46 vv 1-12 prophesying the defeat of Pharaoh Necho at the hand of the
Babylonians at Kharkhemish in the fourth year of the reign of King Yeho-yakim.

(2) vv 13-26 prophesying Nebuchadnezzar's invasion and destruction of Egypt as

prophesied earlier in Jeremiah 44:30.

(1) Vv 1-12: The fall of Pharaoh Necho: Egypt aspired to the position of prime
influence in the entire region and was therefore perturbed by the ascent of Babylon,
which eclipsed Assyria and upset the regional balance of power. Pharaoh Necho
wanted to strike down the Babylonians at Kharkhemish, a strategic stronghold in
the upper valley of the Euphrates near the present-day Syrian-Turkish border about
100 km north east of Aleppo. It was on his way there that he struck down King
Josiah of Judah, who sought to intercept him and prevent him from marching
through the Holy Land. Soon after the death of Josiah, Pharaoh Necho installed
Yeho-yakim as king of Judah, but when he marched back to Kharkhemish in the
fourth year of Yeho-yakim's reign, he was defeated decisively by the Babylonians,
after which "the king of Egypt did not any more go out from his land because the
king of Babylon took everything that had belonged to the king of Egypt from the
brook of Egypt until the River Euphrates" (II Kings 24:7).

Vv 3-4: The prophet scornfully tells the Egyptians to prepare for battle, prophesying
that they will flee and be defeated (vv 5-6).

Vv 7-8: Egypt is compared to a swelling river because the entire prosperity of the
country depended on the Nile, but whereas Egypt wanted to sweep over and
influence the entire region, in fact enemies would come up against her and defeat
her.

V 11: The prophet taunts Egypt, telling her to seek medicine from Gil'ad when in
fact there is no medicine for her wound.

(2) The second part of Jeremiah's prophecy against Egypt in vv 13-28 is read
annually in the synagogue as the Haftara of Parshas BO, which tells the story of the
Exodus from Egypt. The destruction of Egypt as narrated in that Parshah is echoed
in Jeremiah's prophecy of the disaster that was to befall Egypt at the hands of the
Babylonians in the time of Pharaoh Hofra. This took place in the twenty-seventh
year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar (Seder Olam, Rashi on v 13).

V 17: "Pharaoh king of Egypt is but a noise; he has passed the appointed time" –
he boasted that he would go out and defeat the Babylonians and fixed a date for his
campaign, but in the end he did not go out and the appointed time passed.

V 19: "Prepare for yourself the baggage of exile…" Jeremiah advises the Egyptians
to prepare for exile, since the Babylonian policy was to transfer the nations they
conquered elsewhere in order to break their national identity. The Egyptians were
exiled for a period of forty years, as prophesied in Ezekiel 29:13. Jeremiah hints in
v 26 at the restoration of Egypt after their exile.

V 27: "And as for you, do not fear, O My servant Jacob…" Here Jeremiah comes to
comfort the Jews who were exiled to Babylon in order to encourage them not to
despair of being redeemed when they saw that the Egyptians were exiled to a place
nearby and returned after only forty years while their own exile was much further
afield and they had still not been redeemed (Metzudas David). Even if God destroys
the other nations, He will never destroy Israel , even though He chastises them.

"As for you, do not fear, O My servant Jacob, says HaShem, for I am with you!"
 Chapter 47
Jeremiah was sent to prophesy not only to Israel but also to all the surrounding
nations. Without exception they had shown hostility to Israel throughout their
history and gloated over their suffering and exile. Thus the raging fury that caused
the destruction of Jerusalem swept across the entire region leaving none of the
other nations unaffected. Jeremiah had already been commanded to make the
nations "drink" from the "cup" of God's anger. "For thus says HaShem, the God of
Israel, to me: Take this wine cup of fury from My hand and cause all the nations to
whom I send you to drink it" (Jeremiah 25:15).

Following his prophesies in the previous chapter about the calamities that were to
befall Egypt, Jeremiah now turns to the Philistines, who inhabited Gaza and the
surrounding areas to the south of the Land of Israel as well as Tyre and Sidon and
their environs to the north.

The Philistines appear to have suffered a double punishment in the time of

Jeremiah. The first was at the hands of the Egyptians. When the Babylonians were
besieging Jerusalem during the last years of King Tzedekiah, Pharaoh king of Egypt
wanted to advance against them not so much to help Judah (whom he did not want
to be too powerful) but rather in order to deliver a blow to Nebuchadnezzar, whom
he perceived as being a severe threat to Egypt's aspirations to global dominion.
When the Babylonians heard that the Egyptians were marching against them, they
temporarily withdrew from Jerusalem (cf. Jer.37:5) and began to advance against
the Egyptians. This caused Pharaoh to turn back, and on his way back to Egypt, his
forces swept through and ravaged Gaza, as mentioned in the present chapter, Jer.
47:1. The second blow to Gaza came later on, when the "waters arising from the
north" (v 2) – the Babylonians – swept through and destroyed all the Philistine
habitations, as detailed in this chapter.

Chapter 48
Moab too was ravaged by the whirlwind of fury that swept through the entire region.
A number of reasons are given in our text for the suffering that afflicted the
Moabites. "For because you have trusted in your works and in your treasures, you
too shall be taken, and Kemosh [the god of Moab] and his priests and his princes
together…" (v 7). The Moabites had enjoyed prosperity and peace throughout their
history. As we learn in v 11, they had never suffered exile, and they believed that
they were immune. They had rejoiced and gloated when they saw the calamity that
overtook the Ten Tribes of Israel, laughing at them as people laugh at a thief
caught in the act (v 27). It was the pride and arrogance of the Moabites that sealed
their fate (v 29-30).

The prophet urges the enemies of the Moabite to exact God's vengeance from them
with the utmost diligence. "Cursed be he who does the work of HaShem negligently,
and cursed be he who keeps back his sword from blood" (v 10). Nothing similar
was said by the prophet in the case of any of the other nations against whom he
prophesied. The Moabites were singled out for this severe vengeance because they
were cousins of Israel (Lot, the father of Moab, was Abraham's nephew) and Israel
was commanded not to afflict the Moabites (Deut. 2:9) yet the Moabites
persistently showed themselves to be implacable enemies of Israel (see RaDaK on v
10).

Nevertheless, "I will bring back the captivity of Moab at the end of days, says
HaShem" (v 47). According to RaDaK (ad loc.), this will take place in the time of
Mashiach, despite the fact that all the nations became intermingled and at present
the identity and whereabouts of the Moabites are unknown. Nevertheless they will
return at the end of days and will be subject to Israel, as prophesied in Isaiah
11:14.

Chapter 49
Vv 1-6: Prophecy of the punishment of Ammon. Like the Moabites, the Ammonites
were descended from Abraham's nephew Lot but ungratefully showed nothing but
hostility to Israel. Thus it was the king of Ammon who engineered the assassination
of Gedaliah ben Ahikam, which brought Judean independence to an end (see Jer.
40:14).

V 1: "Has Israel no sons? Has he no heir? Why then does Malkam (=the god of
Ammon) inherit Gad and his people dwell in his cities?" – When the Ten Tribes went
into exile, the neighboring Ammonites occupied the territories of Gad, Reuven and
the other tribes, claiming that they had been seized from Ammon (RaDaK).

V 2: "Rabbah of the children of Ammon" is none other than Amman, capital of the
present-day kingdom of Jordan .

V 6: As in the case of the Moabites (ch 48 v 47), Jeremiah prophesies that

eventually the Ammonites will return to their land. RaDaK states that this will be at
the end of days with the coming of Mashiach.

Vv 7-13: The vengeance against Edom. RaDaK (on v 7) states that this prophecy
relates to the future fall of Edom. Jeremiah's prophecy against Edom parallels those
of Obadiah, Isaiah (ch 34) and Ezekiel (25:12-14).

V 12: "Behold, those who do not deserve to drink the cup will surely drink – shall
you [Edom] go unpunished?" The other nations that oppressed Israel were not their
brothers and deserved less of a punishment than Edom, who was Israel's brother
yet still oppressed them (Rashi).

Vv 14-22: Depiction of the terrible fall of Edom.

V 22: "Behold, like an eagle he will ascend and fly and spread his wings over Basra
…" The Basra mentioned here is popularly identified with Basra in Iraq , although
scholars consider this to refer to a town called Basra in the south of present-day
Jordan , which is where the original territory of Edom was located. Nevertheless, in
relation to the popular identification with Basra in Iraq it is of interest that until
today this town is a stumbling block for the army of Britain, which some consider to
be latter-day Edom .

Vv 23-27: The punishment of Damascus, the capital of Aram .

Vv 28-33: Prophecy of the punishment of Kedar and the kingdom of Hatzor . RaDaK
states that Kedar and the "children of the east" mentioned in this verse are from
the children of Ishmael. Verse 28 specifically states that it is Nebuchadnezzar who
would strike them. This is because all the other nations mentioned by Jeremiah in
these prophecies of retribution were struck not only by Nebuchadnezzar but also by
others, whereas Kedar was struck only by Nebuchadnezzar.

Vv 34-39: Prophecy of the punishment of Eilam. As in the case of Moab and Ammon,
Eilam is destined to be restored at the end of days (RaDaK on v 39).
 Chapter 50
Vv 1-3: Prophecy of the destruction of Babylon. Jeremiah's ministry fell at the very
height of Babylonian might and dominion, yet he still prophesied that she would fall,
unlikely as this may have seemed to the people of his time.

"For a nation has come up against her from the north" – this refers to Medea and
Persia, who under Darius and Cyrus respectively overthrew Babylon in the time of
Nebuchadnezzar's grandson, Belshazzar, as described in the book of Daniel.

Vv 4-8: The salvation and restoration of Zion after the destruction of Babylon. "In
those days and at that time… the children of Israel shall come, they and the
children of Judah together…" (v 4). The collapse of Babylon would lead to the
restoration of Judah, and with them those members of the Ten Tribes who
remained in the Land of Israel after the exile of their brothers and who attached
themselves to Judah, accompanying them into exile in Babylon (Metzudas David,
RaDaK on v 4). Simultaneously this prophecy of the unification of Israel and Judah
surely also refers to the eventual return of all the exiled Ten Tribes and their
reconciliation with Judah at the end of days, and verses 5-8 referring to the
salvation have eternal significance and are not bound only to the return to Zion in
the days of Ezra after the fall of Babylon.

Vv 9-16: Depiction of the vengeance against Babylon and its fall.

V 11: "Because you were glad, because you rejoiced, O robbers of My heritage…"
Retribution will befall Babylon because they plundered God's heritage – Jerusalem –
yet had joy and success until now (Metzudas David).

V 12: "Your mother shall be greatly ashamed…" It is customary to recite this verse
when one sees cemeteries of heathens (Berachos 58a).

Vv 17-20: Salvation of Israel after the destruction of Babylon. Verse 17 refers to

the main exiles: that of the Ten Tribes under Sennacherib, and that of Judah and
Benjamin under Nebuchadnezzar.

RaDaK comments that verses 18 and 19 refer simultaneously to the restoration of

Judah to Jerusalem after the fall of Babylon and to the future restoration of Israel.

V 20 prophesies the ultimate cleansing of Israel and Judah from all sin at the end of
days. Since all the sins will be turned into merits, they will SEARCH to see if there
are any remaining sins that can yet be turned into merits!!! (Rabbi Nachman).

Vv 21-34: God's war and vengeance against mighty Babylon.

V 25: "HaShem has opened his armory and has brought forth the weapons of His
indignation…" The daily carnage in Iraq today seems to be the fulfillment of this
prophecy.

V 29: "According to all that she did, so do to her…" God's vengeance is "measure
for measure".

Vv 33ff: The fall of Babylon would be proof of the might of Israel's Redeemer.

Vv 35-40: Prophecy of the destruction and devastation that would overtake Babylon.
Vv 41-46: Depiction of the might of the enemy that would fight against Babylon.
None can thwart God's plan.

Chapter 51
The previous long chapter about the destruction of Babylon is now followed by an
even lengthier chapter continuing with the same theme.

V 1: "Behold I will raise up against Babylon and against those that dwell in Lev-
qamay, a destroying wind…" The commentators point out that LEV-QAMAY, which
literally means "the heart of those that rise against Me", is made up of the letters
corresponding to KASDIM (=Chaldeans) in the AT-BASH cipher (where TAV stands
for ALEPH and SHIN for BEIT etc.)

V 5: "For Israel has not been widowed not Judah from his God…" The coming
destruction of Babylon is not a matter of chance. It is God's vengeance against her
for destroying His Temple and exiling Judah . Thus the passage continues (v 10):
"HaShem has brought forth our vindication…"

V 11: "HaShem has raised up the spirit of the kings of Medea". Darius king of
Medea conquered Babylon in 3389 (=371 B.C.E.). Jeremiah wrote down the present
prophecy in the fourth year of Tzedekiah (see v 59), which was in the year 3327
(=433 B.C.E.). Thus Jeremiah prophesied the fall of Babylon at the hands of Medea
62 years before it occurred.

Vv 15-19 appear with very minor verbal differences in Jeremiah 10:12ff.

Vv 20ff: "You are My battering ram and weapons of war: with you I will smash
(VENIPATZTI) the nations…" In the words of Rashi (ad loc.): "Up until now I have
preserved you to be a destroyer and to smash the peoples against whom I have
decreed exile." The prophet emphasizes that Babylon's power and glory were not
due to her intrinsic greatness but were given to her by God purely in order to serve
His ulterior purpose of punishing the nations. In vv 20-23 the word VENPATZTI, "I
will smash," appears NINE TIMES.

Vv 34f: "Nevuchadrezzar king of Babylon has devoured me, he has crushed me…"
These are the words of Zion and Jerusalem. Although Judah had sinned and
deserved God's punishment, Nebuchadnezzar's greed and cruelty were
disproportionate, and God would justly punish him in order to avenge His people
and His city. Cf. Psalms 137:8-9.

V 39: "When they are heated I will make feasts for them, and I will make them
drunk…" This is exactly what happened when Babylon fell in the reign of
Nebuchadnezzar's grandson, Belshazzar, who made a great feast, became drunk,
exhibited the captured vessels of the Holy Temple and was killed that very night, as
described in Daniel ch 5.

V 45ff: "Go out from her midst, My people…" During the period in which Jeremiah
delivered the present prophecy, he was consistently urging the people of Judah to
submit to Babylon and accept God's decree of exile. Yet at exactly the same time
he was prophesying that 62 years later the Jews would leave Babylon.

V 56: "For HaShem is the God of recompense, He shall surely pay back." These
words express the essential moral of the entire book of Jeremiah, most of which is
made up of his warnings to Judah that God would punish them for their sins with
destruction and exile. The inhabitants of Judea were in denial, but after all his
warnings, Jeremiah was proved correct when events turned out exactly as he had
prophesied and the Babylonians captured Jerusalem, killed or exiled its inhabitants
and destroyed the Temple, as described in chapters 39ff. This was how God "paid
back" Judah. Afterwards the turn of Babylon would come, because although she
was merely an instrument in God's hand, she was far from being righteous and
committed great evil in the way she carried out her mission, and God would "pay
back" Babylon with her eventual destruction.

V 59: This verse implies that King Tzedekiah went in person to Babylon in the
fourth year of his reign (seven years before the destruction of the Temple) in order
to meet with Nebuchadnezzar, and this is the opinion of Midrash Seder Olam.
However the opinion of Targum Yonasan is that Tzedekiah himself did not go to
Babylon but sent Serayah as his emissary (see RaDaK). The purpose of the mission
was to conciliate Babylon, yet at this very moment Jeremiah saw that
Nebuchadnezzar would not be conciliated but would destroy Jerusalem , and that
this very act would seal the fate of Babylon , which would be destroyed. Thus seven
years before the destruction of the Temple Jeremiah instructed that the scroll of his
prophecies of the coming destruction of Babylon should be tied to a heavy stone
and cast into the River Euphrates as a sign that Babylon would eventually sink.

V 64: "Thus far the words of Jeremiah." This marks the end of the prophecies of
Jeremiah: the remainder of the book is narrative.

Chapter 52
The major part of this chapter (verses 1-27 and 31-34) appears almost word for
word in the concluding section of the Book of Kings (II Kings ch 24 vv18-20 and ch
25 vv 1-21 & 25-30). The only differences of substance between the chapter here
and the section in Kings are: (a) Kings 25:22-26 gives a brief account of the
appointment of Gedaliah ben Ahikam and his assassination, which was described in
detail in Jeremiah ch 40; (b) Our present chapter in Jeremiah vv 28-30 gives
precise figures of the numbers of (male) members of the tribes of Judah who were
exiled to Babylon in three successive waves of exile.

These three waves of exile were: (1) the exile of King Yechonyah (=Yeho-yachin),
which took place "in the seventh year" after Nebuchadnezzar subdued his father,
King Yeho-yakim – 3023 exiles (v 28); (2) "In Nebuchadnezzar's eighteenth year:
this was the exile of Tzedekiah which took place with the destruction of the Temple
– 832 exiles (v 29); (3) "In the twenty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar": Midrash
Seder Olam (quoted by Rashi) explains that in this year Nebuchadnezzar conquered
Tyre and swept away Judeans who had fled there and to the regions of Ammon and
Moab – 745 exiles (see Rashi on vv 28-30).

This sober account of the destruction of Jerusalem, the plunder of the Temple
vessels and the complete exile of all the surviving members of the tribe of Judah
concludes the book of Jeremiah, showing the vindication of all of his prophesies
about the coming calamity despite the fact that most of the people of his time
refused to believe them and openly scoffed and persecuted him. Thus we see that
the truth of prophecy does not depend on whether people accept it or not. "Many
are the thoughts in the heart of a man, but it is the counsel of HaShem that will
stand" (Proverbs 19:21).

Jeremiah prophesied calamity, but he also prophesied redemption and restoration.

The fact that all his prophesies of calamity came about is our guarantee that those
of restoration will also come about. His prophesy ends with the release of King
Yeho-yachin from prison after the death of Nebuchadnezzar. King Yeho-yachin was
given a position of honor in Babylon, and this in itself was a sign of hope. During
his captivity Yeho-yachin repented, and although when he was a sinner he had
been cursed that he would die childless, the decree was revoked and he had a child
who fathered Zerubavel, who rebuilt the Holy Temple.

MAY HASHEM LET US WITNESS ALL OF JEREMIAH'S PROPHECIES OF REDEMPTION

AND RESTORATION SPEEDILY IN OUR DAYS. AMEN.
 Book of Ezekiel
Chapter 1
Ezekiel's prophetic ministry commenced a few years prior to the destruction of the First
Temple and spanned a period of over twenty years. Ezekiel received Torah from the
prophet Jeremiah, and there is a tradition that he was actually his son and was called "the
son of Buzi" because people despised (BUZ) Jeremiah (RaDaK on Ezekiel 1:3 in the name
of Targum Yerushalmi). The opening prophesy in the book of Ezekiel, which came to him
in Babylon, is dated to five years after the exile there of King Yeho-yachin (v 2). This took
place eleven years before the destruction of the Temple. Ezekiel went into exile with
Yeho-yachin together with sages and prophets like Daniel, Hananya, Mishael, Azariah
and Mordechai. It is surmised that Ezekiel began to prophesy prior to leaving the Land of
Israel, in accordance with the principle that the Shechinah does not rest upon a prophet
outside the Land unless it first rested upon him in Israel (Moe'ed Katan 25a). Some hold
that Ezekiel's first prophecy is contained in chapter 2, while others hold that it is in
chapter 17 (Rashi on Ezekiel 1:3).

"And it was in the thirtieth year…" (verse 1). Our commentators prove that Ezekiel is
dating his prophesy to the thirtieth year since the previous YOVEL (Jubilee year), which
was the year in which Hilkiyahu the High Priest found the Torah scroll in the Temple in the
eighteenth year of the reign of King Josiah (see II Kings 22:8ff and II Chronicles 34:14ff;
Rashi on Ezekiel 1:2 and RaDaK on Ezekiel 1:1). Although this led to a spiritual revival for
a time, it also marked the sealing of the decree of destruction and exile. Thus Ezekiel tells
us that when he received this prophecy of the departure of the Shechinah from the
Temple, he was already in exile. Much of his prophetic mission was to rebuke the wicked
people of his generation for the sins that were to lead to the destruction of the Temple
and the subsequent exile of the rest of the people. He also prophesied against the nations
and about the war of Gog and Magog. However the climax of his ministry came "in the
twenty fifth year after our exile" (Ezekiel 40:1). This was in the next Jubilee year (see
Rashi ad loc.), when he had a vision of being taken back to Jerusalem, where he saw
every detail of the Future Temple, prophesying the final restoration of Israel at the end of
days and the order in which Melech HaMashiach, the Cohanim, Levites and the Twelve
Tribes will dwell in the Land forever.

"…by the River Kvar…" (v 1) – "If the Shechinah does rest on the prophets outside of the
Land of Israel, it speaks with them only in a place of purity, over the water" (Mechilta Bo,
cf. Daniel 8:2 & 10:4). Some identify the River Kvar with the Euphrates. The Hebrew
word KVAR means "already", implying that what Ezekiel saw in his vision existed long
before. The letters of KVAR are the same as the word REKHEV, a "vehicle", root of the
word MERKAVAH ("chariot") – for in his vision Ezekiel saw the divine "Chariot".

"…and there the HAND of HaShem was upon him" (v 3) – "Every time the word 'hand' is
used in this work or anywhere else in connection with prophecy, it is an expression
indicating FORCE: prophecy overwhelms the prophet despite himself, similarly to the way
in which madness takes over a madman" (Rashi ad loc.).
"And I looked, and behold a storm wind…" (v 4). It is proper to approach the study of
Ezekiel's vision with deep awe and trepidation because he unveils some of the
profoundest secrets of God's providence over creation through the divine "Chariot".
Ezekiel had his vision of the heavenly order through which God governs the world on the
very threshold of the destruction of the Temple. What he saw was "the chariot of the
throne of glory of the Shechinah – and because it was coming with fury to destroy Israel,
it appeared in the form of a storm wind and a cloud" (Rashi on v 4). Ezekiel saw it "coming
from the north" because it was coming from the land of the Chaldees, which is in the
north (Jeremiah 1:14). "And why did it go there? In order to bring the entire world under
the dominion of Nebuchadnezzar, so that no-one would be able to say that He delivered
His nation, Israel, into the hands of a lowly people" (Hagigah 13:2).

Ezekiel was to see further details of the divine "chariot" in later visions (Ezekiel 8:1ff,
10:1ff). He would then see the Divine Presence withdrawing stage by stage from the Holy
Temple in Jerusalem prior to its destruction. However, the main focus of the vision in our
present chapter is not upon the extraneous "fury" that was to bring this about but rather
upon the inner workings of the heavenly order of "angels" – the CHAYOS, "beasts", lit.
"vital beings", and OPHANIM, "wheels" – through which God governs the creation. Thus
it was "from OUT OF THE MIDST" of the storm wind, the cloud and fire that Ezekiel saw
the Chayos, i.e. he caught a glimpse of the interiority that lay beneath the external
"storm wind".

These Chayos – the "beasts" that "draw" the divine "chariot" – are described in vv 5-12.
From Rashi's careful textual analysis, it appears that there are four overall Chayos, each
of which has four "faces" (that of a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle), and each of its four
faces in turn consists of all four faces. Thus each Chayah has 16 faces, and since each
face has four wings, each Chayah has sixty-four wings (Rashi on v 6). This suggests that
God's providence may be seen as a hologram in which each part contains the whole, and
each aspect includes all the different aspects.

"The lion is the king of the wild beasts; the ox is the king of the animals; the eagle is the
king of the birds, and man stands proudly above them all. And the Holy One blessed be
He rules proudly over all of them and over the entire universe... Why does it say here 'the
face of an ox on the left' but later on it says 'the face of one was the face of a cherub' (Ez.
10:14) and does not count the ox? The reason is because Ezekiel begged for mercy and
it was changed into a cherub. He said: Master of the World, how can the accuser (the
golden calf, which was an idolatrous representation of the ox, which Israel saw at Sinai)
be turned into the defender (the ox of the Merkavah)? But is not the face of a cherub the
same as the face of a man? The difference is that one is a big face (man) and one is a
small face (cherub)" (Chagigah 13b). [The face of the cherub is "small" because it is on
the left=TZIMTZUM.]

"And their feet were straight feet" (v 7). They did not have joints since unlike material
animals they had no need to bend their legs to sit or lie down (Rashi ad loc.). From this
verse we learn that when praying the Amidah prayer we should position our feet straight
together like angels (Berachos 10b).

Verses 12ff portray the Chayos in movement and their relationship with the Ophanim
beneath them. The Chayos move because of the RUACH – the will of God – that is clothed
within them (v 12). The Chayos can move in any direction without turning because they
have faces in all directions (ibid.). They are described as "running and returning" (v 14).
The metaphor is one of the flame of a furnace or a bolt of lightning which shoots out and
virtually simultaneously flashes back from where it came. "Similarly when the Chayos
move their heads out from under the firmament that is stretched above them, they
become filled with fear because of the Shechinah which is above the firmament, and they
hurriedly bring their heads back under" (Rashi ad loc.). The Chayos are spiritual forces
yearning for God and seeking to transcend their boundaries, but they can do so only for
a moment before fear and trepidation force them to retreat. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov
taught that the mode of "running and returning" characterizes all spiritual life and
endeavor. We must constantly strive to go beyond our boundaries, yet we are
constrained to remain within them and our task is to actualize the vision we attain at
moments of transcendence within the limitations that God has set for our lives (Likutey
Moharan I, 6 & 22 etc.).

Just as when animals draw an earthly chariot they cause its wheels to turn, so the
celestial Chayos cause the OPHAN ("wheel") of the divine "chariot to move. The Ophan is
"an angel that stands on the earth and his head reaches the Chayos, and his name is
Sandalphon" (Chagigah 13b). This Talmudic comment alludes to the way that the lower
levels of God's governmental order are like a "shoe" (sandal) that garbs the lowest of the
upper levels (the "feet") and through which those higher levels operate in order to bring
about specific effects on earth. The Hebrew word translated as "angel" is MALACH, which
essentially means a messenger or agent through which another higher force operates.
Metzudas David (on v 15) states that each Chayah had only one Ophan rather than a
separate Ophan for each of its four faces. Each Ophan was like "a wheel within a wheel",
effectively turning it into a kind of ball that could roll in any directions without ever
needing to turn (v 17). The Ophanim had eyes all over them so that they could see in all
directions since they never turned (v 18 and Rashi ad loc.).

Verse 18 expresses the "chain of command" whereby the RU'ACH ("spirit"), which is the
"the will of HaKadosh Baruch Hu" clothed in the Chayah (Rashi) caused the Chayah to
"move" (=act), and this in turn automatically caused the Ophan to move (act), since "the
spirit of the Chayah was in the Ophanim".

"And I heard the sound of their wings like the sound of many waters, like the voice of the
Almighty…" (v 24). The voice that Ezekiel heard was like the voice of God as He spoke at
Mt Sinai (Metzudas David, RaDaK ad loc.).

"And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne…. And
upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of ADAM…" (v 26).
Riding the Chariot is ADAM – the Holy One blessed be He: the gematria of the MILUI
(expansion) of the letters of the Tetragrammaton with alephs, expressing the absolute
unity of God on all levels, is 45=ADaM. The prophet saw only a "likeness like the
appearance" – it is forbidden to confuse the MASHAL (metaphor) with the NIMSHAL (the
subject of the comparison) and to imagine for a moment that the prophet saw a human
form. The human form as we know it is but the faintest reflection of a reflection of the
divine reality of which Ezekiel caught a glimpse.

"And I saw something like the color of electrum (CHASHMAL)…" (v 27). Rashi comments:
"We are not permitted to seek to understand the meaning of this verse" (cf. Chagigah
13a). "There was a certain boy who wanted to understand the meaning of the Chashmal
and a fire came forth and consumed him – because he had not reached the proper age.
But let Hananiyah son of Hizkiah be remembered for good, because if not for him the
sages would have taken the book of Ezekiel out of the Biblical canon on account of the
passages that apparently contradict the Torah. What did he do? They brought him three
hundred barrels of oil (to light his lamp) and he sat in an attic and darshened Ezekiel to
resolve the contradictions" (Chagigah ibid.).

"As the appearance of the rainbow…" (v 28). Contrary to the philosophy of the rainbow
generation, the Talmud teaches that it is improper to gaze for long upon the rainbow
(though glancing momentarily is permitted) since it alludes to the glory of God. "Whoever
sees the rainbow in the cloud ought to fall upon his face, as it says, 'Like the appearance
of the rainbow… and I fell on my face'" (Berachos 59a).

* * * Ezekiel 1:1-28 & 3:12 are read as the Haftarah on the first day of the festival of
Shavuos commemorating the Giving of the Torah. * * *

Chapter 2
Having risen prophetically from level to level – from seeing the storm wind and then the
"angels" who execute God's will… until he heard His voice speaking to him – Ezekiel is
now given his mission.

"And He said to me, Son of man… (BEN ADAM)" (v 1 & 3 etc.). Unique among the
prophets, God repeatedly addresses Ezekiel as the "son of man". "It seems to me," says
Rashi, "that he only called him the 'son of man' in order that he should not become
arrogant after having had a vision of the Chariot and of the supernal order" (Rashi on v 1).
"The son of man… Son of pure people, son of righteous people, son of people who
practiced kindness, son of people who demeaned themselves for the sake of My glory and
the glory of Israel " (Tanna d'vei Eliyahu ch 6).

"Whether they will hear or whether they will refuse to hear…" (v 5). The prophet has the
obligation to deliver his message regardless of whether people heed it or not. "And they
shall know that a prophet was among them" (ibid.) – "I want them to know when they are
punished that there was a prophet in their midst who reproved them and they did not
listen" (Rashi ad loc.).

In his vision, Ezekiel was given a scroll of prophecy that he was to "eat" (v 8) – i.e. to
learn it, remember it and internalize its message so that the words would be fluent on his
mouth (Metzudas David ad loc.). "And in it was written lamentations and mourning and
woe" (v 10 – a harsh message!

Let us "eat" and internalize the teachings of our prophets and learn to be true BNEY
ADAM!!!

Chapter 3
We read at the end of the previous chapter how a hand spread forth a scroll before Ezekiel,
"…and it was written inside and outside, and in it was written lamentations and mourning
and woe" (Ez. 2:10). Targum (ad loc.) renders: "…And written in it was what happened
from the beginning and what is destined to happen in the end, and in it was written that
if the House of Israel transgress the Torah, the nations shall rule over them, but if they
practice the Torah, lamentations, mourning and woe shall depart from them."

Our present chapter opens with God's command to Ezekiel to "eat this scroll" – to imbibe
and internalize its message of rebuke so as to ready himself for his mission to the House
of Israel.

In vv 4-10 God fortifies Ezekiel in preparation for his mission, warning him that whereas
any other people would heed God's rebukes, Israel are brazen and hard-hearted – but
reassuring him that God has made him even stronger than them, like the slender Shamir
worm, which has the power to eat through stone (v 9).
Following the vision of the Chariot with which Ezekiel opened (Ez. 1:1ff) and his
appointment as prophet (2:1-3:10), God now tells him in verse 11 of our present chapter
to return to the main body of exiles in Babylon from which he had become separated
when he began to prophecy by the river Kvar.

"Then a spirit took me up and I heard behind me a voice of great rushing, saying, Blessed
be the glory of HaShem from His place" (v 12). In the words of Rashi (ad loc.), "After He
completed giving His instructions, He commanded the wind to carry him to the place
where the exiles were." Metzudas David (ad loc.) explains: "It is as if He was saying to the
prophet, Do not think that now that the Shechinah is leaving its place in the Temple Holy
of Holies the Glory of HaShem will not be blessed and praised as it was when it was in its
place in the Holy of Holies. For even though it will have left its place, He is still blessed and
praised" – i.e. His true glory transcends any possible earthly revelation of it, since nobody
can know His place (cf. Chagigah 13b). The phrase "Blessed be the glory… from His place"
is the second response in the KEDUSHAH (Sanctification) recited by the prayer leader and
congregation as the high point of the communal repetition of the daily morning and
afternoon AMIDAH and Shabbos and festival Mussaf prayers immediately following the
joint response of "Holy! Holy! Holy!..." (Isaiah 6:3). The verse here in Ezekiel 3:12 is also
recited in KEDUSHAH D'SIDRA (the prayer "Uva LeTziyon…") after the daily morning
Amidah and at Minchah on Shabbos and festivals and on Saturday nights.

Ezekiel could still hear the awesome sound of the wings of the Chayos and the noise of the
Ophanim as the spirit carried him away from the "place" of his vision back to the exiles in
Babylon (vv 13-14).

"Then I came to the exiles in Tel Aviv…" (v 15). A TEL is a hill or mound, while AVIV refers
to ripe barley, which in Israel is the sign of SPRING (Ex. 9:31 & 13:4 etc.). It is indeed
after the name of the Jewish place of exile in Babylon mentioned in our present verse that
the modern Israeli city of Tel Aviv was named when it was founded in 1909 to serve as a
residential suburb of the ancient port city of Yafo ( Jaffa ). The name had been used by
the author Nachum Sokolow as the title of his Hebrew translation of Theodore Herzel's "
Old New Land " to symbolize the spring-like rebirth of a new state on the mound
remaining from a much earlier state.

Ezekiel spent seven days in a state of total shock following his return from the exalted
world of prophetic vision to the bustling center of the Babylonian exiles from Judah , until
God spoke to him again with further teaching about the nature of his mission (vv 15-16).
The prophet was obliged to address both the wicked and the righteous. He was to warn
the wicked to turn from their evil ways, and he was to warn the righteous not to allow
themselves to lapse. If the prophet failed to rebuke them he would bear responsibility for
their evil deeds and lapses, but as long as he discharged his duty he would be "clean" and
they alone would bear the consequences of their evil.

"And when a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, I will lay
a stumbling block before him and he will die…" (v 20). "If the righteous man makes the
mistake of thinking that on account of his having been righteous for a long time God will
forgive him for the evil he now commits, I will prepare a stumbling block for him"
(Metzudas David ad loc.). "The stumbling block will be that he will succeed in all his affairs
in this world, because he will eat in this world the fruits of the righteousness he was
intended to eat in the world to come, 'and his righteousness that he did will not be
remembered' i.e. in the world to come" (RaDaK ad loc.).

"And He said to me, Arise, go out to the plain (BIK'AH)…" (v 22). "He instructed him to go
out to the plain where He showed him the Glory as He had showed him by the River Kvar,
for the plain was a place of greater purity than Tel Aviv, which was a human habitation.
He sent him this vision time after time in order to deepen his understanding of God's
providence and His way of governing the creation. Moreover that plain (BIK'AH) was the
same plain in which the original Tower of Babylon had been built (Gen. 11:2), and He
began showing him His providence over His creatures when he mixed up their language
and thwarted their intention" (RaDaK on v 22).

In the plain God gave Ezekiel further instructions and a series of prophecies that are
contained in the coming chapters (chs 4-7). From now on the prophet was to shut himself
up in his house as if imprisoned and not to speak to the people except when God opened
his mouth in prophecy, for the people would not listen to him. The reason was – in the
words of the repeated refrain (ch 2 vv 5, 6 & 7; ch 3 vv 26 & 27) – "FOR THEY ARE A
REBELLIOUS HOUSE".

Chapter 4
SIGNS AND SYMBOLS

At various junctures, certain prophets were instructed to carry out symbolic actions as a
way of vividly dramatizing their message. In the present chapter Ezekiel (still in the
"plain" receiving the series of prophecies that began in v 23 of the previous chapter) is
given three sets of instructions.

1: THE BRICK (vv 1-3)

Ezekiel was to take a large building block and carve on it a representation of the city of
Jerusalem, which he was to surround with siege towers, siege mounds, army camps and
battering rams symbolizing the coming Babylonian assault. "And take for yourself an iron
pan and set it as a wall of iron between you and the city" (v 3) – "From the day the Holy
Temple was destroyed, a wall of iron stands between Israel and their Father in heaven, as
it says, 'Take for yourself an iron pan…'" (Berachos 32b).

2: LYING ON HIS SIDE (vv 4-8)

The "brick" would be positioned where the prophet could gaze upon it before him (see v
7) while lying immobilized on one side for extended periods. "Lying on one side for a long
time without being able to turn onto the other side is extremely hard" (RaDaK on v 4).
Rashi explains that Ezekiel was to endure this pain and suffering for a specific number of
days corresponding to the number of years that Israel had vexed God with their defiance,
"and you will atone for their sins since the punishments I have said I will bring upon them
are harsh in your eyes. I have made it easier for you to bear the pain I have suffered for
the total number of years they have sinned before Me by turning them into the
corresponding number of days" (Rashi on vv 4-5). "Through this pain the sins of Israel
would be atoned without their being utterly destroyed on account of their sins" (Metzudas
David on v 4). "When a king of flesh and blood wants to punish a rebellious province, if he
is cruel he kills them all. If he is kind, he kills half of them. But if he is overflowing with
kindness, he chastises their leaders. Similarly the Holy One blessed be He chastised
Ezekiel in order to cleanse Israel of their sins" (Sanhedrin 39a).

The prophet was to lie on his left side to atone for the sins of the House of Israel – the Ten
Tribes – whose kingdom was centered to the "left" (=North) of Judah (see Ezekiel 16:46;
Metzudas David on v 4). Rashi (on v 5) gives an exact account of how all the years in
which Israel sinned from the period of the first Judges until the exile of the Ten Tribes by
Sennacherib add up to a total of 390. Likewise in his comment on v 6, Rashi gives an
account of the 40 years in which Judah sinned from the time of the exile of the Ten Tribes
until the year of Ezekiel's present prophecy five years after the exile of King Yeho-yachin
(see Ez. 1:2) i.e. in the fifth year of King Tzedekiah.

"Behold, I will lay cords upon you" (v 8): "You shall feel the stringency of My decree of
instructions as if you were bound by thick ropes so that you are incapable of turning from
side to side" (Rashi ad loc.).

3: FAMINE RATIONS (vv 9-17)

"And take for yourself wheat and barley etc." (v 9). During these extended periods of
lying on one side, Ezekiel was to eat in the same way as people facing famine under siege.
Barley is normally animal feed: people only make bread of wheat mixed with inferior
grains when supplies are scarce, and they then permit themselves only minimal rations
for fear of being left with nothing (vv 9-11). The most repulsive aspect of the prophet's
diet was that the fuel for baking his crude loaves would be dried human excrement (v 12).
This would symbolize how "the children of Israel will eat their bread unclean among the
nations to which I shall drive them" (v 13). This decree so appalled Ezekiel – a priest who
had eaten only kosher, ritually pure food from his youth – that he cried out bitterly in
horror (v 14): "I have never eaten an animal that died of itself or was torn by beasts…" –
"not even a dying animal that was slaughtered hurriedly to permit it consumption"; "…nor
did loathsome meat ever enter my mouth" – "not even from an animal over which a sage
had to issue a ruling because of a question over its fitness for consumption… not even an
animal from which the priestly portions had not been duly separated" (Talmud Chullin
37b).

Because of Ezekiel's plea for mercy, God softened the decree, permitting him to use
animal droppings as fuel to bake his bread instead of human excrement. Even so, it was
impossible to avert the coming famine in Jerusalem in which the people would waste
away because of their sins (v 17).

Chapter 5
In the previous chapter Ezekiel was commanded to carry out a series of symbolic actions
alluding to the coming Babylonian siege against the city of Jerusalem, represented by a
large builder's brick. Now God commands him to take "a sharp sword, a barber's razor"
and shave the hair of his head and beard, which he is to weigh out carefully into three
equal portions (v 1 of our present chapter). He is to burn a third on top of the "city"
carved into the brick; he is to smite a third with a sword round about the "city", and he is
to take the last third and scatter it to the winds (v 2).

The meaning of these symbolic actions is specified later in the chapter in verse 12: a third
of the inhabitants of Jerusalem were to die under siege through the burning "fire" of
plague and famine; a third would be cut down by the sword while trying to escape the
Babylonians, while a third would be scattered in every direction in exile, and even there
the sword would chase after them.

The only consolation in all of this was God's instruction to Ezekiel in verse 3: "You shall
also take from these a small number and bind them in the corners of your garment…" –
"These are the few people who would go into exile to Babylon and live" (Rashi ad loc.).
Yet even some of these would be burned in the fire that was to ravage the House of Israel
(v 4). The saving of the remnant through being bound in the corners of Ezekiel's
garments suggests that these were the people who "took hold of the Tzitzis" of the
Tzaddik, i.e. followed his advice (see Likutey Moharan I, 7) and that they were saved in
his merit.

In verses 5-10 The prophet set's forth God's "case" against the sinners of Jerusalem, on
account of which He was to unleash the terrible retribution alluded to in Ezekiel's signs.
"Thus says the Lord God: This is Jerusalem, I have set her in the midst of the nations and
countries are round about her" (v 5). "I put her inhabitants there for their own good,
because she is the choicest of all lands, 'fairest of sites, the joy of all the earth' (Psalms
48:3). For she is in the center of the world, and therefore her air and climate are better
than those of all other lands. Her inhabitants should have followed the straight path and
carried out my good statutes. But instead they changed them, and did greater evil than
all the nations around them" (RaDaK on v 5).

"…nor have you done according to the practices of the nations around you" (v 7) – "For
the nations never exchanged their gods even though they have no godly power, whereas
you have exchanged My glory for that which is of no benefit. You have not followed the
practices of those who are well ordered, but instead you have followed the practices of
those who are corrupt" (Rashi ad loc.; Sanhedrin 39b).

"Therefore thus says the Lord God: Behold I, even I am against you…" (v 8) – "You have
betrayed Me, so I too am against you" (Rashi). Verses 9ff specify the retribution that God
was to send against Jerusalem. Only thus "shall my anger spend itself and I will relieve
my fury" (v 13). In the Hebrew text, the word rendered "I will relieve" is VA-HANICHOSI.
In a play on this word, the Talmud teaches that when Israel suffers at the hands of the
nations, God HEAVES A DEEP SIGH (ANACHAH)!!!" (Berachos 59a).

Because of her abuse of her privileged status, the desolate Jerusalem would become the
reproach of all the surrounding nations (vv 14-15).

Chapter 6
In continuation of the prophecy of the coming destruction of Judah and Jerusalem,
Ezekiel – located in Babylon – is now commanded to turn his face in the direction of the
hills of Israel and to prophecy against them. This was because the favored locations for
the people's idolatrous altars and cult centers were on the tops of hills, which were not
only places of outstanding natural beauty but also afforded spectacular skyscapes of all
the planets, stars and constellations they worshiped.

Later on in Ezekiel ch 8 we will be shown an intimate picture of how even the most
respected dignitaries of the people perpetrated the most abominable forms of idolatry in
the very Temple itself. In our present chapter we hear of the retribution God was to send
against this idolatry, which was evidently rampant throughout Judah and practiced on all
its hilltops: not only their altars and sun-images but their very cities would be destroyed,
and the bodies of the guilty would fall dead before their worthless idols (vv 3-7).

"…and you shall know that I am HaShem" (v 7): the whole purpose of this retribution was
to teach the people what they refused to learn the gentle way – that God has complete
power and will not overlook the flouting of His will. Broken-hearted in exile, the remnant
would understand the evil of their ways and repent (vv 7-10).

Chapter 7
The prophecy in the present chapter is the last in the series of prophecies that began in
chapter 3 verse 22, when God told Ezekiel to go out into the plain, giving him a series of
instructions about symbolic actions he was to take in order to dramatize the coming
destruction of Jerusalem (ch's 4 & 5). After that He then began to explain to him the
reason for the decree. Thus in the previous chapter the prophet was instructed to
prophesy to the hills of Israel about the coming destruction of the land on account of the
rampant idolatry, while in the present chapter he prophesies about the imminence of the
decree, again emphasizing that it is on account of the abominations practiced by the
people of Judah. Then in the following chapters (ch 8ff), Ezekiel is taken in prophetic
vision from Babylon to Jerusalem, where God shows him how leaders of the people were
actually practicing their idolatrous abominations in the Holy Temple itself.

"The end! The end is come upon the four corners of the land!" (v 2) – "This is the 'end' of
which I spoke when I said, 'When you will have grown old (VENOSHANTEM) in the land
and become corrupt… I bear witness against you today that you shall surely perish' (Deut.
4:25). The gematria of VENOSHANTEM is 852. From the time Israel entered the land until
the Temple was built was a period of 440 years, and the First Temple stood for another
410 years, making a total of 850" (Rashi on v 2).

Repeatedly the prophet emphasizes that the coming calamity would be in retribution for
the people's abominations (vv 3, 4, 8, 9 & 20).

"Violence (HAMAS) is risen up into a rod of wickedness – not because of them and not
because of their multitude and not because of their roaring, and the lamentation is not
because of them" (v 11). This rendering of verse 11 follows the explanation of Metzudas
David (ad loc.), who states that "the 'violence' would be that of Nebuchadnezzar, a man
of violence who arose to be the rod striking Israel wickedly and cruelly. But his success
was 'not because of them' – i.e. not because of the merit of the Babylonians or because
of their great multitude or because of their terrifying war cries but only because of the
hand of God" (ibid.).

Our commentators interpret Ezekiel's prophecies in these chapters as referring only to

the destruction of the First Temple, and there is no suggestion whatever that they may
refer to a future destruction. Nevertheless, all of the prophecies that were included in our
Biblical canon contain teachings for all times. Since in our times one of the principal
leaders of Arab violence and terror against Israel has been the so-called HAMAS
movement, we should heed the prophet's teaching about HAMAS (v 11) – as explained by
Metzudas David – and keep in mind that this movement has no intrinsic power of its own
and is able to cause trouble for Israel ONLY because the hand of God chastises until we
repent of our sins.

"Let the buyer not rejoice nor the seller mourn…" (v 12). "The way of the world is that the
buyer rejoices over his acquisition while the seller mourns that financial pressures forced
him to sell… but the prophet says that one who sells a field in Israel has no need to mourn
over it because even if he would not have sold it, it would remain his only for a short time
since he was soon to go into exile and abandon it. Likewise the buyer had no reason to
rejoice, because his purchase would not remain his for long" (RaDaK ad loc.).

"They have blown the trumpet and prepared everything, but no-one goes out to the
war…" (v 14). "When the enemy comes against them, they will have prepared
themselves for war, but no-one will go out to fight" (Rashi ad loc.). The military paralysis
that was to take hold of Judah under attack from Nebuchadnezzar is reminiscent of the
present-day military paralysis of the state of Israel even in the face of constant
provocations, incessant daily rocket and missile attacks against innocent civilians, etc.
Her leaders call it "restraint", but their inability to take any decisive military action
against the people's enemies for most of the time since the 1967 Six Day War has
seriously eroded the country's security. We must understand that this too is the "hand of
God".

Ezekiel prophesies that because of the sin of idolatry, the Holy Temple was to be given
over to strangers to destroy (vv 20-22). Because of the blatant injustices perpetrated by
the people, the very worst of the nations would come to take over their houses and the
pride of their land (vv 23-24). Prophecy, Torah and wise counsel would depart, leaving
spiritual devastation and confusion (vv 25ff) "…and they shall know that I am HaShem" (v
27).

Chapter 8
"And it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth month…" (v 1). This was in the month
of Elul in the sixth year after the exile of King Yeho-yachin. RaDaK (ad loc.) quotes from
Midrash Seder Olam stating that the year in question had been a leap year, explaining
that because of the extra month inserted into the leap year, over four hundred and thirty
days had passed since the prophecies in the previous chapters. In chapter 4 vv 4-6
Ezekiel had been commanded to lie on his left side for 390 days to atone for the sins of
Israel and a further 40 days to atone for those of Judah – a total of four hundred and
thirty days. He would certainly have carried out these instructions immediately after the
conclusion of the prophetic vision in which they were given. This means that the
prophetic visions in our present chapter and those that follow came to him directly after
these 430 days.

Ezekiel was the spiritual leader and head of the Sanhedrin of the Judean exiles in Babylon,
and thus the elders of the people came to sit before him daily. It was in their very
presence that HaShem's "hand" of prophecy overwhelmed him, and in his vision he saw
himself being taken by the locks of his head and carried by a RU'ACH, "wind" or "spirit",
to the northern gate of the Temple in Jerusalem. This was "the seat of the image of
jealousy, which provokes to jealousy" (vv 1-3). The "image of jealousy" was the
idolatrous image originally made by King Menasheh. When Menasheh repented, he cast it
out of Jerusalem but did not destroy it, and his son King Ammon restored it. Despite the
Torah revival in the reign of Ammon's son King Josiah, it appears that the wicked kings
who followed him again restored this image.

It must be understood that such an image was not merely a fancy representation
dreamed up by some artist, which people then proceeded to worship for no reason. King
Menasheh was an outstanding Torah scholar (103b) and without doubt found the deepest
rationalizations for the image he set up. (Rabbi Nachman teaches that God intentionally
brought it about that the writings of the ancients justifying their idolatry should be lost
since later generations, lacking the wisdom to refute them, would otherwise be in dire
peril of succumbing to their influence, Likutey Moharan II, 32.) Thus Midrash Rabbah
Devarim states that Menasheh's image had four faces corresponding to the four Chayos
of the divine "Chariot". It seems that Menasheh had deep knowledge of what Ezekiel was
later to see in his vision (Ezekiel ch 1) but Menasheh turned the angels into gods,
violating the Second Commandment by representing them with physical images.

While Ezekiel physically sat in Babylon shortly before the destruction of the Temple, God
sent the "wind" or "spirit" to carry him to Jerusalem in order to take him on a "virtual
tour" of the Temple so he could see what the people were actually practicing within its
holy precincts (vv 3ff).

"And behold the God of Israel was there according to the vision that I saw in the plain" (v
4). In Ezekiel's vision in the plain (ch 3 vv 23ff) he had seen the same Glory that he had
seen at the River Kvar (ch 1 vv 4ff). This is what he now saw in the Temple – for the
Shechinah was still dwelling there, for it was only in his vision in Chapter 10 that Ezekiel
was to see how the Glory departed from the Temple stage by stage. The presence of the
Glory in the Temple during his vision in our present chapter is precisely what made the
idolatry of the people there so offensive.

Besides the "image of jealousy" (vv 5-6), God showed Ezekiel the many other
representations of creeping things, abominable beasts and other idols which the people
were worshiping in secret chambers. "And seventy men from among the elders of the
House of Israel and Ya'azanyahu the son of Shafan in their midst…" (v 11). "He was an
important figure and his generation learned from him, and this is why God was angry with
him" (Rashi ad loc.). As we follow Ezekiel on his "virtual tour" of the abominations
practiced by the most respectable people in the holiest of places, we can but imagine the
kinds of abominations reportedly practiced by some of the most prominent public figures
of our times in the secret chambers of places like the Vatican, Bohemian Grove in N.
California and many others that the wider public knows nothing about.

"For they say HaShem does not see us – HaShem has abandoned the earth" (v 12). The
idolaters may have believed that God was the first cause of the creation, but "they said
that He does not see what the creatures do because they believed that He had left the
earth in the hands of the heavenly order of stars and planets and did not watch over it"
(Metzudas David ad loc.).

"And behold, there sat women making the Tammuz weep" (v 14) – "This was a certain
metal statue that they used to heat up from within and its eyes were made of lead which
began to melt because of the heat of the furnace. It looked as if the statue was weeping,
and the women would say, He is asking for a sacrifice" (Rashi ad loc.).

"And He brought me into the inner court…. And behold… about twenty-five men with their
backs towards the Temple of HaShem and their faces towards the east, and they were
prostrating themselves towards the sun…" (v 16, cf. Talmud Succah 51b). As if this in
itself was not offensive enough, Rashi and Metzudas David commenting on the phrase
rendered as "they put the branch (Z'MORAH) to the nose" (on v 17) write that the people
were crudely breaking wind from behind, creating a kind of vibrating "song" (from the
root ZEMER), and that the prophet is saying that the foul smell would simply come into
their own nostrils – i.e. their shame would rebound in their own faces.

Chapter 9
"And He cried in my ears with a loud voice saying…" (v 1). In the last verse of the previous
chapter (from which the present verse follows with no section break in the Hebrew text),
God had said that He would have no mercy on the people of Jerusalem because of their
sins, "and though they CRY IN MY EARS WITH A LOUD VOICE, I will not hear them"
(Ezekiel 8:18). The opening verse of the present chapter directly echoes this phrase, and
now God "cries out with a loud voice" ordering "those that have charge of the city" to
draw close with their weapons of destruction in their hands (v 1 of our present chapter).

Ezekiel, who in his prophetic vision was standing in the Temple courtyard, now saw "six
men coming by way of the Upper Gate" (v 2) together with a seventh wearing linen with
a scribe's equipment at his side. RaDaK states that according to the plain meaning of the
text, Ezekiel prophetically saw the ministers of Nebuchadnezzar who were to enter
Jerusalem when the city walls were breached six years after this prophecy (Jeremiah
39:3, see RaDaK on v 2 of our present chapter). On the level of Drash, the sages of the
Talmud stated that the first six men were destructive angels, KETZEF, AF, CHEIMAH,
MASHKHEES, MESHABER and MEKHALEH – "Rage, Anger, Fury, Spoiler, Smasher and
Destroyer" – while the King's "scribe" dressed in linen who later cast fire upon the city
was the angel Gabriel (Shabbos 55a, Rashi & RaDaK ad loc.). The "brazen altar" by the
side of which they stood to receive their orders was the name given to King Solomon's
stone altar, which replaced the brazen altar for animal offerings that Moses had made for
the Sanctuary in the wilderness. The stone altar stood in the AZARAH, the main Temple
courtyard (as opposed to the golden incense altar, which stood inside the Temple
sanctuary in between the Menorah and the Showbread Table).

"And the glory of the God of Israel ascended from the cherub upon which it rested to the
threshold of the House…" (v 3). Since the inauguration of the Temple by King Solomon,
the Shechinah (the Divine Presence="the glory") had rested in the Temple Holy of Holies
over the KAPORES, the cover of the Ark of the Covenant, in between the cherubs that
stood upon it. This "point" was the interface between our material world and the spiritual
world that governs it. Our present chapter and the next describe how, simultaneously
with ordering the destruction of Jerusalem , the Divine Presence ascended from its place
and stage by stage left first the Temple and finally the city.

"We learn from our texts that the Shechinah made ten journeys … from the Altar cover
(KAPORES) to the cherub, from one cherub to the other, from the cherub to the threshold,
from the threshold to the courtyard, from the courtyard to the altar, from the altar to the
roof, from the roof to the wall, from the wall to the city, from the city to the mountain and
from the mountain to the wilderness, and from the wilderness she ascended and dwelled
in her place, as it says, 'I shall go and return to My place'" (Hosea 5:15; Rosh Hashanah
31a; cf. the princess's journey in her carriage in Rabbi Nachman's story of The Lost
Princess).

As the glory ascended from the cherub, HaShem called to the "scribe" to place marks on
the heads of all the remaining tzaddikim in Jerusalem – those who sighed over the
abominations practiced in her midst. These were to be a sign for the angels of destruction
to spare them when they came to slaughter the wicked. These marks were akin to the
marks daubed with the blood of the paschal lamb on the doorposts and lintels of the
houses of the Children of Israel in Egypt to save them from the angels who came to
destroy the Egyptians (RaDaK on v 4).

However, the sages of the Talmud taught that even though there were indeed still some
tzaddikim in Jerusalem who were pained by these abominations, the "scribe" could find
nobody who was free of all guilt. "There was never an occasion when goodness came
forth from the mouth of the Holy One blessed be He and He afterwards relented so that
it turned into bad except in this case. God told Gabriel to go and mark the foreheads of
the tzaddikim with ink so that the destructive angels would have no power over them,
while placing a mark of blood on the foreheads of the wicked so that the destructive
angels would have power over them. But the Attribute of Justice said: Master of the World,
what is the difference between these and those? He said: These are complete tzaddikim
while those are completely wicked. Justice said: They had the power to protest but they
did not. He said: It is revealed and known before Me that if they had protested, the
wicked would not have listened. But Justice replied: 'Master of the World, to You it may
have been revealed, but they did not know (and they ought to have protested)'… Thus
the verse says, 'Slay the old, the young men and girls, the children and the women… but
do not come near any man who has upon him the mark'. But immediately after this, the
same verse continues, '…and BEGIN at My sanctuary (MIKDASHI)' and it goes on to say,
'and they BEGAN with the elders who were before the House' (v 6). Do not read the word
as MIKDASHI but rather as MEKUDASHAI, 'My sanctified ones' – these are the men who
kept the Torah from Aleph to Tav" (Shabbos 55a). We may learn from this that it is not
sufficient to practice the Torah ourselves: we are also obliged to protest against the
wicked who violate it.

Verse 7 describes how God gave instructions to the destroyers to go into action. "And it
came to pass as they were slaying them that I was left" (v 8) – Ezekiel realized that he
alone was left, because the scribe did not inscribe the mark of life on the foreheads of
anyone else since he could not find anyone who was a complete tzaddik owing to their
failure to protest against the abominations (Metzudas David ad loc.). Ezekiel screams out
begging for mercy, but God answers that the sin of Jerusalem was too great, because
they had said that God had "abandoned" the earth – i.e. that there was no such thing as
divine providence or judgment, and they were therefore free to do as they pleased – and
now He would show them His providential hand of judgment (vv 8-9).

"And behold the man clothed in linen… reported saying, I have done according to all that
You commanded me" (v 11) – "For you only commanded me to make a mark on the
foreheads of the righteous and not anyone else, and so have I done, because I did not
mark the foreheads of anyone else since I did not find any tzaddikim" (Metzudas David ad
loc.).

Chapter 10
In the opening chapter of the book, Ezekiel described his first vision of the Divine Glory
"riding" upon the "Chariot" – the apparatus of Chayos and Ophanim through which God
providentially governs the world. In his vision in the present chapter, which directly
continues the narrative in the previous chapter about how God commanded the agents of
destruction to destroy Jerusalem, Ezekiel tells HOW the "apparatus" he had seen in the
earlier vision now began to OPERATE, in this case in order to cast the fire of destruction
upon the city as demanded by the divine Attribute of Justice.

Whereas in chapter 1 Ezekiel called the "beasts" drawing the chariot CHAYOS, he now
calls them KERUVIM, "cherubs", (for the reason discussed in the commentary on chapter
1; see also the comment on v 20 of the present chapter). Looking towards the "throne"
or "seat" of the "chariot" over the firmament above the heads of these "cherubs", the
prophet hears the divine voice commanding the "man dressed in linen" – the angel
Gabriel – to go between the "wheels" below the cherubs and fill his hands with coals of
fire to cast all over the city (v 2).

While Ezekiel, looking prophetically at the very roots of God's providence, saw everything
happening almost simultaneously, the actual events took time to unfold in This World.
Thus verse 2 states: "And He said (VAYOMER) to the man dressed in linen, and he said
(VAYOMER)…" Rashi comments: "Wherever the text says VAYOMER… VAYOMER… this is
only in order to darshen. The Holy One blessed be He spoke to Gabriel, and Gabriel in turn
spoke to the cherub requesting that he GIVE him the coals (instead of Gabriel's filling his
own hands with them directly) in order that the coals should be cooled so as to lighten the
decree. Thus it says later, 'and he took it and gave it into the hands of the one dressed in
linen' (v 7). …And even though the one dressed in linen received them, he did not throw
them immediately but only six years after the time he received them, so that the coals
should become dimmed in his hand all those six years. The proof is that this prophecy
was given to Ezekiel in the sixth year of Tzedekiah's reign (see Ezekiel 8:1) while the city
was destroyed in the eleventh year" (Rashi on v 2).

"Then the Glory of HaShem went up from the cherub to the threshold of the House" (v 4).
Rashi states that this ascent of the Shechinah is the same as described in the previous
chapter (Ezekiel 9:3). The narrative in the present chapter complements that in the
previous chapter. Perhaps in his vision the prophet saw everything in one simultaneous
flash, but when it came to telling what he saw, he had to go back and forth to describe
different aspects.

"And the sound of the wings of the cherubs was heard as far as the outer court, like the
voice of God Almighty when He speaks" (v 5). The "outer court" is the rest of the Temple
Mount outside of the inner courtyard. "Could it be that the voice only reached there
because it was low? No – for the verse says that it was 'like the voice of God Almighty
when He speaks' (i.e. the great voice in which He spoke at Mt Sinai, Deut. 5:19). But
when it reached the outer courtyard, it stopped and went no further (see Rashi on v 5;
see. Metzudas David ad loc.; cf. Rashi on Leviticus 1:1). A screen of TZIMTZUM
(limitation, contraction) intervenes, preventing all who are unworthy from hearing the
inner voice of God's providence.

In vv 6-7 Ezekiel sees how the cherub puts coals into the hand of the one dressed in linen.

IN vv 8ff the prophet gives further description of the cherubs – the chayos he saw in the
vision in chapter 1 – and the ophanim, describing again how the ophanim, the
omni-directional wheels of the "chariot", "automatically" went wherever the "head" – the
cherub, the "beast" drawing it – went.

"And every one [of the cherubs/chayos] had four faces. The first face was the face of a
cherub, and the second face was the face of a man, and the third the face of a lion, and
the fourth the face of an eagle" (v 14). Ezekiel himself tells us in verse 20 that the
cherubs he saw in the present vision were themselves the chayos he saw in his vision at
the River Kvar (Ezekiel 1:5ff). The only difference is that in the present vision he saw the
face of a cherub instead of the face of the ox that he had seen at the River Kvar. Our
sages opened a tiny chink into the mystery of the reason for this change when they said
that Ezekiel begged God to have mercy, asking how the "accuser" (the golden calf – an
"ox") could become a "defender" (one of the drawers of the Divine Chariot; Talmud
Chagigah 13a).

With Ezekiel watching, the Divine Chariot makes successive "journeys" out from the
Temple. As long as the Temple stood, it was at the very center of everything: all the lines
of God's providence radiated outwards from there to the entire world. Even today, God's
providence remains at the center of everything, but from the time of the destruction of
the Temple it ascended from there and can no longer be seen to be manifestly radiating
from Jerusalem. It continues to govern the world, but it does so from a place of mystery.
"Blessed be the glory of HaShem FROM HIS PLACE" (Ez. 3:12; Kedushah).

Chapter 11
"Then a spirit lifted me up and brought me to the east gate of the House of HaShem… and
behold at the door of the gate twenty-five men…" (v 1) – "These were the same men that
he described earlier in chapter 8 v 16 having their backs to the Sanctuary, except that
there he did not specify who they were, but here he names two of them" (Rashi ad loc.).

"Then He said to me: These are the men that devise mischief and give wicked counsel in
this city, who say, It is not near: let us build houses…" (vv 2-3). In his prophetic vision of
Jerusalem shortly before the destruction of the Temple, Ezekiel saw the people whose
stubbornness was to bring down calamity upon themselves. As we find in detail in the
prophecies of Jeremiah (chs 28ff), despite the fact that Nebuchadnezzar had already
carried off King Yeho-yachin and the leading sages and Tzaddikim of Jerusalem to exile in
Babylon, most of those who remained in the city under King Tzedekiah were certain that
"It is not near…" – i.e. that the prophecies of the imminent destruction of Jerusalem by
Jeremiah and Ezekiel would certainly not materialize soon, and if at all, only in the
far-distant future. Fortified by the soothing assurances of numerous false prophets both
in Jerusalem and also among the exiles in Babylon, those who still remained in Judah
were convinced that Nebuchadnezzar's empire would collapse within a couple of years
and that they should therefore "build houses" and "dig in" for a long stay in Jerusalem
(see Jeremiah ch 28. Contrary to their ideas, in Jer. 29:5 it is the exiles in Babylon that he
instructs to build houses and plant gardens.).

The remaining inhabitants of Jerusalem defiantly say: "This city is the cauldron and we
are the meat" (v 3) – "Just as the meat is not taken out from the pot until it is completely
cooked, so we shall not go out of the city until we die a natural death" (Rashi ad loc.).

But in just the same way as Jeremiah warned the remaining inhabitants of Jerusalem that
the sword, famine and plague were very shortly to be unleashed against them (Jer.
29:17), so his disciple Ezekiel is now told to prophesy that God would bring against them
the very sword they feared (v 8 of our present chapter).

"You shall fall by the sword: I shall judge you at the border of Israel " (v 10). The "border
of Israel" refers to "Rivlah in the land of Hamath" (II Kings 25:21) – this is the town of
Antioch or Antakya in modern-day Turkey – where Nebuchadnezzar was encamped while
his armies took Jerusalem, and where he judged the captured King Tzedekiah and killed
his sons in front of his eyes before blinding him. Antioch is the northern boundary of the
Promised Land (Numbers 34:8; see Rashi on verse 10 of our present chapter).

"And it came to pass, while I prophesied, that Palatiyahu son of Benayah died…" (v 13).
The sudden death of one of the most prominent leaders of the twenty-five idolaters whom
Ezekiel saw in the Temple courtyard was part of his prophetic vision and did not actually
occur until later, for according to the Talmud in Kiddushin 72b, Palatiyahu went into exile
in Babylon. Ezekiel's vision of his sudden death came to confirm that the illusions of the
defiant inhabitants of Jerusalem would simply burst like a bubble.

Ezekiel cried out in horror at what he saw (v 13) but in verse 14 God answered him by
explaining the wickedness of Palatiyahu and the other defiant inhabitants of Jerusalem.
Our commentators explain that the seemingly repetitious phrasing in verse 15, "…your
brothers, your brothers, your kinsmen and all the House of Israel in its entirety," comes
to allude to the successive stages in which first the exile of the Ten Tribes and then that
of King Yeho-yachin had taken place prior to this prophecy (see Rashi, Metzudas David
and RaDaK on v 15). The remaining wicked inhabitants of Jerusalem under Tzedekiah
were scoffing at all these exiles, saying, "Get you far from HaShem, for to us is this land
given in possession" (v 15) as if God Himself had cast out the exiles to far-off lands and
would no longer watch over them, giving those in Jerusalem the entire country of Israel
in perpetuity. (A similar brand of snobbery is not unknown today among certain Israelis
who simply dismiss the whole of Diaspora Jewry as being of no significance.)

"Therefore say, Thus says the Lord God: Although I have cast them far off among the
nations, and although I have scattered them among the countries, I shall be to them a
little sanctuary in the countries where they have come" (v 16). These are almost the first
words of any kind of comfort we have had so far in the book of Ezekiel (see also Ezekiel
5:3), promising that those who had submitted to the decree of exile would in fact remain
under God's constant providence and protection. Despite the destruction of the Temple in
Jerusalem, they would have "a little sanctuary" in the form of the synagogues in which
they would pray during their exile. The phrase in this verse MIKDASH ME-AT, "a little
sanctuary", is one of the foundations of the idea that the synagogue building becomes
sanctified with a sanctity akin to that of the Temple in virtue of its being used for the
communal prayer services, and that it must therefore be treated with the appropriate
respect (Megillah 29a, Rambam, Laws of Prayer ch 11). Indeed it was through the vibrant
community life in their synagogues, study halls and community centers that the Jews of
the Diaspora kept the torch of Torah life burning brightly through thousands of years of
exile.

"And I shall gather you from the nations…" (v 17) – "Since even the exiles themselves
thought they would never return to their own land and that those in Jerusalem would
inherit it, He therefore says to them 'I shall gather you in'… and then I shall bring you
back to the Land of Israel. This is speaking about the days of Mashiach" (Metzudas David
ad loc.). In verse 18 we learn that the returning exiles will cleanse the Land of all the
abominations that had been practiced there. May this come soon in our days! Amen.

"And I will give them one heart and I will put a new spirit within you, and I will take the
heart of stone out of their flesh and I will give them a heart of flesh…" (v 19). "'One heart'
means that their hearts will no longer be divided and in doubt as to whether to believe in
HaShem, for they will believe in HaShem with all their heart; 'a new spirit' means a new
willingness to follow His laws; 'a heart of stone' is a heart hard as stone, whereas 'a heart
of flesh' is a heart soft as flesh – submissive and easy-going (NO-ACH)" (Metzudas David
on v 19). The stubborn remaining inhabitants in Jerusalem had said, "WE are the FLESH"
(v 3), but God promises that it will be those purified by the tribulations of the long exile
that will have "a heart of flesh" at the end of days. When Rabbi Nachman arrived in the
town of Breslov, which became his center for most of the last eight years of his life
(1802-1810), he said that his followers would always be called the Breslover Chassidim,
revealing that the Hebrew letters of BReSLoV are the same as in the phrase in our verse,
LeV BaSaR, "a heart of flesh" (Chayey Moharan #339).

"And the glory of HaShem went up from the midst of the city…" (v 23). This verse brings
us to the conclusion of the series of prophecies that began in chapter 8 v 1, when the
"form of a hand" coming out of the fire took Ezekiel by the fringes of his head from
Babylon to the Temple courtyard in Jerusalem, where he witnessed the abominations the
people were committing there and simultaneously, the withdrawal of the Divine Presence
in stages from the Temple. It was the Divine Presence and its "Chariot" that he had
originally seen in his opening vision by the River Kvar (Ezekiel ch 1) and in the plain
(Ezekiel 3:23). Now, at the end of his prophetic vision of being in the Temple Courtyard,
Ezekiel sees the "Chariot" finally departing the city of Jerusalem and standing on "the
mountain" (v 23 of our present chapter). "This is the Mount of Olives, which stands to the
east of the city" (Rashi ad loc.).

"And a spirit took me up and brought me to Kasdim (= Babylon) to the exiles in a vision
through the spirit of God" (v 24). "This informs us that the journey to Jerusalem and the
return to Babylon were not MAMASH (i.e. in material reality), but it was through a vision
that came through the spirit of God that it appeared to him so" (RaDaK ad loc.).

Chapter 12
In the new prophecy that opens in this chapter, God says to Ezekiel: "Son of man, you
dwell in the midst of a rebellious house, who have eyes to see but see not; they have ears
to hear but they hear not, for they are a rebellious house". This "rebellious house" refers
to the body of exiles in Babylon among whom Ezekiel dwelled. "For they had seen that
they had come there in exile, but it was as if they had not seen and had not heard God's
reproof, because they were still encouraging those who remained in Jerusalem, sending
them false prophets and sorcerers telling them that those who stayed would not go into
exile, such as Shemayahu the Nachalami, who sent letters to all the people in Jerusalem
giving them false promises" (RaDaK). Shemayahu's campaign is the subject of
Jeremiah's prophecy in Jer. 24:32.

In order to dramatize the fact that the remaining inhabitants of Jerusalem would
definitely go into exile shortly with the destruction of the Temple, Ezekiel is commanded
to "prepare the vessels of exile" (v 3) – "These are a drinking pouch, a dish and a mat,
and each one serves two purposes: the pouch is filled with water and used as a pillow; the
dish is used for eating and drinking, and the mat is used to sit and to sleep on" (Eichah
Rabasi).

In the gaze of all the community in Babylon Ezekiel was day after day to go through the
motions of a person going into exile (v 4) in order to symbolize vividly the imminent exile
of those who still remained in Jerusalem. "Dig through the wall in their sight…" (v 5).
"This was to symbolize how Tzedekiah would leave Jerusalem through a tunnel through
fear of leaving openly on account of the Chaldees" (Rashi ad loc.).

The intention of Ezekiel's exercise was to arouse the curiosity of the exiles in Babylon
about the meaning of his mysterious actions, and in vv 8ff God tells him how he was to
answer them. "Say to them… This burden (=prophecy) concerns the prince in Jerusalem
(=Tzedekiah) and all the House of Israel that are among them (= in the streets of the
city)" (v 10, see Metzudas David).

Six years prior to the destruction of the Temple and the capture of Tzedekiah, Ezekiel
here prophesies: "My net also I shall spread upon him and he shall be taken in My snare,
and I shall bring him to Babylon to the land of the Kasdim: yet he shall not see it, though
he shall die there" (v 13). As he emerged from his escape tunnel, Tzedekiah was caught
by Chaldean soldiers who were hunting deer (the snare). Even when he was taken to
Babylon, Tzedkiah never saw it because he had already had his eyes put out in Rivlah on
the way.

In vv 17-20 Ezekiel is commanded to eat and drink in the public view in the frenzied,
anxious way of exiles in order once again to impress upon the people in Babylon that it
was illusory to believe that Jerusalem would not fall, because very soon the remaining
inhabitants would be going into exile.

Those who were living in the world of illusion wanted to believe that if there was any
substance in Ezekiel's prophecies, they would only materialize in the far distant future,
but in vv 21-28 God commands him to emphasize to the "House of Rebellion" that the
coming catastrophe was no far-off prophetic vision, but IMMINENT.

Chapter 13
As discussed in the commentary on the two previous chapters, both among those who
had gone into exile in Babylon with King Yeho-yachin prior to the destruction of the
Temple and also among those who still remained in Jerusalem, numerous false prophets
were highly active, prophesying the imminent collapse of the Babylonian empire and
peace for Jerusalem (see Jeremiah chaps 28-9).

In the prophecies in our present chapter and the next, Ezekiel is instructed to speak out
against these false prophets and sorcerers "who follow their own spirit and have seen
nothing" (v 3). They are compared to "foxes amidst ruins" (v 4) because just as the many
breaches in the walls of a ruined building afford ample opportunities for foxes to escape
from there should any man enter, so these false prophets have left the walls of Jerusalem
– its spiritual defenses – full of breaches through which they themselves would flee in
time of danger leaving the city completely exposed to the enemy. Verse 5 explains the
work of the true prophet – to repair the breaches and spiritual defenses of Israel so that
they may stand on the day of war.

The false prophets employed the classic locutions of the authentic prophetic tradition –
"Thus saith the Lord" etc. – but their visions were vain and deceptive (vv 6-7).
Accordingly, "My hand shall be against the prophets that see vanity… they shall not be in
the COUNSEL (SOD=secret) of My people, neither shall they be written in the WRITING of
the House of Israel, neither shall they enter into the LAND of Israel …" (v 9). This verse
lists three ways in which these false prophets would be completely rejected. The Talmud
explains that the "COUNSEL (or SECRET) of My people" refers to SOD HA-IBBUR, "The
secret of pregnancy". This is the esoteric Torah wisdom relating to the intercalation of the
Hebrew calendar (having months of 30 days interspersed with months of 29 days, and
periodic leap years of 13 instead of 12 lunar months) which ensures that the lunar year
remains in synch with the solar year. Besides the astronomical calculations involved in
this wisdom, the alignment of the "moon" (MALCHUS, NUKVA) with the "sun" (TIFERES,
ZEIR ANPIN) is a fundamental pillar of the Kabbalah. The WRITING of the House of Israel
refers to SEMICHAH ("ordination") whereby a senior sage and recipient of the authentic
Torah tradition metaphorically places his "hand" (authority) upon a student initiate (cf.
Numbers 27:18). Such ordination with the "hand" is a form of "writing" in that the
subsequent status of the student as a sage in his own right now endures like something
written. The LAND of Israel means literally the Holy Land (Talmud Kesuvos 112a; see
Likutey Moharan I, 61:2-3 for Rabbi Nachman's in-depth explanation of the inner
connection between the three concepts.)

The simple meaning of the passage in verses 10-16 is that these false prophets and
diviners were constructing what appeared to be a protective "wall" for Jerusalem through
their reassurances to the people that there would be peace, "plastering" this wall with
every kind of plausible rationalization and rhetorical flourish, but that God would send
driving rain and hail (=the Babylonian enemies) and wash this entire flimsy "wall" and its
"plaster" away.

With no twisting of a single word in the same passage in vv 10-16, it is possible to see a
clear contemporary reference to the so-called "Security Fence" that the Israeli
government has built in recent years with the ostensible purpose of keeping terrorists out
of those parts of the country enclosed within it. (This wall does NOT divide the Biblical
Promised Land from territories outside it, but rather, it runs bang through the very middle
of the heartland of Judea and Samaria, ripping them into shreds, awarding all the
territories to the east of it to the Arabs who happen to be there today while enclosing the
Jews inside Little Israel within what former Israel Foreign Minister Abba Eban called "the
Auschwitz borders".)

The Israeli government "have deceived My people, saying 'Peace' when there is no peace,
and it builds a wall and they daub it with plaster" (v 10). The plaster is provided by the
mainstream media, which soothe the citizens into believing that this "wall" will provide
"security". It is plain that in building this fence the government seeks to define the
borders of the truncated future State of Israel they wish to hold onto after unilaterally
throwing away vast swathes of the precious territories of the Holy Land that came back
under Israeli sovereignty in the 1967 Six Day War, as if the sacrifice of those territories
together with a defensive "wall" will provide the people of Israel with security. But the
plain reading of Ezekiel's prophecy indicates that far from being a factor in the Final
Settlement, this wall will in due course be swept away by God's wrath in preparation for
the genuine Final Settlement as prophesied by Ezekiel in the closing chapters of his book.
Verses 17ff address "the daughters of your people who prophesy out of their own heart".
According to the plain meaning of the text, these were women who in exchange for gifts
of barley and pieces of bread, practiced various kinds of divination and fortune-telling,
sewing cloth armbands and head veils for use in special rituals by the people who came
to consult them, whom they would answer quite arbitrarily according to the fancies of
their own hearts (vv 18-19). They were simply entrapping the souls of the people and
sending them to hell (Rashi on v 20), causing distress to the righteous with their
falsehoods while encouraging sinners in their path with the result that they did not repent
(v 22). God warns that He will put an end to their divination and save his people from
their clutches (v 23).

Chapter 14
"Then men from among the elders of Israel came to me…" (v 1). As God's ensuing
message to Ezekiel makes plain, these elders were making the pretence of earnestly
seeking out guidance from the prophet, but in fact they had "set their idols up in their
heart" (v 3) – i.e. internally, they had willfully fanned the flames of the evil inclination's
craving for idolatry in their hearts, and they had "put the stumbling block of iniquity
before their faces" (ibid.), i.e. they were fully intent on gratifying their craving. They were
thus examples of those who come to the true Tzaddik as if to repent and draw near to God,
but inwardly want to seek some way to do this without having to sacrifice their material
lusts and cravings. Despite the fact that their intentions were impure, God was willing to
answer them (v 4) "in order that I may catch the House of Israel in their own heart…" (v
5): His purpose was "in order to take hold of them in their hearts and draw them closer
to Me despite their being separated from Me because of their thoughts and idols, for when
they see that I listen to them and answer them, they will know that there is a God in
Israel" (Metzudas David ad loc.).

God warns these hypocritical exiles in Babylon that they must turn aside from their
idolatry completely, for anyone who makes a pretense of coming to the prophet to search
out HaShem while still entertaining thoughts of idolatry will be destroyed and cut off from
His people (vv 6-8). The false prophets and those who seek them out will both be
punished (vv 9-11).

A new prophecy opens in verse 12, running to the end of this chapter (Ez. 14:23) with a
brief pause between v 20 and v 21. The main theme of verses 12-20 is that under the
normal rules of God's providence, if an entire country sins, even the perfect Tzaddikim
who live there will not be able to save anyone except themselves from God's punishment.
Nevertheless, in verses 21-23 God promises that even when He would send His four "evil
judges – the sword, famine, evil beasts and plague" – against Jerusalem , He would still
spare a remnant of the city's sons and daughters, which would provide some consolation
for those who had already gone into exile in Babylon earlier.

"Son of man: When a land sins against Me by trespassing grievously, I shall stretch out
My hand against it… Even if these three men, Noah, Daniel and Job were in it, they would
only save their own lives through their righteousness" (vv 13-14). Noah and Job were
familiar figures in the lore and legends of Israel , while Daniel was an outstanding
contemporary of Ezekiel who also went to Babylon in the exile of King Yeho-yachin and
soon attained greatness in the court of Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel chs 1ff). The reasons for
citing these three specifically as examples of the perfect Tzaddik in this context are
discussed at great length by our commentators. Metzudas David explains: "These three
are mentioned because Noah alone survived the flood but he could not protect the people
of his generation. Likewise Daniel was unable to protect his entire people, for he alone
was accorded high status in Babylon, while Job could not even protect his own children
and household because they were all destroyed and he alone survived. This is why it says
that even if the three of them were present together, the line of judgment would not
necessarily protect anyone else" (Metzudas David on v 14. Rashi and RaDaK ad loc.
explain at length other parallels between Noah, Job and Daniel.)

Thus under the normal rules of God's providence, even the perfect Tzaddik might be
unable to protect the people from suffering retribution for their sins. The paradox is that
despite this, owing to God's love for Israel, even when He would strike Jerusalem with the
imminent blow, "yet behold, there shall be left therein a remnant to be brought out, both
sons and daughters" (v 22). Although many would die when the Babylonians captured
the city, others would survive and would be taken to Babylon to join the exiles who were
already there, who would see their ways and deeds, "…and you shall know that not
without cause have I done all that I have done there, says the Lord God" (v 23).

Chapter 15
THE FOREST VINE

In the short prophecy in this chapter, God asks Ezekiel a series of rhetorical questions
about the forest vine that produces no fruits – a metaphor for the sinful people of
Jerusalem (vv 1-5). These questions lead to the inexorable conclusion that there is no
alternative but to consume the vine with fire (vv 6-8).

The vine in question is not the cultivated vine of the vineyard, which produces grapes, but
"the branch that grew up among the trees of the forest" (v 2) – the wild vine that, like the
other wild trees in the forest, does not produce fruits. At least the other trees of the forest
may provide useable wood, but not only is wood of the vine in question useless for any
kind of work: it does not even have the strength to serve as a mere peg to hang
something on! (v 3). Isaiah had already compared Israel to such a vine in his "song of his
Beloved": "My Beloved had a vineyard in a very fruitful hill… and planted it with the
choicest vine… and He hoped that it would bring forth good grapes but it brought forth
foul grapes" (Isaiah 5:2).

Several generations later, Ezekiel now prophesies about this vine: "Behold it is cast into
the fire for fuel: the fire devours both ends of it, and its middle is burned – is it fit for any
work?" (v 4 of our present chapter). The fire had already "devoured both ends of it" – for
the Arameans had already encroached on Israel from the north and the Philistines from
the south (Isaiah 9:11), but as for Jerusalem, which was in the middle, "He set it on fire
from all around yet they did not know, and He burned it yet they did not lay it to heart"
(Isaiah 42:25). Even after having seen the calamity that befell the Ten Tribes and the rest
of Judah, and despite having themselves been "scorched" by the "fire" of God's "evil
judgments" of famine, plague and the sword, the inhabitants of Jerusalem still did not
heed His rebuke. "Is it fit for any work?" – "If they will not repent and improve their
behavior, there is no other solution except to deliver them to the fire to be consumed:
Jerusalem too will be destroyed" (see RaDaK on v 4).

"I shall set My face against them, for they came forth from the fire, and the fire shall
consume them…" (v 7). Targum (ad loc.) renders: "I shall send them My punishment on
account of their having transgressed the teachings of the Torah, which were given from
the midst of the fire, and nations fierce as fire shall destroy them."

Chapter 16
The very harsh reproof against Jerusalem contained in the lengthy prophecy in the
present chapter is developed through the allegory of Israel as an abandoned baby girl
upon whom God took pity, taking her in, dressing her and providing for her magnificently,
only to see her turn into a shameless harlot desirous of nothing but fornication. In
retribution God will gather all her "lovers" around her as enemies and deliver her into
their hands for punishment until she is completely chastened.

"Your birth and your nativity are from the land of the Canaanite: your father was an
Emorite and your mother a Hittite" (v 3). Nothing could be more damning than the simple
meaning of the text, which suggests that the people of Jerusalem were kinsfolk of the
very nations that the Land of Israel vomited out before them on account of their
abominations.

"And as for your birth on the day you were born: your navel was not cut, nor were you
washed in water for cleansing, you were not salted at all nor swaddled at all" (v 4).
Israel's "day of birth" was in Egypt, when God "found" them like a baby abandoned in a
field with no one to take pity on it (vv 4-5). In an important halachic teaching, the sages
of the Talmud stated that "all the things mentioned in this passage of reproof may be
performed for a woman who gives birth on the Sabbath. It is permitted to deliver a child
on Shabbos, to cut the umbilical cord, to wash the newborn baby, to salt its skin and wrap
it in swaddling clothes" (Shabbos 129b).

God alone took pity on the abandoned, slave people: "When I passed you by and saw you
weltering in your blood, I said to you: In your blood, live! Indeed, in your blood live!" (v
6). This verse is included in the Pesach Seder Night Haggadah, and among the verses
recited at the naming a boy child immediately following his circumcision. The double
appearance of the word "blood" in the verse alludes to (1) the blood of the circumcision
performed by the Children of Israel at the time of the Exodus; (2) the blood of the paschal
lamb, for it was in virtue of these that they were redeemed (Rashi on v 6).

"I caused you to increase like the plants of the field…" (v 7): This verse, also included in
the Pesach Haggadah, alludes to the fruitfulness of Israel – which was the sign of the
"puberty" of the new nation, which was now ready to be taken in as God's "wife" through
the redemption (vv 7-8).

Verses 9-13 as rendered by Targum Yonasan allude to God's redemption of Israel from
Egypt , giving them not only the material wealth of their enemies but also the Torah and
the commandments and the Sanctuary that they were commanded to build in the
wilderness.

But the great beauty and glory of the once-abandoned girl went to her head and caused
her to lavish her fornication on all passers by (vv 14-15). Not content with her true
"husband" and savior, she made male images – idols – and offered them the very
bounties God had given her (vv 17-19).

"Moreover you have taken your sons and your daughters whom you gave birth for Me to
sacrifice to them" (v 20). "If a person had five sons, four were allocated to worship idols
while one was set aside to go to school to learn Torah, but when the person came to
sacrifice one of his sons to Molech, he would offer the one he had set aside to learn Torah"
(Midrash Tanchuma quoted by Rashi on v 20).

The people went deeper and deeper into their "fornication" returning to their Egyptian
former masters to multiply harlotry (vv 23-26), causing God to send the Philistines
against them to chastise them (v 27), but they were not chastened, and continued
seeking to ingratiate themselves with other heathen nations, such as the Assyrians and
Babylonians (vv 28-29).

"Yet you have not been like a harlot that scorns the payment" (v 31). The normal harlot
sneers at the sums offered by her clients, showing that she is interested only in the
reward and not the fornication itself. But the people of Jerusalem paid and bribed their
foreign "lovers" to fornicate with them out of sheer love of the immorality itself (vv
33-34). [Similarly, the present-day government of Israel offers constant "concessions"
and other gifts and bribes to their Arab enemies in the hope of buying their "love", but
their enemies remain implacable.]

God warns the "harlot" that because of her immorality, He will gather all her "lovers" and
put her on trial before them and let them tear down her high places, strip her, stone her
and pierce her with their swords, burning her houses in order to assuage His anger (vv
36-43).

"Behold, everyone who uses proverbs will use this proverb against you saying: Like
mother like daughter! You are your mother's daughter, who loathed her husband and her
children, and you are the sister of your sisters, who loathed their husbands and their
children…" (vv 44-45). The "mother" is the Land of Canaan, which "loathed her husband
and her children" in the sense of vomiting out the sinful Canaanite nations. Jerusalem's
"sisters" are Shomron – the citadel of the Ten Tribes, who had also been "vomited out"
and exiled from the Land – and Sodom, which had been overturned because of her
wickedness (v 46). The sins of Jerusalem were far more serious than those of Sodom and
the Ten Tribes (vv 47-51), and what was worse than anything was that Jerusalem used to
sanctimoniously judge and condemn the Ten Tribes for their sins when she herself was no
better (v 52, cf. II Chron. 13:8).

"When I bring back the captivity of Sodom and her daughters and the captivity of
Shomron and her daughters, then I will bring back the captivity of your captives in the
midst of them" (v 53). "This will be in the time of Mashiach" (Metzudas David ad loc.). The
return of the captivity of Shomron means the return of the Ten Lost Tribes. Rashi states
that the return of the captivity of Sodom means that God will "heal the land of sulfur and
salt and settle it with inhabitants" (Rashi ad loc.). The future "healing" of the waters of
the Dead Sea is prophesied at the end of Ezekiel (47:8). Present-day Jewish settlements
in the region of the Dead Sea are among the miracles of modern times, and it is said that
Israeli scientists have developed plans for habitation there by enormous populations in
the future.

The people of Jerusalem may have forgotten and despised God's Covenant, but God
Himself promises to remember it and to establish it forever (vv 59ff). Verse 61 states that
Israel will be chastised and ashamed when God will give her older and younger sisters to
her even though she is undeserving. This implies that at the time of the redemption God
will put the territories of her neighbors under the dominion of Jerusalem, not because of
her own merits but because of His compassion (see Rashi on v 61). God's very
compassion will cause her to remember her evil and be ashamed of her former deeds.

Chapter 17
"Son of man: propound a riddle and speak a parable to the House of Israel …" (v 2). In
verses 3-10 Ezekiel sets forth the allegory of the great eagle that snatched the top branch
of the cedar, taking it to a land of traders and planting instead a spreading vine. The
meaning of the symbolism is then explained in verses 11-21.

The great eagle with its long, outspread wings symbolizes Nebuchadnezzar (Rashi on v 2;
see verse 12), under whose rule Babylon was flying high and conquering the world. The
"Lebanon" to which the eagle came refers the Land of Israel , "for it has good forests
which are called Lebanon " (RaDaK on v 3). The top branches of the cedar, which the
eagle snatched, symbolize King Yeho-yakim and his mighty warriors, whom
Nebuchadnezzar took into exile (Rashi on v 3; see verse 12). The "seed of the land" which
the great eagle then planted symbolizes King Tzedekiah (Rashi on v 5; see verse 13),
whom Nebuchadnezzar appointed to replace Yeho-yakim's successor Yeho-yachin after
his brief three-month reign and subsequent exile to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar made
Tzedekiah swear a solemn oath of loyalty (cf. v 13).

"And it sprouted and became a spreading vine…" (v 6). Initially Nebuchadnezzar gave
Tzedekiah dominion over the neighboring lands of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre and Sidon
(Jer. 27:3, see RaDaK on v 6 of our present chapter) but intended that he should remain
the vassal of Babylon. However, when Tzedekiah flourished, he betrayed the eagle that
"planted" him, rebelling against Nebuchadnezzar while hoping for "water" and succor
from the second great eagle in the allegory symbolizing Pharaoh, king of the other great
world power of the time – Egypt (see verse 15). Surely this cannot succeed, HaShem
declares, for the first eagle would certainly pull up the roots of the vine and cut off its fruit
(an allusion to Nebuchadnezzar's killing Tzedekiah's sons) while the second eagle would
utterly fail to defend the vine with the great power and abundant army it had promised
(see Rashi on v 9; cf. verse 17). "Shall it not utterly wither when the east wind (= Babylon,
which is to the east of Israel) touches it? It shall wither in the plantations where it grew"
(v 10).

"Thus says HaShem: As I live, surely My oath that he has despised and My covenant that
he has broken I will put upon his own head" (v 19). The oath that Tzedekiah swore to
Nebuchadnezzar was in the name of HaShem, and for that reason it was as if he had
sworn to HaShem, so that when he rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar it was a rebellion
against HaShem (see Metzudas David on v 19). For that reason God would punish him
"upon his own head": this alludes to how Nebuchadnezzar put out Tzedekiah's eyes. In
verse 20 Ezekiel prophesies in exactly the same words as he had used earlier (Ez. 12:13)
that God would trap Tzedekiah in His snare, alluding to his capture near the exit to his
escape tunnel by a party of deer-hunting Babylonians.

Yet the prophecy ends with words of comfort, for "I shall take from the high cedar… and
I will pluck off from the top of its young twigs a tender one and I will plant it upon a high
and lofty mountain" (v 22). RaDaK (on v 22) explains that the "top of its young twigs"
alludes to King Yeho-yachin, who repented in his prison cell in Babylon and fathered
She'alti-el, the father of Zerubavel, who led the Judean exiles back to Jerusalem – the
"high and lofty mountain – and built the Second Temple. Zerubavel was the archetype of
Melech HaMashiach, and Rashi and Metzudas David (ad loc.) explain this verse as a
prophecy about Mashiach, who will be from the seed of David and will rule in Jerusalem.

Chapter 18
The present chapter is a discourse on the ways of God's justice. It's starting point is a
riddle or proverb that has a thrust different from that of the proverbs and allegories in the
previous chapters. The inferior vine whose fruits are a pain to the mouth has figured
prominently as a symbol of sinful Israel in the prophet's allegories in chapters 15 and 17.
But in the people's defiant rejoinder to the prophet, they took the same metaphor and
turned it into a glib quip that justified their continuing on their sinful path.

We hear what the people were saying when God challenges the Children of Israel: "What
do you mean when you use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying: The fathers
have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge?" (v 1). Metzudas David
explains the people's proverb: "The fathers ate the sour grapes that are supposed to set
the teeth on edge, yet they did not set their teeth on edge. Then why should the teeth of
the children be set on edge if they themselves have not eaten the sour grapes? That is to
say: Does it make sense that our ancestors sinned yet spent all their days in tranquility
without receiving retribution, and that we, their children, who are not such great sinners
as they were, should be punished for their sins?" (Metzudas David on verse 2 of our
present chapter).

The true prophets were constantly warning the people that God's retribution was to strike
them imminently. Rashi spells out the counter-argument the people were posing in their
proverb: "Is this the way of the Holy One blessed be He – that the fathers sin and the
children get punished? The kings of Israel sinned for many years before they were finally
exiled. We too do not need to fear that we shall be punished for our sins" (Rashi on v 2).
To justify their stubborn sinfulness, the people were mocking the entire concept of divine
retribution, pointing to the fact that very often complete sinners appear to enjoy
prosperity and tranquility all their days.

This chapter's prophetic discourse on God's ways of justice in answer to the people does
NOT address the mystery that is the main subject of the debates and discussions in the
book of Job: Why do the wicked seem to prosper while the righteous often suffer? Rather,
Ezekiel states the inexorable law of God's justice: "Behold, all the souls are Mine: as the
soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine. It is the soul that sins that shall die"
(v 4) – "Everyone loves his own possessions and wants them to endure…. 'The soul that
sins shall die' because there is then no reason to favor it, but if not for the sin, why should
He withdraw His favor?" (Metzudas David ad loc.).

The discourse proceeds to set forth the various corollaries of this basic principle of
personal responsibility that is the foundation of God's justice. Verses 5-9 depict the
conduct that befits a truly righteous person. Not only does he steer well clear of all
idolatry, keeping clean in the areas that are "between man and God"; he also observes
God's laws "between man and man", keeping well clear of adultery, business malpractice,
robbery and exploitation of the poor etc. practicing true justice. "He is just: he shall
surely live" (v 9).

Verses 10-13 depict the opposite case – the son of a righteous man who turns into a
robber and a killer, practicing everything that his father rejected. All his father's
righteousness will not protect him from the penalty for his deeds. "Shall he then live? He
shall not live… he shall surely die" (v 13).

In yet another inter-generational swing, the wicked son gives birth to a son "who sees all
the sins that his father did but considers and does not do similarly" (v 14). It is one of the
great mercies of creation that sinful parents do not necessarily breed sinful children, and
that a new generation can break out of the ways of the old and lead better lives. Verses
14-17 depict the righteous life of the grandchild: "He shall not die because of the sin of his
father, but he shall surely live" (v 17).

Verse 20 concludes the first part of the discourse with a restatement of the fundamental
principle of God's justice: "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father and the father
shall not bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him
and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him."

In a new development of the theme of the discourse, vv 21-23 teach that even the
habitual sinner will also live if he repents of his sins and follows the path of justice and
charity. The possibility of repentance is the greatest gift of God's compassion – for, "Do
I desire the death of the sinner, says HaShem, but surely, rather, that he should repent
of his ways and live!" (v 23). This verse figures prominently in the prayers of Yom Kippur,
the Day of Atonement.

The corollary of the principle that the wicked can repent is that there is also always a
danger that the righteous may lapse. "But when the righteous turns away from his
righteousness… shall he live? All his righteousness that he has done shall not be
remembered…" (v 24). This does NOT mean that if a tzaddik sins, all his merits are
instantly wiped out. Rather, "our rabbis explained that this verse applies to the case of
someone who was righteous but comes to regret his good deeds" (Rashi ad loc.).

"The fathers ate sour grapes – shall the teeth of the children be set on edge?" The
people's pungent proverb gave terse expression to their philosophy that there was no
such thing as divine justice. But the prophet has answered them with his discourse
setting forth the principles of God's ways. "You say: The way of the Lord is unfair. Hear
now, O House of Israel: Is My way unfair? Surely your ways are unfair!" (v 25; cf. v 29).
A world without reward for good deeds and punishment for bad is a world run amok. But
God's world is one of justice and retribution, and for our own benefit we should therefore
repent and LIVE.

Chapter 19
The two short allegories contained in the present chapter complete the series of
prophecies that began in Chapter 8 v 1, "in the sixth year, in the sixth month…" (i.e. SIX
YEARS AFTER the exile of King Yeho-yachin and King Tzedekiah's ascent to the throne,
and FIVE YEARS PRIOR to the destruction of the First Temple).It was in that year that
Ezekiel was carried by a RU'ACH, "wind" or "spirit", from Babylon to the Temple in
Jerusalem to witness the abominations of the people and the withdrawal of the Shechinah
from the city (chs 8-11), after which he was brought back to Babylon to prophesy to
those who were already in exile there, delivering various reproofs veiled in allegory and
metaphor (chs 12-19). The prophecy in the present chapter is the last of that year, for
the following chapter is dated to "the seventh year in the fifth month" (ch 20 v 1; see the
commentary there).

"And you, take up a lament for the princes of Israel" (v 1). The three "princes" that are
the subject of this lament are the righteous King Josiah's three wicked sons, who ruled in
Jerusalem in the period culminating in the destruction of the First Temple: Yeho-ahaz (II
Kings 23:31ff), Yeho-yakim (ibid. vv 34ff) and Tzedekiah (II Kings 24:17ff). Not included
is Yeho-yachin, the son and successor of Yeho-yakim, whom Nebuchadnezzar exiled after
only 3 months, replacing him with Tzedekiah.

The first of the two allegories in the present chapter is that of the lioness and her cubs (vv
2-9). "What a lioness was your mother…!" (v 2). The mother lion is the House of Josiah
(Metzudas David ad loc.). "And she brought up one of her cubs… and it learned to catch
prey; it devoured men (ADAM)" (v 3). This refers to Yeho-ahaz, who robbed his own
people Israel , who are called ADAM (see Rashi ad loc., cf. Ez. 34:31), and who was taken
by Pharaoh Necho to Egypt where he died, as told in II Kings 23:33-34 and alluded to in
v 4 of our present chapter.
Verses 5-9 allude to how Pharaoh Necho replaced Yeho-ahaz with another of the "lioness'
cubs" – Yeho-ahaz' brother Yeho-yakim – but the latter pursued the same sinful path, as
told in Jeremiah (22:18, ch 36:1-32 etc.), and "the nations set upon him on all sides" (v
8 of our present chapter, cf. II Kings 24:2) and he was ignominiously captured by
Nebuchadnezzar, dying on the road to Babylon.

The second of the allegories in this chapter (vv 10-14) is that of a fruitful vine that grows
too tall and proud and is then cut down in fury. This alludes to Tzedekiah, the last king of
Judah, and recalls the lengthier earlier allegory in Ezekiel 17:5-10 & 13-21. "And a fire
has gone out from the rod of her branches" (v 14 of our present chapter) – "It is because
of the transgression of her kings and leaders that all this evil has come upon her" (Rashi
ad loc.). This teaches that the leaders of the people are expected to be the exemplars of
the righteousness required of the Holy Nation, and when the leaders fail, this is the root
cause of Israel's troubles.

Chapter 20
* * * In accordance with the Sefardic custom, Ezekiel 20:1-20 is read as the Haftara of
Parshas Kedoshim, Leviticus 19:1-20:27 * * *

"And it was in the seventh year in the fifth month on the tenth of the month" (v 1). The
fifth month is the month of Av, and the tenth day of Av was destined to be the day when
the Temple was destroyed (for although it was set on fire on 9 Av, the conflagration
continued for the whole of the 10 th ). The present prophecy came to Ezekiel four years
before this occurred. "Each year God sent him one prophecy with which to reprove the
people, and even though he was sent other prophecies in between, the first of his
prophecies in any given year was the one that is specifically dated to that year" (RaDaK
ad loc. Cf. Ezekiel 1:2 and 8:1).

RaDaK continues: "His telling the month and the day of this prophecy was a hint that this
would be the date on which Jerusalem was destined to be destroyed. The coming of the
elders to the prophet on that day was arranged by God so that they should hear the
reproof on that day, because it was on account of their sins and those of their fathers that
the Temple was to be destroyed. Now these elders who came to seek out HaShem were
Tzaddikim from among those who went into exile with Yeho-yachin, and when God said to
them, 'I shall not be inquired of by you', it was on account of the sins of their generation.
Perhaps they came to inquire if the exiles in Babylon would ever return to the Land of
Israel… Seder Olam states that these elders of Israel were Hananiyah, Mishael and
Azariah (Daniel 1:6, 3:12 etc.)."

If the elders themselves were righteous, those whom they represented were less so, to
go by the explanation by Rashi (on v 1) as to what the people were saying. "If He won't
listen to us, we too shall not be punished for our sins, for it means He has already sold us
and He has no further claim against us. We are like a slave whose master has sold him or
a woman whose husband has divorced her: They simply have no further connection with
one another!" (Rashi's comment here is founded on verse 32 below in accordance with
the interpretation that will be explained in our commentary.)

In verse 3 God tells the prophet to respond that He will NOT answer the people's inquiry,
i.e. He will not send a prophecy with specific information, which would be a sign of great
favor. This implies that the people were in disfavor. But Rashi points out that "At the end
of this book, Ez. 36:37, he says, 'I SHALL be inquired of by the Children of Israel'. This is
one of the places that teaches us that the Holy One blessed be He MAY go back on an evil
decree" (Rashi on v 3).
Instead of providing the people with the information they wanted about how long the
exile would last, God reproves them in a lengthy review of the history of their rebellions
from the time of the birth of the nation in Egypt. Verses 5-9 recount God's self-revelation
to Israel while still in Egypt in order to redeem them and lead them to the Promised Land.
But from the very outset, "They rebelled against Me and did not want to listen to Me…" (v
8) – "It was hard for them to give up idolatry" (Mechilta). "These were the wicked, who
made up the majority of Israel, who died in the three days of darkness" (Rashi on v 8).
Yet despite the rebellion, God redeemed them in order to keep His promise to the
Patriarchs, so as not to desecrate His name (v 9) as if He did not have the power to do so.

Verses 10-16 tell the next stage in the saga of rebellion during Israel's sojourn in the
wilderness. Even after God's spectacular self-revelation in giving them the Torah and
mitzvos, they would not listen. "They did not go in My statutes…" – "They tried Me with
the golden calf"; "…and they greatly desecrated My Sabbaths" – "Some of the people
went out to gather manna" (v 13 with Rashi's glosses).

Verses 17ff continue the saga, implying that God would have wiped out the people in the
wilderness but for His compassion. Instead, He asked the new generation born to the
rebels in the wilderness to observe His life-giving Torah, yet they too failed to keep it. "I
too lifted up My hand to them (=swore) in the wilderness, declaring that I would scatter
them among the nations" (v 23). Here we see that later cycle of exiles that afflicted Israel
was already decreed when they were in the wilderness, and Moses warned them there
that this is what would befall them if they sinned (see Deut. 4:25ff).

"So I too gave them statutes that were not good… and I defiled them through their
gifts…" (vv 25-6). Rashi explains: "I delivered them into the power of their evil inclination
so as to cause them to stumble in their sins… The very gifts that I instituted – to dedicate
every firstborn to Me – I delivered into the power of their evil inclination, which caused
them to hand those very firstborn to the Molech god. These are the 'statutes that were
not good'" (Rashi ad loc.).

In vv 27-9 the saga of rebellion continues with the people's entry into the Land of Israel ,
where instead of affirming God's unity through offering sacrifices only in the Temple in
Jerusalem , they scattered to all the hills and natural beauty spots, each making his own
altar of pride.

In verses 30ff the prophet is commanded to address the people of his own generation
directly, as if to say: After all this history of rebellion, what are YOU going to do???

In verse 31 God swears that He will not be inquired of by the House of Israel, implying the
withdrawal of His direct, detailed providence (HASHGACHAH PRATIS) from the people,
signified by the absence of prophecy.

"But that which comes into your mind (HA-OLEH AL RUCHACHEM) shall never come
about, that you say, 'We shall be like the nations…'" (v 32). After the lengthy preceding
catalog of Israel's rebellions, one might have thought that God's patience would have
been exhausted and that He would reject them for ever more ("replacement theology").
But this important verse tells us otherwise. The rebellious Israelites of Ezekiel's day
thought that if God had rejected them (by taking them into exile without revealing the
date of their redemption), this gave them a carte blanche to assimilate with the
surrounding nations. Many Jews in modern times, despairing of Mashiach, have come to
the same conclusion. The phrase in verse 32, HA-OLEH AL RUCHACHEM, "that which
arises in your RU'ACH, spirit, mind" is the basis for the rabbinic teaching that the OLAH
sacrifice comes to atone for rebellious thoughts and doubts (Vayikra Rabbah #87).
However, God says that this thought of complete assimilation that has come into their
minds "SHALL MOST SURELY NEVER COME ABOUT" (v 32). This is because God will never
allow Israel to assimilate and disappear, even if He has to rule over them "with a mighty
hand and a stretched out arm and outpoured anger" (v 33). An example of this
"outpoured anger" in modern times was when the proportion of assimilated Jews in
Europe rose to over 50% in the 1930's, provoking a fury that while indiscriminately
wiping out six million Jews, religious and non-religious, also indirectly lead to the
establishment of the State of Israel, a huge ingathering of the exiles and the ongoing
Torah revival that is taking place in our generation.

Thus verses 34ff depict the final redemption and ingathering of Israel at the end of days,
which we have reached in our times. "And I will bring you into the wilderness of the
nations" (verse 35). Rashi (ad loc.) states that this is the same wilderness in which the
Children of Israel journeyed for forty years. Does this allude to the countries of the
nations in which Jews have lived during the long exile? Or could it be that the "wilderness
of the nations" contains an allusion to the United Nations, where Israel is subjected to
daily remonstrations???

Verse 36 teaches that the final redemption will be an event quite as great and cataclysmic
as the redemption from Egypt. God will bring the people back under the discipline of the
Covenant (v 37) and purge out the rebels (v 38). Verse 40 promises the restoration of the
Temple services in Jerusalem. "And I shall be sanctified through you in the eyes of the
nations" (v 41) – "Through you I will be sanctified in the eyes of the nations when they
will see that My hand has ruled" (Metzudas David ad loc.). "This will be in the war of Gog
and Magog" (RaDaK ad loc.). At the end of days Israel will look back over their history and
understand the root cause of the suffering they endured in exile – their own rebellions (v
43) – and this new level of self-understanding will keep them bound to the service of God
forever after.

Chapter 21
Following the prophecy of the final redemption in the closing section of the previous
chapter (Ez. 20:40-44), our present chapter contains very harsh prophecies about the
imminent calamity that was looming over Jerusalem as Ezekiel spoke: the destruction of
the First Temple was only four years ahead.

The first of these prophecies was once again heavily veiled in allegory: "Son of man, set
your face towards the south and preach towards the south, and prophesy against the
forest of the field of the south… Behold I will kindle a fire in you and it shall devour every
green tree in you and every dry tree…" (vv 2-3).

The prophet himself complained that the people would mock him as a false prophet who
simply made up his own clever riddles and parables (v 5, see RaDaK). Accordingly God
immediately sent him another much more specific prophecy retroactively explaining the
meaning of the previous allegory by depicting the coming horror of the sword that was be
unleashed against the people of Jerusalem (vv 6-10). The "forest of the field" in the
allegory (v 2) symbolized the Holy Temple (v 7), which would be plowed like a field (Rashi
on v 2). The consumption by fire of "every green tree… and every dry tree" (v 3) meant
that the sword would consume the righteous and the wicked indiscriminately (v 8).
Moreover, "My sword shall go out of its sheath against ALL FLESH from the south to the
north" (v 9) – "Because I know that the nations will rejoice over your calamity, I shall
vent my fury against them and incite Nebuchadnezzar against them all" (Rashi ad loc.).

In vv 11-12 the prophet is instructed to sigh and groan bitterly in front of his fellow exiles
in Babylon in order to dramatize the horror that was soon to afflict Jerusalem. The reason
why he had to do this was because the people simply did not believe that Jerusalem could
possibly fall. Even when Nebuchadnezzar was marching against her with his armies,
Rashi (on v 28) states that the people did not believe he could succeed.

Thus a new section of the prophecy in verses 13-22 vividly depicts in detail the sharpened,
polished sword that was to be unleashed against Jerusalem. Nobody should imagine that
God had prepared this sword for any other purpose than to chastise His "son" Israel (v
15). Vv 19ff foretell that the sword would be doubled and then strike a third time. Rashi
(on v 19) explains that this alludes to how first Nebuchadnezzar's sword would strike
Jerusalem, then the sword of the Ammonites would strike Gedaliah ben Ahikam
(Jeremiah 40:14-41:2), and finally the sword would catch up with Yochanan ben Korach
and the other remaining Judeans who sought refuge from the Babylonians in Egypt.

In a further prophecy in vv 23ff, God tells Ezekiel to "appoint two ways that the sword of
the king of Babylon may come: the two of them shall come out of one land; and construct
a signpost – construct it at the head of the way to the city". Here the prophet is once
again commanded to take symbolic actions that would dramatize graphically what was
destined to happen, which he foretells in vivid detail in vv 26ff. At the start of what was
to become Nebuchadnezzar's final advance against Jerusalem, even the Babylonian king
himself would at first not know which of two possible directions he would take, because
just as Tzedekiah had rebelled against him, so had the Ammonites (RaDaK on v 33). The
prophet foretells that Nebuchadnezzar would stand at the crossroads and instruct his
diviners and augurs to practice their occult arts, firing flashing arrows, observing the
Teraphim statues and examining the innards of sacrificed animals in order to discover
which road would bring him success (v 26). Even Nebuchadnezzar was in grave doubt
whether he could succeed in capturing Jerusalem – but forty-nine different signs and
auguries consistently indicated that he would (see Rashi on v 28).

The people of Jerusalem were doomed because of their sins (v 29) and those of her king
(v 30), who would be stripped of his crown at the same time as the High Priest would be
stripped of his turban with the destruction of the Temple (v 31).

Even though Nebuchadnezzar decided to march first against Jerusalem, the Ammonites
were not to escape the sword. When his auguries fell out against Jerusalem, the
Ammonites rejoiced (Rashi on v 33) and their own augurs promised them that they were
henceforth safe (Rashi on v 34), but this would prove to be false and Ezekiel concludes by
prophesying that the time would come when God would vent His wrath upon them at the
hands of the kings of Media (vv 35-7; see Rashi ad loc.).

Chapter 22
The prophecies in this chapter detail the sins for which Jerusalem was to be destroyed.
The catalog of sins begins with bloodshed, because "even though the city was full of idols
and other abominations, the worst sin of all is the shedding of innocent blood" (RaDaK on
v 2).

"Behold, the princes of Israel, every one according to his might, have been in you to shed
blood" (v 6) – "Whoever was stronger prevailed" (Rashi ad loc.). "This teaches that they
would stretch out their hands and arms from under their sleeves and take bribes to
corrupt justice" (Tanchuma).

"They have made light of father and mother…" (v 7) – "All the abominations against
which they were warned in Parshas KEDOSHIM (Leviticus ch 19) are enumerated here"
(Rashi on our verse).

After all these sins, "Can your heart endure or can your hands be strong in the days when
I shall deal with you???" (v 14).

"Son of man: the House of Israel has become like dross" (v 18) – "Dross is the waste of
silver. He compares them to metals that are all inferior to silver, as if to say that if they
were all melted in the furnace they would all be accounted as dross and not as silver"
(RaDaK ad loc.). Vv 19ff depict the coming calamity as a terrible burning and smelting of
metals that will cause everything to melt down and loose its original form (see RaDaK on
v 19).

The concluding section of the prophecy in verses 23-31 gives further details the sins that
were leading to this retribution. "Her priests have violated My Torah" (v 26) – "It was
their duty to rebuke and teach the people and inform them about the law, but they did not
do so. This is their violent robbery (HAMAS) – they stole Torah from those who needed to
learn it" (Rashi ad loc.). "…and from My Sabbaths they have hidden their eyes" (v 26) –
"Jerusalem was destroyed because they violated the Sabbath there" (Talmud Shabbos
119b).

"And I sought for a man among them that should build up the wall and stand in the breach
before Me for the sake of the land, so that I should not destroy it, but I did not find one!"
(v 30). Had there been some true Tzaddikim, they could have saved the city! Let each of
us take responsibility to strive to be the one who stands in the breach. In the merit of our
TESHUVAH, may God spare us from all further troubles! Amen.

* * * According to the Ashkenazi custom, Ezekiel 22:1-16 is read as the Haftara of

Parshas Kedoshim, Leviticus 19:1-20:27 * * *

Chapter 23
This chapter's extended allegory about two lustful adulterous sisters comes to explain
and justify the coming destruction of Jerusalem on account of the people's idolatry. The
older (=GEDOLAH, literally "greater") sister is Oholah, representing the Ten Tribes (the
majority of Israel) under the leadership of Ephraim in their capital city of Shomron. The
name Oholah is from the root OHEL, a tent, alluding to the "tent" or temple erected by
Jeraboam, first king of the breakaway Ten Tribes, for the worship of his golden calves,
and also to the house of Baal later erected by Ahab (Rashi on v 4). The name OHOLAH
signifies HER tent, i.e. hers and not HaShem's, for He had no share in it (RaDaK on v 4).
The "junior" sister, representing Judah, whose capital was in Jerusalem, is called
Oholivah, "because My tent (OHOLI), My sanctuary, was in her (BAH)" (Rashi ibid.).

From their earliest youth the two sisters had acted like harlots (v 3). RaDaK explains that
"Every expression of harlotry used in connection with the Assembly of Israel refers to
idolatry. Even though the imagery is that of adultery and intercourse, this is all part of the
allegory because she is compared to a harlot, but this is a metaphor for every kind of
idolatry" (RaDaK on v 3). The infatuation with idolatry was more than a matter of simply
bowing to graven images. Israel had a fatal fascination for foreign nations and their
worldviews, cultures, styles and fashions (cf. vv 7, 12, 14-15), as if the YETZER RA (evil
inclination) of the people whom God chose to be distinct and separate from all others
necessarily craved for the diametrical opposite of separation, i.e. assimilation. The same
craving to be like the nations has been manifest time and time again in Jewish history
until the present, as in the case of those who sought to Hellenize during the Second
Temple period, those in medieval Spain who embraced the philosophy and culture of the
host country, those in eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe who idolized the French
and German "enlightenment", and those today who have eyes only for secular culture,
the punkier the better.

Already in Egypt "their breasts were pressed and their virgin teats were handled" (v 3) –
"That is to say, the Egyptians taught them the ways of their abominations" (Rashi ad
loc.).

Initially Oholah led the way, "and she doted on her lovers, on those of Assyria , her
neighbors…" (v 5). Rashi (ad loc.) states that this alludes to the bribe paid by Menachem
ben Gadi, one of the later kings of Israel, to Pol king of Assyria to help consolidate his
kingship (II Kings 15:19). This indicates that political expediency was often a major
factor in Israel's dalliance with the nations. "Neither did she abandon the lewd practices
she brought from Egypt" (v 8) – "We find that Hosea ben Elah (king of Israel) sent
emissaries to Sou king of Egypt" (II Kings 17:4; Rashi on our verse). In vengeance for the
kingdom of Israel's "adultery" with foreign nations, her "Husband" – God – delivered her
into the hands of her lovers (v 9) – "for Sennacherib (king of Assyria) came and took
them into exile" (Rashi ad loc.).

Even though the allegory tells the story of both sisters, its essential purpose is to explain
the reason for the calamity that was to befall the "junior sister", Oholivah, Judah and
Jerusalem, who had witnessed Oholah's "adultery" and the terrible retribution she
suffered as a result yet failed to take heed of the moral, and indeed did even worse (vv
11ff). Thus Jerusalem too "doted on the children of Assyria" (v 12) – "This refers to King
Ahaz, who sent to the king of Assyria to help him" (Rashi ad loc.). Furthermore, "She
increased her harlotries, and she saw men portrayed upon the wall, the images of the
Kasdim…" (v 14). In the eyes of the people of Jerusalem, the distant Kasdim (=Chaldeans,
people of Babylon and surrounds) were much more exotic than the nearby Assyrians, and
mere images and pictures of Chaldean culture were sufficient to cause the Jerusalemites
to become infatuated. Likewise today, merely through the power of TV, film, magazine
and internet images, millions of people throughout the world are hypnotized by the
culture disseminated by Hollywood even though the vast majority have never physically
set foot anywhere near Hollywood itself. The allurements of ancient Babylonian men's
fashions as described in v 15 bring to mind how the Sophisticate in Rabbi Nachman's
story of "The Simpleton and the Sophisticate" fell in love with the elegant hats and long
pointed shoes of the shop clerks he saw in Warsaw .

"And the children of Babylon came to her into the bed of love" (v 17) – "I say that this
refers to Hezekiah, who rejoiced over the emissaries sent by Merodach Beladan (king of
Babylon) and fed them at his table and showed them his entire treasure house (II Kings
20:13; Rashi on our verse). But after having been defiled by the Babylonians, "her mind
was alienated from them" (v 17) – the later kings of Judah, Yeho-yakim and Tzedekiah,
rebelled against the Babylonians (Rashi ad loc.). Yet this did not spell the end of
Oholivah's adultery, for "she multiplied her harlotries, recalling the days of her youth… in
Egypt" – Tzedekiah sent emissaries to Egypt seeking help (Ezekiel 17:15; Rashi on verse
19 of our present chapter).

Verses 22ff explain that in retribution for Oholivah's long history of adultery God would
arouse her lovers – the very Babylonians from whom she now recoiled in disgust –
against her. "They shall take away your nose and your ears" (v 25). The primitive
punishment of a harlot by disfiguring her face in this way is a metaphor for the abolition
of the kingship and the priesthood (Rashi ad loc.). The nose, which protrudes from the
face, alludes to the king, who is above all the people, while the ears allude to the high
priest, the bells on whose coat are heard by the ears when he enters the Sanctuary
(RaDaK ad loc.). All this would be Oholivah's punishment for going after the nations in the
way of her sister Oholah (v 31).

Verses 36ff further elaborate on the sins of the two sisters. "…And blood is on their
hands… and also they have caused their sons, whom they bore to me, to pass (through
the fire) to them to be devoured" (v 37). While this verse overtly refers to the people's
Molech-worship, the "blood on their hands" also alludes to their willful vain emission of
seed with their hands, for which they did not repent (see Rashi ad loc.). On the very same
day that they sinned, they had the gall to enter the Holy Temple, where they set up an
idol (Rashi on v 38).

Vv 40ff depict Oholivah as a harlot seated on her couch at a banquet with her "lovers".
"Then I said that she was worn out with adulteries…" (v 43) – God thought that perhaps
the people would eventually tire of their ways, but they did not, and there was therefore
no other recourse than to stone them and cut them in pieces, kill their sons and
daughters and burn their houses (v 47). This terrible retribution would be a lesson to
Israel and all the nations, who would know that God rules the world, "and I shall cause
lewdness to cease out of the land" (v 48).

Chapter 24
"And the word of HaShem came to me in the ninth year in the tenth month on the tenth
of the month" (v 1). This was the ninth year of the reign of King Tzedekiah – two years
before the destruction of the Temple. The tenth day of the month of Teves of that year
marked the commencement of King Nebuchadnezzar's siege of Jerusalem, an event that
is commemorated annually until today with the Fast of the Tenth of Teves.

There were no radio transmitters, phones, emails or anything of the kind when Ezekiel,
located far away from Jerusalem in Babylon, received this prophecy about what was
happening in the Holy City and was instructed to record the date. "The ultimate purpose
of writing down the date was because the prophet was in Babylon yet he recorded what
was taking place in Jerusalem, and when the people would hear from messengers that it
was so, they would believe in him and stop paying attention to the words of the false
prophets" (Metzudas David on v 2).

"And utter a parable…" (v 3). We learned earlier that the inhabitants of Jerusalem had
their own glib slogan that "Jerusalem is the pot and we are the meat" (Ezekiel 11:3),
meaning "just as the meat does not leave the pot until it is completely cooked, so we shall
not leave the city until we die naturally" (Rashi ibid.). Now God turns the same metaphor
of the meat in the pot against the inhabitants of Jerusalem with a vengeance. Only now
was the pot being put on the stove: this alludes to the fact that the siege was just
beginning. "…And also pour water into it" (v 3): from the moment the water is first
poured in, it takes time for the pot to boil. Similarly the siege would last for two long years
before the bitter end (see Metzudas David ad loc.). "Gather the pieces of meat into it…"
(v 4) – "Out of fear of the siege, all the heads and ministers had gathered inside the city"
(Rashi). "Take the choice of the flock…" (v 5) – "these are the choicest of Israel " (Rashi).
"Make it boil well" (v 5) – "After all of them are inside, the siege engines will be drawn up
and war will come to the city" (Rashi).

Verses 6-14 explain and elaborate the metaphor. "Woe to the bloody city, the pot whose
filth is in it" (v 6). The "filth" is the scum that rises to the surface as a pot of meat comes
to the boil, but here, instead of being removed, the filth stays within – i.e. the sinners in
the city would not leave (Rashi). Instead, they would be burned up inside it (see vv
11-12).

"For her blood is in her midst, she set it upon the bare rock…" (v 7). Our sages interpret
verses 7-8 as alluding to the blood of the prophet Zechariah son of Yehoyada, which was
spilled on the marble floor of the Temple Courtyard when he was killed on the instructions
of King Yo'ash (II Chronicles 24:20-22) and which seethed incessantly in a mute call for
vengeance until the arrival of Nebuchadnezzar's captain, Nevuzaradan, to destroy the
Temple (Gittin 57b; P'sikta; see KNOW YOUR BIBLE on II Chronicles 24).

The pot was to boil and boil until all the contents dried up and burned on the fire in order
that "its impurity may be molten and its filth may be consumed" (vv 10-11) – only thus
would the sins of the people be expiated. "Because I have purged you but you were not
purged" (v 13) – God had sent prophets to rebuke the people but they did not heed them
(see Rashi ad loc.).

"I AM TAKING AWAY THE DELIGHT OF YOUR EYES" (v 15)

A new prophecy begins in verse 15 with God informing Ezekiel that He would take away
"the delight of your eyes", i.e. the prophet's wife (see v 18), yet paradoxically, the
prophet was instructed to exhibit no signs of mourning. He delivered his prophecy to the
people in the morning; his wife died that very evening, and the following morning he
acted quite unlike any mourner (v 18) in order to needle the people into asking him the
reason for his strange behavior.

The prophet's explanation to the people is given in vv 20-24: Ezekiel's loss of his wife
represented the coming destruction of the Temple – for "Whenever a man loses his first
wife, it is as if the Holy Temple was destroyed in his days" (Sanhedrin 22a). Yet just as
Ezekiel exhibited no signs of mourning over his wife, so the remnant of Judah who were
in Babylon at the time of the destruction of the Temple would show no outward signs of
mourning over it. Rashi explains that the reason for this was because there would be
nobody to comfort the people since there would not be a single one among them who
would not be a mourner, and signs of mourning are only displayed in a place where there
is someone to give comfort. Moreover, the people would be afraid to shed tears openly in
the presence of the Babylonians in whose midst they lived (Rashi on v 22).

Many important laws relating to mourning practices are derived from verse 17, which
details the usual signs of mourning that Ezekiel was NOT to exhibit in this case. Instead,
he was to "bind" his "turban" (PE-EIR) as usual. The PE-EIR refers to the Tefilin, which a
mourner does not wear (Berachos 11a). Ezekiel was told: "Put your shoes on your feet",
whereas a mourner is forbidden to wear shoes (Mo'ed Katan 15b). Ezekiel was told: "Do
not cover your lips", but in earlier times, mourners would swathe their head in grief (ibid.
15a). Ezekiel was told: "And do not eat the bread of men", whereas a mourner is fed the
first "meal of consolation" by his friends and neighbors (ibid. 27b).

In the final section of this prophecy (vv 25-7) God tells Ezekiel that on the day when a
fugitive would arrive in Babylon to break the news that the Temple had been destroyed,
"your mouth shall be opened and you shall speak and be dumb no more" (contrary to His
telling him in Ez. 3:26 to be dumb) because then the people would see that everything
had happened exactly as the prophet had foretold long before, and the truth of his
prophecy would be vindicated.

Chapter 25
Ezekiel's grim prophecy in the previous chapter (Ezekiel 24) about the coming
destruction of Jerusalem was specifically dated to the beginning of Nebuchadnezzar's
siege of Jerusalem, which started on the tenth day of the tenth month (Teves) in the
ninth year of the reign of King Tzedekiah (Ez. 24:1) and continued for two years until the
destruction of the Temple and the city and the exile of its surviving inhabitants.

Since Judah under David, Solomon and a number of its later kings had been the dominant
power from the Nile to the Euphrates, the prospect of its imminent destruction and
humiliation elicited great joy among the peoples in the neighboring territories of Ammon,
Moab, Edom and Philistia as well as in the great maritime city of Tyre to the north of Israel
and in Egypt to its south. Their relish increased as they watched Nebuchadnezzar tighten
his stranglehold on Jerusalem.

The prophecies in the coming eight chapters of Ezekiel (chs 25-32), which date from the
period of the siege Jerusalem, all deal with the destined destruction of the
above-mentioned nations in retribution for their gloating over the fate of Judah. The
prophecies in our present chapter (Ezekiel 25) are directed against Ammon, Moab, Edom
and Philistia, while Tyre and its ruler are the subjects of the prophecies in chs 26-28.
These are then followed by a series of prophecies against Egypt in chs 29-32. Ezekiel's
prophecies against the nations parallel the prophecies about the coming retribution
against the nations contained in Isaiah (chs 13-16, 19, 21, 23, 25 & 34 etc.) and
Jeremiah (chs 46-51).

A comment in the Midrash may shed some light on the complex issue of whether these
prophecies apply only to the specified nations at that time, who may since have simply
perished from the face of the earth, or whether they apply to peoples existing until today,
either in the same territories or elsewhere. "R. Huna said in the name of R. Acha: All the
empires (MALCHUYOS) are called by the name of ASHUR (Assyria) on account of the fact
that they have become wealthy (misASHRos) at the expense of Israel. R. Yose bar
Chaninah said: All the empires are called by the name of NINIVEH on account of the fact
that they took their beauty (misNA'Os) from Israel. R. Yose bar Chalaphta said: All the
empires are called by the name of MITZRAIM (' Egypt ') because they oppress
(METZIROS) Israel " (Bereishis Rabbah 17:4).

Biblical Egypt, Niniveh, Ashur and Tzur etc. were the archetypal embodiment of certain
characteristics that in later history became embodied in other nations (garbs). This while
Ezekiel and the other prophets were without doubt on one level referring specifically to
these nations as they were in their own times, since all their prophecies came through
holy spirit, they simultaneously relate to nations that emerged later on embodying the
same archetypal traits.

The "sister" nations of Ammon and Moab were close relatives of the Israelites since their
founding father, Lot, was a nephew of Abraham, who saved him from captivity at the
hands of the four kings (Genesis ch 14). Thus their joy over the destruction of the Temple
and the land of Israel (verses 3 and 8 of our present chapter) was an expression of rank
ingratitude. Edom (=Seir) was an even closer relative of Israel since Edom's founding
father was Esau, Jacob's brother, and thus when the Edomites handed fugitive Judeans
over to Nebuchadnezzar's armies, it was a betrayal of their brotherly ties. Only through
the destruction of their peoples and their land would these nations know that HaShem
rules (vv 7, 11 and 14).
 Chapter 26
"And it came to pass in the eleventh year on the first day of the month…" (Ezekiel 26:1).
This was the eleventh year of the reign of King Tzedekiah. It was in this year that the
Temple was destroyed. "The prophet does not reveal to us in which month he received
this prophecy, but since he left it unsaid, it would appear that he is referring to the month
in which the destruction took place, i.e. the month of Av" (RaDaK ad loc.; cf. Rashi &
Metzudas David ad loc.).

The prophecy in this chapter is the first in a series of prophecies running until ch 28 v 19
directed against TZOR, which on the level of PSHAT (the plain meaning) refers to the
Lebanese sea-faring city-state of Tyre, which at its height was the center of a highly
prosperous maritime empire stretching from one end of the Mediterranean Sea to the
other. Yet at the same time as we read these prophecies as relating to Tyre, we should
also bear in mind the opinion of Rabbi Eliezer that "every place in the Bible text where
TZOR is spelled CHASSER ('defective', i.e. without the letter VAV in the middle), it refers
to the kingdom of Edom, while every TZOR that is spelled MALEH ('full', i.e. WITH the
VAV) refers to the city of Tyre" (Tanchuma Va-era ch 13; see KNOW YOUR BIBLE Isaiah
ch 23). The root TZAR, without a VAV, means a trouble or oppressor, while the root TZOR
with a VAV means to form or create. In the Hebrew text of Ezekiel's prophecies against
TZOR, the name is sometimes spelled CHASSER (26:2, 26:3, 26:4, 26:7, 27:2, 28:2;
29:18) and sometimes MALEH (27:3, 27:8, 27:12).

Verses 7ff in our present chapter specifically refer to the destruction of TZOR – i.e. Tyre
– at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar. Yet rabbinic commentary on TZOR's exclamation of
glee at the destruction of Jerusalem in verse 2 – "Aha! I shall be filled with her that is laid
waste" – refers it to the glee of Rome over the downfall of Israel . "Rav Nachman said:
Initially, when they brought wine libations from Judah , their wine never became sour…
but now it is the wine of the Edomites that does not become sour" (Pesachim 42b). "If
someone tells you that both Caesarea (the Roman colonial capital of Judea) and
Jerusalem are in ruins or that both are inhabited, do not believe him. But if he says that
Caesarea is in ruins and Jerusalem is inhabited or that Caesarea is inhabited and
Jerusalem is in ruins, believe him, as it says, 'I shall be filled with her that is laid waste'
– If one is full, the other is in ruins, if one is in ruins, the other is full" (Megillah 6a). The
implied see-saw linkage between the destinies of Israel and Edom-Rome is seen as the
fulfillment of the Biblical prophecy about the descendants of Jacob and Esau that "the one
people shall be stronger than the other people" (Genesis 25:23, see Rashi ad loc.).

Verses 1-6 of our present chapter are an overall introduction announcing the coming
destruction of TZOR on account of their glee over the destruction of Jerusalem. Verses
7-14 depict the destruction of Tyre at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar. Verses 15-18 depict
the horror that the downfall of TZOR would evoke among the other nations, who would
understand that if such a thing could befall such a mighty world power, they were all
imperiled.

Verses 19-21 foretell the bitter end of TZOR, which will finally be wiped off the face of the
earth. "And I shall bring you down with them that descend into the pit, to the people of
old time" (verse 20). Those who "descend into the pit" are those who go down to
Gehennom, and the "people of old time" are all the other nations who have been there
from before (Rashi ad loc.).

"And I shall set up my ornament in the land of living" (v 20) – "And I shall give beauty to
Jerusalem" (Rashi ad loc.).
 Chapter 27
"Now you, son of man, take up a lamentation for TZOR…" (v 1). Ezekiel's prophecy in the
previous chapter about the coming downfall of Tyre is now followed in the present
chapter with an elaborate allegory about the calamity that was to befall this most
successful ancient commercial superpower.

Tyre was a heavily fortified Phoenician island city situated "in the heart of the seas"
approximately 3.5 miles from the Lebanese mainland. A line of mainland suburbs
provided timber and water for the mother city, which amassed enormous wealth from its
maritime trade. As we see from our present chapter, every kind of exotic luxury product
poured into Tyre from all parts of the then-known world. The locations of her many
different suppliers and trading partners as mentioned in this chapter stretch from Persia
(v 10) and Media (= Kilmad v 23) in the east to Greece (v 13), Italy (=Elisha v 7) and
Germany (= Togarmah, "Germamia" v 14) in the west, and from S. Russia (=Meshech, cf.
Muscovy, v 13) in the north to the Red Sea coastal regions of Arabia (v 21) and Africa
(Phut=Libya? Somalia? v 10, Sheva= Ethiopia v 23) in the south.

Tyre's great wealth and strength derived from her strategic position with "your borders in
the heart of the sea" (v 4). "Because Tyre was situated in the sea and was destroyed in
her place, Ezekiel depicts her allegorically as a most magnificent ship which was
overloaded with cargo and was sunk by an east wind (see v 26), and because of the
weight of the ship the sailors were unable to save it" (Metzudas David on v 5; cf. Rashi on
v 26).

The prophesied downfall of Tyre was to come about because "you have said, I am of
perfect beauty" (verse 3). "Until now, everyone used to say that Jerusalem was 'of
perfect beauty, the joy of all the earth' (Lamentations 2:15), but now (after the
destruction of the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar) you arrogantly say, 'I am of perfect
beauty'" (Rashi ad loc.).

In verses 4-25 of our present chapter, the prophet paints a detailed picture of the
exceptional wealth and glory that led to Tyre's swelling pride, providing us with an
abundance of fascinating information about the sophistication of trade and commerce in
Biblical times. We should not think for a moment that the people of those times were
simple and primitive.

"The rowers brought you into great waters: the EAST wind has broken you in the heart of
the seas" (v 26). Tyre became subject to Nebuchadnezzar, who came from the east and
to whom she paid tribute, after which she fell under the power of Persia, also in the east.

In verses 27ff Ezekiel prophesies that all of Tyre's wealth together with her sailors and
men of war would "fall into the heart of the seas" (i.e. they would fall prey to other
powers) causing horror and consternation among all her former trading partners and
allies, who would tear out their hair and rend their garments in bitter mourning over the
fearful destruction of such a glorious, prosperous world power on account of her
overweening arrogance.

Chapter 28
After having addressed the CITY of TZOR in the previous chapter, the prophet is now told
to turn to her RULER, the "Prince of TZOR", who was the very epitome of the maritime
empire's arrogance. "Because your heart is lifted up and you have said 'I am a god, I sit
in the seat of God in the heart of the seas', but you are a man and not a god, yet you set
your heart as the heart of God" (v 2).

According to tradition, the "Prince of TZOR" is none other than Hiram king of Tyre , who
was a friend of King David and collaborated with King Solomon in the building of the
Temple in Jerusalem , and who is said to have lived for a thousand years! We learn from
verse 15 of the present chapter that initially, "you were perfect in your ways from the day
that you were created until iniquity was found in you". To have been a friend of the
righteous King David and to have played a key role in the building of Solomon's Temple,
Hiram must indeed have been a most exceptional CHASSID UMOS HA-OLAM (a saint of
the nations of the world). Indeed our sages said that Hiram was one of thirteen who did
not taste the taste of death (together with Enoch, Eliezer servant of Abraham,
Methuselah, Eved Melech HaKushi, Batia daughter of Pharaoh, Serah daughter of Asher,
the three sons of Korach, Elijah, Mashiach and Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi – Yalkut
Shimoni). Hiram is listed as one of nine who entered the Garden of Eden while they were
still alive (Avos d'Rabbi Nathan). But the same source cites the view that Hiram was
removed from there and his place was taken by R. Yehoshua ben Levi (Avos d'Rabbi
Nathan).

"You have been in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering…" (v
13). This verse lists ten different kinds of precious stones, and is the foundation of the
midrashic teaching that when God brought Eve to Adam in the Garden of Eden, He made
him ten CHUPOS (marriage canopies). This midrash (which conceals much more than it
reveals) is based upon the style of DRUSH known as "understanding one thing from
another". The ten canopies are not mentioned directly in the Biblical text in Genesis, but
since Ezekiel reveals the adornments enjoyed by Hiram in Eden, the midrash deduces
that these were the adornments that God brought for Adam and Eve.

The above-mentioned view that Hiram was removed from Eden is also expressed in a
lengthy midrash in Yalkut Shimoni giving a detailed description of an enormous
phantasmagorical "sky-scraper" structure of seven "firmaments" that he built out of steel,
glass and other materials, plating it with gold and studding it with precious stones, in
order to provide a fitting throne for himself. This description brings to mind many modern
expressions of the same kind of arrogance, such as the late lamented World Trade Center.
The midrash concludes: "Hiram became arrogant because he had sent cedars for the
Temple. The Holy One blessed be He said, I will destroy My House so that Hiram will not
be able to vaunt himself over Me. What was his end? The Holy One blessed be He brought
up against him Nebuchadnezzar, who raped his mother in front of his eyes and took him
down from his throne and used to cut off two finger-breadths of his flesh every day and
dip them in vinegar and make him eat them until he died a horrible death. And what
happened to his palaces? The Holy One blessed be He tore apart the earth and hid them
away for the righteous in the world to come" (Yalkut Shimoni).

In the words of Rabbi Yitzchak Luria (the "ARI"): "The matter of Hiram king of Tyre's
arrogance arouses great wonder, but it may be understood in conjunction with teachings
about Pharaoh king of Egypt, who was also very arrogant and said he was a god (see
Ezekiel 29:3). Now all pride is in the neck (GARON, 'throat'), as it says, 'the daughters of
Zion …walk with outstretched necks' (Isaiah 3:16). Now Pharaoh and Hiram are both
rooted in the husks (KELIPOS) that have a hold on the neck of Zeir Anpin. This is why
Pharaoh is called king of Egypt (MITZRAYIM) because Egypt is the "throat", which is very
narrow (TZAR) indeed… Likewise TZOR is from the same root as MATZOR, like
MITZRAYIM. The letters of Pharaoh rearranged make up the word OREPH (back of the
neck), while the gematria of HIRAM is the same as that of GARON (with the kolel),
because Hiram is on the side of the throat (the front of the neck) and not at the back
(OREPH)… All the husks that have their hold at the throat – causing constricted
consciousness (MOCHIN D'KATNUS) – are greater than all the other husks, and their level
is very great. This is why Pharaoh and Hiram, who both have their hold here, were very
exalted and had the arrogance to turn themselves into gods. Pharaoh said, 'I do not know
HASHEM' because he had no hold on the level of the expanded consciousness of
HAVAYAH, and likewise Hiram said, 'I have sat in the seat of God (ELOKIM)' because his
hold was on the level of ELOKIM, i.e. in the 'throat' but not in the head on the level of
Havayah" (Sha'ar HaPsukim on Ezekiel ch 28).

Verses 20-24 prophesy the destruction of Tyre 's northern neighbor of Sidon , which
would remove a pricking briar from the side of the House of Israel. (The "pricks" were well
felt in Israel during the 2006 Lebanon war, when many rockets fired by Hizbullah forces
from Sidon caused considerable damage.)

The downfall of Israel's proud neighbors will have the see-saw effect of facilitating the
return of the House of Israel from their exile among the nations (vv 25-26). Speedily in
our times! Amen.

Chapter 29
All the prophecies in the four chapters from the beginning of our present chapter until the
end of chapter 32 relate to the downfall of Egypt at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar some
years after the destruction of the First Temple, and to the final downfall of Egypt together
with the other nations at the end of days. Egypt was the archetypal oppressor of Israel,
and her downfall marks the redemption of Israel . Thus the last two verses of the previous
chapter speaking of the ingathering of Israel from the nations (Ez. 28:25-26) together
with verses 1-21 of our present chapter prophesying the downfall of Egypt are
appropriate reading as the Haftara of Parshas Va-era (Ex. 6:2-9:35) recounting the
destruction of Egypt through the plagues at the time of the Exodus.

Ezekiel's opening prophecy in this series is specifically dated to "the tenth year in the
tenth month on the twelfth of the month" (verse 1). This was the tenth year of the reign
of King Tzedekiah and just over one year since the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem by
Nebuchadnezzar. This prophecy was received BEFORE the prophecies against Tyre in the
previous three chapters, which are dated to "the eleventh year", the year of the
destruction of the Temple (Ez. 26:1). Thus we see that all these prophecies are not
written in our text in the strict chronological order in which they were received. Rather,
the series of prophecies against Tyre were arranged together because of their thematic
unity, and likewise the prophecies against Egypt. From the quotation from the ARI Shaar
HaPsukim cited in our commentary on Ezekiel chapter 28 about the kabbalistic
conceptual connection between Hiram of Tzor and Pharaoh of Mitzrayim, it is clear why
the series about Tyre and that about Egypt come one after the other.

"Son of man: set your face against Pharaoh king of Egypt … the great crocodile that
crouches in the midst of his streams…" (v 2-3). "Because the entire greatness of Egypt
and all her abundance were on account of the channels of the Nile, the prophet
accordingly metaphorically refers to her king as the crocodile and to her people as the fish
of the river" (Rashi ad loc.).

"…who has said, My river is my own and I have made it for myself…" (v 3) – "I have no
need for the ELYONIM (the supreme powers of God), because I have my river which
provides all my needs" (Rashi). "…and I have made it for myself" (ibid.) – "through my
own might and wisdom I have magnified my greatness and rule" (Rashi). Rashi here
concisely brings out the essence of Pharaoh's idolatry of himself, his prosperity and
power, believing that as long as his control over his natural resources was intact, nothing
could bring him down. The wealthy elite that own and control much of the world today
apparently think the same way.

"But I will put hooks in your jaws…" (v 4). "On account of his having represented him as
a crocodile – which is considered to be a fish – he uses an expression relating to the way
a fish is caught by putting hooks in its jaws to haul it out of the water" (Metzudas David
ad loc.).

"…and I will cause the fish of your streams to stick to your scales" (v 4) – "When they haul
you up out of the river, your people will also be taken up out of the river – the fish
metaphorically represent the people of Egypt, the ministers, horsemen, warriors as well
as the poorer sections of the population, all of whom would be swept away" (RaDaK ad
loc.).

The essential reason for the coming downfall of Egypt was "because you have been a
STAFF OF REED to the House of Israel …" (verse 6). "Several times they relied on them in
the days of Sennacherib and in the days of Nebuchadnezzar but it did not avail them, like
a soft reed that does not support one who leans on it" (Rashi ad loc.). RaDaK explains
further: "The Egyptians promised Israel that they would save them from the Babylonians
but they were unable to do so… as it says in Jeremiah 37:5 recounting how Pharaoh did
march out from Egypt causing the Babylonians, when they heard, to go up from
Jerusalem, but Pharaoh returned to Egypt and the Babylonians went back to capture and
destroy Jerusalem. Thus not only did the Egyptians not support Israel but they actually
harmed them because their trust in Egypt led them to rebel against the king of Babylon…
and thus Ravshakeh (Sennacherib's lieutenant addressing those under Hezekiah who put
their trust in Egypt) said, 'You have trusted in this broken STAFF OF REED'" (II Kings
18:21; RaDaK on our verse).

This first in the series of prophecies about the coming destruction of Egypt does not
specify who would bring the sword that would wreak the havoc there, which we only learn
in the next prophecy (verses 17ff of our present chapter). The focus in this first prophecy
is on the devastation itself, which would spread from one end of the country to the other
(v 10ff). This would last for a period of forty years (v 11ff). Our commentators explain the
deep thread of divine justice that underlies this forty-year timeframe. "Forty-two years of
famine were decreed in Pharaoh's dream (Genesis 41) corresponding to the three times
that seven bad cows and seven bad ears of corn are written in the text – once when
Pharaoh saw his dream, once when he narrated it to Joseph, and a third time when
Joseph explained to him what the seven empty bad cows and seven empty ears of corn
were – a total of forty-two years of famine. But in the time of Jacob they suffered only two
years of famine, because when Jacob came down to Egypt the famine ceased. The
remaining forty years were exacted from them now" (Rashi on v 11).

"And it was in the twenty-seventh year…" (verse 17). This cannot mean the
twenty-seventh year of the reign of Tzedekiah since he reigned for only eleven years. All
our commentators explain on the basis of the ancient historical Midrash "Seder Olam"
that the "twenty-seventh year" was the twenty-seventh year of the reign of
Nebuchadnezzar, i.e. eight years after the destruction of the Temple and the death of
Tzedekiah, which was when Egypt was delivered into the hands of Babylon (Rashi,
Metzudas David, RaDaK). Thus the series of prophecies beginning with that at the end of
the next chapter (Ezekiel 30:20-26), which is dated to "the eleventh year" – i.e. of the
reign of Tzedekiah, the year of the destruction of the Temple – were received BEFORE this
prophecy from Nebuchadnezzar's twenty-seventh year.

Thus again we see that these prophecies are not written in the book in the strict
chronological order in which they were received but rather are arranged thematically to
bring out the prophet's message with maximum effect. Having prophesied in general
about the destruction of Egypt and its reason in the earlier sections of our present chapter
(vv 1-16), Ezekiel now "zooms in" and tells how Nebuchadnezzar would do the work,
receiving the pillage of Egypt as his "reward" for his "great work" in destroying TZUR
(vv17-21), after which, in the prophecy in the first part of the next chapter (Ez. 30:1-19),
Ezekiel details the devastation in Egypt city by city. Then in the prophecies that follow
from Ezekiel 30:20 until the end of the series about Egypt at the end of Chapter 32, he
returns to give more of a "wide angle" perspective on the significance of the downfall of
Egypt in comparison with the downfall of other great nations.

"Son of man: Nebuchadnezzar made his army labor hard against Tzor… yet he had no
wages, nor his army" (v 18). "The way of those who besiege a city for a long time is that
they exert themselves and exhaust themselves carrying great loads of wood and stones.
Nebuchadnezzar captured Tzor in the twenty-third year of his reign, as we find in Seder
Olam… but after he took all its plunder the sea rose and swept it away from them,
because it had been decreed against Tzor and her booty that they should be lost at sea"
(Rashi ad loc.).

Having read Ezekiel's prophecies about the downfall of Tzor in the previous chapters
(Ezekiel chs 26-28), learning now how Nebuchadnezzar was sent to destroy it but could
only receive his "reward" by plundering Egypt provides us with a fascinating insight into
how the Almighty plays off one nation against another in order to bring about His
inscrutable purpose in His providential government of human history. Nebuchadnezzar's
destruction of Egypt would be her retribution for having been a broken reed for Israel,
and the decree against Egypt would spell redemption for Israel .

"ON THAT DAY I shall cause the horn of the House of Israel to put out roots" (v 21). Rashi
comments on this verse that he has neither heard nor found any satisfactory explanation
of how the fall of Egypt would bring forth roots for Israel, and refers the phrase "on that
day" back to verse 13 which says that God would gather in the Egyptians from their exile
"at the end of forty years". Rashi explains that the end of forty years coincided with the
short-lived reign of Belshazzar, the last king of Babylon. This was when the star of Persia
began to rise, and with Persia's destruction of Babylon not only was Egypt freed from
subjection to Babylon but the roots were planted for the rebuilding of the Temple,
because Cyrus of Persia authorized the first wave of Judean exiles to return to Jerusalem
under Zerubavel.

Chapter 30
Verses 1-9 of this chapter wail over the coming destruction of Egypt and her various
neighbors and allies at the hands of God's MAL'ACHIM – "agents" and "messengers" (v 9),
the executors of His inscrutable plans. Verses 10-19 detail Nebuchadnezzar's systematic
destruction of Egypt, its population and their idols city by city.

A new prophecy begins in verse 20, "in the eleventh year" – i.e. of the reign of Tzedekiah,
the year in which the Temple was destroyed. This prophecy, running to the end of the
chapter, "zooms out" from the detailed description of the devastation of Egypt into a
more general summary of the unhealable breach of Pharaoh's power at the hands of
Nebuchadnezzar, showing how God raises up and God brings down, "and they shall know
that I am HaShem".

Chapter 31
The prophecy in this chapter, which continues the series about the coming downfall of
Egypt, was received by Ezekiel in Babylon "in the eleventh year in the third month on the
first of the month" (v 1) – i.e. at the beginning of the month of Sivan in the eleventh year
of the reign of King Tzedekiah, little more than two months before the destruction of the
Temple in Jerusalem on 9 Av.

The prophet challenges Pharaoh, asking him: "To whom do you think you compare in
your greatness?" – "i.e. in aggrandizing yourself before God" (v 2 and Rashi ad loc.). For
the empire of Assyria achieved even greater heights than Egypt , yet God cast Assyria
down. If so, why should Pharaoh think he was any better and could survive?

From the perspective of today's world of mega-superpowers, we may tend to look back
on ancient Assyria, which had no cars, airplanes, computers, satellites and other marvels
of modern technology, as little more than a short-lived puny forerunner of later empires.
We should therefore bear in mind that in its time, Sennacherib's empire comprised the
greater part of the known world, extending from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean
across the entire Middle East deep into central Asia, while its capital of Nineveh was
legendary for its grandeur and sophistication.

The prophet allegorically depicts Assyria as a great cedar. "The waters made it great, the
deep set it up on high…" (v 4). Targum renders: "It abounded with nations, it was mighty
through its allies; it subjected the kingdoms under its rule and put its government over all
the countries of the world".

Rashi on verse 6 hints why God granted Assyria such power. "For what reason did Assyria
attain greatness? Because Ashur (the founder of Nineveh ) refrained from collaborating in
the plan of those in the generation of the dispersal (i.e. to build the Tower of Babel ), as
it says, 'Ashur left that land' (Gen. 10:11), when all the people in the world joined
together in one network to rebel against God… Furthermore, Ashur listened to the voice
of the prophet Jonah and repented from the robbery in their hands".

In other words, Assyria retained a certain moral level in virtue of which it attained
greatness. Nevertheless, Assyria fell into the sin of pride and was therefore cast down:
"You have lifted yourself up in height… and his heart is lifted up in his height. I have
therefore delivered him into hand of the mighty one of the nations…" (vv 10-11).
Sennacherib had arrogantly supposed that after his other successes over idolatrous
nations he would be able to conquer God's city of Jerusalem, but his armies were
miraculously wiped out overnight. Assyria still maintained its empire for more than a
century after Sennacherib's defeat, but was finally overthrown by "the mighty one of the
nations", i.e. Nebuchadnezzar, who had conquered Nineveh in the first year of his reign
(Megillah 11b), twenty-seven years before his coming conquest of Egypt.

Verses 12-13 allegorically depict the destruction of Assyria and all those who took refuge
in the shadow of this "mighty tree" – i.e. its allies and tributaries. The purpose of its
terrible downfall was to teach mankind God's lesson, "…so that none of all the trees of the
waters (=the other nations) should exalt themselves in their height… for they are all
delivered to death, to the nether parts of the earth in the midst of the children of men,
with them that go down to the pit" (v 14). In the words of Metzudas David (ad loc.): "For
all of them are destined to die and descend to the nether world, i.e. the grave… Since all
of them are going to die, what point is there in swelling with arrogance over their great
worldly power and wealth?"

"I made the nations shake at the sound of his fall, with those that descend into the pit;
and all the trees of Eden, the choice and best of Lebanon, all that drink water were
comforted in the nether parts of the world" (v 16). Everything in this world reflects and
alludes to the upper worlds, and thus the various nations in this world and their guardian
angels correspond to the "trees" in the supernal Garden of Eden and are called this in the
verse in keeping with the allegory of Ashur as the mighty cedar. The fall of this great tree
and the descent of Ashur into hell "was a comfort to the other wealthy and mighty who
had already died and were in their graves when they saw that even the mighty Ashur
finally met with the same fate. For it is the way of a person who sees the same trouble
that befell him strike even those greater than himself to feel comforted" (Metzudas David
on v 16).

The moral of the allegory about the fall of Assyria was directed against Pharaoh, who was
to be defeated by Nebuchadnezzar eight years after this prophecy, but who apparently
still believed he was invincible. "To whom do you think you compare in glory and
greatness among the trees of Eden?" (v 18). Pharaoh and his multitude would suffer the
same fate as all the other proud and mighty powers of this world and end up in the pit
among the slain uncircumcised nations.

Chapter 32
The two prophecies in vv 1-16 and vv 17-32 of this chapter were received by Ezekiel in
Babylon "in the twelfth year in the twelfth month" – i.e. in the month of Adar of the year
following the destruction of the Temple, on the first and fifteenth of the month
respectively. We see that days like Rosh Chodesh, the New Moon, and the 15 th Adar,
which was later to become the festival of Shushan Purim, are particularly auspicious for
spiritual ascent and prophecy.

The message of these prophecies is directed against Pharaoh king of Egypt. "You thought
yourself to be a lion among the nations, but you are like a crocodile in the waters" (verse
2). "You imagined that in relation to the other nations you are like a lion against a flock
of sheep, but it is not so, because you are like a crocodile in the waters who has no
strength except in his own place in the waters, but the moment he comes up onto the dry
land he dies. Likewise, you have power only in your own land" (Metzudas David ad loc.).
In other words, had Pharaoh been content with a policy of isolationism without trying to
interfere in international affairs, he could have survived, but because he sought to wield
influence throughout the world (as when Pharaoh Necho campaigned in the time of King
Josiah to try to contain Assyria and when Pharaoh in Tzedekiah's time tried to campaign
against Nebuchadnezzar) he came to grief. (Similarly, many Americans today are coming
to the conclusion that their country would be more successful if it sought to play less of a
role internationally, and that its role as global policeman is endangering its very survival.)

Verses 3ff depict the coming fall of Egypt. "And when I extinguish you, I will cover the
heaven and make its stars dark" (v 7) – "All who hear what has befallen you will mourn
and be astonished, for each one will be fearful for himself saying that the destroyer will
also succeed against us" (Rashi ad loc.).

The final prophecy in this series against Egypt opens in verse 17. It is a lament on the
multitude of Egypt, who are destined to be cast down to the very depths of the earth with
all the other nations that have and will go down into the pit.

"Son of man: wail for the multitude of Egypt and cast them down, her together with the
daughters of mighty nations, to the nether parts of the earth with them that go down into
the pit" (v 17). It is the prophet himself who is commanded to cast them down through
the power of his words. "Prophesy against him and against all those who deny the Torah,
who will go down to the pit of destruction. Here the Holy One blessed be He showed
Ezekiel that all those who deny the Torah go down to Gehennom" (Rashi ad loc.).

This concluding prophesy against Egypt is more than merely the continuation of Ezekiel's
prophesies about the fall of Egypt at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar. It is in the form of an
allegory of the Egyptians being taken down to hell and laid in their graves in a certain
order or arrangement amidst the various other nations in hell, including Ashur (vv 22-23),
Eilam (vv 24-25), Meshech and Tuval (vv 26-28), Edom (v 29) and the "princes of the
north" (v 30). A common factor among these nations is that they are punished in this way
because "they struck terror in the land of the living" (vv 23, 24 & 27) – i.e. they brought
about destruction in the Land of Israel" (Rashi on v 23). In other words, all the nations
mentioned are among the persecutors of Israel. The historical roles of Ashur (which
exiled the Ten Tribes) and Edom (who destroyed the Second Temple) require no
commentary. Eilam not only sought to capture Abraham's nephew Lot, ancestor of
Mashiach (Genesis 14:1) but also aided the Babylonians in the time of Nebuchadnezzar,
coming with them to harm Israel (RaDaK on Jeremiah 49:24). Meshech ("Muscovy",
Russia) and Tuval are nations under the leadership of Gog king of Magog who will come
up against Israel at the end of days (Ezekiel 38:1).

In the words of the Biblical commentator MALBIM (Rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michel
Weiser, 1809-79) , on verse 17 of our present chapter:

"This prophecy is very opaque indeed and it is not known what it comes to teach us, but
earlier commentators have already commented that this is a future prophesy about the
end of days in the time of the war of Gog and Magog, when all the nations will gather
against Jerusalem… When the end comes, after Israel will already have settled in the land
of Israel, the nations are destined to gather and capture Jerusalem, and Gog, prince of
Meshech and Tuval will come from the lands of the north and the west, where the people
are uncircumcised and called Edom, while Meshech and Tuval are from among the
children of Japheth who dwell in Europe. And there (in Ez. Ch 38) he says that Paras
(Persia) Kush (E. Africa? Pakistan???) and Phut ( Somalia ?) and Beith Togarma
( Turkey ?) will come with them, all of these being circumcised and adherents of the
religion of the Ishmaelites. They will gather with the children of Edom to conquer the land
from the hands of Israel, but when they arrive, turmoil will break out among them and
each one will make war against his brothers, i.e. Edom and Ishmael will fight against each
other because their beliefs are separate, and there God will judge them with the sword
and with blood. Here the prophet starts by enumerating Egypt, Ashur and Eilam, who
adhere to the religion of Ishmael and are today circumcised. Afterwards he enumerates
Meshech, Tuval and Edom and their kings, and the 'princes of the north', all of whom are
uncircumcised. The war will be between them. The main downfall will start among the
Egyptians, who are close to the land of Israel. They will come at the head and fall. Then
the Assyrians and Persians will come to exact vengeance on their behalf and then all of
them – both sides – will fall."

"For I have struck My terror into the Land of the Living" (v 32) – "I will put the fear of Me
in the Land of Israel, and the fear of man will no longer be put among them" (Rashi ad
loc.).

Chapter 33
THE WATCHMAN

Following his lengthy series of prophecies against Israel's various oppressors (chapters
25-32), Ezekiel now addresses his own people, who after losing their Temple and going
into exile among the nations would only merit redemption and restoration through
Teshuvah, repentance. The prophecy in verses 1-20 of our present chapter is a teaching
about Teshuvah and how God deals with sinners and tzaddikim.

Verses 1-6 set forth the allegory of the watchman, who has the obligation to warn the
people of a coming war. As long as he sounds his shofar of alarm, he has fully discharged
his duty, and if the people of the city fail to heed his message and take appropriate
precautions, they themselves bear full responsibility for all the harm that befalls them.
Verses 7ff explain the allegory. The watchman is a metaphor for the prophet, who when
he hears from the mouth of God about impending retribution (="war") has the obligation
to warn the people in His name, in order that they should repent (see Metzudas David on
v 7). "The sound of the shofar is the word of the prophet, as it says, 'Raise your voice like
a shofar and tell My people their sin'" (Isaiah 58:1; RaDaK on v 7). If the prophet does
indeed warn the people, he has fulfilled his duty, but if he fails to warn them he will bear
the responsibility for their failure to repent and will be held to account.

However, the people had fallen into despair, and did not believe in the efficacy of
repentance. "Thus you speak, saying, If our transgressions and our sins are upon us and
we are wasting away in them, how should we then live?" (verse 10). Metzudas David
explains what the people were saying: "In truth we have committed sins and
transgressions and we are wasting away because of our troubles, which have not come
upon us for nothing. But how can we live – how can we be saved from destruction? –
because they did not believe that Teshuvah would help, and it was as if they were saying
that therefore they would continue sinning, since they were lost anyway" (Metzudas
David on v 10).

In answer to the people's despair, verses 11ff reveal God's ways of judgment, teaching
that repentance ALWAYS avails the sinner. Righteousness brings LIFE to a person in this
world and the next, while sin brings DEATH to a person in this world and the next. God is
not cruelly vindictive, and has no desire for the sinner to die but rather that he should
repent of his ways and live. God's "arm" is always outstretched to receive the penitent
sinner.

On the other hand, even one who has spent a lifetime in the pursuit of righteousness is
not allowed to become complacent. "The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver
him on the day of his transgression…" (v 11). God will exact retribution from a wayward
tzaddik who gives himself permission to sin in the belief that he can somehow "afford" it
since any sin should be outweighed by his many past merits. "Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai
said, Even if a person was a complete tzaddik all his days but rebelled at the end, he
looses his earlier merits, as it says, 'The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver
him on the day of his transgression…'. And even if he was a complete sinner all his days
but he repented in the end, his wickedness will not be invoked against him any more as
it says, '…but as for the wickedness of the wicked, he will not stumble in it on the day
when he repents of his wickedness'" (Kiddushin 40b).

"Yet the children of your people say, 'The way of HaShem is unfair' – but it is their way
that is unfair" (v 17). The people argued that "it was unfair to judge a person according
to his later deeds, because they thought it would be more proper to take into account his
earlier deeds together with his later deeds and weigh them against each other in order to
reach a verdict" (Metzudas David ad loc.). At first sight it may indeed seem that people
should be judged according to the aggregate of all their deeds, but in fact there is more
compassion in judging them for their later deeds. This way the wicked person is able to
repent and attain life even after a career of evil. And if a tzaddik lapses from his
righteousness and sins, it is considered a benefit for him if he dies and is taken from the
world, because then he can no longer sin (Metzudas David on v 19).
Righteousness and evil cannot simply be weighed one against the other because they are
two entirely different categories. When a person carries out a mitzvah or good deed, he
attaches himself to LIFE, gaining a reward that is beyond limits, above time. But when a
person sins, he binds himself to this finite, time-bound world, which can only end in
limitation and death. "Today if you will listen to His voice" (Sanhedrin 98a): Repentance
must always be TODAY – not yesterday or tomorrow – because repentance is above time.
There is only now.

THE FUGITIVE

"And it was in the twelfth year of our exile in the tenth month…" (verse 21). This was in
the twelfth year counting from the exile of King Yeho-yachin, with whom Ezekiel had
come to Babylon, and who was succeeded by King Tzedekiah. Metzudas David (ad loc.)
states that the years are counted from Tishri while the months are counted from Nissan.
Thus the "twelfth year" began in Tishri, almost two months after 9 Av of the "eleventh
year", which was when the Temple was destroyed. The arrival of the escaped fugitive in
Babylon bearing the tragic news came in the "tenth month" of the twelfth year, i.e. Teves,
nearly five full months after the event.

In the absence of today's instantaneous relay of news via satellite, etc., it was all the
more remarkable that Ezekiel had already been informed of the news through holy spirit
and told it to others the evening prior to the arrival of the fugitive. This was in fulfillment
of God's promise to him in his earlier prophecy about the loss of his wife, symbolizing the
destruction of the Temple, that "on that day, the fugitive will come to you to cause you to
hear it with your ears. On that day your mouth will be opened and you will speak, and you
will be dumb no more" (ch 24 vv 26-7). With the actual arrival of the fugitive now bearing
a first-hand eye-witness report of the very destruction that Ezekiel had specifically
prophesied, the people would know that he was a true prophet.

But even after the destruction of the Temple, the people could still not believe that they
had lost the Land of Israel (vv 23f). Indeed, a residue of "the people who had nothing"
still remained in Judea tending the vineyards and fields (Jeremiah 39:10) until the
assassination of the Babylonian-appointed governor, Gedaliah ben Achikam. They
apparently believed that they could retain their hold on the land, arguing that "Abraham
was one yet he inherited the land, whereas we are many – to us the land has been given
as an inheritance" (verse 24 of our present chapter). Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai explained
that they were saying, "If Abraham, who was only given one commandment
(circumcision), inherited the land, how much more so should we, who have received
many commandments, receive the land as our inheritance" (see Rashi on v 24; see
Tosephta Sotah for other midrashim on this verse, and Likutey Moharan, Intro to Part II,
for Rabbi Nachman's inspiring explanation of the phrase "Abraham was one"). But God's
reply to the people was that "You eat with the blood and lift up your eyes to your idols and
shed blood – shall you then possess the land?" (v 25). Verses 27-29 warn that the land
would be completely destroyed because of their sins. Those who want Israel to remain
intact in our land today should take heed.

In verses 30-33 God warns Ezekiel not to be deceived by the outwardly pious manner of
those in Babylon who came to him to enquire about the latest word of prophecy, because
they too were still far from genuine repentance, looking on his prophecies scornfully as "a
song for flutes by one who has a pleasant voice who can play the instrument well – for
they hear the words but they do not carry them out" (v 32). But harsh reality would finally
bring them to know that they had a prophet in their midst.
 Chapter 34
THE SHEPHERDS OF ISRAEL

The prophecy in this chapter is an indictment of the corrupt leadership of Israel which
applies until today. The leaders are supposed to be the "shepherds" who feed and pasture
the flock of the people, but instead they feed themselves, taking the fat, the meat and the
wool of the best and healthiest for themselves, while abandoning the weak, sickly,
broken, scattered and lost (cf. Zechariah 11:15-17). The failure of the leaders has left the
people like a scattered flock exposed to the ravages of wild beasts.

Verses 7-10 warn the shepherds that God will depose them from their position of
leadership.

In the very beautiful passage of comfort in verses 11ff, God promises that in place of the
corrupt leadership of the people, He Himself will pasture the flock. This corresponds to His
promise that when the people will repent, "HaShem your God will turn your captivity and
have compassion upon you and will return and gather you from all the nations… If your
outcasts be at the utmost parts of heaven, from there will HaShem your God gather you
and from there will He fetch you…" (Deuteronomy 30:3-4). These promises that God
extends personal providence to each and every one of us in order to bring us to follow His
ways should be a comfort to all those who feel they can still find no true leader of flesh
and blood to guide them.

"And as for you, My flock… behold I judge between one lamb and another" – between
those with powerful fists and the weak" (verse 17 and Rashi ad loc.). It is not sufficient for
the corrupt leaders to be removed: the people at the grass roots must change their ways
and enter the mode of helping one another instead of each being bent on the pursuit of
his own selfish interests at the expense of everyone else.

"Is it a small thing to you that you have eaten up the good pasture but you must also
tread down with your feet the residue of the pasture lands?" (v 18). It is permitted to eat
and enjoy, but the individual citizen must realize that it is immoral for him to wantonly
consume, despoil the environment and squander resources instead of protecting and
preserving them for the common good. Similarly, it is immoral for farmers to destroy
produce in times of a glut in order to keep prices "stable" at the same time as many
people are starving. In vv 20f God warns that He will bring the strong and mighty to
judgment for oppressing the weak. This is the compassionate diametrical opposite of the
philosophy of Nietzsche.

"And I will establish one shepherd over them, namely my servant David" – "i.e. a king
from his seed" (v 23 and Rashi ad loc.).

"And I will make them and the places around My hill a blessing" (verse 26) – "And I will
cause them to dwell around My Temple, and they will be blessed" (Targum ad loc.).

"But you are My flock, the flock of My pasturing, you are ADAM" (v 31) – "You are called
ADAM but the idol worshipers are not called ADAM" (Yevamos 61a). All true members of
Israel are encompassed under the noble form of ADAM – "and upon the likeness of the
throne was the likeness of the appearance of ADAM upon it from above" (Ezekiel 1:27).

Chapter 35
The previous prophecy ended with consolations to Israel about the future restoration
under Melech HaMashiach, directing our attention to the end of days, which has become
the main underlying theme in these later chapters of Ezekiel. The coming chapters will
bring us prophesies about how the Land of Israel will flourish at the end of days (ch 36),
and about the spiritual rebirth of the "dry bones" – the souls of Israel (37). Interwoven
with these prophesies are prophesies about the judgment of Israel's persecutors at the
end of days. Thus prior to the prophecy of the Future Temple and the Final Settlement
(chs 40-48), chapters 38-9 deal with the war of Gog and Magog, while our present
chapter (Ez. 35) foretells the future destruction of Edom, the offspring of Esau, who was
the embodiment of the primordial serpent and chief adversary of Israel's founding father
Jacob. In the words of RaDaK on v 1 of our present chapter: "The prophecy of the fall of
Mount Seir follows immediately after the prophecy of the salvation of Israel because the
downfall of Edom will come about at the time of the redemption, 'and saviors will ascend
Mt Zion to judge the mountain of Esau' (Obadiah 1:21)".

"Son of man: set your face against Mount Seir …" (v 2). "For as an inheritance to Esau
have I given Mount Seir" (Deut. 2:5). Mount Seir is the rugged mountainous region south
east of the Dead Sea in the south of present day Jordan, which was originally allotted to
Esau and his descendants. RaDaK (on Obadiah 1:1) writes that "the land of Edom does
not belong today to the descendants of Edom because the nations became mixed up and
most of them are of either the Christian or Moslem faith and it is impossible to recognize
which of them is from Edom, Moab, Ammon or any of the other nations because they
were all exiled from their lands and became mixed among the nations. But Rome was
initially mainly composed of the descendants of Edom, and where the prophets speak
about the destruction of Edom they are speaking about the end of days – for when Rome
is destroyed Israel will be redeemed".

In the time when RaDaK – Rabbi David Kimche, 1160-1235 – was alive eight hundred
years ago, the city of Rome was indeed the spiritual capital of European civilization. Since
then the influence of Rome-Edom has spread all over the world, whether directly or
indirectly through such later "garbs" as Britain , Spain , Germany , America etc. Given the
prophecies of bloodshed and devastation contained in our present chapter, it is
noteworthy that although the last half century was relatively peaceful in Europe, its
history in general in the two thousand years since the destruction of the Second Temple
has been one of repeated warfare, death and destruction. It may be added that even
without the physical destruction of the great cities of western civilization, many of them
are today "desolate" in the sense that extensive areas are effectively no-go areas for
peaceable citizens (unless they speed through in fast cars) owing to the danger and
violence, and wide sections of their populations have lapsed into ever deeper moral
depravity.

The prophet explains the underlying reason for the destruction of Edom's cities and their
devastation: "Because you have had a perpetual hatred and have hurled the children of
Israel to the power of the sword at the time of their calamity" (v 5). Again and again this
prophecy emphasizes that God's retribution against Edom is strictly "measure for
measure". The first expression of this comes in verse 6: "Surely you have hated blood –
and blood shall pursue you" (v 6). If Edom unleashed the sword against Israel (v 5), in
what sense can it be said that they "hated blood"? Rashi (on v 6) gives three
explanations: "(1) You despised the right of the firstborn, to whom My service was
entrusted, but you did not want to dirty yourself with the blood of the sacrifices of which
My service consists – therefore the blood of the slain shall pursue you. (2) Like all men,
you fear killers, but killers will pursue you. (3) You hated blood – you hated your brother,
who is your own flesh and blood".
A second expression of the principle of "measure for measure" is in vv 9-10, which
explain that the reason for the devastation of Edom is "because you have said, These two
nations and these two countries shall be mine and we shall possess it" (v 10). In
explaining this verse, Rashi (ad loc.) says that the simple meaning is that Esau wanted to
inherit both Israel (the Ten Tribes) and Judah. However, Rashi also brings an interesting
midrash of R. Tanchuma explaining that Esau went to marry Ishmael's daughter (Gen.
28:9) in order to rouse him to challenge Isaac over the inheritance of Abraham so that
Ishmael would kill Isaac, leaving Esau as the "redeemer" of his father's blood so that he
would have the right to kill Ishmael, and this way Esau would inherit both Isaac and
Ishmael. This midrash is of particular interest given the present war of the "West" (Esau)
against Ishmael (Islam).

A third expression of the principle of "measure for measure" in the punishment of Edom
comes in verse 11: "Therefore I shall do according to your anger and according to your
envy…" Yet another expression of the same principle comes in verse 15: "Just as you
rejoiced at the inheritance of the house of Israel, because it was desolate, so will I do to
you: you shall be desolate, Mount Seir, and all of Edom, all of it, and they shall know that
I am HaShem."

Chapter 36
"And you, son of man, prophesy to the mountains of Israel …" (v 1). "After speaking of
the retribution against Mount Seir, he now speaks consolation to the mountains of Israel
" (RaDaK ad loc.). Today's Edomites, scattered across the whole earth, show not the least
interest in their ancestral territories in the rocky mountains of Seir in S. Jordan. But for
two thousand years Jews have thought about their land and mentioned it in their prayers
many times every day, and not one of them has the least doubt that their country is the
same mountainous strip of land that everyone in the world knows as Israel.

The other nations have always wanted unjustly to take the promised inheritance of Israel,
children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, for themselves. "Because the enemy has said
against you, Ahah, the eternal high places are an inheritance FOR US!!!" (v 2). The
mountains of Israel are called BAMOS OLAM, 'the high places of the world', because the
Land of Israel is higher than all the other lands" (RaDaK ad loc.). These "high places" are
"on the lips of talkers and the gossip of the people" (v 3). Never has this been more
apparent than today, when Israel is the talk of the entire world – in the United Nations etc.
and the world media. Every day the "Palestinians" and their backers, most notably
President Ahmadinejad of Iran, declare that Israel must be "wiped off the map" and the
land snatched from its rightful owners.

"Measure for measure" God swears that he will judge all the residue of the nations and
Edom with the fire of His jealousy "because they have appointed My land to themselves
for a possession with the joy of all their heart, with disdainful minds, to cast it out for a
prey" (v 5). Things will turn out the very opposite of what Israel's enemies imagine.
"Surely the nations that are about you shall bear their own shame" (v 7) – as when the
Arab armies that vowed the destruction of Israel in 1948, 1967 and 1973 were roundly
defeated. On the contrary, "You O mountains of Israel shall shoot forth your branches
and yield your fruit to My people of Israel, for they will soon be coming" (v 8). "When the
land of Israel will give forth its fruits generously, that is when the end will be close – for
throughout the Bible you have no more clearly revealed end than in this verse"
(Sanhedrin 98a). The last century has witnessed the miraculous revival of agriculture in
Israel after two thousand years of desolation!

"And I will multiply ADAM upon you, all the House of Israel …" (v 10). Once again in this
verse and the two verses that follow it, Ezekiel – who is himself repeatedly called BEN
ADAM, "the son of ADAM" – refers to Israel as ADAM, as he did in Chapter 34, when he
said, "And you, My flock… are ADAM". Israel have the form of ADAM (the Tzelem Elokim)
when they follow the Torah of ADAM (Numbers 19:14).

"Because they say to you, You are a land that devours men" (v 13). This was the
complaint of the Ten Spies, who gave a false report about the Land as "a land that eats
up its inhabitants" (Numbers 13:32). Likewise Israel's enemies say that "this land is
accustomed to destroy her inhabitants: the Emorites were consumed there and the Jews
were consumed their" (Rashi on Ezekiel 13). But God promises that the Land of Israel
"shall not devour men any more nor any more bereave your nations" (v 14). Surely this
can be taken as a promise that contrary to the hopes of Israel 's enemies, THERE WILL
NOT BE ANOTHER EXILE.

Introducing the theme that at the end of days Israel will be purified of their sins, in verses
16-21 the prophet recounts the history of Israel after they first took possession of the
land, when "they defiled it through their way and their deeds – like the impurity of the
menstruous woman (NIDDAH) was their way before Me" (v 17). "Because the Assembly
of Israel is metaphorically called God's 'wife' while He is her 'husband', when she sins she
is compared to a NIDDAH whose husband distances himself from her throughout the time
of her period but draws near to her after her purification. Likewise God 'distanced' Israel
and exiled them to the lands of the nations because of their sins, but He will restore them
after they return to Him and become purified of their sins" (RaDaK on v 17).

Israel's ignominious exile and degradation in the lands of the nations is CHILUL HASHEM,
a desecration of God's name (v 20). Conversely, the ingathering of Israel before the very
eyes of their enemies is the sanctification of His name, for they will know that God rules
(v 23).

"And I shall take you from the nations and gather you in from all the lands and I will bring
you to your land. And I shall sprinkle upon you pure waters and you shall be purified from
all your impurities, and I shall purify you from all your idols" (vv 24-25). "Just as a defiled
person is purified through the water in which he immerses and through the sprinkling of
the ashes of the Red Heifer, so he who is defiled with sins is purified through atonement"
(Metzudas David on v 25). The ORDER of the promises in the above-quoted two verses is
surely significant: the ingathering of the exiles takes place BEFORE their purification. This
should give us hope that even though many of the ingathered Jewish inhabitants of the
land are still far from the Torah, if God has fulfilled His promise to bring them back
physically, He will in the end surely fulfill His promise to bring them back spiritually.

"And I shall sprinkle upon you pure waters" (v 25) – "Rabbi Akiva said, Happy are you O
Israel: Before Whom are you purified? Who purifies you? Your Father in heaven!" (Yoma
86a).

"And I shall give you a new heart and I shall put a new spirit within you and I shall remove
the heart of stone from your flesh and I shall give you a heart of flesh" (v 26). The "heart
of stone" refers to man's evil inclination. The Talmud teaches: "The evil inclination is
called by seven names. God calls it 'evil' (Gen. 8:21). Moses called it 'uncircumcised'
(Deut. 10:16). David called it 'impure', asking for a pure heart (Psalms 51:12). Solomon
called it an 'enemy' (Proverbs 25:21). Isaiah called it a 'stumbling block' (Isaiah 57:14).
Ezekiel called it 'stone' (as in our verse, Ez. 36:26), while Joel called it the 'northern' (or
'hidden') one (Joel 2:20)" (Succah 52a).

A "heart of flesh" is "a heart that heeds and a spirit that is ready to receive the words of
God with love" (RaDaK on Ez. 36:26). Rabbi Nachman pointed out that the letters of the
name of his chosen city of residence, BReSLoV, are the same as in the phrase LeV BaSaR,
"a heart of flesh", saying that his followers would always be called the Breslov Chassidim
– because his pathways have the power to turn our hearts into hearts of flesh!

After the restoration at the end of days, Israel will not sit in the land arrogantly eating
their reward. Rather, they will be full of contrition and remorse, having learned and
internalized the harsh lessons of their history (v 31). Then the desolate land will be like
the very Garden of Eden and its cities will be inhabited again (v 35) – a promise that in
the last hundred years has begun to be realized before the eyes of the whole world. Israel
will be "like the flock of sacrifices, like the flock of Jerusalem in her appointed times" (v
38) – "That is to say, their sins will no longer be remembered against them" (Rashi ad
loc.)

* * * Verses 16-38 of this chapter speaking of the sprinkling of the waters of purification
upon Israel to purify them of their sins make up the Haftara read on Shabbos Parshas
Parah (after Purim) when in preparation for the coming festival of Pesach, the weekly
Torah portion is followed by an additional Torah reading about the purification from
defilement from the dead through the ashes of the Red Heifer (Numbers 19:1-22). * * *

Chapter 37
VISION OF THE VALLEY OF DRY BONES

"…And He set me down in the midst of the valley, which was full of dry bones" (v 1).
Commenting on this vision, RaDaK writes that "the Holy One blessed be He showed
Ezekiel this valley as a metaphor showing that the Children of Israel would leave their
exile, in which they were living in a state comparable to that of 'dry bones'. Alternatively,
He showed him this to show him that in time to come He will resurrect the dead of Israel
at the time of the redemption so that they too should witness the redemption" (RaDaK on
verse 1).

WHOSE BONES?

The Talmud (Sanhedrin 92b) brings a variety of opinions among our sages as to whose
bones these were. The different opinions are by no means mutually exclusive, since
certain souls may be re-incarnated in different bodies time after time. Rabbi Yehudah
considered that the vision was "in truth a metaphor" (BE-EMES MASHAL), while Rabbi
Yehoshua and Rabbi Eliezer (ben Hurknos) both considered that Ezekiel literally revived
the dead. R. Eliezer son of R. Yose HaGlili stated that the dead that Ezekiel revived came
up to the land of Israel, married and had children, and R. Yehudah Ben Beseira declared
that he was one of their descendants, exhibiting a pair of Tefilin which he inherited from
his paternal grandfather that had been handed down from them.

The opinion of Rav is that the dead bones were those of the members of the tribe of
Ephraim who left Egypt before the appointed time and were killed by the native
inhabitants of Gath (I Chronicles 7:21, see Targum Yonasan and RaDaK ad loc. and Rashi
on our verse in Ezekiel.). Shmuel's opinion is that these were the bones of people who
had denied the tenet of resurrection, while Rabbi Yonasan said they were dry because
they were the bones of people who "did not have in them the moisture of a mitzvah", i.e.
they did not observe any of the commandments of the Torah.

Rabbi Yochanan stated that the bones were those of the people who were killed in the
Valley of Dura . This was where Nebuchadnezzar set up his sixty-cubit high idol, to which
all the peoples bowed down, including all the Judean exiles except for Chananya, Mishael
and Azariah (Daniel ch 3). When Nebuchadnezzar saw this, he was enraged, asking them
if just as they had worshipped idols in their own land causing its destruction they
intended to worship them in Babylon in order to destroy it, and he massacred them
(Yalkut Shimoni). Another reason why Nebuchadnezzar carried out a mass slaughter of
young Jewish men at that time was because "among them were youths who put the sun
to shame with their beauty and when the Chaldean woman saw them they started
running with blood (ZIVA) and told their husbands, who told the king, who had them
trampled down. It was at the moment when the wicked Nebuchadnezzar cast Chananya,
Mishael and Azariah into the fiery furnace that God told Ezekiel to go and revive the dead
in the Valley of Dura " (Sanhedrin 92b).

Unraveling the exact identify of these bones is of less importance than grasping the
essential point of Ezekiel's vision, which attests to our perfect faith and belief "that the
Resurrection of the Dead will take place at the time when it will be the will of the Creator,
blessed be His Name" (last of the Thirteen Principles of Faith as formulated by Rambam).
God has the power to take even dry bones (such as the tiny, indestructible LUZ bone from
the top of the spine) and clothe them with sinews, flesh and skin to breathe into them the
spirit of life (v 6).

"Come from the four winds (directions), O breath, and breathe upon these slain" (v 9) –
"From every place where their souls went to wander in all four directions of the world they
will be gathered in" (Rashi ad loc.).

"Behold, O My people, I shall open your graves…" (v 12). In the words of RaDaK (ad loc.):
"If this vision is a metaphor, the lands of the nations where Israel is in exile are the
graves. If it is to be taken literally, the meaning is plain. There is a division of opinion
among our sages about the dead outside of Israel. Some held that they will arise from
their graves in the Diaspora itself, while others said that they will come up to the Land of
Israel by rolling (GILGUL) through underground passages (Kesuvos 111a). The present
verse supports the view that they will come back to life in the Diaspora… for it says 'I will
open up your graves and bring you up from your graves' and afterwards 'I will bring you
to the Land of Israel '".

"Three keys are in the hand of the Holy One blessed be He and have not been entrusted
to any agent: the key to the rains, the key to giving birth and the key to the revival of the
dead" (Ta'anis 2b).

* * * Ezekiel's vision of the Valley of the Dry Bones is read as the Haftara on Shabbos Chol
HaMo'ed Pesach, the intermediate Shabbos of the festival of Passover. * * *

TWO STICKS JOINED INTO ONE

In a further inspiring prophecy of consolation in vv 15-28, God instructs the prophet to

take two sticks and write on one "for Judah and the children of Israel his companions" –
i.e. the tribe of Benjamin, which remained attached to Judah even after the split of the
kingdom – and to write on the other "for Joseph the stick of Ephraim and all the House of
Israel, his companions". The latter are the Ten Tribes, because when the kingdom was
divided, Jeraboam, who was from the tribe of Ephraim, became king, and accordingly the
Ten Tribes were called by the name of Ephraim (verse 16 as explained by RaDaK).

The prophet was to join the two sticks together to make one stick (v 17) to symbolize that
in the end of days the great fissure that has divided the Children of Israel since the death
of King Solomon will be healed, and the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, who are called the
"Jews" (cf. Esther 2:5), will be reconciled with the lost Ten Tribes and become "one in My
hand" (v 19) – "they shall become ONE NATION before Me" (Targum ad loc.).

Verses 21ff prophesy the restoration of the scattered exiles of Israel to their land to
become one people under one king. "And My servant David will be king over them" (v 24)
–"Melech HaMashiach, who comes from the seed of David, will be king over them"
(Metzudas David).

This will inaugurate an eternal covenant of peace between God and Israel with the return
of the Shechinah to Israel and the rebuilding of the Temple, showing all the nations that
HaShem rules (v 28).

* * * Ezekiel's vision of joining the two sticks of Joseph and Judah (Ez. 37:15-28) is read
as the Haftara of Parshas Vayigash (Genesis 44:18-47:27) describing the reconciliation
of Joseph and his brothers. * * *

Chapter 38
THE WAR OF GOG AND MAGOG

Many people mistakenly believe that the war of Gog and Magog is a war of Gog AGAINST
Magog, and the two have been represented in many weird and monstrous ways in
popular folklore. But the truth is plainly visible in the opening verse of our present chapter.
Gog is the name of the king or leader of an unholy alliance of nations, while Magog is the
name of his people, whose founder was Japheth's second son (Gen:10:2, see Rashi on
the opening verse of our present chapter). It is clear from verses 8 and 12 of the present
chapter that their war is against the people of Israel in the land of Israel.

The onslaught of Gog and his allies against Israel at the end of days was foreordained
from the beginning of time and already spoken of "in old time by my servants the
prophets of Israel, who prophesied in those days for many years that I would bring you
against them" (verse 17). Thus the war of Gog and Magog is prophesied in Zechariah ch
14 and alluded to in many different passages in Isaiah and the other prophets. According
to tradition, this war was also the subject of the prophecy of Eldad and Meidad in the
wilderness in the time of Moses (Numbers 11:26, see Targum Yonasan ad loc. and
Sanhedrin 17b). There is an historical inevitability about this war that will cause it to
come about whether the nations want it or not. Thus God says to Gog: "I will turn you
about and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring you and all your army…" (v 4).

PRINCIPAL MEMBERS OF THE ALLIANCE

The peoples of Magog, Meshech and Tuval mentioned in verse 2 were all descendants of
the sons of Japheth and are considered to have spread out from where Noah's ark came
to rest on Mt Ararat to the regions that became their original habitations in the northeast
of Turkey, immediately south of the Black Sea, in Armenia, southern Georgia and the
regions west of the Caspian Sea. It is highly likely that in the course of time these peoples
wandered far and wide from there. (It is noteworthy that Meshech – Muscovy, Russia –
has traditionally been one of the leading persecutors of Israel and Judaism, and its
one-time dictator, Joseph Stalin, was from Georgia , embedded in the name of whose
capital city of Tbilisi is the name TUVAL.)

Verse 5 mentions Paras or Persia, Kush (descended from the firstborn son of Ham, Gen.
10:6), identified either with Sudan or with the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan, and Phut,
which is identified by some with Libya and by others with Somalia.
Verse 6 mentions Gomer, which the rabbis identified with GERMAMIA (= Germany, see
Targum Yonasan on our verse and Yoma 10b) and Togarma, which was the traditional
Hebrew name for Turkey. Verse 6 also mentions "many nations" as well as "the far sides
of the north", which might indicate anywhere across the northern hemisphere from North
America to Northern Europe, Russia, China and Japan!

Verse 13 mentions Sheba, identified variously with east Africa (Ethiopia?) and Arabia
(Yemen?), Dedan (=northeast Arabia, the Arab Emirates?) and Tarshish, which has
different connotations in different Biblical texts and may indicate Tarsus in Asia Minor,
North Africa ( Tunisia ) or Spain .

WHEN DOES THE WAR OCCUR?

Our text explicitly states that the war of Gog and Magog will occur "at the end of days",
when the nations will come "against the land that is brought back from the sword and is
gathered out of many peoples…" (v 8; cf. verse 16). As a follow-on from Ezekiel's
prophecy in Chapter 36 about the return of Israel to their land at the end of days, our
present text teaches that the assault of the nations occurs AFTER the ingathering of Israel,
or the greater part of them, from exile, when they have come back to their land in the
hope of dwelling there prosperously and securely, spread out unfortified habitations (vv
8, 11-12 & 14). It is plain that this refers to our present era, when for the first time in two
thousand years a majority of the world's population of Jews lives in Israel. Our texts state
explicitly that the intention of Gog and his allies is to despoil Israel of their wealth (vv
12-13 of our present chapter) and appropriate their land (as stated in Ezekiel 36: 2 & 5).

THE JUDGMENT AGAINST GOG AND MAGOG

Verses 18-23 depict the divine wrath that will be unleashed against Gog and his armies
(which is also the subject of the following chapter). Verse 19 speaks of a great "shaking"
(RA'ASH) in the Land of Israel, which indicates a literal earthquake, as prophesied in
Zechariah 14:4-5). Verse 20 says that the very fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens,
the beasts of the field and all creeping beings as well as all mankind will shake at God's
presence. RaDaK (ad loc.) states that this verse may be taken both metaphorically and
literally. (It is well-known that many animals are intuitively aware of earthquakes etc.
even before they occur.)

Verse 21 teaches that the downfall of the nations will come about when tumult breaks out
among the forces of Gog and Magog, who will fight "each against his brother". Then God
will judge them with "plague, blood and driving rain and stones of algavish (hail shining
like the gavish jewel), fire and sulfur" (verse 22). The name of God will then be magnified
and sanctified in the eyes of many nations and they will know that HaShem rules (v 23).

* * * Verses 18-23 of the present chapter together with chapter 39 vv 1-15 are read as
the Haftara on Shabbos Chol HaMo'ed Succos – the intermediate Sabbath of the festival
of Succos. * * *

Chapter 39
The present chapter continues Ezekiel's prophecy of the war of Gog and Magog, depicting
the miraculous overthrow of their invading hordes on the hills and mountains of Israel,
where they will be prey for the wild birds and beasts of the field.

"And I will make My holy name known in the midst of My people Israel and I will not allow
My holy name to be profaned any more" (verse 7). "For if Israel are lowly, this is causes
desecration of His name because people say that these are the people of HaShem yet He
does not have the power to save them" (Rashi ad loc.).

"And I will give to Gog a place for burial in Israel, the valley of those who travel to the east
of the sea…" (v 11). Although this verse does not explicitly spell out whether the sea in
question is Israel 's "western" sea, i.e. the Mediterranean, or her "eastern" sea, i.e. the
Sea (or "Lake") of Tiberius, our commentators agree that it is referring to the latter
(Targum, Rashi and RaDaK ad loc.). It would thus appear that the great bulk of the
armies of Gog and Magog will fall in a mountain pass to the east of the Kinneret ("Lake
Tiberius"), which suggests that they will seek to mount a land invasion of Israel from
Jordan and Syria via the Golan Heights, a scenario that in the present age becomes more
and more plausible with every passing day.

Our rabbis taught that the unique privilege of the armies of Gog and Gog in being brought
to burial (COVERED under the earth) rather than being ignominiously left out in the open
to eternity is a reward "measure for measure" for their ancestor Japheth, who with his
brother Shem averted his eyes from the nakedness of their father Noah after he became
drunk and COVERED it over (Genesis 9:23; Bereishis Rabbah #36).

"And all the people of the land shall bury them and it shall be for them for a name" (v 13)
– "All the nations will tell their praises and kindness, saying 'There is no other people who
are as compassionate as this – can you find anyone who buries the very enemy that stood
up against him to kill him?" (Rashi ad loc.). Those who have not been deceived by the
contemporary world media campaign to demonize Israel and its people know that until
today this outstanding compassion even for their enemies is one of the distinguishing
traits of the chosen people.

God's overthrow of the armies of Gog and Magog and His restoration of Israel to dwell at
peace in their land will be the vindication of His glory in the eyes of both Israel and all the
nations, who will thereby know that HaShem rules (vv 21-29).

Chapter 40
After the completion of Ezekiel's prophecy of the war of Gog and Magog, we now come to
the triumphant closing section of his book in chapters 40-48 prophesying the final order
that will prevail in the world at the end of days with the restoration of the Holy Temple
and the coming of Melech HaMashiach, when the twelve tribes of Israel will dwell securely
and at peace in their land. This will be the Final Settlement, when the world will attain a
state of complete rectification (TIKKUN).

"In the twenty-fifth year after our exile, at the beginning of the year (ROSH HASHANAH)
on the tenth of the month…" (v 1). Since Rosh HaShanah is normally celebrated on the
FIRST of the month of Tishri, the dating of this prophecy to Rosh HaShanah AND the tenth
of the month (Yom Kippur) is a seeming self-contradiction. This is resolved through the
teaching of our rabbis that Ezekiel received this prophecy in the Jubilee year, which is
inaugurated with the sounding of the shofar throughout the land of Israel on Yom Kippur,
which is thus the "Rosh HaShanah" of the Jubilee year (Leviticus 25:9; see Rashi on verse
1 of our present chapter). Since all slaves are freed in the Jubilee year and all lands that
have been sold return to their original owners, it was appropriate that this prophecy of
complete redemption and restoration should have been received on this auspicious day of
liberation.

"In the visions of God He brought me into the land of Israel" (v 2) – "He did not actually
take me there but showed it to me as if I was there" (Rashi ad loc.).
"…and set me upon a very high mountain" (v 2) – "This is the Temple Mount. God showed
it to him as being very high indeed, for it will be on a very high and exalted level, as it is
written, 'Established shall be the mountain of the House of HaShem at the head of the
mountains and exalted above the hills" (Isaiah 2:2, RaDaK on verse 2 of our present
chapter).

"…And behold there was a man whose appearance was like the appearance of bronze" (v
3) – "This was the same color as the radiance of the Chayos, who were 'flashing like the
color of burnished bronze'" (Ezekiel 1:7; Rashi on verse 3 of our present chapter). The
linen cord in the angel's hand was to measure the dimensions of the various Temple
courtyards, while his measuring rod was to measure the thickness of the walls and the
height and breadth of the gates.

"And the man said to me, Son of man, see with your eyes and hear with your ears and pay
attention to all that I will show you… tell all that you see to the House of Israel" (v 4). The
angel stood ready to take Ezekiel on a complete "virtual tour" of the Future Temple,
explaining the detailed measurements of every wall, courtyard, gate and chamber, in
order that he should go back to the people and teach them the form of the Temple.

Despite the fact that Ezekiel's prophecy was received well in advance of the building of
the Second Temple, it should be emphasized that what Ezekiel saw was not the exact
form in which the Second Temple was actually built. In the words of Rambam (Hilchos
Beis HaBechirah 1:4): "The building that Solomon built (the First Temple ) had already
been clearly explained in the book of Kings. Now the form of the Temple that is destined
to be built in the future is written in the book of Ezekiel but it is not clearly explained, and
when the men of the Second Temple built it in the time of Ezra, they built it like Solomon's
Temple with certain details as explained in Ezekiel." It would appear that the builders of
the Second Temple did not believe that the world had yet reached the level of perfection
which Ezekiel's Temple expressed. We may infer from Rambam's words that until now the
Temple prophesied by Ezekiel has never been built and that this is therefore the form of
the Future Temple for which we are praying and waiting every day.

Ezekiel's vision of the Future Temple and its meaning is the subject of the kabbalistic
classic MISHKNEY ELYON ("Dwelling places of the Supreme") by Rabbi Moshe Chayim
Luzzatto ("Ramchal", 1707-47), which the present author had the privilege of translating
into English under the title of "Secrets of the Future Temple " with full introduction, maps
and diagrams. This work is available for free download at
http://www.azamra.org/secrets.shtml .

Ramchal explains that the Temple is the center point where all the different branches of
the Tree of Life connect with their roots, channeling a flow of sustenance and blessing to
the entire world. The different areas of the Temple radiating outwards from the EVVEN
SHESIYAH ("Foundation Stone") in the Holy of Holies to the surrounding courtyards on
the Temple Mount correspond to the four kabbalistic "worlds". The detailed dimensions of
the various Temple chambers, walls and gates correspond to various divine names and
attributes, because the Hebrew letters that make them up all have mathematical values.
These names and attributes interact with one another to create a three-dimensional
"hologram" expressing through a unique form of sacred geometry the spiritual kingdom
through which this world is governed. Through the study of the form of the Future Temple
and its meaning, "You will know how the King of the kings of kings watches over His
creatures and conducts His universe in an ordered manner… You will be able to
understand the way the world is run and how God gives each day's portion of food and
sustenance to all His creatures, each in its own time." (Ramchal, Mishkney Elyon).
The route by which the angel took Ezekiel on his "virtual" tour of the Future Temple began
at the outer wall of the Temple Mount. From here the angel took him through the Eastern
Gate, showing him the "cells" flanking it on both sides on the outside of the wall, and the
"vestibule" that stood before it inside the great Outer Courtyard (vv 5-16). Those familiar
with the ground plan of the First and Second Temples should note that a fundamental
difference in the design of the Future Temple is that the "Outer Courtyard"
(corresponding to the Ezras Nashim, Women's Courtyard) will entirely surround the
Temple Sanctuary and Inner Courtyard (Azarah) on all sides, whereas in the First and
Second Temples the Ezras Nashim adjoined the Inner Courtyard on one side only but did
not surround it on all sides.

Vv 17-27 describe the three gates of the outer courtyard situated respectively on the
north, south and east sides (the west side has no gate) and an elevated gallery with
chambers running around the inside of the courtyard wall. Vv 28-37 describe the plan of
the Inner Courtyard (Ezras Yisrael, Azarah) with its three gates facing those of the outer
courtyard. Verses 38-43 describe the Washers' Chamber where the sacrificial portions
will be washed and prepared for offering on the Altar. Verses 44-7 describe other special
chambers in the Inner Courtyard for the instruments of the Levites and the garments of
the Priests. Verses 48-9 describe the measurements of the OOLAM or "Vestibule" leading
into the main Temple Sanctuary building.

Chapter 41
The Hebrew text of Ezekiel's account of the Future Temple – which will be the earthly
representation of the Heavenly Temple – is necessarily opaque because is simultaneously
a detailed description of a highly complex physical structure and a garb clothing the
deepest secrets of God's names and attributes and His government of the world. The
classical Biblical commentators on our text (Rashi, Metzudas David and RaDaK) discuss
at length the literal meaning of the words and phrases making up Ezekiel's description of
the physical structure of the Future Temple but hardly enter into Midrash and do not
touch at all (at least openly) upon its deeper meaning.

The only comprehensive discussion of the latter with which this author is familiar is that
of the kabbalistic genius Ramchal (Rabbi Moshe Chayim Luzzatto 1707-47), who side by
side with his MISHKNEY ELYON on the kabbalistic meaning of the Temple also provided
"Five Chapters" in the style of the Mishneh clarifying its dimensions and physical form on
the basis of Ezekiel's text. My dear friend Rabbi Abraham Rokeach, who is a Talmid
Chacham, an authority on the forms of the First, Second and Future Temples and also a
building engineer by profession, has told me that from the engineering point of view, it is
Ramchal's explanation of the physical structure of the Future Temple that makes the
most sense.

Within the scope of the present Study Notes it is impossible to do more than briefly
categorize the main areas of the Temple precincts as described by Ezekiel in these
chapters and to offer a tiny sample of comments by Ramchal about the significance of the
areas in question. Those interested in studying Ezekiel's text in conjunction with
Ramchal's commentary in SECRETS OF THE FUTURE TEMPLE should note that Ramchal in
his work takes a different route around the Temple from that taken by Ezekiel. For Ezekiel
started at the outer wall of the Temple Mount, entering by the eastern gate into the Outer
Courtyard and then going INWARDS first to the Inner Courtyard and then to the actual
Temple building itself. Ramchal on the other hand chose to discuss first the Holy of Holies
and the Sanctuary, and then move OUTWARDS from the Temple to the Inner Courtyard
and from there to the Outer Courtyard and then to the Temple Mount.
"And he brought me to the Sanctuary…" (v 1). The "Sanctuary" is the HEICHAL, the main
Temple building – the House itself (containing the Menorah, Showbread Table and
Incense Altar) as opposed to its surrounding courtyards. Verses 1-2 provide the
dimensions of the Sanctuary and its entrance. "This is the place from which the souls of
Israel receive their sustenance, and this is where the inner Incense Altar is located. This
is the Altar where the sacrifice of the souls is offered when they bring their gift before the
King" (Ramchal).

Verses 3-4 provide the dimensions of the Holy of Holies – the innermost chamber of the
House. "The first place that emanated from the Foundation Stone is a place of intense
light and abundant blessing. For as she [i.e. Malchut] goes forth from before the King,
there she stands at first in all her beauty and glory. Who can describe her power and
brilliance? This power is given only to Israel. A great screen separates the Sanctuary from
the Holy of Holies. This hall is thus for the King alone and none other. Only once each year
[on Yom Kippur] when the High Priest in the lower world enters the Holy of Holies with the
incense, is permission to enter granted to the one who is permitted to enter. This is
because of God's great love for His people, who are more precious to Him than the
ministering angels" (Ramchal).

Verses 5-11 describe the walls of the House and the dimensions of the "side chambers"
that were built in banks around them – three on the west side and fifteen each on the
north and south sides.

"Surrounding the Sanctuary and the Holy of Holies are structures in the form of rooms or
cells built one on top of the other. Everything that comes forth from the Holy of Holies
divides into three columns. Thus there are three rows of five cells along the south wall,
three rows of five along the north wall, and three cells on top of one another along the
west wall. Thus the Sanctuary is surrounded by cells on three sides… Let me explain the
purpose of these cells. Besides the sustenance that the armies of angels receive from the
gates of the Inner Courtyard and beyond, they also receive a share from behind the walls
of the Sanctuary itself. This is extra sustenance. Even though it comes to them from
outside [the Sanctuary], it is on the highest level, as opposed to the sustenance they
receive from the gates, which is already on a lower level even though it comes from
inside" (Ramchal).

Verses 12-15 explain the dimensions of the outer walls of the House on the west, north,
east and south sides. Verses 16-21 describe the windows and paneling of the House and
the ornamental cherubs and palm trees on the walls.

"Inside the Sanctuary, the most beautiful lights appear on all the walls. They all receive
from one another as they spread out from amidst the radiance caused by the perfect
union all around. These lights shine in the form of cherubs and palm trees. Understand
the greatness and importance of these lights. There are male and female palms. Of this
it is said: "The Tzaddik will flourish like the palm" (Psalms 92:13), referring to Tzaddik
(Yesod) and his mate (Malchut). The cherubs have two faces: that of a man on one side
and that of a lion on the other. Know that the building of this Temple is accomplished
through the power of the right side (Chesed, the face of the lion) in mercy (Tiferet, the
face of man). It is from the light of these two that the holy union symbolized by the palm
tree derives. For this reason the faces of the cherubs are turned towards the palm tree,
for the lion is on one side, the face of the man on the other, and the palm tree stands
between the two" (Ramchal).

THIS IS THE TABLE THAT IS BEFORE HASHEM

Verse 22 apparently speaks about "the altar of wood" but our sages explained that this
cannot refer to the altar on which the animal sacrifices are offered (since this is located in
the Inner Courtyard in front of the House). It could possibly refer to the Incense Altar in
the Sanctuary which is made of wood plated with gold (RaDaK ad loc.) but Targum (ad
loc.) explains that the "altar" mentioned here is in fact a TABLE adjacent to the Incense
Altar, in accordance with the words of the angel to Ezekiel at the end of the verse: "This
is the table that is before HaShem". Thus our sages commented: "The verse opens with
the 'altar' and ends up with the 'table'. This comes to teach that as long as the Temple is
standing, the altar atones for Israel, but now it is a person's table (the way he eats in
purity and holiness) that atones for him" (Berachos 54b, Chagigah 27a). Some
customarily recite the verse "This is the table that is before HaShem" as they begin their
meal, and take care to say words of Torah at the table in order to elevate their eating.

Verses 23-26 describe the Sanctuary gates, their number and form and the windows of
the Vestibule that stood in front of the Sanctuary.

"The root of all things is found in the Supreme Wisdom that stands at the peak of all levels
and gives power to all the hosts of heaven and the heavens of the heavens. This Wisdom
possesses mighty 'gates' from which its radiance and glory shine to all the creatures in
the lower worlds that crave to delight in its great pleasantness. This wall has gates, for
without gates how would blessing and sustenance go forth to the lower realms?"
(Ramchal).

Chapter 42
"And he took me out to the Outer Courtyard… and he brought me to into the chamber that
was over against the main wing…" (verse 1). Verses 1-12 of the present chapter describe
the dimensions of three-storey buildings or "chambers" that stood parallel to the main
Temple building on its north and south sides. Verses 13-14 then explain the function of
these chambers, which was to serve as a place where the Cohanim can eat their portions
of the holy of holy sacrificial offerings.

"Understand that these chambers are where the angels actually receive the sustenance
given to them from around the outside of the Sanctuary building. The sustenance flows
out from the recess into the cells adjoining the Sanctuary walls. As it leaves the cells it
merges into a single flow in the Winding Staircase. Then at a distance of twenty cubits it
reaches these chambers, where the angels receive it. These chambers are designated for
eating the holy sacrificial portions, for this is the sustenance that comes down to the
branches after they rejoin their root and after the beautiful unification that is brought
about through the sacrifice. But note how far away the angels are when they receive their
share of the holy offering as compared to the souls of Israel, who receive their share from
inside the Sanctuary, since their sustenance comes from the incense, which is burned
inside. This is why the sages said: "Israel's appointed place is further within than that of
the ministering angels" ( Yerushalmi Shabbat 2; Ramchal) .

Verses 15-20 measure the outer perimeter of the Temple Mount on the east, north, south
and west sides. Since each side was 500 rods, and the angel's measuring rod was six
cubits long (Ezekiel 40:5), the future Temple Mount will be 3000 x 3000 cubits. Thus the
future Temple Mount will be THIRTY-SIX TIMES bigger than the Temple Mount in the time
of the Second Temple, which was 500 x 500 cubits!!!

"The Temple Mount is the place from which the officers of the World of Asiyah receive,
and thus its walls, which set bounds for all the light contained within it, total five hundred
rods by five hundred rods. The rationale of these dimensions is bound up with the fact
that all the lights that govern the running of the world work together in complete accord
and perfect unison. They all join and become interconnected with each other instead of
going each in its own direction. Therefore nothing is ever executed through Kingly Power
[Malchut] that was not commanded by the King [ Zeir Anpin ], Who is the Tree of Life.
This is a journey of five hundred years. That is why the measure of the Temple Mount is
the greatest of all: five hundred. But it did not spread out any further, for as she
[Malchut] receives, so she gives. This future Temple will be superior to the earlier
Temples. In the First Temple, each of the four sides of the Temple Mount was five
hundred cubits in length, while in the Third Temple each side will be five hundred rods.
The use of the rod as the unit of measurement in the Third Temple is bound up with fact
that it will be built through the revelation of the hidden "Beginning", Keter, the Crown…

Chapter 43
"Then he brought me to the gate… and behold, the Glory of the God of Israel came from
the way of the east…" (v 1). At the conclusion of Ezekiel's "virtual tour" around the Future
Temple in order to learn its form and measurements, after completing measuring the
Temple Mount, the angel who was his guide brought him back to the east gate of the
Mount, where the prophet saw the Glory of God approaching in order to enter the
completed Temple.

With this Ezekiel's prophecy has come full circle, because at the beginning of his ministry,
he witnessed the Glory (chapter 1) only to see it depart from its place above the Ark in
the First Temple and leave stage by stage until it ascended to Heaven for the duration of
the exile (chapter 9 v 3ff). That was when Ezekiel prophesied the coming destruction of
Jerusalem in the time of Tzedekiah (ibid. vv 1f).

Now, following all his intervening prophecies and after having seen the perfect form of
the Future Temple in all its details, a spirit comes and lifts Ezekiel to the Inner Courtyard,
where he sees that the Glory of HaShem fills the House again (v 5). God promises that
this will be His dwelling place among the Children of Israel forever – for they will be fully
rectified and will no longer engage in the abominations practiced in the time of the First
Temple, when kings (Menasheh and Amon) were buried in the gardens of their palaces
adjacent to the Temple, and idolatry was practiced at their tombs (vv 7-8, see Rashi,
Metzudas David & RaDaK ad loc.). God promises that from now on they will reject their
old pathways so that God will dwell among them forever (v 9).

TEACH THEM THE FORM OF THE HOUSE

"You, son of man, describe the House to the House of Israel that they may be ashamed
of their iniquities… And if they are ashamed of all that they have done, make known to
them the form of the House…" (v 10). It is through Teshuvah – repentance – that Israel
is worthy of seeing this Temple. Shame over one's improper behavior before God is the
very root of true repentance. Thus the Hebrew letters of the first word of the Torah,
BEREISHIS make up the words YOREI BOSHES, Awe and Shame (Tikuney Zohar). When
Israel begin to glimpse the form of the Future Temple they will become ashamed of their
deeds, and as their shame matures into ever deeper Teshuvah, they will be able to learn
the form of the House in order to build it.

The Midrash tells: Ezekiel said to the Holy One blessed-be-He: "Master of the World: We
are now in exile, and You tell me to go and inform the Jewish People about the plan of the
Temple? 'Write it before their eyes, and they will guard all its forms and all its laws and do
them.' How can they 'do them'? Leave them until they go out of exile, and then I will tell
them." The Holy One blessed-be-He said to Ezekiel: "Just because My children are in exile,
does that mean the building of My House should be halted? Studying the plan of the
Temple in the Torah is as great as actually building it. Go and tell them to make it their
business to study the form of the Temple as explained in the Torah. As their reward for
this study, I will give them credit as if they are actually building the Temple" (Midrash
Tanchuma, Tzav #14).

THE ALTAR

Only after the completion of his main tour of the House and after witnessing the return of
God's glory did Ezekiel see the form of the Altar. This is because the Altar is itself a
manifestation of the Glory.

"The place of the Altar is most precisely aligned and its place may not be changed
forever…. It was in this place in the Temple that Isaac our father was bound… It is a
tradition in everyone's hand that the place where David and Solomon built the Altar in the
threshing floor of Arava was the place where Abraham built the Altar and bound Isaac,
and that is the place where Noah sacrificed when he came out of the Ark and this is the
Altar upon which Cain and Abel offered and there Adam sacrificed after he was created
and from there he was created. Our sages said that Adam was created at the place where
he gains atonement. The dimensions of the Altar are very precisely aligned and its form
is known by tradition from one man to another. The Altar that the returning Babylonian
exiles built was in the form in which the Future Altar will be built, and it is not permitted
to add to or subtract from its measurements" (Rambam, Laws of the Temple 2:1-3).

The form of the Altar is explained by Rambam (loc. cit.) on the basis of Mishneh Middos
3:1, and is discussed in relation to our present text in Talmud Eiruvin 4a and Menachos
97a.

In the words of Ramchal: "The Altar provides a place for all who need to ascend on it. The
total height of the Altar is ten cubits built on three distinct levels. The height of the top
level is four cubits as is that of the second [or middle] level, while the third [or bottom]
level is two cubits high. This is because there is a place here for all the Palaces of the
World of Beriyah according to their order of ascent. The top four cubits correspond to
Keter , Chochmah and Binah in the Palace known as Holy of Holies, together with Desire
[= Tiferet ], which ascends higher than all the others. The middle four cubits correspond
to Chesed , Gevurah , Netzach and Hod . The bottom two cubits correspond to Yesod and
Malchut , which join together in the Palace of Sapphire Stone . Know that the Supreme
Wisdom [ Chochmah ] contains thirty-two pathways under which all things are
subsumed: these are the ten Sefirot together with the twenty-two letters of the
Aleph-Beit from top to bottom. Correspondingly the Lower Wisdom – Shechinah – is
called "Glory" [ KaVoD = 32], because like the Upper Wisdom she too contains thirty-two
pathways, only in this case they are ordered from the bottom upwards. Four lights
descended from the Shechinah into the World of Beriyah . They are called Glory. When
these lights reached their bottom level [i.e. the base ( Yesod ) of the Altar, which is
thirty-two cubits square] all thirty-two appeared merged together in one place…
(Ramchal).

In verses 15f the Altar hearth is called the HAR-EL (="Mount of God") and the ARI-EL
(="Lion of God"), alluding to the shape of the crouching lion taken by the consuming Altar
fire and to the likeness of the face of the lion (CHESSED) on the Chayos.

In verses 18-27 Ezekiel is instructed to consecrate the Altar in order to inaugurate it for
daily service. RaDaK commenting on the word "and YOU shall put it" in verse 19, writes:
"He is speaking to Ezekiel, who was a Cohen, saying that he should hand the offering to
the priests to offer and he should sprinkle the blood and make atonement on the Altar.
For in the future he will be the High Priest, even though Aaron will be there, or he will be
his deputy, and this verse also teaches about the revival of the dead in the future."

The future Temple service is to be conducted by the line of Cohanim descended from
Tzaddok (v 19). This is because he was the first High Priest in Solomon's Temple and he
was descended from the sons of Elazar the Priest, because the covenant of the priesthood
was given to Elazar's son Pinchas and his seed, while the sons of Ithamar went down on
the scale of the priesthood on account of the curse of Eli (RaDaK on Ezekiel 40:48).

The ox to be offered as the inaugural sin offering (vv 19-21) parallels the sin offering of
the ox at the original inauguration of Aaron and his sons (Menachos 45a) but the sin
offering of goats from the second to the seventh day of the future inauguration services
(vv 22-26) does not parallel anything at the time of the inauguration of the Sanctuary in
the wilderness (Rashi on v 22) but is a new innovation.

* * * Ezekiel 43:10-27 is read as the Haftara of Parshas Tetzaveh (Exodus 27:20-30:10),

which tells how Aaron the High Priest and his sons were to be inaugurated into the
priesthood. * * *

Chapter 44
After teaching about the form of the Future Temple and its inauguration services,
Ezekiel's prophecy now turns to detailing the regular functioning of the Temple and its
ministering priests, the Cohanim.

Ezekiel's prophecies were arranged by the Men of the Great Assembly, but some of what
he says, particularly in certain places later in the present chapter and in those that follow,
raised concern among the sages because he appears to contradict what is written in the
Five Books of Moses. They sought to hide away his prophesies – until a certain sage by
the name of Hananyah ben Hizkiah hid himself away in an attic with three hundred
barrels of oil for light by which to study, until he succeeded in understanding what Ezekiel
was saying and how it fitted with what is written in the Torah (Hagigah 13a).

In verses 1-2 Ezekiel is set down by the east gate of the Temple building, adjacent to
which he is shown the southern side-entrance by the main gate (Middos 4:2) where no
man may enter – for the Glory of HaShem passes there – and which is to remain closed
except when the NASI sits there to "eat bread", i.e. sacrificial portions. This NASI is "the
Cohen Gadol, who because of his importance is permitted to eat the bread and meat of
holy offerings in that gateway, which is opened for him when he eats" (Rashi on v 3).
Metzudas David (on v 3) states that this NASI is Melech HaMashiach.

Ezekiel is then taken to the northern side-entrance, and he sees how the House is filled
with the Glory of HaShem (v 4). In the ensuing prophecy in verses 5-8 God tells Ezekiel
to take careful note of all the details of the Temple that he has been shown and to warn
Israel against the rebellion and abominations that led to the destruction of the First
Temple. The "strangers, uncircumcised in heart and uncircumcised in flesh" who had
entered there and ministered had not been non-Israelites but rather, those who "made
their deeds strange to their Father in Heaven" to the point that not only were they
uncircumcised in heart but they did not even circumcise their flesh (see Rashi on v 7,
Zevachim 22b).

Verses 10ff teach that "the Levites that went far away from Me when Israel went astray
after what they went astray" – i.e. Cohanim who had practiced some kind of idolatry, the
descendants of lines other than that of Tzaddok – will have only limited functions in the
Future Temple. While they will be permitted to slaughter the sacrificial animals (v 11),
this is because a ZAR (non-Cohen) is in any case permitted to carry out the SHECHITAH.
However all the ensuing acts of priestly service following the SHECHITAH – receiving the
blood, taking it to the Altar and sprinkling it in its proper place – will be barred to these
"Levites" and permitted only to the descendants of Tzaddok (vv 15-16).

One of the apparent contradictions between Ezekiel and Exodus is that Ezekiel seems to
say in verse 17 that "when they come within the gates of the Inner Courtyard, they shall
wear garments of linen and no wool shall come upon them" whereas the garments of the
High Priest and the ordinary priests as described in Exodus ch 28 specifically include
certain mixtures of wool with linen that are otherwise forbidden to be worn (SHA'ATNEZ).
The apparent contradiction is resolved the moment we realize that here in Ezekiel the
"Inner Courtyard" alludes to the Holy of Holies, and that he is referring to the High Priest
on Yom Kippur, who enters there dressed in garments of pure linen (Leviticus 16:4; see
Rashi on Ezekiel v 17).

Verses 20ff teach special rules that apply to the Cohanim when they serve in the Temple,
such as the way they are to cut their hair, the prohibition of consuming wine at the time
of their service, and limitations on who they are permitted to marry. These compare with
laws given in Parshas Emor (Leviticus 21:1ff etc.). A seeming inconsistency between
verse 22 of our present chapter and Leviticus 21:7 & 14 as to whether a Cohen may
marry a widow and whether she needs to be that of a Cohen is resolved through careful
textual analysis (see Rashi on v 22).

Verses 28ff teach that the Cohanim will have no tribal portion in the Land of Israel among
the other tribes. Instead they will receive their priestly gifts as taught in the Torah: the
priests' share of the meal, sin and guilt offerings, the first fruits, Terumah (the first tithe),
Challah (the first portion of the dough) and dedications (CHEREM).

Verse 31 stating that the priests may not eat any part of "that which dies of itself
(NEVEILAH) or is torn (TEREIFAH), whether it is a bird or beast" could be taken to imply
that Israelites who are not priests WILL be permitted to eat NEVEILAH and TEREIFAH –
which would contradict the Torah. However, the true intent of the verse is to give a
specific warning about this to the priests since in the Temple their way of slaughtering
bird sacrifices is not with a knife (SHECHITAH) but with their thumb nail (MELIKAH),
which is TREIF to a non-Cohen, and they might wrongly infer that this entitles the
Cohanim to eat other kinds of TREIF as well (Menachos 45a). Let us not imagine we can
understand everything. "Rabbi Yochanan said: This parshah will be explained by Elijah
the Prophet" (ibid.).

* * * Ezekiel 44:15-31 is read as the Haftara of Parshas Emor (Leviticus 21:1-24:23),

which begins with the laws that apply uniquely to the priests. * * *

Chapter 45
"And when you divide the land by lot for inheritance…" (v 1). As Ezekiel's vision of the
"Final Settlement" moves towards its conclusion in these final chapters of his book, he
now begins to set forth the way in which the Land of Israel will be apportioned between
the Temple, the Priests, the Levites, the Nasi and the Twelve Tribes of Israelites at the
end of days.

The opening section in our present chapter (verses 1-7) deals with the Temple compound,
the territories of the Priests and Levites and those of the Nasi. Following this section, the
prophecy digresses to subjects mostly relating to the Temple services before returning to
the subject of the boundaries of the Land and its apportionment among the Twelve Tribes
from ch 47 v 13 to the end of the book.

In order to understand the situation of the territories of the Temple, Priests, Levites and
Nasi as described in our present chapter in relation to those of the other tribes, it is
necessary to grasp that the future boundaries of the Land of Israel will stretch "from the
river to the river", i.e. from the Nile to the Euphrates, as promised to Abraham (Gen.
15:18). This is clear from the section on the future boundaries of the Land in Ezekiel
47:13-20. Thus the northern boundary of the Land is on the Mediterranean coast way
north of the State of Israel's present-day northern border up in Turkey at HOR HAHAR by
the city of Antakya (=ancient Antioch) approximately 38 degrees N of the Equator. The
southern boundary of the Land will be at the western arm of the Nile near Port Said.

In Ezekiel Chapter 48 we will learn that this entire stretch of land is destined to be divided
into a series of thirteen equal strips running from east to west, one under the other from
north to south. Each strip will be 25,000 poles (= approximately 80 kilometers) "wide"
(i.e. from north to south), while its length (west-east) will be all the way from the western
boundary of the Land, i.e. the Mediterranean Sea, to the eastern boundary of the Land.
Out of these thirteen strips, the center strip just over midway from north to south – which
is the subject of verses 1-7 of our present chapter – will be for the Temple, the Priests and
Levites, the City of Jerusalem and the Nasi. Seven of the Twelve Tribes will take their
territories in the seven strips to the north of this central strip, while the other five Tribes
will take theirs in the five strips to the south, as will be set forth in Chapter 48 (see Rashi
on verse 1 of our present chapter).

"And when you divide the Land… you shall designate a portion (TERUMAH) to HaShem, a
holy area of the land: the length (i.e. east-west) shall be twenty-five thousand poles and
the breadth (north-south) shall be ten thousand" (verse 1). This TERUMAH of
approximately 80 x 30 kilometers is the choicest (holiest) part of the central strip and will
house the Temple itself in an area of 500 x 500 poles (=3000 x 3000 cubits), as set forth
in verses 2-3, while the remainder will provide areas for housing for the priests who will
minister in the Temple (v 4). South of this TERUMAH strip will be another strip of 25,000
x 10,000 poles providing areas for housing for the Levites (verse 5), and south of the
Levites' strip will be a third, narrower strip of 25,000 x 5,000 poles for the City of
Jerusalem, where Israelites will be able to have houses (verse 6, see Rashi). Thus the
TERUMAH strip of the Temple and priests together with the strips of the Levites and the
City of Jerusalem will make up a square of territory 25,000 x 25,000 poles in the center
of Israel (Rashi on v 6).

The remaining territories of the central strip from the western border of this square to the
Mediterranean and from its eastern border to the eastern border of the Land of Israel will
be given to the Nasi, the king or leader of the entire people (verse 7). His position will
evidently be hereditary (see Rambam, Laws of Kings 1:7) and his lands will be inherited
by his descendants (see Metzudas David on Ezekiel ch 46 v 16). By having his own lands
in perpetuity, there will be no need for the Nasi to exploit others or expropriate their lands,
and this will enable the corruption that characterized the kings of Israel and many of the
later kings of Judah (not to speak of Israel's present-day "leaders") to be eradicated
forever (verse 9).

Verses 10-12 lay down the future units of measurement of solids (the EIPHAH v 10) and
liquids (the BATH v 11) and of currency (v 12). For the eradication of corruption and
injustice also depends upon fair business dealings, whereas "double standards" bring on
Amalek. This is why the Torah commandment about fair weights and measures (Deut.
25:13-16) is followed immediately by the commandment to erase the memory of Amalek
forever (ibid. vv 17-19).

Verses 13-15 describe the tithes of wheat, barley, oil and lambs which the people will
offer in the Temple or for the consumption of the priests. The Nasi will have the
responsibility of providing the Temple animal, meal, oil and wine offerings on the festivals,
Sabbaths and new moons (v 17). Rashi comments on verse 17: "I say that NASI here
refers to the Cohen Gadol (High Priest) and that the same applies wherever the word
NASI appears in this subject, but I have heard in the name of Rabbi Menachem that it
refers to the king."

"Thus says HaShem: In the first month on the first day of the month you shall take a
young bullock…" (v 18). Rashi (ad loc.) states that this refers to the ox mentioned earlier
(Ez. 43:19) as the inaugural sin-offering in the Temple, and that we thus learn that the
inauguration of the Future Temple will take place on the first of the month of Nissan. This
supports the opinion of Rabbi Yehoshua that the future redemption will take place in
Nissan (see RaDaK on verse 18 of our present chapter).

Verses 21-25 deal with the festival sacrifices in the Temple. The resolution of certain
apparent discrepancies between our present text and the festival sacrifices as laid down
in Leviticus and Deuteronomy is discussed by Rashi on v 22-4.

Chapter 46
"The gate of the Inner Courtyard that looks eastwards shall be shut for the six working
days but on the Sabbath it shall be opened…" (v 1). This is the gate of the center
courtyard of the Temple. It will be closed during the week because neither the people nor
the Nasi will normally come to the Temple on weekdays but only on the Sabbaths and
New Moons (cf. Isaiah 66:23). For this reason the east gate will then be opened to enable
them to prostrate towards the opening of the Temple and the Holy of Holies (see
Metzudas David on v 1).

In the words of Ramchal: "The East Gate is a place of the most intense light and power,
and cannot be opened for the creatures of the lower worlds except on the Sabbath and
the New Moon. This is because it is in direct alignment with the Great Gate, the center
column, and must therefore be kept closed. It can only be opened for the Prince, namely
the Messianic King. Because of his great strength and paramount importance, this gate
will be open for him, but no-one else will be able to enter except on those two days… On
these days the Shechinah receives a very great light indeed from Tiferet . For this reason
this gate will be opened on these two days and the people will come to prostrate
themselves and share its great light" (Ramchal, Mishkney Elyon).

Verses 4-8 describe the offerings that the Nasi will bring on behalf of the people on the
Sabbaths, New Moons and festivals (see Rashi on vv 4 and 6).

Verses 9-10 describe how the people will enter and pass through the Temple precincts
when fulfilling the commandment to appear there on the festivals (Ex. 23:17). Normally
it is not permitted to take a "short cut" directly through the Temple or through a
synagogue, entering on one side and going out on the other (Berachos 62b). But here the
text explicitly instructs the people and the Nasi to enter from the north and exit from the
south, or vice versa, on the festivals.

In the words of Ramchal: "The obligation to appear in the Temple on festivals… has the
purpose of reconnecting the branches with their roots three times a year. The roots are
divided into two, one to the right and one to the left. The pilgrims [branches] must enter
by one gate, proceed across the Temple and leave by the opposite gate in order for all the
roots to be joined to one another and thus become interconnected and unified. When this
happens, it is said, 'And who is like your People Israel, one nation in the earth!' (II
Samuel 7:23; Ramchal Mishkney Elyon).

Verses 11-12 describe the festival and free-will offerings of the Nasi, while verses 13-15
give the details of the daily continual offering in the Temple.

Verses 16-18 revert to the subject of the rights of the Nasi over his designated territories,
which were described in the previous chapter (Ez. 45:7). The perpetual ownership of
these territories by the Nasi and his heirs will obviate the need for them to expropriate
the lands of the people and oppress them.

Verses 19ff seemingly somewhat abruptly revert to the subject of the form of the Future
Temple in a further continuation of Ezekiel's "virtual tour" around its precincts, except
that here, the focus is not so much on the structure of the buildings in question as on their
function in the Temple rituals. In verse 19 the prophet is again shown the three storey
chambers running parallel with the Temple building on its north (and south) sides which
he described in ch 14 vv 1-14. Here he is informed that the purpose of these chambers is
to provide a place for the priests to prepare (and eat) their holy of holies (KODSHEI
KODSHIM) sacrificial portions (v 20).

In the final stage of his "virtual tour" of the Temple before its astounding climax in the
next chapter, Ezekiel is shown four chambers in the four corners of the Outer Courtyard
corresponding to the four unroofed "chambers" in the four corners of the Ezras Nashim in
the First and Second Temples. The purpose of those in the Future Temple is somewhat
different: they will provide places for the priests and the people to consume their portions
of "light holy" sacrifices (KODSHIM KALIM), which have a lesser stringency than the
KODSHEI KODSHIM of the priests (see RaDaK on v 24).

* * * The passage in Ezekiel 45:16-46:18 is read as the Haftara on Shabbos Parshas

HaChodesh prior to or on Rosh Chodesh Nissan, when in addition to the weekly parshah
the section in Exodus 12:1-19 is also read * * *

Chapter 47
"AND A FOUNTAIN SHALL GO FORTH FROM THE HOUSE OF HASHEM"

Just like Ezekiel in our present chapter, the prophet Joel had already prophesied that at
the end of days, "a fountain shall go forth from the House of HaShem" (Joel 4:18).
Likewise the prophet Zechariah, a younger contemporary of Ezekiel's who according to
one opinion was his student, also prophesied in his vision of the war of Gog and Magog
that when the Mount of Olives splits, "it shall be on that day that living waters will go forth
from Jerusalem, half of them towards the eastern sea (Yam HaMelach, the "Dead" Sea)
and half of them towards the western sea (the Mediterranean)" (Zechariah 14:8; see
RaDaK ad loc.).

At the climactic conclusion of Ezekiel's "virtual tour" of the Future Temple, he is now
shown these living waters emerging from the under the threshold of the Temple. "First he
saw the water emerging from under the threshold of the House, which is in the middle of
the east side of the House, and afterwards the water turned southwards and went down
from the southern shoulder of the gate of the Sanctuary. It is possible that it was coming
out of the southern side-door of the gate, by which no man ever entered the House. The
water went down south of the Altar and flowed out of the Inner Courtyard and from there
out of the city" (RaDaK on v 1). The Talmudic rabbis taught that "this stream originated
in the Holy of Holies. At first it was as thin as the antenna of a locus. When it came to the
entrance of the Sanctuary it was the thickness of a weft thread. When it reached the gate
of the Vestibule it was as thick as a warp thread. When it came to the gate of the Inner
Courtyard it became as wide as the mouth of a small bottle…" (Yoma 77a).

The angel guiding Ezekiel takes him out of the north gate of the Inner Courtyard into the
Outer Courtyard, bringing him around to the outer gate of the east side to watch the
waters flowing out of the Temple precincts (v 2). By the time the angel went out and
measured a thousand cubits from the Temple wall (even the flow of the waters of
CHESSED is precisely measured with GEVURAH) the waters were already ankle-deep (v
3). By the time he measured another thousand cubits they were knee-deep (v 4), and
after measuring another thousand, they were up to his loins. Soon the waters became a
river so deep that it was dangerous to wade through and even to swim across would be
impossible (v 5).

In the short time between the angel's having brought Ezekiel out and his taking him back,
many trees had sprung up on both banks of the river.

"And he said to me, these waters are going out towards the eastern region and go down
into the Aravah, and on their entering the sea, the sea of issuing waters, the waters shall
be healed" (v 8). Our sages taught: "Where were the waters going? To the sea of Tiberius
(=the Aravah) and the sea of Sodom (Yam Hamelach, the first 'sea' in the verse) and to
the Great Sea (=the Mediterranean, the 'sea of issuing waters, from where they will go
out to the oceans of the world) to heal their salty waters and sweeten them" (Tosefta of
Succah 3:3).

Whereas previously these seas could not support many life forms because of their
saltiness, they will in future support an abundant diversity of fish because "when these
waters come there they will be healed and everything shall live wherever the river
comes" (v 9). According to tradition, the souls of Tzaddikim are incarnated in fish, who
will doubtless rejoice in swimming in the great sea of wisdom!

"But its miry places and its marshes shall not be healed…" – and why? Because "…they
shall be given for salt" (v 11; Rashi ad loc. See Ramchal quoted below).

The many wonderful fruit trees on the banks of this amazing river are reminiscent of all
the kinds of trees that were "pleasant to behold and good for food" which God caused to
sprout in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:9). Every month these trees will produce a new
harvest of ripe fruits (Rashi on v 12 of our present chapter). "The fruits will be for food
and the leaves for medicine (LI-TERUPHAH)" (v 12) – a medicine "to release the mouth
(LE-HATIR PEH) of the dumb, and to release the mouth of the barren women" (Sanhedrin
100a. LE-HATIR PEH, "to release the mouth", is a rearrangement of the letters of
LI-TERUPHAH in our verse. See Likutey Moharan I, 60).

In the words of the concluding passage of Ramchal's MISHKNEY ELYON on the form of the
Future Temple:

By the entrance to the Inner House is a small path where the sweetest waters flow. These
waters come from the innermost place of delight, a place of the most powerful Mercy
[ Rachamim ]. For that reason, as these waters come out, their direction of flow is to the
south [ Chesed ]. They then flow out of the Temple. Where to? This is explained in the
verse: "… And they will come into the sea, into the sea of the putrid waters, and the
waters shall be healed" (Ezekiel 47:8). For their mission is to heal all gatherings of water
from their saltiness by means of the tremendous mercy they contain. These waters are
not the same as the basic sustenance given to enable all things to subsist, but rather a
most precious light that shines from the Holy of Holies in order to temper the severity of
Gevurah in any place where it is strong. Even so, it says: "But its swamps and marshes
will not be healed; they will serve to supply salt" (ibid. v. 11) . For some Gevurah is
needed in the world, and this is the significance of the salt required with all sacrifices. For
this reason "they will serve to supply salt", and this is why some was left. If it were not so,
Mercy would spread out on every side and all the powers of Gevurah would disappear. In
the time of the Mashiach mercy will spread throughout the world, and all things will be
rectified and brought to perfection. All the lights will shine with a radiance unlike anything
ever known. Holiness will spread without bounds, and all the worlds will be filled with
serenity, bliss and joy, as it says: "This is the day that God made, we will rejoice and be
glad on it" (Psalms 118:24).

THE FUTURE BOUNDARIES OF THE LAND OF ISRAEL

Verses 13-20 trace the boundaries of the Land of Israel in the Final Settlement and
parallel and complement the description of the boundaries of the Land in Numbers
34:1-12. It should be noted that the boundaries of the Land of Israel given in both of
these texts are those of the Land of Canaan – the land of the seven Canaanite nations
west of the River Jordan that God gave to Israel – but do not include the territories of
Sichon king of the Emorites and Og king of Bashan east of the Jordan (the Gilead, the
Golan etc.), which already came into the possession of Israel in the time of Moses. Nor do
they include the territories of Moab, Ammon and Edom (all in the present-day state of
Jordan ), which are destined to come into Israel 's possession at the end of days in
accordance with God's promise to Abraham (Genesis 15:19 see Rashi ad loc. and Rashi
on verse 18 of our present chapter).

There are varying opinions about the identity of some of the locations marking the
boundaries as mentioned in our text. These opinions are set forth together with a
supporting map in the Talmudic Encyclopedia Vol 2 s.v. Eretz Israel. As discussed in the
KNOW YOUR BIBLE commentary on Ezekiel chapter 45, the western boundary of Israel is
the Mediterranean Sea, and the northwest boundary of the Land is marked by the great
mountain spur that comes down into the Mediterranean near the town of Antakya in what
is presently Turkey. From there the northern border runs eastwards until it turns south to
encompass large parts of present-day Syria , the whole of present-day Lebanon and all of
Israel west of the River Jordan. The southern end of the eastern boundary of the land is
marked by Tamar way south in Israel's Negev, from where the border turns westwards to
meet the Mediterranean at the western arm of Egypt's Nile River, or at the very least at
Wadi El Arish.

This is the land that is to be divided among the Twelve Tribes of Israel, as set forth in the
next chapter. Verses 22-23 state clearly that the righteous proselytes (GERIM) who have
entered the community of Israel will also receive their share of the Land for themselves
and their offspring in the territory of the tribe among whom they live.

Chapter 48
The section contained in verses 1-29 of the present chapter sets forth the location of the
tribal inheritances of the Twelve Tribes in the Final Settlement in relation to the TERUMAH
"tithe" of land in the center of the country that will be for the Temple, the Cohen-priests
and Levites, the City of Jerusalem and the Nasi.
As discussed in the KNOW YOUR BIBLE commentary on Ezekiel chapter 45, the entire
Land of Israel will be divided into a series of thirteen strips of territory each running from
the eastern boundary of the land to the west western boundary and each 25,000 poles
(appx. 80 kilometers) "wide" (i.e. from north to south). These strips will be arranged one
below the other from the northern border of the Land all the way down to its southern
border (see Rashi on verse 1 of our present chapter). In verses 1-8 we learn that seven
tribes will have their territories north of the TERUMAH area of the Temple, Priests, Levites.
City of Jerusalem and Nasi, which is the subject of verses 9-22. Then in verses 23-28 we
learn that the other five tribes will have their territories to the south of this area.

This division of the Land among the tribes in equal strips is radically different from its
division in the days of Joshua, when the size of each tribe's inheritance was related to the
size of its population, and in several cases a number of tribes took their inheritances side
by side in a row running from east to west, which meant that some tribes were in
mountainous territories with no access to the sea, while others were in valleys or
lowlands by the coast etc. In the words of the Talmudic sages: "Not like its division in this
world will be the division of the Land in the world to come. In this world a man who
possesses a field for land crops may not possess a fruit orchard while one who has a fruit
orchard may not have a field for land crops. But in the world to come there will be nobody
who does not have a share in the mountains, the lowlands and the valley, as it is written,
'the gate of Reuben, one; the gate of Judah, one; the gate of Levy, one…' (Ez. 48:31).
And the Holy One blessed be He himself will give them their portions, as it says, 'and
these are their portions says HaShem'" (Ez. 48:29; Bava Basra 122a).

There are also some noteworthy differences between the locations of some of the tribes
in the north (GEVURAH) and south (CHESSED) of the country in the division of the land
under Joshua and their locations in the Final Settlement. The first three tribes mentioned
in our text, who will take their portions in the three northernmost strips of the Land, are
Dan, Asher and Naphtali, all three of whom did indeed take their portions in the
northernmost part of the territories conquered in the days of Joshua. But whereas
Zevulun and Issachar took territories immediately to their south in the time of Joshua, in
the Future Settlement they will no longer be north of Jerusalem but south: they will take
the two strips immediately adjacent to that of the southernmost of all the tribes – Gad. In
place of Issachar and Zevulun in the north will be Menasheh and Ephraim. South of
Ephraim will be Reuben, who in the time of Joshua did not have any portion in the Land
of Israel west of the Jordan as the tribe of Reuben, together with Gad and half the tribe
of Menasheh, took their portion in the territories east of the Jordan conquered in the days
of Moses.

An interesting switch is that Judah, who originally took virtually the entire country SOUTH
of Jerusalem will in the future be immediately NORTH of the TERUMAH strip of the Temple,
Priests and Levites etc. while Benjamin, who was originally in the territories NORTH of
Jerusalem, will in the future be to its SOUTH. South of Benjamin will be the tribe of
Shimon, who did not even have their own territory in the time of Joshua but were
absorbed in the territory of Judah. This was because the tribe of Shimon had been under
a cloud since the time when Jacob cursed Shimon after he and Levy slew the men of
Shechem, and especially since the time of Moses, who did not even bless Shimon on
account of the prince of that tribe having flouted his authority by taking a Midianite
woman. The restoration of the tribe of Shimon in the Final Settlement signifies the
complete rectification of Israel in time to come.

Verses 9-14 demarcate the exact measurements of the TERUMAH of 25,000 x 25,000
poles of land and those of its constituent areas: (1) That of the priests – a strip of 25,000
x 10,000 poles running east-west with the Temple in the middle, vv 10-12. (2) That of the
Levites immediately to its south – likewise in a strip of 25,000 x 10,000 poles running
east-west, vv 13-14. (3) That of the City of Jerusalem, which was for Israelites from all
the tribes – a narrower strip of 25,000 x 5,000 poles containing the city itself, which will
be 4,500 x 4,500 poles surrounded on all four sides by open land 250 poles wide, i.e. a
square of 5,000 x 5,000 poles touching the boundaries of its strip on the north and south
sides, with two strips of 10,000 x 5,000 to its east and west providing lands for farming
and support for the people in the city, vv 15-19.

As stated above, these three areas make up a square of 25,000 x 25,000 poles, while the
areas from the eastern side of this square to the eastern boundary of Israel and from its
western side to the sea will be for the Nasi, v 21.

"AND THESE ARE THE EXITS OF THE CITY…"

The closing section of Ezekiel's prophecy (vv 30-35) describes the Twelve Gates of the
City corresponding to the Twelve Sons of Jacob. The tribe of Levites (of which the
Cohen-priests are a part) are not included in the apportionment of the Land of Israel
among the Twelve Tribes as they will have their own areas in the TERUMAH territory. In
the absence of the tribe of Levy from the apportionment of the Land, Joseph's sons
Menasheh and Ephraim both attained the status of full tribes, as indicated in Ezekiel
47:13, in order to make up the tally of twelve.

But in taking their places at the twelve gates of the Holy City, three on each of its four
sides, the twelve sons of Jacob are all equal. The "bed" and resting place of Jacob, perfect
of the fathers – the Holy Temple – is at last complete, and each of his twelve sons has his
own unique gate of ascent, prayer and devotion as part of the overall unity.

Everything is peace and perfection – complete TIKKUN, repair and rectification. "And the
name of the city from that day shall be: HaShem is there" (v 35).

And may it be the will of our Father in Heaven to quickly bring about His redemption in
kindness and mercy, "And the city will be built on its hill and the palace will sit in its
appointed place" (Jeremiah 30:18) speedily in our days. Amen!
 Book of Daniel
Chapter 1
There could be few better introductions to the book of Daniel than the opening
words of R. Avraham Ibn Ezra's commentary thereon: "This is the book of the man
greatly beloved, in which the most glorious of things are spoken, with prophecies
some of which have already come about and others that are still destined to come
about. Each thing is expressed with brevity in mysteries and riddles, while its
secrets reside with the angels above – secrets that stand upon all the foundational
elements – and its commentators have not succeeded in penetrating its secret.
Each one explains as far as his hand reaches, but the feet of all of them are
unsteady when it comes to the time of the destined end…"

The rabbis said: "If all the wise men of the nations of the world were on one side of
the scale and Daniel on the other, he would outweigh them all" (Yoma 77a). Daniel
himself was considered not a PROPHET (NAVEE) but a wise and saintly SAGE
(HACHAM), yet he saw what even the prophets did not see" (Sanhedrin 93b; see
Daniel 10:7).

From the point of view of historical narrative, the book of Daniel takes up the story
of the exile of Judah in Babylon from time of the first phase of the exile, which took
place under King Yeho-yakim, as told in II Kings ch 24. This was eighteen years
before the destruction of the Temple and, together with the exile of Yeho-yakim's
son Yeho-yachin a year later, brought to Babylon the very flower of the Judean
population, including all those righteous Judeans who heeded the message of the
prophets of the time and accepted the decree of exile with resignation instead of
trying to fight it.

Nebuchadnezzar was a ruthless but highly complex and very deep world ruler who
was determined to use the minds and intellects of the very cream of the captive
Judeans to serve his needs in governing and expanding his empire. "Because you
did not serve HaShem your God… you shall serve your enemies" (Deut. 28:47). "If
you had been worthy, you would have been called My servants, but now that you
have not been worthy, you are servants of Nebuchadnezzar and his companions"
(Yalkut Shimoni).

Nebuchadnezzar ordered his chief minister to choose an elite of good-looking,

super-intelligent and wise Judean children who would be well fed and specially
educated for service in his court. One of the requirements was that "they must
have the ability to stand in the palace of the king" (v 4). The Talmud picturesquely
explains this to mean that they would have to be able to control themselves so as
not to laugh, chat or fall asleep during lengthy court sessions as well as holding
themselves in if they felt the need to relieve themselves (Rashi ad loc., Sanhedrin
93b).

Daniel was determined not to defile and sully himself with the royal food that was
provided for these privileged Judean captive children, exemplifying the very first
rule of Jewish spiritual survival in exile: METICULOUS OBSERVANCE OF THE LAWS
OF KASHRUS (spiritual purity of food). Daniel and his companions understood that
the food we ingest nourishes not only our physical bodies but fuels and influences
our very minds and souls. They knew that ingesting the royal food, whose
ingredients and methods of preparation went contrary to Torah law, would corrupt
their subtlest spiritual sensitivities and indeed their entire outlook on everything,
destroying their Jewish purity. With a courage comparable to that of Joseph in his
years of captivity in Egypt, they secured the agreement of the king's catering
officer to test them out on a diet of vegetables and water for ten days in what must
have been one of the first macrobiotic experiments in history. They had astounding
success, proving healthier than all the other children who did eat the king's food.

When Daniel and his companions were finally taken before Nebuchadnezzar, they
brought about a great sanctification of the Name of God even in exile, showing that
it was precisely the Torah-observant Jewish captives who outweighed all the sages,
wizards and diviners of the Babylonian empire.

The closing verse of our present chapter (v 21) which tells us that Daniel remained
in a position of influence until "the first year of King Koresh (=Cyrus)", is open to a
variety of interpretations (see Rashi ad loc.) Some rabbis held that Daniel retained
his influence only until the reign of Koresh I, who ruled before Ahashverosh, while
others held that he remained until the reign of Koresh II (=Darius II) who ruled
after Ahashverosh (Megillah 15a). The chronology of the empires that succeeded
that of Babylon will be discussed in later commentaries.

Chapter 2
Although the dream of Nebuchadnezzar is dated in our text as having taken place in
"the second year of the reign (MALCHUS, kingship) of Nebuchadnezzar…" (v 1),
Rashi (ad loc.) points out that this cannot be taken literally since Daniel was not yet
in Bablyon. What the text means is that this was in the second year after the
destruction of the Temple, for then Nebuchadnezzar attained the height of temporal,
unholy MALCHUS when he displayed his brazen arrogance in entering into the
Sanctuary of the King of the Universe.

After his dream, "his spirit was troubled", VATITH-PA'EM RUHO. Nebuchadnezzar's
dream is compared to Pharaoh's dream of the seven cows and seven ears of corn,
except that in Pharaoh's case, it says VATI-PA'EM RUHO (Gen. 41:8), whereas in
the case of Nebuchadnezzar the grammatical form of the Hebrew verb is the
"doubled" HITPA'EL – VATI TH -PA'EM implying double trouble, because on waking
up, Pharaoh forgot the interpretation but did remember the dream, whereas
Nebuchadnezzar forgot both the interpretation AND THE DREAM ITSELF.

Metzudas David on verse 2 explains that the HARTOUMIM that Nebuchadnezzar

summoned to tell him what he had dreamed and what it meant were experts in
natural sciences and psychological explanations of dreams while the ASHAPHIM
were medical doctors who understood how bodily changes are reflected in the pulse,
urine etc. The MECHASHPHIM were astrologers who used the positions of planets
etc. in interpreting various phenomena including dreams, while the KASDIM were
experts in the constellations and could understand a person's destiny by knowing
the hour at which he was born. Rashi (on Daniel 1:20) says the HARTOUMIM used
to use human bones for divination.

In response to Nebuchadnezzar's outlandish demand to be told the very dream that

he himself had forgotten, the KASDIM, who had the reputation for being the most
deeply immersed in the occult arts as well as the cruellest, switched into speaking
Aramaic – the lingua franca of Mesopotamia and Syria – so that everyone present
should be able to understand and see how ridiculous the king's demand was in
order to shame him into backtracking. Much of the rest of the book of Daniel is
written in the same courtly Aramaic, with its very stately cadences and a style
somewhat more ornate than the classic chiseled simplicity of biblical Hebrew.

The KASDIM explained to the king that he was asking for something far too weighty
"and there is no one else (AHARAN) who can tell the king except the gods, whose
dwelling is not with flesh" (v 11). The Midrash states that (by reading the letter HET
of AHARAN as a HEH) the KASDIM were saying that "there is no AHARON" – i.e. the
only person who could have told the king his dream would have been AHARON the
High Priest – i.e. the High Priest of the destroyed Temple in Jerusalem, who could
have consulted the URIM VE-THUMIM. Nebuchadnezzar was enraged because those
same KASDIM had advised him to destroy the Temple, and this is why he now
ordered them all to be killed (Rashi on v 11).

The decree extended to all the wise men in Babylon, including Daniel and his
companions Hananiyah, Misha'el and Azariah, but through the power of their
sanctity and prayer and Daniel's exalted holiness, God revealed the secret of the
dream to him. Like Joseph when he explained to Pharaoh the meaning of his dream,
Daniel emphasized to Nebuchadnezzar that God alone had the power to reveal the
dream and its meaning to him – as if Daniel himself were a mere channel (v 27):
Daniel's whole purpose was to SANCTIFY THE NAME OF GOD.

With the collapse of the Davidic kingdom of holiness as a temporal world power, the
MALCHUS had fallen to the KELIPOS ("husks"), of which – after Pharaoh king of
Egypt – Nebuchadnezzar was the golden HEAD. Thus in the second year after the
destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar in his dream
envisaged HIMSELF and all that would come after him until the end of time as the
unholy MALCHUS worked its way through to the end of its internal logic, leading
eventually to its own destruction by the MALCHUS of MASHIACH (the stone that
smashes the statue).

We are blessed to have very great rabbinic commentators on the book of Daniel.
Besides Rashi and Metzudas David, the standard classical commentators, we also
have the outstanding commentary of RABENU SA'ADIA GAON (892-942, Egypt and
Israel) and that of R. Avraham IBN EZRA, both of which provide crucial insights into
the meaning of the imagery in Daniel's visions.

All the commentators are agreed that the golden head of the statue is
Nebuchadnezzar while the silver chest and arms are the empires of Medea and
Persia that followed (as we will read later on in Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah and also
in Esther). All are agreed that the bronze belly and thighs allude to the Greek
empire that started with the conquests of Alexander of Macedon. R. Sa'adia Gaon
states that some commentators identified the iron legs exclusively with Aram (=
Edom , Rome ), but he takes issue with this as it leaves no room for the empire of
Ishmael. He himself endorses the view that the fourth kingdom is divided between
Aram (iron) and Ishmael (clay). As to their being "iron mixed with miry clay, they
shall mingle themselves with the seed of men": this signifies that Jewish seed will
be mixed in with these peoples as will the seed of many other peoples living with
them – except that they will not be truly attached to one another just as iron and
clay don't hold together.

[We can see aspects of this end-of-time prediction in today's kind-of alliance
between Britain-U.S.A. and Saudi Arabia etc. The degree of intermingling of Jewish
seed in many nations can be gauged from today's rates of intermarriage and
assimilation.]
All the commentators are agreed that the stone that smashes the statue (v 34-5) –
which Daniel explains as the MALCHUS that will never ever be destroyed – is the
MALCHUS of Melech HaMashiach that we are awaiting soon in our times.

On hearing Daniel tell him his dream and its meaning, both of which
Nebuchadnezzar knew but had forgotten, the king fell down to worship him like a
god – but Daniel refused to be treated as a god and did not accept the king's gifts,
because Daniel knew that God exacts retribution not only from idol worshippers but
also from the gods they worship (Bereishis Rabbah 96).

Chapter 3
Having heard Daniel's interpretation of his dream – that the empires of the nations
would be destroyed while the kingdom of Israel would endure – Nebuchadnezzar
was determined to make Israel stumble and find a way to destroy them, and this
was why he immediately built his golden idol (R. Sa'adiah Gaon). ARI explains that
the idol was SIXTY CUBITS HIGH corresponding to the six main Sefiros of Chessed-
Gevurah-Tiferes-Netzach-Hod-Yesod, each of which is composed of all ten Sefiros
(6 x 10=60). Nebuchadnezzar sought to turn the Kindness of Zeir Anpin into severe
Judgment (Sefer HaLikutim, Daniel).

It is said that he chose to erect his idol in the Valley of Doura (v 1) because this
was where Adam's buttocks were formed. R. Saadia Gaon states that the Valley
was full of the bones of Israelite exiles from the tribe of Ephraim who had been
slain by the KASDIM, and the king wanted to frighten all his subjects into
submission. In revenge for Nebuchadnezzar's brazen arrogance, God commanded
Ezekiel to bring the dry bones back to life in this same Valley of Doura (Sanhedrin
92b).

It seems as if Nebuchadnezzar wanted to establish a new world religion, which

would explain why he brought together such an huge array of officials and
representatives of so many different lands (v 2). For the jubilant inauguration of his
idol he assembled an enormous symphony orchestra: the list of the many different
kinds of instruments includes many that had formerly been played in the Temple in
Jerusalem.

The Chaldean slanderers who denounced Daniel's three companions, Hananiya

(Shadrakh), Misha'el (Meishakh) and Azaria (Abad-nego), to Nebuchadnezzar were
jealous of the fact that at Daniel's request they had been appointed to supervise all
the royal ministers (Daniel 2:49).

When Nebuchadnezzar threatened the three with burning in his furnace and
arrogantly asked them, "Which god will save you from my hands?" (v 15), they
replied without hesitation that the God they served had the power to save them,
and that even if He did not – for they did not rely on their own merits or on
miracles – they would still not worship Nebuchadnezzar's idol. In other words they
were ready to sacrifice themselves even without being saved.

In the words of the Midrash, the three companions told Nebuchadnezzar: "When it
comes to all the various taxes you impose on us you are king, but if you are telling
us to worship idols, you and a dog are just the same and you are no king" (Yalkut
Shimoni). It was this that enraged the king (v 19) causing him to have the furnace
stoked sevenfold… The fourth figure that Nebuchadnezzar saw walking unscathed
through the fire was the angel Gabriel, "who was following after the three
companions like a student after his teacher, to teach you that the Tzaddikim are
greater than the ministering angels! When Nebuchadnezzar saw the angel Gabriel,
he immediately recognized him and all his limbs quaked and trembled. He said,
This is the angel I saw in Sennacherib's war, and he appeared like a river of fire
that burned up his entire camp" (Yalkut Shimoni).

Nebuchadnezzar's recognition of the saving power of HaShem was a great

SANCTIFICATION OF HIS NAME during the very exile of Israel – and as we see from
vv 31ff, Nebuchadnezzar wrote a letter to all the people's of his empire praising the
supreme God. A number of the beautiful Aramaic phrases from this letter are
woven into the Shabbos table song KAH RIBON found in most Siddurs and
collections of Shabbos Zemiros.

Chapter 4
In order to interpret yet another of his mysterious and terrifying dreams,
Nebuchadnezzar felt obliged to turn again to Daniel, "…because I know that the
spirit of the Holy God is with you and no secret is withheld from you" (v 6).

The essential moral of the dream is that man's pride – a trait associated with
human MALCHUS, kingship, government, power – is an affront to God, Who brings
down and humbles the mighty in order to teach them that everything they have is
only His gift.

Nebuchadnezzar had ascended to the greatest heights as a conqueror and ruler of a

world empire. He had built up Babylon as an enormous metropolis whose
magnificent buildings were the very wonder of the world. But he said in his heart,
"My power and the strength of my hand has made for me all this might" (Deut.
8:17). He had to learn the same lesson that we all have to learn: that no matter
what we may have achieved, whether materially or spiritually, there is no place for
vanity and arrogance because everything we have has been given to us by God not
because of our own intrinsic worth or merit but only through His kindness and
compassion.

The great tree in Nebuchadnezzar's dream with its beautiful branches and abundant
fruit providing food for all, shade for all the animals and branches for all the birds,
was none other than the king himself, who is the PARNASS – provider of livelihood
and sustenance for all. Thus MALCHUS is called the PARNASS, source of
PARNASSAH.

It was Rabbi Nachman of Breslov who revealed that the angel that came to cut
down Nebuchadnezzar's mighty MALCHUS and teach him the lesson of his life was a
manifestation of the soul and spirit of RASHBI – Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, author of
the outstanding kabbalistic treasure, the holy Zohar. In verse 10, "a watcher and a
holy one came down from heaven", the initial letters of the Hebrew words, E-ER V-
KADEESH M-IN SH-EMAYA NA-HEES, are an anagram of the name Shim'on (Preface
to Likutey Moharan Part I).

To teach Nebuchadnezzar his lesson and humble his arrogant heart, he was to be
literally cast down from his kingship and transformed into a beast living wild with
the animals eating grass and moistened with dew. Stripped of his human intellect
and sensibilities, he would have the heart of a beast for seven years.

The decree against Nebuchadnezzar is reminiscent of the similar decree against his
counterpart on the side of holiness, King Solomon, who was tricked by Ashmodai
("Asmodeus") king of the demons into giving him his protective ring, after which
the demon king banished Solomon from his kingdom forcing him to wander for
years until he was restored (Targum and Rashi on Ecclesiastes 1:12; Sanhedrin
20b).

King Solomon recorded the moral of what he learned about the world during his
period of humiliating banishment in the last work of his life, Ecclesiastes. Daniel
spelled out the essential lesson that Nebuchadnezzar was to learn from his
banishment here in our chapter, v 22: "You will be driven from men and your
dwelling will be with the beasts of the field… until you know that the Supreme God
rules over the kingdom of men and that He gives it to whoever He pleases".

Ordinary citizens like ourselves should also learn from this that it is God who has
appointed all of the world leaders of today, and He alone decides whom to raise up
and whom to bring down. Instead of complaining about our "leaders" we should ask
what we can do to improve things in the realm where we have influence: the
spiritual realm.

Each one should also take to heart the existential message of this chapter to all
men – for there comes a time when each one of us must meet our end, and the
body goes back to the earth from which it came and the soul returns to her Maker.

Having interpreted Nebuchadnezzar's dream, Daniel advised him to redeem his sins
with charity. The rabbis taught that Daniel was punished for advising the wicked
Nebuchadnezzar how to save himself, because "Charity elevates a People (= Israel),
but the kindness of the nations is a sin" (Proverbs 14:34). "All the kindness that the
idolatrous nations perform is accounted to them as a sin because they do it only in
order for their power to endure" (Bava Basra 10b). Some say Daniel's penalty was
to be thrown into the lions den, while others say that Daniel is identical with
Hathakh (Esther 4:6 & 9) who was killed by Haman (Bava Basra 4a).

For a whole year Nebuchadnezzar gave charity to support the exiles from Judea,
who had been reduced to begging (Rashi on v 24) but one time he heard the noise
of the crowds of poor people he had agreed to support and he regretted not having
used the money to embellish Babylon even more grandiosely. He decided to stop
giving charity (Rashi on v 25), and: "At the end of twelve months he was walking in
the palace… and said, Is this not great Babylon that I have built up by the might of
my power…" (v 27). No sooner had the words left his mouth than the decree as
foretold in his dream was fulfilled exactly as Daniel had interpreted it, and
Nebuchadnezzar was banished from his kingdom until he learned the truth.

Chapter 5
According to the dating system of Midrash Seder Olam, Nebuchadnezzar had come
to power in Babylon in 3319 (-441 B.C.E.) and ruled for 45 years until his death in
3364 (396 B.C.E.). He was succeeded by his son Eveel Merodakh, who ruled for 23
years, after which Belshazzar, Nebuchadnezzar's second son (Rashi on v 1), ruled
for two years until 3389 (371 B.C.E.) It was in that year that Darius king of Medea
fought against Belshazzar, killed him and captured Babylon, as recorded in the
closing verse of our present chapter (v 30). Thus Babylon ruled for a total of 70
years.

Rashi (on verse 1) says, "We find in Josephus that Belshazzar fought against Darius
the Mede and Cyrus (Darius' son-in-law) by day and conquered them in battle, and
in the evening he made his great feast, and it was during the meal that his enemies
returned and fought against the city and conquered it."
Nebuchadnezzar may have learned God's lesson, but he failed to teach it to his son
Belshazzar, who at the height of his drunken jubilation over his imagined victory
ordered the gold and silver vessels that Nebuchadnezzar had looted from the Holy
Temple in Jerusalem to be brought out for use in his idolatrous feast.

THE ORIGINAL WRITING ON THE WALL

The mysterious message of doom that appeared on the walls of Belshazzar's palace
at the height of the banquet was inscribed by the fingers of a frightening human-
looking hologram of a hand. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 21b-22a) brings a variety of
opinions about why neither the king nor any of the Chaldean sages, wizards,
astrologers, necromancers or other diviners could decipher the writing. One is that
the script in which the Torah scroll was written changed in the days of Ezra (which
were now beginning with the demise of Babylon) and no-one knew the new script.
Other opinions hold that in any case the message was written in the ATBASH cipher
(where Aleph is replaced with Tav, Beit with Shin, etc.).

It would appear that since the death of Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel had been relegated
to a position of lesser influence, but now while everybody panicked, the Queen
(Mother?) suddenly remembered the divinely-gifted grace-crowned Daniel, who was
summoned to foretell the imminent first stage in the collapse of Nebuchadnezzar's
dream-image of gold, silver, copper, iron and clay as he had originally interpreted it
(Chapter 2) – the fall of the golden head, Babylon.

Daniel rejected the gifts of purple robes, gold chains and rule over one third of the
empire that Belshazzar offered him in return for deciphering the message. Daniel
did everything not for gain but only LI-SHMOH, in order to sanctify the Name of
God. Despite the fact that in speaking to Belshazzar he knew he was addressing
another world autocrat no less arrogant and ruthless than his father, Daniel did not
shrink from delivering his message of reproof and doom. After reminding
Belshazzar of the forgotten lesson learned by Nebuchadnezzar, he says, "You his
son Belshazzar… have not humbled your heart…" (v 22). "You took the Temple
vessels and used them to praise gods of silver and gold, copper, iron, wood and
stone that do not see or hear or know anything, but you gave no honor to God, in
Whose hands are your soul and all your ways" (v 23).

Each generation has to learn the same lesson again. The days of Babylonian
supremacy had been numbered and were now complete. Belshazzar had been
weighed in the scales and found wanting, and the Babylonian empire therefore
broke in pieces as the ascendant star of Medea rose over the world.

Chapter 6
Darius the Mede conquered Babylon in 3389 (371 B.C.E.) and thus the center of
power moved northeast across from Babylon to the Medean capital of Ahmatha
(present-day Hamadan in western Iran approximately midway between the Caspian
Sea and the Persian Gulf). Darius ruled for only one year before he was killed, after
which the center of power moved again, this time to neighboring Persia, with its
capital in Persopolis (near present-day Shiraz in south west Iran).

Our text (v 1) notes that Darius was sixty-two when he took power, from which we
may learn that he was born in the same year that Nebuchadnezzar took King Yeho-
yachin of Judah into exile in Babylon: thus at the very moment that
Nebuchadnezzar was building his empire, God had already prepared its nemesis!
(Rashi ad loc.)
Darius was another world emperor, although apparently somewhat mellower than
the cruel, ruthless tyrants who preceded him. Our present chapter gives us
something of a feel for the extensive governmental apparatus of satraps and
presidents that was necessary to rule over this patchwork empire consisting of
peoples of so many different cultures and languages.

Daniel, who had foretold the downfall of Belshazzar's Babylon at the hands of
Darius and who immediately became the latter's favorite advisor, was appointed to
supervise the entire apparatus, being placed above all the satraps and their
presidents – which caused intense jealousy on their part. It is a sign of the balance
of power that prevailed in Darius' regime that the satraps and presidents were not
only capable of getting their own legislation passed (vv 8-10) but could even force
the king to keep to their laws against his will (v 16).

Having failed to find anything incriminating in Daniel's personal conduct, these

prototypical anti-Semites decided to catch him out on religious grounds by
instituting a new personality-cult religion based on emperor worship that predated
Roman emperor worship and Christianity by about four hundred years. The satraps
and presidents of Medea legislated a new political correctness that forbade anybody
to pray to any other god except the emperor.

Quite unfazed, Daniel continued the life of prayer that he had always followed both
in his childhood in Jerusalem and ever since he went into exile. Three times a day
he would face in the direction of the place of the Temple in Jerusalem, kneeling
down to bless, pray and give thanks to God through open windows (v 12). This text
is one of the main biblical sources of the laws of prayer (Berachos 31a) including
the law that a synagogue should have windows (preferably twelve).

After Daniel was caught praying to the true God and thereby contravening the new
law of Persia and Medea that gave the emperor a monopoly on receiving worship,
even King Darius was unable to rescue his wise and beloved favorite from being
thrown into the lions' den. Beside himself with worry, Darius could not bring himself
to eat or sleep and rose with the first light of morning full of foreboding – only to
find that Daniel was alive and well, sitting among the peaceful, entranced lions,
whose mouths had been closed by God's angel (v 23).

This miracle was another tremendous SANCTIFICATION OF GOD'S NAME that lives
on in a story that has been told and retold from generation to generation. The
righteous were redeemed while the wicked slanderers who tried to denounce Daniel
got their just deserts and suffered the very penalty they tried to inflict on him,
being torn to pieces by the lions. [Compare Rabbi Nachman's story of Kaptzin Pasha
at http://www.azamra.org/Essential/kaptzin.htm ]

It is a sign of the enlightened atmosphere that prevailed thereafter under Darius

(as under Cyrus of Persia, who followed him) that Darius wrote to all the provinces
of his empire telling everyone to revere the God of Daniel, Who "delivers and
rescues and works signs and wonders in heaven and in earth…" (v 28).

Chapter 7
"There is no before and after in the Torah". The dreams of Daniel recounted in the
present chapter are dated to "the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon" (v 1)
which was prior to his overthrow by Darius the Mede who was the central character
in the previous chapter.
Daniel is not considered as one of the prophets, yet his dreams and visions reach to
the most sublime heights of the universe. The present vision beginning with the
four winds churning up the great sea (=Binah, the Sea of Wisdom comprising the
50 – YaM – Gates of Understanding) encompasses the entire sweep of world history
from the ascendancy of Babylon until the end of time and the rule of Melekh Ha-
Mashiah.

A single stone lion is all that remains today in the ruins of ancient Babylon in Iraq
to testify to the lost glory of that fallen empire. Many similar carved images of all
kinds of fearsome beasts must have adorned the Babylonian capital in its heyday,
and these would have helped make the imagery in Daniel's account of his dream of
monsters even more real and graphic in the minds of those who heard them in his
time and afterwards.

Rashi on verse 4 brings proof texts from Jeremiah 4:7 and 48:40 associating the
first monster – the lion with eagle's wings – with the empire of Babylon itself, which
in the time of Belshazzar was just about to have its wings clipped and get cut down
to size.

The second monster, in the form of a bear, is associated with Persia – then in the
ascendant – since "the Persians eat and drink like a bear and are wrapped in a thick
coat of flesh like a bear" (Rashi on v 5). The three ribs in its mouth correspond to
the three kings of Persia, Cyrus, Ahashverosh and Darius the Persian (Rashi).

The leopard (v 6) is associated with Greece, and its four wings correspond to the
four kingdoms into which the Greek empire split after the death of Alexander of
Macedon. The Greeks were compared to a leopard because they imposed a
succession of evil decrees against the Jews that were like a leopard's spots, each
one strange and different from the others (Rashi).

Daniel's vision of the fourth monster came in a separate dream on its own (v 7)
because it was more powerful than the three that preceded it (Rashi ad loc.). Rashi
and R. Saadia Gaon agree that the fourth monster alludes to Aram (=Edom, Rome)
and that its ten horns correspond to the ten emperors up until Vespasian, in whose
time the Second Temple was destroyed. Where these two commentators differ is on
the identification of the little horn that came up among the others, which had "eyes
like the eyes of a man and a mouth speaking great things" (v 8). Rashi identifies
this with the ranting Titus, who entered the Temple Sanctuary in Jerusalem with a
harlot before desecrating and destroying it. Rashi does not mention the empire of
Ishmael (which is less than surprising when we consider that he was living in
eleventh century France-Germany in what was part of the well-entrenched "Holy
Roman Empire "). On the other hand, R. Saadiah Gaon – who lived a century earlier
in Egypt and Israel and could witness the rise of Islam from close at hand –
identifies the eleventh horn with Ishmael. In R. Saadiah's commentary on
Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the statue of gold, silver, bronze, iron and clay (Daniel
2:40ff), he discusses in detail the complex interrelationship between Aram and
Ishmael and their respective spheres of influence (see also Ibn Ezra on Daniel
2:39). Rambam (Letters) identifies the "mouth speaking great things" with the
founder of Islam.

"As I looked, thrones were placed and the Ancient of Days sat…" (v 9). The
depiction of the heavenly court sitting in judgment over the world is the source of
many kabbalistic teachings about God's providence, including the name given in the
Zohar to the divine PARTZUF ("persona") of Arich Anpin, ATIK YOMIN ("the Ancient
of Days"). His "garb like white snow" and "the hair of His head like clean wool"
(ibid.) allude to the attributes of loving kindness and compassion that characterize
the Partzuf of Arich Anpin.

One by one the successive monsters were cast aside, until the fourth was destroyed
and burned up by fire. Their lives were prolonged only "for a season and a time" (v
12) until "one like a son of man came with the clouds of heaven and came to the
Ancient of Days…" (v13). All the commentators agree that the "son of man" is
Mashiah (note that he is NOT called the "son of God"), who will receive "dominion
and glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations and tongues should serve
him – an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and a kingdom that shall
not be destroyed" (v 14).

"I came to one of them that stood by" (v 16): it was to an "angel" (=intelligent
celestial being) that Daniel turned for an explanation of the vision. The angel told
Daniel that in the end the kingdom will be inherited by KADISHEY ELYON, the "holy
ones of the Most High" (v 18) – these are the restored, rectified saints of Israel.

As to when this will happen, our text is of course famously cryptic. Speaking to
Daniel 2,300 years ago, the angel revealed that the eleventh horn would inflict
many painful decrees and chastisements upon Israel "for a season and seasons and
half a season" (v 25). Anyone who wants to speculate on how long this may be is
welcome to do so, but those who believe with simple faith will take on trust the
words of R. Saadia Gaon (ad loc.): "All the sages and commentators, including
those with genuine Torah knowledge, have found no way to unlock and understand
this calculation, and no one knows the secret except God, as it is written, 'For the
day of vengeance is in my heart' (Isaiah 63:4). If the heart has not revealed it to
the mouth, how would the mouth reveal it to a mere angel? We simply have to wait
and hope until He will have mercy on his people and His city. Amen."

Chapter 8
The text now reverts from Aramaic to Hebrew for the remainder of the book of
Daniel. Chapters 2-7, which were in Aramaic, the lingua franca of the Babylonian
and Persian Empires, speak of Daniel's interactions with their rulers and the
profound universal lessons they had to learn about how God deals with man
"measure for measure". In the coming chapters the lessons are directed more
specifically to Israel yearning for the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and they contain a
deep PNIMIUS (interiority) that Hebrew is uniquely fit to express.

Daniel records the graphic external images of his visions, and then tells how angels
come to him to interpret and explain them, thereby bringing him to the level of
BINAH. We in turn must rely on R. Saadia Gaon, Rashi and the other great
commentators who have come down to us to explain Daniel's visions.

The vision in our present chapter is dated to the third year of Belshazzar, the last
king of Babylon. His empire was on the verge of collapse, and we find Daniel in
Shushan, which is located in what is now western Iran between Hamadan and
Shiraz: it had been the capital of Eilam and now became the main center of the
Persian empire.

This vision is the second in a series (v 1) the first of which was in the previous
chapter (7). The imagery of these visions is in each case different, but the
NIMSHAL – the object of the comparison – is the ultimately one: the great sweep of
history until the "end of days".
In his vision, Daniel saw himself standing by OOVAL OOLOI, which some render as
the River OOLOI, although R. Saadia says there is no river in Shushan and that this
was the mighty gate of the city. OOLOI would then be related to the word EIL,
"mighty one" – and this in turn is related to the word AYIL, a "ram", one of the
creatures Daniel saw, representing the rising star of Persia. [One might add that
the Hebrew word OOLAY means "perhaps" – i.e. PERHAPS our interpretations are
hopefully not too wide of the mark.]

The classical commentators agree that the larger and smaller horns of the ram (v
3) allude respectively to Persia, the greater power, and Medea, the lesser power.
Thus under Queen Esther's Ahashverosh, Persia extended "from India to Africa ",
while Darius the Mede ruled for only one year before giving over the kingship to his
son-in-law, Cyrus of Persia (father of Esther's Ahashverosh).

The goat alludes to Greece. The horn signifies Alexander of Macedon, who defeated
Darius of Persia, who was Esther's son. Yet Alexander died at the very height of his
power, and his kingdom split into four (v 8).

"And out of one of them came a little horn that became exceedingly great" (v 9).
Rashi interprets this horn as alluding to Titus, and he takes the phrase in verse 10
– "And it grew great, even to the host of heaven…" – to refer to his destruction of
the Second Temple. On the other hand, R. Saadia Gaon sees this horn as an
allusion to the empire of Ishmael (Islam) which took the land of beauty (v 9,
=Israel) from the Romans.

"And for an appointed time it was flagrantly set against the daily sacrifice, and it
cast down the truth to the ground…" (v 12). Rashi (ad loc.) says this means that
idolatry would be established in Jerusalem instead of the daily Temple offerings.

It is when the focus of the vision moves to Jerusalem, the heart of the world
(BINAH), that Daniel hears a celestial conversation between the angels asking "How
long shall be the vision… to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden
under foot" (v 13). As to the calculation of how long this will be as given in verse
14, Rashi (ad loc.) comments: "The seer was commanded to close up and seal the
matter, and even to him it was revealed in a language that is closed up and sealed,
and we shall wait in hope for the fulfillment of the promise of our King, even if one
'end' after another passes by…"

The angel Gabriel is sent to explain the vision to Daniel – yet the explanation itself
is so beyond him that he falls into a slumber until the angel touches him and brings
him to his feet (v 18). Gabriel teaches "what will be in the latter end of the
indignation, for it is at the end of a long time" (v 19). Rashi explains the "king of
fierce countenance" mentioned in v 23 as referring to Titus, who destroyed the
Second Temple, but R. Saadia Gaon explains this as a reference to the kingship of
Ishmael. (R. Saadia also gives an alternative explanation relating the entire vision
primarily to the struggle between Persia and Greece.)

We should remember that at the time of Daniel's vision the destruction of the
Second Temple was over 450 years in the future and it was no mean feat to foretell
how it would come about. At the same time, the vision is multi-layered, and just as
history goes around in cycles, so the imagery can allude to multiple levels all at
once.
 Chapter 9
Very soon after his vision in the previous chapter, Daniel "pondered in the books
the number of the years…" (v 2). This was in the first (and only) year of the reign
of Darius son of Ahashverosh the Mede. (This was NOT the Ahashverosh of Megillas
Esther.). Little more than a year after conquering Babylon, Darius the Mede gave
over the kingship to his son-in-law Cyrus of Persia, who was the father of Esther's
Ahashverosh.

Daniel had watched the fall of Babylon knowing that it had been prophesied by
Jeremiah (29:10), who had foretold that at the completion of seventy years of
Babylonian power, God would redeem Israel. At first Daniel thought that the
building of the (second) Temple and complete redemption would come about
seventy years from the time that Babylon had first subjected Israel to her dominion,
which was when Nebuchadnezzar conquered King Yehoyakim eighteen years prior
to destruction of the First Temple. It was only from the words of the angel at the
end of this chapter that Daniel understood that the new Temple would not be built
until seventy years after the actual destruction of the First Temple by the
Babylonians in the reign of King Tzidkiyahu.

Daniel's response to the seemingly interminable exile was to PRAY. The Tzaddik
repents for all Israel , and in his most eloquent prayer for redemption Daniel speaks
in the first person plural, putting fitting words of repentance and supplication into
the mouths of all of us. Many phrases and indeed entire passages (vv 15-20) are
incorporated into the TAHANUN supplication as recited on Mondays and Thursdays
as well as into many other penitential SELICHOS.

Daniel begins his prayer with the confession of sin (vv 5ff) expressing our deep
shame and contrition over the misdemeanors that have led to our national exile.
The prayer is designed to guide us to internalize the bitter lesson and moral of the
destruction of the Temple and the exile, which came about exactly as the Torah had
warned (v 13).

Daniel appeals to God's compassion, arousing the memory of the redemption from
Egypt (v 15) as he begs God to turn His anger from Jerusalem.

With hindsight we know that the Second Temple was built in due course, but Daniel
was praying eighteen years beforehand at a time when the satraps and governors
of Babylon and Persia were no doubt gloating over the exile of the troublesome
Jews and drumming in the message that they would never be restored.

Through Daniel's profound faith and earnest prayer he was "greatly beloved" (v 23)
in God's eyes, and was worthy of ascending to the level of BINAH (v 22), for the
angel Gabriel came swooping down from the heavens to further elucidate the
meaning of the visions in the previous chapters and enlighten him as to when the
Temple would be rebuilt. Rashi (vv 25ff) explains that the cryptic message of the
angel alludes to the building of the Second Temple and its subsequent destruction
by Titus, and how in the end he will be accursed and lost when the power of his
empire is swept away by Mashiah in the war of Gog and Magog. Although the place
of the Temple is occupied by a center of idolatry, this will endure only until the
decreed day of its destruction with the coming of Mashiah.
 Chapter 10
The vision in our present chapter is dated to the third year of Koresh (Cyrus) king
of Persia (v 1). Cyrus was given the kingship by his father-in-law Darius the Mede
in the year 3390 (-370 B.C.E.) and ruled for only three years. Initially he permitted
the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, but soon afterwards the work was
suspended owing to the denunciations against the Jews by their enemies, as we will
read in detail in the book of Ezra, which we shall God willing be studying after
Daniel.

Rashi (on verse 2) explains that Daniel's period of mourning and abstention lasted
for THREE SABBATICAL CYCLES, i.e. 21 years, from the time Darius the Mede
conquered Babylon (which was when Daniel tried to calculate when the restoration
would take place, see ch 9 v 2) until the second year of the reign of Darius the
Persian, the son of Esther, under whom the Second Temple was completed.

To abstain from fine bread, meat, wine and anointment for all this time in mourning
over the desolation of Jerusalem was an extraordinary feat, and in the merit of his
undertaking to do so Daniel was granted the extraordinary vision of the end of time
in this and the ensuing chapters. Just as his vision in ch 8 v 2 was by the River
OOLOI, so the present vision was at the River Tigris, and similarly Ezekiel's vision of
the Chariot was at the River Kvar – these are spiritual rivers flowing with the light
of divine revelation.

Daniel now saw "the man dressed in linen", whom he describes in truly spectacular
terms (vv 5-6). Only Daniel saw this apparition, but "the men who were with me
did not see the vision, but great trembling fell upon them" (v 7). According to our
sages, Daniel's companions were the prophets Haggai, Zecharia and Malachi
(Megillah 3a; Rashi on v 7). Prophets had their own methods of rising to the level
where they were worthy to have the voice of God speak through them (see Rabbi
Aryeh Kaplan, "Meditation & the Bible"), but even these prophets were unable to
see what Daniel, the righteous sage, now saw.

Ibn Ezra on v 5 points out that Daniel's ability to stand in the face of the revelation
of an angel exceeded that of Gideon and Samson's parents, Manoah and his wife
(Judges 6:22-3 and 13:22). This indicates that YERIDAS HADOROS (the spiritual
decline that occurs from generation to generation) is not necessarily irreversible by
Tzaddikim on the highest of levels. Similarly, in recent generations Rabbi Nachman
mentioned his having received visits from the guardian angels of nations like
Greece (= Russia ?) and France (see Tzaddik -- Chayey Moharan -- #489).

The "man dressed in linen" whom Daniel saw had also been seen by the prophet
Ezekiel prior to the destruction of the First Temple (Ezekiel 9:2; 10:11). The sages
identified him with the angel Gabriel (see Yoma 77a) as does Rashi (on ch 11 v 1).
Eichah Rabbasi states that the "man dressed in linen" serves three functions: (1)
Executioner of HARUGEY MALCHUS, those to be killed on the decree of the King;
(2) High Priest – for he wears linen, like the High Priest on Yom Kippur; (3)
Heavenly scribe.

As the "man dressed in linen" tells Daniel (v 12), it was in the merit of his having
undertaken to fast on behalf of Israel and Jerusalem that his prayers were heard
and Gabriel was turned into the defender of Israel.

The "man dressed in linen" opens a chink in the heavy veil that covers over the
proceedings before the Heavenly Court, where the guardian angels of the various
nations advance their pleas and counter-pleas. The "man dressed in linen" tells
Daniel that "the guardian angel of Persia has been standing against me for 21 days
[of heavenly time]" (v 13). Rashi explains (ad loc.): "He has been fighting with me
in heaven asking for an extension for the empire of Persia in order to keep Israel
subject". The "man dressed in linen" has been resisting this, and has now come to
enable to Daniel to understand what will happen to his people "in the end of days"
(v 14). This vision of the future, which begins in the next chapter, covers the entire
period of the Second Temple including its destruction and thereafter up until the
final redemption.

Chapter 11
"As for me, in the first year of Darius the Mede, I stood up to confirm and
strengthen HIM" (v 1). It is the "man dressed in linen", the angel Gabriel, who is
speaking in this entire chapter, and as explained by Rashi (ad loc.) he stood up to
strengthen the angel Michael – Israel's guardian angel – against the pleas by the
guardian angel of Persia before the Heavenly Court to intensify Israel's burden of
exile.

"And now I will tell you the truth" (v 2): this is the beginning of a very long,
involved and detailed prophecy which according to Ibn Ezra (on v 3) covers the
entire history of the world from the time of Daniel until the destruction of the
Second Temple (vv 5-31) and from then on until the final redemption (vv 32-40).

Verse 2 speaks about the empire of Persia. The "fourth king" mentioned here is
Darius the Persian, son of Ahashverosh and Esther, who mobilized his entire empire
to fight against Greece and was defeated.

Verse 3 refers to Alexander of Macedon, and verse 4 speaks of how his empire spit
into four kingdoms.

From that time on the two dominant players on the world scene were the kings of
the south and the north. Metzudas David on v 5 identifies the king of the south with
Egypt and the king of the north with Greece/Rome. Students of world history may
see certain parallels between the back-and-forth conflicts between these two as
foretold in this chapter and world conflicts in more recent times. In some respects
the wars between the colonialist empires and their subject nations (the " Third
World ") and between the West vs. Islam are conflicts between the kings of the
north and the south!

Caught somewhere in the middle of the conflicts described in this chapter are Israel,
who by the time of the Second Temple period were split into the righteous faithful
and the wicked sinners. Rashi and R. Saadia Gaon both interpret v 14 as a
reference to the way the "renegades of your people" – the sinners – repeatedly
conspired and intrigued with Rome and Egypt, trying to play off the one against the
other. The phrase BNAY PORITZAY AMECHA ("renegades of your people") is often
cited as an allusion to THAT MAN (Yimach SHemo OOzichro).

Verse 20 is explained by Rashi as an allusion to the Hasmoneans (the heroes of

Chanukah), who overthrew the Greek oppressors. Thereafter, however, the
Hasmonean king Hyrkanus conspired with Rome to overthrow his brother
Aristobulus, which led to the downfall of the Hasmonean dynasty and ever-
increasing intervention by Rome until eventually they became the occupying power
and destroyed the Temple. Rome is specifically alluded to in v 21 (see Rashi and
Metzudas David).
Verse 31 alludes to the destruction of the Second Temple. Verse 32 speaks of the
collaboration between the Jewish renegades and the Romans while the righteous
Jews continued in the path of the Torah. Despite the efforts of the latter to teach
the people God's ways, verse 33 speaks about their terrible suffering in the
tribulations of the long exile after the destruction of the Temple.

Verses 36ff allude to the spectacular successes of Rome and the kings who
inherited her mantle, whose policy was to show outward respect to the religious
traditions of the people they governed in order to keep control of them (see Rashi
on v 39).

The closing verses of the chapter allude to the bitter wars prior to the final
redemption of Israel, may it come speedily in our times!

Chapter 12
Our present chapter, which concludes the book of Daniel, completes the prophecy
that he received from "the man dressed in linen" about the future history of the
world until the end of days. This prophecy was granted to Daniel in the merit of his
mourning and self-affliction over the desolation of Jerusalem. The prophecy began
in the previous chapter with the foretelling of the tangled history of the period of
the Second Temple up until its destruction (Daniel 11:2-31), after which it
continues with its highly allusive foretelling of the end of days (Daniel 11:32-45;
12:1-13).

"And at that time Michael shall stand" (v 1). Rashi (ad loc.) says that Israel's
guardian angel will "stand" in the sense of being stopped in his tracks and silent like
one struck dumb when he will see how the Holy One blessed be He will ponder how
He can destroy the great armies of Gog and Magog for the sake of small Israel. It
will be "a time of trouble such as there never was…" (v 1). The rabbis said there will
be trouble for the Torah scholars because of their enemies and accusers, and
trouble for the whole people because of decree after decree and waves of robbers
one after the other (Kesubos 112b).

The good news is that "your people shall be delivered" (v 1) – "the kingdom of Gog
will be destroyed and Israel shall be saved" (Rashi ibid.). [Instead of worrying of
present-day Persia will harm Israel, we should repent with all our hearts and trust
in God.]

"And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake…" (v 2). This
refers to the resurrection of the dead (Rashi ad loc.) – as well, of course, to the
tremendous spiritual awakening and the widespread return to the Torah that we
witness in our time among Israelite souls that in some cases have been buried in
exile and cultural alienation for centuries. This itself is the revival of the dead!

"And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness (ZOHAR) of the
firmament…" (v 3). This verse is darshened at length in the Zohar, which takes its
name from here. The rabbis of the Talmud state that the category of "the wise"
includes every DAYAN ("judge") who judges truthfully as well as those who go
around collecting charity, while "they who turn many to righteousness" are those
who teach Torah to little children (Bava Basra 8b).

Just like the angels whom Daniel heard asking the "man dressed in linen" – "How
long shall it be to the wondrous end?" (v 6) – we too are more than curious to
know the answer. The "man dressed in linen" replied most cryptically, "It shall be
for a time, times and a half" (v 7). Daniel himself did not understand this answer (v
8), so we should not be surprised that we cannot either. As Rashi says on verse 10,
"Many shall purify themselves and make themselves white" – many will try to give
a clear explanation of these calculations; "and they will be tried" – it will be a trial
to many to understand them; "and the wicked shall do wickedly" – the wicked will
miscalculate, and having stumbled they will say there will be no further redemption,
"and they will not understand". However, "the wise shall understand" – at the time
when the end arrives. (Rashi on v 10). For "in the end they will be granted the
wisdom to understand the allusions" (Metzudas David on v 9).

In the words of R. Saadia Gaon (on v 7): "When the generations have descended
very low, then all these troubles will come to an end, but we do not know until
when they will go on since the angel himself told Daniel that the matters are sealed
and closed up, and we certainly do not have the power to understand the secret of
these calculations of days and years…"

"Happy is the man who waits…" (v 12).

 Book of Ezra
Chapter 1
"And Moses ascended to God…" (Exodus 19:3). "This Ezra ascended from Babylon
…" (Ezra 7:6). Citing these two verses and the word they have in common,
"ascended", the rabbis compared the stature of Ezra to that of Moses, saying that
Ezra too was fit to be the one through whom the Torah was given to Israel
(Sanhedrin 21b).

The achievements of Ezra will be discussed later on. His book is a direct
continuation of the book of Daniel – the opening verse of Ezra begins with a VAV,
"AND in the first year of Cyrus…" (v 1), connecting the narrative in Ezra with what
went before in Daniel (Rashi on Ezra 1:1). The book of Ezra tells the story of the
return of the exiles from Babylon to Judea and other parts of the Land of Israel and
how the Second Temple was built. This book is therefore a most important
paradigm for our time, since our task too is to return out of exile and to restore and
rebuild our heritage and our Temple. The greatness of the achievement of Ezra and
his generation is enhanced by the fact that so far they had experienced only
destruction but as yet no redemption. Even so, they defied all of the many the
accusers who sought to thwart and discourage them, and with great courage they
went up to their land. For us their achievement should serve as a precedent that
can guide us in the restoration that we must accomplish.

The return from the exile in Babylon took place IN STAGES, the FIRST of which is
recorded in our present chapter and those that follow it. Although this book was
written by Ezra and is called by his name, Ezra himself does not enter the narrative
until Chapter 7, which describes the SECOND stage of the return.

We have already seen how with the fall of Babylon to Darius the Mede, Daniel
"contemplated in books…" in order to calculate the number of years that had
passed since God's word to Jeremiah "to accomplish seventy years in the
desolations of Jerusalem"(Daniel 9:2). As discussed in our commentary there,
Darius' capture of Babylon took place exactly seventy years after Nebuchadnezzar
had taken Yeho-yakim king of Judah into exile – that was EIGHTEEN years before
the destruction of the First Temple in the reign of King Tzidkiyahu.

The narrative in the book of Ezra begins "in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia" (v
1), whose reign began within a year of Darius the Mede's conquest of Babylon. With
the fall of the Babylonian empire after seventy years, the FIRST WAVE of returnees
now went back to Judea and they started laying the foundations of the Second
Temple, but – as we will read in the ensuing chapters – their enemies denounced
them to Cyrus and he ordered the work to be suspended. There were no further
building activities during the whole of the remainder of the reign of Cyrus and
throughout that of Ahashverosh, and the building of the Temple was resumed only
in the reign of his son, Darius ("the Persian") son of Queen Esther. Thus from the
time of the aliyah of the first wave of returnees under Cyrus as recounted in our
present chapter, it took another EIGHTEEN YEARS until the Temple was finally
rebuilt, exactly seventy years after the destruction of the First Temple.
The leadership of the first wave of returnees will be discussed in the next chapter
(Ezra 2). Ezra himself did not go up to Jerusalem with the first wave of returnees
because the teacher from whom he received the Torah tradition – Baruch ben
Neriyah, who had received it from the prophet Jeremiah – was still alive in Babylon,
and Ezra wanted to receive everything possible from his teacher. It was only after
seven years, with the death of Baruch, that Ezra went up to Jerusalem with the
SECOND WAVE of returnees.

After all the years of exile under the weighty yoke of Babylon, its fall at the hands
of Darius the Mede and the subsequent ascent of Cyrus to the throne of Persia were
a great relief. "So says Cyrus king of Persia: all the kingdoms of the earth has
HaShem the God of Heaven given to me, and He has commanded me to build Him
a House in Jerusalem that is in Judah " (v 2).

God's "command" to Cyrus is contained in the prophecy of Isaiah, who had lived
generations earlier yet foretold that Cyrus would restore Israel to their land and
have the Temple rebuilt (Isaiah 44:28; see 45:1).

The campaign of Aliyah from Babylon and the other cities of exile to the Land of
Israel is somewhat reminiscent of the magnificent enterprise of Aliyah of Jews to
Israel over the past centuries rising exponentially since 1948. Like the Aliyah
sanctioned by Cyrus, the modern Aliyah has also been supported by many
contributions from those who for one reason or another have had to remain in the
Diaspora, who have formed local support groups to sustain those going up to the
land (see our chapter vv 4; 6).

Cyrus' release of the Temple vessels looted by the Babylonians held forth the
promise that redemption was near at hand. They were entrusted to "SHESHBATZAR
the prince over Judah ", v 8; the rabbis identified him with Daniel, who stood firm
six (SHESH) times when he was in trouble (BA-TZAR; see Rashi ad loc.).

The thrill and excitement of the return of the exiles from Babylon is captured in the
Song of Ascents (SHIR HA-MA'ALOS) that is traditionally recited on Shabbos and
other festive occasions immediately prior to BIRKHAS HA-MAZON, Grace after
eating bread. "When HaShem restored the captivity of Zion, we were like dreamers.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter and our tongue with song… He who goes
weeping in his way, bearing a bag of seed, shall come back with joy, carrying his
sheaves" (Psalms 126:2 & 6).

Chapter 2
"And these are the children of the province who went up out of the captivity…" (v 1).
Rashi paraphrases, "These are the children of Israel that were from the province of
Israel [which was then a province of the Persian Empire] who went up now from
the captivity in exile to Jerusalem."

Verse 2 provides us with the names of the leadership of this first wave of Aliyah
from Babylon, including some familiar names like Mordechai and Nehemiah. (This
Aliyah took place BEFORE the Purim story, as will be discussed in a future
commentary: it would appear that Mordechai must have gone back to Shushan at
some point after his Aliyah.)

ZERUBAVEL
The first name in the list of leaders is Zerubavel ben She'alti-el, who in Haggai 1:1
is called "governor" (PEHAS) of Judea. Zerubavel was heir to the kingship of David,
which had very nearly been wiped out completely. Two out of the last three kings of
Judah had left no heirs: these were Yeho-yakim, whom Nebuchadnezzar exiled and
tortured to death, and Tzidkiyahu, all of whose sons were slaughtered in front of his
eyes. The last surviving member of the Davidic dynasty, Yeho-yakim's son, King
Yechoniah, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile in Babylon prior to the
destruction of the Temple, also had no heir and was unlikely to have one since he
was cruelly imprisoned in Nebuchadnezzar's jail in solitary confinement in a deep
narrow pit.

The Midrash tells that the exiled Sanhedrin in Babylon realized the peril hanging
over the House of David and turned to the Queen's old nanny asking her to try to
influence the Queen to influence Nebuchadnezzar to let Yechoniah be with his wife.
Eventually he agreed that she could be lowered down by rope into Yechoniah's
prison pit cell, where there was barely room to stand let alone to lie down. In any
case, after having been lowered down for this chance-in-a lifetime, Yechoniah's wife
suddenly discovered that she had a flow of blood, which meant that relations were
forbidden. Yechoniah used to ignore the laws of NIDDAH and ZIVAH when free in
Jerusalem prior to his captivity, but, chastened by his sufferings in exile, he had
repented and heroically refused to have relations. His wife was hauled up again and
mercifully was allowed to purify herself from her flow, after which she was once
again lowered down… And through their coming together standing in this cramped
dark pit, the House of David was saved from extinction (Vayikra Rabba 19:6). The
child born of that union was She'alti-el, father of Zerubavel.

The heirs to the Davidic throne were no longer called kings: in future the Davidic
leadership was primarily spiritual. The mantle of leadership eventually came down
to Hillel, whose school became the accepted legal authority by all Jews, and a few
generations afterwards it passed down to Rabbi Yehudah, known as HA-NASI, "The
Prince", author of the Mishneh, which is the very foundation of the Oral Torah.

YESHUA THE HIGH PRIEST

In Haggai 1 Yeshua ben Yotzadok is called YeHOshua ben YeHOtzadok. His name
(like the name Zerubavel) is familiar to those who read the Haftaras because it
appears in the prophecy of Zechariah (2:14-3:7) which is read in the synagogue as
Haftara TWICE every year: on Shabbos Chanukah and also on Shabbos Parshas
Beha'aloscha (third parshah in Numbers, read shortly after the festival of Shavuos.)

Yehoshua was the High Priest and son of a High Priest, but some sources suggest
that he might not have served as High Priest had not Ezra – who was greater in
Torah and more saintly – remained initially in Babylon (Shir HaShirim Rabba 5:5).
According to Rambam, Ezra did eventually serve as High Priest. In Ezra 10:18 we
find that Yehoshua's sons had intermarried, which was a stain on the family. This
may be why in these texts his name and the name of his father (Ezra 3:8) are
spelled without the letter HEH. In its form of Yeshu'a it was a not uncommon name
and, despite its having apparently been given to the founder of Christianity, there is
no suggestion whatever in our biblical texts that it has any kind of specifically
messianic connotation.

THE RETURNEES

Rashi on verse 3 states that in some cases in this chapter the text mentions the
fathers or family of the people named, in other cases the Judean towns from which
they had originated and to which they now returned (v 70). Even in exile they
evidently cherished their attachment to their old homes and never lost hope of
returning: Diaspora Jews should take note!!!

Those who returned were not only from the tribes of Judah and Benjamin although
the latter were in the majority. The total number of those who returned in this first
wave of Aliyah is given in v 64 as 42,360, but the total of all the population figures
given in the earlier part of the chapter – which are for members of Judah and
Benjamin – is only 30,000. Seder Olam states that the remainder were from other
tribes who joined this Aliyah (Rashi on v 64). Although the returning population was
initially mainly concentrated in the tribal territories of Judah and Benjamin, we
know from many references in the Mishneh as well as from archeological relics that
during the four centuries-long period of the Second Temple the YISHUV
("settlement") extended over most areas of Eretz Israel except for certain coastal
areas and a strip around Shomron which was inhabited by the KOOTIM whom
Sennacherib had settled in place of the Ten Tribes.

YICHUS – "LINEAGE"

We will see in the later portions of the book of Ezra that ethnic self-purification was
a very important preoccupation for the leaders of the return, because even before
the exile there had been a certain incidence of intermarriage between Israelites and
the surrounding Canaanites, Ammonites and Moabites etc. and intermarriage
increased when they went to Babylon. One of Ezra's major concerns was to clarify
the personal status of the various different categories that made up the Jewish
communities in Babylon that were now sending OLIM to Israel. The fourth chapter
of the Talmudic tractate KIDDUSHIN begins by stating that Ten YICHUSIM
('categories of pedigree') went up from Babylon: Cohen-Priests, Levites, Israelites,
Hallalim (disenfranchised priests), converts, freed slaves, Mamzerim ("bastards"),
Nethinim (Gibeonites), Shesuki (child of unknown fatherhood) and Asufi (child of
indeterminate parentage; Kiddushin 96a). The Talmud explains that Ezra realized
that with the return of the people together with the Sanhedrin to Israel, Babylon
would be left without a strong rabbinic leadership. He therefore endeavored to
empty Babylon of all those whose personal status was questionable so that the
purity of the Babylonian community could be maintained, sending them to Israel
where the rabbis of the Sanhedrin would be able to adjudicate over their status.

Thus the list of OLIM given in our present chapter specifies that some were
Gibeonites (vv 43ff) or from among the (non-Israelite) servants of Solomon (vv
55f), while some were unable to tell their parentage or family (v 59). The status of
certain priests was indeterminate and would not be able to be clarified "until a
priest will stand with the URIM VE-THUMIM" (v 63), i.e. through the holy spirit that
will return with the coming of Mashiah.

All these OLIM did not travel to Israel by plane to Ben Gurion airport, and since the
numbers of animals listed (v 66) are considerably smaller than those of the humans,
we must infer that the great majority of the latter made the journey on foot. And
what a journey it was!!! Traveling with them were TWO HUNDRED MUSICIANS (v
65): "Because they were going up joyously from Babylon to Eretz Israel, they
NEEDED singers to help them turn their journey into an enjoyable walk through
abundant SIMCHAH" (Rashi ad loc.)

Chapter 3
From the closing verses of the previous chapter (Ezra 2:68-70) we see that the
primary goal of these OLIM was to return to the House of God in Jerusalem and
rebuild it. The present chapter traces the initial steps in the rebuilding of the
Temple taken by this FIRST WAVE of returnees.

The journey of the OLIM across land from Babylon to Israel and their settlement in
their old towns and villages in Judea must have taken much of the summer. "And
when the seventh month arrived… the people gathered themselves together as one
man to Jerusalem" (v 1). The first day of the seventh month (=Tishri) was Rosh
HaShanah. Likewise we will see in Nehemiah ch 8 that Rosh HaShanah was a highly
propitious day in the calendar.

"And they set the altar on its bases; for fear was upon them because of the peoples
of the lands…" (v 3). The "peoples of the lands" were the jealous KOOTIM
("Samaritans") and other inhabitants of the surrounding areas of what was a
province of the Persian Empire. As we shall see in the ensuing chapters, these
assorted peoples were keeping their eyes skinned on the returning Jews waiting to
pounce at any sign of rebellious activity in order to denounce them to the king.
[Similarly today "Peace Now" and hosts of other official and unofficial monitors from
all over the world keep their eyes constantly skinned on the Jewish settlers in Judea
and Samaria, ready to denounce them the moment they do anything that might
suggest they are free people living in their own land.] Rashi on v 3 explains that the
reason why Yeshu'a the High Priest and Zerubavel built and offered on the Altar
was in order to make a public demonstration that they had authorization from the
king of Persia in the hope of forestalling any efforts to denounce them. In the event
they did not succeed, because the accusers were soon writing letters to the Persian
king anyway, as we will see in the ensuing chapters. Nevertheless, all of the daily
and seasonal public sacrifices as well as private dedications were now reinstituted
(v 5).

Seven months later the building work commenced, accompanied by the singing of
the Levites (v 9) – what a spectacle that must have been – and the foundations of
the new Temple were laid (v 10).

Despite the jubilation of the younger generation over the rebuilding of the Temple,
those present who were old enough to remember the Temple of Solomon, which
had been destroyed 53 years earlier, cried and sobbed so loudly that they almost
drowned out the joyous singing, for this was joy mingled with the sorrow of
chastened hearts.

Chapter 4
"And the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the children of the exiles
were building the Temple" (v 1). These "adversaries" were the KOOTIM
("Samaritans") and other peoples that Sennacherib had settled in Shomron and the
other cities of Israel in place of the Ten Tribes (II Kings 17:24). Their sensors were
telling them that a rebuilt Jerusalem would be a serious threat to their comfort as it
could herald an Israelite national revival that would bring back the Ten Tribes, who
were all too likely to drive them out of the rich and pleasant land in which they had
been squatting since the time of Sennacherib. [The present-day "Palestinian" Arab
perception of any possibility of a Jewish revival in Israel is based on similar
considerations.]

The response of the adversaries to the efforts to rebuild the Temple is an example
of the way the SITRA AHRA (the unholy side) is aroused as soon as there is an
arousal on the side of the holy (Likutey Moharan I, 22:7). God sends obstacles in
the way of those seeking to accomplish a holy goal in order to increase their
yearning and longing to the point where they are able to do so. The time had not
yet come for the building of the Second Temple, for it had already been prophesied
that it would only be built seventy years after the destruction of the First Temple.
Zerubavel and Yeshu'a were obliged to TRY to accomplish the holy task, but as yet
they could not succeed.

The first ploy of the adversaries was to propose that they should join with the Jews
in building the Temple – in order to be able to stall and sabotage the venture from
within. The reply of Zerubavel and the other leaders that "You have nothing to do
with us in building a House to our God" (v 3) is one of the main sources for the law
forbidding receiving dedications and donations from non-Israelites for incorporation
in the actual fabric of the Temple building (Rambam, Hilchos Shekalim 4:8; Erchin
1:11; Matonos Aniyim 8:8).

After this rebuff, the adversaries turned to psychological warfare (v 4) in an

attempt to discourage and demoralize the Jews. In addition they hired lobbyists in
the Persian court in order to bring diplomatic pressure to bear on the king to
undermine the project. We learn from verses 5-6 that this campaign was sustained
for a period of more than sixteen years until the second year of the reign of Darius
king of Persia.

Cyrus I of Persia, in whose reign this campaign started, is identical with

Artahshasta in v. 7: this was the generic name of the Persian kings just as Pharoah
was the generic name of the kings of Egypt. Cyrus reigned only two years (3390-2
= 370-368 B.C.E.) and was succeeded by Ahashverosh of Megillas Esther fame. The
unnamed individuals who "wrote to him an accusation (SITNAH from the root
satan) against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem " (v 6) are identified by
Midrash Seder Olam as being none other than the sons of Haman that were
eventually hanged. Aside from this reference, the Book of Ezra passes over the
events in the reign of Ahashverosh, including Haman's plot against the Jews as
foiled by Mordechai and Esther, in complete silence.

Having typified this sixteen year campaign in general terms in vv 5-6, the text in
verse 7 goes back to very beginning of the period – for as mentioned earlier,
Artahshasta is identical with Cyrus, who reigned for only two years before
Ahashverosh came to the throne. One of the great paradoxes of Cyrus is that after
having grandiloquently sanctioned the building of the Temple (Ezra 1:1ff), he then
made a complete about-turn as a result of the diplomatic machinations of the
adversaries.

From verse 7 onwards the text shifts into Aramaic, the lingua franca of the Persian
empire, as it begins to report the correspondence passing to and fro between the
adversaries of the Jews in the province of AVAR NAHARA ("West of the River
Euphrates") and the imperial court. The text continues in Aramaic until Ezra 6:19.

The letter from the adversaries to Cyrus is recorded in our present chapter vv 7-16.
Having established their credentials as representatives of the peoples moved into
Shomron and other locations west of the Euphrates by Assnapar (=Sennacherib, vv
9-10, Rashi ad loc.), they immediately warn the king of serious trouble if the
"rebellious, bad city" of Jerusalem (v 12) is ever rebuilt. [Their insinuations bear
comparison with the best of latter-day anti-Jewish and anti-Israel incitement.] They
warn him that any rebellion by the Jews will hit him hard IN THE POCKET as they
will cease paying the various poll-taxes and other kinds of tribute into the Persian
treasury (v 13). They advise him to check out the imperial records to see if
permission was ever granted to the Jews to rebuild their Temple. The bottom line of
their message to the Persian emperor was that if the city of Jerusalem were to be
rebuilt and fortified, "you won't have any portion west of the Euphrates" (v 16). If
anything was calculated to make the king of a new world empire jump it was this
reminder of the likely effects of any re-arousal of Jewish imperial expansionism.

In his reply to the adversaries' letter (vv 17-22), which expresses an historical
awareness of the great power of Israel under its mighty kings of the past (v 20),
Cyrus reversed his earlier endorsement of the project of building God's House in
Jerusalem (Ezra 1:1ff). [Similarly, not long after their "Balfour Declaration" of 1917,
the British government hastily backtracked from giving genuine support to the
building of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, since which time Israel has suffered
repeated back-stabbings from this and other professed allies.] Cyrus gave the
adversaries carte blanche to interrupt the building of the Temple, which they
rushed to do with all haste (v 23), and the work was stopped until the second year
of the reign of Darius king of Persia (v 24). (According to the opinion that Darius
was the son of Queen Esther, he would have been no more than about six years old
when he came to the throne as Esther became queen in the seventh year of the
reign of Ahashverosh, who reigned thereafter for only seven more years until he
was killed by one of his servants in 3406=354 B.C.E.)

Chapter 5
Our text now fast-forwards from the reign of Cyrus, ignoring that of Ahashverosh
and jumping directly to the second year of the reign of Darius, when the building of
the Temple was resumed. The prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah mentioned in
verse 1 of the present chapter are found respectively in Haggai 1:1ff and Zechariah
1:1ff, both of which are date-stamped to the second year of Darius.

The prophets knew through holy spirit that with the death of Ahashverosh and the
ascent of Darius to the throne of Persia, the times had changed and now the
moment had come to actually build and complete the Temple, work on which
started in earnest.

This holy arousal naturally elicited a counter-arousal on the part of the unholy
forces and a new set of adversaries headed by Tatnai, the governor of the Persian
provinces west of the Euphrates (v 3), now tried to interfere with the building
project. After receiving no comfort from the Jews, they wrote to Darius drawing his
attention to the unnatural speed with which the Temple was being built in
Jerusalem and the unnatural success of the project (v 8).

It is perhaps a sign of the changed times after the death of Ahashverosh and the
ascent of Darius to the throne that the tone of their letter is more subdued than
that of the adversaries as recorded in ch 4. Now they only enquired of the new king
whether it was correct that the building work proceeding apace in Jerusalem had
received the sanction of King Cyrus, and as we shall see in the next chapter, Darius
reply was in the affirmative.

Chapter 6
A MIRACULOUS FIND

The emperors of Assyria, Babylon and Persia were autocrats who were literally
worshipped as Gods (Daniel 6:8). The legitimacy of the new Persian king Darius
depended on that of his grandfather Cyrus, founder of the empire, and this was
why the discovery of a scroll recording an imperial decree from the time of Cyrus
was of great significance sixteen years later in the time of Darius, demonstrating to
the Jews and gentiles alike that there was a solid imperial precedent for Persia –
which had swept away the Babylonian empire – to back the rebuilding of the
Temple in Jerusalem.

Several millennia prior to the advent of electronic information storage, the rulers of
Egypt , Assyria, Babylon and Persia etc. kept extensive archives of scrolls recording
all kinds of governmental decisions and transactions. Some say that AHMETHA
where Cyrus' decree about the Temple was discovered was the name of the Medean
capital (=present-day Hamadan in W. Iran ), while others say that it refers to the
protective pottery flask or leather pouch in which the document was stored (Rashi,
Metzudas David).

The scroll (vv 3-5) gave full confirmation of everything that the priests and leaders
of Judea had been saying to their adversaries: they had indeed received royal
endorsement from no less than the emperor Cyrus for the building of a splendid
Temple in Jerusalem adorned with marble and wood and for the return of the
Temple vessels.

In a very pointed snub to the adversaries, Darius instructed them to keep well
away and stop interfering with the building project (vv 4-7). More than that, they
were to ensure that the returnees had everything they needed for all the Temple
sacrifices, including oxen, rams, lambs, goats and salt as well as wheat, oil and
wine for use in the libations (v 9).

Darius wanted the returnees not only to offer the Temple sacrifices but also to
"pray for the life of the king and his sons" (v 10). The rabbis commented that
Darius' charity was not complete as it was motivated by self interest (Bava Basra
10a). The danger to his life must have seemed very real: his father Ahashverosh
had been murdered only two years earlier (just two years after the Purim miracle,
which took place in the twelfth year of Ahashverosh's fourteen-year reign). Given
that Ahashverosh had initially given his full support to Haman's plot to exterminate
all the Jews, his violent death so soon after Haman's downfall must have seemed
like a warning from Heaven about the likely fate of those who make trouble for the
Jews, giving Darius a strong motive to support the rebuilding of the Temple. We
can only speculate what if any influence Queen Esther had over Darius, who was
her son.

The adversaries had been diplomatically routed, the prophets were prophesying
that the time was ripe to build the Temple, and imperial patronage for the
rebuilding had been publicly reaffirmed. Thus the project now went ahead at full
speed. Work on the new Temple commenced in the second year of Darius' reign
and continued for four years until its completion in Darius' sixth year. The
inauguration of the Second Temple (v 16), seventy-four years after the destruction
of the First Temple, is somewhat comparable to the giving of the second Tablets of
Stone after the shattering of the first. It is noteworthy that the returnees did not
see themselves as Judeans but as representatives of all of the Twelve Tribes of
Israel (v 17).

"And the children of the exile celebrated the Pesach…" (v 19). After several
chapters in Aramaic tracing the diplomatic process between the imperial court and
the governor of the provinces west of the Euphrates and his clique, our text here
reverts to Hebrew since the Pesach celebration was a purely internal Israelite affair.

"And the Children of Israel who had returned from the exile ate, as did all who were
separated from the impurity of the nations of the earth to join them to search out
HaShem the God of Israel" (v 21). Rashi explains that those who had "separated
from the impurity of the nations" were GERIM, "proselytes" who had converted in
Babylon and elsewhere (see Kiddushin 70a; cf. Esther 8:17), for the main purpose
of the Israelite descent into exile is to gather in the sparks of holiness that are
scattered among the nations and bring them up to the Holy Land.

Verse 22 states that God had made Israel rejoice, "and He turned the heart of the
king of ASHUR in their favor to strengthen their hands…" This refers to Darius of
Persia, whose empire extended over the territories once ruled by Assyria (Metzudas
David).

Chapter 7
"Now after these things in the reign of ARTAHSHASTA king of Persia" (v 1). This is
none other than Darius, for as previously mentioned, Artahshasta was the generic
name of all the Persian kings just as Pharaoh was the generic name of the kings of
Egypt. Since the events in the present chapter took place in the seventh year of
Darius' reign, it could be that after the consolidation of his kingship following the
assassination of his father Ahashverosh he now preferred to use the hereditary title
of the Persian kings.

ENTER EZRA

The seventeen-generation genealogy of Ezra given in our text (which skips over
some of the generations mentioned in the parallel genealogy in I Chronicles 5:30ff,
Metzudas on v 1) traces his lineage to Aaron the High Priest through the line of
Pinchas son of Elazar.

According to some opinions, Ezra is identical with the prophet Malachi (Megillah
15a; Targum on Malachi 1:1). He is known as HA-SOPHER, "the scribe", because he
was the towering Torah authority of his time and his influence is felt until today.
Since the written scroll of the Torah is the very foundation of all of Judaism, those
who were able to write the sacred scroll in accordance with all its conventions and
secrets were the most honored of sages. The Hebrew word SOPHER also means to
count and tell. The repetition of the word SOPHER in verse 11 is darshened in
Shekalim 13b to indicate that just as Ezra was the scribe, counter and enumerator
of the Written Torah, so he was the teller and enumerator of the Oral Torah. Indeed
the enactments of the outstanding rabbis – some of the most important of which
were instituted by Ezra – are known as DIVREY SOPHRIM, "the words of the
scribes".

Verses 7-10 recount the four-month cross-country journey of Ezra and those who
joined him in the SECOND WAVE of returnees from Babylon to Jerusalem in the
seventh year of the reign of Darius. Ezra came bearing certified documentation
from the Persian king (with whose court Ezra obviously had the best of contacts)
affirming that: All Israel were free to go up to Jerusalem (v 13); they were to be
provided with MONEY – silver and gold – to finance the Temple project (v 15);
financing for the Temple sacrifices, vessels and all other needs was to be provided
through a grant from the royal treasury (v 20); and the Cohen-priests, Levites, the
Temple SINGERS and gate-keepers and the Gibeonite hewers of stone and wood
were to be exempt from imperial taxes (v 24). From this last enactment the Talmud
learns that Torah scholars should exempt from taxation (Nedarim 62b).

BARUCH HASHEM

Building the Temple in Jerusalem under the patronage of the Persian king was not
the same as building it as a free nation in the time of Solomon without being
subject to any foreign power. Nevertheless, after seventy years in ruins, the rise of
the new Temple was a miracle that was all the greater when seen against the
backdrop of the terrible exiles and persecutions that had taken place under
Sennacherib king of Assyria and Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. This is why Ezra
blessed God "who has put such a thing as this in the king's heart… and has given
me grace before the king and his counselors and before all the king's mighty
princes…" (vv 27-8).

Chapter 8
"Now these are the heads of their fathers' houses and this is the genealogy of those
who went up with me from Babylon" (v 1).

When Israel had come up out of Egypt, "and also a mixed multitude went up with
them" (Exodus 12:38). The admixture of non-Israelite stock had again and again
brought disaster upon the nation. In order to avoid further disasters, Ezra made
sure that only those who could establish their Israelite status and lineage would go
up with him from Babylon. It is said that one of his main activities there in the
years in which he stayed behind before going up to Jerusalem to join the returnees
who went in the first wave was to investigate and clarify the status and lineage of
all those who were still in exile.

Ezra's journey from Babylon and his arrival in Jerusalem were briefly described in
the previous chapter (Ezra 7:7-9). In the present chapter the text takes us back to
the beginning of this journey just before Ezra set off (vv 15ff). The first step was to
assemble all the new Olim who would be traveling together across the dangerous
territory between Babylon and Israel. They came together at the River Ahavah
(which in this case cannot be interpreted as having the connotation of "love" as
AHAVAH here is spelled with a VAV and not a BEIS).

"And we encamped there for three days" (v 15). An interesting law that the Talmud
derives from this verse is that someone returning from a journey is exempt from
the obligation of prayer for three days (Eiruvin 65a). In the days before jets and
super-smooth cars, coaches and the like, travel could be extremely exhausting and
debilitating, particularly for these Olim who had just come from the Babylonian
villages of their exile together with their wives, children, livestock and possessions.
As a general rule, in order to bring ourselves into the right frame of mind for prayer,
it is necessary to "camp", unwind and meditate for a while before we open our
mouths!

"And I inspected the people and the priests but I found none of the sons of Levi" (v
15). Rashi on Kiddushin 69a, where this verse is darshened, brings down the
tradition that Ezra searched for Levites who would be fit to serve in the Temple but
could find only Levites who had bitten off their thumbs with their teeth in the time
of Nebuchadnezzar so that when he demanded that they sing him the Temple
music, they could honestly reply, "'How can we sing the song of God in a foreign
land?' (Psalms 137:4) – we are unable to play our harps". Thus Ezra found no
Levites fit for service – because those who were fit were sitting peacefully and
comfortably in Babylon while the OLIM who went up to Jerusalem were
impoverished and burdened with the rebuilding work and in fear of all those around
them".

Rashi's evocation of the sharp contrast between the peace and comfort of the exiles
in Babylon as opposed to the trials of the OLIM in Jerusalem could apply equally
well today, when the material lives of many Jews in the lusher areas of the present-
day Diaspora are often very much more cushioned than those of many Israelis.
A halachic consequence of the absence of fit Levites from Ezra's ALIYAH was that
he penalized the Levites for their failure to return to Israel by awarding the 10%
MA'ASER tithe on produce that farmers were supposed to give them (Numbers
18:24) to the Cohanim (priests) instead (Yevamos 86b; Rambam Hilchos Ma'aser
1:4).

The Talmud states that it would have been fit for the Israelites to return to their
Land in the days of Ezra to the accompaniment of miracles and with the same "high
hand" with which they entered under Joshua, except that sin had its effects and
they now needed permission from Cyrus and Darius to do so (Berachos 4a). The
route from Babylon to Israel passed through lands whose inhabitants had shown
extreme cruelty to the Israelites when they went into exile in the days of
Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar. Moreover, as we have seen from the previous
chapters, the territories west of the Euphrates harbored all kinds of adversaries
who were very anxious to thwart the returnees. Thus Ezra's large, straggling cross-
country caravan of men, women and children and livestock had the potential for
being exposed to great danger. Yet Ezra confesses that he had been "ashamed to
ask the king for a band of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy on
the road, because we had spoken to the king saying, The hand of our God is upon
all those who seek Him for good, but His power and His wrath are against all those
who forsake Him" (v 22).

The same positive "spin" that Ezra had used in order to persuade the Persian ruler
that God was with the Israelites actually put him in a corner, making it impossible
for him to now ask for military protection. An armed escort would have been very
reassuring, but the Israelites were forced to put their trust in God alone, and Ezra
called for fasting and repentance before they set off (vv 21 & 23). Ezra entrusted
the treasures sent by the Persian king and the Israelites who remained in Babylon
into the hands of leading priests to carry during the journey (vv 24-29).

"And I said to them, You are holy to HaShem; the vessels are holy also" (v 28).
From the comparison in this verse between the holiness of the priests and that of
the Temple vessels, which are not allowed to be used for personal benefit, the
rabbis learned out that it is forbidden to "use" a Cohen-priest as a waiter or
attendant or to perform mundane tasks for one's own benefit (Yerushalmi Nedarim).

Verse 35 tells us that among the offerings offered by the returnees after their
arrival in Jerusalem were "twelve he-goats for a sin offering (HATAS)" but goes on
to say that "all this was a BURNT (OLAH) offering". Since the meat of sin offerings
is normally consumed by the priests, why are these sin offerings specifically
described as an OLAH, all of which is consumed on the Altar? The Talmud explains
that the twelve goat sin offerings were brought on behalf of the Twelve Tribes in
order to expiate the sin of idolatry in the days of King Tzidkiyahu – and the meat of
the goat sin-offering for idolatry is NOT eaten by the priests but burned outside the
camp (Temurah 15b; see Numbers 15:24 and Rambam Hilchos Shegagah 12:1). In
offering sacrifices for all the Twelve Tribes, we see once again how Ezra and the
returnees saw themselves as representatives of the entire people of Israel.

Chapter 9
The return to Jerusalem and the reinstitution of the Temple rites encouraged a
great wave of repentance among the people. The leaders immediately approached
Ezra and confessed that the entire nation – Israelites, priests and Levites – had
been guilty in Babylon of the same sin of intermarriage that their fathers had
committed before the exile with the Canaanite nations and the surrounding
Ammonites, Moabites and Egyptians (vv 1-2). Moreover, they admitted that "the
hand of the princes and rulers has been chief in this crime" (v 2) [just as it was in
the great wave of Jewish assimilation in the last few centuries, which was led by
the Rothschilds and similar leading families].

Ezra was surely not unaware of this national flaw, which undermines the very
foundations of the people, but the mere mention of it was sufficient to drive him to
tear his garments and pull out the hairs of his head and beard in anguish (v 3).

"And at the time of the afternoon sacrifice [shortly after midday] I arose from my
fasting" (v 5). From here the Talmud (Megillah 30b) learns that the proper
procedure on a public fast day is for the leaders to spend the entire morning
investigating the affairs of the community. [A lot could be accomplished if rabbis
and community leaders would actually practice this today.]

Ezra's prayer (vv 6ff) puts words of confession, contrition and repentance into the
mouths of all Israel. He admits that "we are slaves" (v 9). [In Ezra's day it was to
the Persians, while today it seems to be to the Americans, who appear to dictate
most if not all of what Israel does.] "But He gave us grace in the eyes of the king of
Persia " (ibid.) This is interpreted by the Talmud as a reference to the overthrow of
Haman in the days of Ahashverosh (Megillah 10b).

At the very outset of the new settlement, Ezra delivered a forthright lesson on the
Torah condition for successful Israelite possession of the Holy Land: complete
separation from the impurity of the idolatrous nations, which means NO
INTERMARRIAGE (vv 11-14).

In our times there is hardly a family in all Israel that has been unaffected by the
enormous wave of intermarriage in recent centuries, and in many cases the bold
steps taken by the returnees in the time of Ezra to cleanse the nation as described
in the coming chapter are in practical terms all but impossible in most families.
What we can do is to try to do everything possible to cleanse our minds of any
foreign ideologies that have knowingly or unknowing allowed to intermarry into the
native Torah way of thinking that is our national heritage.

Chapter 10
" Judah has dealt treacherously and a disgusting thing has been done in Israel and
in Jerusalem ; for Judah has profaned the holiness of HaShem that He loved, and
has married the daughter of a strange god…" (Malachi 2:11). In the Talmud, Rav
Nahman brings this verse as support for the statement by R. Yehoshua ben Korhah
that Malachi is identical with Ezra, one of whose greatest achievements was to
eliminate the blight of intermarriage that cut at the very foundations of the people.

It was the sight of this saintly priest and prophet in the newly built Temple, praying,
weeping and confessing in the name of the entire nation, that brought all the
assembled people to a great swell of Teshuvah, with all the men, women and
children weeping (v 1).

"And SHECHANIYAH the son of YEHIEL from the children of EILAM answered and
said to Ezra, We have trespassed against our God and have taken alien women…"
(v 2). It is interesting that in verse 26, where YEHIEL is listed among the children
of Eilam who had taken foreign wives, his son Shechaniyah is NOT mentioned as
one of those who had done so. Yet Shechaniyah still stepped forward to "confess".
Why?
The Talmud explains by telling how one time while R Judah the Prince was teaching
his disciples, he smelled a strong smell of garlic. He told whoever had eaten garlic
to leave. His best student, R. Hiyya, immediately got up and left, and then
everyone else also got up and left. The following morning R. Judah's son Shimon
found R. Hiyya and asked how he could dare offend his father – until R. Hiyya
confessed that he had not eaten garlic at all. From whom did R. Hiyya learn this
way of saving others from embarrassment? From R. Meir. For once a woman came
into the Beis Midrash and said "One of you made me his wife by sleeping with me."
On hearing this R. Meir immediately got up and wrote her a Get ("bill of divorce")
and on seeing this, all the other students also wrote her a Get… And who did R.
Meir learn it from? From Shmuel HaKatan. And Shmuel HaKatan learned it from
Shechaniyah the son of Yehiel (Sanhedrin 11a).

Getting up first in front of everyone to confess to having intermarried was a

courageous act on the part of Shechaniyah that was intended to make it easier for
all those who really were guilty to confess and begin to repair the damage.
Shechaniyah asked Ezra to set the process in motion, and the latter – continuing
his fasting and repentance – gave orders for all the returnees to assemble in
Jerusalem, warning that anyone who failed to do so would be penalized by having
all his property declared ownerless (v 8). This verse is the foundation for the law
that Beis Din (a rabbinic court) is entitled to use the sanction of declaring the
property of recalcitrant individuals HEFKER, ownerless and free for anyone to take
(Shekalim 3b).

This great national assembly was held on the 20 th of the month of Kislev (v 9) –
which is in December at the height of Israel's rainy season, usually one of the
coldest, windiest times in Jerusalem. We can imagine what a chilly, sorrowful
occasion it was as the bedraggled crowd confronted the enormity of what they had
allowed to happen during their exile. Everyone was willing to do what was
necessary to purify the nation, but it was simply too cold to stand outside in the
rain now and complete the very delicate and time-consuming work needed to
rectify the flaw.

Ezra laid down a timetable for the returnees from the various different cities of the
exile to appear together with their elders and judges in order to check into what
had happened in each family and separate Israelites from their foreign wives and
children. We need only try to imagine what it would take today to separate home-
born Jews who have intermarried from their non-Jewish spouses and children in
order to get a glimmer of understanding of the enormous, heart-rending enterprise
Ezra carried out in his time with priests, Levites and Israelites alike.
 Book of Nehemiah
Chapter 1
The book of Nehemiah is a direct continuation of the book of Ezra. In Ezra 2:2
Nehemiah was numbered among the leaders of the FIRST WAVE of returnees who
had gone up out of exile to Jerusalem together with Zerubavel and Yehoshua the
High Priest while Ezra remained in Babylon. In Ezra 2:63 Nehemiah was mentioned
under his name HATIRSHATHA (see Nehemiah 10:2) as having forbidden those
priests who were unable to bring written proof of their priestly lineage from eating
sacrificial meat.

Nehemiah evidently returned to exile at some point thereafter to join and

presumably lead the sizeable communities that remained in Babylon, Persia and
other centers. We have evidence in our text of a certain two-way traffic between
Israel and the Diaspora of those days, though it was probably less intense than the
two-way jet air traffic that exists today between Tel Aviv, Paris, London, New York ,
Los Angeles and other Jewish centers worldwide. As we shall presently see,
Nehemiah rose to a top position in the Persian royal court – in the same tradition of
outstanding Tzaddikim like Daniel and Ezra who also had the ear of the emperor
kings of their times.

The first wave of returnees had come up to Jerusalem in the first year of the reign
of Cyrus of Persia in 3390 (370 B.C.E.). They had laid the foundations of the
Temple Altar, but owing to the opposition of the adversaries it was not until
eighteen years later that they were able to build the Temple in the year 3408 (352
B.C.E.). Ezra came up from Babylon to Jerusalem seven years later in 3415 (345
B.C.E.), and it was then that he began his work of separating the people from their
foreign wives as told in the closing chapters of the book of Ezra.

The book of Nehemiah opens "in the twentieth year" (Nehemiah 1:1) but does not
specify in the twentieth year of what! The rabbis learned from GEZEIRAH SHAVAH
with the identical phrase in Nehemiah 2:1 that this was in the twentieth year of
ARTAHSHASTA = Darius king of Persia (Rosh Hashanah 3a, see Rashi on Nehemiah
1:1). This was in the year 3426 (334 B.C.E.) – i.e. ELEVEN YEARS after Ezra's
Aliyah to Jerusalem.

In other words, with the opening of the book of Nehemiah we have one again fast-
forwarded, this time to eleven years after the events described at the end of the
book of Ezra, passing over in silence the details of all that happened in the
intervening years.

We are not told until the closing words of our present chapter (Nehemiah 1:11)
exactly who Nehemiah is. It turns out that he is no less than the personal wine-
butler of Darius king of Persia – a prestigious position of influence if ever there was
one, since you get the king at his most mellow moments. Of course a king's butler
has to taste the wine every time before he serves it to prove that it has not been
poisoned, and since the Persian king's wine was YAYIN NESECH (idolatrous wine),
the rabbis of the time gave a special license to Nehemiah to drink it even though
YAYIN NESECH is normally strictly forbidden for Jewish consumption. This is the
reason why Nehemiah was given the name HATIRSHATHA: HATIR means
"permitted", SHATHA means "he drank" (see Rashi on Ezra 2:63, Yerushalmi
Kiddushin 41b).

It was precisely because Nehemiah was not only a great, open-hearted Tzaddik but
also one who had the ear of the king of Persia, head of the great superpower of the
day, that it was so fortuitous that Hanani and his companions, visiting the Golus
from Jerusalem, came to him and told him the latest news about his brothers in
Jerusalem (Nehemiah v 2).

The great jubilation at the time of the aliyah of Ezra eleven years earlier carrying a
letter of authorization from that same king Darius had given way to a cry of pain
from the harassed residents of Judah. The walls of Jerusalem were broken down
and marauding adversaries were engaged in an intense intifada, burning down the
houses without regard for the authority of the king of Persia, who was many, many
hundreds of miles away and who in any case had little interest in backing up his
letter of authorization by engaging his armies to deal with a local squabble in one of
his many provinces.

The news of the plight of the returnees threw Nehemiah into mourning, weeping
and fasting, and he offered the eloquent prayer recorded in our chapter, phrases
from which are included in some of the prayers and supplications in our Siddur
(prayer book) and Selichos (penitential prayers). Nehemiah delicately alludes to
God's promise that if the exiles of Israel would repent, He would gather them in to
His chosen place (v 9) – as if to say, now that they have returned, please PROTECT
THEM!!! Nehemiah continued – since he had some PROTEKTZIA with the king of
Persia – asking for God to grant him favor with the king – showing that it is
permissible for us to pray for success in our dealings with other people.

In the ensuing chapters we will see how Nehemiah asked the king of Persia for a
temporary leave of absence (which lasted twelve years) in order to go to Jerusalem,
where he not only built the city walls to protect the population physically, but also
built the spiritual walls of the nation by campaigning against the cruelty of creditors
to defaulting debtors and against the desecration of the holy Shabbos.

Chapter 2
A unique feature of the book of Nehemiah is that unlike almost all the other
narrative portions of the Bible, here the hero of the story writes about his own
exploits in the first person singular. Throughout the Torah, Moses, who wrote at
God's dictation, described his own deeds as if writing about someone else in the
third person [except in certain of his discourses in Deuteronomy]. Samuel did the
same when he wrote the book called by his name. While the prophets frequently
describe their own spiritual experiences in the first person, Nehemiah alone gives a
long, detailed first-person account of his own endeavors in the world of practical
action.

In this book we thus have an intimate picture of how a Tzaddik and a man of
ACTION and ACCOMPLISHMENT turned to prayer, faith and trust in God at every
step in his activities. Writing about oneself carries some risks: thus Nehemiah's
repeated prayer to God to remember him for good in the merit of his various
exploits (Nehemiah 5:19, 13:14 etc.) did not escape the censure of some of the
rabbis, who said that as a result his book, although called by his name, was merely
appended to the Book of Ezra instead of standing as a complete work in its own
right (Sanhedrin 93b).
The conversation between ARTAHSHASTA (= Darius) king of Persia and his wine
butler Nehemiah took place a few months after the latter had received a report of
the great plight of the residents of Jerusalem as described in Chapter 1. As
Nehemiah was serving the king wine, the latter observed a serious change for the
worse in his butler's facial expression. In a verse cited as illumining the effect of the
emotions upon the physical body (Likutey Moharan I, 60:6), the king declared that
the bad look on Nehemiah's face proved that he harbored bad thoughts in his heart
(v 2). The king feared that his butler was trying to get him to drink poisoned wine
(Rashi ad loc.).

After Nehemiah had explained that the cause of his anguish was the plight of
Jerusalem, when the king asked him what he wanted, Nehemiah first prayed to God
in Heaven (v 4, cf. Nehemiah 1:11). He then asked leave of absence from the royal
court in order to travel to Jerusalem to take matters into his own hands and rebuild
the city. He requested a written guarantee of safe passage through the dangerous
western imperial provinces through which he had to pass on his way to Judea as
well as for access to the royal forests there for timber for his building project.

"And when Sanbalat the Horonite and Toviah the Ammonite slave heard, it
displeased them greatly that there was come a man to seek the welfare of the
children of Israel " (v 10). In the eleven years since Ezra's danger-ridden aliyah to
Jerusalem, a new set of adversaries had grown up, for "in each and every
generation they have stood up against us to destroy us" (Pesach Haggadah).
Sanvalat would appear to have been one of the leaders of the Samaritans (cf.
Nehemiah 3:34) while the Ammonites had always been implacable enemies of
Israel.

DEMOLITION FOR THE PURPOSE OF BUILDING

Only three days after his arrival in Jerusalem, Nehemiah jumped into action. "And I
arose in the night… and I told no one what my God had put in my heart to do in
Jerusalem …" (v 12). Ibn Ezra followed by modern Bible translators interpret the
verb SOVEIR in vv 13 and 15 as meaning that Nehemiah merely INSPECTED the
city walls, but Rashi (on v 12) and Metzudas David (on v 13) interpret it has having
the sense of SHOVEIR, "I BROKE the walls", explaining that Nehemiah's intention
was to make the breaches in the walls even bigger and more extensive than they
already were in order to shock the inhabitants of Jerusalem when they would wake
up the following morning so as to spur them into agreeing to join Nehemiah in the
urgent rebuilding of the city walls.

Living in the vast urban agglomerations in which over half the world's population
resides today, it is harder to appreciate the reason why all ancient cities that were
worthy of the name were almost invariably walled for defensive purposes. Indeed in
the times of Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar the fortified walls of Jerusalem
enabled its inhabitants to survive years of sieges before the city finally succumbed.
With the destruction of Jerusalem, the massive wooden gates of the various
entrances to the city had been burned, and the charred stones of the walls were
weak and crumbling. The ruined walls symbolized the weakness of the Jews and
their subject status. The returnees from Babylon who lived in the unfortified city
were exposed to constant marauding incursions from their adversaries, and were
evidently too weak, demoralized and preoccupied with their day-to-day activities to
be able to take decisive action to defend themselves.

By further breaking down the remains of the old walls, Nehemiah did indeed
succeed in arousing the inhabitants of Jerusalem to take urgent action to rebuild
them (v 17), much to the anger of their adversaries, who immediately accused
them of treason against the Persian king. Nehemiah's response was to strengthen
himself in his faith in God. His statement to the adversaries that "you have no
portion or charity or memorial in Jerusalem (v 20) is one of the main proof texts for
the law that no contributions to the walls and towers of Jerusalem are accepted
from non-Israelites (Shekalim 4b).

The walls of Jerusalem are also of great halachic significance, as they define the
boundaries of the city for the purpose of eating KODOSHIM KALIM ("light holy
offerings" that could be consumed outside the Temple but only within the city walls),
MA'ASER SHENI (the "second tithe" eaten by its owners in Jerusalem, usually
during their visits for the pilgrim festivals) and BIKURIM ("first fruits", eaten by the
priests) etc.

Chapter 3
Despite the opposition of their adversaries, Nehemiah and the people of Jerusalem
succeeded in building up the walls of the city.

The present chapter is of very great interest in providing us with a detailed

topography of the walls of Jerusalem at the start of the Second Temple period
including references to gates, springs, pools and strategic strongholds many of
which are known until today. While the city was expanded later on in this period,
many of the locations mentioned must have been familiar to the Tannaim and other
Tzaddikim of the late Second Temple period about whom we read constantly in the
Mishneh and Talmud, such as Hillel and Shamai, Raban Yohanan ben Zakkai, Rabbi
Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabbi Akiva etc.

Part of the beauty of the project of rebuilding the fortifications of Jerusalem about
which we read in the present chapter was that it was not an impersonal, monolithic
government enterprise using imported foreign laborers having no connection with
the city. It was a cooperative venture carried out with their bare hands by the very
citizens themselves. Virtually every family took responsibility for a designated
section of the city walls and gates. Almost everyone took part – Cohanim, Levites,
Israelites and Gibeonites – with very few exceptions (v 5).

The gates of Jerusalem as recorded in this chapter have very evocative names,
such as the Gate of the Flocks (v 1) – many animals were brought up to the Temple
– the Gate of the Fish (v 2, for Shabbos?!?) – the "Old Gate" (v 6), the Dung Gate
(v 14) – known until today as the gate near the Western Wall – the Gate of the
Spring (v 15), the Water Gate (v 26), the Gate of the Horses (v 18) which dated
from the period of the Kings (II Kings 11:16), the Eastern Gate (v 29) and the Gate
of the Guard (v 31).

The adversaries responded to this building project with scorn, derision and
vilification of the "wretched Jews" (v 34) echoes of which can be heard until today
in the Arab response to the rebuilding of modern Israel. Swollen with arrogance,
Sanvalat asked rhetorically, "Will they [the nations] allow them? Will they [the
Jews] sacrifice? Will they complete the work in one day? Will they revive the stones
out of the heaps of dust seeing as they are burned?" (v 34). Tovia the Ammonite
slave further refined the mockery, saying that even a fox would be able to break
through their stone wall (v 35).

Nehemiah showed the right way for a Jew to respond to such anti-Semitic abuse,
refusing to engage the adversaries but rather turning to God and asking Him to
hear their insolence and bring it down on their own heads. Nehemiah and the
inhabitants of Jerusalem meanwhile pressed on unperturbed with the work of
rebuilding.

Chapter 4
Our chapter relates the thickening trouble that now struck the builders of Jerusalem
from their adversaries. The opening verse gives us an indication of who these
adversaries were. As mentioned in the commentary on Nehemiah ch 2, Sanvalat
appears to have been one of the leaders of the inhabitants of Shomron (see
Nehemiah 3:34). Tuviah was apparently a renegade Israelite who was intermarried
with some of the leading Judeans, with whom he had excellent connections (see
Nehemiah 6:18). The AREVIM are likely to have been Ishmaelite tribes who had
spread into Eretz Israel from east of the River Jordan, where the Ammonites were
also based. The ASHDODIM were Philistines living in the Mediterranean coastal
areas of Israel. All of these elements now gathered together to make war on the
Judeans who by rebuilding Jerusalem were threatening the comfortable status quo
the adversaries had been enjoying since the exile of the Ten Tribes under
Sennacherib and of Judah and Benjamin under Nebuchadnezzar.

Nehemiah's building of the walls of Jerusalem "under fire" or, at the very least,
under the constant threat of attack from enemies all around has its parallel in the
building of the modern Jewish Yishuv in Eretz Israel, which since its inception has
been attended by unremitting belligerence and aggression from Arab and other
enemies on every border of the tiny country. The greater the influx of Jews into
Israel and the greater their success in building up the country, the greater their
enemies' hostility has become, making a mockery of every peace plan that has
been devised to try to diffuse it.

The previous chapter gave a general account of the rebuilding of the walls and
various gates of Jerusalem. This enterprise, which was executed through each of
the different families in the city building their own section of the wall, could not be
accomplished in one day. It was a protracted project that left the Jews highly
vulnerable to attack in what turned into an enervating war of attrition to the point
that " Judah said, the strength of the bearers of the burdens is failing…" (v 4). The
repeated helpless sighs heaved daily by the pressured citizens of contemporary
Israel echo the same feeling.

The adversaries' plan was to infiltrate Judea in order to spring a surprise attack (v
5). [This is reminiscent of the original Oslo strategy of the "Palestinians" to infiltrate
Israel in order to strike with the sudden terror attacks that became the hallmark of
the last decade. This is one of the reasons why the Palestinians have always
advocated "open borders" into Israel (but not the other way round), opposing the
Israeli separation fence that is a de facto admission of the complete failure of the
"peace process".]

In verse 6 we find that Nehemiah receives a warning of the hostile intentions of the
adversaries from "the Jews dwelling with them". This is evidence that the returnees
were not only concentrated in and around Jerusalem and Judea but were spreading
considerably further afield. Indeed, by the time of the later Second Temple period,
the Yishuv extended over most of the areas occupied by the earlier kingdoms of
Judah and Israel, including the whole Galilee, Mt Ephraim, the Negev and east of
the Jordan. The main exceptions were certain coastal areas and the strip of land
around Shomron, which was occupied by the KOOTIM ("Samaritans").

The belligerence of modern Israel's enemies has forced her to become a militarized
nation in which most members of the workforce, having already performed
compulsory full-time army service for a number of years, then have to serve every
year in MILUIM, "reserve duty", sometimes for periods of up to several months.
Somewhat similarly, Nehemiah was forced to build the walls of Jerusalem with a
civilian workforce half of whom worked on the building while the other half had to
carry out guard duty in order to defend them (v 10). Even those who were engaged
in the actual labor had to do so while heavily armed. They were forced to do their
work with one hand while holding a sword in the other! Nehemiah himself had to
keep a shofar-blower at his side in case there was a need to summon everybody to
one place to stave off a sudden attack (vv 11-12).

"So we labored in the work, and half of them held the spears from the time of the
breaking dawn until the stars appeared. Likewise at the same time I said to the
people, Let everyone lodge with his attendant within Jerusalem so that in the night
they may be a guard to us and labor in the day" (vv 15-16). These verses are likely
to be familiar to anyone who has studied the Talmud where it begins in Tractate
Berachos, because these are the very first verses quoted by the ShaS from the
NaCh (though not from the Five Books of Moses, from which three verses are
quoted earlier on the page). These verses from Nehemiah are introduced as proof
texts in a discussion about the time when the obligation to recite the evening
SHEMA begins – when the stars first appear (Berachos 2b).

Despite the fact that the Jewish laborers were engaged in physically demanding and
doubtless very sweaty work during the Israeli summer, they were so busy working
and trying to defend themselves that they did not even have time to strip off their
clothes and wash!!! (v 17).

Chapter 5
Nehemiah did not only have to deal with threats from Israel's external enemies. He
was also faced with internal social friction and resentment caused by the great
disparity between the "upper crust" of the returnees, who were or had become very
wealthy, and the less successful ones, who were not. The latter were small farmers
who were trying to scrape a living out of ancestral allotments that had been
neglected for over seventy years. Not only did they have to produce sufficient to be
able to subsist and cover their basic needs; they also had to pay heavy tributes to
the Persian king.

The opening of the present chapter paints a sorry picture of how the poor had fallen
into debt and were reduced to selling not only their fields and vineyards but even
their very sons and daughters as slaves to the rich just in order to survive (vv 1-5).

The descent of the weaker classes into chronic debt is another feature of the time
of Nehemiah that also characterizes modern Israel, where the huge gap between
the rich and the poor continues to widen despite major economic growth. The
country's enormous security budget sucks money out of the economy, necessitating
heavy taxation of the working population and high import duties, pushing up the
prices of homes, consumer goods, services and everything else, leaving most
sections of the population mortgaged up to the hilt while financing car purchase and
other projects with heavy-interest loans at the same time as living off credit cards
and expensive bank overdrafts…

Contemporary political leaders tend to be fully implicated in the ongoing

exploitation of the weaker sections of the population and the attendant government
corruption. Israel's last four prime ministers as well as countless other ministers
and high officials have been subject to police investigations for serious wrongdoing.
Nehemiah, on the other hand, stood up as a true leader of the people, championing
the poor and oppressed against the wealthy and powerful. "…And I rebuked the
nobles and the rulers…" (v 7). Nehemiah asked them questions to which they could
give no answer: "We have redeemed our brothers the Jews who were sold to the
heathen; and will you nevertheless sell your brothers, or shall they be sold to us?"
(v 8).

Nehemiah initiated a collective remittance of debts, seeing that all the fields,
vineyards, olive trees and houses that had been seized as collateral against bad
debts were returned (v 11). Nehemiah was not merely acting as the champion of
mundane social justice. At every step he made it clear that helping our brothers
and sisters rather than exploiting and oppressing them is an integral part of FEAR
OF GOD (vv 9, 13).

The chapter ends with Nehemiah's testimony about his own integrity. We learn
from v 14 that the Persian king Darius had appointed Nehemiah as GOVERNOR of
Judah , yet he never used his position for personal gain. He did not even consume
the food which the population were obliged to provide for the governor, let alone
enjoy the expensive "perks" that previous governors had permitted themselves. On
the contrary, Nehemiah supported a sizeable entourage – including many converts
– at his own table at his own expense. "Remember me, my God, for good,
according to all that I have done for this people" (v 19).

Chapter 6
Nehemiah's speedy rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem caused fury among the
adversaries, who now plotted to kill him.

To understand the complexity of Nehemiah's situation, we must read the present

narrative in the light of information that is only given towards the end of the
chapter.

Nehemiah was the de facto leader in Jerusalem at this time – it was he who took
the initiative to get the people to build the wall. The leadership of the nation was
vested in the Sanhedrin, which included outstanding prophets and sages who had
returned from exile in Babylon. Ezra was still alive and active, as we shall see in
Chapter 8, where Nehemiah and Ezra work together as a "team" for the spiritual
revival of the nation. But where the two are mentioned together, it is Nehemiah
who is given precedence (Nehemiah 8:9). Not only was he an outstanding Tzaddik.
He had also been appointed governor of Judea by Darius king of Persia, in whose
court he enjoyed a position of the greatest influence. He was also very wealthy (see
Nehemiah 5:17-18; 7:69, where Hatirshasah=Nehemiah).

Sanvalat and Tuvia and their associates saw themselves as loyal subjects of Persia,
which had taken over the Babylonian empire, and they evidently felt they had the
right to dwell in the territories in which they lived in its western provinces
maintaining the existing status quo without allowing the Jews – with their history of
rebellion against imperial rulers like Babylon – to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.

It emerges from vv 17-18 that Tuvia enjoyed excellent connections with leading
figures in Judea, and he and his son were actually married to prominent Judeans.
Rashi (on v 17) states that Tuviah was a YISRAEL RASHA ("wicked Israelite");
however the Talmud in Kiddushin 70a – discussing aspects of the laws of YICHUS
("lineage") in the light of certain verses in our present chapter and the next –
implies that he was a heathen.
To add further subtlety to the scene around Nehemiah, we find that already among
the penitent returnees from Babylon there were various false prophets (v 10) and
prophetesses (v 14) who were using the language of faith day by day to broadcast
gloomy messages of doom to Nehemiah in order to discourage him. Moreover there
were various agents and informers who were spreading disinformation about Tuvia
and reporting back to him about Nehemiah's every word and movement (v 19).

Keeping all this in mind we can better appreciate the wisdom with which this
humble man of action pursued his mission. In vv 2-4 the adversaries try to lure
Nehemiah to a location where they could kill him. Nehemiah replies that he is too
busy to leave Jerusalem. In vv 5-7 Sanvalat sends an open letter accusing
Nehemiah of high treason against the Persian king, planning to have himself
declared king of Judah. In vv 8-9 Nehemiah absolutely denies the accusations, but
is surrounded by people who are trying to demoralize him. In vv 10-13 Nehemiah
comes to a "prophet" in Jerusalem who assures him that he knows prophetically
that Nehemiah is in such mortal danger that he must take refuge in the Temple
Sanctuary (the only place that had gates – the gates of Jerusalem were still not in
place). But Nehemiah recognizes him to be a false prophet and refuses to sin by
entering the Sanctuary, which is forbidden to a non-priest.

Amidst all this Nehemiah persisted in building the walls of Jerusalem, which were
completed – to the consternation of the adversaries – on 25 Elul (v 15), the
anniversary of the first day of creation (for man was created on the sixth day, Rosh
HaShanah). "For through our God was this labor accomplished" (v 16).

Chapter 7
With the completion of the walls of Jerusalem, the last step was to put the doors in
position in the city gates, and to charge the gate-keepers of the city and the
Temple together with the Temple singers and Levites with their duties. Nehemiah
charged his "brother" (=friend) Hanani (see Nehemiah 1:2 and Rashi ad loc.) and
Hananiah, governor of the city – "as a man of truth and a God-fearing man for
many days" (present chapter v 2) – to open the gates only briefly at a specified
time each day to allow people to pass in and out of the city, in order to prevent a
surprise attack from the adversaries.

YICHUS

Having built the physical walls of Jerusalem, Nehemiah (in conjunction with Ezra)
set about the work of building the spiritual defenses of the nation through family
purity.

Prior to the exile, the people of Israel – as a nation of tribal, clan and family
networks – carefully guarded their family records and registries of marriages,
relationships and personal status. But ever since they had gone into exile
intermarriage, immoral conduct and other factors affecting personal status had left
considerable confusion. If all this had happened to Judah after only seventy years
of exile, it is no wonder that today, two thousand years since the destruction of the
Second Temple and two thousand five hundred years since the exile of the Ten
Tribes, untold numbers of Jews and Israelites have completely lost track of their
lineage. Only in the last couple of centuries, the mass migrations of Jews from
Eastern Europe, attended by chronic persecution and culminating in the holocaust,
have caused countless family records and community registers to become lost. It
may be that the Mormons – who are assiduous collectors of records of lineage,
especially Jewish lineage – know more than many about different people's family
backgrounds, but the majority of present-day Jews know little if anything about
their great grandparents and even less about earlier generations and their
"bloodlines".

Today it is up to each individual who feels his or her Israelite soul stirring within to
make a personal covenant of self-dedication to HaShem the God of Hosts, Who
knows all the souls and all their incarnations.

One who appreciates what it is to be from the seed of Israel will find it easier to
project himself into the mindset of Nehemiah and the Tzaddikim of his time in
seeking to establish clear records of the lineage of all the returnees from Babylon in
order to lay the foundations of national purity and spiritual strength for the
generations to come.

The records of the families of the Israelites, Levites, Cohanim-priests, Gibeonites

and Temple servants who came up from Babylon as given in the present chapter
overlap with those given in Ezra ch 2. In both chapters the total number of
returnees is given as 42,360 (Ezra 2:64, Nehemiah 7:66) but many of the names in
our present chapter are different from those in found Ezra, and the individual
population figures given for the various families are also not the same.

Metzudas David (on Nehemiah 7:66) explains that the first wave of returnees had
come up to Jerusalem with Zerubavel and Yehoshua the High Priest in the second
year of Cyrus of Persia, while Nehemiah came up to Jerusalem OVER THIRTY-FIVE
YEARS LATER in the twentieth year of Darius of Persia. In giving the names and
numbers of the various families in accordance with their different statuses as based
on the SCROLL OF LINEAGE Nehemiah found on the completion of the city walls
(Nehemiah 7:5), he adjusted them to take account of people who had died and
those who had been born since the time of the compilation of the original scroll. In
some cases entire families had almost become extinct by the time of Nehemiah,
with their surviving members attaching themselves to near relations in other
families. In other cases individual branches of certain families had been so prolific
that they could be counted as families in their own right (See Metzudas David on
Nehemiah 7:66 at length).

"And these are they who came up from Tel Melah, Tel Harsha, Keruv Adon and
Eemeir, and they could not tell the house of their fathers and their seed…" (v 61).
The Talmud (Kiddushin 70a) darshens: Tel Melah (="the mound of salt") – these
are people whose deeds are like the deeds of Sodom that was turned into a mound
of salt. Tel Harsha (="the mound of dumbness"): this refers to a child who calls out
"father" and his mother hushes him. "And they could not tell the house of their
fathers and their seed if they were from Israel" – this refers to the ASUFI who was
gathered in from the street. Keruv Adon and Eemeir: Rabbi Abahu said, "Said
(AMAR) the Lord (=Adon), I said Israel should be before me like an angel (KERUV)
but they made themselves like a leopard (that mates indiscriminately). Others said
in the name of Rabbi Abahu: "Said the Lord, even though they made themselves
like a leopard, they are considered before me like an angel." Rabba bar Hana said:
Everyone who marries a woman that is not fit for him is considered as if he plowed
the whole world and sowed it with salt…

Chapter 8
Now that the returnees from Babylon to Judea had settled again in their ancestral
towns and villages, they were ready to return to the Torah path of life that is the
purpose of Israel's existence.
With the arrival of the first day of the seventh month – Rosh HaShanah, the Head
and beginning of the spiritual year – everyone, including both the men and the
women, flocked to the Temple.

The account of this unique national assembly – central to which was the public
reading from the Torah scroll – is one of our main sources for the laws and customs
of: (1) the public Torah reading in the synagogue (2) Rosh Hashanah (3) the
Succah.

THE READING OF THE LAW

The central figure in this section is Ezra the Scribe and High Priest. While Moses had
instituted the public reading of the Torah on Shabbos, Mondays and Thursdays (so
that three days should never go by without the people hearing the Torah), it was
Ezra who instituted other customs relating to the Torah reading that are observed
until today. Among them are the reading of the Torah during the Shabbos
afternoon Minchah service; the calling of THREE people for ALIYAH ("going up" to
the reader's desk to bless and read from the Torah) at the Shabbos afternoon and
weekday readings, and the reading of no less than ten verses from the Torah on
those days (Rambam, Hilchos Tefilah 12:1). Ezra either instituted or renewed the
custom of reading the Torah week by week from the beginning Genesis to the end
of Deuteronomy in an annual cycle that starts and ends on Shemini Atzeres (one-
day festival following Succos), reaching the reproof at the end of Leviticus just
before Shavuos and the reproof towards the end of Deuteronomy just before Rosh
Hashanah (Rambam, ibid. 13:2).

Ezra's Torah reading took place "in front of the wide space that is before the Gate
of the Water" (v 2). In Talmud Yoma 69b there are different opinions as to whether
this was in the main Temple courtyard in front of the House (the Azara), the Ezras
Nashim ("Women's Courtyard" before the Azara) or elsewhere on the Temple Mount.
In any event, this assembly is emblematic of the assembly of all the people in the
Synagogue, to which everyone must come to hear the Torah.

In the light of the widespread feeling today that women have somehow been
excluded from Jewish religious life, it is important to note that our text repeats that
Ezra's gathering included men AND women (vv 2 & 3) and that EVERYONE was
listening to the Torah and receiving a running translation into the vernacular
explaining what it is saying (v 3 and see Rashi on v 7). Everyone had their ears
tuned only to the Sefer Torah (v 3) – not to the kinds of frivolous conversations
that go on during the Torah reading in certain synagogues that are frequented by
irreverent ignoramuses who unfortunately have never been sufficiently inspired by
their rabbis and teachers to make them want to wake up from their spiritual sleep
and grasp that the words of the Torah are the words of the Living God, and that
even if they are not fully understood they should still be treated with the utmost
respect.

When Ezra read the Torah, he was flanked by six men to his right and six to his left
(v 4: Zechariah=Meshulam "because he was COMPLETE in his deeds" Megillah 23a).
The Talmud finds an allusion in the six men flanking Ezra to the six men who go up
to the Torah reading on Yom Kippur (Megillah ibid.)

"And Ezra opened the scroll in the eyes of all the people…" (v 5). This alludes to the
custom of HAGBAHAH, raising the scroll so that everyone can see the script, which
according to the Sefardi and Chassidic NUSAH ("style", "custom") is performed prior
to the actual reading, while many Ashkenazi communities perform it after the
reading. At the moment of the HAGBAHAH it is customary for people to stretch out
their right hand pointing towards the Torah (cf. v 6).

"And Ezra blessed…" (v 6). This alludes to the BLESSING made by the reader before
he begins to read. (The present-day custom where the person called up to the
Torah reading blesses but leaves it to the BAAL KOREI, to actually read stems from
the fact that the level of education has fallen to the point where the great majority,
even if they can read Hebrew, are still unable to read the Torah themselves directly
from the scroll with the correct vocalization and cantillation / "trope" because only
the letters are written in the scroll but not the vowels or musical notations. In
earlier times, and in some Sefardic and Yemenite communities until today, each of
the men called to the Torah actually reads his portion himself, as do many Bar-
mitzvah boys.) It is the blessing over the reading of the Torah – when recited and
listened to with the proper intentions – that transforms the occasion from being a
prosaic reading of a text into a collective act of devotion in which both the reader
and the listeners are attaching themselves to God through hearing His words.

"And they read in the scroll, in the Torah of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and
caused them to understand the reading" (v 8). The Talmud (Megillah 3a) darshens
from this verse that Ezra established the MIKRA (way of READING the words), the
TARGUM (translation into the Aramaic vernacular of the people=MEFORASH), the
divisions of the verses (P'SUKIM=VE-SOOM SECHEL), the cantillation/trope (=VA-
YOVEENU BA-MIKRA) and the MASORETH ("tradition" as to how the words in the
Torah are to be spelled, whether MALEY, "in full", or HASEIR, "lacking" certain
letters, with enlarged or diminished letters etc.) For all this had apparently been
forgotten (by the majority, although presumably an inner circle of sages, prophets
and priests always preserved and handed down the sacred tradition) and Ezra
formally reinstituted and returned to the authentic tradition.

ROSH HASHANAH

From the response of Nehemiah and Ezra in v 9 we can infer that the Torah reading
in the precincts of the Temple brought all the assembled people to a great wave of
anguish, weeping and repentance for their deeds. Now these two leaders taught a
lesson in the proper celebration of Rosh HaShanah that is expressed succinctly by
Rabbi Nachman, who once said that God gave him a unique gift in being able to
understand what Rosh HaShanah really is. "On Rosh HaShanah one must act wisely
and only think good thoughts. One should only keep in mind that God will be good
to us. One must be happy on Rosh HaShanah and yet one must cry…" (Sichos
HaRan #21).

The lesson of Ezra and Nehemiah, which is brought as Halachah in Shulchan Aruch,
is that together with our tearful repentance on Rosh HaShanah, we must also
celebrate the festival joyously with good food and drink in the confidence that God
will be merciful with us and stretch out His "arm" to accept our repentance. "FOR
THE JOY OF HASHEM IS YOUR STRENGTH" (v 8).

The penitence aroused in the people on this Rosh Hashanah was greatly elevated
through the joyous celebration of Succos, which started on the 15 th of the month
and continued for seven days followed by the one day festival of SHEMINI ATZERES
immediately afterwards. Dwelling in the Succah for seven days helps us internalize
the lesson that God's encompassing presence protects us wherever we are in the
wilderness of life. From verse 15 the sages learned that the branches and leaves
used for S'CHACH, the "roof" of the temporary Succah dwelling, must grow from
the ground and must be in their natural state so as not to be susceptible to the
TUM'AH, "impurity", that attaches itself to man-crafted vessels (Succah 12a).
"And all the assembly of the returnees from the captivity made Succos and dwelled
in Succos, for the Children of Israel had not done so since the days of Joshua bin-
Nun" (v 17). It was not that under King David etc. they had not celebrated Succos,
but with the return under Ezra they now began counting the Sabbatical and Jubilee
Year cycles again and observing the laws of walled cities and tithes etc. just as the
people had started to do when they first entered the Land under Joshua (Erchin
32b).

Chapter 9
After the jubilant celebration of Succos followed by Shemini Atzeres (which is on
the 22 nd Tishri), the people gave themselves only one day (="ISRU HAG", the day
after a festival, invested with a festive character) before returning to the Temple
fasting, in sackcloth and ashes, separating themselves from foreign wives and
children (v 2), and presumably from foreign ways of thinking as well. Verse 3 is one
of the sources for the laws of proper procedure on public fast-days (Taanis 12b).

The Levites now stood on their platform in the Temple and opened up in a song
that was a call to all the people to repent.

The passage running from the last part of verse 5 until the end of verse 11 is
familiar from the daily morning prayers, during which they are recited after Psalm
150, before SHIRAS HA-YAM, the "Song of the Sea".

The entire "song" of the Levites, which continues until the end of the present
chapter, praises God the Creator of heaven and earth and goes on to recount the
history of Israel from the founding father Abraham, to whom God promised the
Land of Canaan, through the redemption from Egypt and His providential care of
Israel in the wilderness, leading them with pillars of fire and cloud, feeding them
with Manna and water from the rocks, giving them the Torah, the Shabbos and
other commandments, followed by Israel's rebellion with the sin of the golden calf,
God's forgiveness and His giving them the lands of kings and nations filled with
great goodness….

As the people stood now at the start of the new era of the Second Temple, the
story of how Israel had become fat off God's bounty and rebelled, resulting in their
exile, had to be sung to them afresh in order to remind them that their mission was
to rectify the sins of the past. For each generation must hear again the saga of the
nation and to relearn its forgotten lessons all over again.

Chapter 10
Stirred to repentance by the song of reproof sung by the Levites on the Temple
platform as recorded in the previous chapter, the entire assembly renewed the
ancestral Covenant of dedication to God, with the leaders of the Priests, the Levites
and Israelites formally signing their names on a written affirmation of commitment.

It may be difficult to assimilate the long lists of names given in these chapters, but
they should be read with reverence as part of the fabric of the sacred text, which is
the national archive and treasury of all the souls of Israel. With sensitivity to the
allusions contained in the different Hebrew roots on which these names are built,
careful study will reveal a wealth of insights into the mindset and outlook of the
generations of pining exiles and grateful returnees who gave such names to their
children.
It was not only the home-born Israelites who reaffirmed their commitment to the
Covenant. Among the many unnamed people who followed their leaders in this
collective act of repentance were not only many priests, Levites, gate-keepers,
Temple singers and servants, but also "all those who have separated themselves
from the peoples of the lands to the Torah of God, their wives, their sons and their
daughters, everyone having knowledge and understanding" (v 29). "These are the
CONVERTS who separated themselves from the religions of the nations in order to
become attached and joined to the Torah of the Holy One blessed be He and to
keep his commandments" (Rashi ad loc.)

This affirmation of commitment to the Covenant took the form of a solemn oath
which carried the sanction of severe curses on those who would violate it (v 30).
The people undertook to observe the commandments of the Torah, specifying those
that most needed strengthening, including the maintenance of family purity and
rejection of intermarriage (v 31) and the observance of the Shabbos (v 32). It is
noteworthy that the specific aspect of Sabbath observance mentioned in the text is
abstention from buying and selling, which are prohibited not because they
necessarily and intrinsically involve carrying out any of the 39 MELACHOS ("labors")
that are forbidden MID'ORAISO (explicitly in the written Torah). Rather they are
forbidden MI-DE-RABBANAN (through enactments of the sages), whether as a
"fence" to keep people well away from infringing MELACHAH (thus trading often
leads to writing, which is a forbidden MELACHAH), or because such activities are
inconsistent with the sanctity of the day. We thus see how the Written Torah
(TaNaCh) goes hand in hand with the Oral Torah as taught by the sages.
Observance of Shabbos is a central theme in Nehemiah 13.

"We also laid ordinances (MITZVOS) upon ourselves to charge ourselves yearly with
the third part of a shekel…" (v 33). This refers to an annual contribution to the
Temple over and above the statutory annual contribution of a Half Shekel by every
adult male. The Talmud explains that the extra contribution mentioned here
represents TZEDAKAH, "charity", and learns out from this verse that the mitzvah of
charity is counted as equivalent to all of the other mitzvos since the verse calls it
not MITZVAH in the singular but MITZVOS in the plural (Bava Basra 9a).

"And we have cast lots among the priests, the Levites and the people for the wood
offering…" (v 35). The Talmud explains that the returnees did not find wood in the
Temple for use on the Altar to burn the sacrifices, and a number of individuals
volunteered to bring wood to the Temple at their own expense. They won this right
not only for themselves but also for their descendants, who on specified dates
during the year would bring their wood offerings together with sacrifices and
festivities (Taanis 28a).

A very important part of the Covenant was the reaffirmation of all of the
commandments relating to the Land and its produce, including the Sabbatical year
of rest from agriculture (see v 32, which specifically refers to the remittance of
debts in that year), the first-fruits (v 37), sacrifice of first-born animals (v 37),
Hallah, the gift of dough to the priests, Terumah, the priestly tithe, and Ma'aser,
the 10% of produce given to the Levite out of which he in turn had to give 10% as
Terumas Maaser to the Cohen-priest (v 38ff). From now on collection of these
tithes was to be organized under formal supervision in order to ensure proper
support for the priests and Levites who were responsible for all of the Temple
activities.
 Chapter 11
Nehemiah had already remarked that in his time, at the start of the Second Temple
era, "The city was large and great, but the people in it were few, and the houses
were not yet built" (Nehemiah 7:4). The great majority of the returnees from
Babylon had gone back to their ancestral farms and rural settlements in what was
primarily an agricultural society, and Jerusalem was far from being the kind of
industrial or commercial center that could support a large population.

Besides the tithes on agricultural produce, it was necessary to take a ten per cent
"tithe" of the population in the form of volunteers who would reside in Jerusalem
and strengthen the city. Our present chapter lists only the most important leaders
among these volunteers (see Rashi on v 4), who included members of the tribes of
Judah and Benjamin as well as priests and Levites. (By no means all the priests and
Levites served in the Temple all the time: they were organized into MISHMAROT
who served according to a rota, while the others spent most of their time living in
their various towns and villages outside the city, see v 20.)

Our chapter also lists key officers responsible for the maintenance of the Temple
fabric (v 16) the prayer services and singing (v 17) and guarding the Temple gates.

"For it was the king's commandment concerning them" (v 23). Rashi (ad loc.)
explains that this refers to the Persian king Darius, who put his trust in certain
officers to supervise the disbursement of funds from the royal treasury to pay for
various Temple needs. Not mentioned in the text is that when the Temple was built,
the Persian kings gave orders to place a decorative frieze representing the Persian
capital city of Shushan above the eastern gate of the Temple in order to put fear of
the governing power into the hearts of the people so that they would not rebel (see
Bartenura on Middos 1:3).

The chapter concludes with a list of the chief habitations in territories of Judah and
Benjamin, many of which are settlements in Israel until today.

Chapter 12
Our present chapter continues listing the names of the leading Cohen-priests and
Levites who returned to Judea from Babylon with Zerubavel – although the list does
not include all of them (Rashi on v 12).

Verses 27ff recount the ceremony of inauguration of the rebuilt city walls of
Jerusalem by Ezra and Nehemiah. The purpose of this inauguration was to formally
sanctify the area enclosed within the walls with the unique sanctity of Jerusalem.
Only within the city walls is it permitted to eat KODOSHIM KALIM ("light" sacrifices,
which did not have to be eaten within the Temple courtyard, such as the meat of
peace and thanksgiving offerings, the Pesach lamb, animal tithes and firstborn
animals), BIKURIM (the "first fruits" eaten by the priests), MAASER SHENI (the
Second Tithe eaten in Jerusalem by its owners) etc. A variety of restrictions applied
in the Holy City unlike other cities in Israel: among them are the prohibition against
leaving a dead body to rest in Jerusalem overnight; no graves were permitted there
except for those of the kings of the House of David and Hulda the Prophetess;
areas within the city could not be plowed or used for agriculture, fruit orchards etc.;
pottery furnaces were not permitted because of the smoke, and garbage tips were
proscribed as they would have attracted unclean creatures that could have caused
defilement to people and foods that had to be eaten in a state of ritual purity, etc.
(see Rambam, Hilchos Beis HaBechirah 7:14).
The Sanhedrin were authorized to expand the city and the Temple courtyards as far
as they wanted (Rambam, Beis HaBechirah 6:10). "And how would they add to the
city? The rabbinic court would offer two Todah (thanksgiving) animal offerings and
then take the mandatory leavened loaves included with the animal sacrifice, and
the rabbis of the court would go in procession after the thanksgiving offerings…
They would stand with harps and cymbals by every single corner and every single
stone in Jerusalem chanting 'I will exalt you, HaShem, for You have lifted me up…'
(Psalm 30:2) and continue until they reached the end of the area that they were
sanctifying, where they stopped. There they would eat the bread of one of the
thanksgiving offerings while the other was burned…" (Rambam ibid. 6:12; cf.
Talmud Bavli, Shevuous 15b).

Rambam maintains that the ceremony conducted by Ezra as recounted in our

present chapter was largely symbolic as the area in question was not now actually
sanctified anew since the original sanctification of the Temple precincts and the city
of Jerusalem carried out by King Solomon was not only for his own time but for all
time to come (ibid. 6:14). However, this opinion is disputed by others (see Raavad
ad loc.). Rambam thus holds that it is permitted to offer sacrifices on the Temple
Mount even when there is no Temple, but this opinion is not universally accepted.

From the account of the ceremony of inauguration as described in our chapter, we

see the great importance of MUSIC and SONG in the Temple rituals (v 28). The
arrangements for the Levite singers and Temple musicians reinstituted by Ezra and
Nehemiah dated back to King David, the "sweet singer of Israel" (vv 36 & 46). The
restoration of the Temple was thus complete, and Nehemiah took steps to ensure
the orderly collection of the Terumah-tithe for the priests and the Maaser-tithes for
the Levites so that they would be freed from the burden of supporting themselves
in order to devote themselves to their duties in the Temple.

Chapter 13
The work of separating the returnees from their foreign wives was complex and
protracted. One of the sons of the High Priest himself was married into the family of
Tuviah, one of the leading adversaries, and the High Priest even gave Tuviah an
office in the Temple, where he was in an excellent position to spy on what was
happening there.

The exact chronology of the various events described in our present chapter is
somewhat obscure. The walls of Jerusalem were built and dedicated by Nehemiah
shortly after his arrival there in the twentieth year of the reign of Darius king of
Persia, and Nehemiah stayed in the city for twelve years. Thereafter he returned to
Babylon to continue serving the king as his wine butler/advisor. Our text seems to
imply that it was during Nehemiah's absence that Tuviah gained his foothold in the
Temple and that Nehemiah thereafter returned to Jerusalem, but it is not clear how
long afterwards this was (v 6, see Rashi and Metzudas David ad loc.)

Whenever it was, Nehemiah used his authority as governor of Judea to eject Tuviah
from the Temple. He also had to struggle with the Temple officers, who had become
negligent about providing the Levite Temple singers with their MA'ASER tithe,
causing them to abandon their duties in Jerusalem in order to go around the farms
of Judea to collect it for themselves (vv 10-13).

Nehemiah saw as one of his greatest achievements the restoration of respect for
and proper observance of the Shabbos in the Holy City (vv 14-22). He witnessed
flagrant violation of the prohibition against MELACHAH on Shabbos in Judea: the
treading of grapes in the winepress involves the MELACHAH of S'CHITAH, squeezing
and separating the juice from the flesh of the fruit, which is a derivative of the
MELACHAH of DASH, separating the kernels of produce from the stalks. This is
forbidden MI-D'ORAISO (by the law of the written Torah). Nehemiah also saw the
shameless marketing of all kinds of produce on Shabbos by various traders and
merchants. Commercial activity is not necessarily forbidden on Shabbos MI-
D'ORAISO but is certainly forbidden MI-DERABBANAN (through the enactments of
the sages, cf. Isaiah 58:13).

In order to restore proper observance of the Shabbos, Nehemiah had to struggle

with the leaders of Judea (v 17) – not unlike the HAREDIM in Israel today, who are
locked in struggle with the secularized in an attempt to uphold the sanctity of
Shabbos.

"What evil thing is this that you do and profane the Sabbath day? Did not your
fathers do this, and did not our God bring all this evil upon us and upon this city?
And yet you bring more wrath upon Israel by profaning the Sabbath" (vv 17-18). If
only we would imbibe this lesson today.

The closing section of our chapter returns to the issue of intermarriage (vv 23-31).
Thus Nehemiah's book ends with his strengthening of two of the most fundamental
pillars of Judaism: family purity and observance of the Shabbos.

With this we reach the end of all the narrative books of the TaNaCh with the
exception of the Book of Chronicles, which retells the history of Israel until the
destruction of the First Temple, concluding with a brief reference to the return of
the exiles from Babylon to Jerusalem under Zerubavel. With the help of God we will
study Chronicles later on in the year, after first delving into the prophetic and
wisdom literature.
 Book of Hosea
Chapter 1
WHY START THE TWELVE "MINOR" PROPHETS NOW?

According to an ancient tradition, the order of the NEVI'IM ("prophets") as written

in the scroll of the TaNaCh was: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Jeremiah, Ezekiel,
Isaiah and "the Twelve" (="minor" prophets). The Talmud asks why Isaiah is placed
AFTER Jeremiah and Ezekiel, since he lived several generations earlier. It answers
that since the book of Kings ends with the destruction of the Temple, it is fitting to
read Jeremiah directly after it since his main theme is destruction. Ezekiel begins
with destruction and ends with comfort, while Isaiah is all comfort, and thus
destruction comes next to destruction and comfort next to comfort (Bava Basra
14b).

The Twelve "minor" prophets are not minor in the sense that they were any less in
spiritual stature than the "major" prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel but only
because their surviving written prophecies are much shorter. These twelve short
prophetic works are accounted as one book and written together in a single scroll
so that they should not get lost, which would be easy if each was on a separate
small scroll.

The first of The Twelve is Hosea. The Talmud (ibid.) explains that the book of Hosea
ought to have been written before that of his contemporary Isaiah because Hosea
started prophesying first. However, since, for the reason given above, Hosea's
prophecy was included in the same scroll as Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, who
came well after Isaiah at the end of the period of the prophets at the time of the
building of the Second Temple, the entire book of the twelve "minor" prophets is
placed after Isaiah in the traditional order of the books of the Bible. [The Talmud
states that it was Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi and the Men of the Great Assembly
who wrote the twelve "minor" prophets in one scroll when they saw that Holy Spirit
was departing from the world: they wrote down their own prophecies and included
with them those of the earlier "minor" prophets in order to ensure they would not
get lost. Bava Basra 15a, Rashi ad loc.]

Despite the fact that in the traditional order Ezekiel comes after Kings, we have
followed a different order in our Bible study, because after completing Kings II we
went directly to Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah, which are contained in KESUVIM
(=writings), the third component of TaNaKh. The reason for doing so was to study
the HISTORY of Israel consecutively, since Daniel picks up the narrative of the exile
to Babylon exactly where the last two chapters of Kings II leave off. (When people
follow Kings II with Isaiah or Ezekiel etc. they normally reach Daniel etc. only very
much later and easily become confused about the history and chronology.)

Having completed our study of the biblical books that are mainly devoted to
historical narrative (with the exception of II Chronicles, which retells for a
somewhat different purpose the history of Israel until the exile in Babylon), we
should now have an overall grasp of the historical framework within which to gain
deeper understanding of the prophets. They were addressing the people of their
time in the historical conditions in which they were caught up – and thus make
constant references to the national and international realities of their times. At the
same time, their prophecies are the Word of God as addressed to all the
generations to come, and they are as relevant today as they were when they were
first spoken. Through clearer understanding of the historical context in which they
prophesied, we can better know how their message applies to us in the world we
live in today. Since history is cyclical, the spiritual roots of the situation we face
today lie deeply embedded in the situation addressed by the prophets.

The reason for studying The Twelve "minor" prophets before approaching the
lengthy books of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel is that the study of The Twelve
serves as an excellent introduction to the language and methods of the prophets,
which are very different from most of the historical narratives we have studied until
now.

WHO WAS HOSEA?

Verse 1 of our present chapter tells us that Hosea ben Be'eri prophesied in the days
of Uziah, Yotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and Yerav'am ben Yo'ash
king of Israel (see Kings II chs 14-20). Uziah came to the throne 223 years before
the destruction of the First Temple. It was in the time of Hezekiah, who died 110
years before the destruction, that the Ten Tribes were taken into exile in the year
3205 (555 B.C.E.).

Hosea's father Be'eri is Be'erah mentioned in I Chronicles 5:6 as prince of the tribe
of Reuven, and he was also a prophet (Isaiah 8:19-20). From verse 2 of our
present chapter the rabbis learned that Hosea was the first of four great prophets
who prophesied in the same period. The other three were Amos, Isaiah, and Michah.
Hosea received Torah from Zechariah son of Yehoyada the High Priest, who
received it from Elisha. Hosea was the greatest of the four prophets of his time, and
he taught Amos, who in turn taught Isaiah, who taught Michah (Rambam,
Introduction to Mishneh Torah). Hosea prophesied for ninety years (Pesachim 87a).
"Said the Holy One blessed be He to Reuven: You were the first to repent. By your
life, your son's son will stand up and be the first to open up with Teshuvah, as it is
written, Return, Israel to the Lord your God" (Hosea 14:2, Bereishis Rabbah 84:18).
Hosea's reproofs were primarily directed against the Ten Tribes under the
leadership of Ephraim. The gravesite of Hosea is said to be in a burial cave in the
old cemetery of Safed in the Galilee, which can be visited until today. However
some authorities dispute this identification, stating that the grave in question is that
of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananiya. Some believe the grave of the prophet Hosea to
be east of the River Jordan.

"GO TAKE FOR YOURSELF A WIFE OF HARLOTRY AND CHILDREN OF

HARLOTRY" (v 2)

Z'NOOS (="harlotry"), a recurrent theme in Hosea, is a metaphor for faithlessness

to God – forsaking one's true "husband" and going after other "lovers"=idols (cf.
Numbers 15:39, recited twice daily in the third paragraph of Shema). In Hosea's
time the Children of Israel reached the lowest level both in relation to God and in
their behavior to one another. The rabbis stated that God hinted to Hosea that he
should pray for the people, but he replied that God should change them for another
people (an early example of "replacement theology"). "The Holy One blessed be He
said, What can I do with this elder. I'll tell him to take a harlot who will bear
children who may nor may not be his, and I'll tell him to send them away. If he
agrees, I too will send Israel away. So it was: Hosea married Gomer bas Divlayim,
a known harlot, who bore him children who were given names alluding to their
future fate, but when God asked Hosea to divorce and send them away, Hosea
began asking for mercy so that they could stay with him. The Holy One blessed be
He said to Hosea: This wife is not loyal to you and the children are not definitely
yours but you still want them. How then can you tell me to send away Israel , the
children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, one of the possessions I have acquired in the
world? Hosea immediately understood that he had erred in what he said and
begged for mercy on Israel " (Pesachim 87a).

Some of the rabbis took Hosea's marriage with this harlot as having happened
literally (Pesachim 87a), while others saw it as essentially a prophetic allegory (see
Targum Yonasan and RaDaK on v 2).

The prophecy in the present chapter deals with:

vv 1-3: Hosea's marriage with the harlot.

vv 4-5: The birth of the son Yizra'el (="God will scatter") and the prophecy of the
punishment that would be visited on the house of Yehu ben Nimshi, who had shed
the blood of the house of Ahab (="the blood of Yizra'el", the location where they
were killed, II Kings ch 9) but who later practiced idolatry himself.

vv. 6-7: Birth of the daughter Lo-Ruhamah (="not shown love"), a prophecy of the
punishment of Israel and comfort to Judah .

vv. 8-9: Birth of the son Lo-Ami (="not My people"), a metaphor of God's
abandonment of Israel .

Chapter 2
This chapter of consolation follows directly after the first chapter dealing with
punishment as if to indicate that after God told him to marry a harlot etc. Hosea
realized he had sinned in having earlier said that God should divorce the unfaithful
nation (Pesachim 87b; Rashi on v 1). "What connection is there between chapters 1
and 2? It can be compared to a king who was angry with his wife and summoned
the scribe to write her a GET (=bill of divorce), but by the time the scribe arrived,
the king was reconciled with his wife. He said, How can I send this scribe away
wondering why I summoned him? The king told the scribe to write a new KESUBAH
(marriage contract) double the value of the first" (Sifrei quoted by Rashi on v 1).

Vv. 1-3: Prophecy of consolation and redemption, opposite of the harsh prophecy of
the previous chapter. Verse 2 prophecies the reunification of Judah and Israel, who
will appoint over themselves "one head" (=Mashiach) and come up from "the land"
(=exile). "…for great is the day of Yizre'el, i.e. the day of their ingathering from
having been "sown" (ZARA) and "scattered" by God. Thus Hosea, who lived even
before the exile of the Ten Tribes, was looking at the entire sweep of history that
will culminate in the healing of the split between Judah and the Ten Tribes and their
reconciliation under King Messiah.

"Say to your brothers, My people and to your sisters, Shown love" (v 3). Metzudas
David and RaDaK (in the name of Rav Sa'adia Gaon) interpret: "You, the children of
Judah and Benjamin, say of your brothers, the children of the Ten Tribes, that they
are My People just like you… and likewise say Shown-Love of the women of the Ten
Tribes". In this verse Jews thus have a clear directive to reach out to the returning
members of the Ten Tribes and help them return to their Israelite roots.
Vv. 4-7: God reproves Israel as a "harlot" for having replaced him with idols. He
threatens that this will lead to her returning to her condition of nakedness as it was
prior to the redemption from Egypt (v 5).

"For their mother has played the harlot. She who conceived them has acted
shamefully" (v 7): "Their very sages and teachers are ashamed before the people
because they say to them 'Don't steal' while they themselves steal, and they preach,
'Don't lend upon interest' while they do precisely that" (Rashi ad loc.

"For she said, I will go after those who love me"(v 7). RaDak (ad loc.) explains that
on one level "those who love me" are Egypt and Ashur, with whom Israel tried to
make a covenant [just as today Israel thinks U.S. and the European Union etc. are
her "friends"], while on another level they refer to the sun, moon and constellations
which they worshipped idolatrously.

Vv. 8-15: Specifies the penalty for abandoning God. V 13 is explained by the rabbis
as alluding to the destruction of the Temple, turning the month of Av into a time of
mourning (Taanis 29b).

Vv. 16-20: God's attempt to bring the Assembly of Israel back to him. "I will allure
her and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her" (v 16): Targum
explains that in the future redemption God will do wonders and miracles just as He
did in the wilderness. (Those of us who feel we are living in a kind of wilderness
today can also constantly see and feel His miracles as He draws us to him!)

Vv. 21-22: God strikes a renewed, eternal Covenant with Israel. When men wind
the leather RETZUA-strap of the arm TEFILIN as a "wedding ring" around the
fingers and hand to form the letters SHIN-DALET-YUD, it is customary to recite
these verses.

Vv. 23-25: Prophecy of consolation and restoration of the nation to its previous
status. "And I shall sow her for me in the land…" (v 25). Just as one sows a small
measure of seed and harvests a very great measure, so through God's "sowing" the
Children of Israel in their lands of exile, they will bring back very many converts
(Pesachim 87b).

This whole chapter, which tells how Israel are numberless as the sand of the sea, is
read as the Haftara to parshas Bamidbar, which is read in May-June just before the
festival of Shavuos, and which speaks of the counting of the Children of Israel by
Moses in the wilderness .

Chapter 3
"Having completed his words of comfort, he now returns to words of reproof to the
people of his generation. This is the way of the prophets – to intermingle reproof
and comfort" (RaDaK on v 1).

V 1: Having previously commanded Hosea to marry an adulterous woman, God now

commands Hosea to love such a woman in spite of her disloyalty. This adulterous
woman is a prophetic metaphor for the people of Israel , whom God loves – albeit
seemingly from afar – despite their disloyalty. How now is God to show His love to
His people? In the coming verses the prophet takes a "long view" from the
beginning of Israel's nationhood until the very "end of days" (v 5), revealing that
God's love will take the form of the lengthy suffering of exile, which will eventually
bring the people back in search of what they have lost.
V 2: The PSHAT (literal meaning) appears to be that the prophet acquired his wife
as commanded through giving her KIDDUSHIN gifts of 15 silver coins and a
sizeable quantity of barley. As explained by Rashi based on Midrash, all this alludes
to God's acquisition of the people of Israel as His "wife" through the redemption
from Egypt on the FIFTEENTH of Nissan, and through giving them the redemptive
commandments of (1) each individual's silver half-shekel contribution to the
Temple and (2) the barley Omer offering brought on 16 th Nissan. Rashi himself as
well as numerous other midrashim also darshen this verse in many ways "…that the
Torah be made great and glorious".

V. 3: God's Covenant with His people was that the relationship should be "for many
days" ON CONDITION that the "wife" is loyal, and then He will be loyal to her. This
verse alludes to the first two of the Ten Commandments: "I am…" and "you shall
have no other gods…" (Exodus 20:2-3).

V 4: The people will remain in exile for "many days", waiting for redemption, and
God too will wait to be able to take them back as His people, but even in their exile
He will not chose another people. If there is no MELEKH (king) – if God appears not
to be with them in exile – at least there will not be any SAR (angel), i.e. even in
exile the will not worship an intermediary. If there is no ZEVAH (sacrifice in the
Temple), at least there will be no MATZEVA (idolatrous pillar altar). If there will be
no EPHOD (high priest's breastplate, URIM VE-THUMIM), at least there will be no
TERAPHIM (astrological divining instruments) (Metzudas David ad loc.).

V 5: After the days of exile, the Children of Israel will repent and seek out the three
things that they despised in the days of Rehaboam and Jeraboam: the kingship of
Heaven, the kingship of the House of David, and the Temple in Jerusalem. "And
they will seek out the Lord their God…" = the kingship of Heaven."And David their
king" = the kingship of the House of David. "And they will be filled with fear
towards God and to his goodness…" This refers to the Temple (Rashi ad loc. In the
name of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai).

Chapter 4
This chapter begins a new prophecy of reproof that specifies in more detail the
component transgressions which together constitute Israel's infidelity to her
"husband", God.

V 1: God's "controversy" or argument against the inhabitants of the land is because

all three columns are flawed. There is no TRUTH (=TIFERES, the center column).
There is no KINDNESS (=CHESSED, the right arm of love) and there is no
KNOWLEDGE OF ELOKIM (no awareness of God's power of DIN, Judgment and
Strength=GEVURAH, the left arm of might). The three columns are supposed to be
manifested in the LAND (=MALCHUS, the receiving "vessel"), and the land is flawed
because they are not.

V 2: The catalog of false oaths, deception, murder, theft, immorality and adultery
until "blood leads to blood" and one terrible bloody strike follows another aptly
typifies certain areas of present-day Israeli society just as it typified the society in
the day of the prophet.

V 3: Characterization of the mourning of the land under the devastations of exile,

which affects the entire ecology of animals, birds and even the fish of the sea.
V 4: But the people do not want to hear the reproof, telling the true prophets not to
argue with them, while the people themselves argue against their own priests,
whose role is to teach them Torah.

Vv 5-10: Running away from the reproof of the true prophets, the people will
stumble together with their false prophets. The people have fallen to a state that is
the opposite of DA'AS (=true knowledge of God), and just as they have forgotten
the Torah, so God will "forget" their children (since at Sinai the people brought in
their own children as guarantors of the Covenant) producing generations of
assimilated Israelites. They will eat without being satisfied and fornicate but not
increase their population.

V 11: The root cause of the national malady lies in ZENOOS, "immorality"/disloyalty
to God and the preoccupation with "wine" – immediate gratification and the flight
into fantasy.

Vv 12-13: "My people ask counsel of a piece of wood, and their staff declares to
them" (v 12) – they seek out idols and follow what their false prophets say. Instead
of going up to the Temple, which was intended to be the single focus of worship of
the One God, the people are scattered, all in their own private cults. The fathers'
disloyalty to God leads to immorality among their daughters and daughters-in-law.

V 14 is darshened in Talmud Sotah as teaching that the plague of immorality will be

so widespread that the Bitter Waters that came to test whether a man's wife had
been disloyal would no longer be effective because the men folk themselves were
also immoral.

Vv 15-16: Admonition to Judah not to join with Israel or learn from their path. [It is
very tempting for the Torah observant to want to imitate those who have thrown
off the yoke when they see them living it up and apparently enjoying themselves
hugely.] For Israel is like a headstrong cow that has been fattened up and now
kicks, whereas God will in exile pasture them like a lamb, whose diet is more
skimpy (Rashi).

V 17: "Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone". On PSHAT level the prophet is
saying that the Ten Tribes are so given over to idolatry that further reproof is
pointless. The Midrash learns from this verse: "Great is peace, because even if they
worship idols, if there is peace among them He cannot (as if) do anything to them.
But when they are divided among themselves, what does it say? 'Their heart is
divided, now they shall be found guilty'" (Hosea 10:2; Bereishis Rabbah 38).

V 18: The people's drunken mentality is far from God. It is their kings who initiated
this path of sin. But just as a strong wind sweeps a weak bird far from where it
wants to be, the wind of exile will sweep the people away until they become
ashamed of their idolatrous sacrifices.

Chapter 5
In studying Hosea (and the whole Bible) it is valuable to pay attention to the
original Hebrew parshahs (chapters or sections) as written in the parchment scroll
as opposed to the sometimes arbitrary chapter breaks that are conventionally used
in the majority of printed Bibles.

In many printed Hebrew Bibles (but not in the written scroll), the parshah breaks
are indicated by an enlarged Peh indicating PARSHAH PETHUHAH, an "open
parshah", or an enlarged Samach indicated PARSHAH SETHUMAH, a "closed
parshah". A Parshah Pethuhah is a more decisive break from what went before than
a Parshah Sethumah, as suggested by the manner in which they are respectively
written in the scroll. In the case of the parshah Pethuhah, the space that separates
it from the preceding section is wider and more obvious than in the case of a
Parshah Sethumah.

A Parshah Pethuhah is the equivalent of a chapter in itself – a section of the text

that has own theme and purpose. A Parshah Sethumah is less separate from the
Parshah that precedes it – it is more like a section break within a chapter.

Today's text, Hosea Chapters 5-6, makes up one whole prophecy. Ch 5 v 1 marks
the start of a new Parshah Pethuhah that runs until the end of Ch 5 v 7. Ch 5 Verse
8, "Blast the shofar…" begins a Parshah Sethumah which runs continuously in the
parchment scroll until the end of Ch 6 v 11. Thus the chapter break after 5:15 is
arbitrary, and while it highlights the call for repentance in 6:1, it actually disrupts
the continuity of the prophecy as a whole and its meaning. The real break in the
prophecy is where the Parshah Sethumah starts at 5:8: this creates a pause in the
prophecy before it continues further amplifying on the theme with which it started.
Verses 5:1-7 are Introductory; verse 5:8-6:11 are elaboration.

V 1. This is a prophecy addressed to the heart of Judah no less than it is to the Ten
Tribes, "Israel". RaDak explains (ad loc.) that the address to the Cohanim-priests
and the House of Israel is directed in particular to Judah, who is here included in
the generic Israel. The priests here are the true priests of God, who served in His
Temple in Jerusalem in the territory of Judah.

However the "house of the king" is understood as a specific reference to the kings
of Israel, the northern kingdom, who after the split with Judah in the time of
Rehav'am posted border police to forcibly prevent their people from going up to the
Temple in Jerusalem – these are the "trap in Mitzpah, and a snare spread upon
Tabor" (Rashi). Judah and Ephraim are involved together in the consequences of
this.

Vv 2ff: Ephraim's "original sin" of rebelling against the authority of the kingship of
David is the harlotry that has defiled the whole of people of Israel, including Judah
– but they find it impossible to abandon their ways and return to God – "and they
do not know HaShem": the essential flaw is in DA'AS, mind, ideas, knowledge,
consciousness.

V 5: Israel, Ephraim and Judah are all named here together – being interconnected,
the stumbling of one leads to the fall of the other.

V 6: "With their flocks and their oxen they will go to search out HaShem but they
will not find Him" – they have mistaken rote performance of ritual for true
repentance: this is because of their flawed Da'as. They do not know God and
therefore they do not know what He really wants.

Verse 7 is a general summary of the introductory part of the prophecy (vv 1-7):
"They have betrayed God…" Their intermarriage with the nations, literally and
ideologically, has spawned the "strange children" as a result of which the month of
Av – the destruction of the Temple – will consume their whole share. This is a
prophecy analyzing and explaining why destruction is on the way.
Now comes a BREAK, indicated by an enlarged Samach in the Hebrew printed text,
marking the start of a new Parshah Sethumah – in our case an amplification of the
introductory section, running continuously until the end of Ch 6.

Verse 8: The shofar blast is a warning of coming war and trouble, but all the
locations mentioned in the verse are in the territory of Benjamin, except for BEITH
AVEN (lit. "house of corruption"), which is in that of Ephraim. Targum allusively
relates Giv'ah to the request of the people to have a king – Saul – and Ramah (the
town of Samuel) to their rejection of Samuel's appeal to them not to take a king
but to serve only God. The original taking on of a temporal king is thus traced as
the root of the later rebellion against Judah by Ephraim and the Ten Tribes, leading
to the establishment of the idolatrous cult in Beith Aven, which is now drawing even
Benjamin – who remained loyal to Judah – after it, thus corrupting everything.

Vv 9-10: If Ephraim is facing devastation as the punishment for this, Judah is

chasing up behind. Hosea was foretelling the future that awaited both of them, with
the exile of the Ten Tribes (Ephraim) and the destruction of the Temple (Judah).

Vv 11-12: "Ephraim is oppressed… because he willingly went after the dictate", i.e.
the "dictates" and new commandments of the prophets of Baal. This is the cause of
the canker-worm eating away at Ephraim and the rot in the house of Judah.

V 13: The closing eras of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were marked by the
efforts of their kings to buy allies in the hope of saving themselves from their
enemies. The temporary alliance of Hoshea ben Elah with Assyria and Ahaz king of
Judah's bribery of Tiglath Pilesser to help him against Aram and Israel are said to
be alluded to here (Rashi ad loc.).

V 14: All their ploys will not succeed.

V 15: "I will go and return to My place…" This is the exile of the Shechinah from the
world (Talmud Rosh Hashanah 31a). This exile will continue "until they realize their
guilt and search out My face [God's presence], in their trouble they will seek Me."

The following verse, Chapter 6 v 1, is a direct continuation, telling us what they say
when they seek out God:

Chapter 6
V 1: "Go and let us return to HaShem…" The prophet is placing words of repentance
in the mouths of the people, encouraging them with the faith that just as God has
the power to chastise, so He has the power to heal.

V 2: Hosea takes a very long view of the history of Israel, encouraging the people
with the prophecy that "after two days He will revive us, on the third day He will
raise us up" – "He will strengthen us after the two punishments that have befallen
us, the destruction of the First and Second Temples, and raise us up with the
building of the Third Temple" (Rashi ad loc.).

V 3: "And let us KNOW, let us PURSUE to KNOW (DA'AS) HaShem…" The remedy
lies in DA'AS.

But the heart of the penitent can be fickle – how the YETZER RA ("evil inclination")
fights in the heart of one struggling to separate from a bad past and live a better
future. The people's kindness is "like a morning cloud and like dew that departs
early" (v 4).

V 5 "Therefore have I hewed them by the prophets; I have slain them with the
words of my mouth". This refers both to the death of many people in the coming
disasters and also to the slaying of true prophets, such as Zechariah son of
Yehoyada the High Priest, Uriah and Isaiah, because the people did not want to
hear their message.

V 6: This verse contains the essential message of Hosea and all the prophets: "I
want your kindness and not your sacrifices; I want your KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
rather than your burnt offerings".

V 7: "And they, like ADAM, violated the Covenant". This verse is the source of the
teaching that Adam "pulled back his foreskin" – denying the Covenant (Sanhedrin
38b). The nation thus repeats Adam's original sin.

Vv 8-11 characterize the strongholds of sinners in Gil'ad (Menashe) and Shechem

(Ephraim): These verses allude to the three cardinal sins of idolatry, murder and
adultery. The plague afflicts not only Ephraim but also Judah, whose backslidings
were to pull them into exile just as God was ready to restore the whole nation.

Chapter 7
As in the case of the two previous chapters, Hosea chapters 7-8 make up a single
prophetic discourse made up of two parts: a Parshah Pethuhah ("open section") =
Ch 7 vv 1-12, followed by a Parshah Sethumah ("closed section") = Ch 7 vv 13-16
with Ch 8 vv 1-14. The break between ch 7 v 16 and ch 8 v 1 is thus "artificial" and
interrupts the continuity of the prophecy.

The first part of the prophecy, Ch 7 vv 1-12, analyses the wickedness of the people,
which is bound up with the wickedness of their kings and rulers, comparing their
plotting of evil to a baker leaving his dough to rise (vv 4 and 6). Underlying the
reproof is the idea that this is blatant ingratitude for God's redemption of Israel
from Egypt, when their dough did not have time to rise before they hurriedly left
(see Targum Yonasan on v 4). As a result Ephraim will be a crude cake baked on
the coals and eaten up immediately – consumed by the nations of their exile: no
matter where they turn they will be trapped in God's "net".

The second part of the prophecy, from 7:13 to 8:14, amplifies on the sins that are
leading Israel into exile with Judah to follow. The essential rebellion is against God's
Covenant – His Torah (8:1). The people's choice to be governed by a temporal king
led them to make themselves gods of silver and gold, the calves of Jerabo'am, an
intermediary intended to "manipulate" God. Yet they will find that all their projects
and endeavors will be frustrated – they will sow to the wind and produce no flour
for real bread (8:7). Their turning to the nations for help will merely hasten their
exile (8:10), and because they have become strangers to God's Torah (8:12), they
will return to Egypt, the place of their original exile (8:13).

Ch 7 v 1: "When I would have healed Israel, then the iniquity of Ephraim was
uncovered". God wants to save and heal them, but at the very time of redemption
their sins rise to the fore. Whenever there is an arousal of holiness, there is a
corresponding arousal of impure forces. From this verse, the rabbis darshened that
God does not strike Israel unless He first creates the medicine to heal them
(Megillah 13b).
V 2: The people do not believe that God knows and remembers our deeds.

V 3: Their very kings and rulers are delighted at the people's evil and lies – the
people encourage their rulers in evil and vice versa.

V 4: The people are heated up with lust for adultery like a stoked oven, while the
"baker" rests, allowing his dough to rise and his immoral plans to come to fruition.
As mentioned earlier, Targum Yonasan on this verse contrasts the people's plotting
in this way with God's goodness to them in Egypt when He saved them before their
dough had time to rise.

V 5: The rulers are "drunk" and the king is in league with scoffers and scorners.
From this verse the Talmud derives the teaching that scoffers do not enter into the
presence of the Shechinah (Sotah 42a).

V 6-7: Further elaboration of the image of baking bread as a metaphor for the
plotting of sin and immorality that is causing national disaster. Rashi on v 7 brings
a midrash from Yerushalmi Avodah Zara 1:1 telling that on the day that Israel
chose Yerav'am (Jerabo'am) as king and asked him to make an idol, all the princes
were drunk. He told them to come back the next day when they would be sober,
giving them time to think about it all night like the baker leaving the dough to rise.
When they came back the next morning, he told them he feared the Sanhedrin, but
the people said they would kill them – "and they have devoured their judges".

V 8: "Ephraim has mingled himself among the peoples". "Mingled" (YITHBOLAL) has
the connotation of mixing a batter or dough, and also that of assimilation. "Ephraim
is as a cake not turned" – "like a cake baked on the coals that is not even turned
over before being consumed" (Targum Yonasan; Rashi).

Vv 9-10: The essential flaw lies on the level of DA'AS, knowledge and awareness:
the people do not even realize that all their power has been eaten up by strangers
and that advanced old age has set in. They do not even try to return to God.

Vv 11-12: Ephraim flits around like a silly dove seeking help from Egypt to Ashur –
not realizing that wherever they go, God's net is spread for them.

There is now a pause after v 12 followed by a Parshah Sethumah starting at verse

13 and continuing until the end of Ch 8. This section further elaborates the sins of
Israel that are making the punitive exile inevitable:

Vv 13-15: God wants to redeem Israel, but their rebellion is making the coming
disaster inevitable. They do not cry out to God with all their hearts – they only
complain and they are only interested in securing supplies of grain and wine.

The Talmud (Bavli Avodah Zarah 4a) darshens from these verses: "I would have
redeemed them, but they have spoken lies against Me"(v 13) – "I said I would
redeem them through monetary loss in this world in order that they should merit
the world to come, but they have spoken lies against Me" [complaining of their
suffering without understanding its purpose]. "Though I have trained them and
strengthened their arms, yet do they devise mischief against Me" (v 15) – "I said I
shall chastise them with suffering in this world in order to strengthen their hand in
the world to come, but they account it as evil".

V 16: Their turning to the nations for help will not avail them – they will simply go
into exile and fall.
 Chapter 8
V 1: This is a direct continuation of the prophecy in Ch 7, calling on the people
again to take the shofar to sound a warning about the coming war that will lead to
the destruction of the very Temple itself as a result of the fundamental flaw of
transgressing the Covenant and abandoning the Torah.

V 2: Even when the people cry out to God, it is insincere and He will not answer
them.

Vv 4-6: It was the choice by the people of kings who were not divinely ordained
that led them to make idols of silver and gold – the calves of Jerabo'am – a sin
from which the people cannot cleanse themselves. Their idol is merely man-made
and will be shattered to pieces.

V 7: The entire national enterprise of idolatry is compared to sowing to the wind –

it will produce no tangible flour to eat, and even if it does, the nations will consume
it. The metaphor of futile sowing connects with the metaphors in Ch 7 vv 4, 6 in
which the people's plotting of evil was compared to a baker leaving his dough to
rise.

Vv 8-10: The irony is that the more efforts Israel will make to run after the nations,
the nearer they will bring their own feared exile.

Vv 11-13: Ephraim's idolatry goes contrary to the many Torah teachings that God
taught them through His prophets – but in the eyes of the people they are strange
and irrelevant. Even their rituals of sacrifice in the Temple find no favor with God:
the decree is sealed and the people will return to exile in Egypt (as happened after
the destruction of the First Temple , when those who escaped captivity by the
Babylonians sought refuge in Egypt , where they died).

V 14: Israel has forgotten his Maker and is concerned only to build palaces, while
Judah has built a multitude of fortified cities – but all will be consumed by fire.

Chapter 9
Chapter 9 v 1 begins a new prophecy, the first section of which is contained in vv
1-9, followed, after a break, by a longer second section (PARSHAH SETHUMAH)
running continuously from ch 9 v 10 until ch 10 v 8. The conventional chapter
break at 10:1 is arbitrary, interrupts the continuity of the sense of the prophecy,
and does not correspond to the section breaks in the hand-written Hebrew scroll.

Section 1: Vv 1-9:

V 1: "Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy as other people…" The true joy of Israel is not
like that of other nations that did not receive the Torah and did not fall to God's lot
– but now that Israel has gone astray from God they have lost much good (Rashi).
Israel goes around like a harlot seeking sustenance and help from the nations
instead of depending on God.

V 2: As a punishment, their granaries and wine-vats will not sustain them.

V 3: Instead of dwelling in their own promised land, they will go into exile in Egypt
and Assyria.
V 4: Instead of offering pure sacrifices in God's Temple, they will eat impure food in
exile – for they eat only for their own gratification: this is not the way to bring
sacrifices to God.

V 5: What will you do on the day appointed for His vengeance – the day of God's
"feast", i.e. when He slaughters the people?

V 6: Prophecy of the exile that will ensue when destructive invaders enter the land.

V 7: After having been flawed with a lack of DA'AS (knowledge, Godly awareness),
the people will learn to know God's righteousness through the tribulations of exile,
which is the payment for their sins. Then they will see that the false prophets on
whom they relied for comfort were fools and madmen (Metzudas David).

V 8: Ephraim has his own "watcher", the false prophet who prophesied in the name
of their idol, who is nothing but a snare into whose trap the people will fall
(Metzudas David).

V 9: The sin of Ephraim was rooted in Giv'ah – alluding to the scandal of the
Concubine in Giv'ah (where the tribes of Israel initially failed in their campaign
against Benjamin owing to the presence of Michah's idol, Judges ch 19), or
alternatively this alludes to the people's request for a king made to Samuel at
Giv'ath Shaul (Rashi).

Section 2 of the prophecy: Chapter 9 v 10 – Chapter 10 v 8:

Ch 9 V 10: God originally chose Israel because they were like refreshing grapes in a
wilderness or the luscious first fruits of the fig tree – the founding fathers and the
generation of the Exodus were unique in the wilderness of the nations. However,
already during the forty years of wandering in the wilderness, the people sinned
with the Moabite women who caused them to become attached to their god, Baal
Pe'or (Numbers ch 25).

V 11-14: The prophet prefers that the people should flit away like a bird and stop
procreating: either they should have stillborn children, or abort their embryos, or
not even conceive, as this would be better than raising children only to see them
killed by their enemies, because Ephraim has become like the haughty Tyre

V 15: The prophet prays that their children should die young as the pain over the
death of a child is less than that over the death of an adult (Rashi).

"All their evil is in Gilgal…" The people sinned greatly with idolatrous altars in Gilgal
(which was in the territory of Ephraim) because the Sanctuary had originally been
in Gilgal and the later idolatrous prophets told the people that it was a propitious
place for sacrifice (Rashi).

Vv 16-17: Ephraim is smitten and dried at the roots, and cannot produce fruits –
future generations – because God has rejected them owing to their disobedience,
as a result they must go into exile. [Students of Hebrew may wish to consider
whether allusions to the founder of Islam are embedded in Hosea 9:6 and 16.]

Chapter 10
Verses 1-8 are the direct continuation of the parshah that began in ch 9 v 10.
V 1: Having earlier compared Israel to grapes in the wilderness ( 9:10 ) and having
prophesied the terrible fate awaiting their fruits – their children – Hosea now
complains that Israel is an empty vine – because their very fruitfulness and
prosperity caused them to sin.

V 2: "Their heart is divided…" i.e. from God: this is why they will be found guilty.

V 3: When the troubles of exile strike, they will realize that they have no king,
because the king in whom they trusted to go ahead of them and fight their battles
proved unable to help them (Rashi).

V 4: They talk indiscriminately, swearing falsely and striking covenants with the
nations, and just retribution will therefore sprout like bitter hemlock in a field
(Metzudas David).

V 5-7: The inhabitants of Shomron will succumb to panic over the idolatrous calves
of Beith-Aven (=Beith El, where Jeraboam set up his altar). This is a prophecy of
how the Assyrian king Phul was to take away with him the golden calves of Beith El
when he took the tribes of Reuven, Gad and Menasheh into exile (I Chronicles
5:26).

V 8: The ultimate retribution will be the destruction of the idolatrous altars of Israel,
causing them to ask the very mountains and hills to cover them in their shame.

A new prophecy starts at verse 9, which is the beginning of a PARSHAH PETHUHAH.

This prophecy runs until 13:11 with a pause at ch 12 v 1, which begins a new
PARSHAH SETHUMAH.

Ch 10 v 9: "More than in the days of Giv'ah have you sinned O Israel…" Rashi
explains this as a reference to the sin of the Concubine in Giv'ah (Judges ch 19ff),
where the presence of Michah's idol prevented the tribes of Israel from succeeding
against Benjamin. "…there they STOOD" – i.e. the people STAYED with the same
evil trait of idolatry (Rashi). We thus see Michah's idol to be the root of Ephraim's
fall.

V 10: "According to My desire, I constantly chastised them in the time between one
judge and another and I gave them over into the hands of their enemies" (Rashi).

V 11: "Ephraim is like a cow that has to be trained to work and draw the yoke and
plow, but she prefers to thresh the harvested crops in order to eat while doing so.
God taught them Torah and mitzvoth, but they want the reward without practicing"
(Metzudas David).

V 12: "Sow for yourselves with righteousness, reap according to kindness…".The

prophet yearns for the people to WORK so as to earn the promised goodness.
"Rabbi Elazar said: The practice of kindness [going beyond the letter of the law] is
greater than righteousness and charity [in strict accordance with the law and no
more], as it is written, Sow for yourselves with righteousness, reap according to
kindness. If a person sows, he may or may not eat, but when a person reaps, he
will definitely eat. The reward for charity is only according to the degree of kindness
with which it is practiced" (Succah 49b).

V 13: Despite the call of the Torah to good deeds, the people are like a stubborn
cow that has plowed nothing but wickedness, as a result of which they will eat the
fruits of their deception, having put their faith and trust in their own might – "MY
power and the strength of MY hand" (Deut. 8:17).

V 14-15: The coming doom is all the result of the idolatry of Beith El.

Chapter 11
The Bible editors who introduced the chapter system universally used in our printed
Bibles broke Hosea into chapters that are in most cases approximately equal in the
number of verses they contain. However, the conventional chapter system
frequently violates the traditional breaks of Parshah Pethuhah and Parshah
Sethumah as contained in the handwritten scrolls.

This is particularly confusing in studying Hosea chapters 11 and 12, because the
conventional chapter division implies that these are separate prophecies, which
they are not. They are in fact the latter part of the first section and the first part of
the second section of one long prophecy that began at Hosea 10:9, breaks with a
Parshah Sethumah at 12:1 and runs continuously without a break until 13:11. In
order to see this entire prophecy as one lengthy discourse falling into two parts, it
is best to study Hosea 10:9-13:11 as a continuous piece.

The entire prophecy is castigating Israel under the leadership of Ephraim for their
original demand at Giv'ah for a king like other nations (Hosea 10:9) – a sin that led
to the rebellion of the Ten Tribes against the House of David and to Jeraboam's
establishment of the cult of golden calves in Beith El and Dan. The prophecy might
in some ways be characterized as an expression of a "love-hate" parent-child
relationship in which all the love is from God while all the rebellion is from Ephraim,
who having waxed rich from His blessings proceeded to serve the work of his own
hands and trust in his own might. Through the overthrow of Ephraim's kings by the
very nations they had wooed like a harlot and through the harsh tribulations of
exile, God will teach them His righteousness. It is with the final overthrow of their
rebellious kings that the prophecy climaxes (13:10-11).

One of the underlying metaphors of the entire prophecy is of Ephraim as a calf that
was intended to learn to bear the yoke and plow the field of Torah and mitzvos, but
which rebelled. The metaphor is bound up with the fact that Joseph (father of
Ephraim, corresponding to the constellation of Shor, Taurus, the "Ox") was blessed
by Moses as a "first-born ox" (Deut. 33:17).

God's love for Israel as expressed in this prophecy is evoked through references to
the essence of the Torah – righteousness and kindness -- (10:11-12; 12:7), as a
yoke applied with kindness (11:4) and to God's merciful redemption of Israel from
Egypt by Moses (11:3; 12:14; 13:4-5). In the second section of the prophecy
which starts in ch 12 v 1, God's love for Israel is evoked in particular through telling
of God's mercies to Jacob (12: 4-5 and 12:13f.).

The prophecy repeatedly juxtaposes God's mercies and His calls for repentance
through His true prophets with the people's callous deceptions: the more they are
called to repent, the more they run to their idols (11:2). Yet in spite of their
rebellions, God's eternal love for Israel cannot allow Him to reject his first-born son
– for He is God and not a man (11:9) – and woven into the fabric of this prophecy
is how He will redeem Israel and enter the celestial city of Jerusalem only when the
Temple is rebuilt in the earthly Jerusalem (11:9-10).
The opening of chapter 11 v 1 must be understood as the direct continuation of the
passage at the end of the previous chapter (Hosea 10:9-15), the beginning of the
prophecy, recounting how Israel sinned from the days of Giv'ah and were
repeatedly chastised, and how although God sought to train the wayward calf in the
ways of righteousness and kindness, they rebelled and trusted in their strength and
might, causing their own coming doom through the destruction of Beith El and the
kingship of Israel (11:15).

Chapter 11 v 1 answers why all this is coming upon the people – "Because Israel is
a NAAR…" – lit. a "foolish youth", stripped (ME-NU'AR) of all goodness (Rashi ad
loc.) – YET EVEN SO, "I have loved him…" God has been calling Israel through his
prophets from the time He brought them up from Egypt .

V 2: As much as the prophets called to them, so the people went after their idols.

V 3: God wanted to train Ephraim, the Ox – he sent them Moses, who "took them
on his arms" (Numbers 11:12) – but the people did not know it was He that healed
them.

V 4: In His mercy, He put upon them the yoke of Torah with loving tenderness.

V 5-6: He promised them they would not see their Egyptian enemies any more
(Exodus 14:13). But the result of Israel 's rebelliousness was that now Ashur is
their king – it was the Assyrians who took the Ten Tribes into exile, because they
refused to repent. Because of their own foolish counsel, their cities were to be
scourged with the sword and their "branches" (=the mighty warriors) consumed.

V 7: The people are in doubt about whether to repent. The prophets "call them TO
ABOVE (=EL AL), but none at all would raise himself". [Yes indeed, it is from this
verse that the Israeli national airline takes its name. And travelers look forward to
the days when the captains will start every flight with a call to all the passengers
and crew to join in lifting our hearts TO ABOVE, up to God, and offering Him our
prayers for the safety and success of all.]

Vv 8-9: Yet as the loving Father, God is wracked with pain, as it were, over how to
chastise His wayward son. "How shall I give you up, Ephraim? How shall I surrender
you, Israel? My heart is turned within Me. All my compassion is kindled. I will not
execute the fierceness of My anger, I will not turn to destroy Ephraim. For I am
God and not a man; the Holy One in the midst of you, and I will not come as an
enemy." The moving eloquence of these verses speaks for itself.

An alternative translation for the closing words of v 9, "I will not come as an
enemy", would be: "I will not come into (another) city" – i.e. I am the Holy One in
your midst and in spite of everything I will always dwell only in Jerusalem. A third
interpretation – on the level of allusion – is given in Taanis 5a: "I will not come into
the city…" "The Holy One blessed be He said, I will not come into the heavenly
Jerusalem until I come into the earthly Jerusalem, for the two are interconnected"
(cf. Psalms 122:3). In other words, the perfection of creation – when God as it
were enters and reigns in His celestial city – will come about only with the
rebuilding of the earthly Temple in Jerusalem.

Vv 10-11 prophesy the future awakening of Israel in response to God's call, and
how the exiles will come trembling [as Haredim?] from the west, from Egypt [the
exile in Islamic countries in the south] and Ashur [the exile in the Christian
countries in the north] and return to their homes. This promise of future
redemption concludes the first section of the prophecy.
* * * The Sefardic custom is to read Hosea 11:7-11 and 12:1-12 as the Haftara of
Parshas Vayeitzei, Gen. 28:!0-32:2 * * *

Chapter 12
The second section of the prophecy that started in Hosea 10:9 now begins with the
opening of a Parshah Sethumah:

V 1: Despite all of God's mercies as recounted in the first section of the prophecy,
"Ephraim compasses Me about with lies and the House of Israel with deceit…" Yet "
Judah still rules with God" – Judah is still ruled by the fear of God, their kings were
still faithful to God.

V 2: But Ephraim is running after the wind in his international alliances, which will
not save him on his day of doom.

V 3: "HaShem has also a controversy with Judah …" – God explains to Judah His
grievances against Ephraim so that they will not be surprised when He punishes
Jacob (=the people of Israel) for his ways (Rashi).

V 4: God's grievance is that Israel has rebelled in spite of all His mercies to Jacob
from the very time that he was in the womb, when God already gave him mastery
over Esau, after which He enabled him to prevail over the angel with whom he
struggled (Genesis 32:25ff).

V 5: This verse tells the story of Jacobs overcoming the angel, who wept and
begged Jacob to release him, promising that he would later testify at Beith El that
he and Esau agreed that Jacob deserved Isaac's blessings (Rashi; Hullin 92a).

V 6-7: God is eternally faithful – ready to bestow love on Ephraim now just as He
did upon Jacob, asking Israel only to return to God and to guard the essential path
of the Torah – kindness and Justice, always hoping in God.

V 8: But Ephraim is a merchant of deceit, a Canaanite! The Hebrew word KENA'AN

in this verse has the connotation of "merchant" but also is used reprovingly of
Israel , who are behaving like the Canaanites.

V 9: Ephraim trusts in his own wealth and power, even though he should realize
that they will not save him on the day when he is judged for his sins.

V 10: God reminds Ephraim that He is the God who brought them out of Egypt, and
despite their waywardness He will eventually bring them to dwell again in tents –
the tents of Torah study – just as in the time when Jacob was pure and simple,
dwelling in tents (Genesis 25:27; Rashi on Hosea 12:10).

V 11: God has repeatedly warned the people through His prophets. "…and I have
used similes by means of the prophets". These words are an important source text
for teachings about the methods of the prophets.

V 12: If destruction comes to Gil'ad (Reuven & Menasheh), it is only because of the
idolatry that has continued in Gilgal and all over the rest of their territories.

V 13-14: The prophet returns to the theme of God's mercies with Jacob, father of
Israel – as when he protected him in his flight from Esau to dwell with Laban, and
when He took the people out of Egypt under the leadership and guardianship of
Moses. This verse is the beginning of the Haftara of Parshas VAYEITZEI in Genesis
(read in November) speaking of Jacob's flight to Laban. The Haftara of VAYEITZEI
runs from Hosea 12:13 until 14:10.

V 15: Yet in spite of all God's mercies, Ephraim has provoked Him most bitterly,
and He will requite him for this.

The prophecy continues in Ch 13:1-11, which will be discussed in the next

commentary.

MAY GOD TURN OUR HEARTS TO HIM AND RESTORE US TO OUR LAND AND BUILD
HIS TEMPLE IN JERUSALEM QUICKLY IN OUR TIMES. AMEN.

* * * The sections in Hosea 12:13-15, 13:1-15 and 14:1-10 are read as the
Haftara of Parshas Vayeitzei, Gen. 28:!0-32:2 * * *

Chapter 13
Hosea Chapter 13 vv 1-11 are the concluding verses of the second section of the
lengthy prophecy that began in Hosea 10:9 – a prophecy tracing the sin of Israel to
their original request for a temporal king and culminating in 13:11 with foretelling
how God in His anger will take away their king.

In the central sections of this prophecy, contained in the previous two chapters, the
prophet repeatedly contrasted God's mercies throughout their history with Israel's
betrayal through idolatry. The last verse of the previous chapter (12:15) summed
up Ephraim's bitter provocations that will cause God to requite him.

Hosea 13:1 continues immediately with an historical allusion to Ephraim's

provocations. "When Ephraim spoke, there was trembling; he exalted himself in
Israel; but when he became guilty through the Baal, he died." This verse contrasts
the earlier status of Ephraim as leaders of the people for good (e.g. under Joshua)
with their later fall through idolatry. The commentators explain this verse as
alluding specifically to how Jeraboam originally caused trembling when he showed
zealousness for God in speaking out against Solomon (I Kings 11:26), but how
after becoming king himself, he ruined everything for Ephraim by making his idols
(Rashi, Metzudas David).

V 2: "And now they sin more and more…" In the generations after Jeraboam people
sinned more and more by making silver images of their idol to have always visible
in their very homes (Metzudas David). "They say, let those who sacrifice a man kiss
the calves." They considered Molech-worship (passing children through fire and
entrusting them to the idolatrous priests) as the highest form of service, and said
that whoever kissed their calf idols was considered as if he had carried it out. I
leave it to the reader to reflect on how Hosea's analysis of ancient idolatry relates
to the widespread contemporary idolatry of wealth and the way many parents bring
up their children to serve it.

V 3: It is because of this idolatry that Ephraim will be swept away.

V 4-6: Again the prophet recalls God's historical mercies to Israel in redeeming
them from Egypt and protecting them in the arid wilderness, only to see them
rebelling because of their very satisfaction from His blessings to the point where
they forgot Him.
Vv 7-8: Therefore God will track them and lie in wait for them as wild beasts track
their prey. None is more dangerous than a great bear embittered over the loss of
his young, who attacks whoever he meets and tears apart his victim's chest to get
to his heart – so God will tear open the closed heart of the people.

V 9: The people themselves are responsible for their own destruction, having
rebelled against their very Helper.

Vv 10-11: The prophecy now concludes by God mockingly asking the rebellious
people where on their day of doom are the kings and judges they had requested to
be their saviors. The people should have served God instead of relying on temporal
rulers, and their penalty would be to see God take away the very king they had put
their trust in.

The five verses in Hosea 13:12 -14:1 make up one Parshah Pesuhah, a separate
short prophecy relating thematically to the previous prophecy in that it sums up the
coming doom of Ephraim as punishment for his rebellion and ingratitude. The
conventional chapter break at 14:1 needlessly violates the continuity of this section.
This prophecy presents the picture at its worst – perhaps to shock those who hear
its message into truly opening their hearts ready for the beautiful climax of the
entire prophecy of Hosea which comes in the closing Parshah, Hosea 14:2-10,
"Return O Israel …"

Hosea 13:12: "The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up; his sin is laid in store" – God
will remember every detail and not let him off (Rashi).

V 13: A time of travail will come in which Ephraim will not be able to stand.

V 14: God had repeatedly saved them from death and hell, but they showed no
gratitude, and therefore He will not relent.

V 15: "Though he be fertile (YAPHREE) among the reed grass (AHIM)…" YAPHREE is
a play on the root letters of EPHRAIM, meaning to be fruitful. Ephraim was a fruitful
leader among his brothers (=AHIM). PERE also has the connotation of gall-root
(Deut. 29:17) as well as wildness and excess (Gen. 16:12; Rashi on Hosea 13:15).
But an east wind (the most destructive of all the winds) will sweep them away.

Chapter 14
Chapter 14 verse 1 is the concluding verse of the short prophecy that began in
Hosea 13:12. The brutal and horrific destruction of the suckling babes and
expectant mothers of Shomron is the penalty for her rebellion.

This very harsh prophecy of doom concludes the reproofs of Hosea, who now
greatly softens his tone for his final, glorious prophecy, Chapter 14:2-10, a Parshah
Pesuhah consisting of his immortal call to Israel to return to God, teaching the
simple, cleansing pathway of repentance through confession and prayer, and
promising that God will certainly respond with unstinting love, reviving and
restoring Israel with the resurrection of the dead and the building of the Temple.
This prophecy is read as the first part of the Haftara of Shabbos Shuvah, the
"Shabbos of Repentance" between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur (September-
early October).

V 2: "Return O Israel to the Lord your God for you have stumbled in your iniquity":
"Great is Teshuvah, repentance, for thereby even willful sins are transformed into
unwitting transgressions, because 'iniquity' is willful yet the verse calls it
'stumbling'… See how great is the power of Teshuvah, which reaches the very
Throne of Glory, as it says, 'Return unto the Lord your God'" (Yoma 86b).

V 3: "Take with you words…" These are the words of confession offered by the
penitent (Likutey Moharan I:4). "…and we will offer the words of our lips instead of
calves": prayer takes the place of animal sacrifice. When a person conquers his
material lusts and devotes his energies to prayer, this itself is the sacrifice of his
"animal" side. This is the ultimate repair of the root sin of the people – worship of
the animal.

V 4: The prophet puts words into the mouths of the penitent nation, who will reject
their earlier path of seeking succor in other nations and in military might and
instead turn to God, Who shows compassion to the orphan.

V 5- As soon as the people repent, God will show unstinting love and His anger will
depart.

V 6: Just as the dew never ceases, so God's love for Israel will never cease
(Metzudas David). They will flourish and grow strong as the mighty trees of
Lebanon.

V 7: "Their sons and daughters will multiply and their radiance will be like the
radiance of the oil of the Temple Menorah and their fragrance will be like the
fragrance of the Temple Incense " (Targum Yonasan).

V 8: "They will be gathered in from their exile and they will dwell in the shade of
their Mashiah and the dead will live and there will be abundant good on earth and
the memory of their good deeds will go forth unceasingly like the blasts of the
trumpet over the good old wine poured as libations in the Temple" (Targum
Yonasah).

V 9: "Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols?" Immediately God
will answer and look down upon Ephraim providentially, reaching down to the level
of man just as the foliage of the cypress tree bows down gracefully to the earth
when a man takes hold of its branches, for it is from God that all the people's "fruit"
– their goodness -- derives (Rashi).

V 10: "Whoever is wise, let him understand these things; whoever is prudent let
him know them; for the ways of HaShem are right, and the just do walk in them,
but the transgressors shall stumble in them". The Torah is a double-edged sword,
but those who follow it innocently and sincerely will go ever forward to eternity.
 Book of Joel
Chapter 1
Some identify the prophet Joel -- Yo'el son of Pethu-el – as the firstborn son of
Samuel the Prophet (cf. I Samuel 8:2), who did not initially go in his father's ways
but was said to have repented later and "persuaded God" (PETHU-EL) with his
prayers (Bamidbar Rabbah 10:5, Rashi on Joel 1:1). According to another opinion,
Joel prophesied in the time of Yehoram son of Ahab, during whose reign there were
seven years of famine (II Kings 8:1) – four of them said to have been caused by
the four species of locusts enumerated in Joel 1:4, while the last three were
marked by drought (Rashi ad loc. RaDaK). A third opinion is that of Midrash Seder
Olam ch 20, which states that Joel prophesied together with Nahum, and Habakkuk
towards the end of the First Temple period in the reign of the wicked king
Menasheh son of Hezekiah (Rashi, RaDaK).

Whenever he lived, Joel was granted eternal prophecy teaching lessons for all time.
His prophecy divides into two main parts: (1) Chapters 1-2: Warnings about a
coming terrible plague of locusts and calls for the people to repent. (2) Chapters 3-
4: Prophecies about the end of days, the ingathering of the exiles to Israel, the
attack of the nations of the world against Israel and their defeat in Emek
Yehoshaphat, the restoration of Zion and the time of Mashiah.

Vv 1-6: Prophecy of the coming terrible plague of locusts.

A particularly noteworthy aspect of Joel's prophecy is that it brings out the

ECOLOGICAL effects of sin and how these may be averted through REPENTANCE.

The coming plague of locusts prophesied by Joel in this and the following chapter is
described as one "the like of which has never ever been" (Joel 2:2) whereas in the
case of the plague of locusts brought by Moses against the Egyptians, the Torah
states that "before it there was no similar case of locusts like it and after it there
will be nothing like it" (Exodus 10:14). Rashi on the verse in Exodus states that the
plague in the days of Joel was even more serious than that of Moses, because there
were four species of locusts, while that of Moses was unique precisely because it
consisted of only one species.

A literal plague of locusts is a very terrible thing. One can also take Joel's
prophecies about the coming plague of locusts as a graphic metaphor for the
destructive effects of men's evil deeds upon the entire global environment – as if
vast armies of natural destroyers are invading and consuming the very food we
depend upon. In the light of repeated scientific warnings about the dangers of
global warming, the latest reports about a serious epidemic of Asian bird flu now
ravaging poultry in sophisticated Britain, etc. it is fitting to take Joel's prophecy as
yet another wake-up call to repentance in order to save the world we live in.

Vv 2-3: Joel's call is to the elders and all the inhabitants of the earth. HA-ARETZ in
this verse particularly refers to Eretz Israel , but it can also apply to the whole
earth. The call is one that must be told to all the future generations.
V 4: This verse enumerates the four species of locusts that would come one after
the other to devastate the land.

Vv 5ff: The people are in a drunken stupor – the only way to shock them is to
illustrate to them how they themselves will feel the plague – by seeing the vines
that provide them with their wine destroyed by the locusts.

V 9: "The meal offering and the drink offering is cut off from the House of God":
from here we see that Joel was addressing a nation with a functioning Sanctuary or
Temple. They had to understand that even if they were outwardly practicing the
Temple rituals, this was not enough. Without their inner repentance, they would
see the destruction of the entire ecology.

V 10: This is the opposite of the blessing in the second paragraph of Shema, "and
you shall gather in your grain, your wine and your oil" (Deut. 11:14).

Vv. 10-12: Including the reference to olive oil in verse 10, these verses enumerate
all the seven species of produce for which the Land of Israel is praised: Wheat,
Barley, the Vine, Fig and Pomegranate, Olive and Date (Deut. 8:8).

Vv 13ff are a call to the priests to lead the people in mourning and repentance over
the destructive plague through fasting and self-examination. "For near is the day of
HaShem, and as a destruction from the Almighty (SHOD MI-SHADAI) will it come"
(v 15). Whereas the divine attribute of YESOD (=SHADAI) is the source of blessing,
when the Yud departs because of sin, all that is left is SHOD, destruction.

Vv 16ff. The prophet calls to the people to open their eyes to the environmental
destruction and waste around them.

V 18: The very animals are sighing and perplexed at man's destruction of nature
through his evil deeds.

V 19: This is truly a cry of prayer to God over the destruction of the environment.

V 20: The very animals are panting to God over the destruction of water resources
and the fire that is ravaging the world.

Chapter 2
V 1: The blast of the Shofar is emblematic of the call of the prophet to the people
to repent before the evil comes.

Vv 2-9 are a horrifically graphic description of the coming plague of locusts, which
descend upon a land green like the Garden of Eden and leave it like a desolate
desert. They are like armies of horses and their riders, sounding like chariots as
they dance over the tops of the mountains like an entire nation of warriors ready
for war, bringing terror to all faces. Locusts are noted for their extraordinary
discipline and methodical destruction (v 8). They will climb into all the houses
through the windows like a thief (v 9).

Vv 10: These swarms of relentless warriors of God blot out the very light of the sun
and the moon and the stars. Ecological destruction affects the entire universe.

V 11: The people must understand that the plague is being sent only through the
word of God. "And HaShem utters His voice before His army, for His camp is very
great, for He Who executes His word is strong, for the day of HaShem is great and
very terrible, and who can abide it?" This verse introduces one of the most sublime
prophetic calls to repentance (Joel 2:11-27). It is read together with selections
from Hosea (14:2-10) and Michah (7:18-20) as the Haftara of Shabbos Shuvah, the
Sabbath of Repentance between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur (September/early
October).

V 12: Since the plague is sent from God, it follows that in order to avert the coming
evil, the people must repent. "EVEN NOW, says HaShem, return to Me with all your
hearts…" (v 12).

V 13: "Tear your hearts and not your garments…" We are asked not merely to
make outward shows of mourning but to tear down our inner insensitivity and
break through the apathy in our hearts…

V 14: Repentance can cause God to turn around the harsh decree and convert it
into a blessing.

Vv 15ff. The whole people must be mobilized for a national campaign of repentance
that will bring in people of all ages, elders, children and even suckling babes, brides
and their grooms.

V 17: The words of the prayer of the Cohen-priests and Levites in this verse,
"Spare Your people, HaShem…" are incorporated into the additional Tahanun
supplications recited in the synagogue on Mondays and Thursdays.

Vv 18-27 are a prophecy of the comfort and great goodness that will come if the
people will repent. As soon as they do so, God will immediately show His
zealousness for the Land and have mercy on His people.

V 19: "And I will remove far off from you the northern one (HA-TZAPHONI)…" – this
is the evil inclination, which is hidden (TZAPHOON) in the heart (Rashi, Succah
52a).

V 23: "Be glad, you children of Zion, and rejoice in HaShem your God, for He has
given you the former rain in due measure, and He has brought down for you the
rain in the first month, the former rain and the latter rain…" The Talmud relates
that after the plague of locusts in the time of Joel, the entire period of the rainy
season passed in Israel with no rainfall whatever by the end of Adar. On the first of
Nissan (normally the time of the last rains of the year) came the very first rainfall.
Joel told the people to go out and sow their fields, but they said it would be better
to eat their last remaining measure of wheat and barley and live rather than sow it
and die. Joel told them nonetheless to sow, and they miraculously discovered
remaining seeds in the walls and ant holes, and went out and sowed on the second,
third and fourth of the month. The second rains fell on 5 Nissan and by 16 Nissan
the crops ripened sufficiently to make it possible to bring the Omer offering in the
Temple (Taanis 5a).

Vv 24-27 are a beautiful prophecy of how in time to come God will make up for all
that the predators have taken from us. "And you shall eat in plenty and be
satisfied" (v 26): in the future, man will no longer feel the gnawing urge to
OVERCONSUME, because he will be truly satisfied.
 Chapter 3
Verse 1: "And it shall come to pass AFTER THIS…" – "This refers to the end of days.
The verse here says 'AFTER THIS' because the previous verse had said 'And you will
KNOW that I am amidst Israel …' (Joel 2:27). However as yet this is not complete
knowledge, because even so, you will still relapse and sin again. However, AFTER
THIS level of knowledge there will come a time when you will know Me with perfect
knowledge and you will no longer sin. This will be in the days of Mashiah, 'for the
earth will be full of the knowledge of God' (Isaiah 11:9)" (RaDaK on verse 1).

"I shall pour out My spirit over all flesh…" Metzudas David interprets "flesh" as
referring to the nations of the world, "for even the heathens will then recognize and
know that HaShem is God". However, RaDaK maintains that "all flesh" refers to
those Israelites who will be worthy to receive the holy spirit of knowledge and
understanding that God will then pour forth (compare Likutey Moharan I:22 on the
concept of "flesh"). The verse speaks of "all" flesh to indicate that those worthy will
include young and old (cf. Jeremiah 31:33). Even higher will be the levels of "your
sons and daughters, your elders… and your young men…" They will attain actual
prophecy, which will be granted to them through dreams (Numbers 12:6) (RaDaK
on v 1).

V 2: "And also upon the servants and the handmaids in those days…" Those who
will serve Israel in the Land of Israel will also be filled with the spirit of knowledge
and understanding (RaDaK).

V 3: "And I will put wonders in the heavens and on the earth: blood and fire and
pillars of smoke…" "The sign of blood will be on earth because of the great amount
of killing there will be. The fire and pillars of smoke will be in the skies – these are
the flashes of light that will burn up as they fall and the fires will send up smoke.
These will be the sign of the plague upon the nations that come with Gog and
Magog against Jerusalem " (RaDaK). Do these flashes of burning light presage
nuclear war???

The words "wonders… blood and fire and pillars of smoke" in this verse are brought
in the Pesach Haggadah to prove that Deut. 26:8, speaking of how God brought us
out of Egypt with "wonders", alludes to the plague of blood.

V 4: "The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood…" Ibn Ezra
says the darkening of the heavenly lights will be a sign of terrible wars, and this
darkening of the lights will be just before the coming of the day of HaShem – this
will be the day of the plague on Gog and Magog and the nations that come up with
him. The moon will turn into "blood" in the sense that this will be its color when it is
partially eclipsed, while when the eclipse is complete it will be black. Rambam
interprets the darkness of the sun and blood of the moon and similar descriptions in
Joel 4:15 as metaphors for the troubles that will strike the nations at the time of
their downfall. According to Rambam's interpretation, the darkness could also refer
to the anguish Israel will suffer just prior to the downfall of Gog and Magog, who
will go up with many nations against Jerusalem and make war against the city, and
half the people will go out into exile (cf. Zechariah 14:6) – this will be the darkness
– while the day of the downfall of Gog and Magog will be "the great and awesome
day of God".

V 5: "And it shall be that everyone who will call on the Name of HaShem will be
saved…" "For then in the war of Gog and Magog it will be a time of great trouble for
Israel for a short time (cf. Isaiah 26:20) and then many of Israel will fall, but the
KEDOSHIM, the holy ones who truly fear God will be saved (cf. Isaiah 26:20,
Psalms 145:18). These are "the remnant whom HaShem shall call" (RaDaK on v 5)

In the Hebrew handwritten scroll there is no break between the end of Chapter 3
and the beginning of Chapter 4: it is one continuous prophecy until Chapter 4 verse
9, which begins a new Parshah Pethuhah.

Chapter 4
V 1: "All of this will take place in the days and at the time when I will bring back
the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem – these are the days of Mashiah. The verse
mentions Judah and Jerusalem because even though ALL ISRAEL will return,
Mashiah himself will be from the tribe of Judah and Jerusalem will be the capital of
the kingdom and that is where the war of Gog and Magog will take place" (RaDaK).

V 2: "And I shall gather all the nations and I shall take them down to the valley of
Yehoshaphat …." This refers to the Kidron Valley, which runs along the eastern wall
of Jerusalem separating the Temple Mount from the Mount of Olives . It means "the
valley where God will judge". According to the Biblical prophecies, in the war of Gog
and Magog the two major coalitions of gentile nations under Esau and Ishmael will
join forces against the Jewish state in Israel, which will be overwhelmed and
conquered. Its last stronghold will be Jerusalem, which will also be conquered by
the gentiles. At that moment God will commence Judgment, saving Israel through
plague, rain, fire and stones sent against the gentile nations, whose bodies will fill
the Land of Israel taking seven months to bury, and only the gentiles who helped
Israel will be spared (cf. Ezekiel 38ff, Daniel 2, Zechariah 14) .

"…over My people and My inheritance Israel whom they scattered among the
nations and they divided My land". We today are witnesses not only to how Israel
has been and still is scattered among the nations, but also to how even after the
nations promised to give the Land back to the Jewish People (in the Balfour
Declaration 1917), they divided up the land into smaller and smaller strips in the
various armistice lines and partition plans that have been and are being debated up
until this very day… In the last few years we have all watched the "Separation Wall"
built up to divide the Land.

V 3: "And they have cast lots for my people and have given a boy for a harlot and
sold a girl for wine that they might drink…" How many secularized and assimilated
Jewish kids in Israel and throughout the Diaspora have been sold into mental and
ideological captivity and slavery in all but name?

V 4: "What are you to me Tyre and Sidon and all the provinces of Philistia …?" In
the light of this prophecy about the centrality of these towns of Lebanon and the
territories of the Palestinians in the end-of-days war against Israel, it is significant
that many of the missiles sent against Israel from Lebanon in the 2006 war came
from Tyre and Sidon , while the Palestinians are obviously today's frontline
protagonists against Israel .

Vv 5-6 speak of the material plunder taken from Israel by the nations, as well as
the plunder of their sons and daughters, who were kidnapped and sold to the
Greeks far from their own borders. It is significant that historically the single most
powerful ideological challenge to the Torah has come out of Greek culture, which
has had a decisive influence on the "western" culture that enslaves assimilated and
non-assimilated Jews alike until today.
Vv 7-8: "Behold I will arouse them from the place to which you have sold them…"
We are today witnessing the arousal of Jews and Israelites all over the world, and
we have seen the great influx of Jews into Israel particularly in the last 60 years.
This has been paralleled by enormous migrations of gentiles from country to
country, where many end up as migrant workers – de facto slaves – as prophesied
in Verse 8.

A new section (Parshah Pethuhah) begins at verse 9. Having already prophesied in

general terms how God will bring the nations to judgment in the Valley of
Yehoshaphat and having laid forth God's testimony against the nations for their
crimes against Israel through the ages, the prophet now depicts the war of Gog and
Magog in detail:

V 9: "Proclaim this among the nations: Prepare (KADSHU) war, stir up the mighty
men…" Whereas Joel in ch 2 v 15 called for blasting the Shofar in Zion, "Sanctify
(KADSHU) a fast", i.e. repentance on the part of Israel, he now uses the same word
KADSHU in a mocking call to the nations to prepare their "holy" war – Jihad? –
against Israel.

V 10: Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears…"
Ironically, this is the opposite of Isaiah's depiction of the age of Mashiah that will
follow the war of Gog and Magog, when the nations will beat their swords into
plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks (Isaiah 2:4). Today we indeed see
how mind-boggling sums are invested in weaponry while everywhere people are
impoverished and starving.

Vv 11-12: Summons of the nations to the Valley of Yehoshaphat for God's

judgment.

Vv 13ff: "Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe…" Just when the nations are at
their fattest and most prosperous, they will be ripe to be cut down.

Vv 15-16: This will be a moment of cosmic darkness – the sun, moon and stars will
be darkened – and precisely then HaShem will roar from out of Zion and give His
voice from Jerusalem … "And the heavens and earth will shake" – "First he will
exact punishment from the angels of the nations above, and afterwards from the
nations on earth" (Rashi).

V 17: The result of all this will be that we will each in our own individual way know
that HaShem is God, ruler over all – and at last Jerusalem will be cleansed from the
aliens passing through it.

V 18 begins a new Parshah Sethumah – i.e. there is a brief pause before we enter
the climactic conclusion of this prophecy in vv 18-21 depicting the wonderful
prosperity that will reign in the days of Mashiah after this war.

"And a spring shall go forth from the House of HaShem and water the valley of
Shittim ". This spring is described in detail in Ezekiel's prophecy of the Messianic
era (Ezekiel 47:1-12). The Midrash states that it waters the valley of Shittim to
atone for the sin of Pe'or, which took place when the people dwelled in Shittim
(Numbers 25:1; see Rashi on Joel 4:18).

V 19: The future destruction of Egypt and Edom are mentioned together in this
verse because just when King David almost completely destroyed Edom, Haddad
escaped to Egypt where he found favor in the eyes of Pharaoh, who allowed him to
stay until he was able to rise up against Solomon (I Kings 11:16ff; Rashi on Joel
4:19).

Vv 20-21: In the end Judah will endure forever and Jerusalem from generation to
generation. Even if God cleanses the nations of their other sins and evil, He will not
cleanse them of the blood of Judah. Metzudas David comments that Israel need not
fear that since the nations know they are going to be killed, they may make every
effort to take revenge against Israel thinking that they are in any case lost, because
God dwells in Zion and He will protect His people and the nations will have no
power.

God's indwelling presence will rest in Zion for ever – the conclusion of Joel's
prophecy is thus parallel to the conclusion of Ezekiel's prophecy, "And the name of
the city from that day shall be, The Lord is there" (Ezekiel 48:35; RaDaK on Joel
4:21).
 Book of Amos
Chapter 1
The prophet Amos was a wealthy cattle farmer and cultivator of sycamore trees
(Amos 7:14). He came from the city of Tekoa in the territory of the tribe of Asher
(see RaDaK on Amos 7:10). He received Torah from the prophet Hosea and was an
older contemporary of the prophets Isaiah and Michah (Pesachim 87a).

Amos prophesied during the reigns of Uzziah king of Judah and Yerav'am son of
Yo'ash king of Israel, both of whom succeeded in restoring the power and
prosperity of their respective kingdoms and subduing the rebellious neighboring
subject peoples. While Amos prophesied against the gentile nations as well, his
prophecies were mainly directed against Israel and the moral decline that had set in
as exemplified by the exploitation of the poor and weak by the wealthy and
powerful. Amos encountered fierce opposition, and was mocked by his
contemporaries as a stammerer (Vayikra Rabbah 1:2). His name, from the Hebrew
root AMAS meaning to carry a heavy load, has the connotation of being of heavy
tongue (cf. Rabbi Nachman's story of the Beggar who could not speak). However,
the rabbis enumerated Amos among eight "princes of men" together with Yishai
(Jesse), Saul, Samuel, Zephaniah, Tzedekiah, Elijah and Messiah.

Verse 1: Amos prophesied "two years before the earthquake". This "earthquake"
was the natural and/or moral earthquake that took place when King Uzziah of
Judah offered incense in the Temple Sanctuary (which was strictly forbidden for any
non-priest). This earthquake is mentioned in Isaiah 6:4 and Zechariah 14:5.

Verse 2: The "roar" of God is the prophetic message of reproof emanating from the
Holy of Holies, causing mourning in the "pastures of the shepherds" – these are the
doomed kings – and the destruction of their strongholds (Targum Yonasan, Rashi).

These two introductory verses are followed by a series of six short parallel
prophesies of doom against the six chief neighboring kingdoms of the time around
Israel, Damascus (=Aram, Syria), Gaza and the Philistines, Tyre, Edom, Ammon
and Moab, before the prophet turns his main focus to Judah and especially Israel.
Each of the following prophesies against the nations is a separate PARSHAH
PETHUHAH in itself.

Verse 3: "Thus says HaShem: For three transgressions of Damascus I will turn
away its punishment, but for the fourth I will not turn away its punishment". The
commentators explain that the principle underlying this verse and the parallel
verses later in this chapter and the next (Amos 1:6, 9, 11 & 13 and 2:1, 4 & 6) is
that expressed in Job 33:29: "Lo, God does all these things twice or three times
with a man, to bring back his soul from the pit…": God does not punish a person for
the first, second and third sin he commits but only for the fourth sin and those
afterwards (Rashi, RaDaK; cf. Rambam, Hilchos Teshuvah 3:5). While God does not
normally exact payment from the nations for their evil except if it is very severe, as
in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, He does take exception to the evil they
perpetrate against Israel (RaDaK).
RaDaK lists three major evils perpetrated by Damascus (= Aram ) against Israel –
in the time of Baasha king of Israel , in the time of Ahab and in the time of Yeho-
ahaz son of Yehu. The fourth sin was their attack on Judah in the reign of Ahaz (II
Kings 10:32), after which they were punished for all their past evil by being taken
into exile by Ashur.

Vv 4-5: Amos' prophecy of the punishment of Aram was delivered sixty-five years
before it took place.

Vv 6-8: The commentators explain the sin of Gaza and the Philistines in "carrying
away into exile a whole captivity to deliver them up to Edom" as referring to what
they did at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, when they handed
over to Titus and his armies (=Edom) the many Jews who were trying to flee from
them through Philistine territories (RaDaK).

Vv 9-10: The people of Tyre also handed escaping Jews over to the Romans at the
time of the destruction of the Second Temple, forgetting the "covenant of brothers"
that had existed between King Solomon and Hiram king of Tyre (I Kings 5:26;
Rashi, RaDaK).

Vv 11-12: Edom too "pursued his brother with the sword… and he kept his wrath
for ever": This refers to the pursuit by Esau (=Edom) of his brother Jacob, the
refusal of the Edomites to allow Moses and the Children of Israel to pass through
their territory on the way to Israel (Numbers 20:14ff) and to the destruction of the
Second Temple by the Romans. The town of Basra mentioned in v 12 cannot be
identified with Basra in Iraq , but was a town between Moab and Edom southeast of
the Dead Sea (see Rashi on v 12; cf. Genesis 36:33).

Vv 13-15: The Ammonite territories lay east of Gil'ad, the territory of the tribes of
Reuven, Gad and Menasheh east of the Jordan , into which the Ammonites
constantly sought to encroach in defiance of the Biblical curse against those who
encroach on their neighbor's boundaries (Deut. 27:17).

Chapter 2
The conventional chapter break here is somewhat arbitrary although it does fall at
the beginning of a new Parshah Pethuhah containing the prophecy against Moab .
But this must be taken together with the preceding prophecies of doom against the
other nations, all of which come as an introduction to Amos' prophecies against
Judah and Israel, as if to say: since God punishes the other nations, to whom He
did not reveal Himself, how much more must He chastise his chosen people Israel,
who are much nearer to Him (see RaDaK on Amos 3:2).

Vv 1-3: Moab's sin of "burning the bones of the king of Edom into lime" is explained
by the commentators as referring to the incident in II Kings 3:27 when the Moabite
king burned the firstborn son of the king of Edom, causing Edomite fury against
Judah (with whom Edom was forced to fight against Moab) from then on (RaDaK).

Vv 4-5: While the nations are punished for their evil and treacherous behavior
against Israel, Judah is taken to task for despising God's Torah – for every person
is judged according to his level, and the same applies to each nation. While the
kingdom of Israel were also guilty of despising the Torah, the people of Judah were
particularly criticized for this since the authoritative Torah scroll was kept in the
Temple, which was in their territory. From the fact that the "rediscovery" of the
Torah scroll by Hilkiah the High Priest in the reign of Josiah (II Kings 22:8) caused
such a great stir, we can infer the degree of previous neglect of the Torah (RaDaK).

Vv 6-16: A new Parshah Pethuhah opens at verse 6 detailing the sins of Israel :
"because they have sold the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of shoes…"
(v 6). While the Israelites were guilty of the three cardinal sins of idolatry, murder
and adultery, it was their corruption of justice that sealed their fate. The very
judges and leaders took bribes to pervert justice at the expense of the righteous,
poor and downtrodden, as detailed in vv 6-8.

In the same way as Hosea contrasted God's mercies to Israel with their disloyalty
and betrayal, Amos recounts how God gave them the land of the Canaanites and
blessed their children with prophetic spirit, expecting them to adhere to a higher
standard of behavior (vv 9-11). But the people gave the Nazirites (=their teachers,
Targum) wine to drink so that they would not be able to give legal rulings (cf. Lev.
10:9-11) and they told the true prophets to stop prophesying (cf. Amos 7:12).
Amos warns that these sins will completely undermine the strength of the nation
(vv 13-16).

Amos 2:6-16 and 3:1-8 are read as the Haftara of Parshas VAYEISHEV in Genesis,
read in November-December, narrating the sale of Joseph by his brothers,
corresponding to the sin of selling the righteous for silver (Amos 2:6).

Chapter 3
Chapter 3 vv 1-10 make up a single Parshah Pethuhah, a section in itself. In the
previous section Amos had castigated the people for ordering their prophets not to
prophesy. Now he tells them that the prophets are the true servants of God to
whom He reveals what is to come in advance, and that their prophecies of doom
will surely come about.

V 1: The prophet urges the people to HEAR, understand and internalize the word of
God that he will speak. Amos explicitly addresses the ENTIRE FAMILY of Israel – the
kingdom of Judah and the Ten Tribes.

V 2: "You only have I known of all the families of the earth". This text offers a
crucial insight into the deepest mystery of the world, why Israel suffers more than
all the other nations, as history clearly testifies until this very day. In the words of
RaDaK (ad loc.): "It is because I know and love you and have chosen you from all
the peoples that I will therefore punish you for all your sins, because you have seen
and known all My signs and wonders that I performed on your behalf, and you
know I have benefited you. Justice therefore demands that I punish you for your
sins. For when the servants who minister directly before the king disobey his
orders, he shows greater anger towards them than he does towards those who are
not so close to him. God pays little attention to the nations of the world regardless
of whether they do good or evil except when their wrongdoing is very serious as in
the case of the generation of the flood. But in the case of Israel , He punishes them
for all their sins precisely because they are close to Him."

Vv 3-6 contain a series of seven interrelated rhetorical questions leading to the

inevitable conclusion that the doom foretold by the prophets will come about.

1. "Can two walk together unless they be agreed?" (v 3): Before I punish you, I
make it known through My prophets in case it might bring you to repent. If I did
not make myself known to and "meet" the prophet and reveal My secret to him in
order to reprove you, how could he have fabricated his prophecies, for how could
he have known what I am going to do? Know that I have sent him (RaDaK).

2. "Will a lion roar in the forest when he has no prey?" (v 4) The holy spirit in the
mouth of the prophet is the "roar of the lion". Just as the lion only roars when he
has his prey, so the prophets only prophesy doom when the decree has been made.
The lion also alludes to Nebuchadnezzar (Rashi).

3. "Will a young lion cry out from his lair if he has taken nothing?" (v 4). The lion
does not roar before he has his prey in order not to give it a warning in time for it
to escape (RaDaK).

4. "Can a bird fall in a snare upon the earth where there is no trap for it?" (v 5):
The enemy will not leave you alone and go away empty-handed (RaDaK).

5. "Does a snare spring up from the earth and have taken nothing at all?" (v 5).
How can it be that you sin yet your sins will not be a snare for you? (Rashi).

6. "Shall a shofar be sounded in the city and the people not be afraid?" When the
watchman warns the people of an onslaught of enemies, the people become filled
with fear. So you should have feared on hearing the warnings of the prophets.

7. "Shall evil befall a city and the Lord has not done it?" When the evil comes, you
will know that it has been sent by God as the penalty for not heeding His prophets.

Vv 9-10: The prophet calls on the Philistines and Egyptians to come to witness the
coming tumult in Shomron, capital of the Ten Tribes, as a result of their oppression
and robbery.

Verse 11 begins a new Parshah Pethuhah which continues until the end of the
present chapter (Amos 3:11-15). This is followed by two Parshah Sethumah's in ch.
4 vv 1-9 and vv 10-13. As discussed in previous commentaries, the break between
a Parshah Sethumah ("closed section") and the section that precedes it is less
absolute than in the case of a Parshah Pethuhah ("open section"). Thus Amos 3:11-
4:13 is a single long prophecy broken into three sections. The overall message –
following on from the previous section vindicating God's prophets – is that the
doom they are foretelling will definitely come upon the sinful people unless they
repent.

V 11: The enemies are poised all around the land, ready to bring down the arrogant
nation.

V 12: When a lion snatches a lamb, the shepherd tries to retrieve at least a mere
couple of bones or a piece of ear, even though they are of no use whatever, in
order to prove to his master that the lamb was taken as prey and that he did not
steal it (Metzudas David). The metaphor comes to emphasize how absolute the
destruction of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes would be. Only the few members of
the Ten Tribes who attached themselves to the House of Judah would survive (see
Rashi).

Vv 13-15: The first section of this prophecy concludes with the warning that the
coming doom will destroy Jeraboam's idolatrous altar of Beith El together with the
opulence of Shomron, whose inhabitants were so wealthy that they had separate
winter and summer houses.
 Chapter 4
The prophecy that began in Amos 3:11 now continues with a new section (Parshah
Sethumah), Amos 4:1-9. This is the middle section of this prophecy.

Verse 1: The "fat cows of Bashan that are on Mt Shomron" are literally the wives of
the oppressive lords of the kingdom as well as being a metaphor for the very lords
themselves, who evidently corrupted justice and robbed and exploited the poor and
weak in order to satisfy their demanding wives.

V 2: The fat cows and their daughters will be taken into exile in cramped,
undignified fishing boats.

V 3: The population will go out into exile through the many breaches in the city
walls. Targum Yonasan interprets Harmon as a reference to the "Mountains of
Darkness" beyond which the Ten Tribes were taken into exile.

Vv 4ff where the prophet tells the people to go to Beith El to transgress are like a
man telling a villain, "Keep on, keep on… until your measure is filled " (Rashi).

"…bring your offerings THE NEXT MORNING and your tithes AFTER THREE DAYS".
The prophet sarcastically mocks the idolaters for changing the Torah laws of
sacrifice for their own convenience [just as the "Reform" movement has done].
Thus the Torah says "the sacrifice shall NOT remain overnight until the morning"
(Ex. 34:25) while the animal tithe must be consumed within TWO days. The
idolaters would "Offer a thanksgiving sacrifice of LEAVEN", while the Torah
specifically forbids this (Lev. 2:14; Rashi on Amos 4:5).

Vv 6ff depict how God has already sent chastisements to the people in the form of
famine (v 6), drought (vv 7-8), crop failure and pests (v 9) yet they have not
repented. The refrain, "yet you have not returned to Me" is repeated three times in
this section (vv 6, 8 and 9).

The depiction of drought in verse 7 – with some suffering more than others – is
cited in Talmud Sanhedrin 97a as one of the signs of the period immediately prior
to the coming of Mashiah.

Verses 10-13 are a Parshah Sethumah which constitutes the third and closing
section of the prophecy that began at Amos 3:11. This section echoes the previous
section in repeating twice the refrain following the evocation of the steadily
intensifying punishments: "…yet you have not returned to Me says HaShem!" (vv
10 and 11).

V 12: "Prepare to meet your God, O Israel!" The coming evil can still be averted if
the people will repent. This verse is quoted as the Biblical source of the requirement
to prepare oneself for prayer – by cleansing the body of its waste products and
dressing respectfully (Berachos 23a, Shabbos 10a).

V 13: This verse is one of the sublime prophetic evocations of the greatness of God,
who not only creates the grandest aspects of the universe (mountains, winds) but
even knows the tiniest details of man's private conversations with his very wife –
when one dies, God lays out all his deeds and words before him (Chagigah 5b). "He
will turn the dawn of the Tzaddikim into radiant light and the light of the wicked
into gloomy darkness" (Rashi). "He treads on the high places of the earth" – he
brings down the haughty and arrogant (Rashi).
MAY GOD TURN OUR HEARTS TO HIM, RESTORE US TO OUR LAND AND BUILD THE
TEMPLE IN JERUSALEM QUICKLY IN OUR TIMES. AMEN.

Chapter 5
Amos Chapter 5 consists of two related prophecies: (1) vv 1-17 with a break after v
15 for a short concluding 2-verse Parshah Sethumah; this prophecy calls on Israel
to repent before doom befalls them and analyzes their wrongdoing, foretelling the
devastation and mourning that will come when God vents His anger; (2) Vv 18-27
warning that the day of doom will be worse than people imagine and calling on the
people to repent in order to avoid going into exile.

The prophecies of Amos were directed to the people of his time, and having through
our study of the historical portions of the Bible broadened our perspective on this
period prior to the exile of the Ten Tribes and the destruction of the First Temple,
we should be in a better position to understand the specific situation he was
addressing. Yet as eternal prophecy from God, Amos' words apply to all of us until
today. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov urges us to see ourselves and our own situation
within every Torah lesson we study. We are therefore also bound to look deep into
our own hearts and ask ourselves how Amos' prophecy can help us uncover our
personal flaws and see what we can do to correct them.

In seeking to relate the message of Amos and his fellow prophets to the socio-
political realities of the people of Israel today – both those in the land of Israel and
those in the Diaspora – it might be tempting to identify those who continue to put
Torah practice at the center of their lives with Judah, while the more assimilated
and distant from the Torah tradition might be identified with the Ten Tribes. Many
of the reproofs of Amos and his fellow prophets against the kingdom of Israel seem
highly relevant to the Israel of today as well as to Diaspora communities. Yet such
schemas must be employed only with the utmost caution since the God-created
reality in which we live is infinitely more subtle and complex than our minds can
comprehend.

V 1: The prophet calls upon the House of Israel – the entire people – to hear and
attend to his sorrowful lament.

V 2: The apparent simple meaning of this verse is that the virgin of Israel has fallen
and shall rise no more (LO THOSEEF KOOM). Israel was a "virgin" prior to falling
under the influence and control of foreign masters. RaDaK (ad loc.) explains that
this is a prophecy that the Ten Tribes would go into exile, as indeed they did in the
days of Hoshea ben Elah at the hand of the king of Assyria, and they still have not
returned because Judah alone returned to Jerusalem from Babylon but not the Ten
Tribes. However RaDaK is at pains to emphasize that the Ten Tribes are destined to
return in time to come, as prophesied by several prophets. RaDaK thus brings
examples from elsewhere of the same root LO YASAF used in the sense of someone
not adding any more to do something for a certain period of time, whereas in fact
they did indeed do it again later on (II Kings 6:23; ibid. 24:7 and Jer. 37:5). Thus
Israel may not have risen yet, but she will! This agrees with the rabbinic
interpretation of this verse in Talmud Berachos 4b: "She has fallen but she will not
continue to fall any more; Arise O virgin of Israel". This interpretation is consistent
with the rabbinic approach of uncovering the good that lies buried within apparently
negative phrases.

V 3: The prophet warns of the literal decimation of the cities and towns of Israel.
V 4: "For thus says HaShem to the House of Israel: Seek Me and you shall live".
These words are the foundation of the entire Torah – and are seen as such in the
Talmudic passage in Maccos 23b: "Six hundred and thirteen commandments were
given to Moses… David came and reduced them to eleven principles… Then Amos
came and reduced them all to one foundation, 'Seek Me and live'". The way to seek
out God is through constant study of His Torah in order to understand His will, and
through constant prayer to Him to help us fulfill it.

V 5: Beith El and Gilgal were the sites of idolatrous worship. There was no idolatry
in Be'er-Sheva, but once people had come up from the south and passed Be'er-
Sheva, they were on the road to Beith El (Rashi).

V 6: The prophet repeats his call to repent, warning of the doom that will befall the
people and their idols if they do not.

V 7: The main sin that is bringing on this doom is the corruption of justice and the
failure to practice charity and kindness. The people have overturned God's
intention.

V 8: The prophet now brings examples of how God turns things around from one
extreme to the other. The rabbis said that the stars of the Pleiades (the "tail" of
Aries) have a chilling effect while those of the constellation of Orion bring heat to
the world, and both are necessary for the growth of fruits. The people should have
learned from God to turn things around for the benefit of the world and not to
overturn justice (RaDaK).

V 9: In vengeance for the people's overturning justice, God will strengthen the
weak enemies and bring them against the mighty nation.

V 10: The people refuse to heed the words of the prophets.

Vv 11-12: The corruption of justice and oppression of the poor by the powerful and
wealthy will be punished with the loss of their fine mansions and charming orchards
and vineyards.

V 13: On the day of doom the wise person will be silent – he will not question God's
attribute of Justice because the people are guilty of all these sins (Rashi).

Vv 14-15: The prophet again calls on the people to repent in the hope that they will
listen, so that God will mitigate the harsh decree.

Vv 16-17 are a PARSHAH SETHUMAH concluding the previous prophecy, telling of

the terrible mourning that will reign in all the towns and streets and in the very
orchards when the evil decree strikes.

Verse 18 opens a new PARSHAH PETHUHAH – a new prophecy – which continues

until the end of the chapter v 27. "Woe to you that DESIRE the day of HaShem":

This is addressed to those who mocked the prophets' warnings of coming doom,
sarcastically saying "Let Him hurry and hasten His work" (Isaiah 5:19; Rashi).

Vv 19-20 warn that the coming doom will be far more terrible than these sinners
imagined.
Vv 21-23 condemn the people for the emptiness of their religious assemblies and
their sacrifices. Their ritual music does not please God.

V 24-5: The essentials that God wants are Justice and Charity. Mere sacrifice
without inner repentance is not what God asks.

V 26: The people are warned that they will carry their idols with them into exile.
"Kiyyun" mentioned in this verse is a reference to the cult of Shabbetai=Saturn,
which is called by this name in Arabic and Persian (RaDaK). It has indeed been
suggested that aspects of this cult were involved in Sabbeteanism, to which some
modern scholars trace the origins of the assimilation that has overtaken the Jewish
people in recent centuries.

V 27: "I will cause you to go into exile beyond Damascus". Until now, the kingdom
of Israel had suffered mainly from Aram with its capital in Damascus, but the
coming exile under Sennacherib was to take the Ten Tribes much further afield.

Chapter 6
Chapter 6 makes up one prophecy that starts with a PARSHAH PETHUHAH (vv 1-
10) followed by a PARSHAH SETHUMAH (vv 11-14).

V 1: "Those who are at ease in Zion" refers to Judah, while "those who trust in Mt
Shomron" are the Ten tribes. They were named "chief among the nations" – they
were intended to be separate from them – but instead they have assimilated.

V 2: The prophet asks the people to look at the great contemporary powers of the
day – Kalne=Babylon, Hamat=Antioch, and Gath was the most powerful of the
Philistine cities – and consider if their territories are really so superior to the land
God gave Israel that they feel they want to be like the foreign nations.

V 3: The people are simply bringing nearer the evil day when they will dwell in the
seat of violence – under Esau (Rashi; cf. Ovadiah 1:10).

V 4 depicts the affluence of the wicked people who have made comfort and the
satisfaction of appetite the center of their lives.

V 5: Just as today, there was a plethora of self-infatuated singers and musicians to

entertain the comfortable people.

V 6: Nobody felt pain over the destruction looming over the Ten Tribes under the
leadership of Ephraim (=Joseph).

Vv 7-10 depict the coming doom in chilling detail.

Vv 11-12 warn of the utter destruction that awaits the kingdom of Israel on account
of the corruption of justice.

V 13: "They who rejoice over nothing, saying, 'Have we not taken horns for
ourselves through our own strength?'" This seems to typify the aggressive
shopping-mall, entertainment-center-based culture of our times.
V 14: The enemies will afflict Israel all the way "from the entrance of Hamath" –
i.e. the extreme north east of Israel – "up to the river of the Aravah="the brook of
Egypt" in the extreme south west of Israel (Rashi) – i.e. across the entire Land.

Chapter 7

The last prophecies of Amos in the closing section of the book (Amos 9:11-15)
speak of the final redemption and restoration, but before that, from the beginning
of chapter 7 until 9:10, he recounts in a succession of short parshahs a progression
of five prophetic images of the coming doom.

Rambam (Maimonidies) writes of suh prophetic images as follows:

"The things that are made known to the prophet in a prophetic vision are made
known to him by means of a metaphor. During the actual vision, the meaning of
the metaphor is immediately inscribed in his heart and he knows what it signifies,
as in the case of the ladder seen by Jacob our father with the angels ascending and
descending: this was a metaphor for subjugation to the empires…. The same
applies in the case of the 'beasts' seen by Ezekiel, Jeremiah's 'seething pot' and
'almond rod', the scroll seen by Ezekiel and the Eiphah-measure seen by Zechariah.
Some of the prophets recount both the image and its meaning, while others only
tell the interpretation, or in some cases only the metaphor without the
interpretation as in certain passages in Ezekiel and Zechariah. And they all
prophesied through metaphors and riddles…" (Rambam Yesodey HaTorah 7:3).

1. Amos 7:1-3: Image of the plague of locusts.

"Thus HaShem God showed me… KO HEER'ANI ADNY YKVK" (the Hebrew NIKUD,
vocalization of YKVK in this verse is with the vowels of ELOKIM). In this verse, KO
signifies the lens or looking glass of Malchus – "like this, so" (introducing the
prophetic MASHAL or metaphor). HEER'ANI means "He showed me". The two
names of God in this verse are ADNY, signifying His attribute of Malchus, together
with YKVK (with the NIKUD of ELOKIM=Gevurah, might), signifying BINAH. The
junction of Malchus and Binah signifies that the decree has been made by the BEIS
DIN SHEL MAALAH, "the Heavenly Court", and is to be executed by the BEIS DIN
SHEL MATA, "the court below" (Shaarey Orah Gate 8).

The image of the locust as the destroyer who consumes everything is reminiscent
of the prophecy of Joel ch's 1-2. Amos stands up and pleads with God to revoke
this decree of absolute destruction and God repents.

2. Vv 4-6: Image of judgment by fire. This prophetic metaphor is introduced by the

same formula as in the previous metaphor: "Thus HaShem God showed me…" Once
again Amos stands and pleads with God to revoke the decree because the people
will be unable to survive, and God repents.

3. Vv 7-9: Image of the builder's plumb line – used to ensure that the wall is built
exactly perpendicular. This indicates the strict line of Judgment whereby nothing is
overlooked or forgiven (Rashi). The prophet sees ADNY – the attribute of Judgment
-- "standing" on the wall holding the plumb line. The rabbis interpreted this as a
sign that the Divine Presence was leaving the Temple stage by stage. They listed
ten separate "journeys" of the Shechinah – from the cover over the Ark of the
Covenant to the Keruvim (angelic figures), from there to the threshold of the
House, then out to the Temple courtyard, onto the altar, onto the roof, from the
roof to the wall (our verse is the proof-text for this "journey" to the wall), from
there out to the city, from there to the mountain, then on to the wilderness before
rising and sitting in her place…. (Rosh HaShanah 31a).
Verse 9 speaks of the destruction of the high places of "YIS-HAK" (=Isaac). What is
unusual in this verse is not so much that YIS-HAK is spelled with a letter SIN in
place of TZADE (cf. Jeremiah 33:26) but that almost uniquely in all the prophets,
Israel are here called the children of Isaac (cf. Amos 7:16) whereas usually they
are called only the children of Jacob/Israel since Abraham and Isaac both had other
sons who were not ancestors of Israel. RaDaK (ad loc.) suggests that Amos was
contrasting the behavior of Isaac – who was bound on the altar to do God's will –
with that of his descendants, who flouted His will with their high places.

Amos concludes the prophecy of the builder's plumb line by foretelling the
destruction of the HOUSE of Jeraboam II (son of Joash and the grandson of Jehu
ben Nimshi) by the sword.

Vv 10-17: Amatziah the idolatrous priest of Beith El denounces Amos to king

Jerabo'am II as a traitor for prophesying that he would be killed. Amatziah lied to
Jerabo'am, because Amos had not prophesied that Jerabo'am himself would fall by
the sword but that his HOUSE would fall – alluding to the killing of Jerabo'am's son
Zechariah by Shalem ben Yaveish. The rabbis praised Jerabo'am for not accepting
this slander (Pesachim 87b).

Amatziah contemptuously tells Amos to flee to Judah and collect bread from people
in reward for his prophecies.

Amos answers Amatziah, "I am no prophet neither am I a prophet's son…" (v 14).

Rashi ad loc. explains: "I am not one of your false prophets who takes a fee for
prophesying. I have no need for all this and I have never practiced this, because I
am wealthy with herds and property…" "I was a dresser (BOLEIS) of sycamore
trees…" (v 20). Rashi here says the correct Hebrew word should be BOLEISH
(searching like a BALASH, "detective", for the best trees to cut down) but that
Amos was a stutterer (see commentary on Amos 1). So was Moses, and so was
Rabbi Nachman's hero, the Beggar who could not speak – because his words were
so exalted that people in this world could not understand what he was saying.

Amos curses Amatziah – among other things, he will die on impure land – i.e. in
exile. From here the rabbis taught that all who are buried in the Land of Israel are
as if they were buried under the Temple Altar (Kesubos 111a).

Chapter 8
Chapter 8 opens with the fourth of Amos' prophetic images, the basket of summer
fruit (Amos 8:1-3). The figs and dates used to be put aside to dry in the hot
summer sun and are called KAYITZ. As in many cases in such prophetic images, the
interpretation is linguistically bound up with the metaphor: thus KAYITZ alludes to
the KEITZ=end. The happy songs of idolatry will be replaced with howling and
mourning, and the dead bodies will be so many that those dealing with them have
to hush each other in order to prevent everyone from breaking down in helpless
weeping.

Vv 4-8 are a separate PARSHAH PETHUHAH explaining that the root cause of the
coming doom is the injustices of the wealthy and powerful, who are heartlessly
squeezing the poor – hoping that food will be scarce, whether through the
intercalation of an extra month in the calendar causing a late Pesach Omer offering,
or after the end of the Sabbatical year, in order to jump up prices. "To decrease the
measure and increase the shekel and falsify the balances of deceit" (v 5) – i.e.
smaller quantities for higher prices, and deceit everywhere. This also typifies the
modern economy as far as the poor are concerned. This is why enemies will sweep
away the people like a massive flooding river that washes over the land sweeping
everything away.

Vv 9-10 are a separate PARSHAH PETHUHAH. "I will cause the sun to go down at
noon" (v 9). Rashi explains that the downfall would come suddenly at a time of
great peace, referring this prophecy to the killing of King Josiah by Pharaoh Necho
when the latter marched his armies through Israel on his way to Assyria. According
to this interpretation, this prophecy is directed at Judah just as much as at Israel.

"And I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation…" (v
10). This verse is the source of the law that Jewish mourning over the dead lasts
for seven days (SHIV'AH) as well as various other laws of mourning (Mo'ed Katan
15b).

Vv 11-16 are a separate PARSHAH PETHUHAH prophesying the terrible spiritual

famine that will strike. We see this in our days: even the spiritual seekers do not
know where to find reliable Torah teaching, while the overwhelming majority of the
population are not even aware of how starved they are for Torah. When the rabbis
went into the orchard of Yavneh and said that the day would come when the Torah
would be forgotten by Israel, they cited verse 11 in support – except that Rabbi
Shimon bar Yohai (author of the Zohar) said that the Torah would not be forgotten
in his merit! (Shabbos 138b).

Chapter 9
The closing chapter of Amos prophesies the destruction of the Temple, the exile of
Israel, the restoration of the House of David, the final redemption and the Messianic
era of prosperity and blessing.

Chapter 9 vv 1-12 make up a single Parshah Sethumah which continues the

prophecy that began in Chapter 8 v 11 speaking about the terrible spiritual famine
that was to come about because of the idolatry of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes.

Chapter 9 now opens with the fifth and last in the series of prophetic images of the
coming doom that started at the beginning of Chapter 7.

Verse 1: "I saw the Lord (ADNY) standing besides the ALTAR, and He said, Smite
the capital that the thresholds may shake…" As in the previous visions, the divine
name used here indicates that Amos saw the aspect of DIN, harsh judgment. In
chapter 7 vv 7-9 Amos described the builder's plumb line over the Temple wall –
indicating the departure of the Shechinah (Divine Presence) from the Temple
building, one of her ten "journeys" away from Israel heralding the coming exile.
The present vision was said by the rabbis to prophesy one of the earlier stages or
"journeys" of the Shechinah in this process – from the cherubs over the Ark of the
Covenant in the Holy of Holies onto the golden incense ALTAR that stood in the
Temple Sanctuary (Rashi ad loc., Talmud Rosh HaShanah 31a). The fact that in this
later prophecy Amos saw an earlier stage in the flight of the Shechinah from the
Temple, one that was to come sooner, underlines that the day of doom was
drawing closer.

Targum Yonasan explains that the blow to the capital – the lintel over the entrance
of the Temple – alludes to the death of King Josiah, while the subsequent shaking
of the thresholds alludes to the terror that gripped the leaders of the people as a
result: Josiah was the last righteous king of Judah and with his death at Meggido at
the hands of Pharaoh Necho, the kingdom's doom was sealed.
Vv 2-4 prophesy the terrible carnage and exile that would overtake the people.
Targum Yonasan explains the "serpent" that God would send to bite them (v 3) as a
metaphor for the nations fierce as a serpent that He would arouse against them.

Vv 5-6 are reminiscent of passages in some of the other prophets, notably Isaiah,
and also in the book of Job, majestically evoking the great might of God over the
entire universe in order to affirm that He has the power to bring about all that His
prophets foretell.

V 7: "Are you not as much mine as the children of the Kushiyim (=Africans)…?"
This verse until the end of the book (Amos 9:7-15) are read in the synagogue as
the Haftara of Parshas Aharey Moth (Leviticus 16:2-18:30) which warns Israel not
imitate the immorality of the Egyptians and Canaanites. However, by the time of
Amos the people had fallen into the immorality proscribed by the Torah, and in
response God says in this verse, "Why should I hold back from punishing you since
you do not return to Me? Are you not descended from the sons of Noah just like all
the other nations? Indeed you have become like the Kushiyim, of whom it says,
'Can the Kushi change his skin?' (Jer. 13:23) – so you too can improve" (Rashi).
Metzudas David explains that the Philistines and Arameans were both destined to
be exiled from their lands (Jeremiah 47:4; II Kings 16:9) yet God would not
redeem them, whereas He did redeem Israel from slavery in Egypt and thereby
acquired them as His – in which case they are duty bound to obey Him.

V 8 foretells the destruction of the KINGDOM of the Ten Tribes but emphatically
states that the PEOPLE – the House of Jacob – will never be destroyed.

Vv 9-10 foretell that the people of Israel will be "shaken about" among all the
nations just as corn is sifted in a sieve, the purpose being to allow the grit and
waste – the sinners – to fall through the sieve and die in order to leave the grain –
the righteous – purified and intact (Metzudas David).

V 11: "After all this will have come upon them, the day prepared for redemption will
arrive, and on that day I shall raise up the fallen tabernacle of David. This, as
explained by Targum Yonasan, refers to the kingship of the House of David"
(Rashi).

V 12: This verse prophesies that Israel – upon whom the Name of God is called –
shall in future possess the remnant of Edom and of all the nations.

Verses 13-15 are a final Parshah Pethuhah describing the great plenty with which
Israel will be blessed after the restoration.

V 13: There will be so much produce in the fields that the harvesters will still be at
work when it is time to start plowing for the next growing season, while the grapes
will be so plentiful that the wine pressers will still be at work when it is time to sow
next year's crops… Amos' blessing is even greater than the blessing in the Torah
(Leviticus 26:5) that "the threshing will continue until the grape harvest and the
grape harvest until the time of sowing" (RaDaK).

Vv 14-15 foretell the return of the exiled people of Israel to our land. "…and they
shall no longer be plucked up out of their land which I have given them says
HaShem your God". Here we have God's promise that there will be no further exile
from the Land of Israel!!!
 Book of Obadiah
Chapter 1
The rabbis taught that Obadiah was a GER TZEDEK (righteous convert) from Edom
(Sanhedrin 39b) – he was a descendant of Eliphaz the Teimanite, the companion of
Job (Yalkut Shimoni) – and that he received Torah from Elijah the Prophet. Obadiah
prophesied in the time of Ahab king of Israel and Yehoshaphat king of Judah. He
lived in the kingdom of Israel under the rule of Ahab and Jezebel – he was Ahab's
chamberlain – yet he resisted their evil influence. The rabbis pointed out that
whereas Abraham was described only as "fearing God" (Genesis 22:12), Obadiah
was characterized as "fearing God VERY MUCH" (I Kings 18:3; Sanhedrin 39b).
Although prophesy normally rested only on those of Israelite lineage, Obadiah
attained prophesy in the merit of his self-sacrifice to save the true prophets whom
Jezebel sought to kill. He hid one hundred prophets in two caves and after using up
his own considerable wealth to feed them, he borrowed on interest from King
Yehoram, signing over his own children as collateral for the loan (II Kings 4:1).

Obadiah's prophecy relates mainly to the nation from which he came: Edom. "The
Holy One blessed be He said: Let one who dwelled between two villains (Ahab and
Jezebel) yet did not learn from their deeds come to prophesy against Esau, who
dwelled between two Tzaddikim (Isaac and Rebecca) and did not learn from their
deeds". Obadiah's prophecy ends with the great salvation of Israel at the end of
days and the revelation of God's glorious kingship over all the world.

The book of Obadiah is read as the Haftara of parshas VAYISHLAH speaking of

Jacob's encounter with Esau and the latter's descendants.

Verse 1: "So says the Lord (ADNY) God (YKVK with nikud of Elokim)…" As discussed
in the commentary on Amos, the juncture of these two divine names alluding
respectively to Malchus and Binah indicates that the destined fate of Edom is
agreed by the Beis Din shel Matah (Malchus) in conjunction with the Beis Din shel
Maalah (Binah). All the nations will eventually make war against Edom (Metzudas
David).

Regarding the identity of Edom, RaDaK (on Obadiah 1:1) writes: "The land of Edom
(south east of the Dead Sea) does not today belong to the children of Edom
because the nations were mixed up and the majority are either Christian or Moslem
and it is impossible to recognize which of them comes from Edom, Moab, Ammon or
the other ancient nations, because they all went into exile from their lands and
became mixed up with the other nations. But Rome was initially mostly made up of
Edomites. When the prophets speak of the destruction of Edom, they were referring
to what will happen at the end of days."

Verse 2: "I will make you small among the nations". Isaac and Rebecca both called
Esau their "big" son (Genesis 27:1 & 15) but God says, "Before Me he is small"
(Rashi). The rabbis taught that Edom is called "small" because they did not have
their own script or language (Avodah Zara 10a). This fits in with RaDaK's teaching
that the Edomites infiltrated other nations, presumably adopting their languages
and alphabet. Thus Haman – from the seed of Amalek, who was Esau's illegitimate
grandson – attained power in Persia [and his descendants appear to have gained
power in Iran today as well as over other groups that promote the killing of Jews].

Verse 3: "Thou who dwellest in the clefts of the rock…" Rashi explains that Edom
leans on the "staff" of his fathers, Abraham and Isaac, but they will not help him.
Rashi also identifies the Hebrew word for "clefts", HAGVEY, with the word
HAGA="destruction" (cf. Isaiah 19:17). Rashi renders the latter in Old French as
BREITEINA. Whether this is a secret allusion identifying Edom with Britain is left for
the reader to decide.

Verse 4: "Although you soar aloft like the eagle and though you set your nest
among the stars, from there will I bring you down…" The eagle was the emblem of
the Roman and Byzantine empires as well as being the emblem of the U.S.A. [Does
the prophecy that God will bring Edom down even from among the stars indicate
that the American attempt to dominate outer space to ensure military superiority
will eventually fail? China's recent knocking out of a space satellite may presage
this.]

Verse 5: "If thieves come to you and robbers by night, how come that you will be in
a slumber (alternative rendering: cut off)?" Today the predominantly Edomite
nations of Europe and America are suddenly beginning to wake up to the fact that
vast numbers of foreign immigrants have entered their lands and are consuming
their resources at a rate that is very alarming to their home-born citizens!

Verse 7: "All the men of your confederacy have driven you to the border…." Does
this verse also allude to the way America's allies have left her alone in the mire in
Iraq?

Verse 8-9: The leadership of the west does indeed today seem to have fallen into
the hands of fools who seem bent on their own ultimate self-destruction.

Verse 10-11: "For your violence against your brother Jacob, shame shall cover
you". The final destruction of Edom will come about in vengeance for the evil they
perpetrated against Israel at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple.
RaDaK (on v 11) writes that Titus and his forces who destroyed the Temple were
Edomites, many of whom still lived in the land of Edom, and although they were
under the power of Rome, the Roman rulers themselves were Edomites, and when
Titus laid siege to Jerusalem the Edomites were delighted and did everything in
their power to hand over Jewish fugitives to the Romans, whereas they should have
come to their aid since they were their brothers…

"And foreigners entered his gates and cast lots upon Jerusalem, and you too were
one of them." In our own times, Israel's chief "allies", U.S.A. and Britain, are
constantly pushing for a "settlement" that involves the division of Jerusalem.

Vv 12-14: Edom should not have stood from afar jubilantly witnessing Israel's
suffering.

Vv 15-16: God will requite the nations measure for measure.

V 17: In the end the House of Jacob will repossess all that the nations took from
them and be restored to Zion.

V 18: Joseph will be the flame that sets fire to Esau's house of straw! It is the
moral purity of Joseph – archetype of the Tzaddik – that will prevail over Esau. See
Rashi on Genesis 37:1 for further explanation.
V 19: This verse prophecies that at the end of days, the people of Israel will inherit
both the territories of Edom to the south east of Israel and also all of their own
ancestral lands west and east of the River Jordan, including the territories that were
not fully conquered in the days of Joshua and the Judges (see Metzudas David).

V 20: The cities of the south of Israel will be inherited by "this exiled host of the
Children of Israel who are among the Canaanites as far as France and the exiles of
Jerusalem who are in Spain". RaDaK (ad loc.) explains that "this exiled host" refers
to the exiles that Titus took to Germany, France and Spain, and that it was the
inhabitants of Jerusalem who went into exile in Spain, from where they spread out
to other lands in the Roman Empire and to what are today Islamic lands. In other
words, the Land of Israel will eventually be repossessed by Jews of both Ashkenazic
(from France and Germany etc.) and Sephardic (Spain, Islamic lands) backgrounds.
This prophecy has been realized within our lifetimes. RaDaK also brings a tradition
that the inhabitants of Germany were the Canaanites who fled from their land in
the time of Joshua. This adds the profoundest historical irony to the fact that
Germany started the Holocaust.

And in the end of days, "Liberators shall ascend upon Mount Zion to judge the
mountain of Esau, and the kingdom shall be God's".

SPEEDILY IN OUR TIMES! AMEN.

 Book of Jonah
Chapters 1-2
The book of Jonah is read every year in the synagogue on Yom Kippur as the
Haftara after the afternoon Minchah service reading from the Torah. Jonah is
appropriate reading on the Day of Atonement as the message of this profoundly
deep and heavily veiled prophetic metaphor is ultimately simple and completely
universal: Repent!

Our sages tell that Yonah (=dove) son of Amitai (from the root EMeT=Truth) was
the son of the widow from Tzorphath with whom Elijah the prophet stayed during
the years of famine (I Kings 17:8ff), and that it was this boy that Elijah revived
(ibid. vv 17-24; Midrash Shohar Tov 26). Jonah learned Torah from Elisha and was
considered Tzaddik Gamur – completely righteous. It was Jonah that Elisha sent to
anoint Yehu ben Nimshi, nemesis of the house of Ahab (II Kings 9:1-10), and
Jonah's prophecy that Yehu's grandson, Yerav'am ben Yo'ash would restore the
boundaries of Israel is recorded in II Kings 14:25. Here Jonah is said to have come
from "Gath HaHefer", prompting the rabbis to discuss if he was from the tribe of
Zevulun or Asher. Jonah is said to have received prophecy in the merit of going up
to Jerusalem for the festival of Succoth (at a time when the kingdom of Israel
prevented the people from doing so) and rejoicing greatly at Simhat Beith
HaSho'eva, the celebration of drawing the water for the Succoth water libation on
the Temple Altar (Yerushalmi Succah 8:1).

As the book of Jonah relates, God told the prophet to go to Nineveh to tell the
people to repent, but not wanting to carry out this mission, Jonah tried to flee to
Tarshish, taking a boat from Yaffo. The latter is none other than the ancient Israeli
Mediterranean harbor-town of Yaffo besides which the great metropolis of Tel Aviv
has sprung up in modern times. The exact identity of Tarshish is the subject of
considerable discussion: While some associate it with Tarsus, the city in Cilicia in
the present-day Mersin province of Turkey , others think it may have been Crete
(cf. Genesis 1:4). Elsewhere in TaNaCh Tarshish is the name of a great sea (Daniel
10:6 etc.) as well as that of the gem aquamarine (Ex. 39:13). Nineveh , the sinful
city to which Jonah was sent, was a very important city in ancient Assyria located
on the east bank of the Tigris in modern-day Mosul (N. Iraq/Kurdistan).

There could be no better guide into the mysteries of Yonah than Rabbi Eliezer the
Great in ch 10 of the Midrash named after him (Pirkey d'Rabbi Eliezer):-

Why did Jonah flee? First God sent him to restore the boundary of the kingdom of
Israel and his words were fulfilled. Next He sent him to Jerusalem to prophesy its
destruction, but the people repented and God relented and did not destroy it – and
people called Jonah a false prophet. The third time, He sent him to Nineveh, but
Jonah argued within himself: "I know this people are close to repenting, and if they
do and God relents, He will send His anger against Israel. Not only will the
Israelites say I am a false prophet but so will the nations of the world. I will flee to
a place in connection with which His glory is nowhere mentioned (=the sea)… "
Jonah went down to Yaffo but could not find a boat – the boat he eventually took
was already two days' voyage from Yaffo in order to test Jonah. What did God do?
He sent a storm-wind that brought the boat back to Yaffo. Jonah saw and rejoiced
in his heart, saying, "Now I know that my way is right". When the sailors told Jonah
they were going to the remote sea islands of Tarshish, he said "I will go with you".
Jonah happily hired the boat… After one day at sea the boat was encompassed by
storm-winds. All the other boats were going to and fro on a calm sea, but the boat
Jonah went in was in dire trouble, "so that the ship seemed likely to be wrecked"
(Jonah 1:4).

Pirkey d'Rabbi Eliezer continues: Rabbi Hananiah says, PEOPLE FROM ALL THE
SEVENTY NATIONS WERE PRESENT IN THAT BOAT, each one with his idols in his
hand (cf. 1:5). [I.e. the story of Jonah has universal application.] They prostrated
to their idols, saying, "Let each one call in the name of his gods and the god that
answers us and saves us from this trouble is God". Jonah was asleep until the
captain of the boat came and aroused him. When Jonah told him he was a Hebrew,
the captain said, "We have heard that the God of the Hebrews is great. Rise and
call to your God: perhaps He will have pity on us and perform miracles for us as He
did for you at the Red Sea ". Jonah said, "I will not deny that this trouble has come
upon you because of me. Throw me into the sea and it will become calm". Rabbi
Shimon says: The sailors did not want to throw Jonah into the sea, but after
throwing all their baggage into the sea and trying in vain to row back to the shore,
they took Jonah and lowered him up to his ankles into the water. The sea started
becoming calmer, but when they hoisted him up again it started to rage again.
They lowered him in up to his belly and it became calm; they pulled him up and it
raged again. They lowered him down to his neck and it became calm, but when
they pulled him up again it continued raging, until they threw him in completely –
and the sea became calm.

The Midrash continues: Rabbi Tarphon says, The fish had been prepared to swallow
Jonah since the six days of creation. HE ENTERED ITS MOUTH LIKE A MAN
WALKING INTO A GREAT SYNAGOGUE [i.e. the whole mystery of being swallowed
by the fish is bound up with the mystery of prayer and spiritual devotion]. The two
eyes of the fish were like radiant glass windows. Rabbi Meir says that a precious
jewel hung in the belly of the fish radiating to Jonah like the midday sun, showing
him everything in the sea and the depths of the earth. Of this it says, "Light is sown
for the righteous" (Psalms 97:11). The fish said to Jonah, Don't you know that
today it is my turn to be eaten by Leviathan?" Jonah said: "Take me to him". Jonah
said to Leviathan, "For your sake I have come down to see your dwelling-place,
because in the future I am destined to tie a rope around your tongue and raise you
up to slaughter you for the great feast of the Tzaddikim". Jonah showed Leviathan
the seal of Abraham (the sign of the Covenant, his circumcision). Leviathan saw
and fled two days' distance from Jonah.

The Midrash goes on: Jonah now said to the fish, "I saved you from Leviathan: now
show me everything in the sea and the depths of the earth." [The Midrash now
relates how the fish took Jonah on a kind of grand underwater world tour in a live
submarine.] The fish showed him the great river-source of the Ocean, as it says,
"The depth encompasses me" (Jonah 2:6). He showed him the Red Sea through
which Israel passed, as it says, "the reeds (SOUF) were wrapped about my head"
(ibid.) He showed him the breakers of the sea from which the waves go forth, as it
says, "all Your billows and Your waves passed over me" (v 4). He showed him the
pillars and foundations of the earth (v 7) and he showed him Gehennom, as it says,
"You brought my life up from destruction", and he showed him the lowest pit of
hell, as it says, "From the belly of hell I cried out and You heard my voice" (v 3). He
showed him the Temple of God, as it says, "I went down to the ends of the
mountains" (v 7). He showed him the Evven Shesiyah ("Foundation Stone") fixed in
the depths beneath the Sanctuary, and the sons of Korach standing praying on it.
The fish said to Jonah, "You are standing under God's Temple: pray and you will be
answered". Jonah prayed…. But he was not answered until he said, "What I have
vowed I will fulfill" (v 10) – "My vow to bring up Leviathan and slaughter him before
You I will fulfill on the day of Israel's salvation". God immediately made a sign for
the fish to vomit Jonah out onto the dry land (v 11).

The Midrash of R. Eliezer concludes: The sailors saw all the great signs and wonders
that God performed for Jonah and immediately rose and cast their gods into the
sea, as it says, "They that guard lying vanities forsake their loyalty" (2:9). They
returned to Yaffo and went up to Jerusalem and circumcised themselves…. And they
made vows and proceeded to fulfill them, going to bring their wives and all their
families to fear the God of Jonah (Pirkey d'Rabbi Eliezer ch 10).

Through the weave of Rabbi Eliezer's Midrash we can see how the story of Jonah is
an allegory of Israel among the Seventy Nations, and how the terrible global storm
sent by God as a result of Israel's flight from Him into sin eventually brings Jonah
and all the nations to know and fear God. With many contemporary world "leaders"
repeating regularly that "all of the world's problems are rooted in the Middle East
problem (= Israel), and if that can be solved, everything else will be solved", we
clearly see how God's "dove" (=Yonah, cf. Song of Songs 2:14) remains until today
at the very center of the global storm.

Another dimension of the prophecy of Jonah is brought out in the Holy Zohar
(Vayakhel 199a ff). In the words of the Zohar: These verses allude to the whole of
man's life from his emergence into the world until the resurrection of the dead.
Jonah's going down into the boat is man's soul entering the body to live in this
world. Man goes in this world like a boat in the great sea that seems likely to be
wrecked. When man sins in this world and thinks he will flee from his Master
without taking account of the world to come, God sends a great storm-wind – the
decree of harsh justice – and demands justice from this man, striking the boat and
causing illness. Even on his sickbed, his soul is still not stirred to repent – Jonah
goes down into the depths of the boat and slumbers. Who is the captain of the boat
that wakes him up? This is the good inclination, who tells him, "Now is not the time
to sleep – they are taking you to judgment over all that you have done in this
world: repent!" "What is your work? From where do you come? Which is your land?
From which people are you" (Jonah 1:8). "What work have you done in this world –
confess to God about it! Think where you come from – a putrid drop – and don't be
arrogant before Him! Remember that you were created from the very earth! Ask
yourself if you are still protected by the merits of the founding fathers of your
people!" When the person is about to die, his defending angels try to save him –
the sailors try to row back to the land – but the storm-wind is too strong and can
only be assuaged when man is taken down into his grave. Throwing Jonah into the
sea corresponds to burial in the grave. The belly of the fish is hell, as it says, "From
the belly of hell I cried out" (Jonah 2:3). The three days and nights Jonah was in
the belly of the fish corresponds to the first three days in the grave, when his
innards burst onto his face and they say, "Take what you put inside yourself: you
ate and drank all your days and did not give to the poor. You made all your days
like festivals, while the poor went hungry and did not eat with you…" The judgment
continues for thirty days with the soul and body being judged together. Afterwards
the soul ascends and the body rots in the ground, until the time when God will
revive the dead. "He has swallowed up death for ever" (Isaiah 25:8) – "And God
spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah out onto the dry land" (Jonah 2:11). And in
this fish there are remedies for the whole world…
 Chapter 3
Vv 1-2: "And the word of God came to Jonah a second time saying, Arise go to
NINEVEH, that great city…" ARI points out that the Hebrew letters of the name of
Y-O(=Vav)-Na-H are contained in the name of the city N-Y-Ne-Ve-H, with the
addition of one extra Nun, signifying the 50 Gates of Binah=Imma. The gematria of
Y-O-Na-H is 71, and with an additional unit for the whole word we have a total of
72=HeSeD=Hokhmah=Abba. Jonah's task was to bring Abba and Imma to Zivug in
order to bring compassion into the world, which was under the dark shadow of
severe Judgments owing to the wickedness of the people (ARI, Sefer HaLikutim,
Jonah; see there for other amazing insights into Jonah ch's 1-2). The task of the
prophet was to bring the people to repentance, which is rooted in BINAH.

On Jonah himself the success of his mission would have a negative effect because
he was prophesying that the city would be overturned after forty days if the people
did not repent – and when they did, the city was not destroyed, making it seem as
if his prophecy had not come about and was false. (But in fact, a prophet is proven
false only if a good prophecy is not realized, not if a prophecy of doom does not
come about since God may relent and overturn an evil decree but he does not
overturn a good one, Rambam, Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah 10:4.) Despite the
potential damage to his reputation, Jonah went about his mission, saying, "Another
forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown (NEHEPHECHETH)" (v 4). The root
HAPHACH means to turn something around. ARI comments that Jonah was actually
prophesying that DIN, harsh judgment, would turn about into RAHAMIM, kindness
(ibid.).

V 5: "And the men of Nineveh believed in God and they called for a fast…" RaDaK
comments that men from Jonah's boat – those members of the 70 Nations who
converted – were there in Nineveh and they gave testimony over the wonders they
had witnessed with Jonah in the boat. This was why the men of Nineveh BELIEVED
Jonah and did what was required. RaDaK's comment once again points to the
universal significance of the book of Jonah for all mankind, as suggested also by the
following Midrash:

V 6: "And the matter reached the king of Nineveh …" The Midrash tells: Rabbi
Nehuniah HaKaneh says, You can learn about repentance from Pharaoh, who
rebelled flagrantly against HaShem when he said "Who is HaShem that I should
listen to His voice?" (Ex. 5:2) but later repented, saying, "Who is like You among
the gods, HaShem?" (Ex. 15:11). God saved Pharaoh from death to tell the power
of His might, as it says, "However, on account of this I have caused you to stand"
(Ex. 9:16), and he became the ruler of Nineveh. The men of Nineveh were
constantly plotting to harm each other and they were sunk in robbery and
homosexuality. God sent Jonah to prophecy the destruction of the city. When
Pharaoh heard, he rose from his throne and rent his garments and clothed himself
in sackcloth and ordered all his people to fast for three days… However after forty
days they went back to their evil ways and went to even further extremes than
before, and the dead were swallowed up in the lowest pit of hell, as it is written,
"Men groan from out of the city" (Job 24:12; Pirkey d'Rabbi Eliezer).

V 8: "Let them turn every one from his evil way and from the violence (HAMAS)
that is in their hands". Today we are still waiting for the world to renounce HAMAS
and everything that this evil concept and the Arab organization that bears its name
represents. Our sages taught on this verse that the level of repentance the king
demanded from the people of Nineveh was that even if someone had stolen a
wooden beam and built it into the structure of his house, he was to pull down the
house in order to return the brick (Ta'anis 16a). This actually is in accordance with
the strict law of the Torah relating to theft, but in fact, to avoid deterring people
from penitence, the Rabbis mitigated this with their enactment that a thief could
pay monetary restitution for the stolen beam to avoid having to pull his own house
down (Rambam, Laws of Robbery and Lost Property 1:5).

V 10: "And God saw their deeds…" The Talmud brings that on public fast days when
a sage would address the people exhorting them to repent, he would quote this
verse, saying, "Brothers, it is not the fasting and sackcloth that cause God to take
pity but the repentance in the heart and good deeds… It does not say 'And God saw
their sackcloth and fasting' but 'And God saw their DEEDS, for they returned from
their evil way'" (Ta'anis 16a).

Chapter 4
Why did Jonah feel so bad when the people of Nineveh repented and averted
disaster? Besides feeling that he was seen as a false prophet in the eyes of the
nations, our sages taught that Jonah also feared that the repentance of Nineveh
after only one warning would raise a serious accusation against Israel, who had
many true prophets yet still did not repent (cf. RaDaK on Jonah 4:1).

Verse 2 invokes the essence of the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy (Exodus 34:6).

Verse 3: Jonah asked God to take his life because he did not want to see evil befall
Israel as a result of the accusation aroused by the repentance of Nineveh. His
request is compared to that of Moses to "please blot me out of Your book" if God
would not forgive Israel (Exodus 32:32, cf. Numbers 11:15, RaDaK on v 3).

Verse 4 begins a new Parshah Sethumah – continuing, after a pause, from the
previous section – in which God teaches Jonah a lesson in compassion.

V 6: "And HaShem-Elokim appointed a castor oil plant (KIKAYON)…" The Midrash

says of the KIKAYON: God brought up the KIKAYON over Jonah's head during the
night, and in the morning 275 leaves came out (corresponding to the gematria of
KIKAYON), each leaf a span and a handbreadth wide. There was enough room for
four people to sit under the shade of the KIKAYON to take shelter from the sun, but
God appointed a worm which gnawed through the plant from below so no moisture
could rise up to the leaves, which dried, and the plant died and all the flies and
mosquitoes there afflicted Jonah on every side until his eyes welled up with tears
before God. He asked him, Why are you crying – do you feel pain over this plant
that you did not cultivate, which you never fed with fertilizer and never watered,
which came up in one night and the next night it was already dried up? Should I
not have pity on Nineveh the great city? At that moment Jonah fell on his face and
said, Govern Your world with the attribute of compassion" (Yalkut Shimoni).

ARI (Sepher HaLikutim) states that the KIKAYON which protected Jonah alludes to
the TZELEM – the encompassing levels of Hochmah, Binah and Daat that hover
over and protect the soul in this world.

Verse 10: "…and should I not be concerned for Nineveh in which are more than one
hundred and twenty thousand people that cannot discern between their right hand
and their left and also much cattle?" Rashi comments that those who cannot
discern between one hand and the other are the children, while the "much cattle"
(BEHEMAH RABBAH) refers to all the adults whose mentality is that of an animal
(BEHEMAH) since they do not know Who created them.
 Book of Micah
Chapter 1
The prophet Micah was from the tribe of Judah from the city of Moreshah in the
kingdom of Judah. Micah received Torah from Isaiah and was the youngest of the
"quartet" of prophets (the senior two being Hosea and Amos) in the days of Uzziah,
Yotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah (Pesachim 87a, see Tosafos there), immediately prior
to the exile of the Ten Tribes and about a century and a half before the destruction
of the First Temple.

The prophecies of Micah include reproofs against the people of Shomron and
Jerusalem over their sinful behavior to their fellow man, reproofs against the
leaders and false prophets who deceived the people, prophecies of consolation
about Mashiach, the future greatness of Zion, Jerusalem and the Temple Mount and
the peace and tranquility that will then rule, God's complaints over the ingratitude
of His people, His desire that the people should pursue justice and kindness, and
the prophet's prayer for the people, concluding with his invocation of the 13
Attributes of Mercy in order for God to forgive Israel.

Chapter 1 Verse 1: Micah's prophecy is directed towards all the people of Israel –
the Ten Tribes (=Shomron) and Judah and Benjamin (Jerusalem). The intimate
relationship that he sees between their respective sins is set forth in this first
prophecy (vv 5, 9 etc.).

V 2: "Hear all you peoples…" Micah is addressing the Tribes of Israel, each one of
which is considered a "people" ('AM) in itself (Metzudas David). "Let HaShem God
be witness against you…" Micah is saying that He will testify "that I prophesied to
you in His name and warned you" (Rashi ad loc.).

V 3: "He will tread upon the high places of the earth" – "these are the people who
are exalted and arrogant" (Rashi).

V 4: In the light of Rashi's comment on the previous verse, the erupting volcanic
cataclysm described in this verse can be seen as a metaphor for the coming
complete upset of the people's existing social order.

V 5: "What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Shomron? And what are the high
places of Jerusalem? Are they not Jerusalem?" Micah traces the source of the sins
that are leading to the coming doom directly to the kings of Shomron and
Jerusalem respectively. Shomron was the stronghold of the kings of Israel (the Ten
Tribes), and it was they who promoted worship of Jeraboam's calves, while the
Jerusalem-based kings of Judah were responsible for allowing the continuation of
the altars in the "high places" (BAMOTH) in Judah. Both cults were fatal deviations
from the Torah. (See RaDaK on this verse.) [Similarly today the ills that afflict
secular Israel are closely bound up with the ills afflicting the more traditional Jews.]

Vv 6-8: First the prophet describes the complete destruction that would befall
Shomron and its idols – the Ten Tribes went into exile first. Micah's comparison of
Shomron to a harlot whose idols are the hire she received from her lovers follows
similar metaphors in Hosea (1:2 etc.) and the other prophets.

V 8: "For this I will wail and howl…" By the time of Micah, youngest of the "quartet"
prophesying in the same period, the day of doom was coming ever closer. His
phraseology here is reminiscent of the similar language found in Jeremiah, who
came later and lived through the destruction of the Temple.

V 9: "For her wounds are desperate, for it has come as far as Judah, it has reached
the gate of my people to Jerusalem ". The prophet already sees beyond the exile of
the Ten Tribes, because the disease has spread to Judah itself and to the very
capital in Jerusalem.

V 10: "Declare it not in Gath …" When David lamented the death of Saul and
Jonathan, he too did not want the shame of Israel to be known to their enemies the
Philistines (II Samuel 1:20). In the present verse, in which Micah begins to depict
the mourning and exile that were destined to strike city after city in Judah, it is
clear that foremost among the enemy forces encroaching on Judah 's territory were
the Philistines. The English translations cannot do justice to the subtlety of the
Hebrew in this and the following verses, where the prophet uses word-play on the
names of the various towns of Judea to depict the horrors that were to strike each
one. The name of the town OPHRAH in our verse is from the Hebrew root 'APHAR,
"dust". It seems highly significant that the KSIV (written form) as opposed to the
KRI (pronunciation) of HITHPALASHI, "roll about" [in the dust], is HITH-PALSHTI –
apparently alluding to the Philistine (PELISHTI). Today, nearly two and a half
millennia after Micah, we once again see a people whose self-selected name
consists of exactly the same letters seeking to encroach on the land of Israel .

Vv 11-15: The prophet sees into the future, watching the people of one Judean
town after the other facing the terrible shame, degradation and horror of
deportation and exile, in each case expressed through his wordplay on the names
of the towns. Lachish (v 13) was the first Judean town to import Baal worship from
the kingdom of Israel (RaDaK). "Therefore you will give presents to Moresheth
Gath" (v 14): Gath had been taken from the Philistines by David, but now they
would receive it back (see Rashi, RaDaK). "The houses of Achziv are a dried-up
stream (ACHZAV)" (v 14): this Hebrew root denotes disappointment (no water!).
Micah here prophesies how years in the future the Judean town of Achziv would be
drawn after Pekah ben Remalliah, the second last king of Israel, but would be
disappointed about having relied on him as he was killed (Rashi, Sanhedrin 102b).
"I will bring against you a possessor (YORESH) against you who dwell in
MORESHAH…" Here the prophet addresses the people of his own town (cf. Micah
1:1). Enemies are coming who will take possession of their land.

V 16: "The eagle flies high above the other birds, and once in ten years it flies
higher than ever until it reaches the upper atmosphere close to the sphere of fire,
and because of the great heat its feathers come of its wings and fall off" (RaDaK).
Likewise the prophet foretells how the land of Israel was to become "bald" when
the Israelites would go into exile under Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar.

And why??? The prophet has spoken about how the land would be possessed by
others, and in the coming short Parshah Sethumah (ch 2 vv 1-2) he will explain the
reason for this terrible punishment.
 Chapter 2
Vv 1-2: "Woe to them that devise iniquity…" The wealthiest and most powerful
were constantly practicing the most sophisticated forms of land-grabbing and self-
enrichment at the expense of their fellow Israelites, and it was precisely because
they robbed others of their land that all their land would be taken by their enemies,
as prophesied in the previous chapter, MIDDAH KE-NEGED MIDDAH, "measure for
measure". The Israelite king Ahab's seizure of Naboth's vineyard (I Kings ch 21) is
the most glaring example of such land-grabbing.

V 3: This verse begins a new Parshah Pethuhah following on directly from the
previous one. Just as the wicked were devising (HOSHVEY) evil on their beds (v 1),
God declares that He is "devising (HOSHEV) evil against all this family" (v 3).
MIDDAH KE-NEGED MIDDAH.

V 4: Those who lament when this evil strikes will cry out, "The share of my people
has been exchanged…" – "the inheritance of my people has been given over to the
enemy – how will He ever come back to me to restore to us our fields that this
enemy shares out for himself, how will it ever be possible to return them to me?"
(Rashi). Many in the present day may be asking the same question about the
territories of the Holy Land that have been given over to Israel's enemies in
exchange for a mirage of "peace" that has turned into a nightmare.

V 5: "Therefore you shall have none that cast the line by lot in the assembly of
HaShem". Those who have robbed others of their land will be punished by having
no descendant who will measure out the land of his inheritance in God's land after
the future redemption (Metzudas David). Behind the harshness of this prophecy lies
the consolation that the rest of the people who did not rob others of their land will
have their share in the land of Israel returned to their descendants in the time of
the redemption.

V 6: "You who preach, do not preach…" Micah addresses the true prophets, as if to
say that the moral degradation has reached such a low that it is purposeless to
prophecy any more since the people will merely insult them.

V 7: The prophet quotes the people's mocking of his prophecies of doom: they ask
if God's temper has become short and if He would do such a terrible thing. God
answers that His words will benefit those who go straight. (See the comment on vv
12-13 below.)

V 8: The people see God as an adversary – and they continue their blatant robbery,
stripping innocent people who were going along quite securely of their very clothes,
making them look like war returnees (Rashi).

V 9: The theft of people's property is a catastrophe for their wives and children (see
Likutey Moharan I, 69).

V 10: The prophet tires of cataloging the people's sins, telling them to get up and
go into exile already because this was not the MENUHAH (invigorating repose and
tranquility) that God intended for the people of Israel in His land – to defile it with
their bands of wickedness.

V 11: Rejecting the words of the true prophet, the people would take any man
walking in wind and falsehood and preaching for a glass of wine or liquor as their
prophet and guide.
Vv 12-13: The two closing verses of this Parshah are susceptible to two quite
opposite interpretations, as detailed by RaDaK. They can be explained as
prophecies of the coming doom with the remnant of the people packed like sheep
into cities under siege as the enemies break through until eventually the king –
Tzidkiahu – ignominiously leaves Jerusalem , the divine presence having departed.

On the other hand Targum Yonasan, Rashi and Metzudas David prefer to draw out
the consolatory prophecy contained in the very same Hebrew words. (That two
opposite prophecies can be contained in the very same words was explained earlier
in v 7: "Are these His terrible doings? – [No], My words do good to him that walks
uprightly".)

The good news is that in the final redemption, "I shall surely gather the remnant of
Israel …" They shall be like flocks for multitude, and their cities will resound with
the sounds of their great populations. Their redeemer will break through the
barriers and obstacles in order to straighten the path for them, and their king –
Mashiach – will pass before them and God will pass by at the head of all of them
(see Targum, Rashi, RaDaK).

Chapter 3
Chapter 3 verse 1 begins a new Parshah Pethuhah setting forth the sins of the
leaders of the people on account of which they were to be punished with exile.
Whereas the preceding verse (Micah 2:13) spoke of God at the HEAD of the people,
the prophet now addresses the sinful temporal HEADS of Jacob and rulers of Israel,
who should have known better than to act as they were acting: "Is it not for you to
know justice?"

Vv 2-3: The root of all their evil is that they are devouring each others' very skin
and flesh, robbing and exploiting the people and consuming them like meat in a
pot. The prophet will return to the theme of oppression and injustice by the wealthy
and powerful in vv 9-11.

V 4: When the coming trouble strikes, the sinners will cry out to God but He will not
answer; rather, He will hide His face from them because of their evil deeds.

V 5 begins a new Parshah Pethuhah taking the analysis of the evil of the people a
stage further by exposing the venality of the false prophets who support the evil of
the rulers by selling prophecies of peace and prosperity to those willing to pay them
while declaring holy war against anyone who refused. The contemporary equivalent
of these false prophets and soothe-sayers would appear to be the armies of spin
doctors and hack media pundits whose job is to sell the policies of the very wealthy
and powerful to the hypnotized public and pull a cloak over their wrongdoing and
corruption.

Vv 6-7: Micah foretells that when the coming doom strikes, the false prophets will
be put to shame. Many of the official spokesmen and mainstream media
commentators who were predicting in the early 1990's that Israel's Oslo agreement
with the "Palestinians" would lead to a golden age of peace in the Middle East would
also be put to shame if they were forced to re-read their words again in the light of
the nightmare that has developed as a result. The same applies to those who
promised that Israel 's "disengagement" from Gaza would lead to greater security.
V 8: Micah asserts that in contrast to the baseless prophecies of the false prophets,
his own prophecies are full of the power and spirit of God. Unlike the false
prophets, he will not flatter the corrupt rulers and cover over their wrongdoing.

V 9: The prophet returns to castigating the rulers for their corruption. "If you see a
generation that suffers from many troubles, go out and examine the judges of
Israel, for all the troubles come only on account of the judges of Israel, as it says,
"Hear this you heads of the House of Jacob and rulers of the House of Israel who
pervert justice" (Shabbos 139a).

V 10: "…they build up Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity" – "Each one
builds his house with blood since they shed people's blood to take their money to
build their own houses, and they build Jerusalem with money extracted through
corruption, exploitation and deception" (Metzudas David). This is a prophecy that
resonates with those familiar with the property market in various parts of present-
day Israel with Jerusalem foremost among them. Many honest citizens are quite at
a loss as to how to afford a house when prices are driven ever higher by powerful
players who have amassed enormous wealth on the backs of others. Those same
honest citizens note that while they themselves are pinched ever tighter
economically as "the measure is reduced and the shekel price is increased" (Amos
8:5), the wealthy keep getting wealthier and bank profits have never been higher.

V 11: This verse lists three sins, which were to be requited with the three
punishments listed in the following verse (Shabbos 139a). The three sins are: (1)
The heads (=the kings or Sanhedrin, RaDaK) take bribes in passing judgments and
making their governmental decisions. [Recent revelations about corruption at the
top levels of the Israeli government may be presumed to be merely the tip of an
iceberg.] (2) The priests, whose function was to teach Torah and issue halachic
rulings could be bought for a price and would rule accordingly. [Today it is the
editors and columnists who decide what is right and wrong in favor of whoever pays
them, and predetermine the public debate before it even begins.] (3) The prophets
(the ideologues) divine for money.

V 12: Therefore: (1) Zion shall be plowed like a field. This prophecy was realized
with the destruction of the Temple – the Romans literally plowed up the Temple
Mount. In case this was not enough, the prophecy has been realized again quite
literally in our days with the extensive Arab excavations on the Temple Mount in
recent years, in which many priceless archaeological relics have been barbarically
destroyed. (2) Jerusalem shall become heaps of rubble. This too was realized when
the Romans destroyed the city, and again when the Jordanians wantonly destroyed
synagogues and other buildings in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem
after its capture in the 1948 War of Independence. (3) The Temple Mount shall
become like the high places of the forest. Anyone who has seen the Temple Mount
from the Mt of Olives or aerial pictures knows that it has been planted with many
trees, in flagrant violation of the Torah prohibition against planting any tree in the
vicinity of God's altar (Deut. 16:21).

A famous Talmudic passage tells how after the destruction of the Second Temple a
group of sages passed by its ruins and, on seeing a fox emerge from the place of
the Holy of Holies, broke down weeping, while Rabbi Akiva laughed. When his
companions asked why he laughed, Rabbi Akiva answered that seeing the literal
fulfillment of Micah's prophecy in our present verse gave him confidence that the
prophecy of Zechariah will also be fulfilled that "old men and old women will yet sit
in the streets of Jerusalem… and the streets of the city will be filled with boys and
girls playing…" (Zechariah 8:4; Maccos 24b).
 Chapter 4
Verses 1-3: "And it shall be at the end of days…" Following the preceding prophecy
of destruction, this sublime prophecy of consolation about the restoration of the
Temple and how the nations of the world will stream to seek out God and His Torah
is also found in Isaiah 2:2-4 with almost identical wording except for very minor
changes.

RaDaK comments (on v 1) that in saying that the Temple Mount will be "established
on the top of the mountains and it shall be EXALTED ABOVE the hills" the verse
does not necessarily mean that it will be literally higher than it was, but that the
nations will exalt and give honor to the Temple Mount and come there to serve
HaShem. We may presume that the Temple Mount will no longer be insulted by
being called merely the "third holiest place" of a tradition that does not recognize
the name of HaShem or Moses his prophet. Rather, the Temple Mount will be the
central focus of the entire world, from which the Torah – the word of HaShem – will
go forth to all parts of the globe.

"And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning
hooks" (v 3). Despite the noble declared aims of the United Nations, the world is
clearly still very far from the realization of this prophecy, as astronomical sums of
money and resources continue to be poured into arms and armaments by nations
great and small. We can only hope and pray that God will bring humanity to its
senses before we destroy ourselves and the whole world. It is comforting that
Micah here prophecies that eventually "they will not learn war any more" (v 3).

V 5: "For let all people walk everyone in the name of his gods" – "all the nations
will go to destruction for having worshipped idols" (Targum) – "but we shall walk in
the Name of HaShem our God for ever and ever."

Vv 6-7 make up a short Parshah Pethuhah continuing with the prophecies of

consolation about the end of days, when God will bring in the scattered of Israel,
who are as if limping in exile, being unable to move from their place (Metzudas
David).

V 8: The prophet promises Jerusalem – the center to which the "flocks" gather on
the pilgrim festivals – that the former dominion will return: this is the original
united kingdom of David as it was before the Ten Tribes split from Judah and
Benjamin (Rashi, Metzudas David, RaDaK).

V 9: There are varying interpretations of the Hebrew word TA-RIYI in this verse.
Some render, "Why do you CRY OUT aloud", relating the root to TERU'AH as in the
shofar blast. However, Rashi relates the root to REI'A, a "friend", rendering, "Why
do you need to seek out friends and lovers, the kings of Egypt and Assyria, to help
you?" The same question could be put to the rulers of Israel today: Why do you feel
the need to rely on your peace treaty with Egypt and your backers in Washington
when God is your King and advises you how to run your affairs – by following His
Torah?

V 10: The prophet compares the coming ructions of exile to the pain of a mother
giving birth – but promises that after the exile will come redemption and
restoration.

V 11-14: Rashi and particularly RaDaK explain this passage as a prophecy of the
ingathering of the exiles in the time of Mashiah. Verse 11 begins with the word
NOW as if to say, You can be quite confident that this prophecy will come to pass,
even if it does so only after a long time, just as if it were happening NOW (RaDaK).

"And now many nations are gathered against you, who say, Let her be defiled and
let our eyes look upon Zion " (v 11). These "many nations" are Gog and Magog and
the many nations that are with him (RaDaK). We see with our own eyes how in
every international forum today the voices of the nations are raised in cries of
accusation that Zionist Israel is "defiled", and they all wait for her downfall.

"But they do not know the thoughts of HaShem…" (v 12). The nations do not
understand that it is part of God's plan that they should feel compelled to come
against Jerusalem, intending to plunder and destroy her – for this is how He draws
them so as to gather in the Vale of Yehoshaphat where He will defeat them (Joel
4:2; Rashi on Micah 4:12). The nations will be like sheaves gathered in from the
field – to be beaten and threshed.

V 13: "Having compared the nations to sheaves, God tells Zion that despite her
weakness after the exile, He will strengthen her and give her metal horns with
which to gore the nations and brass hooves with which to trample them" (Metzudas
David).

V 14: "Now gather yourself in bands, daughter of troops – he has laid siege against
us; they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek." Rashi applies
this verse to the Babylonians who were to destroy the First Temple because of
Israel's sin of abusing their prophets and judges and striking them on the teeth.
However, RaDaK applies the verse to the people of Jerusalem under siege from the
forces of Gog and Magog, when "half the city will go out in exile" (Zechariah 14:2)
and the enemies will publicly degrade the judges and leaders of Israel to the point
that they will contemptuously strike them on the jaw. The public demonization of
leading rabbis in our time – accompanied by the unscrupulous twisting of their
words to imply the opposite of what they intended (=striking them on the jaw) may
also be a sign of the fulfillment of this prophecy.

Chapter 5
Chapter 5 Verse 1 begins a Parshah Sethumah that continues until the end of verse
5. This very important section speaks of Mashiah and the defeat of Gog and Magog
at the end of days. It is thus a continuation of the previous prophecy (Micah 4:8-
14) which spoke about the restoration of the Davidic kingship and the war of Gog
and Magog.

V 1: The prophet addresses Bethlehem, (also called Ephrath, Gen. 48:7) – the
family home of King David (I Samuel 17:58), from whose progeny there will
emerge God's anointed Mashiah. RaDaK (ad loc., uncensored version) cites the
Christian interpretation of this verse as a reference to their founder, said to have
been born in Bethlehem. RaDaK shows that this interpretation is untenable since
(1) he was never "ruler in Israel" as Mashiah will be – rather, the people ruled over
him since they had him executed, Sanhedrin 43a; (2) the claim that "from ancient
time, from days of old" to which Mashiah's "goings out" are traced refers to God is
impossible because God is beyond time. Targum Yonasan renders "and his goings
out from ancient time from days of old" as: "his [Mashiah's] name was declared
from ancient time, from days of old" – i.e. from the beginning of creation it was
foreordained that Mashiah will come at the end of days.
V 2: "Therefore He will give them up until the time when she who travails has
brought forth…":God will give them into the hands of their enemies until the time
when Zion travails and gives birth to her children" (Rashi). Micah 4:9 also
characterizes the pangs of redemption as birth pangs. Since a woman gives birth
after NINE MONTHS of pregnancy, the Rabbis learned from this verse that "The son
of David will not come until the kingdom of wicked Rome has spread over the entire
world for NINE MONTHS" and then "the remnant of his brothers" – i.e. the brothers
of Mashiah, Judah and Benjamin (RaDaK), will return to the Children of Israel – i.e.
they will be reconciled with the Ten Tribes" (Yoma 10a).

V 3: This verse prophecies the strength and glory of Mashiah that will be
manifested through the power of God, and the return of the exiles to the Land of
Israel.

Vv 4-5: "And THIS will be peace", i.e. this will be genuine peace as opposed to the
sham that has gone by the name of "peace" until now. If enemies try to enter the
Land, we shall raise against them "seven shepherds and eight princes of men". The
rabbis stated that the "seven shepherds" are David in the center with Adam, Seth
and Methuselah to his right and Abraham, Jacob and Moses to his left. The "eight
princes of men" are Jesse, Saul, Samuel, Amos, Zephaniah, Tzedekiah, Mashiah
and Elijah (Succah 52b). Rashi on our present verse states: "I do not know from
where they learned this". "Mashiah will save us by destroying the land of Ashur and
Babylon with their princes and rulers so that no more enemies shall go out of those
lands to enter within our boundaries" (RaDaK).

V 6 is a Parshah Pethuhah in itself. This verse is the beginning of the selection from
Micah (5:6-6:8) that is read as the Haftara to Parshas Balak in the Book of
Numbers. Balak's request to Bilaam to curse Israel is referred to in Micah Ch 6 v 5.

"And the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many peoples like dew from
HaShem…" The "many peoples" are those who will gather against Jerusalem with
Gog and Magog. (Metzudas David, RaDaK). "Israel will be among them like dew
from HaShem, for the dew comes from God from heaven, and one who hopes in
Him will not put his trust in any man to bring it to him but he will put his hope in
HaShem alone since it is He Who causes the dew and rain to fall on the earth. So
too in the salvation from the war of Gog and Magog, Israel will not hope in anyone
except God, for He is their savior and there is no other savior besides Him, because
they will be a small number of people while the nations gathered against them will
be very many – who will be able to save them except Him? His salvation will come
down to them in the same way that dew comes down upon the ground… and
afterwards it will be 'like showers on the grass': just as the showers are more
abundant than the dew, so God's goodness to Israel will continue growing"
(RaDaK).

Vv 7-8 are another Parshah Pethuhah prophesying how in the war of Gog and
Magog when the nations will come against Jerusalem, Israel will stand up to them
like the lion, king of the animals, and like a young lion among flocks of sheep
(RaDaK). "Your hand shall be lifted up against Your adversaries, and Your enemies
shall be cut off" (v 8) – "The five fingers of God's right hand are all for the sake of
redemption. He will use His whole hand to destroy the children of Esau, who are His
adversaries, and to cut off the children of Ishmael, who are His enemies, as it says,
Your HAND shall be lifted up against Your adversaries…" (Yalkut Shimoni).

Vv 9-14 make up a Parshah Pethuah prophesying how the defeat of the forces of
Gog and Magog will come about not through horses and chariots (alluding to help
from "allies" like Egypt, Rashi) but through the power of God alone. God will "cut
off the cities of your land and destroy all your fortresses" (v 10) because there will
no longer be any need for fortified cities. After the coming of Messiah all the forms
of witchcraft, divination and idolatry that used to be practiced will become defunct.

Chapter 6
Chapter 6 opens with a new Parshah Pethuhah (vv 1-8) followed by a Parshah
Sethumah (vv 9-16). These are two sections of one prophesy which returns to the
theme of God's "argument" against Israel over their ingratitude for His past
kindness and mercy. The first section (vv 1-8) evokes God's kindness and forgiving
attitude to Israel at the time of their entry into the Land of Israel, explaining that
what He wants from the people is not multitudes of animal sacrifices but that man
should practice justice and kindness and go modestly with God. The second section
(vv 9-16) berates Israel for practicing the very opposite of this through their
dishonesty in business and the oppression practiced by the wealthy, and he warns
that God will punish them.

Chapter 6 v 1: "Arise, contend before the mountains and let the hills hear your
voice!" The "mountains" are the patriarchs, the "hills" the matriarchs (Rashi).

Vv 2-5 express God's complaint against Israel, pointing to His historical kindnesses
to them, for which they have shown nothing but ingratitude. The argument that
Israel should have shown more gratitude after God's kindnesses to them is familiar
from various passages in Hosea (e.g. ch 3; 7:13 etc.)

V 5: "O my people, remember now what Balak king of Moab devised and what
Bilaam son of Be'or answered him." Balak wanted Bilaam to divine the moment of
God's anger in order to take advantage of it to curse Israel, but Bilaam answered,
"How shall I denounce when God has not denounced?" (Numbers 23:8). In other
words, God showed complete forbearance to Israel in the wilderness and did not
show anger despite their backslidings, bringing them from Shittim (despite their sin
there with Pe'or god of the Moabites) to Gilgal, their first encampment after their
successful entry into the Land of Israel.

V 6-7: The prophet – speaking in the name of all Israel – asks what is the
appropriate way to show gratitude to God for his kindnesses: surely not through
abundant animal sacrifices (external rituals that do not cause people to improve
their actual behavior).

V 8: God has already told man what is good and what He wants from him: to
practice Justice and Kindness and "to walk modestly with God" (=loving God with
all one's heart and soul, which is a matter entrusted to man's heart, RaDaK).

Vv 9ff: The prophet calls out to the sinful city rebuking the people for practicing the
very opposite of what God asks, exploiting others and acquiring wealth through
selling short and other forms of deception and malpractice. They will be punished
for this behavior, yet the prophet knows that they will not heed his warnings, "for
the statutes of Omri are kept" – they will continue to follow the practices instituted
by the kings of Shomron, leading to inevitable doom.

Chapter 7
Vv 1-2: The prophet laments that he was chosen to prophesy in a generation in
which no Tzaddikim are left. The "summer fruits" have been "gathered in" – the
righteous have left the world. Micah outlived the other members of the "quartet" of
prophets of his time -- Hosea, Amos and Isaiah. He found himself left without
companions in a degenerate age when everyone was scheming against everyone
else.

V 3: The prophet continues his reproof against the people over their moral
degeneracy. The leaders demand bribes; the judges are interested not in justice
but in pay-offs while the great and powerful – who should have enforced justice –
abuse the victims of corruption and injustice, thereby thickening and strengthening
the cords of sin (Metzudas David).

Vv 4-5: The best of the people are prickly as thorns. It is impossible to trust in
anyone.

V 6: This verse is cited in Sotah 49b as typifying people's behavior BE-IKVASA

D'MESHIHA, in the "footsteps" or threshold of Mashiah".

Vv 7-8: In spite of seeing only negativity all around him, the prophet affirms that
he will hope in God, confident that the redemption will come. He tells Israel's
enemy not to rejoice, for in spite of Israel's fall, she will yet rise up. RaDaK states
that this prophecy is addressed to wicked Rome, under whose rule Israel had been
in exile for over a thousand years (by RaDaK's time), and who rejoices over her
plight thinking her hope is lost. "Yet even though I sit in darkness, God is light to
me."

Verses 9-13 make up a Parshah Pethuhah prophesying the future redemption that
will come when Israel's suffering for her sins is complete. The scales will then be
turned against her enemies, who taunted her during the exile but who will be
covered with shame in the end.

"There shall be a day when they shall come to you from Ashur…" (v 12). The
prophet says that while the nations mocked Israel saying that her hoped-for day of
redemption would never come, that day is in fact guarded and treasured by God as
the day on which their enemies will come to destroy them (Rashi). RaDaK explains
that the locations given in v 12 all border on the Land of Israel, "which was [and is]
surrounded by evil neighbors who did everything in their power to harm Israel ". On
the other hand, Targum Yonasan interprets this verse as prophesying the
ingathering of the exiles of Israel from Assyria and all the other lands of their
dispersal. Targum renders "from MAZOR" as "from great HORMINI", which is
usually identified with Armenia yet which is given in Targum on Jeremiah 51:27 as
the Aramaic translation of ASHKENAZ= Germany (see RaDaK on Micah 7:12).

V 13: "And the land shall be desolate because of those that dwell in it, for the fruit
of their doings." – "This refers to the lands of the nations, who harmed Israel"
(RaDaK).

Verses 14-20 constitute a Parshah Pethuhah beginning with Micah's prayer to God
to guide Israel as a shepherd leading his flock, with the people dwelling in their
ancestral pastures throughout Greater Israel just as in the days of their earlier
glory.

V 15: "As in the days of your coming out of the land of Egypt I will show you
wonders." Here God Himself answers the prophet, promising that the future
redemption will be attended my miracles and wonders as striking as those of the
Exodus from Egypt.
Vv 16-17: These wonders will be witnessed by the nations who will gather against
Jerusalem with Gog and Magog, and they will be ashamed of all the might with
which they thought to conquer Jerusalem (RaDaK).

Vv 18-20: The prophet returns to praising God over the good destined for Israel.
"Who is a God like You, Who pardons iniquity…" According to the strict line of
Justice we are not worthy of all that goodness since we are full of sin – but "Who is
like God, who forgives sin!"

These three closing verses of Micah invoke God's Thirteen Attributes of Mercy,
which were revealed to Moses at Sinai. While the Thirteen Attributes as revealed to
Moses (Exodus 34:6-7) are considered kabbalistically as their "outer vessels", the
attributes as invoked by Micah allude to the flow of inner blessing that is drawn
down to the lower worlds through these vessels (Zohar, Idra Rabba, Naso 130b).
The Thirteen Attributes as invoked by Micah and the corresponding Attributes
revealed by Moses are as follows:

Micah 18-20: (1) Who is a God like You (2) who pardons iniquity and (3) forgives
the transgression (4) of the remnant of his heritage? (5) He does not maintain his
anger for ever, (6) because He delights in mercy. (7) He will again have
compassion upon us; (8) He will suppress our iniquities. (9) And you will cast all
their sins into the depths of the sea. (10) You will show truth to Jacob, (11) love to
Abraham, (12) as you have sworn to our fathers (13) from days of old.

Exodus 34:6-7: [HaShem HaShem] (1) mighty, (2) merciful (3) and gracious, (4)
long- (5) suffering (6) and abundant in love (7) and truth, (8) keeping kindness (9)
to thousands, (10) forgiving iniquity (11)and transgression (12) and sin (13) but
who will by no means clear the guilty…
 Book of Nahum
Chapter 1
Nahum the Alkoshi was so called after the name of his town or family. Seder Olam
(ch 20) states that Nahum prophesied in the days of Menasheh king of Judah, who
was the son of Hezekiah. The commentators suggest that Menasheh's name is not
mentioned in the text as he was not a righteous king. Rambam in his introduction
to the Mishneh Torah states that Nahum received Torah from the prophet Joel, who
had received it from Micah, and that Nahum transmitted the Torah to Habakuk,
who gave it over to Tzephaniah, who taught Jeremiah.

The main theme of Nahum's prophecy is the overthrow of Nineveh, which was the
capital of the empire of Ashur, Assyria. While the earlier kings of Judah and Israel
suffered from the incursions of Aram, by the reign of Hezekiah Aram had been
eclipsed by Assyria, which became the major "superpower" of the time and which
under Sennacherib not only exiled the Ten Tribes but also laid siege to Jerusalem
itself, threatening the very Temple, until the miraculous overthrow of his army as
described in detail in II Kings chs 18ff. Thereafter Ashur continued to be a major
center and Jonah was sent to prophecy against the sinful Nineveh. In the days of
King Menasheh, Judea was subject to Assyria and had to pay her taxes, but Nahum
prophesied that God would take vengeance and that Nineveh would be overthrown,
as happened about a century after his time, when Nebuchadnezzar conquered the
city and Babylon took Assyria's place as the major world empire.

While the classical commentators explain Nahum's prophecies about the coming
doom of Nineveh as referring to its overthrow by Nebuchadnezzar, Targum Yonasan
also interprets the same prophecies as alluding to the future destruction at the end
of days of all the nations that harmed Israel. As a prophecy of vengeance against
her enemies, Nahum's message, although fearsome and doom-laden, is a
consolation to Israel. Thus the name Nahum is from the Hebrew root NAHEM
meaning to comfort. The form Nahum is adjectival (like BARUCH, RAHUM, HANUN)
indicating that the bearer of the name is a source of comfort (just as RAHUM, from
RAHEM, to show mercy, applies to He who is the source of all mercy).

The opening verses of Nahum, following on as they do in our Bible texts from the
closing verses of Micah, continue to describe God's attributes, focusing here on His
vengefulness to His enemies (v 2). While verse 3 describes God as "long-suffering"
or "slow to anger", it also describes Him as being "great in power". Rashi (ad loc.)
explains that God has the power to take vengeance, and if He does not hurry to do
so, this is because He is long-suffering – but in any event He will not acquit the
wicked.

Vv 3-5 evoke the mighty powers of God as manifested in nature in the storm winds
that raise clouds of dust, in the drying up of seas and rivers, the destruction of the
most fertile of areas and in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. In the words of
RaDaK (on v 4): "He has the power to overturn nature – all the more so does He
have the power to give one nation sway over another so as to destroy it, which is in
any case not contrary to nature". Thus the commentators interpret the references
to God's power over the forces of nature as metaphors for His overthrow of the
nations. "He rebukes the sea and makes it dry…" (v 4) – "this is a metaphor for the
nations, who are compared to water" (Isaiah 17:12; Rashi on Nahum 1:4). "…and
He dries up all the rivers" (v 4) – "Here the prophet prophesies that God would
make Nebuchadnezzar king in the days of Yeho-yakim and give over Assyria and all
the other lands to the sword" (Rashi ad loc.).

V 7: "HaShem is good, a stronghold on the day of trouble…" "Even when He exacts

punishment from His enemies, His mercy does not move from benefiting those who
fear Him, unlike a man of flesh and blood who when occupied with one thing is
unable to direct his attention to something else" (Rashi).

V 8 prophesies how Nineveh would be completely swept away.

Vv 9-11: When Sennacherib laid siege to Jerusalem, his lieutenant Ravshakeh

publicly blasphemed (II Kings 18:22ff), as if God had no power against Assyria, but
Nahum prophesies that its overthrow will be swift and total.

Vv 12-14 make up a Parshah Sethumah emphasizing how complete will be the

overthrow of Assyria, to the point that it will never again be able to oppress Israel.
"Though they are at peace and likewise many, even so they shall be cut down and
it shall pass away…" (v 12). In its simple meaning this verse is saying that even if
the Assyrians are all at peace – unified and of one accord – and constitute a great
multitude, they shall still be sheared like wool and pass away, never again able to
afflict Israel. Rabbinic Midrash turns the whole verse around, darshening
homiletically that if a person sees that his livelihood is limited and all the more so if
he is "at peace and likewise many" (=wealthy), he should "shear" his possessions
and give charity and then he is assured that he will not see the face of hell. "It's
like when two sheep have to cross through the water. If one of them has been
sheared and the other not, the one that is sheared gets across but not the one that
is covered in thick wool, which gets weighed down by the water" (Gittin 7a).

Chapter 2
V 1: Nahum's prophecy of the coming overthrow of Nineveh and Assyria is a
consolation to Judah, who suffered greatly because of Sennacherib's overbearing
haughtiness and his attempted capture of Jerusalem. "O Judah, celebrate your
feasts…" – "You find in every place that Judah is first: when they encamped in the
wilderness, Judah was in the east… And when the bringer of good tidings will come,
Judah will be given the good news first, as it says, 'O Judah, celebrate your feasts'"
(Midrash Tanchuma).

V 2: "For the wicked one (MEIPHEETZ) shall no more pass through you, he is
utterly cut off." – "This refers to Sennacherib, who scattered (HEIPHEETZ) the
Children of Israel in exile" (Rashi, Metzudas David, RaDaK).

V 3: The glory of Israel will be restored.

Vv 4-6 graphically depict the onslaught of Nebuchadnezzar's warriors and chariots

against Nineve.

V 7: Nineveh was situated on the banks of the Tigris (Mosul in modern day N. Iraq).
Once the gates to the river would be opened, the way into the city would be clear
and "the palace was dissolved" (=the king would be terrified, Targum). Verse 8
describes the exile of the queen and her panic-stricken maids.
Vv 9-10 evoke the great power and wealth of Nineveh, all of which would fall to her
enemies. Verse 11 evokes the devastation and terror that would come upon her
inhabitants.

Vv 12: "Where is the den of the lions…?" – "This is a lament over Nineveh whose
kings were harsh and strong as lions" (Rashi). The kings of Assyria would go
hunting for lions in the hills above the Tigris and took the lion as the symbol of
Assyrian power.

V 14: "Behold I am against you, says HaShem of Hosts, and I will burn her chariots
in the smoke… and the voice of your messengers shall no more be heard". The
most notorious of Assyria's "messengers" was the blasphemous Ravshakeh (I Kings
18:28; Isaiah 36:13) but all his vauntings would prove to be empty.

Chapter 3
"Woe to the city of blood…" (v 1). The closing chapter of Nahum makes up one
continuous Parshah Pethuhah reproving arrogant Nineveh for the sins that are
leading to her doom. "It is full of lies and robbery; the prey does not depart."
Nineveh's dominion was founded on deceit and robbery.

Vv 2-3 evoke the cruel military power and force with which Assyria asserted her
dominion over other peoples in order to build her empire.

V 4: "Because of the harlotries of the charming and bewitching harlot…" – "The

Assyrians knew how to seduce the hearts of the kings of the earth and join up with
them, and in the end they would conquer and subject them" (Rashi).

Vv 5-6: God will expose the shame of the harlot.

V 7: The downfall of Assyria will be astonishing to the nations, but none will mourn
for her because she harmed them all.

V 8ff: "Are you better than No-Amon …?" The town of NO is Alexandria in Egypt,
which is described as AMON, having the connotation of a foster-parent, as this was
the city that fostered and produced the kings of Egypt (Rashi). Nahum was
prophesying that Nineveh would meet the same fate as Alexandria, Kush (=
Sudan?), Egypt, Phut (= Tunisia or possibly Somalia) and Loob (= Libya): all were
exiled by Nebuchadnezzar, and so too would the people of Nineveh be exiled.

V 11: "You too shall be drunken …" According to her greatness, Nineveh too shall
drink the cup of poison and be hidden from the world as if she never existed (Rashi,
Metzudas David).

Vv 12-14: Prophesying how the population of Nineveh will fall to their captors like
ripe fruits falling from a shaken tree, Nahum warns them to prepare water and
build up the fortifications of the city for the coming siege.

Verses 15-17 compare the great hosts of Assyria to various species of locusts,
which mysteriously fly off and disappear. [According to the tradition that Nahum
was the disciple of the prophet Joel, Nahum's metaphorical comparison of the
Assyrians to swarms of locusts makes it plausible to interpret the prophecies in Joel
1-2 about the coming plague of locusts as foretelling the onslaught of the swarming
nations against Israel in the end of days.]
V 18: "Your shepherds slumber, O king of Ashur…" It is when a country's leadership
falls into complacency and "sleep" while the people are bent on the pursuit of
leisure that the nation is ripe for God's vengeance to strike.

V 19: "All who hear the report about you clap their hands over you, for upon whom
has not your wickedness passed continually?" The prophet has explained the moral
dimensions of God's overthrow of Nineveh and her empire in order to teach
mankind a lesson about His way of dealing with the wicked and arrogant powers of
the earth.
 Book of Habakuk
Chapter 1

Our text gives no indication of the identity of Habakuk's father, tribe or city. The
Holy Zohar teaches that he was the son of the Shunemite woman born through the
blessing of Elisha and later revived by him (II Kings 4:8-37; Zohar I, 7a). He was
called Habakuk because "you will embrace (HOBEKETH) a son" (II Kings 4:16). This
would place Habakuk in the time of Yehoram son of Ahab. However, Seder Olam
states that Habakuk prophesied considerably later, in the time of Menasheh son of
Hezekiah. In accordance with this, Rambam (Intro. to Mishneh Torah) states that
Habakuk received Torah from the prophet Nahum and was the teacher of
Tzephaniah. It could be that the Zohar is hinting at the provenance of Habakuk's
soul while Seder Olam is telling us when he lived.

HABAKUK'S ARGUMENT WITH GOD

"How long shall I cry and You will not hear…?" (v 2).

Habakuk was oppressed with the problem of why the wicked prosper while
successfully oppressing and inflicting suffering on the righteous. This is a question
that continues to vex us until today because it seems like an affront to faith and
belief in a just God.

Our sages teach that even in the reign of Menasheh, when Ashur was in the
ascendant, Habakuk already saw prophetically that Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar
would become the world power and treat all the peoples under their dominion with
the utmost cruelty, especially Israel, whose Temple they destroyed. "For lo, I am
raising up the Chaldees, a bitter and impetuous nation…" (Habakuk 1:6).

Just as in recent generations the Holocaust and other evils have baffled even those
who want to have faith in God's justice, so too in the time of Habakuk, the prospect
of the impending doom that was being prophesied by leading prophets was baffling
even to the believers of the generation. As Habakuk says (1:4): "Therefore Torah is
slackened' – people see no more point in observance – "and justice does not go out
triumphantly, for the wicked man besets the righteous so that justice goes out
perverted (ME-UKAL)". Rabbi Nachman of Breslov points out that ME-UKAL is made
up of the letters of AMALEK, who led the nations in barbaric attacks on Israel
(Likutey Moharan II:5).

Just as today, Habakuk's cry is over HAMAS (v 2) – violence, as exemplified in cruel

terror attacks on innocent men, women, children and little infants. (It is enough to
glance at some of the Tisha Be-Av KINOS, the mournful dirges recited in the
synagogue annually on the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple, to get a
glimpse of the bloodthirsty, sadistic cruelty of the Chaldean Babylonians as well as
Israel's other persecutors through the ages.
Vv 5-9 evoke the specter of the rise of Babylon to world dominion, sweeping
through country after country on a rampage of conquest, slaughter, robbery and
plunder.

V 10: As a world conqueror whose power-crazed arrogance dwarfed even that of

Julius Caesar or Napoleon, Nebuchadnezzar would laugh at the many kings and
rulers he was to capture.

V 11: Seeing his great success, Nebuchadnezzar would be overcome by a spirit of

madness that would make him attribute all his success to his false god (Rashi). The
picture of Nebuchadnezzar that emerges from Daniel chs 1-4 confirms and
complements Habakuk's evocation of the Babylonian ruler.

V 12-13: After having described the menacing specter of Nebuchadnezzar and the
Chaldeans as he saw it in his prophetic vision, Habakuk now defines the issue of
faith which this is arousing in him. Granted that God is eternal and that we, the
people of Israel shall not die – for we shall never be wiped out – and granted that
God has only ordained and established the coming ascendancy of Babylon to judge
and punish those who rebel against Him, the question remains: "You are of eyes
too pure to behold evil and cannot look upon iniquity. Then why do You look upon
them that deal treacherously and hold Your peace when the wicked devours the
man that is more righteous than he?" People are often expressing the same
bafflement when they ask where God was during the Holocaust and other evils.

V 14: "You make man like the fishes of the sea…" – "Why are men compared to the
fishes of the sea? To tell you that just as the fishes of the sea die as soon as they
go up onto dry land, so people who separate themselves from the study of Torah
and practice of the mitzvos immediately die" (Talmud Avodah Zarah 3b).

Vv 15-17 express the conclusion of Habakuk's presentation of the challenge to

faith. If the wicked conqueror enjoys such success and prosperity, sacrificing to and
worshiping his own net and trap as if they were the gods who bestowed his
ascendancy upon him, how will the wicked ever cease from their evil rampages
against all the nations?

Chapter 2
"I will stand upon my watch and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what
He will say to me and what answer I shall give to those who argue with me" (v 1,
see Rashi). As spiritual leader of his people, Habakuk felt obliged to answer those in
perplexity, who were raising with him the very arguments he set before God.

The rabbis taught that Habakuk, like Choni HaMe-agel after him, traced a circle in
the ground and declared that he would not move out of it until he received an
answer from God (Ta'anis 23a). Of course only a complete Tzaddik is permitted to
do such a thing!

Vv 2-3: "And HaShem answered me and said, Write the vision… For there is still a
vision for the appointed time…" God's answer was that the ascendancy of
Nebuchadnezzar's dynasty would come to an end, and that another prophet would
arise who would foretell exactly when this would be (Jeremiah 29:10). RaDaK
points out that Daniel also foresaw and lived to witness the fall of Babylon, as well
as being the channel of God's chastisement of Nebuchadnezzar over his arrogance.

Habakuk's prophecy of how God's righteousness and justice will eventually be

vindicated applies not only to Nebuchadnezzar and the Chaldees but to all the
wicked persecutors of Israel. "For there is still a vision for the appointed time, and
it speaks concerning the end, and does not lie: though it tarry, wait for it, because
it will surely come, it will not delay" (v 3). Phrases from this verse are included in
the Thirteen Principles of Faith # 12: "I believe with perfect faith in the coming of
Mashiah, and even though he tarries, even so I will wait every day for his coming."

V 4: "Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright in him…" Even though the
oppressor may remain incorrigibly arrogant, "…the just shall live by his faith". The
rabbis said that 613 commandments were given to Moses, King David reduced
them to eleven basic principles, Isaiah to six, Micah to three… Amos to one… And
Habakuk based them all on one foundation: "The just shall live by his FAITH"
(Maccos 23b).

Verse 5 begins a new PARSHAH SETHUMAH which amplifies the general answer
given to the prophet in vv 2-4 by showing him visions of the downfall of
Nebuchadnezzar's dynasty and the taunting parables which the nations will invoke
against him.

V 5 alludes to the drunken intoxication of Nebuchadnezzar as well as that of his

grandson Belshazzar, who drank from the Temple vessels, only to be killed on the
same night by Darius the Mede, who conquered Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar had a
voracious appetite for conquest, but in the end all the nations he conquered would
sing dirges over the destruction of his empire.

V 6: "Woe to him that increases that which is not his…" In the coming sections (vv
6-20) the word "Woe" (HOY) is repeated five times like a chant in a dirge. Each
HOY introduces a new aspect of the reproof against the wicked Babylon (vv 6, 9,
12, 15 and 19).

"Woe to him that increases that which is not his" (v 6). This is a reproof that could
also justly be directed not only against Babylon but also against former colonial
powers like Britain, France, Italy, Holland etc. as well as the neo-colonial powers
that still continue to ravage weaker nations and plunder their wealth and resources
under the guise of "development programs" and other noble-sounding projects.

Vv 7-8: Just as Babylon ravaged other nations, so the time would come when she
would be ravaged, "…because of the blood of ADAM (=Israel, Ezekiel 34:31) and
the violence done to the land (of Israel), to the city (=Jerusalem) and all its
inhabitants" (v 8, see Rashi).

Vv 9-11: If a person steals, it is bad for his house and dynasty, for even a stolen
brick or wooden beam built into the structure of the house cry out that they were
acquired through crime (RaDaK on v 11).

Vv 12-14: Building an empire on blood and iniquity are a futile endeavor, for
eventually God's glory will be revealed to all the world and everyone will see that
His Justice rules (cf. Isaiah 11:9).

Vv 15-18: The Talmud relates that Nebuchadnezzar would get the exiled kings he
held in captivity in Babylon very drunk and then make sport and sodomize them
(Shabbos 149b). This expresses the Babylonian method of pretending to be very
friendly and getting their victims to feel so relaxed that they would reveal their
most sensitive secrets (cf. II Kings 20:12ff). MIDDAH KE-NEGED MIDDAH,
"measure for measure", Babylon's shame would also be revealed in the eyes of all
and she too would drink the cup of poison. "Because of the blood of ADAM (=Israel)
and the violence done to the land (=of Israel), to the city (=Jerusalem) and all that
dwell therein" (v 18, Rashi ad loc.). Of what use then would be Nebuchadnezzar's
idols?

Could it be that the bloody carnage in Iraq in recent years, which is still increasing,
may not also be an expression of God's vengeance for the crimes of Babylon?

"Woe to him that says to the wooden idol, 'Awake!' to the dumb stone, 'Arise!' Can
it teach? Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver and there is no breath at all in it.
But HaShem is in His holy Temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him" (vv
19-20).

Chapter 3
HABAKUK'S PRAYER

"This prayer is constructed in the same way as one of the psalms, and thus the
phrase 'upon Shigyonoth' (v 1) is like 'A Shigayon of David' (Psalms 7:1) and the
phrase 'To the Menatze'ah ("conductor") on my stringed instruments' (v 19) is like
similar phrases in Psalms, and the word Selah (v 9) is also not found anywhere else
in the Bible except in this prayer and in the Psalms. The subject of the prayer is the
suffering of Israel in this exile. The prayer relates the miracles and mighty deeds
performed by God for Israel from the day He redeemed them from Egypt, and the
prophet prays and tells prophetically that He will do likewise during this exile and
when they go out from the exile and in the war of Gog and Magog" (RaDaK on
Habakuk 3:1).

"Prior this prayer, earlier in Habakuk's prophecy, he said, 'Why do you show me
iniquity and cause me to behold mischief?' (Hab. 1:3). For the prophet saw
Hananiyah, Misha-el and Azariah entering the fiery furnace and being saved, and he
saw Rabbi Hananiyah ben Teradyon burned in the fire. When he saw this he
complained, 'They were righteous and pure and so was he – then why will he be
burned while they will be saved?' The Holy One blessed be He then revealed
Himself to him, saying 'You are complaining against Me? Is it not written, "A God of
truth without iniquity" (Deut. 32:4)? Habakuk immediately said, 'I spoke
mistakenly' – 'A prayer of Habakuk the prophet over SHIGYONOS' (from the root
SHEGAGAH, an unintentional sin)." (Midrash Shoher Tov 90).

In the light of the classical commentaries (Targum Yonasan, Rashi, Metzudas David,
RaDaK), it can be seen that Habakuk's prayer contains allusions to the Exodus from
Egypt, the Crossing of the Red Sea, the Giving of the Torah, Israel's entry into the
Land and the miraculous overthrow of the 7 Canaanite Nations as well as the
subsequent Exile, the final Ingathering of the Exiles and the defeat of the forces of
Gog and Magog at the gates of Jerusalem.

In Diaspora communities where the festival of Shavuos commemorating the Giving

of the Torah is celebrated for two days, the Haftara of the second day of the festival
is read from Habakuk 2:20-3:19.

V 2: "O HaShem, I have heard the report of You …" Rashi explains: "I have heard
the report of You from of old – how you always exacted punishment from those
who angered You – yet you show patience for this villain (=Nebuchadnezzar, who
was to cause Israel so much suffering, as expressed in the previous chapter). Now,
during the years of trouble that we are in today, arouse and restore Your earlier
work when You exacted punishment from our enemies, and make it known during
these years now. And even when you show anger to the wicked, remember to show
mercy to Israel."
Vv 3-5: Now the prophet begins to recount God's earlier feats which he previously
asked Him to renew. Habakuk starts with the giving of the Torah: "God comes from
Teiman and the Holy One from Mount Paran …" Teiman was the firstborn of Eliphaz
son of Esau (Gen. 36:11) while Ishmael "dwelled in the wilderness of Paran" (Gen.
21:21). Esau (=Seir) and Ishmael are similarly mentioned in Moses' evocation of
God's revelation at Sinai (Deut. 33:3). These verses are the foundation of the
Midrash that prior to giving the Torah to Israel, God offered it to the children of
Esau and Ishmael but they refused because the Torah forbids bloodshed and
robbery etc. on which both live (Avodah Zarah 2b etc.).

V 6: "He stands and shakes the earth…" Targum Yonasan and Rashi explain this
verse as alluding to the earthshaking ructions with which God punished the sinful
generations of the Flood and the Tower of Babel, while Metzudas David and RaDaK
explain it as alluding to the way God drove out the Canaanite nations. "His ways
(HALICHOS) are as of old (OLAM)" – "These wonders came about because all those
who run and govern the world, the angels above and those below, all belong to God
to execute His will" (Metzudas David). "For this reason He does with them
according to His will – to raise up one and cast down another, to drive out one and
give to another their inheritance. It says 'His ways are of old' (HALICHOS OLAM)
because the world (OLAM) is governed through the journeying of the spheres, stars
and planets" (RaDaK). The phrase HALICHOS OLAM LO is quoted at the end of the
daily morning prayers (TANYA D-VEI ELIAHU etc. – learn halachos every day, don't
read the word as HALICHOS but as HALOCHOS).

V 7: Kushan was one of the first oppressors of Israel in the period of the Judges
(Judges 3:8). Targum explains the verse as saying that because of their sins Israel
were afflicted with Kushan, but when they repented they were saved from the
Midianites by Gideon.

V 8 alludes to the miracles of the splitting of the River Jordan when Israel entered
the Land and the splitting of the Red Sea.

Vv 9-10: God reveals His "bow" in order to fulfill His oath to the patriarchs to
benefit the Twelve Tribes in giving them eternal possession of the Land of Israel.
He revealed His power through the miracles of Arnon (Numbers 21:13-15) and the
splitting of the Jordan.

Vv 11-12: God made the sun and the moon stop for Joshua (Josh. 10:13) and
performed other miracles to drive out the seven Canaanite nations.

V 13: "Just as you went out to save Your people when they entered the land of the
seven nations, so You are destined to go forth in the future to save Your anointed
Mashiah. Just as you saved them then, so you will take them out of exile and bring
them back to their land. Your Mashiah refers to Mashiah ben David. Then you will
smash the head of the forces of the wicked Gog…" (RaDaK).

Verse 14 begins a new Parshah Pethuhah – the closing section of Habakuk's prayer,
which continues until the end of the book.

While Rashi interprets v 14 as a reference to the miraculous overthrow of

Sennacherib's armies when they came against Jerusalem, RaDaK explains it as
further amplification of the destined defeat of the forces of Gog and Magog. "You
have pierced with his own shafts the head of his warriors who come out as a storm
wind to scatter me" – "With the shafts of Gog himself You shall pierce the head of
his warriors, who are called P'RAZAV because they will come in a great multitude
spreading out everywhere around Jerusalem (cf. Ezekiel 38:11; Zechariah 2:8),
and God will send tumult among them and they will all take sticks in their hands
and smash each others' heads … They will be destroyed just like the Egyptians, who
came to consume Israel, the 'poor one', in a place where they thought God does
not see" (RaDaK).

V 16: "When I heard, my belly (=heart) trembled…" – "The prophet is saying that
He heard prophetically of the trouble in which Israel will be placed on the day of
Gog's coming…" (RaDaK). "…that I shall rest only to encounter a day of trouble" –
"Because I thought I would be able to rest in my Land after having returned there
from exile, and now my rest has turned into a day of trouble" (RaDaK). In recent
generations, the many Olim to Israel who hoped that their settling in the Land
would be for MENUHAH, rest and recreation, have likewise been filled with profound
unease to say the least as they come to realize that Israel is now under actual
assault from the forces of Gog and Magog in the guise of the "Palestinians",
Hezbullah, "Al Qaeda", Iran, the multinational forces of the U.N. etc. etc. etc.

V 17: "But the empire of Babylon shall not endure… the kings of Medea will be
killed, the warriors of the idolatrous nations will not succeed, Rome will be
destroyed…" (Targum Yonasan). The world is currently witnessing the steady
destruction of Babylon (= Iraq ), while Medea (= Iran ) would appear to be next in
line. "This verse speaks metaphorically of the nations that will gather against
Jerusalem with Gog and Magog, saying that they will not succeed but they will be
destroyed and any who escape without getting killed will be afflicted with a plague
in their limbs etc. (cf. Zechariah 14:12; RaDaK on Habakuk 3:17).

V 18: "The prophet says in the name of Israel, When the camp of Gog is destroyed,
then I will rejoice in God's salvation." (RaDaK).

V 19: "He makes my feet like deers…" "We find here not KA-AYALIM (the masculine
form) but KA-AYALOTH (the feminine form). Why? Because the legs of the females
are more steady than those of the males!!! KA-AYALOTH – like TWO deers,
Deborah and Esther" (Midrash Shoher Tov 22). The redemption comes about
through the righteous WOMEN!

"To the MENATZE'AH on my stringed instruments" – "I will make pleasant melodies
and the MENATZE'AH, the Levite Temple musician, will play the corresponding song
on his instruments" (Rashi).
 Book of Tzephaniah
Chapter 1
The opening verse of the prophecy of Tzephaniah traces his lineage to Hezekiah:
according to the biblical commentator Ibn Ezra, this was King Hezekiah of Judah.
Tzephaniah received the Torah from Habakuk and was the teacher of Jeremiah. As
stated in verse 1, Tzephaniah prophesied in the time of Josiah, who was the last
righteous king of Judah a generation before the destruction of the First Temple. Our
sages teach that Tzephaniah was a Tzaddik and the son of a Tzaddik (Megillah 15a)
and they counted him with eight "princes of men" together with Adam, Jesse, Saul,
Samuel, Elijah, Amos and Mashiah (Succah 52a). Prophesying at the same time as
Tzephaniah were Jeremiah and Huldah the Prophetess. According to our sages,
Tzephaniah prophesied in the synagogues and study halls, Jeremiah in the streets
and markets and Huldah to the women. The destruction of the Temple was very
imminent and God sent prophets to all the people in the hope that they would
repent and avert the decree, but each person went his own way and did not pay
attention, and the prophecies of doom were fulfilled.

Tzephaniah's prophecies are mainly about "the Day of HaShem" – the harsh Day of
Judgment that was coming on account of the people's idolatry and corruption – and
Tzephaniah appeals to the people to repent. He also speaks of God's vengeance on
the nations surrounding the Land of Israel, and prophesies that a remnant of Israel
will finally dwell securely in the Land and God will rejoice in them and all will know
and recognize His greatness.

Vv 2-3 prophecy the ravage and devastation of the Land, which will affect the
people and the very animals, birds and fish (the ecology) as well as the "stumbling
blocks" of the wicked" – i.e. their idols (Rashi).

Vv 4-6: God's hand is stretched out specifically over Judah and Jerusalem, and
specifically over the idols and their priests and ministers, those who worship the
heavenly hosts and swear by God but back up their oaths by invoking their
"king"=idol (Rashi), and those who have fallen away from God's Torah or who have
failed to search Him out.

Vv 7-8: "The Day of HaShem is near…" God is preparing a "sacrificial slaughter" and
sanctifying the "guests": it is "holy war" (Jihad). This is the punishment of the
princes and governing classes "and ALL WHO WEAR FOREIGN APPAREL". [In the
early days of the State of Israel, the political leadership went Israeli-style in
shirtsleeves and without neckties, but today almost all the males go in the best
tailored suits and expensive ties though rarely with any head covering, while female
political fashion has become the height of chic.]

V 9: "And I will punish all who leap over the threshold…" Yonasan translates this as
"all who follow the customs of the Philistines" (see Rashi; cf. I Samuel 5:5). "They
fill their masters' house with violence (HAMAS) and deceit".
Vv 10-11: "The sound of crying from the Gate of the Fish… from the Second Gate…
from the Hills… from Makhtesh". Rashi brings the simple PSHAT that the Gates are
those of the Fish and Fowls in Jerusalem while Makhtesh refers to the Kidron valley
east of the Temple Mount, but he also brings the Midrash (from Psikta Rabasi) that
the Gate of the Fish is Akko (the port town of Acre, the "key of the Land of Israel"),
the "Second Gate" is Lod (which was the second city after Jerusalem and a major
center of learning in the time of R. Akiva and is a thriving town until today), "the
hills" allude to the town of Tzippori (Sepphoris) in the hills above Tiberias (Megillah
6a), while Makhtesh (=a bowl) refers to Tiberias itself, which is in the "bowl" or
"navel" of Israel. All these have historically been locations of strategic importance.

V 12-13: From God's "search" through Jerusalem "with lamps" our sages learned
out that the search for Chametz (leaven) on the eve of the 14 th of Nissan in
preparation for the Pesach festival of redemption must be conducted with a candle
(Pesahim 7b). This verse shows that purpose of God's search is to punish the
people who are the Chametz of the nation, those who "are settled on their lees
[living in tranquility and at ease, like wine on its lees, Metzudas David], who say in
their hearts, HaShem does not do good [to the Tzaddikim] or evil [to the wicked,
Rashi]". The real Chametz is thus APIKORSUS, the belief that there is no judgment
and no Judge. Those who embrace this will be devastated. The positive message of
this verse is that just as Chametz is removed but everything that is not Chametz
remains, so God will remove the wicked but save the righteous.

Vv 14-16: In these verses alone the DAY of HaShem is mentioned EIGHT TIMES
besides the four mentions earlier in verses 7, 8, 9 and 10. This emphasizes the
imminence of the coming doom.

V 17: "And I will bring distress upon ADAM" – "this means Israel, who are called
ADAM" (Rashi). There can be no mistaking against whom Tzephaniah's reproof is
directed: you and I should take careful note. "They will go like the blind": The
apparent blindness on the part of many Jews both in Israel and the Diaspora as to
what is going on today in the world around us is also very noteworthy.

Chapter 2
V 1: "Gather yourselves together and assemble together O unfeeling nation…" The
rabbis darshened the phrase HITHKOSHESHOO VA-KOSHOO as meaning "search for
your own flaws and those of others in order remove them" (Sanhedrin 18a, Rashi,
Metzudas David, RaDaK). Targum Yonasan says the nation is "unfeeling" (LO-
NICHSAF) because they do not yearn to return to the Torah.

V 2: The prophet calls on the people to repent before the day of doom arrives.

V 3: The very essence of repentance is to practice justice and to cultivate humility.

"When Rabbi Ami would reach this verse he used to break down in tears: 'Seek out
justice, seek out humility…' – and after all this, 'PERHAPS you will be hidden [and
not die] on the day of God's anger'!?!" (Hagigah 4b).

V 4: "For Gaza shall be forsaken and Ashkelon shall be a desolation; they shall
drive out Ashdod at the noon-day…" It might appear from a simple reading of the
text that the abandonment of Gaza etc. takes place on the day of God's anger.
Israel's ignominious retreat from Gush Katif (Gaza) and the continuing daily missile
bombardment of the Israeli towns of Ashkelon and Ashdod etc. certainly seem
indicative of God's anger. However, in biblical times Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod and
Ekron were Philistine towns, and Rashi (on v 4) explains Tzephaniah's prophecy of
their future devastation as a promise to Israel that if they will follow the path of
repentance explained in the previous verse, God will punish their wicked neighbors,
the Philistines, Ammonites and Moabites, as the coming verses elaborate. It would
be very beneficial for present day Israel to imbibe this message.

Vv 6-10 thus detail the overthrow of the Philistines, Ammonites and Moabites one
after the other, and how the remnant of Israel will take possession of their lands. In
the case of the Philistines, the verse states that this will take place "in the
EVENING" (v 7). Similarly, the future redemption from the hordes of Gog and
Magog is described as taking place "towards the EVENING" (Zechariah 14:7). These
verses explain that the nations are punished for their arrogant taunting of Israel
and because "they have magnified themselves against their border" (v 8). Metzudas
David explains the latter phrase to mean that "they took from the land of Israel to
expand and add to their own boundaries". This is exactly what the Arab nations
sought to do in 1948, 1967 and 1973 etc. and are still trying to do today – not
without the tacit support of the British, who had already subtracted vast chunks of
territories from the lands they originally promised in 1917 as the Jewish national
homeland and handed them to their Arab protégées.

V 11: The destruction of the nations and their gods will bring them to fear HaShem.

V 12: The commentators indicate that the KOOSHIM mentioned in this verse (and
in Tzephaniah 3:10) as a people who come not from Africa, as many believe, but
rather from beyond the rivers of India (the Indus??? see Rashi on this verse and
Targum Yonasan on Tzeph. 3:10). This would conform to the opinion in the Talmud
that KUSH mentioned in Esther 1:1 was adjacent to India and not in far off Africa
(Megillah 11a). It was to Kush that the Ten Tribes were exiled.

Vv 13-15: The catalog of nations to be destroyed when God redeems Israel

climaxes with Ashur – who took the Ten Tribes into exile – and their capital city of
Nineveh.

Chapter 3
V 1: Having suggested to Judah that if the people will repent, God will wreak
vengeance on their enemies, the prophet now returns to his reproof against the
"filthy polluted oppressing city" – the sinful Jerusalem.

Vv 2-4: But the people have not accepted the reproof. The rulers and judges are
self-seeking and corrupt; the false prophets are worthless and treacherous while
the priests have polluted the sanctuary and violently perverted the Torah.
Unfortunately these criticisms hold until today. The latter-day equivalent of the
priests who have perverted the Torah would be those "rabbis" of varying
complexions who blatantly or subtly corrupt the true message of the Torah.

Vv 5-7: Despite the backslidings of the people, God has been just and has done no
iniquity. He has repeatedly destroyed great nations hoping that Israel would see
and draw out and apply the moral to themselves in order to avoid a similar fate so
as not to lose all the goodness God has bestowed upon them, "but they rose early
and corrupted all their doings" (v 7).

V 8: "Therefore wait for me, says HaShem, until the day that I rise up to the prey;
for my determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms to
pour upon them my indignation, all my fierce anger." RaDaK applies this verse to
the war of Gog and Magog, as if God is saying, "Wait until that day, when I will
smelt and purify you, because you will not imbibe the lesson until the day I arise
for the prey, the day of the coming of Gog and Magog, against whom I shall come
forth to take the prey and plunder them" (RaDaK on v 8). We would be well advised
not to wait until then to repent.

V 9: "For then I will convert the peoples to a purer language…" – "These are the
peoples who will remain after the war of Gog and Magog: I will turn their original
language into a pure language, so that they will no longer bring the names of other
gods on their lips but all will call on the Name of HaShem" (RaDaK; cf. Zechariah
14:9).

V 10: "From beyond the rivers of Kush come my suppliants, the daughter of
Putzay…" Targum Yonasan explains that "my suppliants" refers to the exiled
Children of Israel, who call on God's name and He answers them, while the
"daughter of Putzay" alludes to how Israel were scattered (PATZATZ) in their exile.

Vv 11-12: The Day of God will not bring destruction to Israel but rather their
cleansing from their previous arrogance so that they will again be fit to celebrate on
God's holy mountain – in the Temple.

V 13: "The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity…" This famous, beautiful verse
expresses the high standards of behavior to which Israel will adhere in the time of
the redemption, so that "they shall feed and lie down with none to make them
afraid".

Vv 14-15 are a short PARSHAH PETHUHAH calling on the redeemed Zion and Israel
of the future to rejoice wholeheartedly in God's salvation.

Vv 16-17 begin the closing section of Tzephaniah, prophesying the future security
that will replace our present fear: God Himself will rejoice.

V 18: "Those that were far away from the festive assembly do I gather…" Rashi (ad
loc.) explains this to mean that God will destroy those who took themselves away
from His appointed seasons and did not keep His Sabbaths and festivals. It follows
that one of the main keys to redemption is observance of the Shabbos and
festivals. In the words of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, "If only Israel would observe two
Shabbosos they would be redeemed immediately" (Shabbos 118b).

V 20: "At that time I will bring you in and at that time I will gather you…" This
verse is read in the early part of the daily morning service at the climax of the
passages accompanying the first recital of the Shema following the BIRKHATH
HASHACHAR (morning blessings), prior to the sacrificial readings and P'sukey
DeZimra. Metzudas David states that the two expressions "bring you in" and
"gather you" refer respectively to the Ten Tribes, who did not return when the
Second Temple was built, and to the people of Judah, not all of whom returned at
that time. In the final redemption they will all return without exception. This is
surely an excellent thought with which to start the prayer service each morning!
 Book of Haggai
Chapter 1
Haggai was one of the last prophets of Israel. The identity of his father and tribe
are unknown, but he was called MALACH HASHEM, God's "emissary" (Haggai 1:13).
He was a member of the court of Ezra the Scribe together with Zechariah and
numerous other prophets and sages, who are known as the Men of the Great
Assembly. Some say that Haggai received Torah from Ezekiel, but Rambam says
that he and the other members of Ezra's court received Torah from Baruch ben
Neriah, the student of Jeremiah (Mishneh Torah, Introduction). Haggai is said to
have been one of the prophets who was with Daniel when he saw his vision of the
angel (Daniel 10:7; Sanhedrin 93b). It is also said that the Targum of Yonasan ben
Uzziel on the prophets was received from the mouths of Haggai, Zechariah and
Malachi (Megillah 3a).

Verse 1: "In the second year of Darius the king…" This is Darius king of Persia, who
ruled after Ahashverosh, who was killed by one of his servants one year after the
Purim miracle. According to Midrash Vayikra Rabbah (13) Darius was the son of
Queen Esther. He came to the throne in the year 3406 (=354 B.C.E.). Haggai's
prophecy in the second year of Darius' reign came eighteen years after the first
wave of Jewish exiles had returned from Babylon to Jerusalem under the leadership
of Zerubavel son of She'altiel and Yehoshua ben Yehotzadak the High Priest, as
narrated in Ezra ch's 1ff. They initially had the blessing of Cyrus king of Persia to
rebuild the Temple and they laid the first foundation of the new House, but Cyrus
subsequently retracted his permission. Throughout the 14 year reign of his
successor Ahashverosh, the building of the Temple was stalled as a result of the
letters of denunciation he received from the Jews' adversaries under the leadership
of the sons of Haman. The Purim miracle at the end of the reign of Ahashverosh
opened the way for the building of the Second Temple, which was resumed in
Darius' second year because of the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah that the
time was ripe, as we see in our present text (cf. Ezra 5:1).

"…in the sixth month on the first day of the month…" The prophecies contained in
the book of Haggai were all delivered in a four month period beginning on 1 st Elul,
a most significant date in the Torah calendar as it marks the start of the days of
compassion and repentance culminating in the High Holidays. Haggai's prophecies
were directed particularly at Zerubavel and Yehoshua the High Priest, who as
leaders of the people were being called upon to take the initiative in acting on the
divine call to rebuild the Temple.

V 2: "This people say, The time has not come for the House of HaShem to be
built…" Haggai's prophetic mission came at a time when the returnees from Babylon
had fallen into deep despair. From the time of their return to Jerusalem they had
been faced with unremitting opposition from their adversaries to any move to build
the Temple , and they had all but given up, wondering if it would ever be rebuilt.
Instead they put their focus on restoring and rebuilding their land, which had been
devastated for over seventy years since the Babylonian conquest. There is a strong
resemblance between the feelings of the people of that time and those of many in
Israel today, who after the first exhilaration of the great influx of returnees after
almost two thousand years of exile have encountered so many insuperable
obstacles to the establishment of a true Torah state that they find it impossible to
conceive how the complete redemption of the people in the land will ever be able to
take place.

Verse 3: God's answer to the people through His prophet is a resounding YES! Now
– when everything seems completely hopeless – is precisely the time to rebuild the
Temple. "Is it the time for you to dwell in your well-timbered houses whilst this
House lies waste?" The same question might well be addressed today to the many
whose primary concern is to build and decorate their own magnificent private
mansions.

Vv 5-6: The people of the time were faced with a phenomenon that is all too
familiar today. No matter how much effort they put into their livelihood, they
always ended up with pathetically little to show for it. Through the prophet, God
asks the people to reflect why this is so. "Consider your ways… You have sown
much and bring in little…" (This is the opposite of how it should be: normally one
sows a small amount of seed and reaps a large harvest.) "He that earns wages
earns wages to put them into a bag with holes." This will certainly resonate with
everyone who has to pay income tax, social security, city taxes, health and
education bills, water, electricity, gas and an unending list of other expenses. The
rabbis explained that the reason for sowing much and harvesting little was because
without the Temple the mitzvah of bringing the BIKKURIM ("first fruits") was in
abeyance. The reason why people ate but were not satisfied was because there
were no MENACHOS ("meal offerings"). The wine did not lift anyone's spirits
because the Temple wine libations were defunct, while people's clothes did not
provide genuine warmth because the priestly garments were not in use in the
Temple (Rashi on v 6).

Vv 7ff: In this new Parshah Pethuhah, God challenges the people to ponder deeply
the economic and ecological woes that are afflicting them as long as each one runs
to his own house while God's House lies in ruins, and to see the turnabout that will
take place as soon as they will start rebuilding the Temple.

V 8: God tells the people to start gathering the materials for the new Temple "so
that I may be glorified" – VE-EKAVDA. In the Hebrew scroll this word is written
HASEIR, i.e. lacking the final letter HEH that Hebrew grammar requires for the first
person singular. The lack of this HEH (=5) in relation to God's glory in the coming
Second Temple was taken to signify the five elements that were present in the First
Temple but lacking in the Second: the Ark of the Covenant, the Urim VeThumim
(prophetic spirit coming through the High Priest's breastplate), fire from Heaven on
the Altar, the Shechinah and Holy Spirit (Yoma 21b; Rashi on v 8).

Vv 9-11 depict the lack of blessing in the ecology and the produce of the land as a
result of the absence of the Temple. "If the nations of the world knew how much
they suffer when Israel sin, they would post two soldiers by the side of each one to
guard him from sinning" (Midrash Tanchuma). Unfortunately the nations are mostly
unaware of this, and instead vent their frustrations through anger and anti-Semitic
outrages against the Jews.

V 12: The greatness of Zerubavel and Yehoshua and the remnant of the nation who
were with them lay in the fact that they did indeed heed the prophet's reproof and
went into action.
V 13: As soon as the people began to stir, God assured them through his
"emissary" or "angel", Haggai, that "I am with you".

Vv 14: "…and they came and performed work in the House of HaShem…" The
commentators explain that this work was in PREPARATION for the building –
hewing stones and sawing beams to provide the materials (Rashi; Metzudas David).

V 15 opens a new Parshah Pethuhah because a new chapter was starting in the
history of the people with the beginning in earnest of preparations for the rebuilding
of the Temple. Yet this verse is a continuation of the previous Parshah in the sense
that it tells us the day on which these preparations started – on the 24 th Elul,
another most significant date in the Torah calendar as it is the anniversary of the
beginning of the six days of creation (according to the opinion of Rabbi Eliezer,
Rosh Hashanah 8a).

Chapter 2
V 1: "In the seventh month on the twenty-first day of the month…" This prophecy
came on the seventh day of the festival of Succoth, "Hoshana Rabbah" – one day
before the conclusion of the Tishri festival season. Since the actual building of the
Temple was set to commence little more than two months later on 24 Kislev
(Haggai 2:10), it was necessary to spur the people to throw all their energy and
enthusiasm into the preparatory work of assembling the required materials.

V 3: Faced with the devastation all around them in the aftermath of the exile and
the opposition of the adversaries, the task of restoring anything of the true glory of
Solomon's legendary Temple must have seemed completely daunting (cf. Ezra
3:12f).

Vv 4-5: God urges the people to keep strong in their faith "according to the word
that I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt" – this refers to the Torah.
If the people were to keep the Torah, seeing as God's spirit was standing in their
midst – i.e. in their prophets – they had nothing to fear (Rashi).

V 6-7: Since the rise of Assyria, Israel had become accustomed to living under the
shadow of colossal empires, but God promises that He will now throw the world into
ferment. This is interpreted as a prophecy of the destruction of the Persian empire
(which came in the thirty-sixth year of Darius' reign with his defeat at the hands of
Alexander the Great), and the overthrow of Greek dominion over the Jews under
the Hasmoneans (Rashi on v 6).

V 8: "The silver is Mine and the gold is Mine…" – "Rabbi Meir says, A person should
always teach his son a clean, easy craft and beg mercy from Him to whom wealth
and possessions belong, for poverty is not the result of one's profession nor is
wealth the result of one's profession by only because of Him to whom wealth
belongs, as it says, The silver is Mine and the gold is Mine" (Kiddushin 82b).

V 9: "The glory of this latter House shall be greater than that of the former…" Some
said that this is because the Second Temple, particularly as embellished by King
Herod, was physically grander than the first, while others said that it is because the
Second Temple stood for 420 years while the first stood only for 410 years (Bava
Basra 3a). "This LATTER House…" Since the building was ready to go up in front of
them, it would have been sufficient to refer to it simply as THIS House. The
apparently redundant word ACHARON (="latter" or "last"), thus alludes to the Third
Temple (may it be built quickly in our times), which will be the greatest of all.
V 10 begins a new Parshah Pethuhah with a new prophecy that was delivered in the
same year on 24 Kislev. This was when the work on the actual building of the
Temple began – appropriately this was on the eve of what would later become the
Festival of Hanukah, the celebration of the re-inauguration of the Temple by the
Hasmoneans after the overthrow of the Greeks.

Vv 11-14: Just as the work of physically rebuilding the Temple commenced, it was
necessary to show the priests who would be responsible for conducting all the
services that they had to have complete mastery of all the complex Torah laws
which they involved. God instructed Haggai to "test" the priests in order to show
them that they needed to "brush up" on their Mishneh!

A full understanding of Haggai's two questions to the priests and the various ways
they were interpreted by the commentators requires a detailed knowledge of the
laws of TUM'AH and TAHARAH (ritual impurity and purification). Each of the main
sources of TUM'AH is called an AV ("father"), such as a dead lizard (SHERETZ), a
lump of carrion meat (NEVELAH), spit of a leper (ROK), etc. while something that
was originally pure but became defiled by one of the above is known as a VLAD
("child" or "derivative"). The laws of Tum'ah involve a kind of domino effect
whereby an AV causes the VLAD it touches to become a RISHON (first degree
derivative), while the RISHON causes the food it touches to become a SHENI
("second derivative"). If a SHENI comes in contact with priestly Terumah or
sacrificial Kodoshim food, it turns them into a SHELISHI ("third derivative"), which
in turn has the power to render Kodoshim (but not Terumah) a REVI'I ("fourth
derivative"). Haggai's first question to the priests (v 12) was precisely whether one
of the kinds of AV TUM'AH listed above had the power to cause such a domino
effect to the fourth degree. His second question (v 13) was about the what domino
effect caused by TEMAY NEFESH, i.e. blood, flesh or bones from a dead human
body, which is called AVI AVOS HA-TUM'AH ("the father of the fathers of impurity"),
because its ritual impurity is so intense that it causes even what it touches to
become an AV.

What exactly Haggai was asking and whether the priests did or did not know the
correct answers are subjects of extensive discussion by the commentators (see
Rashi, Metzudas David and RaDaK on these verses). RaDaK concludes his
discussion by saying that even if the priests did know the correct answers, the
lethargy they had displayed until now in rebuilding the Temple meant that anything
they offered on the Altar would be considered ritually impure. This may be seen as
a dig at those who are willing to study the Temple laws in great depth but show no
enthusiasm about doing anything to actually rebuild it.

Vv 15-19: The prophet challenges the people to take careful note of how from the
very day that they would start to throw themselves fully into the building of the
Temple God would send blessing and prosperity.

Vv 20ff are a prophecy addressed to Zerubavel, who was not only the governor of
the Persian imperial province of Judea but also heir to the kingship of David, which
had very nearly been wiped out completely since two out of the last three kings of
Judah had left no heirs – Yeho-yakim, whom Nebuchadnezzar exiled and tortured to
death, and Tzidkiyahu, all of whose sons were slaughtered in front of his eyes. The
last surviving member of the Davidic dynasty, Yeho-yakim's son, King Yechoniah,
whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile in Babylon prior to the destruction of
the Temple, also had no heir and was unlikely to have one since he was cruelly
imprisoned in solitary confinement in a deep narrow pit. Eventually
Nebuchadnezzar's wife prevailed upon him to agree to let Yechoniah's wife be
lowered down by rope into his prison pit cell, but she then discovered that she had
a flow of blood, which meant that relations were forbidden. Yechoniah had been
wont to ignore the laws of NIDDAH and ZIVAH when free in Jerusalem prior to his
captivity, but, chastened by his sufferings in exile, he had repented and now
heroically refused to have relations. His wife was hauled up again and mercifully
was allowed to purify herself from her flow, after which she was once again lowered
down… And through their coming together standing in this cramped dark pit, the
House of David was saved from extinction (Vayikra Rabba 19:6). The child born of
that union was She'alti-el, father of Zerubavel.

Prior to Yechoniah's repentance, Jeremiah had prophesied that even if he was as

close to God as His very signet ring on His right hand, He would cast him away
(Jeremiah 22:24). But after his repentance, God restored his seed and promised
that He would make Zerubavel "like His signet ring" (which a person normally never
removes). "For I have chosen you" – "I have chosen the seed that will issue from
you to be King Mashiah!" (Metzudas David).
 Book of Zechariah
Chapter 1
V 1: "In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius…" Zechariah's first recorded
prophecy came in the same period as Haggai was prophesying that the time had come to
rebuild the Temple. Haggai had prophesied at the beginning of Elul, the sixth month of
that same year, and again on 21 Tishri, the seventh month, telling the people to start
preparing building materials. To reinforce the message of restoration and revival,
Zechariah prophesied in Heshvan, the eighth month. Haggai then prophesied again on 24
Kislev, when the work of the actual building began, followed by Zechariah two months
later on 24 Shevat (Zech. 1:7).

"…Zechariah the son of Berechyah the son of Iddo the prophet…" From the fact that the
names of Zechariah's father and grandfather are given in the text, it is inferred that they
too were prophets. Some identify Iddo with Iddo mentioned in Nehemiah 12:16 as one of
the priests, which would mean that Zechariah was the leader of his priestly family.
Together with the other Men of the Great Assembly, Zechariah received Torah from
Baruch ben Neriyah, the student of Jeremiah (Rambam, Introduction to Mishneh Torah).
Zechariah was also called Meshullam since he was complete (SHALEM) in his deeds.

The meaning of Zechariah's prophecies is very hidden. Their mysterious imagery bears
comparison with the visions of Daniel, for both lived at a time when the power of
prophecy was declining owing to the exile, and for this reason they were unable to clarify
the full meaning of their visions (Metzudas David on Zech. 1:8). In the words of Rashi:
"Zechariah's prophecy is very obscure, for it contains images similar to a dream that
should be susceptible to interpretation, but we will not be able to attain the true
interpretation until the Righteous Teacher (Mashiah) will come" (Rashi on Zechariah
1:1).

The fourteen chapters of Zechariah make up four separate prophecies: (1) Zech. 1:1-6;
(2) Zech. 1:7-6:15; (3) Zech. 7:1-11:21; (4) Zech. 12:1-14:21. The themes of his
prophecy are the restoration of Jerusalem and the repentance required on the part of the
people in order to establish the new Temple; the destiny of the people in the Second
Temple era and thereafter until the end of days, the war of Gog and Magog and the final
redemption.

Vv 2ff: "God was greatly displeased with your fathers…" The prophet opens with reproof,
recalling the sins of the fathers of the present generation, which had caused the
destruction of the First Temple. His second prophecy (Zech. 1:7ff) alludes to the future
history of the Second Temple and the restoration and consolation of Jerusalem, but
before he can comfort the people and give them hope, he must first chastise them in
order to make them think about God's ways, which are "measure for measure". Before
they could embark on the work of building of the new Temple they had to repent and
understand that they must not return to the sinful ways of their fathers. Zechariah's
message is highly relevant to the many today who have left the path of loose or even
non-existent attachment to Judaism with which they were brought up and seek to
embrace the authentic Torah pathway.

Vv 5-6: "Your fathers – where are they?" Zechariah asks the people to reflect on what
happened to the generation of the destruction. The people could retort that the prophets
who had reproved them were also no longer alive (Sanhedrin 105a), but Zechariah points
out that nobody can live forever and that all the dire prophecies of destruction had been
fulfilled.

Verse 7 begins a new prophecy which falls into ten sections running until the end of
Chapter 6.

V 8: "I saw in the NIGHT…" The fact that the vision of the prophet was "in the night"
indicates that the power of prophecy was diminished, for the era of prophecy was coming
to an end (Metzudas David).

"…and behold a man riding on a red horse…" – "This 'man' was an angel while the RED
horse alludes to the fact that retribution would be exacted from the Kasdim (Babylonians)
and from Medea and Persia with the sword and with blood, as it says below (v 15), And I
will show great anger to the nations that are at ease" (Rashi on v 8).

"…and he was standing among the myrtle bushes that were in the glen…" RaDaK (ad loc.)
explains that the myrtles, which have a fragrant scent, symbolize Israel, who have the
fragrance of the mitzvoth. The man was "standing by them" to help them and take them
out of exile, which is the METZULAH ("glen"). "…and behind him were horses, red,
faint-colored [or mixed-colored] and white." Metzudas David (on v 11) explains that the
horses were sent by God and allude to the world empires. They are symbolized by horses
to allude to their great speed and multitude… The red ones allude to Babylon (symbolized
in Daniel 2:38 by gold, which is red-colored)… The fainter/mixed-colored horses allude to
the two empires of Medea and Persia … while the white ones allude to Greece, perhaps
because they customarily wore white garments. In this vision He did not show him the
fourth empire – that of Rome – because their rule came only after the destruction of the
Second Temple and as yet He had not spoken to him about this; later on, after having
spoken to him about it, He also gave him allusions about the fourth empire.

Vv 9-11: In answer to the prophet's request for the interpretation of the vision, the angel
channeling him prophecy tells him that he will show him its meaning. In verse 10 the
angel on the red horse amidst the myrtles begins to give the answer, which is amplified
in verse 11. The horses – the empires – have taken over the world and are dwelling in
peace [not unlike today, where Europe, America, Russia and China etc. enjoy relative
peace while Israel suffers from constant harassment and wars].

V 12: The tranquility of the nations prompts the angel of God speaking in the prophet's
mouth to ask why God does not show mercy to Jerusalem: UD MOSAI – "until when???"

V 13-17: This cry of pain to God over the suffering of Jerusalem prompts God's reply of
comfort and consolation: God promises that He will return to Jerusalem and rebuild His
Temple while the nations that live in tranquility will face His anger for having caused
Israel unwarranted suffering.

Chapter 2
Verse 1 opens a new section of Zechariah's second prophecy. The four "horns" again
symbolize the four main empires that have dominated Israel through history – Babylon,
Persia, Greece and Rome – just as an animal's horns are emblematic of its power and
pride (Metzudas David; cf. Daniel 7:7 & 11, 8:3ff etc.).

Vv 2-4: The four empires come to scatter Judah and treat them without mercy, but the
four "craftsmen" (HARASHIM, carpenters, experts at cutting hard wood and tough horn)
will exact vengeance from them.

Vv 5-8: An angel is coming to measure the city of Jerusalem, as if to indicate the future
greatness it will attain. "The Holy One blessed be He wanted to give a measure to
Jerusalem… but the ministering angels said, Master of the World, You have created many
great cities in Your universe belonging to the nations of the world and you never put limits
on their length and breadth. Will You give a measure to Jerusalem, where Your Name
dwells, where Your Temple stands and where there are many Tzaddikim??? God
immediately said to the angel that was supposed to measure Jerusalem, Run, speak to
that lad (=Zechariah) saying ' Jerusalem shall be inhabited like unwalled towns because
of the multitude of men and cattle that shall be in it'" (Bava Basra 75b). In our time we
are witnesses to the fulfillment of this prophecy. Jerusalem is now the largest and most
populous city in Israel and has spread far beyond the old walled city, with extensive
beautiful suburbs on the surrounding hills. Animals too can quite literally be found in the
city (such as donkeys and horses, not to speak of cats and dogs), or it could be that the
reference to "men" and "animals" here is similar to that in Jonah 4:11 as explained there
by Rashi (see our commentary on Jonah 3-4).

V 9: "For I will be to her, says HaShem, a wall of fire round about…" – "Said the Holy One
blessed be He, I must pay for the fire I kindled: I set Zion on fire… and in the future I will
build it with fire" (Bava Kama 60b). This verse is quoted in the NAHEM prayer that is
recited in the Tisha b'Av Minchah afternoon service.

Vv 10-11 call on the exiles of Israel to come home.

Vv 12-13: God will take vengeance on the nations, "for he that touches you touches the
apple of his eye".

Verse 13 introduces a section of Zechariah (from here until ch. 4 v 7) that is familiar as
a Haftara read TWICE every year – on the Shabbos of Hanukah and also as the Haftara of
Parshas BeHa'aloschah (the third parshah of Numbers, read in mid-summer shortly after
the festival of Shavuos). The prophet comforts the people with the promise that many
nations will come to recognize God and serve Him and that God will again inherit Judah as
His share and restore Israel and Jerusalem. Speedily in our times!!! Amen.

Chapter 3
Verse 1 opens a new section of the lengthy prophecy that began in Zechariah 1:7 about
the dawning age of the Second Temple and the coming empires until the end of days.

YEHOSHUA THE HIGH PRIEST

"And He showed me Yehoshua the High Priest…" As High Priest, Yehoshua was the most
important mover in the enterprise of building the new Temple second only to Zerubavel
the "king". Outwardly there seemed to be reasons to question the ability of either of them
to be granted success in this holy venture, but the prophet's vision penetrates beneath
the surface appearance.

"And the adversary (SATAN) was standing at his right hand to thwart him." The accusing
forces had a hold because Yehoshua's sons had taken foreign wives who were unfit to be
married to Cohanim (priests), as we learn from Ezra 10:18 (see Rashi on Zechariah 3:1).
The accusation against Yehoshua in the higher world gave force to Sanvalat and the other
adversaries in this world who had been working to thwart the rebuilding of the Temple, as
described in Ezra (see RaDaK on Zech. 3:1).

Verse 2: "And God said to the adversary, God rebukes you…" Because of the great power
of this verse to quell the forces of evil, it is customarily recited together with other "verses
of mercy" with the "bedside" Shema prior to going to sleep for the night.

"Is this not a brand plucked out of the fire?" The Talmud tells that in Babylon Yehoshua
had been cast into a fiery furnace by Nebuchadnezzar together with two false prophets
(Ahab ben Kolayah and Tzidkiyahu ben Maaseyah cf. Jeremiah 29:21), and that although
Yehoshua was saved when the other two died, the fire did singe him on account of his
sons being married to foreign women (Sanhedrin 93a).

Vv 3-4: Yehoshua's dirty clothes are symbolic of the stain caused by his sons' marriages.
Yet the angel before whom Yehoshua stood in this celestial judgment told the angels
standing before him to remove the dirty clothes (and his sons did divorce their wives and
repent, Ezra 10:19), showing that sin can be rectified and that the soiled garments can be
replaced with "festive garments" – merits – a very important lesson as the new Temple
was about to rise out of the ruins of the first.

V 5: "Then I said, Let them put a pure mitre on his head…" The prophet tells us that he
prayed for Yehoshua: the mitre on his head alludes to the crown of the priesthood that he
attained as an inheritance for his offspring after him since they separated from their
foreign wives (Metzudas David).

V 7: On the threshold of the Second Temple period, God warns the High Priest to follow
sincerely in the pathway of the Torah, promising him that if he does, "I will give you
pathways among these standing". Targum renders: "I will revive you at the resurrection
of the dead".

V 8: "Hear now, Yehoshua… for behold I will bring My servant Tzemach". The root
TZAMACH means "sprout". Rashi (ad loc.) interprets this as a promise to magnify
Zerubavel, who although heir to the kingship of David was in the eyes of the Persian court
merely the governor of Judea, a small figure, but God would give him favor in the eyes of
the king so as to be able to rebuild the Temple and the city of Jerusalem. RaDaK (ad loc.)
adds that TZEMACH also refers to King Mashiah, and that in addition to the salvation that
occurred in the time of Zerubavel, this is a prophecy that God will bring another even
greater salvation in the time of Mashiah. RaDaK notes that the tradition that the name of
Mashiach is Menachem is based on this verse because the gematria of Menachem is the
same as that of Tzemach.

V 9: "For behold the stone I have laid before Yehoshua; upon one stone are seven
facets." Targum and Rashi interpret the "stone" as referring to the foundation of the
Second Temple: this is a prophecy that the Temple was to expand seven times the extent
of the existing foundation. Metzudas David (ad loc.) adds that this is also a prophecy that
the foundation of the Third Temple has already been laid in the sense that it has already
been decreed that it will be built, and that it will be inaugurated by a descendant of
Yehoshua the High Priest. "And I will remove the sin of that land in one day" – "On the day
they begin to rebuild the Temple blessing will come into the fruits" (Rashi).

Chapter 4
Verse 1 is a continuation of the section Zechariah's lengthy prophecy that started in the
previous chapter. The prophecy now rises to a new level in which the spiritual sources of
the power of Zerubavel the "king" and Yehoshua the High Priest are revealed. In Zech.
3:1-10 the angel channeling the prophecy to Zechariah did not speak to him directly but
only showed him what was going on in the celestial court. But now "the angel that talked
with me CAME BACK", speaking to Zechariah directly and "rousing" him as from a sleep
– i.e. bringing him to a new spiritual level.

THE GOLDEN MENORAH

Verse 2: The seven branched Temple candelabrum as described in detail in Exodus

25:31-40 is the source of spiritual light that emanates to the whole world. In his vision of
the Menorah, Zechariah saw above it a bowl (GOULAH="fountain" cf. Joshua 15:19) from
which oil was flowing into the seven lamps (i.e. the cups holding the oil and wicks). Each
of the lamps was individually supplied with oil from the GOULAH-bowl through seven
small channels of its own (Rashi, Metzudas David). The Midrash associates the seven
lamps with the seven shepherds of Israel , the seven days of creation and seven very
fundamental mitzvoth etc. (Yalkut Shimoni). On the kabbalistic plane they allude to the
seven lower Sefiroth, each of which contains aspects of all of the others. Rashi states that
this verse alludes to the light that will shine in the future, which will be forty-nine times
as great as the light of the creation.

V 3: "And there were two olive trees by it…" Only later in the prophecy (vv 11-12) do
more details emerge about how oil was produced from these olive trees to fuel the
Menorah. Rashi on v 3 explains that just as in an olive press, the many berries from the
olive branches mentioned in v 12 were being squeezed by themselves into the golden
"spouts" (TZANTROTH) which are mentioned there, and that it was from these spouts
that the oil flowed into the GOULAH bowl or fountain which was supplying the pipes
leading down into the lamps.

V 6: In answer to the prophet's request for an explanation of the vision, the angel tells
him that it is a sign to reassure Zerubavel. Just as the olives grew and the oil was
produced all by themselves in every respect (with no need for effort or intervention), so
the building of the Temple would be completed not through the might and strength of its
builders but through God's spirit (Rashi ad loc.)

V 7: "Who are you, the great mountain before Zerubavel? Become a plain!" On one level
the prophet was addressing Tathnai governor of the Persian provinces west of the
Euphrates and the other adversaries of the Jews who had been stalling the building of the
Temple, saying that they would not be able to stand before Zerubavel. Metzudas David
(ad loc.) states that the "great mountain" refers to Gog king of Magog. "Do you think that
you are a great mountain that will stand in front of Mashiach so that he will not be able to
get across? It is not so. In the face of Mashiach you will be like a plain that he will cross
quite easily – Gog will have no power to hold back Mashiach!"

"And he shall produce the headstone of it" – "King Mashiach will bring forth a great stone
to place as the foundation of the future Temple" (Metzudas David).

Vv 8ff: A new section of this prophecy now elaborates further on the significance of the
vision of the Menorah, promising that Zerubavel will succeed in building the new Temple .

V 10: "For who has despised the day of small things…" When the foundations of the
Second Temple had first been laid, those who remembered the glory of the First Temple
were disappointed and discouraged (Ezra 3:12), but they would rejoice when they would
see Zerubavel's building arise. For "The eyes of HaShem rove to and fro through the
whole earth" – God sees what humans do not see, and He knows that Zerubavel is fit to
build this Temple (Rashi).

Vv 11ff: The prophet asks for further explanation of the vision of the Golden Menorah,
and specifically about the two olive trees standing by it, since these are the source of the
spiritual power emanating from it. The angel answers him that they allude to the
Priesthood and the Kingship (the High Priest and the King are both anointed with the
anointing oil, which is perfumed olive oil) and these are the foundations of the Temple, as
embodied in Yehoshua the High Priest and Zerubavel the "king". They "stand by the Lord
of the whole earth" because they are ready to do His will.

Chapter 5
In the previous visions concerning Yehoshua the High Priest and the golden Menorah, the
prophet received great lessons about the leaders who were to build the new Temple and
the spiritual source of their power. Now, in the vision of the Flying Scroll (Zechariah
5:1-4) and the Eiphah-measure (Zech. 5:5-10) the prophet receives lessons about the
social justice that must be the foundation of the new order, because it was theft,
deception and oppression that caused the exile.

THE FLYING SCROLL

Vv 1-2: "And I looked, and behold a flying scroll… its length twenty cubits and its breadth
ten cubits." The scroll came forth from the Holy of Holies in the Temple through the
entrance of the Temple vestibule (OOLAM) which was ten cubits wide and twenty cubits
high. In other words, this moral lesson that theft, deception and false oaths bring
punishment in their wake is bound up with the very essence of the Temple concept. The
presence of the Holy Temple demands appropriate standards of conduct between men,
particularly in their business dealings with one another. This scroll of reproof is the same
scroll that the prophet Ezekiel saw (Ezekiel 2:9-10).

The sages of the Talmud stated that the entire Torah was written on this scroll. The
Hebrew word in verse 2 that is translated as "flying" ('APHAH) also has the connotation of
"folded" or doubled over, which means that the surface area of the scroll was in fact
twenty by twenty cubits. We learn from verse 3 (MI-ZEH… MI-ZEH…) that it had writing
on both sides. If the scroll were sliced into two leaves, the total surface area would come
out to be doubled again, i.e. twenty by forty cubits = 800 square cubits. Isaiah 40:12
asks, "Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand and meted out heaven
with the SPAN…?" Since God measures heaven (=the created world) with a span, which
is a half cubit, 800 sq. cubits consist of 3,200 square spans. This means that the entire
world is only 1/3,200 the expanse of the Torah (Talmud Eiruvin 21a, Rashi on Zech. 5:1).

V 3: "Then he said to me, this is the curse that goes out over the face of the whole
earth…" The curse – the punishment for the sins enumerated in this verse – is "going out"
over the earth because the scroll was going forth from the Temple. One side (MI-ZEH) of
the scroll (one aspect of the reproof) is directed against every thief; the other side
(MI-ZEH) is directed against everyone who swears falsely. They are two sides of the same
reproof because although theft in itself is less serious than taking God's name in vain
through a false oath, theft brings a person to lie and swear falsely (RaDaK on v 2).

V 4: "I have taken it forth, says HaShem of hosts…" Previously individuals who stole and
swore falsely had not been punished, but now God has drawn forth the reproof in the
form of the flying scroll and shown it to the prophet, to indicate that the nation has now
been warned and that once their measure is complete they will suffer collectively for
these sins (Rashi on vv 3-4).

THE EIPHAH MEASURE

The EIPHAH is one of the standard Torah units of measure of weight (cf. Exodus 16:36
etc.). Estimates of the modern equivalent vary between 24.8-43.0 kilograms. The Torah
explicitly forbids "double standards": "You shall not have in your house an EIPHAH and an
EIPHAH, one big (for measuring what one buys) and one small (for measuring what one
sells)" (Deut. 25:14).

Vv 5-6: The EIPHAH-measure is going forth to reprove those "whose eyes are in all the
land" – who are looking everywhere to see what they can steal and how they can reduce
the weight of what they sell while raising the prices. They will be punished "measure for
measure".

Vv 7ff: "And behold, the leaden cover was lifted and there was a woman sitting in the
midst of the EIPHAH…" The wicked woman represents the nation whose people behaved
unjustly in business. The woman is now punished by being enclosed in the
EIPHAH-measure – she is punished with the very same measure she meted out to others!
A heavy lead lid closes her in: this represents the heavy weight of exile that punishes the
sinners by keeping them trapped and silenced. RaDaK (on vv 7-8) explains that this
woman represents the Ten Tribes, who were all part of one kingdom and went on the
same wicked path, as a result of which they were sent into a long exile.

[The Talmud in Yoma 69b and Sanhedrin 64a darshens this verse in a radically different
way as teaching that in the time of Zechariah the sages sought to eliminate the evil
inclination by closing it up in a lead container in order to silence it, until they realized that
all desire to procreate would dry up, so instead they released it but blinded its eyes so as
to reduce the impulse to worship idols and contravene the incest laws, and indeed these
sins were less rampant in the time of the Second Temple than they had been in the time
of the First.]

Vv 9-11: "And I lifted up my eyes and looked, and behold there were two women coming
forth, and the wind was in their wings…" Again, these women were coming forth from the
Temple to give reproof. RaDaK interprets these two women as representing the tribes of
Judah and Benjamin, who went into exile in Babylon. Even though by the time of
Zechariah's prophecy many of the exiles had returned to Jerusalem with Zerubavel,
many others still remained in Babylon. "And they carried the EIPHAH-measure between
the earth and the heaven." This is not the same EIPHAH as in verse 8, which was closed
in under a heavy lead lid to make it sink into the earth (alluding to the lengthy exile of the
Ten Tribes). The EIPHAH of verse 9 borne by the women with wings like a stork's was
hanging in mid-air, indicating that the exile of Judah and Benjamin was only temporary
until they returned to their land (RaDaK). Nevertheless, as a result of their sins, many
still remained in exile in the land of Shin'ar = Babylon (Rashi; Metzudas David).

Chapter 6
THE VISION OF THE FOUR CHARIOTS

Following the previous section of this long prophecy evoking the exile of the Ten Tribes to
an unknown land and of Judah and Benjamin to Babylon as a result of their sins, the new
section (ch 6 vv 1-8) is a vision of four chariots representing the four major powers that
have oppressed and exiled Israel throughout history until today: Babylon, Medea-Persia,
Greece and Rome-Ishmael.

V 1: The chariots come forth from between two mountains of bronze, symbolizing the
great strength of these powers, since they are God's agents (Rashi).

V 2: The horses of the first chariot are red, signifying Babylon (cf. Daniel 2:38; gold is
red-colored). The horses of the second are black, signifying Medea-Persia, who
"blackened the faces of Israel in the days of Haman" (Rashi).

V 3: The horses of the third chariot are white, signifying the Greeks, who customarily
wore white garments. The horses of the fourth are B'RUDIM, "grizzled" or "blotched" (as
if with lumps of white hail, BARAD) and AMUTZIM, "ashen". These signify Ishmael and the
Romans, who are from the children of Edom and who rule together with Ishmael. The
"blotched" horses allude to Ishmael, for they contain whiteness and radiance since their
extraction is from Abraham and they hold to some of his instructions since they are
circumcised, while the "ashen" horses allude to the Romans, who burned the Temple and
turned it into ashes (Metzudas David). RaDaK, who makes similar identifications to those
of Metzudas David, adds that the white blotches signifying Ishmael/Rome indicate that
they consider themselves faithful to the Torah of Moses which is white as hail, yet they
mix it in with many other beliefs…

V 5: "These are the four winds of the heavens…" – "These are the guardian angels of the
powers that rule over the four directions of heaven" (Rashi). "They are going forth from
standing before the Lord of all the earth" – "They came before Him and He gave them
permission to rule" – (Rashi).

Verse 6 makes no mention of the chariot with red horses – Babylon – because their rule
had already come to an end by the time of Zechariah (Rashi). The black horses – Medea
and Persia – went northwards to conquer Babylon. The white horses – Greece – went
after them: Alexander of Macedon ( reece ) defeated Darius of Persia. The blotched
horses – Ishmael – went and entrenched themselves in the south, which was where
Ishmael dwelled (Metzudas David). In verse 7, the ashen horses – Rome – go forth to
walk to and fro throughout the earth, "for they rule over the earth with Ishmael"
(Metzudas David).

V 8: "See, those who go out to the land of the north have relieved My spirit in the land of
the north" – God is pleased that Medea-Persia have gone to the north, Babylon, and
exacted His vengeance from her (Rashi).

CROWNS FOR THE HIGH PRIEST AND KING-MASHIACH

Verse 9 begins a new Parshah Sethumah which runs until the end of this chapter (Zech.
6:15), concluding the lengthy prophecy that began in Zechariah 1:7 evoking the era that
was beginning with the building of the Second Temple and the powers that would rule the
earth thereafter until the end of days.

In this closing section of the prophecy Zechariah receives instructions from God to take
silver and gold from some of the wealthy returnees to Jerusalem from Babylon in order to
make two crowns. One of them is explicitly made to place on the head of Yehoshua son of
Yehotzadak, the High Priest, one of the two main leaders and builders of the Temple (v
11). Our text does not state explicitly for whom the second crown is intended, but this
may be inferred from verse 12, where Zechariah is instructed to tell Yehoshua about the
great destiny of Zerubavel, from whose progeny will come the Mashiach=Tzemach (cf.
Zechariah 3:8), who will build the future Temple. Zerubavel himself was never crowned
king, but already on the threshold of the Second Temple era, Zechariah was told to
prepare the crown for Mashiach, who will build the Third Temple , which will stand forever
(Metzudas David).

"…and the counsel of peace shall be between them both…" The Temple will be built when
the temporal and spiritual leaders – represented by the king and the priest – will see eye
to eye.

V 15: "And they that are far off shall come and build…" – "This refers to the future Temple,
for then the scattered exiles of Israel (=the Ten Tribes) and Judah will come from far off
and build God's Sanctuary, and then you will know that HaShem of Hosts sent me to
prophecy these things and that I have not spoken from my own heart… This will come
about in your days IF YOU LISTEN TO GOD'S VOICE TO GO IN HIS WAYS!!!" (Metzudas
David).

Chapter 7
A HALACHIC QUESTION

Vv 1-3: "And it was in the fourth year of King Darius…" With this begins a new prophecy
that runs until the end of Chapter 11 and consists of 21 sections or paragraphs of a few
verses each.

The previous prophecy (Zechariah 1:7-6:15) had come to Zechariah two years earlier in
Darius' second year, when the building of the Second Temple was just beginning. Now,
nearly two years later, with the building work still in progress, came a new prophecy
prompted by a halachic question that had been addressed to the priests of the new
Temple and the prophets (=Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi) by leading members of the
community of Jews that still remained in exile in Babylon. Since the destruction of the
First Temple seventy years earlier they had each year been marking its anniversary on
the ninth day of the fifth month (=Av) with the fast of Tisha b'Av, and they wanted to
know if they should still continue to do the same now that the Temple was being rebuilt.

"For they still did not believe that the building work would succeed because of the
adversaries who had succeeded in holding it up for many years, and even though they
had now heard that the building work was again in progress, they lacked faith and were
unwilling to come up out of exile from Babylon because they did not believe that the
Temple would be completed and be able to stand against those adversaries" (RaDaK).

Somewhat similarly, many Jews in the Diaspora today also wonder if they should make
Aliyah to Eretz Israel considering that the country is beset by enemies from outside and
within, and they question whether the steadily increasing ingathering of exiles that has
been witnessed over the last few centuries until today is really the fulfillment of the
ancient prophecies.

Just as such doubts are very discouraging to those who have settled in the national
homeland in order to rebuild and restore its glory, so the niggling halachic question about
whether it was still necessary to fast on Tisha B'Av was also very discouraging to the
brave pioneer returnees from Babylon to Jerusalem who were working hard to rebuild the
Temple against fierce opposition from the gentiles all around.

Vv 4ff: The prophecy is not even addressed directly to those in the community of Babylon
who had put the actual question (who, having remained in exile, were as if
excommunicated by God), but rather to "all the people of the Land" (v 5) – i.e. the
inhabitants of Jerusalem, whom it was necessary to encourage in order to rid them of any
doubts about the matter (Metzudas David).

Before coming to the specific answer to the question (which does not come until ch 8 vv
18-19), the prophet begins with a rebuke designed to show that the question essentially
missed the point. The people were asking what they should do on Tisha b'Av as if fasting
were a religious duty that somehow benefits God. The prophet tells them that the reason
why they had to fast was only in order to repent of their own sins, which had led to the
destruction of the First Temple and the exile: fasting in itself was no more pleasing to God
than their eating and drinking, which was only for their own pleasure and benefit.

[The prophet's answer also contains another implicit rebuke, because the people had only
asked whether they should continue fasting on Tisha b'Av, whereas Zechariah (v 5) also
adds the fast of seventh month (=Tishri), which was established to commemorate the
assassination of the Babylonian-appointed Jewish governor of Judea, Gedaliah son of
Ahikam, which spelled the end of the last vestige of Jewish independence there after the
destruction of the First Temple. Here Zechariah teaches that the death of a Tzaddik is as
disastrous as the destruction of the Temple – Metzudas David.]

The real point is not to carry out a ritual fast but rather to be aware of the sins that caused
the destruction of the Temple in order to correct them from now on: these were the sins
for which all the "first prophets" in the time of the First Temple had reproved the people
prior to the destruction. They were the very opposite of the pathway of true justice and
kindness to one another that Zechariah beautifully depicts in vv 9-10.

Vv 11-14: In order to succeed in building a new Temple that would endure, the people
had to take to heart that it was precisely because of the earlier generations' refusal to
listen to the voice of the prophets and follow the Torah sincerely that the destruction and
exile had come about. The people themselves were responsible for turning the "pleasant
land to desolation" (v 14).

Chapter 8
Vv 1ff: Beneath the surface of the halachic enquiry sent by the Diaspora community in
Babylon lay an implicit lack of faith in the Temple rebuilding project. The prophetic
response is a most emphatic rejection of any notion that God has somehow abandoned
Zion and Jerusalem: "I have been zealous for Zion with great zeal…"

V 3: "I have returned to Zion and I will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem …" Zechariah's
prophecies of the glory of Jerusalem were addressed to encourage those who were
rebuilding the Second Temple. Many aspects of these prophecies were indeed fulfilled for
lengthy periods during the Second Temple era, which saw great blessing in the Land (v
12) and many prominent converts to the Torah, such as Queen Helene (Yoma 37a etc. cf.
Zech. v 21f). Yet eventually the Second Temple was destroyed, leading to a possible
question as to whether Zechariah's prophecies also relate to the Future Temple. As if to
answer this, Metzudas David comments on verse 3 that God's promise to return to Zion
with the building of the Second Temple was conditional on the people's willingness to
heed the message of the prophets (cf. Zech. 6:15) and that if they were to do so, the
complete redemption would come about in their days. This implies that each generation
has the ability to bring about the complete redemption if they rise to the challenge and
repent sufficiently, but if not, the final redemption is deferred, though not forever, and
when it comes, all the promises in the prophets will be fulfilled.

V 4: "Thus says HaShem of Hosts…" This and similar phrases are repeated again and
again in the coming verses of consolation (6 7 9 11 14 & 17) in order to strengthen the
consolation, for no matter what, the promised goodness will come (RaDaK).

"Old men and women shall YET AGAIN dwell in the streets of Jerusalem …" – "the phrase
YET AGAIN ('OD) emphasizes that the future redemption will indeed come. The old men
and women will be in the streets because they will not be homebound on account of
weakness (Metzudas David).

V 5: "And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets."
Streets in many present-day neighborhoods of Jerusalem testify to the fulfillment of this
prophecy nearly 2,500 years after it was delivered.

V 6: "In time to come God will bring the evil inclination and slaughter it in front of the
righteous and the wicked. To the righteous it will seem like a tall mountain, while to the
wicked it will seem like a thread no wider than a hairsbreadth. The righteous will weep
saying: How were we able to conquer such a tall mountain? The wicked will weep asking:
Why couldn't we overcome this thread of no more than a hairsbreadth? And the Holy One
blessed be He will also be in wonderment with them, as it says, 'If it be marvelous in the
eyes of the remnant of this people in these days, it will also be marvelous in My eyes'"
(Succah 52a).

Vv 9-13: God encourages those building the Temple by pointing to the fact that from the
time of the commencement of the work the previous lack of blessing and peace had been
reversed, and in future prosperity will reign.

Vv 14-17: The prophecy emphasizes that the foundation for success lies in truth between
man and man in their mutual dealings: everything depends upon justice.

Vv 18-19: The prophecy could only specifically address the Babylonian community's
question about whether to continue fasting on Tisha b'Av and the other fast-days
commemorating the destruction of the Temple after having first corrected their various
misconceptions. The actual answer is a resounding affirmation that with the rebuilding of
the Temple, what were once fast-days will turn into festivals. The fast-days enumerated
in verse 19 are the four mandatory public fast-days in the Torah calendar besides Yom
Kippur. The "fast of the fourth (month)" is 17 th Tammuz commemorating the breach of
the walls of Jerusalem and other calamities. That of the fifth month is Tisha b'Av
commemorating the actual destruction of the Temple. The fast of the seventh month (3
Tishri) commemorates the assassination of Gedaliah son of Ahikam (II Kings 25:25),
while the fast of the tenth (10 Teves) commemorates Nebuchadnezzar's laying siege to
Jerusalem.

Vv 20-23 prophecy how after the future redemption of Israel many nations will come to
seek out HaShem in the Temple in Jerusalem.
"And ten men from all the languages of the nations shall take hold and seize the corner of
the garment of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you…" (v 23). Since there are
seventy nations, the verse teaches that seven hundred men will take hold of each corner,
and since there are four corners, each Jew will have 2,800 men hanging onto his Tzitzith!
(Talmud Shabbos 32b). This requires merit.
 Book of Malachi
Chapter 1
Malachi was the last prophet of Israel. His name is from the word MAL'ACH meaning
a "messenger" or "angel", and the YUD at the end means that he is "My" (i.e.
God's) special messenger. Malachi prophesied at the beginning of the Second
Temple period together with Haggai and Zechariah, but unlike in the case of their
prophecies, no date is included in that of Malachi. Nor are their any indications in
the text about his identity. The opinion of Rav Nachman in the Talmud is that
Malachi was a pseudonym for Mordechai (who according to this opinion was called
Malachi, "my agent," because he was "second to the king" Esther 10:3). However
the opinion of R. Yehoshua ben Korchah is that Malachi was Ezra (Megillah 15a).
Targum Yonasan (on Mal. 1:1) likewise identifies Malachi with Ezra, although other
sages considered that he was a separate prophet (Megillah ibid.). He was a
member of the Great Assembly and came up to Jerusalem from Babylon, where he
had learned Torah from Baruch ben Neriyah, the student of Jeremiah (Rambam,
Intro. to Mishneh Torah).

The identification of Malachi with Ezra seems particularly plausible since the major
focuses of Ezra's work included the separation of the returnees from Babylon from
their foreign wives and the re-establishment of the priesthood on firm foundations.
Both themes figure prominently in the prophecy of Malachi. Yet the fact that his
identity and date were perhaps intentionally left obscure gives his message a
timelessness that makes it as relevant today as ever, since his was the very last
prophetic message to Israel. With Malachi everything has come full circle, because
the first prophet who came to reprove Israel after the death of Joshua was also
anonymous and was simply called God's MAL'ACH or "messenger" (Judges 2:1)
although the sages identified him with Pinchas (Seder Olam 19; Targum Yonasan,
Rashi and RaDaK on Judges 2:1). Indeed Ezra was a direct descendant of Pinchas
(Ezra 7:5).

Malachi 1:1-2:7 was chosen by the sages as Haftara to Parshas Toldos (Genesis
25:19-28:9) which tells of the birth of Jacob and Esau and how Jacob took the
birthright and the blessings from his brother. In Malachi's prophecy, God reproves
the descendants of Jacob for failing to live up to their mission.

V 2-5: "I have loved you, says HaShem, yet you say, How have You loved us…?"
The prophet introduces his reproof against Israel with a reminder that God has
shown unique love for the descendants of Jacob, giving them preference over those
of Esau-Edom, to whom God will never grant lasting ascendancy, because no
matter how they may build and rebuild, He will always pull them down. It is a fact
that Mt Seir, the region south east of the Dead Sea which God gave as an
inheritance to Esau (Deut. 2:5), is today largely barren and unpopulated.

V 6: "A son honors his father and a servant his master; if then I am a father, where
is My honor, and if I am a master, where is the reverence due to Me…?" Having in
the previous verses demonstrated God's fatherly love for the descendants of Jacob,
the prophet now chastises them for failing to respond by showing Him the proper
respect and reverence.

"…says HaShem of hosts to you, the priests, who despise My Name…" Ostensibly
this prophecy is addressed to the COHANIM priests, who officiated in all the
sacrificial rituals in the Temple. Yet Malachi's reproof also applies to the entire
people, since God's call to Israel was that "you shall be to Me a kingdom of
COHANIM" (Exodus 19:6).

Vv 7-9: While the prophet's reproof is ostensibly directed against the disparaging
way in which the priests conducted the Temple services, offering blemished animals
on the altar, we should also take it as a criticism of the way we often offer our
prayers today in the Synagogue, speaking casually and absent-mindedly to God in
a way in which we would never dare address a high government official whose
patronage we require. If this is the way we pray, what kind of an answer can we
expect?

V 10: The priests considered they deserved a reward for their smallest acts of
service in the Temple – opening the doors, kindling the altar fire… Don't many also
feel they deserve some kind of "reward" for their prayers and acts of devotion, as if
they are doing God a great favor with them?

Vv 11-14: "For from the rising of the sun to the place of its going down, My Name
is great among the nations, and in every place offerings are burned and presented
to My Name…" Throughout the world, from east to west, even the idolaters
acknowledge that there is one supreme God over all the powers they worship. This
makes our disparaging and blemish-ridden service of God an even greater
desecration of His Name since God has revealed His unity, transcendence and
immanence to us more than to any other nation.

The sages also darshened verse 11, "in every place offerings are burned and
presented to My Name", as referring to those Torah scholars who engage in the
study of Temple laws even in exile: they elicit God's favor just as if they had
actually offered sacrifices (Menachos 110a, Rashi on Mal. 1:11).

Chapter 2
Vv 1-3: Following on directly from the reproof in the previous chapter, Malachi now
warns the priests of the curses that will come upon them if they fail to heed his call
to serve God with the proper respect.

V 3: "…I will spread dung upon your faces…" – "This is addressed to those who
abandon the Torah and celebrate every day as a festival… Three days after a
person has been laid in the grave his belly bursts and spews out its contents on his
face and says, Take what you put inside me" (Shabbos 151b).

Vv 4-7 depict the behavior and attitudes that God asks from the priests by evoking
the personality of the founding fathers of the priesthood, Aaron and Pinchas, with
whom God also established His covenant (Numbers 25:12). "The law of truth was in
his mouth and iniquity was not found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and
righteousness and turned many away from sin" (v 6). "Rabba bar bar Hannah said
in the name of Rabbi Yohanan: What does it mean when it says, 'For the priest's
lips should guard knowledge and they should seek the law at his mouth, for he is
the messenger (MAL'ACH) of HaShem of Hosts'? It means that if the teacher is like
an angel of HaShem of hosts, they should seek Torah from his mouth, and if not,
they should not seek Torah from his mouth" (Hagigah 15b). The clear message that
cries out from this verse is that it is not sufficient for the Torah scholar to be sharp-
minded and know a lot. He must LIVE the Torah he teaches!

Vv 8-9: If Torah teachers stray from practicing the path they are teaching, they will
come to be despised.

V 10: "Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Why do we deal
treacherously each man against his brother by profaning the covenant of our
fathers?" (v 10). Taken in its simple, obvious sense, this verse has a message for
all of us. The commentators also interpret this verse as an introduction to the
second main theme of Malachi's reproof – his criticism of those who had taken
foreign wives, particularly those who already had Israelite wives whom they
subsequently treated as less than second best. The prophet points out that all the
Israelite souls are hewn from one source and are thus brothers, making their sin of
taking foreign wives and betraying their Israelite wives even worse (Metzudas
David, RaDaK). While all the commentators take the reproofs against intermarriage
and marital faithlessness at face value, they can also be seen as reproofs against
the people for betraying their own priceless national heritage by dallying with
foreign cultures and traditions.

Vv 11-12: The penalty for taking foreign wives is that the issue of such marriages
will be cut off from the Torah tradition and from the priesthood.

V 13 deals with a sin that is considered even more serious than that of those who
were unmarried and took foreign wives. This is the sin of those who did so when
they already had an Israelite wife, thereby betraying her. "Because the Israelite
women became blackened with hunger during the exile and became disgusting in
the eyes of their husbands, who would leave them at home like widows in their
husbands' lifetimes while treating the foreign woman as the mistress. The Israelite
women would come before God's altar crying, asking how they had sinned and
what crime their husbands had found in them…" (Rashi). This verse is the source of
the tradition that when a husband divorces the wife of his youth, the very altar
sheds tears (Sanhedrin 22a).

V 15: "And did not he who was one do this even though he had the residue of the
spirit? And what did the one seek? The seed of God!" The commentators interpret
this somewhat obscure verse as an interchange between the people and the
prophet. The people challenge the prophet's warning against taking a second,
foreign wife by citing the case of Abraham, who was "one", i.e. unique and alone in
his time (cf. Ezekiel 33:24), who took Hagar (who was from Egypt) when already
married to Sarah. The prophet answers that Abraham only did so because Sarah
was childless and he sought a successor who would teach the world about God (cf.
Targum Yonasan, Metzudas David on v 15).

V 16: If a person hates his wife he should either come clean with her and divorce
her, or else remove the hatred from his heart (cf. Rashi ad loc. & Gittin 90b).

V 17 begins a new Parshah Pesuhah which continues without a break until Malachi
3:12. The conventional chapter break after the present verse is artificial and
disrupts the continuity of the new section (cf. Metzudas David on Malachi 3:1). With
this verse the prophet introduces a new element in his reproof – a criticism of the
people who question God's justice when they see the success of the wicked in this
world. Either they say that everyone who does evil must be good in God's eyes
since He apparently shows them favor, or else they think there is no sense at all in
the way the world is run and ask, Where is the God of justice? Such thoughts have
led many to abandon their faith, and we are therefore in great need of Malachi's
answer in the closing sections of his prophecy in the coming chapter.

* * * The passage in Malachi 1:1-14 and 2:1-7 is read as the Haftara of Parshas
Toldos Genesis 25:19-28:9 * * *

Chapter 3
The closing chapter of Malachi gives the prophet's answer to the doubts and
questions with which the people "wearied" God as expressed in the last verse of the
previous chapter, Malachi 2:17: considering the apparent success of the wicked,
either God approves of them or else, where is the God of Justice? (As indicated in
the commentary on the previous chapter, the conventional chapter break after
Malachi 2:17 violates the continuity of the new Hebrew parshah which begins with
that verse and continues until Malachi 3:12.)

The book of Job could be described as an "in-depth" analysis of all the issues bound
up with the above questions, which are also addressed in the other "wisdom"
literature (Psalms and Proverbs) and in certain other biblical passages. But here in
Malachi it is the prophetic answer to these questions that is given: in essence, this
is that the apparent success of the wicked in this world is only temporary until
God's terrible Day of Judgment, when they will be destroyed, while the righteous
will be vindicated and rewarded.

Chapter 3 verse 1: "Behold I shall send My messenger (MALACHI) and he shall

prepare the way before Me…" Rashi (ad loc.) states that God's messenger comes to
destroy the wicked, while the "Master Whom you seek" is the God of Justice, and
the "messenger (or angel) of the Covenant" comes to avenge the Covenant.
Metzudas David (ad loc.) states that the "Master whom you seek" is King Mashiah,
while the "angel of the Covenant" is Elijah the prophet, who, like Pinchas (Numbers
25:11), was zealous for God's Covenant (I Kings 19:10 etc.) when the kingdom of
Ephraim banned the practice of circumcision.

Vv 2-3: "For he will be like a refiner's fire and the washer-man's soap. And he shall
sit as a refiner and purifier of silver…" He who comes to prepare the way for the
God of Justice separates out all impurity and removes the stain of the evil doers
from the world.

"And he will purify the children of Levi…" The ultimate restoration of the Temple as
a place of true service of God depends on the purification of the Levites and priests
who will minister in it.

V 4: "Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant to HaShem as in

the days of old and as in former years." Sifri darshens: "as in the days of old" – as
in the days of Moses, "and as in former years" – as in the days of Solomon; Rabbi
Judah the Prince says, "as in the days of old" – as in the days of Noah, "and as in
former years" – as in the days of Hevel (=Abel), when there was no idolatry in the
world. In the end everything will return to its pristine purity.

The passage from verse 4 until the end of Malachi, the central theme of which is
the future Judgment and Redemption, is read as the Haftara on Shabbos HaGadol,
the Shabbos immediately preceding the Pesach festival.

V 5: "And I will come near to you to judgment, and I will be a swift witness against
the sorcerers and against the adulterers and against false swearers and against
those who oppress the hireling in his wages…" – "When Rabbi Yohanan would come
to this verse he would weep, saying, Is there any remedy for a servant whose
master is coming near to judge him and is quick to bear witness against him?
Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai said, Woe to us because the verse equates light sins
(holding back a hireling's wages) with the most serious (adultery and sorcery)"
(Hagigah 5a; Rashi ad loc.).

"For I, HaShem have not changed…" – "Even though I am patient and slow to anger,
My original attitude has not changed so as to love evil and hate good" (Rashi).
"…and you, children of Jacob, have not been consumed" – "Even though you die in
wickedness and I have not exacted punishment from the wicked during their
lifetimes, you have not been consumed, and I have left the souls for Me to exact
punishment from them in Gehennom" (Rashi).

Vv 7ff: God calls for the people to repent in order for Him to return to them. The
specific sin that is singled out as requiring the people's repentance is the entire
nation's failure to pay their MA'ASER and TERUMAH tithes to the Levites and Priests
respectively, whose task is to minister in God's Temple and teach His Torah. The
people's failure to pay these tithes is the cause of the curse that is causing
agricultural and economic depression, whereas God promises that if they will pay
them, "I shall pour you out a blessing until there will not be sufficient room to
receive it" (v 11) until Israel will be a "land of delight" (v 12). Providing proper
support for the nation's spiritual ministers and teachers is the very key to national
prosperity.

Vv 13-15: "Your words have been strong against Me…" The people's lack of faith in
God's justice, as expressed in Malachi 2:17, is now elaborated. Just as today, many
people saw the apparent success of those who acted with brazen impunity and
inferred that it was pointless to serve God and observe the Torah code. "They have
even tested God and been saved!"

V 16: Without responding directly to this lack of faith, God points to those who are
God-fearing and who speak differently in quiet conversation with each other,
agreeing not to be drawn after the ways of the wicked even though God does not
hasten to punish them.

"And God listened and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before
Him…" Not a single good thought, word or deed is ever forgotten. Everything is
recorded in God's book, and in the end the righteous will be rewarded and the
wicked punished. These quiet, thoughtful private conversations at the "grass roots"
level of the nation among the God-fearing are the very key to redemption.

V 18: "Then you shall return and see the difference between the righteous and the
villain, between the one who serves God and the one that did not serve Him." One
cannot make inferences about God's justice from the apparent lack of justice in this
world: only on the Day of Judgment will His true justice be fully revealed.

V 19 opens a new PARSHAH PESUHAH, and in some Biblical editions this makes up
a separate chapter, Malachi 4:1-6. The prophetic reply to people's doubts about
God's justice is that they will be answered decisively on the terrible Day of
Judgment, when those who were flagrantly evil will be consumed.

Vv 20ff: "But to you who fear My name a sun of righteousness shall shine with
healing in its wings…" The same day that burns like an oven for the wicked will
prove to be a day of healing for the righteous – they will be saved from all evil and
will rejoice wholeheartedly (RaDaK).
V 22: "Remember the Torah of Moses My servant…" In his closing words, the last
prophet of Israel calls on the people to remember and follow God's law, which is
called by the name of Moses because he sacrificed himself totally for the sake of
the Torah. The sin of the golden calf and subsequent breaking of the Tablets of the
Law, which took place in the Hebrew month of Tammuz, brought forgetfulness into
the world. The initial Hebrew letters of the prophet's plea to remember Moses'
Torah – ZICHRU TORAS MOSHE – are the same letters that make up the name of
the month of TaMuZ!

V 23: "Behold I shall send you Elijah the prophet…" – "Rabbi Yehoshua said, I have
a tradition from Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai going back to Mt Sinai that Elijah will
not come to defile or purify, reject or draw near, but only to reject those who
forcibly pushed their way forward and to bring close those who were forcibly
pushed away… The sages said, he comes not to reject or draw near but to make
peace among them, as it says, And he will turn the heart of the fathers to the
children and the heart of the children to their fathers" (Eduyos 8:7). Speedily in our
days! Amen!

* * * Malachi 3:4-24 is read as the Haftara on Shabbos HaGadol, the Shabbos

immediately preceding the festival of Pesach * * *
 Book of Proverbs
Chapter 1
V 1: "Proverbs of Solomon son of David king of Israel." Unlike the prophets of Israel,
King Solomon needs no biographical introduction since the outer details of his life
and times are described in full in I Kings chs 1-11 and II Chronicles chs 1-9. It is
the inner soul and the unfathomable wisdom of Solomon that are revealed in his
three works contained in the Kesuvim or holy "writings" – Song of Songs, which he
wrote in his youth, Proverbs (MISHLEY), which dates from his maturity, and
Koheles (Ecclesiastes), which he composed in his old age. The initial MEM of the
opening word of MISHLEY is written large in the Hebrew text to indicate that
Solomon fasted 40 days in order to attain Torah wisdom like Moses, who fasted 40
days and nights (Yalkut Shimoni).

The English word "proverb" is an attempt to render the Hebrew word MASHAL. The
word "proverb" suggests a succinct, pithy and memorable saying that teaches deep
wisdom. Much of MISHLEY is indeed made up of such sayings: Proverbs chs 1-9 are
a lengthy prologue to the work, while almost all of the rest of the book from
chapter 10 onwards is made up of such "proverbs" in the usual English sense of the
word. However the Hebrew word MASHAL does not only have the connotation of a
"proverb" in this sense but also means a metaphor, graphic likeness or image that
facilitates deeper understanding and insight into the NIMSHAL, some subject or
concept that is elucidated through being compared to or represented by the
metaphoric image. "All his words are similes and metaphors: for example, he
compares the Torah to a good wife while idolatry is compared to a harlot" (Rashi on
Proverbs 1:1).

V 2: "To know wisdom (HOCHMAH) and instruction (MUSSAR) and to apprehend

words of understanding (BINAH)". The Spanish rabbi and moralist Rabbenu Yonah
of Gerondi (d. 1263), author of the moralistic classic Shaarey Teshuvah, "The Gates
of Repentance", explains in his commentary on Proverbs that HOCHMAH, "wisdom",
is the defining trait of the righteous Tzaddikim who follow the way of truth, and it is
this trait that will be explained in this work. MUSSAR, "instruction" or "reproof" (lit.
chastisement) comes to castigate the wicked and explain the loss and damage they
cause. BINAH, "understanding", comes when one attains an understanding of the
ultimate meaning or intention of something that is said and the thought that lies
behind it.

V 3: "To RECEIVE the instruction of wisdom…" It is not enough to KNOW wisdom.

The point is to receive, accept and APPLY the lesson in practice (Rabbenu Yonah).
"…justice (TZEDEK) and judgment (MISHPAT) and equity (MEISHARIM)" – "TZEDEK
means going beyond the letter of the law; MISHPAT means judging truthfully
following the line of justice; MEISHARIM means knowing how to act rightly and
intelligently in those areas where there is no clear legal decision or obligation"
(Rabbenu Yonah).

Vv 4-5: Application to the pursuit of wisdom will benefit even the simple and foolish,
while the wise will gain ever greater wisdom.
V 6: "To understand MASHAL and MELITZAH…" – "When studying each verse, one
must pay attention to understanding the two pathways of the MASHAL (here this
means the object being elucidated through the metaphor), and the MELITZAH
(=the rhetorical phraseology or stylistic device through which it is expressed). It is
necessary to understand what it is that is being compared to the metaphorical
image used, but one must also not disregard the stylistic device or metaphor itself
– this too must be understood. Thus when it says, 'to save you from the strange
and alien woman' (Prov. 2:16) this is a metaphor for the idolatrous vanities of
Egypt . One must also understand why he used the metaphor of a harlot…" (Rashi).

V 7: "The fear of HaShem is the beginning of knowledge…" – "Until this point,

Solomon explained his purpose in writing this work. Now the book proper begins"
(Rashi). The very foundation of all wisdom and knowledge is to teach oneself to
fear God.

V 8: "Hear, my son, the instruction of your father…" Rabbenu Yonah explains that
success in the service of God is founded on four prerequisites, which are explained
one by one in the coming passages. (1) One must chose good guides and teachers
and be willing to listen to their reproof (vv 8-9). (2) One must avoid all fellowship
with evil people (vv 10-19). (3) One must understand that God requites evil and
rewards righteousness and set oneself to fear God (vv 20-33). (4) One must toil
and struggle to attain wisdom and avoid all extraneous, empty, alien "wisdom"
(Prov. 2:1-22).

Vv 10-19 warn against joining those who seek to make great gains at others'
expense because they do not understand that they are walking straight into a trap
that will destroy them.

V 20: "Wisdom cries outside, she utters her voice in the streets…" Wisdom calls to
us from everywhere, seeking to draw us near. We must understand that it would be
a fatal error to reject the call of wisdom, for those who do "will eat the fruits of
their way and be filled with their own devices" (v 31). This is the sage's answer to
the very same doubts that the prophet Malachi (ch 3) addressed when he said that
although God is long-suffering, He will eventually exact retribution from the wicked,
showing that He is the God of true Justice.

CHAPTER 2

The moralistic philosophy of Proverbs is rooted in a worldview that sees man as a

free agent living in a dangerously deceptive world from which God has purposely
obscured the truth in order to make it necessary for man to strive to attain it
through toil and effort, thereby earning his reward. Caught in a confusing maze in
which the most likely-looking paths turn out to be blind alleys and worse, man
desperately needs true guidance, which is precisely what Proverbs offers.

In verses 1-4 the voice of wisdom calls to the young, inexperienced "son",
appealing to him to heed the message. He must dedicate all his faculties to the
pursuit of the right and left columns of the kabbalistic tree – HOCHMAH-wisdom (v
2) and BINAH-understanding (vv 2-3) – in order to attain the center-column
attribute of DA'ATH ELOKIM, the "knowledge" of God (v 5). This is more than
merely cognitive knowledge: DA'ATH has the connotation of deep attachment. It is
necessary to seek out and cultivate these attributes with the same eagerness that
people seek out wealth and treasure (v 4).

Verses 5ff set forth the benefits conferred by Godly wisdom. "For HaShem gives
wisdom; from His mouth is knowledge and understanding" (v 5). The wisdom that
King Solomon urges us to seek is great because it has been given from the mouth
of God Himself, and this is why we should strive to acquire it (Rashi on v 5). This
wisdom confers protection (v 8) and unlocks the secrets of God's justice (v 9).

V 12: Only the wisdom of the Torah can save us the evil path of those who skillfully
use language to turn everything around so that truth looks like falsehood and vice
versa: "these are the EPIKOURSIM who deceive Israel into abandoning their faith
and turn the Torah into something evil" (Rashi ad loc.)

V 16: Likewise the Torah saves from the "strange woman, the alien woman who
makes her words smooth and slippery". This "strange woman" is the personification
of heresy and atheism. "It would make no sense to say that he is merely talking
about a literal adulteress, for what kind of praise of the Torah would it be to say
here that it saves you from the strange woman but not from any other sin? This
must refer to heresy, which causes people to cast off the yoke of all the
commandments" (Rashi).

V 19: "None who go into her return again, they will not attain the paths of life".
Rabbi Nachman explains that it is in the intrinsic nature of the conundrums of
heretical philosophy that they can never be resolved, and those who try to unravel
them simply get sucked in and sink without ever being able to reach any conclusion
(Likutey Moharan Part 1 Torahs 62 & 64).

Vv 20-22: The wisdom of the Torah brings a person to keep to the ways of the
righteous, who "will dwell in the LAND" (v 22) – "the world to come" (Rashi) –
when the wicked are cut off and cast into hell.

Chapter 3
Until this point, King Solomon has explained the four preconditions for true service
of God. As discussed in the commentary on Chapter 1, these are (1) choosing good
teachers; (2) keeping one's distance from wicked people; (3) attaining fear of God
through being aware of the reward for righteousness and the punishment for sin;
(4) pursuing true wisdom while eschewing heresy as set forth in Chapter 2.

Now, in Chapter 3, King Solomon explains what serving God means and the great
blessings of long life and peace that it brings.

V 3: "Kindness and truth will not abandon you…" – "He begins by emphasizing the
qualities of kindness and truth…Kindness means setting oneself to make every
effort to show kindness to people and to benefit them with one's possessions and
through physical effort, to make them feel good and to seek out peace, goodness
and honor for them while being careful not to harm them whether by deeds or
words. With this trait one banishes cruelty, selfishness, hatred, jealousy and pride…
Truth means not calling evil good or good evil, not using flattery to ingratiate
oneself with people, giving honor to the righteous while despising the wicked and
judging people fairly without favoritism…" (Rabbenu Yona).

Vv 5ff: Perfect trust in God means that one does not put one's trust in man nor in
one's own powers and intelligence. "In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will
direct your paths" (v 6): this famous verse teaches that the essence of trust in God
is to seek Him out in all the different aspects and details of our lives: it is through
this interactive "partnership" with God that all our paths become blessed.
Vv 8-10: Service of God not only brings spiritual benefits but actual physical health
and material blessings.

Chapter 4
As mentioned in the commentary on Proverbs ch 1, the first nine chapters of the
book are a kind of extended prologue consisting of a series of discourses that set
forth the wise path in life and exhort us to follow it. Then from chapter 10 onwards,
most of the rest of the book is a weave of "proverbs" in the usual English sense of
the word – one-sentence sayings of wisdom each of which is a perfectly chiseled
epigram. These proverbs are collected one after the other in verse after verse,
chapter after chapter, with in many cases no discernible thematic relationship
between them.

However, in these early chapters of the book, each discourse is a continuous whole
in the sense that one verse leads into the next developing the overall theme of the
discourse, while a logical thread can be discerned in the sequence of the discourses.
These vary in length from a few verses to a whole chapter. They return again and
again to the same underlying themes, exploring them in different ways and with
different images. This is characteristic of MUSSAR, moralistic teaching, since its
purpose is to drum home the message and to reinforce it with constantly renewed
encouragement and exhortation.

The worldview and spiritual psychology of Proverbs are elaborated and explained at
length in Kabbalistic literature as well as in the literature of Rabbinic MUSSAR and
HASHKAFAH ("outlook", "worldview"). Proverbs has a unique style of its own, with a
distinctive vocabulary and a system of cantillation (trope) that is different from all
of the other books of the Bible except Psalms and Job. Even so, the fundamental
structure of each verse is the same as it is throughout the Bible. Every verse
divides into two parts, with a rest or pause in the middle (ETHNAHTAH). The second
part of the verse is normally an expansion or elaboration of the first, or sometimes
its antithesis. This fundamental verse structure is an expression of the underlying
thought pattern of the Torah, which proceeds from Chochmah (the start, initial
statement or "thesis") to Binah (the explanation and elaboration, or sometimes the
"antithesis"). Not only does every phrase and verse have its simple meaning, which
Biblical translations strive to render; the Hebrew letters and words also carry
multiple levels of overtones and allusions as well as mathematical equations and
divine names and attributes that no translation can convey.

Chapter 4 vv 1-19 are a discourse on the theme of giving honor and devotion to the
pursuit of Torah wisdom and keeping away from the path of the wicked which is its
negation. This discourse is the third and last in the series that began in the
previous chapter devoted to the overall theme of practical service of God, starting
with faith and trust (Proverbs 3:1-20) and going on to practical fulfillment of the
commandments of the Torah (3:21-35). These three discourses on the service of
God came after earlier discourses explaining the four prerequisites for serving God:
choosing good teachers (1:8-9), avoiding evil influences (1:10-18), being aware of
the reward for righteousness and the punishment for evil (1:20-33) and pursuing
wisdom (2:1-22). There the pursuit of wisdom was presented as the prerequisite
for serving God, while in the discourse in our present text it is itself an act of
service.
Ch 4 v 1: "Hear, you children, the instruction of a father…" The Torah commands
each father to teach the Torah diligently to his children (Deut. 5:7) because the
entire transmission of the Torah from generation to generation depends on this.
Here, we are all the children, while King Solomon acts as the mouthpiece for the
loving Father of all of us -- the Holy One, blessed be He (Rashi on Proverbs 4:1).
"The prophet prophesies and speaks as the emissary of the Holy One blessed be He,
and he acts as His mouth" (Rashi on v 2).

V 3: "For I was my father's son, tender and the only one in the sight of my
mother…" – "If you say that Solomon hated people because he warns against
robbery and sexual immorality, things which people crave, he therefore says, 'I was
my father's son, tender and the only one…' to show that his father loved him
greatly yet still gave him this reproof, emphasizing that he is warning all of us only
out of love" (Rashi on vv 3-4).

V 5-7: This loving father now urges us to acquire wisdom and understanding, which
are the only truly enduring acquisitions we can gain from this world. Rashi (on v 7)
explains that the acquisition of CHOCHMAH-wisdom is the first stage: one must
acquire, accept and internalize information from one's teacher. The next stage is
then to apply one's own intelligence, BINAH-understanding, in considering and
analyzing this information in order to "understand one thing from another".

Vv 10ff encourage us to be mindful of the great benefits that accrue from gaining
wisdom, including length of days. Wisdom is not a one-time acquisition: gaining
wisdom is a pathway (vv 11-12). First and foremost it requires persistence and
constant application (v 13). One must therefore be constantly on guard against
getting sidetracked onto the pathway of the wicked, which is antithetical to that of
wisdom (vv 14-19).

Verses 20-27 make up a new section on the theme of ZEHIRUS, "caution". In the
words of Rabbenu Yonah: "Our sages said that study brings a person to practice
(Kiddushin 40b) and practice brings one to caution. Therefore Solomon started with
a section speaking about the pursuit of wisdom, study (2:1-22) and afterwards
arranged three sections dealing with practice: (1) faith and trust in God in all areas
of life, Proverbs 3:1-20; (2) keeping the commandments of the Torah, 3:21-35; (3)
honoring the Torah and those who teach it while distancing oneself from evil
companions, 4:1-19. Now he turns to the subject of caution, arranging it in four
sections. (1) Caution in keeping the commandments of the Torah, Proverbs 4:20-
27; (2) Caution in preserving one's fear of heaven intact, 5:1-23; (3) Caution in
avoiding monetary loss, 6:1-4; (4) avoiding the opposite of caution, which is
laziness and lethargy, 6:5-11. His way in this book is to first teach about every
desirable trait and every pathway to reverence, and then afterwards to speak
disparagingly about the opposite of the trait in question in order to keep you well
away from it."

The present section (4:20-27) exhorts us to caution in keeping the positive

commandments of the Torah and avoiding infringement of its prohibitions. We are
urged to devote all of our faculties to this mission: these verses mention the ears,
the eyes, the heart, the mouth, the lips and the legs. Each limb of the body must
be directed to the pursuit of the commandments.

Chapter 5
This chapter is a discourse in two parts (vv 1-6 & 7-23) on avoiding the "strange
woman", who symbolizes the evil inclination in all aspects and in particular heretical
beliefs, which provide a rationalization for everything that is contrary to the Torah.
This "strange woman" is the very opposite of the archetypal God-fearing "Woman of
Valor" whose traits are delineated in the closing chapter of Proverbs (ch 31).

The "strange woman" is seductive and alluring, holding out the promise of every
kind of pleasure and satisfaction through the use of slick, tempting language. "But
her end is bitter as wormwood…" (v 4). "Her feet go down to death…" (v 5). This
verse teaches that those who fall victim to her seductions will loose the life of this
world and the next. The verse is also adduced in the kabbalistic writings as alluding
to the way in which lower levels ("feet") of the aspect of the attribute of MALCHUS
are clothed in and sustain the realm of evil (SITRA ACHRA=death).

Vv 7ff explain the terrible consequences of falling prey to the allure of the "strange
woman". Those who do so give all their strength to "others" (v 9) – these are the
false gods to whom people devote their lives, while the "cruel one" to whom they
give over their precious years is the angel appointed over hell, who punishes them
for ever after for having spent their time in vain. All their energy is sapped by
strangers and aliens, and all they are left with in the end is the terrible pain of
regret and contrition (v 11), asking why they did not listen to their true guides and
teachers (vv 12-14).

V 15: "Drink waters out of your own cistern…" Rather than turning aside to the
"strange woman", one must remain faithful to the source of life that God has given
as one's share – the Torah, which is "the wife of your youth" (v 18 see Rashi). This
is the true antidote to the seductive heresies and temptations that surround us. The
Torah is "a loving hind and a pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy you at all times
and be ravished always with her love" (v 19).

Vv 11ff: Even when one trusts in God, not everything goes well all the time! When
seeking to attain wisdom and serve God, one must understand that suffering is an
inevitable part of the pathway, "for HaShem reproves those that He loves…" (v 12).

V 12: "For its merchandise is better than merchandise of silver…" – "In every kind
of exchange that people make in business, one person takes this and the other
person takes that. But when a person says to his friend, You teach me your chapter
and I will teach you my chapter, each one of them ends up with both chapters in
hand!" (Rashi).

Vv 17-18: These very beautiful evocations of the great benefits of Torah wisdom
are recited in the synagogue after the public Torah reading as the scroll is returned
to the ark.

Vv 19-20: "HaShem founded the earth with Wisdom and established the heavens
with Understanding; with His Knowledge the depths were split asunder and the
clouds drop down the dew." These verses allude to deep kabbalistic secrets of the
creation, showing that the wisdom we are exhorted to seek out is the inner wisdom
of the Creator Himself.

Vv 21ff: "My son, let them not depart from your eyes…" The pursuit of this wisdom
requires unremitting application, but this is worth it because of the perfect security
and divine protection which it brings.

Vv 27ff set forth the principles with which one who would serve God must govern
his conduct towards his fellows. "For the crooked person is an abomination to God,
but His secret is with the righteous" (v 32). God deals with all MIDDAH KE-NEGED
MIDDAH, "measure for measure".
 Chapter 6
Our chapter is made up of three sections each warning against a specific type of
flaw or evil, followed by another section listing some of the worst offenses in God's
eyes and then a discourse on the Torah as the general remedy against the "woman
of evil" who tempts man to sin.

Vv 1-5: "My son, if you are guarantor for your friend, if you have struck your palms
for the stranger…" On the simple level this section gives advice to one who has
already borrowed from someone or entered into some financial obligation, telling
him not to rest until he has paid what he owes. On the allegorical level, Rashi
explains that at Sinai every Israelite became a "guarantor" for the "friend" =God,
and is therefore under an obligation to keep the Torah. After receiving the Torah it
is a most serious offence to have "struck your palms" (=shaken hands) with "the
stranger", i.e. to backslide and turn from His ways and attach oneself to the
heretics to go in their ways.

The advice is to humble oneself before Him like a doorstep (that everyone treads
on) and to send many "friends" (advocates) to pray to and placate Him on our
behalf. Just as one puts oneself in a dangerous position on the material plane if one
fails to repay one's debts (in accordance with the MASHAL, simile/metaphor of
having borrowed), so one stands to loose greatly on the spiritual plane if one does
not repent of one's sins after having been chosen by God to receive the Torah (this
is the NIMSHAL, the subject of the comparison).

In this case the evil has already been done – the situation is BEDI-AVAD, "after the
event" – but it is still possible to repair. One must do so swiftly. As to not shaking
hands with and entering into a commitment to "the stranger", the Chassidim say
that there is only one promise that it is permitted and indeed imperative to break,
and that is a promise one has made to one's evil inclination to do something wrong!

Vv 6-11: "Go to the ant, you sluggard…" Here King Solomon develops the counsel
of alacrity with which the previous section ended, preaching against another evil –
that of laziness, inertia and apathy, which can cause a person to loose all the great
riches he stands to gain from serving God in this world. The Midrash brings a
beautiful story about how King Solomon went traveling with his entourage on a
flying carpet and, on landing, squashed many ants. Bending down to listen to the
queen of the ants' complaint, the king was deeply chastised on hearing that
everything in creation has something teach us, including even the humble little ant.

Vv 12-15: The concept of the "base" man – ADAM BELIYA'AL – is just about the
worst in the moralistic vocabulary of the Torah (Deut. 13:14, I Samuel 25:25, I
Kings 21:13 etc.). Here it is applied to the person who speaks evil, LASHON HARA,
about others, both with his mouth and through the hints he makes with his eyes,
feet, fingers, etc., thereby sowing discord among people. Rashi (on vv 13-14)
explains that this section is also speaking about the heretics who seduce people
into idolatry, thereby sowing discord between man and his Creator.

Vv 16-19: "There are six things which HaShem hates and seven which are an
abomination to Him…" Rashi (on v 16) explains that the "seven" is the seventh
abomination. The written text (KSIV) says TO'AVOS in the plural but the prescribed
reading (KRI) is TO'AVAS, which is the singular possessive, the "abomination of His
soul". This implies that the seventh is as bad as all the first six together. The six
are (1) high eyes – pride; (2) a tongue of falsehood; (3) hands that shed innocent
blood; (4) a heart that dwells on thoughts of criminality; (5) legs that run to do
evil; (6) a false witness. The seventh, which is as bad as all of them put together, is
one who sows discord between brothers through evil speech.

Vv 20-26: These verses teach that steadfast devotion to Torah and its
commandments is the general remedy against all evil, and particularly against the
"woman of evil", who is the worst enemy of the soul. Rashi (on v 24) emphasizes
that this can only be interpreted allegorically as referring to heresy and idolatry.

Among these beautiful verses containing King Solomon's praises of the Torah are
some that are very famous and widely quoted in Torah literature. V 22 is darshened
in Pirkey Avot 6:10 as alluding to how the Torah protects one even in the grave and
when one wakes up in the world to come.

Vv 27ff: "Can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned?" The sin
of going with the wife of a friend (v 28) is taken literally by Rashi and also as an
allusion to going after idolatry, which is set apart for heathens and not for you (see
Rashi ad loc.). Adultery/idolatry is much worse than stealing, which a person
resorts to because he is hungry. Even so, he has to pay back heavily: how much
more will the idolater/adulterer have to pay a heavy penalty for a sin which there
was no need to commit.

Chapter 7
Again King Solomon urges us to bind and attach ourselves to the Torah, and to
make Torah CHOCHMAH-wisdom and BINAH-understanding integral parts of our
lives, as familiar to us as our closest relatives and dearest friends. The Torah is the
only true protection against the allurements of the "strange woman", which are the
main subject of this chapter.

"For at the window of my house I looked out through my lattice…" The wise
Solomon looks out at the world and tells us what he sees:

"And I saw among the simple ones (PETHA'IM), I discerned among the youths, a
young man (NA'AR) void of understanding…" (v 7). It is mainly to the PETHI, "naïve,
gullible" and the NA'AR, lit. "youth" that Solomon's MUSSAR, moralistic reproof, is
addressed. This is because the villain (EVEEL, KH'SEEL, BELIYA'AL etc.) and the
scoffer (LEITZ) are normally so bent on their evil that their ears are closed to
reproof. The PETHI and NA'AR on the other hand are still innocent – too innocent,
because they are inexperienced and easily seduced. They do not understand that
the smiling face of evil is a deceptive front concealing its real essence and the long
term destruction it brings.

Vv 19-20: "For the man is not in his house, he has gone on a long journey; he has
taken a bag of money with him…" Rashi says that the husband not being in the
house alludes to how the Holy One blessed be He has withdrawn his Indwelling
Presence (through the destruction of the Temple and Israel's exile) and has given
all the good (of this world) to the nations. Rashi says that the "bag of money" he
has taken refers to the good people whose lives He has taken. In the light of
Rashi's explanations, we can understand better how the evil inclination needles the
exiled Israelites to turn astray from the Torah when they see the great material
success of the nations in a world where the Shechinah is concealed and where
innocent people apparently suffer and die.
Vv 22f: Bitter is the end of anyone who goes after the "strange woman", and this is
why the "children" should listen to the warnings of the loving Father not to go after
her.

V 26: "For she has cast down many wounded, and many strong men have been
slain by her." In case some women take offense because the evil inclination is
repeatedly personified as a "strange WOMAN", let it be noted that the Talmud
clearly and explicitly darshens this verse as referring to MALE Torah scholars who
are not fit to teach and rule yet still tell people what to do, thereby killing them
spiritually (Sotah 22b). May the Almighty lovingly guide us to the true Tzaddik so
that we will not go astray!

Chapter 8
Following the vivid depiction in Chapter 7 of the allurements of the "strange
woman" and the long-term havoc and destruction she wreaks, Chapters 8 and 9
round off the long "prologue" of the Book of Proverbs with a progression of four
sections in praise of Torah wisdom: Proverbs 8:1-21; 8:22-31; 8:32-36 and 9:1-18.

Chapter 8, v 1: "Does not wisdom call and understanding put forth her voice…" God
has created this world of trial in which we live as a mixture of good and evil, and He
has given us the freedom to choose between them. While the "strange woman"
accosts us at every turn with her allurements, as we learned in the previous
chapter, true Torah wisdom also "stands at the top of the high places by the way"
and "cries out at the gates…" If only we were to open our eyes, we would see that
God's Torah also calls to us from every direction and out of every situation in which
we find ourselves in life – except that most people are deceived by the superficial
appearance of this world and fail to penetrate to the truth that underlies it.

V 4: "To you O men, I call…" The wisdom of the Torah beckons to each and every
one of us to draw closer.

V 5: "O you simple (PETHA'IM), understand prudence, and, you fools

(KHESSEELIM), be of an understanding heart". The PETHI is the simple gullible
person who is open to the allure of evil because he is inexperienced and knows no
better. The KHESSEEL is one who has already succumbed to the desires of his heart.
Wisdom calls out to both categories, because both can be redeemed – as opposed
to the scoffer (LEITZ), on whom reproof is wasted (see below, 9:7-8).

Vv 10-11: "Receive My instruction and not silver, and knowledge rather than choice
gold. For wisdom is better than rubies…" Even those who have material wealth
often do not enjoy it, and they certainly cannot take it with them when they leave
this world. But Torah wisdom is a treasure of inestimable value since it not only
benefits those who gain it in this world but also accompanies and sustains them in
the world to come.

V 12: "I am wisdom, I dwell with prudence…" – "once a person has learned Torah,
prudence enters into him in ever matter" (Rashi).

V 15: "Through me kings reign and princes decree justice…" Torah wisdom is the
foundation of good government, if only the rulers would follow it!

V 17: "I love those who love me and those who seek me early shall find me". The
Hebrew word for "shall find me" is YIMTZA-OON'NEE. It is written with an extra
letter Nun (which has the mathematical value of 50) to indicate that those who
seek Torah wisdom can attain the 50 Gates of Understanding (Rashi).

V 21: "That I may cause those who love me to inherit substance…" The Hebrew
word rendered as "substance" is YESH, meaning that which exists. YESH consists of
a Yud (=10) and a Shin (=300). Based on this verse, the sages teach that "God will
give each and every Tzaddik 310 worlds" (Sanhedrin 100a). This verse concludes
the discourse that began in 8:1 speaking about the benefits that Torah wisdom
confers.

Verse 22 opens a new section (PARSHAH PESUHAH) in which the Torah herself
speaks to us directly in order to explain her position of supreme importance in the
scheme of God's creation.

"HaShem created me as the beginning of His way…"Seven things were created

before the world was created: the Torah, Teshuvah (Repentance), the Garden of
Eden, Gehennom (Hell), the Throne of Glory, the Holy Temple and the name of
Mashiah" (Pesachim 54a).

V 30: "Then I was by him as a nurseling (AMON)…" The surface meaning is that
even before creation, the Torah was, as it were, God's favorite child. The Hebrew
text alludes to the level of KETER, the Crown, because the Hebrew for "I was" is
EKYEH, the divine name associated with KETER (cf. Exodus 3:14). AMON has
exactly the same Hebrew letters as OOMAN, a "craftsman". Thus the Midrash
teaches: "The Torah here says, I was the craftsman's tool of the Holy One blessed
be He. Normally in this world when a king of flesh and blood builds a palace, he
does not build it out of his head but consults a craftsman (OOMAN), and even the
craftsman does not build it out of his head. He uses plans and diagrams in order to
know exactly how to make all the rooms and corridors… So too the Holy One
blessed be He looked into the Torah and created the world…" (Bereishis Rabbah 1).
Based on our verse, this Midrash is the source of the idea that the Torah is the
"blueprint" of creation.

Verse 32: "And now, children, listen to me, for happy are those who keep my ways".
The logical conclusion arising out of the preceding sections explaining the benefits
of Torah wisdom and its august place in the scheme of creation is that we should
heed the call of wisdom and do everything in our power to acquire it.

V 34: "Happy is the man who listens to me, waiting daily at my gates…" The key to
acquiring this most precious acquisition is to set aside regular study time every day.
It is certainly worth it, "for he who finds me has found LIFE!!!"

Chapter 9
In parallel with the "strange woman", who has readied and bedecked her home and
prepared a feast of love for those she seeks to entice (chapter 7 vv 14-18), Torah
wisdom has also "built her house" and prepared a feast of "meat" and "wine" for
those who have the good sense to go into her (chapter 9 vv 1ff).

V 1: "Wisdom has built her house; she has hewn out her seven pillars…" The
Talmud (Shabbos 115a) identifies these seven pillars with the 7 days of creation (=
the seven lower sefirot, which all emanate from HOCHMAH-wisdom). The Talmud
(ibid.) also identifies them with the seven books of the Torah (the book of Numbers
is considered to consist of 3 books, because the two verses in Numbers 10:35-36
are considered as a whole book in itself dividing what proceeds from what follows).
Another interesting midrash from Yalkut Shimoni on this and the following verse
darshens them as alluding to the War of Gog and Magog: "her house" is the Holy
Temple; the "seven pillars" allude to the seven year duration of this war; the meat
and the wine (v 2) allude to the "meat of the warriors and blood of the princes of
the earth" that Israel will then consume (Ezekiel 39:18), while the "maiden" whom
wisdom sends out to invite everyone to the feast (v 3) is Ezekiel, whose prophecy
about the War of Gog and Magog is more detailed than those of the other prophets.

V 3: "She has sent forth her maidens…" – "Adam and Eve; another explanation:
Moses and Aaron" (Rashi). Wisdom speaks to us in many ways, calling and
appealing to us to heed her message.

Vv 4ff: "Whoever is simple (PETHI), let him turn in here…" As discussed earlier, the
wisdom of the Torah is a lifeline for the innocent and gullible.

V 7: "He who reproves a scorner brings shame on himself… Do not reprove a

scorner lest he will hate you…" It is futile to try to reprove the wicked and the
scoffers, because they are set in their ways and not only will they not listen; they
are also likely to turn on the one offering the reproof and tell him that he too is
blemished. "This is a warning that it is forbidden to speak to those who seduce
others from the straight path, not even to reprove them or to try to bring them to
the Torah" (Rashi).

Vv 13ff: The lengthy "prologue" to Solomon's collected one-verse proverbs (which

begin in chapter 10) ends with a final warning about the Woman of Folly, who also
sits in a most prominent position in town seeking to entice the same simple,
innocent gullible passers-by to whom true Torah wisdom seeks to throw a lifeline.
"Stolen waters are sweet and bread eaten in secret is pleasant" (v 17) – "the taste
of relations with an unmarried girl is not the same as the taste of another man's
wife" (Rashi). What the simple fool does not realize is that "the dead are there and
that her guests are in the depths of hell" (v 18). May God help us to come to our
senses and realize where we are in this world!

Chapters 10-11
"The proverbs of Solomon…" (Chapter 10, v 1). From here until the end of the book,
the greater part of the text consists of one-verse proverbs or at times short series
of verses elaborating on a single idea. Sometimes an overall theme can be
discerned in consecutive proverbs, yet often there is no specific relationship
between one proverb and the next: each is a jewel in itself.

We have no information about how or why these proverbs were arranged as they
are, but a very interesting clue as to how they have come down to us in their
present form is contained much later in the book in Proverbs 25:1: "THESE ALSO
are the proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied
(HE'TEEKOO)." This verse introduces another seven chapters of proverbs.

Metzudas David comments on the above-quoted verse: "It would appear that the
material from the beginning of the book until this point [i.e. until ch 25] was copied
over and available in everyone's hands, whereas from this point until the end of the
book the only copies were in the hands of Hezekiah's officers, who copied these
words from scrolls of Solomon that were available to them. This is why the text
says 'these ALSO are Solomon's proverbs' i.e. even though they were not available
to everyone, nevertheless these too are his words which Hezekiah's officers copied,
and they can be trusted as to the fact that these words came from the mouth of
Solomon." [Hezekiah became king 13 generations or 235 years after the death of
King Solomon.]

About a century and a half ago it became fashionable for a certain breed of Biblical
"scholars" who in rebellion against traditional rabbinic explanations of the Bible to
indulge in what they called "Biblical criticism" in which they tried to cast aspersions
on the divine origins of the Bible (and, by implication, on its binding nature) by
claiming that different parts of various books were written by different human
authors and later redacted into their present form. However, nowhere in any of the
classical rabbinic commentators is there the faintest hint that the authors of the
Biblical books were anyone other than as stated in the text in each case or as
handed down in rabbinic tradition, and there is no reason whatever to distort the
literal meaning of the text or, for example, to take the above-quoted verse as
explained by Metzudas David in any other way except literally.

Rashi on the above-quoted verse in Proverbs 25:1 comments that the word
HE'ETEEKOO, rendered as "copied", also has the connotation of "they
STRENGTHENED", noting that when Hezekiah became king [after a lengthy period
of rebellion against the Torah under previous kings] he established centers for
students in every city until eventually a check was made from Dan to Beersheva
and not a single ignoramus was found (Sanhedrin 94b). It would make perfect
sense that a highly innovative revivalist Torah leader like Hezekiah would reveal
new materials that had previously been handed down only among the inner circle of
the House of David, in order to strengthen Torah observance in his kingdom.

We may infer that the redaction of Proverbs took place in two stages: the greater
part of Solomon's proverbs were arranged in his lifetime, presumably at his behest,
and copied by scribes for circulation among the people, while later on in the time of
Hezekiah, supplementary materials were added from private royal manuscripts
thereby giving the work the form in which we have it today.

How should we study this treasury of wise epigrams and aphorisms? In the absence
of a continuous "story-line" it can be hard to take in, absorb and internalize verse
after verse of such wisdom. It is somewhat like touring a vast museum of dazzling
treasures: even with the best will in the world, one's eyes are likely to glaze over
after a time. Moreover, practically every single verse is accompanied by an
enormous wealth of rabbinic midrash, commentary and explanation dating from
Mishnaic and Talmudic times until the present day. Each verse of Proverbs provides
topics for lengthy consideration, discussion and debate, and may be susceptible to
interpretations that go in radically different directions. Each of the four standard
levels of Biblical interpretation (PaRDeS) can certainly be applied to Proverbs: (1)
PSHAT, the "simple" or "literal" meaning; (2) REMEZ, the "allusions" to various
Torah ideas, historical events, etc.; (3) DRASH, the teachings that are derived from
the verse through the hermeneutical methods of Torah interpretation (such as the
13 Rules of R. Ishmael or the 32 Rules of Rabbi Eliezer son of R. Yose HaGlili as
printed at the end of full editions of Talmud Bavli Brachos); (4) SOD, the "secret",
"mystical" or "esoteric" dimension of the words, which consist of divine names and
numerical formulae, etc. – for the entire Bible was written through prophecy and
holy spirit.

Rabbi Nachman of Breslov taught that in studying any part of the Torah, the
essence of the mitzvah is simply to read the words in order one after the other
trying to gain a general understanding without seeking to master every last detail.
He also taught that wherever one is studying in the Torah, one's primary purpose
should be to derive practical guidance in order to improve one's character and
behavior. Thus he taught that one should always try to find oneself in each text –
to see how it relates to one's own issues and concerns.

Precisely because of the tremendous wealth of wisdom collected in Solomon's

proverbs, one must expect that it cannot all be assimilated at one time. At different
junctures in life, different sections, verses and phrases will become more
meaningful. It often happens that a certain phrase or idea may seem very strange
and incomprehensible, until life brings one to a certain point where suddenly its
truth shines out in a flash of illumination. In order to prepare for such moments, we
would do well to learn a lesson from the humble ant, who spends the entire
summer working hard dragging heavy grains for storage until the winter, when she
can relax, eat and enjoy the fruits of her labors (see Proverbs 6:8).

Almost all the proverbs in our present text, Chapters 10 and 11 consist of a single
verse devoted to one idea, the first half of the verse stating a thesis and the second
half its antithesis. The mode of thought is that of oscillation between holistic
HOCHMAH-wisdom and analytic BINAH-understanding. It is precisely the contrast
between the thesis and antithesis that throws light on the meaning of each one,
thereby generating the synthesis – DA'AS, "knowledge", "comprehension".

The overall theme of the proverbs in chapters 10 and 11 is the contrast between
the character, attitudes and behavior of the Tzaddik (the righteous person) and
those of the Rasha (the wicked villain) and their respective destinies in God's order
of Justice, where goodness is rewarded in the world to come while evil is punished
in Gehennom. The mind of the Tzaddik is characterized by the qualities of
HOCHMAH ("wisdom"), BINAH and TEVUNAH (different aspects of "understanding")
while the Rasha is KHESEEL and EVEEL, both of which mean "foolish", lacking in
DA'AS. The Tzaddik is generous and forgiving, while the Rasha is mean and selfish.
The Tzaddik blesses; the Rasha curses, insults and disparages. The Tzaddik is
straight and honest; the Rasha is deceptive and treacherous. The Tzaddik is pure
and sincere, the Rasha stubborn and crooked. In accordance with their respective
characters and behavior, the Tzaddik is rewarded with long life and wealth in the
world of Truth, while the Rasha faces bitterness, disaster and death when the
bubble bursts and the emptiness of his fantasies is revealed.

Ch 11 v 31: "Indeed, the Tzaddik is recompensed on earth…" – "even the Tzaddik

pays the price in this world for a sin he commits" (Rashi) – "…how much more so
the wicked and the sinner!" – "Then why should the wicked man trust that all will
be well for him just because he is successful for the moment? If even the Tzaddik is
punished, how much more so will the wicked man be punished either in his lifetime
or when he dies" (Rashi).

Chapter 12
Each of the proverbs in these chapters stands independently, with no single theme
or progression of thought binding them all together. Each aphorism opens up a
world of thought in itself. A full commentary would require a discussion of every
verse in turn with an analysis in each case of the MASHAL (the metaphor or image)
and the NIMSHAL (the subject that is elucidated through the comparison). Such
commentaries have already been provided by the classical Torah commentators
(Targum Yonasan, Rashi, RaDaK, Ibn Ezra, RaLBaG, MaLBiM, etc.), but to give a
digest of their discussions and of various comments by the rabbis of the Talmud
and Midrashim on each verse would be well beyond the scope of the present study
notes, which will instead offer some brief comments on selected verses, leaving
students to familiarize themselves with the actual Biblical text and to draw personal
lessons and messages from those verses that speak to them particularly at this
time.

Chapter 12 verse 1: One who loves true knowledge of God (DA'AS) will love reproof
because he has the humility to understand that he must constantly correct his own
misconceptions, where as one who hates being criticized and corrected will not
grow in wisdom and will therefore remain a BO'AR, a "fool", or more literally, an
"animal" who lacks the exalted human faculty of DA'AS.

As in the previous chapters, the main overall theme of most of the proverbs in our
present text is the contrast between the thought patterns, ways of speech and
deeds of the righteous TZADDIK and those of the wicked RASHA. The Tzaddik
pursues justice while the Rasha is full of mischief and deceit (v 3). The wicked use
words to trap and kill others, while the righteous seek to save them and promote
peace (v 6). Since God rules the world with absolute justice, it is only fair that he
should give endurance to the Tzaddikim and overthrow the wicked (vv 3, 7, etc.)

V 8: "A man should be commended according to his intelligence (SECHEL)…" The

rendering of SECHEL as "intelligence" somewhat makes it seem as if high marks are
given to those with high IQ, because in our highly sophisticated society dominated
by ”experts", intelligence is associated in the minds of many with quick, sharp
thinking whether for good or bad. But in the vocabulary of Torah literature, SECHEL
refers to the triad of mental faculties known kabbalistically as holistic HOCHMAH-
thinking, analytic BINAH-thinking and their synthesis, DA'AS, the knowledge of God.
Since God Himself is totally beyond our intellects, the only way to "know" Him is
with simplicity and sincerity, through faith. This is why "…he who is of a perverse
heart shall be despised" – because one who allows himself to be dominated by the
perversity of the evil inclination in his heart looses his holy good sense.

V 9: "The righteous man knows the soul (NEFESH) of his animal…" – Rashi (ad loc.)
comments that "he knows what his animal and his family need". The Tzaddik's
"animal" would allude to his physical body whose nature, requirements and purpose
as the servant and agent of his own higher soul (NESHAMAH) the Tzaddik fully
understands. He lives on the spiritual plane but understands the material plane.

"…but the kindnesses of the wicked are cruel". This can be understood on many
levels. For example, "lovingly" plying one's family and children with candies and
junk food can be extremely cruel in the long term. Also, those kindly "rabbis" of
recent centuries who sought to "sweeten" Judaism for their congregations by
"easing the burden" of Torah and changing or abandoning many of its most
precious observances have proved in fact to be exceedingly cruel both to the lost
souls of their congregants and to the entire people of Israel, whom they have left
divided and largely bereft of a true, unifying tradition. Another form of "kindness"
that is really extremely cruel is the failure to condemn and punish many crimes and
acts of terror, or even to justify them on psychological or ideological grounds. It is
this misplaced "kindness" of the wicked that has led to the rampant crime and
terror in the world today.

V 11: "He that tills his land shall have plenty of bread…" Rashi comments that
besides the obvious simple truth of this proverb, it also teaches that one who
constantly reviews his Torah studies will not forget them. [This is the reason for the
two-chapter-a-day Bible study cycle, which enables us to cover the entire Bible in
one year and review it each year thereafter, thereby becoming ever more familiar
with all facets of this life wisdom.]
V 14: "From the fruit of the mouth of a man shall he be satisfied with good…" –
"From the reward for the work of the mouths of those who engage in Torah
[repeating their studies orally out loud day by day] they eat the good in this world
while the principal endures for them in the world to come" (Rashi). "…and the
recompense of man's hands shall be handed to him" – the rewards God gives in the
world of truth are strictly in accordance with our efforts in this world.

V 15: "The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but the wise man listens to
advice." The fool likes to decide everything for himself according to his own ideas,
but in order to get through this mixed up world we need guidance from a source of
truth that stands beyond it – the Torah.

V 16: Fools vent their anger on the spot, but the wise are more prudent.

V 19: "The lip of truth shall be established forever." Living as we do in a world of

rampant falsehood, this should be very comforting to us.

V 21: "No evil shall befall the just…" God protects those who truly and sincerely
follow the Torah, saving them from coming to sin even though this is all too easy in
the complex, fast-moving world we live in.

V 23: "…the heart of fools declares their folly" – "they declare their folly in a loud
voice" (Rashi). One who possesses DA'AS TORAH, "knowledge of the Torah", can
rapidly discern the folly of those who do not understand the true nature of this
world and its purpose: their words, their behavior and their very gait all cry out
folly.

V 24: "The hand of the diligent shall RULE…" – "shall become rich" (Rashi). The
riches, of course, are spiritual. Everything depends on diligence and effort.

V 25: "Anxiety in a man's heart dejects it." The Hebrew word rendered as "dejects
it" is YASH'CHENAH, the pi-el form of the root SHACHAH, to come down low. The
sages of the Talmud darshened this as (1) YA-SICHENAH, "he should put it out of
his mind", or (2) YA-SICHENAH, "he should TALK ABOUT IT to others" (Yoma 75a).
In fact, good talk therapy with an honest friend or true counselor helps remove
anxiety from the heart.

Chapter 13
V 1: "A wise son hears his father's instruction." Rashi comments that it is because
the father gives instruction and reproof that the son becomes wise.

V 2: "A man shall eat good from the fruit of his mouth…" The first part of this verse
is almost identical to Ch 12 v 14, "a man shall be SATISFIED with good from the
fruit of his mouth", although the second part of the verse is different. There are
also other cases where part or all of a verse recurs in more than one place in
Proverbs.

V 3: "He who guards his lips keeps his life…" Guarding and sanctifying our faculty of
speech is one of the most important keys to spiritual success in life.

V 4: "The soul of the sluggard desires and has nothing, but the soul of the diligent
shall be richly supplied." Many people have dreams and wishes, but only through
diligence can they be made actual and far-off goals turned into practical
achievements.
V 7: "There is one who seems to be rich yet lacks everything, and one who seems
to be poor yet has great wealth." Here is another verse pointing to the paradoxical
nature of this world and God's way of running it: many things are very different
from the way they seem on the surface.

V 13: "He who despises the word shall be punished, but he who fears the
commandment shall be rewarded" – "When a person despises one of the teachings
of the Torah, he ends up being snatched as a surety for it" (Rashi).

V 18: "Poverty and shame come to one who refuses instruction (MUSSAR)…" Again
and again Solomon drives in the message that we must submit ourselves to the
reproof and moralistic teachings of the Torah (cf. vv 20 & 24 etc.). Mussar
literature, whether in the form of the moralistic classics ("Path of the Just", "Gates
of Repentance" etc.) or Chassidut (Likutey Moharan, Tanya etc.) should be part of
the regular diet of every Torah student.

Chapter 14
V 1: Only by employing the wisdom of Torah in one's life can one build a structure
that will endure to eternity.

V 2: One who truly reveres God behaves correctly. Going crookedly is an affront to
God.

V 3: The fool hits out at everyone with his stick of arrogance.

V 4: "Without oxen the crib is clean [i.e. the owner's house is empty of produce]
but an abundance of produce comes through the strength of the ox" – "That is to
say, in a place where there are no Torah sages, the teachings available are not in
accord with the halachah" (Rashi).

V 6: "A scoffer seeks wisdom but it is not there…" – "When he needs it, he does not
find it in his heart" (Rashi).

V 7: Keep your distance from fools.

V 9: "Amends pleads for fools, but among the upright there is good will" – "The
fools are the sinners: only by making amends and paying the penalty can they
conciliate God. His will is to the upright" (Rashi).

V 10: "The heart knows its own bitterness, and with its joy no stranger can meddle"
– "Each person knows the toil and effort with which he labors in the Torah, and
therefore no stranger will have a share when he receives his future reward" (Rashi).

V 12: "There is a way that seems right to a man but its end are the ways of death"
– The pathos of our condition in this benighted world is that we cannot see what
the consequences of our choices will be, particularly in the very long term. This is
why we require the guidance of God's Torah, since He sees to the end of everything.

V 13: The laughter of this world cannot last for ever.

V 17: He that is soon angry acts foolishly…" One of the most important virtues of
the upright is patience and long-suffering, which can save us from much trouble.
V 19: "The evil bow before the good" – "At the end… in time to come" (Rashi).

V 20: "Even by his own neighbor, the poor man is hated, but many are the friends
of the rich man" – "The 'poor man' is someone who is ignorant of Torah, who does
not know how to act in the proper way, and he is hated even by his close friends"
(Rashi).

V 23: "In all labor there is profit, but the talk of the lips leads only to deficiency" –
Work and action, not mere words!!!

V 24: The true "wealth" of the sages is their understanding of the Torah (Rashi).

V 26: Not only does one's fear of God give personal security; it also protects one's
very children.

V 27: The reason why fear of God is the source of life is because it warns the
person to avoid the snares of death – sins and transgressions (Metzudas David).

V 28: "In the multitude of the people is the king's glory…" – When many people
carry out a mitzvah together, this brings God great glory (Talmud Yoma 70a).

V 29: More in praise of patience and forbearing, which save us from folly.

V 30: "A tranquil heart is the life of the flesh; but envy is the rottenness of the
bones" – This verse is one of the foundations of the psychosomatic wisdom of the
Torah, teaching that good, positive attitudes are conducive to physical health.

V 31: To oppress the weak is an insult to their Maker.

V 32: "…the upright has hope even in his death" – "When he dies he is assured that
he will come to the Garden of Eden" (Rashi).

"Charity elevates a nation (= Israel, Rashi) but the kindness of the peoples is a sin"
– "because they take from one to give to another" (Rashi).

Chapter 15
V 1: "A soft answer turns away wrath…" This is a lesson to imbibe.

V 3: God is watching everything; there is no escape.

V 4: "A soothing tongue is a tree of life…" The way we speak can have a decisive
effect on our own health and that of those around us.

V 6: "In the HOUSE of the righteous is much treasure but in the REVENUES of the
wicked is trouble." Rashi's comment on this verse illustrates the level of REMEZ,
"allusion", in the text. On the first half, Rashi writes: "The Temple [=the House]
that was built by David, the righteous Tzaddik, is a great treasure and a tower of
strength". On the second half, darshening the Hebrew word rendered as "revenues"
– TEVOUAH from the root "to BRING IN", Rashi writes: "…but through the
BRINGING IN of the idol that King Menasheh brought into the Temple, it was
spoiled".
V 8: "The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to God" – God does not want
perfunctory outward expressions of service, He wants the devotion of the heart.

V 11: If everything in hell and destruction are revealed to God, how much more is it
certain that He knows what is in people's hearts (Rashi).

V 13: "A joyous heart makes the face cheerful" – Again, the soul and the mind
influence the health of the body.

Vv 15-17: True happiness in life depends not on material prosperity or the lack of it,
but on people's ATTITUDES.

V 22: "For want of counsel purposes are frustrated; but in the multitude of
counselors they are established" – the true counsel that all need is that of the
Torah.

V 24: "The path of life (ORAH HAYIM) goes upward for the wise…" The authors of
the Arba Turim / Shulhan Aruch chose the phrase ORAH HAYIM for the title of the
first of the four sections of these foundational codes of Torah law as it applies in our
times. ORAH HAYIM deals with the laws of the prayers and blessings of daily life
and the laws of Shabbos and the festivals. Numerous other phrases from Proverbs
were also chosen as the titles of famous Torah classics. Thus in the present chapter,
verse 7, SIFTHEY HACHAMIM, "the lips of the wise", is the title of the most
important super-commentary on Rashi, and verse 30, ME'OR EYNAYIM, "the light of
the eyes" is the title of an important Chassidic work by R. Menachem Nachum of
Tchernoble.

V 25: "HaShem will pluck up the house of the proud; but He will establish the
border of the widow". If a person sees an idolatrous temple, he should recite the
first phrase of this verse; if one sees the houses of Israel in a state of habitation,
he should recite the second part of the verse (Talmud Berachos 58b).

V 27: Unjust gains sully a person's house. One who hates free gifts and wants only
what he works for shall live.

V 30: "The light of the eyes rejoices the heart; and a good report makes the bones
fat." More on the mind-body connection!

Chapter 16
V 1: "The preparations of the heart are man's, but the answer of the tongue is from
HaShem." When we arouse ourselves from below (HIS'ORERUS D'L'TATA) and
strive to order and better ourselves, this evokes an arousal from Above
(HISORERUS D'L'EIYLA).

V 2: "All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but HaShem weighs the
spirits." It is very hard for a person to acknowledge that his attitudes and behavior
may be wrong. But God knows the truth as to who is good and who is not (Rashi),
for He is INSIDE the spirit/soul of each person. The Hebrew word rendered as
"weighs", TOKHEIN, is from the root TOKH, which means "within" (Metzudas David).

V 3: "Commit your works to God" – pray to Him about everything you need, and
this will give a sound basis to all your thoughts, ideas and plans (Rashi).
V 4: God made everything to reveal His might and glory – even the evil day that
befalls the villain reflects glory on God.

V 7: "When God is pleased with a man's ways, He makes even his enemies to be at
peace with him" – including his own wife!!! (Bereishis Rabbah 54). If a person
wants domestic harmony, the key is for him to put all his effort into serving God.

V 10: "There is a magic (KESSEM) on the lips of a king; in judgment his mouth will
not err." The "king" is the sage, when he sits in judgment. If he is a true sage, God
gives him intuitive understanding of where the truth lies. KESSEM here is a kind of
power of divination, the ability to guess right.

V 11: "A just balance and scales are God's: all the weights of the bag are His
work." The merchants of old had bags containing a variety of weights in order to
measure out different quantities. God has every kind of weight and measure, to pay
each person exactly according to his behavior (Rashi; Metzudas David).

V 14: "The wrath of the King is like messengers of death, but a wise man will pacify
it." Every Jew needs to be connected to a true sage, who through his great humility
has the power to appease God and bring atonement (cf. Likutey Moharan I, 4).

V 17: "The highway of the upright (MESILLAT YESHARIM) is to depart from evil…"
The phrase Mesillat Yesharim, "Path of the Just", was chosen by the outstanding
sage Rabbi Moshe Chayim Luzzatto (1707-47) as the title of his outstanding
moralistic classic on the path of ascent to true service of God.

V 18: "Pride goes before destruction…" This was so in the case of Haman in ancient
Persia , and it will be so in the case of the latter-day Hamans now governing the
same country.

V 20: "He who gives heed to the word will find good…" – "One who considers his
words carefully and weighs his pathways will find good" (Rashi). "…and happy is the
one who trusts in God" – "When he weighs his pathways and sees that he has the
opportunity to perform a mitzvah that involves some danger or monetary loss, if he
trusts in God and does good, he will succeed" (Rashi).

V 24: "Pleasant words (=words of Torah, Rashi) are like honeycomb, sweet to the
soul and health to the bones." – We have the power to influence the health of our
bodies through the very words we speak.

V 28: "A froward man sows strife, and a whisperer separates a leader (ALOOPH)."
When a person distorts the meaning of what was said, he stirs up strife among
people (Metzudas David). Rashi interprets the "leader" as God: as a result of a
person's complaints, he separates the Ruler of the world from himself.

V 31: The practice of charity lengthens one's days (Rashi).

V 33: "The lot is cast into the lap, but its whole disposition is from God" – Man may
cast lots, but it is God who determines the outcome and the share that each will
receive. Thus when the Land of Israel was divided among the tribes, it was done
through casting lots, and thus each tribe received their proper portion.

Chapter 17
V 1: Rashi comments on this verse: "It was better for the Holy One blessed be He
to destroy His Temple and His city so as to be at peace from Israel's sins, because
they used to offer the sacrifices of strife in His House."

V 2: "A servant that deals wisely shall have rule over a son that deals shamefully,
and shall have part of the inheritance among the brothers." Rashi says that the
"servant who deals wisely" is the GER TZEDEK ("righteous convert"). He is better
than a home-born villain! And in time to come the converts will have a share of the
inheritance among the Children of Israel (cf. Ezekiel 47:23).

V 3: "The refining pot is for silver and the furnace for gold, but God tries the
hearts." The tests that God takes people through can be a refining through fire.

V 8: "When a person comes before God and placates Him with words and returns to
Him, this is a precious stone and a pearl in His eyes, and in whatever the person
asks of God, He will give him success" (Rashi).

V 9: It is better to overlook the bad things people may do to one and not to try to
take vengeance, because by constantly harping on their evil he causes God – who
commanded us not to nurse a grudge or take vengeance – to depart from him
(Rashi).

V 15: "One who justifies the wicked, and one who condemns the righteous, are
both an abomination to God." Both ills are also very prevalent in the public media
today.

V 16: What use is it for a person to acquire the wisdom of the Torah if he does not
intend to observe the Torah and studies only to acquire a name for himself? (Rashi).

V 17: Rashi's rendition of the verse is: Always show love to friends in order to
acquire people who will love you, for in a time of trouble, your friend will be "born"
and become a brother who will help you and take a share in your sorrow.

V 18: Agreeing to be a guarantor in some financial transaction is not considered

wise. Rashi interprets the handshake as that of someone who "shakes hands" with
the heretics in order to go in their ways when he has already made a guarantee to
God (in the Sinaitic Covenant) to observe His commandments.

V 19: "…One who exalts his gate seeks destruction." "Exalting one's gate" means
speaking arrogantly (Rashi).

V 22: "A merry heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones." This is
the Torah path of healing in a nutshell.

V 24: "Wisdom is before one who has understanding, but the eyes of a fool are in
the ends of the earth." Rashi comments: The fool says, "Wisdom is not available
near at hand, because it is very far from me. How will I ever be able to learn all
thirty chapters of the Mishnaic order of Damages (the 3 Bavas), the thirty chapters
of Tractate KELIM (the tractate on purity and impurity of vessels), the twenty-four
chapters of Tractate Shabbos…?" But for the wise man it is something easy. Today
he studies two chapters and tomorrow another two, and says: This is what those
who were before me always did.

V 26: "The Holy One blessed be He never said to wipe Israel from the Land, for it is
not good in His eyes to punish all of them" (Rashi).
 Chapter 18
V 1: "He who is separated will seek his own desire; in all sound wisdom he will be
revealed." Rashi: "One who is separated from the Holy One blessed be He so as not
to guard His commandments chases after the desire of his heart and his evil
inclination. And in the end his shame will be revealed among the sages. Our rabbis
darshened that this refers to Lot, who separated himself from Abraham, but in the
end, his shame is revealed in the synagogues and study halls, for 'The Ammonite
and Moabite [ Lot's descendants] may not enter the assembly' (Deut. 24:4)".

V 2: The fool does not desire true understanding but only the fantasies produced by
his own heart.

V 4: "The words of a MAN's mouth are deep waters" – Rashi: Where the word ISH
(=man) is used in the Bible, it refers to a man of great might. "A flowing brook, a
fountain of wisdom": Rabbi Nachman of Breslov took great pride in the fact that the
initial letters of the last four Hebrew words of this verse are an acronym of the
name Nachman: Nachal Nove'a Mekor Chokhmah!

V 5: "It is not good to respect the person of the wicked and to turn aside the
righteous in judgment." Besides the plain meaning of the text, the sages darshened
that it is not good for the wicked to be shown forbearance for their evil in this world
since they are then punished for it in the next, while the righteous are punished for
their sins in this world in order to attain the life of the world to come (Yoma 87a;
Rashi).

V 6: "A fool's lips enter into contention and his mouth calls for strokes." A fool
constantly accuses others but the effect is that his mouth calls out for suffering to
be brought down upon himself (Rashi).

V 9: "Even one who is slack in his work is a brother to the destroyer." When a
Torah student is slack in his studies, he comes to distort and forget the Torah.

V 10: "The Name of HaShem is a tower of strength; the righteous runs with it and
is set on high." It is remarkable that a mere word or name could give such strength
and protection. Even more remarkable is that one who takes refuge in a mighty
physical tower is closed up in it and cannot go anywhere, but when the Tzaddik
depends on the name of HaShem, he can run wherever he wants and still take
strength there in God's name (Metzudas David).

Vv 11-12: Unlike the Tzaddik, who trusts in God, the rich man takes refuge in his
wealth, but if he is haughty because of it, this can lead to his destruction (Rabbenu
Yonah).

V 13: "When one gives an answer about something before he has heard it out, this
is folly and a disgrace to him." Unfortunately this characterizes the level of much
discussion of serious issues over wide areas of the contemporary media and
education system, not to speak about most discussion in the "street".

V 14: "The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, but a broken spirit who can
bear?" Man's soul has the power to strengthen him in face of the illnesses of the
body, for the soul governs the body in health and even in illness, but if the soul is
weak and broken because of sorrow and depression, the body is unable to
strengthen it (Metzudas David). Mind over matter!
V 16: "A man's gift makes room for him…" Besides the simple meaning, this
teaches that when one gives charity, it widens his share in the world to come
(Rashi).

V 17: "He who pleads his cause first seems just, but his neighbor comes and
searches him out." The first person to put his case often sounds right. The judge
must be very careful not to allow himself to be influenced by his arguments without
first balancing them with the arguments of the other side.

V 21: "Death and life are in the power of the tongue…" Every one of us should take
this verse to heart and put a strong rein on our tongues.

V 22: "One who finds a wife finds a great good…" Besides the plain meaning of the
verse, the "woman" also refers to the Torah (Rashi).

V 24: Rashi: "When a person acquires friends for himself, the day will yet come
when he will need them and they will draw him near. And if you say, 'So what?'
know that sometimes a friend is closer than a brother and reaches out to one more
than one's relatives and brothers."

Chapter 19
V 2: "Also the soul that is without knowledge is not good…" – "It is not good for a
man to be without Torah" (Rashi). "And he who hastens with his feet is a sinner" –
"The sinner tramples on sins underfoot saying, 'This is an insignificant matter and I
can transgress'" (Rashi).

V 3: "A man's folly perverts his way and his heart frets against God." – "It is
through his own sin that evil comes upon a person because in his folly he perverts
his way and transgresses, with the result that he is punished. But when the trouble
strikes, he frets against God, questioning His justice!" (Rashi).

V 4: One who is wealthy in Torah also gains many friends.

V 6: "This can be interpreted as referring to those who give charity, and it can also
be interpreted as referring to those who teach and spread the Torah."

V 7: "All the brothers of the poor hate him; how much more do his friends go far
from him. He that pursues words – they turn against him." – "He says, So-and-so
and so-and-so are my relatives; so-and-so and so-and-so are my friends, but all his
words are emptiness" (Rashi). Name-dropping does not help!

V 8: "He who acquires heart loves his own soul…" – "Because the knowledge of God
is in the heart, the verse says that one who acquires heart loves his own soul"
(Metzudas David).

V 12: "The king's wrath is like the roaring of a lion…" – "The 'king' is the Holy One
blessed be He (Rashi).

V 16: "One who despises his ways shall die" – "because he does not set his heart to
weigh them" (Rashi).

V 17: "When a person is ill and near death, his charity pleads on his behalf before
the attribute of Judgment, saying, 'That poor man's soul was about to leave his
body because of hunger, but this man fed him and brought it back into his body; I
too shall give him back his soul'" (Rashi).

V 19: "A man of great wrath shall suffer punishment, but if you save, you shall yet
add" – "If you set aside your anger and save your enemy when you see that evil
has come upon him, you shall yet add days and goodness to your life" (Rashi).

V 22: "The desire for a man is on account of his kindness…" – the main reason why
people love a person is because of his kindness."…and a poor man is better than a
man of deceit" – If a person promises but does not carry out his promise, a poor
man is better than him (Rashi).

V 25: "When you strike the scorner, the simple will become prudent…" – "On seeing
the plagues visited on Pharaoh and the war against Amalek, Jethro became wise
and converted!" (Rashi).

Chapter 20
V 1: "Wine is a mocker" because it gives the drinker the feeling that his mind is
expanded, but this is deceptive.

V 2: Whoever provokes the king – God – endangers himself.

V 3: People often get into an argument because they feel affronted, but man's true
dignity is to restrain himself and avoid being drawn into a quarrel.

V 4: Because of the cold, the lazy man avoids "plowing" – i.e. exerting himself in
Torah study – and as a result, when his time of need arrives, he finds himself
lacking (Rashi).

V 5: The way of the wise man is to conceal his counsel in the depths of his heart
(deep beneath the surface of his words), making it hard for others to grasp it. His
counsel is like waters that lie deep beneath the surface of the earth and are hard to
draw out. But "a man of understanding will draw it out": he starts by drawing out
the upper waters – seeking to understand the surface meaning – and this will bring
him to what lies below (Metzudas David).

V 6: Most people like to give the impression that they are very kind and considerate,
but who can find people who not only promise but actually deliver?

V 8: When Gold sits on His throne of judgment, all men's evil is "spread out" and
visible in front of His eyes, even what they do in secrecy (Metzudas David).

V 9: "Who can say… I am pure from my sin (CHATASI)?" The Hebrew word
CHATASI can also mean, "I have sinned" – the opening word of the confession.
Thus the verse can be construed as saying, "Who can say… I am pure in the way I
make my confession before God?" for even as we confess to God we may have
ulterior motives. We have to repent not only over our actual sins but even over our
inadequate confessions of sin (Rabbi Nachman, Likutey Moharan I:6).

V 10: "Diverse weights and measures are both an abomination of God." When a
person uses one set of criteria to judge his friends and a different set to judge his
enemies and opponents, this is an abominable distortion of judgment. This occurs
almost daily in international condemnations of Israeli behavior, yet we also should
not allow our disgust at the abominations of others to justify our turning a blind eye
to our own imperfections.

V 12: The ear and the eye are God's work. What He wants is an ear that listens to
reproof and an eye that sees what is likely to develop out of one's different possible
choices in life (Rashi).

V 13: Wealth and satisfaction (=Torah, good deeds and the enjoyment of the
reward they bring) do not come to those who are lazy and like to sleep away their
days.

V 14: During the bargaining before a purchase, the buyer downgrades the article in
order to push down the price, but after the purchase he is proud of his ability to
strike a good deal. Similarly, when a person seeks to attain the wisdom of the
Torah despite poverty and hardship, he complains, but afterwards he will be
overjoyed over the great good that he has gained (Metzudas David).

V 15: Gold and jewels may be expensive yet they are quite abundant in this world.
What is really precious and rare is a mouth that speaks true wisdom! (Metzudas
David).

V 16: While it is forbidden to enter the house of a borrower to take a pledge, it is

permitted to enter the house of the guarantor of the loan in order to do so, since he
willfully agreed to be a guarantor (Bava Metzia 115a).

V 18: "If you come to fight against the Satan, come with wise stratagems –
repentance, prayer and fasting" (Rashi).

V 19: Don't open your heart to those who are indiscreet.

V 21: "An estate may be gotten hastily at the beginning but its end shall not be
blessed" – Thus the tribes of Reuben, Gad and half Menasheh took their portion
east of the R. Jordan before all the other tribes – and they went into exile before all
the other tribes! (Rashi).

V 24: Our very footsteps are governed by God although we do not know it. "A man
does not hurt even his little finger here below unless it is decreed against him from
above" (Hullin 7b).

V 25: "When a man stumbles into sin, he causes a flaw to his own holiness, and he
must then offer sacrifices in order to plead for his soul" (Rashi).

V 27: Man's own soul bears witness against him on the Day of Judgment (Rashi).

Chapter 21
V 1: "The king's heart is in the hand of God: like watercourses, He turns it
wherever He will." It should be comforting to know that the decisions made by the
apparently self-willed rulers and leaders of this world are in fact all under God's
complete control, and He will surely bring everything out right in the end!

V 2: People are naturally prejudiced in their own favor and rarely see their own
guilt, but God knows the truth.
V 3: Even King Solomon, who built the Temple, the center for the offering of
sacrifices, taught that what God really wants is not ritual atonement but charity and
justice.

V 5: True gains come from toil and industry, while those who try to "get rich quick"
are likely to end up lacking.

V 11: "Through witnessing the chastisements that befall the scoffers, the simple
become wise and repent" (Rashi).

V 12: "The Righteous One considers the house of the wicked, overthrowing the
wicked to their ruin." Metzudas David offers an interesting alternative p'shat
(explanation): When a righteous person stands in the house of a wicked man, this
righteous Tzaddik brings success to the house of the wicked man, who is blessed on
account of the Tzaddik, and this itself causes the wicked man to continue doing evil,
thinking that the blessing has been sent on his own account and that his behavior is
good in God's eyes. Metzudas' explanation would open a chink into the mysteries of
God's providence, whereby the wicked are deceived into continuing their pursuit of
evil in this world in order to cause them to loose everything in the world to come.

V 14: Rabbi Hin'na Bar Papa used to distribute charity at night-time [when nobody
could see him, thereby saving the recipients embarrassment]. One time the king of
the demons approached him and said, "Have you not taught us, rabbi, that 'you
shall not encroach on the boundary of your neighbor' (Deut. 19:14)? [I.e. why are
you performing mitzvoth at night, which is the time of the demons?] He replied, "Is
it not written, 'A gift in secrecy pacifies anger'? (Shekalim 15a).

V 15: "To do justly is joy to the righteous but ruin to the workers of iniquity" –
"God's joy is to take retribution from the righteous in this world in order to give
them merit for the life of the world to come, and the righteous rejoice when God
chastises them in order for them to gain the life of the world to come. However
chastisements do not avail the wicked because they do not take note and repent,
and instead they only complain" (Rashi).

V 18: "The wicked is a ransom for the righteous" – "The righteous is saved and the
wicked comes in his stead, such as in the case of Mordechai and Haman" (Rashi).

V 22: "A wise man scales the city of the mighty…" – "This alludes to Moses, who
ascended to heaven among the mighty angels, and brought down the Torah"
(Rashi).

V 28: "A false witness shall perish, but the man that OBEYS shall speak
unchallenged" – i.e. the man who OBEYS the Torah, which says, "You shall not bear
false testimony against your neighbor" (Rashi).

V 31: Men may make their preparations for self-protection in the face of war, but
ultimately salvation is from God alone.

Chapter 22
V 1: The "name" that should be chosen more than great wealth is one's own good
name and reputation as keeper of God's Torah. It is also THE "good name", God's
holy Name that we should set before us at all times (Psalm 16:8; Shulhan Aruch,
Orah Hayim 1:1). The "grace" (HEIN) that is better than silver and gold is the
vessel one constructs through one's Torah study, prayers, good deeds and
attributes in order to receive the light of God's presence in the form of awareness
and knowledge of God (Likutey Moharan I:1).

V 2. The rich and the poor man meet when the poor man says to the rich man give
me livelihood and the latter answers harshly. They meet again in the wheel of
destiny, for "God makes them all" – He brings them to life again and makes the rich
man poor and the poor man rich! (Rashi).

V 3: The prudent man sees evil – the punishment for sin – and hides away: he does
not carry out the sin (Rashi).

V 4: English translations render: "The reward (EKEV) of humility is fear of God,"

implying that fear of God comes as a result of and is a higher level than humility.
But literally EKEV means a "heel" – i.e. implying that the main thing is humility, and
its lowest level, the "heel", is fear of God (Rashi).

V 5: "Thorns (TZEENIM) and snares are in the way of the stubborn." From this the
rabbis deduced that everything is in the hands of heaven (determined by God)
except for chills and colds (the root TZANAN means to be chilled), which a person
allows to come upon him through his own obstinate negligence, while one who
guards his life and soul will keep away from the things that cause them (Avodah
Zarah 3b)..

V 6: "According to what you teach a young child and how you educate him in
different things whether for good or for bad, even when he is old he will not veer
from that path" (Rashi). Early education in the good ways of God's Torah is vital.

V 7: "The rich man rules over the poor people" – the ordinary people are always in
need of a student of the Torah (Rashi).

V 8: As one sows, so one reaps – according to one's behavior in this life, so is the
reward one receives afterwards. A person may rule over people with fierce anger,
but eventually his straw stick of dominion is worn down because he uses up his own
power (Rashi).

V 10: "Cast out the scorner and contention will go away…" The "scorner" is the evil
urge (Rashi). By wholeheartedly embracing the good within us and dissociating
ourselves from our bad impulses and negativity, we may free ourselves of inner
conflict and attain harmony.

V 11: When one frees one's heart of impurity and sanctifies his lips by speaking
only words of grace – Torah and devotion – God loves him and favors him (Rashi).

V 13: "The lazy man says, 'There's a lion outside, I'll get slain in the streets'" – "He
says, How can I go out to learn Torah?" (Rashi).

V 14: The "strange woman" whose mouth is a "deep pit" is the preacher of heresy
and idolatry.

V 15: King Solomon teaches us not to idealize children and imagine them to be
perfect angels because "foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child". Children
are subject to a natural folly, and they have to be trained with the "rod of
correction". Likewise in ch 23 v 13 King Solomon advises not to spare the child
correction, "for if you strike him with the rod he will not die". The sages were
opposed to cruel physical punishment but understood better than contemporary
psychologists and "experts" in discipline that at times children are in need of wisely
administered physical punishment in order to grow out of this natural folly.

V 16: If a person oppresses the poor for his own gain, he will eventually have to
give away all his money to wealthy idolaters and the governments of the nations so
that all his efforts result only in his own loss (Rashi).

From the beginning of Proverbs Chapter 10 until this point the entire text has
consisted of one-verse aphorisms that are often if not mostly unconnected
thematically with those preceding and following them. However, from Chapter
22:17 onwards longer sequences of verses are often employed, making up short
discourses, though not of the length of the discourses with which the book of
Proverbs opens in Chs 1-9.

Vv 17ff: "Incline your ear and hear the words of the wise" – try to learn Torah from
even the merest sage; "and apply your heart to MY knowledge" – if your teacher is
wicked, don't learn from his behavior (Rashi). It is to the quest for the inner
knowledge of God that Solomon is telling us to give our hearts – "In order that your
trust may be in HaShem" (v 19): this is the very essence.

V 20: "Have I not written for you excellent things (SHALEESHIM)". SHALEESHIM
literally means captains, honored leaders (cf. Ex. 16:4) – Solomon's proverbs are
all important teachings. SHALEESHIM also has the connotation of "threefold",
alluding to the Torah, Nevi'im (Prophets) and Kesubim (Holy Writings). "If you say,
How can I trust in God and turn my heart from all other activities so as to study the
words of my teachers – maybe they are mistaken and there is no place to trust in
God and expect to receive a reward – King Solomon answers this objection by
saying that you can find words of true counsel and knowledge in the books of the
Torah (Metzudas David). Even if you feel you cannot fully trust the people who are
teaching you Torah, if you are willing to delve into the Torah itself you will be able
to find the truth.

Vv 22-29 is a short PARSHAH PESUHAH ("open", free-standing section) containing

several pieces of advice. (1) vv 22-23: Don't oppress the poor even though they
are weak, because God will stand up for and avenge them. (2) vv 24-25: Don't
befriend angry types because you will learn from their bad ways, which will be a
snare for you; (3) vv 26-27: Don't get involved in deals that leave you with
commitments that you are unable to meet to the point where your creditors take
everything from you. (4) v 28: Don't encroach on others' territory, literally – and
also, don't encroach on the boundaries set by the fathers: these are the ancestral
customs of Israel such as the three daily prayers, which should not be changed…
(Yalkut Shimoni. (5) v 29: Be energetic and enthusiastic in your service of God.

Chapter 23
Vv 1-5: Ostensibly this short discourse advises against succumbing to the
temptation to join the mighty and powerful in order to become wealthy because
their tasty dainties are the bread of deception and any wealth one may gain will
eventually fly off and disappear. However, the sages darshened this discourse as
advice to a student sitting before his teacher seeking to gain the wealth of Torah:
"Consider well he that is before you" – "If you know that he will give you an answer
to anything that you ask him, be careful to ask him whatever you need to know.
But if not, keep quiet (v 2 – "put a knife in your throat") and (v 3) separate
yourself from him in order to go to a worthy teacher. Vv 4-5: Don't try to "get rich"
in your studies by learning heaps of unrelated details which you will only forget –
try to understand how the various details fit logically together (Hullin 6a).
Vv 6-8: Don't eat the bread of the mean-eyed.

V 9: Don't waste wise words on a fool who will despise their wisdom.

V 10: Don't encroach on others' rights, such as that of poor orphans to the
agricultural gifts that must be given to the poor: LEKET, the gleanings, SHICH'HAH,
the forgotten sheaf and PE'AH, the corner of the field that must be left unharvested
(Rashi).

Vv 12-14: Submit yourself to correction and chastisement and do not withhold it

from those whom it is your responsibility to educate – correction DOES NOT KILL!

Vv 15-16: God's greatest delight is when His children follow the path of wisdom and
speak the truth.

Vv 17ff: The perennial temptation is to wanti to follow the sinning herd because of
their apparent success. Don't give in.

V 20-21: Don't give into the desire to quaff wine and eat much meat in this world,
for those drunk with and gluttonous for the pleasures of this world will end up poor
in Torah and they will have nothing but tattered rags with which to clothe their
souls in the world of truth.

V 23: It is forbidden to "sell" the Torah by charging a fee for teaching. Yet if you
see that the only way to acquire the truth is by paying, "Acquire the truth…" (See
Bechoros 29a).

Vv 26-28: Again and again Solomon reiterates the importance of following the path
of Torah wisdom and distancing oneself from the "harlot" and "alien woman" =
heresy.

Vv 29-35 give a vivid depiction of the cries, complaints and self-caused injuries of
the red-eyed drunkards who sit up late drinking, always in search of good liquor.
One should not so much as look at wine when it is red (v 31), despite the fact that
it is so lusciously tempting and high quality (on the basis of this verse, red wine is
considered the best and choicest for Kiddush and the Four Cups of Pesach). The
redness alludes to GEVURAH, the very might that contracts and conceals Godliness.
Thus the drunkenness depicted in this section comes from the "wine" of alien
wisdom offered by the strange woman. In the end it bites like a serpent (v 32)
making the eye see strange things and turning the heart into confusion (v 33). The
person ends up completely addicted (v 35).

Chapter 24
Vv 1-14: Having warned against associating with the "strange woman" (23:27ff)
and falling into drunkenness (23:29-35), King Solomon now warns against following
in the ways of those who seek to build their fortunes through robbery and mischief
(24:2). Rather, one should seek out wisdom and understanding, for these bring
true and enduring wealth, the wealth of the spirit. "For a house is built through
wisdom and established through understanding. And with knowledge the rooms will
be filled…" (vv 3-4). These verses are the foundation for important kabbalistic
teachings about the Sefiros of Hochman, Binah and Da'as.

V 6: "Make your war with wise stratagems (TAHBOULOS)…" The war in question is
that against our evil urge. It is often impossible to engage the evil urge directly in
order to overwhelm it, because its power is very great. It is better to use wise
stratagems in order CIRCUMVENT and get around it. For example, when a person
rises early in the morning to pray and follows his prayers immediately with a
session of Torah study, this takes the wind out of the sails of the evil urge before it
even has a chance to attack. "Who do you find fighting the war of the Torah? The
person who has in hand bundles (HAVILOT) of Mishnehs!" (Sanhedrin 42a).

Vv 8-9: When a person does not devote his intellectual faculties to the pursuit of
wisdom but instead uses them to plot evil, he will get a reputation as a man of
mischief and his evil thoughts and scoffing are a sin and an abomination.

Vv 10-12: "If you are weak on the day of adversity, your strength is small indeed."
On the simple level, these verses are teaching that one should not abandon his
friends on their day of trouble because he will then be too weak to help himself
when trouble strikes him. The rabbis darshened that if a person allows himself to
become lax in studying the Torah, he will not have the strength to stand on his day
of trouble (Rashi on v 10; Berachos 63a).

Vv 13-14: A person should pursue wisdom with the same if not more enthusiasm
than that with which people like to eat sweet honey!

V 15ff: Solomon cautions the wicked not to lie in wait to take advantage when they
see a righteous man tottering, because even if the Tzaddik falls repeatedly he will
still rise up in the end. The final letters of the four Hebrew words SHEVA YIPOL
TZADDIK VA-KAM ("the Tzaddik may fall seven times but rises") are an anagram of
AMaLeK, the archetypal evil. When the wicked fall, they do not rise up again.

Vv 17-18: Even a righteous person should not exult triumphantly when his enemy
falls. For this reason on the festival of Pesach, with the exception of the first day it
is customary not to recite the complete HALLEL (Psalms 113-118) so as not to show
undue glee at the time when of the overthrow of the Egyptians and their drowning
in the Red Sea (Yalkut Shimoni).

V 21: "My son, fear God and the king…" – "One should show respect to the ruler on
condition that he does not turn you away from fear of God: the fear of God always
takes priority" (Rashi). "…and do not meddle with those who are given to change
(SHONIM)" – "These are the heretics who say there are two (SHNAYIM) domains"
(Rashi).

V 23: "These also are sayings for the wise…" – "All the teachings below are directed
particularly to the sages who sit in judgment – they must have no respect for
persons when judging…" (Rashi).

Vv 24-25: "One who says to a wicked person, 'You are righteous', will be cursed…
But to those who offer reproof, it will be pleasant." Metzudas David (on v 25)
explains the connection between these verses: If one tells a wicked person that he
is righteous, this will merely encourage him to go further in his wickedness.
However, in the case of those who seek to reprove the wicked, it can be
advantageous to say to a wicked person, 'In truth you really are a Tzaddik, but you
have gone astray in certain particulars and these you should correct'. If they were
to openly call him wicked, it could cause him to counter-react and stubbornly
protest his innocence, whereas this way they can draw his heart to them and
induce him to listen to their words. Metzudas' comment can help us better
understand Rabbi Nachman's teaching to search for the good even in bad people in
order to elevate them.
V 27: "Prepare your work outside and establish it for yourself in the field, and
afterwards build your house." The rabbis interpreted this verse literally as advising
that one should first get a place to live, then work on establishing a livelihood (with
fields and vineyards) and only afterwards build his house = marry. They also
interpreted the verse homiletically as teaching that one should first study Bible,
then master the Mishneh, and only afterwards try to darshen and fathom the
depths of the Torah (Sotah 44a).

V 30: "I passed by the field of the sluggard…" – "This is the person who fails to
review what he has studied… First he starts forgetting some of the main principles,
and in the end he twists the words of the sages ruling that which is pure to be
impure and that which is impure to be pure, and he destroys the world" (Rashi).
The Talmud darshens: "I passed by the field of the sluggard" – this alludes to King
Ahaz; "…and by the vineyard of a man lacking heart" – this is Menasheh. "…and lo,
it was all grown over with thistles" – this is Ammon; "…its face was covered with
nettles" – this is Yeho'akim; "…and its stone wall was broken down" – this is
Tzedekiah, in whose time the Temple was destroyed (Sanhedrin 103a).

Chapter 25
V 1: "These too are the proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah king of
Judah copied out." Metzudas David writes on this verse: "It would appear that the
proverbs from the beginning of the book up until this point were copied over and
available in everyone's hands, but the proverbs from here until the end of the book
were only available to the staff of King Hezekiah, who copied these teachings from
scrolls of King Solomon that they discovered. This is why it says that THESE TOO
are the proverbs of Solomon despite the fact that they were not available to
everyone. Nevertheless these too are his teachings, which were copied over by
Hezekiah's men, and they are reliably attributed to Solomon."

V 2: "The glory of God is a matter that must be concealed, but the glory of kings is
a matter that may be investigated." The "glory of God" refers to the esoteric
wisdom of MA'ASEH MERKAVAH, the "Work of the Chariot" and MA'ASEH
BEREISHIS, the "Work of Creation", as well as to those statutes of the Torah that
are beyond the grasp of human reason (such as the ashes of the red heifer and the
prohibition against wearing mixtures of wool and linen etc.). It is forbidden to
investigate these matters too deeply or to search for reasons. On the other hand,
the "glory of kings" alludes to the rulings and enactments which the sages made as
a "fence" around the Torah: here it is permitted to investigate and ask for reasons
(Rashi).

Vv 4-5: Just as the removal of impure admixtures from silver leads to the
production of a good vessel, so the removal of the wicked from the kingdom
establishes the throne of the ruler.

Vv 6-7: It is unadvisable to flaunt oneself before those who are greater than
oneself; it is better to wait modestly to be called to greatness rather than to push
oneself forward only to be cast down.

V 11: "Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a word spoken fitly (AL OPHNAV)."
The phrase AL OPHNAV literally means either "on its foundation" or "on its wheel".
Just as golden knobs set on a background of silver are most beautiful, so is a word
– a MASHAL or "metaphor" – that sits and fits perfectly on its basis, which is the
NIMSHAL or subject of the comparison. A good MASHAL should perfectly reflect and
constantly return to its NIMSHAL just as a wheel revolves and always goes back to
its place (cf. Metzudas David).
V 14: When someone boastfully gets up in the synagogue and promises a large gift
of charity but then fails to deliver, it is like clouds and vapors but no rain: the poor
are desperately longing for his help, and it does not materialize (Rashi).

V 15: While God is still showing patience before exacting retribution, this is when
the sinners should set themselves to conciliate Him with repentance and prayer, for
a "soft tongue" – prayer and supplication – have the power to break the harsh
decree (Rashi).

Vv 21f: "If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat…" The rabbis darshened: If
your enemy, the evil urge, is "hungry" and tells you to satisfy him with sins, then
you should take yourself off to the study hall and feed him with the bread and
water of Torah, for this way you rake burning coals onto his head, and God will
deliver you from him so that he will not get the better of you (Succah 52a).

V 27: "Eating too much honey is not good, but the investigation of their glory is
glory." Eating too much honey gin refers to delving too deeply into the esoteric
wisdom of the Work of Creation and the Work of the Chariot. One should not reveal
these secrets in public as it causes the ignorant to ridicule them and to enquire
"what is above" and "what is below". Where then should one focus one's
investigations? Upon the words of the sages, "whose glory is glory": it is permitted
to ask the reasons for their various enactments and for the "fences" they erected
around the Torah (Rashi).

V 28: A person who cannot control his own temper makes himself vulnerable to
danger just like a city whose defenses have been torn down.

Chapter 26
Verses 1-12 speak out in various ways against the "fool" – KH'SEEL. The KH'SEELIM
are defined by Rabbenu Yonah (on Proverbs 1:22) as those who have acquired a
stock of bad deeds, transgressing in order to satisfy the demands of their eyes for
pleasures and delights. He explains that when a person pursues worldly pleasures,
he becomes ever more distant from the spiritual and intellectual levels of his soul.

V 1: "Like snow in summer and like rain at harvest time, so honor is not seemly for
a fool." Snow in the summer fruit-drying season is disastrous, as is rain during the
harvest. Likewise, honor – meaning not only worldly prestige but also knowledge of
the Torah, particularly its esoteric dimension, as in 25:2 above – is not fitting for
one who is not in control of his evil urge.

V 2: Such a person is liable to lash out at others with harsh judgments and curses.
One need not worry when abused by a fool: he may scatter gratuitous curses like
darting birds, but if they go anywhere it is only upon himself.

V 3: Chastisement is the only medicine for the KH'SEEL, who is like a stubborn
animal.

Vv 4-5: These two verses teach us when to avoid an argument with a KH'SEEL and
when it is necessary to answer him. If the KH'SEEL tries to draw one into a quarrel,
one should give no answer in order not to lower oneself to his level (v 4). However,
if the KH'SEEL makes an assertion which, if unanswered, will cause him to be wise
in his own eyes, it is necessary to counter it explicitly and not to leave him
unanswered (Rashi).
V 6: It is not worth appointing a KH'SEEL as one's representative or envoy because
this will involve one in much extra work trying to undo the damage he is liable to
cause.

V 7: A person limps when one thigh is higher than the other. Likewise when the fool
employs a MASHAL to express himself, it is not even with – it does not FIT – the
NIMSHAL, and his thoughts merely "limp".

V 8: The MARGEMA is a sling: a stone placed in it does not stay there long, and
likewise the honor – Torah knowledge – transmitted to a fool does not stay with
him. From this verse the sages deduced that teaching an unworthy student is like
practicing the idolatrous ritual of throwing stones towards MARKULIS (Hullin 133a).

Vv 9-10: Rashi interprets these two verses as connected. The MASHAL or parable
touted by the fools (v 9) is that expressed in v 10: God created everything (=RAV
MEHOLEL KOL) and evidently employs both fools and idlers for His purposes. Since
He seemingly judges everyone equally, whether wise or foolish, there is no need to
pursue wisdom! This false proverb provides the fool with justification for continuing
on his own path of folly.

Vv 13-16 speak out against the sluggard, who finds endless excuses for avoiding
doing what he has to do, turning from side to side on his bed in order to avoid
getting up.

Vv 17ff preach against various kinds of evil-intentioned, quarrelsome and

argumentative types. V 17 cautions not to get involved in other people's strife as
this is like taking a dog by the ears, only to get bitten.

Vv 18-19: "As a madman who casts firebrands, arrows and death, so is the man
that deceives his neighbor and says, 'Am I not in sport?'" – these verses are taken
to typify ISHMAEL, whom Sarah saw "playing" with Isaac (Gen. 21:9; see Rashi on
Gen. 29:10).

V 20: Contention is caused by somebody: there is always someone who instigates it.

Vv 23ff: Burning lips and a wicked heart are the hallmarks of those dissimulators
who speak smooth, seductive words as if they love their listeners when in fact they
are their enemies and harbor evil intentions.

V 27: The archetypal case of one who dug a pit only to fall into it was Bilaam, who
advised Balak to seduce Israel with the Midianite women but when he went to
Midian to demand his reward, he was killed there. The archetypal case of one who
rolled a stone that later killed him was Avimelech: he killed his seventy brothers on
one stone, but in the end was killed by a millstone that crushed his head (Judges
9:53; see Rashi on Proverbs 26:27).

Chapter 27
V 1: "Man proposes but God disposes": When making plans for the future, those
who fear God and know His great power qualify themselves by saying, IM YIRTZEH
HASHEM – "if God wills".

V 5: Even if a person is subject to an open rebuke that causes him shame and
embarrassment, this is good if it stems from true love hidden in the heart of the
one delivering the rebuke.
V 7: When a Torah student feels he has already learned sufficient and does not
yearn for more wisdom, he comes to loathe even "honeycomb" – he is not
interested even in sound Torah reason. But for a person who craves Torah wisdom,
even the things that come to him with bitterness and effort are sweet to him (cf.
Rashi).

V 8: Just as it is hard for a bird to be away from her nest, so it is hard for a person
to be away from his true place. This alludes to the soul, whose true place is in the
world to come and which is like a wanderer in this world (Zohar Dvarim 278a).

V 9: Offering sweet words of wise counsel to our friends is the surest way to uplift
them.

V 10: "Do not forsake your own friend…" (=God) "…and your father's friend…" (God
favored your fathers, and if you forsake Him you will suffer.) "…neither go into your
brother's house in the day of your calamity…" (do not trust that the children of Esau
and Ishmael will show you favor). "Better is a neighbor that is near…" (this is God,
who is NEAR to those who call Him) "…than a distant brother" (this is Esau; Rashi).

V 14: "He that blesses his friend in a loud verse early in the morning, it shall be
counted a curse to him." The Midrash gives examples of people who loudly praised
the great wealth and success of certain individuals, only to cause government
officials to confiscate their possessions or thieves to steal them (Avot d'Rabbi
Nathan 22b).

V 17: Torah students sharpen each other mentally through their discussions (Rashi).

V 19: The feelings we radiate to others have a decisive influence over the feelings
they radiate back. The more we open our hearts and show kindness to those to
whom we seek to reach out, the easier they will find it to open their hearts to us.

V 21: "…and a man is tried by his praise" – "In virtue of the way people praise a
person for his good deeds, he is tested as to whether he is good or bad" (Rashi).

Vv 23-27 are ostensibly addressed to the shepherd or owner of flocks cautioning

him to consider constantly what they need, for the investment will be well worth it.
Wealth and power are evanescent, but even when there is no more pasture left for
the flocks, the flock-owner will still benefit from their wool, their skins and meat
and cheese etc. Homiletically, these verses are darshened as advising the Rabbi
appointed over the community to take his "flock" under his wing and lead them
with gently, so that he will eat the fruits of his endeavors while the principal will
remain: As his teachings spread, these "lambs" will provide him with "garments",
for his students will give him a name and a garb of splendor and glory (Rashi).

Chapter 28
V 1: "The wicked flee when no-one pursues [they will be easily routed on their day
of doom, Rashi], but the righteous are as secure as a young lion [the Tzaddik
strengthens his heart in God, Rashi]." While the English translation renders the
main sense of the verse, it misses an interesting nuance in the original, where the
Hebrew word for "wicked" is a singular form (RASHA) while the verb "flee" (NASOO)
is a plural form, and conversely the Hebrew word for "righteous" is a plural
(TZADDIKIM) while the verb rendered as "are… secure" (YIVTACH) is in fact
singular. This seems to imply that each wicked person is alone unto himself but
collectively they will all flee, while the Tzaddikim are together and united, but each
one has the strength and confidence of a young lion!

V 2: "For the transgression of the land, many are its princes…" – "This is the
punishment of the land, when its officers are many and they pursue only their own
gain" (Rashi). This applies directly to the present-day government of Israel , where
prime ministers patch together their shaky coalitions by creating ever more
ministries to provide "jobs for the boys". It may also be safely assumed that the
many grotesque publicized cases of corruption at the highest levels of government
represent only the tip of the iceberg of the corruption that actually exists.

V 3: The "poor man" who oppresses the weak is the judge who is an AM HA-ARETZ
(=Torah ignoramus). This would be a fair description of the great majority of the
judges of the Israeli High Court ("BAGATZ"), who have been notorious for trampling
on the laws of the Torah since the inception of the state.

V 4: "Those who have abandoned the Torah praise the wicked, but those who
observe the Torah contend with them." It would be interesting to use this
proposition to analyze the heroes of secular Israel and those who have forced the
Torah observant to contend with them.

V 5: Even when punishments befall the wicked, they do not understand that this is
to requite their evil because they think everything comes by chance. But the
righteous understand that everything comes from Heaven, and they are able to
understand why and for what reason, because they do not attribute anything to
chance (Metzudas David).

V 8: Profiting from taking interest on loans to fellow Israelites is considered one of

the most serious transgressions of the Torah. The verse says that the profits will go
to "him that is gracious to the poor". Midrash Tanchuma interprets this as the
government, which on hearing of someone's great wealth confiscates his profits and
uses them to build bridges and repair the roads to benefit the public. It will indeed
be a great comfort when our governments really do take the exorbitant profits of
the bankers and lenders and use them for the genuine benefit of the poorer sectors
of society.

V 9: One who willfully flouts the Torah cannot expect his prayers to be heard.

V 11: "This verse is speaking about a teacher and a student: when the student
scrutinizes what the teacher says, this makes the teacher wise!" (Rashi).

V 12: "At a time when the righteous rejoice because they enjoy great success and
everything is done according to their instructions, great is the beauty and harmony
of the place because the voice of the oppressor is not heard. But when the wicked
rise to rule, it is then that 'a man is sought out,' because these wicked people seek
them out to steal their possessions" (Metzudas David). Another way in which many
smaller players tend to be "sought out" in the corrupt political life of our times is
through being submitted to grueling trials by the public media over often tiny
misdemeanors while the big fish are left to get away with murder.

V 13: It is best to own up and confess to one's wrong-doing and to let go of it: this
is what elicits God's compassion.

V 14: When a person is fearful of the punishment for sin, this keeps him away from
sin (Rashi).
V 17 refers to a person who leads another astray, causing him to lose his soul: the
person who caused him to stumble may flee for help and atonement until the day of
his death, but Heaven will not allow him to repent so that he should not sit in the
Garden of Eden while his student is in hell (Yoma 87a).

V 20: The "faithful man who abounds with blessings" is the person who gives his
tithes to the poor "in faith" – i.e. he gives what he is obliged to give even though
there is no witness to see exactly how much he gives. But God sees and multiplies
his blessings (Rashi).

V 21 is addressed to the judge, cautioning him to have no respect for person and
not to take bribes – for how can a person twist judgment for a mere morsel of
bread???

V 23: "One who rebukes a man shall in the end find more favor than one who
flatters with the tongue" – "Anyone who rebukes his neighbor for the sake of
heaven attains a share in God, and not only that, but a thread of kindness is drawn
down upon him" (Tamid 28a).

V 24: "One who robs his father and his mother and says, 'There is no transgression',
is a companion of the destroyer" – "…his father…" is the Holy One blessed be He;
"…his mother…" is the Assembly of Israel. One who causes the public to sin robs
God, separating His children from Him, and robs them of goodness. The "destroyer"
is Jeraboam (Rashi). This verse is also applied to a person who eats or has some
other enjoyment from the world without making the appropriate BRACHAH
(blessing) (Berachos 35a).

V 27: One does not lose from giving a poor man help.

Chapter 29
V 4: "With justice does the king establish the land, but he that exacts gifts
overthrows it" – "If the judge is like someone who does not need to buy lovers and
take bribes, he will establish the land, but if he is like a priest going round to all the
barns to ask for tithes, he will destroy it" (Kesubos 105b).

V 7: "The righteous knows the cause (DIN) of the poor…" – he knows the suffering
of the poor and what they require, and he gives his heart to them" (Rashi).

V 8: The way of the scoffers is to foment strife, setting everywhere on fire, while
the way of the righteous is to mediate peace and turn away people's wrath against
their brothers.

V 11: "A fool spends all his spirit, but the wise man stills it afterwards." When
having to argue with a fool, it is often best to let him pour out everything he has to
pour out before answering wisely in order to still him.

V 12: "If a ruler listens to falsehood, all his servants are wicked" – "When the ruler
listens to falsehood or accepts slanderous reports, all his attendants then turn into
villains because in order to find favor in his eyes they give him slanderous reports
and sin with their very souls" (Metzudas David). Parents, teachers, managers and
leaders etc. who must constantly listen to what their children/students/workforce
etc. have to say about each other should take careful note of Solomon's wisdom
here.
V 13: "The poor man and the oppressor (ISH TECHOCHIM) meet together; HaShem
enlightens the eyes of both of them." Metzudas David interprets the word rendered
"oppressor" as someone that has been beaten down and broken, explaining that
whether a person was born poor or was originally born rich but afterwards lost his
wealth and was broken by the "illness" of poverty, this is not by chance. Everything
comes from heaven through God's decree, and likewise if they afterwards become
wealthy, this too is God's decree. Rashi interprets the ISH TECHOCHIM as a master
of Torah, while the "poor man" is his student. When the student asks the teacher to
teach him a chapter and the teacher does so, "God enlightens the eyes of both of
them.

Vv 15 & 17: "The rod and reproof give wisdom…" "Correct your son and he will give
you rest…" – "If you do so, you will not get angry on his account and you will yet
rejoice over his deeds" (Metzudas David). King Solomon taught the opposite of the
widespread present-day philosophy of leaving children without moral direction.

V 18: "When there is no vision, the people cast off restraint…" – "When Israel cause
prophecy to depart from them through insulting the prophets, they breach holes in
the walls and go astray" (Rashi). Part of the medicine is for us to study the
prophets!!!

V 21: "When a person spoils his servant from youth, in the end he will be a ruler" –
The "servant" is the evil urge (Rashi).

V 25: Is it the snare that causes man's fear, or his fear that causes a snare? The
Hebrew can be read both ways, but Rashi's preferred interpretation is that the
snare of a sin causes fear in man, i.e. if a person has sinned, this causes him to
fear. This can be the key to many of people's phobias.

V 26: Many people try to accomplish their goals by trying to "pull strings" and use
the influence of those in positions of power, but in truth, whatever a person attains
is decreed by God and instead of appealing for help from flesh and blood it would
be better to start by appealing to the true Judge.

Chapter 30
V 1: "The words of Agur Bin Yakeh…" After the very lengthy series of profoundly
wise proverbs stretching all the way from Chapter 10 until this point, the present
abrupt introduction to the closing discourses of Proverbs is very surprising. No
names are in the TaNaCh by chance. Each has its own meaning, overtones and
midrashim. Agur is none other than Shlomo himself, who here calls himself AGUR
from the Hebrew root AGAR, "he gathered" – for Solomon gathered and acquired
Torah and understanding. BIN-YAKEH, the child that VOMITS! For he "vomited it
out": The Torah writes "…and he shall not multiply wives for himself that his heart
shall not go astray" – VE-OUCHAL, "and I shall be able": Solomon said, "I shall
multiply but I shall not go astray" (Tanchuma).

"The burden, says the man, unto Ithi-el, unto Ithi-el and I shall be able." The
"man" = Shlomo, utters this burden = prophecy about himself, concerning Ithi-el
(="God is with me"), because he depended upon his wisdom in multiplying gold,
horses and wives, which the king is warned against, and he said "ITHI-EL, God is
with me, and I shall be able: I shall multiply wives and they will not turn my heart
astray, I shall multiply gold and not go astray, I will multiply horses and not return
the people to Egypt" (Rashi).
V 2: "Surely I am brutish, unlike a man, and I do not have the understanding of a
man" – Here Solomon expresses contrition, deploring his having relied on his own
wisdom in a matter over which God warned him in case he would sin (Rashi).

V 3: "And I have not learned wisdom that I should have the knowledge of the Holy
One" – "because I subtracted from or added to the words of the Torah" (Rashi).

Having spent the entire book of Proverbs urging us to seek wisdom, in these verses
of contrition, Solomon is warning us not to depend on our own wisdom and reason
but only upon the letter of the Torah, without seeking to change it or add or
subtract in any way.

V 4: Solomon's rhetorical questions in this verse are darshened in various ways as

referring to God Himself, who gave the Torah, and to Moses, who ascended to
Heaven and brought the Torah down to earth (Yalkut Shimoni, cf. Rashi, Metzudas).
"What is his name and what is the name of his son" This is part of Solomon's self-
reproof. As Rashi puts it: "If you say there was already someone else like him, tell
me what his son's name is, from which family he came forth so that we may know
who he is. "…if you know" – "if you know who he is; then how is it that you were
not afraid to transgress His words?"

Vv 7-9: Now Solomon prays to God, making two requests: (1) Keep me away from
falsehood; (2) Provide my needs so I will be neither poor nor rich, lest I become
haughty and deny God or so poor that I steal, lie and take His name in vain.

V 10: This verse teaches that one should not cry to God asking Him to carry out
judgment on someone, even if he is evil, not even if he and his generation carry out
all the abominations enumerated in this and the ensuing verses (11-14). The proof
is from the prophet Hoshea, who suggested that God should exchange Israel for
another people, only to be commanded by God to take an adulterous woman as his
wife (Rashi).

Vv 15-17: "The leech has two daughters…" – "The two daughters are the Garden of
Eden and Gehennom. The one says, 'Give me the Tzaddikim' while the other says,
'Give me the wicked'" (Rashi). King Solomon is teaching us his conclusion after
having erred through relying on his own wisdom. "There is no wisdom and no
understanding before God" – the Torah has decreed what is righteous and what is
wicked, and this cannot be changed. One who mocks this wisdom will suffer.

Vv 18ff: "There are three things that are too wonderful for me, yea four that I do
not know" – "What this means is that just as there are three things that are
concealed from me so that I do not know the path along which they went, so in the
case of the fourth I do not know how to recognize the matter after it occurs"
(Metzudas David). The fourth matter is expressed in v 20 – the way of an
adulterous woman. For since she is married and no longer a virgin, if she has an
adulterous relationship she can clean her "mouth" (down below) and no-one will be
any the wiser. Solomon is deploring the adulterer and adulteress for believing that
just as they can hide their act from men because of the speed and secrecy with
which may be performed, so they think they can hide it from God.

The third of the four things that were "too wonderful" for Shlomo was "the way of a
man with a young woman" (v 19). It is particularly important for those who have
suffered from exposure to non-Jewish distortions of the meaning of the Biblical
texts to note that the Hebrew term for "young woman" in this verse is 'ALMA, and it
is perfectly clear from the context – the WAY of a man – that this verse is referring
to physical relations. In the words of Metzudas Tzion (=Metzudas David when he
defines the meanings of words) commenting on v 19: "A woman tender in years is
called an ' ALMA even if she has had intercourse, as in 'Behold the young woman
('ALMA) has conceived' (Isaiah 7:14)". Careful contemplation of the meaning of
these verses together with Metzudas' comment shows that the translation of ' ALMA
in Isaiah 7:14 as a "virgin" is preposterous.

V 21-3: The very earth quakes and rages over the upside-down human world in
which slaves and maidservants rule – these are the empires of the Sitra Achra
which rule during Israel's long exile.

V 24ff: We should learn from the industriousness of the ants, the patience of the
rabbits who labor despite their weakness until they succeed in boring holes even in
the rocks, from the discipline of the locusts who unify even without a leader and
from the self-sufficient spider, who even in the chambers of kings prefers to eat
from the own labors of her own hands.

Chapter 31
V 1: "The words of King Lemu-el, the burden with which his mother corrected him."
Like the first verse of the previous chapter, the king in this verse is interpreted in
rabbinic midrash (Bereshis Rabba 10, Sanhedrin 70b) as referring to Solomon
himself. He is LEMO-EL, facing or turned to God. He here recounts his mother's
rebuke to him as if it is a prophecy received from God (Metzudas David). In the
early sections of Proverbs, Solomon spoke of his father's chastisements to lead him
on the path of wisdom. Now he speaks of those of his mother after the death of
King David, after which he launches into a praise of the Wise Woman built as an
acrostic on the letters of the Aleph Beis in vv 10-31 (Ibn Ezra). The rabbis tell that
when King Solomon married the daughter of Pharaoh, on the day of the
inauguration of the Temple she brought into him various kinds of musical
instruments and he was awake for the whole night. The next morning he slept until
the end of the fourth hour of the day, and because the keys of the Temple
courtyard were under his pillow they were unable to offer the daily perpetual
offering, and his mother entered and rebuked him in the words that follow"
(Metzudas David).

Bat-sheva's rebuke to Solomon consists of invaluable advice to the king not to

dissipate his strength on women and not to drink, because wine is not for kings.
"Open your mouth for the dumb…" (v 8) – "This means that if someone comes
before you in judgment and is like a dumb person lacking the knowledge to order
his claims and pleas, you should open your mouth for his sake to put his claims and
pleas in order" (Metzudas David). The final advice to the king is that he must rule
with justice (v 9).

Vv 10-31, EISHES HAYIL, "A woman of valor," is well known to those who observe
and love the holy Shabbos since this passage is recited weekly at the Friday night
Shabbos table after greeting the angels prior to making the Kiddush. The evocation
of the righteous, God-fearing woman makes a fitting conclusion to Solomon's Book
of Proverbs, which has taken us along all the highways and byways of wisdom.
Having warned repeatedly against succumbing to the allurements of the "strange
woman" and her wares of heresy and sin, Solomon seals his book with the praises
of "the woman that fears God" (v 30).

On one level EISHES HAYIL is Solomon's praise of his own wise mother Bat-sheva
(Metzudas). Midrashically, the passage is interpreted as a praise of the ideal woman
of Israel as embodied in Sarah, the founding matriarch of the nation (Tanchuma).
Rashi also interprets the Woman of Valor as referring to the Torah itself, and offers
a detailed commentary on the entire passage from this perspective. Metzudas
David more specifically relates the Woman of Valor to man's intelligent soul, which
may dwell with him to a greater or lesser extent depending upon his deeds. "Who is
it that can attain the intelligent soul to perfection so as to know and understand by
himself every word of wisdom and intelligence???" (Metzudas).

"The Woman of Valor is the Torah: happy is he who is worthy of finding her! He
eats the fruits in this world and the world to come… To those who study her, she
brings blessing and sustenance… From the fruits of her works she planted a
vineyard – Israel – to sustain them for the life of the world to come… She is not
afraid of the snow – of Gehennom – for her household… They are clothed in scarlet
– the blood of circumcision… She laughs on the last day – they do not have to be
depressed about God's attribute of Judgment because they will be saved from it…
She looks to the ways of her household – the Torah teaches the good pathway so
as to separate oneself from sin. Her children – the students – rise up and call her
blessed, and her husband – the Holy One blessed be He… Grace is deceitful – this is
refers to all the nations and the vanity of their greatness and beauty. Give her – in
time to come – of the fruit of her hands – beauty, greatness, strength, glory and
rulership" (Rashi).
 Book of Job
Chapter 1
The book of Job is unique in the entire Bible canon as being a complete work
devoted to one question: Why do good people suffer? This question has proved to
be a most difficult and, at times, insuperable challenge to many people's faith in the
God of justice.

The identity of Job himself and that of the author of the book bearing his name are
both obscure in the extreme. The Talmud in Bava Basra (15b) brings no fewer than
eight different opinions as to the period of time in which Job lived: at the time of
the Exodus / in the time of the spies / in the time of Ezra / in the days of the
Judges / in the time of Ahasuerus / during the ascendancy of Sheba / during the
ascendancy of the Chaldeans / in the time of Jacob. The same passage in the
Talmud also brings another opinion – that Job never existed at all but is a purely
allegorical figure. Perhaps this opinion comes to emphasize that it hardly matters
when Job actually lived or, because in truth he is a universal figure and the lessons
to be learned from his book apply in all ages.

They apply not only to the people of Israel, to whom most of the books of the Bible
are primarily addressed, but to all humanity. Thus although, according to some of
the rabbinic opinions cited in the Talmud, Job could have been an Israelite, the
most widely accepted opinion is that he was a righteous gentile, and it is precisely
this that gives the book its universality. Job's own testimony about his upright path
(chapter 29) provides a shining ideal to which all mankind should aspire.

When Job's companions came to comfort him in his suffering, they argued that
suffering is sent to man because of his sins and that Job could therefore not have
been completely righteous. Yet Job himself was unwavering in his protestations of
his own innocence, and most of the rabbis agreed that Job did not sin. It is his very
innocence that makes him the exemplar of the suffering Tzaddik, whereas had he
sinned, it would have detracted from his quest to unravel the mystery of why the
righteous suffer.

Many of the rabbis were of the opinion that the book of Job was written
prophetically by Moses.

V 1: "There was a man in the land of OOTZ …" The commentators associate this
land with Aram Naharayim, where Nahor the brother of Abraham lived (Gen. 24:10)
– Ootz was Nahor's firstborn (ibid. v 22). Targum on Lamentations 4:21 identifies
"the land of OOTZ" with Armenia , stating that this was inhabited by Edomites. Ibn
Ezra and Ramban (on Job 1:1) concur in identifying Ootz as a land inhabited by
Edomites. Ramban suggests that Job was a descendant of Abraham through Esau
and that he knew his Creator and served him through fulfilling all the MITZVOS
dictated by human reason and commonsense, in particular the MITZVOS of the
heart, the root of all of which is the fear of God. Ramban argues that Job's
companions were also Edomites, and in his introduction to the book of Job he
suggests that it is appropriate that the lengthy dialogs it contains about human
suffering are attributed to the descendants of Esau, the archetype of the sword-
wielding warrior, symbolizing the Accuser who brings punishment into the world.

"And this man was pure and righteous and he feared God and turned aside from
evil." This description is to be taken at face value since these are not the words of
Job himself but those of the author of the book.

Vv 2ff: Job attained the very summit of material success, possessing abundant
livestock – the main wealth in antiquity – as well as being blessed with seven sons
and three daughters, who lived in the lap of luxury, feasting every single day.

For fear that his children may have become arrogant and denied God, Job regularly
offered OLAH (whole burnt) offerings on their behalf. Verse 5 is adduced by the
Talmud as proof that out of all the different kinds of Temple sacrifices, the OLAH
offering specifically came to atone for untoward thoughts (Yerushalmi Yoma 42a).

V 6: "And the day came when all the sons of God came to stand before HaShem…"
– "This whole matter could have been known only by way of prophecy" (Ramban ad
loc.). The prophet who wrote the book of Job depicts the heavenly scene on "THE
DAY" – "this was Rosh HaShanah, the Day of Judgment" (Rashi) – when all the
angels gathered in the BEIS DIN SHEL MA'ALAH, the "heavenly court". Although
God is perfect unity and encompasses and includes all His angels, they are depicted
as being "separate" from Him and "standing before Him" because each of the
different angels depicts a different aspect or quality.

"…and the Satan too came in their midst." Again, God is perfect unity, but there is
an aspect that comes to test and try men, and this aspect is embodied in the figure
of the "Satan". The Hebrew word Satan relates to the word SITNAH (Gen. 26:21
and Ezra 4:6) meaning strife and accusation. Commenting on our verse, the sages
of the Talmud stated that the Satan has three roles. (1) He is the Tempter or
YETZER RA, man's evil inclination. (2) Having tempted man and caused him to
stumble, he then stands up as the Accuser, pointing to man's sins and demanding
retribution. (3) Having indicted man, he comes to punish him in his third role, as
the Angel of Death (Bava Basra 16a).

Vv 8-9: God Himself attests that in spite of Job's outstanding material success, he
had not sinned in the way that so many of the wealthy and powerful sin, with
arrogance and the denial of God. Yet the Satan argues that Job's righteousness had
not yet been genuinely tested since he had been insulated from poverty and other
harsh aspects of life.

Vv 11ff: The Satan demands that Job be tested to see if he will not blaspheme
when he has a taste of suffering. God gives Satan authority to destroy Job's wealth
and kill all his children – yet even in the face of these terrible calamities, Job does
not complain that God has been unjust. Instead he stoically states in his immortal
words: "Naked I came forth from my mother's belly and naked shall I return there.
HaShem gave and HaShem took away – let the name of HaShem be blessed (v 21).

Chapter 2
"Health, children and livelihood are not dependent on merit but upon MAZAL"
(='fortune'?)" (Mo'ed Katan 28a). So far the Satan had struck at two of the three
fundamental pillars of Job's life – his livelihood (wealth) and children. But even this
was not enough of a test.
V 4: "Skin covers skin…" If a person sees a blow coming to the skin of his face, he
instinctively raises his hand to protect himself, preferring to suffer the blow on the
skin of his hand in order to protect his head (see Rashi and Metzudas David on this
verse). The Satan argues that Job had been content to suffer the loss of his wealth
and children in order to protect himself from the loss of his life, but claims that as
soon as the blow will come to Job's very skin and bones, he will break down and
curse God because of his suffering. God now authorizes the Satan to submit Job to
the worst of all tests, physical illness and pain, as long as he does not actually kill
him.

Job's wife sees his terrible suffering and asks him what point there is in continuing
to serve God now that he has lost everything: he might as well curse his bad
fortune and die since he has nothing to live for. Job answers her with another
immortal line (v 11): "Shall we accept the good from God but not accept the bad?"

In verse 11 our text testifies that even in the face of this terrible physical suffering,
Job did not sin with his lips. The Talmud infers that "with his lips he did not sin, but
he sinned in his heart! What did he say? 'The earth is given into the hand of the
wicked, He covers the face of its judges' (Job 9:24)" (Bava Basra 16a). This implies
that in his heart Job wondered if there is really a God. Since most of us have such
thoughts at one time or another, it is somewhat comforting that even the righteous
Job could not avoid them. Had he never had any doubts at all, he would have been
a plastic Tzaddik. The fact that he did have them makes him all the more real.

V 11: "And three friends of Job heard…" Given that they all lived at great distances
from one another in the days before emails, phones and faxes, how did they know
that their friend was in trouble? "Some say that they each had a crown on which
were modeled the faces of each one of them, and when suffering befell one of them,
his face changed. Others say that they each had a tree and because it withered,
they knew" (Bava Basra 16b).

When Job's friends arrived they could not even recognize him because of his abject
suffering. Nobody could bring himself to speak for seven days until at last Job
opened his mouth and "cursed his day", as we will see in the following chapter.
From the description of how Job's friends sat down on the ground to empathize with
him and did not speak until he spoke first, the rabbis learned several important
laws of conduct for those coming to comfort mourners (Moed Katan 18a).

Chapter 3
STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK OF JOB

Chapter 3 consists of Job's opening speech wishing that he had never been born
rather than having to suffer in life, apparently for no just or intelligible reason. In
chapters 4-5, Eliphaz HaTeimni, the leader of the three companions, answers Job,
after which the latter speaks again in chapters 6-7. Job is then answered in chapter
8 by the second of his three companions, Bildad HaShoohi, and Job answers back in
chapters 9-10. Next, in chapter 11, the third companion, Tzophar HaNaamasi,
answers Job, who replies in chapters 12-14.

The cycle repeats itself in exactly the same way in chapters 15-21, where the three
companions successively answer Job, who answers them back after each of their
speeches. There is then a third cycle of speeches in chapters 22-31, in which
Eliphaz and Bildad (but not Tzophar) again address and are answered by Job. Job's
answer to Bildad is contained in chapters 26-31, in which Job gives a lengthy
defense of himself, finally silencing his three companions, who despair of
persuading him to change his view of his situation in any way.

A new interlocutor – Eli-hoo ben Barach-el – then enters and embarks on a lengthy
address to Job in chapters 32-37. After this, God Himself addresses Job in chapters
38-41 in what is surely one of the most beautiful passages in all of Biblical literature.
Finally, in chapter 42, God "adjudicates" in the debate between Job and his
companions, and at last restores the chastened Job to a life of prosperity, wellbeing
and honor.

Chapter 3 vv 1-2: "And Job spoke and said, Oh that the day on which I was born
had perished…"

An invaluable insight into Job's stance is provided by the outstanding Talmudic

scholar and Biblical commentator RaMBaN (Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, or
Nachmanides 1197-c.1270) in his comment on how Job "cursed his day": "We find
the prophets cursing in this way, for Jeremiah also said 'cursed be the day on which
I was born' (Jer. 20:14) but in Job's case the intention was bad and his companions
understood what he was thinking from what he said. When Job saw the many
terrible troubles and evil that came upon him – and he himself knew his own
righteousness – he thought that perhaps God is neither aware of nor makes a
reckoning of men's deeds and that there is no watchful providence over them. He
started by saying that it is the influence of the planets and stars on the day and
hour of people's birth that determine the good and evil that will befall them. He
inclined to the view of the astrologers and therefore opened by cursing the day on
which he was born, thinking that this was what caused him this evil. He argued that
because of man's inferiority and God's exaltedness, He pays him no attention. Thus
man is under the rule of chance according to what the stars determine and how
they rule on earth. Thus Job believed that the same applies to man as we believe
applies to animals – that there is no supreme guardianship over them except to
keep their species in existence, but that no individual member of the species
receives either punishment or reward. In the case of animals we do not say they
sinned when they get slaughtered or that they must have been meritorious if they
have a long life, and we see that their livelihood is available in plenty [and not
governed by a higher Providence ]. This is his meaning in this first speech"
(Ramban on Job 3:2).

The Biblical commentator Metzudas David, who provides a brief summary after
each of the speeches of Job and his companions, takes a line similar to that of
Ramban in his summary of Job's opening speech: "Job was perplexed and fell into
doubt, thinking that everything that happens to man is determined by the heavenly
order of the stars and planets in accordance with the way they rule at the moment
of conception and birth. This is why Job cursed his day of birth and the night when
he was conceived. He also complains against God, who laid down this governmental
order, asking why He did not so arrange things that someone who was born under
the order that ruled when he was born should not die either in his mother's womb
or at the moment of birth so as not to suffer such evil, for it would be better for him
to die" (Metzudas David on Job 3:25).

From the fact that Job curses the DAY on which he was born but the NIGHT on
which he was conceived, the Rabbis learned that it is not fitting for man and wife to
come together by day (Niddah 16b).

Verses 1-8 elaborate on Job's curse of his day of birth and night of conception,
while in verses 9ff he explains WHY he was cursing them – because it would have
been better for him to have died in the womb or immediately after being born
rather than having to endure his present suffering. In verses 12-18 Job explains
that death would have been better because – according to his understanding –
death is a "sleep" and a "rest" (v 12). In verses 12-18 Job expresses how death is
the great equalizer, because death comes to all, great and small.

In verses 19-25 Job asks why God gives life to those who are suffering when in fact
they are longing to die.

V 24: "For the thing that I had feared has come upon me…" We are all
uncomfortably aware that but for the grace of God, we could also be in the same
terrible position as Job, and indeed many of those suffering from illness and other
troubles and afflictions are only too familiar with Job's frustration at having been
born and his longing to die.

Chapter 4
Eliphaz of Teiman's reply to Job is contained in chapters 4 and 5.

Rashi (on Job 4:1) states that Eliphaz is identical with Eliphaz, the firstborn son of
Esau (Genesis 36:4) and that because he was raised on Isaac's lap he merited that
the Shechinah rested upon him. Rashi states that Teiman (=Yemen/Aden) was part
of the land belonging to Esau.

Vv 2-6: Eliphaz chastises Job for complaining against God's government of the
world. Job had chastised others and given them support in their suffering, but now
that his turn came to suffer he was already "exhausted" and unable to come to
terms with it and accept that it was just. In verse 6 Eliphaz says that this showed
retroactively that the "fear" of God Job had displayed in better times was not based
on pure love but rather on the expectation of reward.

Vv 7-11: Eliphaz argues that calamity and suffering come upon men because of
their sins and evil.

V 12: "Now a word came stealthily to me…" Having chastised Job for complaining
about his suffering, Eliphaz now states that on Job's account a prophecy has been
sent to him. Verses 12-16 evoke the way in which he experienced the prophecy.
Rashi (on v 12) comments that the prophecy came in this stolen manner "because
holy spirit is not revealed to the prophets of the heathens in a manifest way [as in
the case of the prophets of Israel, who say, "Thus said HaShem…"]. This can be
compared to the case of a king who has a wife and a concubine. When he comes
into his wife he comes openly, but when he comes into his concubine he does so
secretly and with stealth. This is how the Holy One blessed be He comes to the
prophets of the heathens. 'And God came to Avimelech in a dream of the night'
(Gen. 20:3), and this was how He came to Laban (Gen. 31:24). Likewise Bilaam
was 'fallen and with open eyes' (Numbers 24:4)… But in the case of he prophets of
Israel, it is written: 'Mouth to mouth shall I speak in him, in a vision and not in
riddles' (Numbers 12:5).

Verses 17-24 express the content of Eliphaz's prophetic message for Job. This is
that it is not possible that man could be more pure and righteous than God who
made him. It is inconceivable that a fully-rounded and mature man who had to
establish some system for governing people would arrange things such that good
and bad people would be treated in one and the same way. If so, how could anyone
imagine that God would have given over everything into the hands of the heavenly
order of stars and planets – for in that case the righteous and the wicked would be
treated in exactly the same way, and then man (who would not arrange things in
such a way) would be more righteous than God (see Metzudas David on Job 4:17).

Chapter 5
Job Chapter 5 is the continuation of the speech of Eliphaz which began in the
previous chapter. In the Massoretic Hebrew text there is no break of any kind
between the two chapters.

The previous chapter had ended with the prophetic message that Eliphaz had
received for Job – that man is not more righteous than God and that His order of
government must be just. Rashi (on Job 5:1) explains that Eliphaz' prophecy ended
at the end of the previous chapter and now he returns to his rebuke.

Ch 5 V 1: "Call now – is there anyone that will answer you?" – Metzudas David
explains that Eliphaz is rebuking Job, saying that he has become a disgrace in God's
eyes for kicking in protest against his suffering, so that now neither God nor any
interceding angel ("the holy ones") will answer him.

V 2: "For anger kills the foolish man…" – "For the anger of a fool like you kills him,
because if you had kept silent God's attribute of compassion might have restored to
you" (Rashi). When we become angry in the face of suffering, we make it
impossible for ourselves to come to terms with it, and our life is simply consumed
through our own folly.

Vv 3-5: Eliphaz returns to his theme that Job must have sinned, because
wickedness may succeed temporarily but cannot endure forever. Eventually
someone who oppressed and exploited others is punished by having his children
become helpless orphans while his illicitly acquired wealth is returned to the poor
from whom it was taken.

V 6: "For affliction does not come out of the dust…" – "A blow that comes to a man
does not come for nothing and does not simply spring out of the dust" (Rashi).

V 7: "For man is born to trouble" – "for it is not possible that he will not sin and as
a result receive trouble in order to receive his punishment. Man is not like the
'sparks that fly upwards' – these are the angels and spirits, who fly upwards and
are not from the lower realms such that the Satan and the evil inclination could rule
over them" (Rashi).

Ramban (on vv 7-8) writes that the two verses are connected together: Man is born
to a life of exertion and anger and he cannot be saved from this, because God
Himself brings this upon him just as He has made it the nature of the 'sparks' to fly
upwards. "But I would seek to God…" (v 8): It is impossible to ascribe this
governmental system to any planet or constellation but only to HaShem alone, for
He deals with men's sins justly.

In vv 9ff Eliphaz begins recounting the praises of God, who governs even the rains
with Providence. V 10 is cited in Taanis 10a as proof that God Himself sends the
rains in the Land, i.e. of Israel, while the HOUTZOS, the outside lands, are sent
rains through His agents. These are aspects of His Providence. God lowers and
raises up, frustrating the thoughts of the crafty (v 12) who wrongly believe that
they can succeed in their devices. But God knows that the frustration of their plans
and the suffering He sends them is for their own ultimate good (Ramban).
V 16: "So the poor person has hope and iniquity stops up her mouth" – everything
works out justly in the end.

V 17: The moral of Eliphaz' entire speech is that if a person suffers, it is for his own
good, and he must not reject God's rebuke. It is God alone who sends suffering (v
18) and He too has the power to heal, saving the person from many evils. The
seven evils from which He saves are: hunger, war, slander, robbers, famine causing
unaffordable prices, wild animals and stumbling blocks (Metzudas).

Vv 24ff: If only Job will accept his suffering with patience and humility, Eliphaz
promises him that all will be well, his offspring will multiply and flourish and he will
die satisfied.

Metzudas David summarizes Eliphaz' answer to Job as follows: "Eliphaz asserts

definitively that everything comes through Providence, bringing proof from the way
the wicked fall and cannot rise up, whereas the righteous are not destroyed in this
way. Eliphaz refutes Job's view that everything is entrusted to the mechanistic
order of the stars and planets and that the righteous and wicked both suffer one
and the same fate. If a human were to devise such a system it would be considered
to be abominable even though man is imperfect and cannot even be compared to
the angels let alone to the Holy One. It is inconceivable that there could be any
injustice in God's way of governing the world. If there are things that seem to come
in an arbitrary way as a result of the mechanistic order of the heavens, the truth is
that everything comes about through Providence and it is only because of the
limitations of human understanding that we are unable to know their real meaning.

As we follow the successive arguments and counter-arguments of Job and his

companions, it will be wise to bear in mind that we are not expected to determine
which side is right and which is wrong. The purpose of the complex weave of
arguments and counter-arguments in this sacred text is to explore and help us
understand the many different and often contradictory aspects of the profoundly
difficult question of why people suffer.

Chapter 6
Job's reply to Eliphaz begins in chapter 6 and continues to the end of chapter 7.
Eliphaz had criticized Job's fool's anger (5:2). Now Job answers that his pain and
anger simply cannot be measured and this is why he has been driven to distraction
(ch 6 vv 2-3) because of God's terrible chastisement.

V 5: "Does the wild ass bray when he has grass…? – "Am I crying out for nothing?
Even a foolish animal doesn't bray when it has food" (Rashi).

V 6: "Can that which is unsavory be eaten without salt…" – "Do you really believe
that Eliphaz' arguments can be accepted when they contain no substance?" (Rashi).

V 7: According to the commentators (Rashi, Metzudas), Job expresses now the

disgust of his soul at his repulsive affliction of boils.

Vv 8f: This is why he begs and hopes for death, and he is not afraid of this because
he knows that he has not denied the words of the Holy One – he has not committed
any sin.

V 11ff: "What is my strength that I should hope?" Eliphaz had advised Job that if he
would only accept his suffering stoically all would be well in the end, but Job (who
was actually going through the suffering rather than merely observing it from the
outside like his companions) explains that he has no strength to wait for the end
because the suffering is so intolerable.

Vv 15-21: Job feels betrayed by his friends, comparing them to a river that flows
abundantly when the snows melt but which disappears in the heat of summer
precisely when people need it, causing them only disappointment.

Vv 22-23: Job tells his companions that he has not asked them for any gift of
money, or to do anything themselves to save him from his adversary.

V 24: All he is asking them is to teach and show him the meaning of his suffering.

Vv 25f: What are all their words of reproof worth if they cannot show him this?

Vv 28: Job pleads with his companions to hear him out carefully and see his
innocence.

Chapter 7
Chapter 7 continues Job's reply to Eliphaz, which started at the beginning of
Chapter 6. At the end of Chapter 6 Job had protested his innocence of any sin that
could be accounted as the cause of his suffering, asking his companions to examine
carefully and see that he had committed no wrong. Now in Chapter 7 Job counters
Eliphaz' argument that if he would only submit to his suffering and accept its
purgative power, God would in the end "settle" with him, protect him from trouble
and evil and show him goodness.

Vv 1-2: "Is there not a limit to man's service on earth…" Man's life has an end: he
is like a hired laborer whose contract is for a limited period and who longs for it to
come to an end. Job is unable to wait for the good end promised by Eliphaz
because his suffering is so great that his only hope is to die.

In vv 3-4 Job depicts the terrible suffering caused by his illness. His pain keeps him
awake all night hoping for relief in the morning, and when the relief does not come
he tosses and turns on his bed all day hoping for relief in the evening.

In v 5 Job depicts the horrible effects of the boils with which he is afflicted, which
are full of maggots, while his skin is cracked and disintegrating.

Vv 6-10: Job feels that his life is "slipping through his fingers" at a rate faster than
that of the weaver's shuttle, and there is therefore no hope of a better future.

Vv 7-9: "My eye shall no more see good… As a cloud is consumed and vanishes
away, so he who goes down to the grave shall come up no more." From here the
Rabbis learned that Job denied in the resurrection of the dead (Rashi & Metzudas
David ad loc.; Bava Basra 16a). If death is but a sleep (Job 3:12) and there is no
afterlife, what hope is there of a better future for Job if his life in this world is
slipping away consumed by his suffering?

V 11: "I ALSO shall not restrain my mouth." Job is saying that if God will not leave
him alone and refrain from hurting him, he too will not restrain himself from crying
out over His way of dealing with him. If he complains, it is because of the terrible
bitterness of his soul.
V 12: "Am I a sea or a sea monster that You set a watch against me?" The sea is
limited by the shore, and the sea monster cannot move beyond the depths of the
sea. Similarly Job feels God has set a watch against him from which he cannot
escape, because of the Satan, who has been charged to ensure that despite his
suffering the soul will not go out of him, so that there is no refuge for him in death
(see Rashi).

Vv 13-16: Job is sick of this life of suffering, in which he finds no relief or comfort
but only anguish. He would much prefer to die.

Vv 17-18: Job now challenges Eliphaz' argument that everything is under God's
Providence, asking how it could be fitting that God would constantly watch over
man and pay attention to his deeds when man is so lowly and despicable.

V 18: "That You should remember him every morning and try him at every
moment." From this verse the Rabbis learned that man is judged every day and at
every moment (Rosh HaShanah 16a).

V 19 is the desperate cry of the suffering invalid: How long before You will leave me
alone? You do not even give me a moment to swallow!

Vv 20-21: Job now asks how it could affect or harm God even if he had sinned. If
God knew from the very outset of Job's creation that this is how it would be, why
did He create him simply in order to take vengeance from him like the target of an
arrow? Why can He not simply take away his sin since his life will soon be over?

Chapter 8
The second of Job's three companions, Bildad HaShoohi, now makes his
contribution to the first cycle of arguments and counterarguments, answering Job
by asking how it could be possible that God would corrupt justice (v 3).

V 4: If Job's children died, this must have been because of their sinful life of
constant banqueting (Metzudas David).

Vv 5-7: If, as Job claims, he is innocent, then God will surely "settle" with him in
the end so that although he is suffering now, he will enjoy relief later on.

Vv 8-10: Bildad adduces the wisdom handed down from the earliest generations
based on their experience and investigations.

Vv 11ff: Bildad explains this received wisdom through the metaphor of the reed
grass and rushes, which expresses the evanescence of the success of the wicked.
As long as the reeds and rushes have an abundant supply of water they flourish,
but as soon as the water disappears they dry up and wither. Similarly the wicked
flourish as long as the hour "laughs" at them, but as soon as their measure is
complete, the success in which they trusted turns out to be as flimsy as a spider's
web.

There is a difference in the way vv 16-19 are explained by Rashi and Ramban on
the one hand as opposed to the way they are explained by Metzudas David on the
other.

Rashi and Ramban explain vv 16-19 as a continuation of the metaphor of the reed
grass and rushes. No matter how extensively their roots may spread, as soon as
they are consumed they disappear for ever and it is as if they had never been in
the place where they grew.

However according to Metzudas David's interpretation, vv 16-19 contain a second

metaphor expressing how the righteous endure and are regenerated, as opposed to
the wicked who were compared to the reed grass that quickly dries up and
disappears. Thus Metzudas David interprets v 16 as referring to a mighty tree that
remains moist even when it stands in the sun, and its branches spread over the
whole garden where it is planted. Its extensive roots reach down to deep deposits
of water. Metzudas David explains vv 17-18 as saying that such a tree is so strong
that even if it is transplanted so that it is as if it never existed in its first place, even
so, it has the power to regenerate itself and grow even better in the new place to
which it is transplanted. According to Metzudas David, the metaphor comes to
teach that even the trouble that strikes the righteous, who are compared to a
mighty tree with extensive roots, is actually for their benefit because since the tree
is intrinsically strong. Even when it is transplanted elsewhere, it still has the power
to grow and flourish. Likewise even when the Tzaddikim are "transplanted" into a
life of suffering, it can still be turned to their advantage even though we cannot
know how this is so because of the limitations of human understanding.

Vv 20: Bildad's inference from this received wisdom of the early generations is that
if Job is truly pure and innocent, God will not reject him and eventually the tables
will be turned on his adversaries.

Chapter 9
In his speech in the previous chapter, Bildad, like Eliphaz before him, had argued
that everything is under God's direct providence and that if the wicked enjoy
goodness, it will turn out to be to their detriment, while the evil that befalls the
righteous will turn out to be for their good.

In answering Bildad in this and the following chapter, Job's main complaint is that
he is pure and righteous and that suffering has come upon him despite his
innocence. Job agrees with Bildad that God cuts off the wicked, but argues that the
righteous also do not escape from His hand and that He deals in the same way with
the pure and with the wicked.

V 2: "…but how should a man be just before God?" – Metzudas David explains: "My
entire complaint is: What kind of reward is this if a person acts justly before God
and goes in His ways yet is also left to the government of the heavenly system of
stars and planets and suffers the same fate of the wicked?"

V 3: But if the righteous man wants to argue with God over the loss of his reward,
God will not even answer one out of a thousand of his questions.

V 4: God is wise to perfection and supremely powerful, and it is therefore

impossible for a lowly mortal to argue against Him.

Vv 5-10 evoke the supreme power of God. He makes earthquakes (vv 5-6) and
nobody really knows why they are sent. "He commands the sun and it does not
rise" (v 7) – "The darkening of the sun through God's decree is a metaphor for the
destruction of one empire and the rise of another" (Ramban). God's wondrous ways
are beyond the comprehension of the human mind.
V 11: "Even though He is constantly passing before me and the whole world is full
of His glory, I cannot see Him and even though He passes before me I am unable
to understand his form or likeness" (Metzudas David).

V 12: He can snatch away a man with great power and speed and nobody can
challenge Him and ask why He does this.

Vv 13-15: Even the celestial angels could not come to the help of proud Egypt
(=Rahab). How much less so can a weak human like Job challenge God. Metzudas
David notes that at times Job asserts that he does want to argue with God, while at
other times he says he is unable to argue with Him: this is the way of a person who
is wracked with pain and one time says one thing and another time something else.

V 16: "If I called and He answered me, I would not believe that he had listened to
my voice" – Job is saying that it seems so inconceivable to him that God would
listen to him that even if it happened, he would not believe it. Job could not believe
that everything he was suffering was under God's detailed providence, as he goes
on to explain:

V 17: "For he crushes me with a storm and multiplies my wounds without cause." If
a storm wind comes, it causes suffering to all and does not discriminate between
the righteous and the wicked – Job felt that all his suffering was for nothing.

V 19: "If the suffering that he has brought upon me is because of His great power
and might, I know that He is all-powerful and nothing is held back from Him. But if
my suffering has been sent through the attribute of justice, if only someone would
appoint a day when we can come together to judge and determine who is in the
right" (Metzudas David).

Vv 20-21: Job holds resolutely that he is innocent, but feels unable to stand up to
God and assert his innocence because in his human weakness and lowliness he will
never be able to make his point.

V 22: "Therefore I said, It is all one: he destroys the innocent and the wicked." This
is Job's argument against Bildad, who said that the suffering of the righteous is for
their good, which is not so in the case of the wicked. Job asserts that suffering
afflicts the righteous and the wicked equally and does not discriminate between
them. The "scourge" (Heb. SHOT) that strikes suddenly and laughs at the innocent
(v 23) is the SATan (Rashi).

V 24: "The earth is given into the hands of the wicked. He covers the face of its
judges. If this is not so, who will get up and deny it?" – "As long as the wicked man
lives, the earth is his to do has he desires, to rob and oppress, and because of his
great power, even the judges of the earth hide their eyes from him so as not to
look upon his deeds" (Metzudas David).

Vv 25-31: Job is haunted by the speed with which his life is slipping away. He is
convinced that even if he holds his peace and stops complaining about his unjust
suffering, God will still not send him relief, because even if he were to repent and
chastise himself to cleanse himself of any sin, God will still send him down to the
grave and never restore him to his former self. If he cries out and tries to justify
himself, he will still come out as if a wicked man, while if he remains silent he will
gain nothing. "Woe to me if I speak, and woe to me if I don't" (Ramban).

Vv 32ff: Job yearns for an impartial arbitrator before whom he can argue against
God without feeling fear of God's overweening power and might.
 Chapter 10
One cannot but admire Job's unflinching boldness in refusing to accept his
companions' view that he must have sinned and insisting on his own innocence.
Only Job himself knew what was truly in his heart and whether or not he had
sinned. For this reason, whenever he wants to press the question of why the
righteous suffer, he complains about his own suffering rather than about that of
anyone else, because he could never know from the outside if that other person
was truly righteous or not (see Ramban on Job 9:25).

V 2: "I say to God, Do not condemn me, let me know for what reason You are
contending with me" – Job is complaining that although he is righteous, he is
suffering in the same way as the wicked deserve to suffer. This is why he wants
God to explain to him the reason for his own suffering in order not to equated with
the wicked.

V 3: Why does God oppress the righteous – the work of His hands – yet gives
success to the wicked?

V 4: Surely God sees into the heart of each one – if so why does He treat the
righteous no differently from the wicked?

V 9: God formed Job like a potter makes a vessel out of clay: why does He now
want to return him to the dust?

Vv 10ff: After having formed Job's body so wondrously, why is He now destroying
him?

V 15: "If I am wicked, woe is me, and if I am righteous, I cannot lift up my head…"
Job again emphasizes that he sees no difference between the fate of the wicked
and that of the righteous.

Vv 16ff: Again Job wishes that he had never been born or that he had died at birth
and gone straight to the grave instead of having his present life of futile suffering.

Chapter 11
The third of Job's companions, Tzophar the Na'amatite, now answers him. Ramban
(on Job 11:2) explains that "Tzophar's intention was to give support to the
argument of his companions that Job had sinned and this was why all this evil had
come upon him. The new idea that he introduces is that some of God's deeds are
revealed while some are concealed. For God overlooks the sins of the wicked and
although He sees their evil, He does not at first pay attention in case they will
repent. All this is because of His mercy over His works. If He benefits the wicked
and shows them mercy, how much more so will He not harm the righteous. The
only reason why suffering has come upon Job is to prompt him to direct his heart to
repentance and to stretch out his hands to God in prayer, and in the end he will
attain tranquility. For the tranquility of the wicked turns into calamity in the end if
they do not repent. Thus Job's problem over the cases of the wicked people who
enjoy a good life turns into a proof of God's mercy over His creations – for He does
not reject the work of His hands. All the more so will He not harm the righteous."

Vv 5-6: But oh that God would speak… and He would tell you the secrets of wisdom,
for wisdom is manifold!" The Hebrew phrase for "wisdom is manifold" is KIPHLAYIM
(="there is double…") LE-TOOSHIYAH (="…to wisdom"). The Hebrew word
TOOSHIYAH is from the root YESH, "it exists", because God's wisdom is forever and
never returns to nothingness in the way everything else does (Metzudas Tzion). In
the words of Ramban (on v 6), "All that visibly exists in the world is double and
contains both revealed wisdom and hidden wisdom. That is to say, God's
Providence over the creations is good both on the revealed and concealed level."
Tzophar tells Job that God has exacted less of a payment for his iniquity than is
warranted, and this is proof that He will not exact any more than is warranted.

Vv 7-10: God's wisdom is unfathomable and nobody can call Him to account for
what He does.

V 11: God sees men's iniquity and if He appears to pay no attention, it is because
He shows patience in case they will repent (see Rashi).

V 12: Even an empty, foolish man can gain himself a heart and subject himself self-
reckoning and return to his Creator. Man starts life as a wild ass's colt, but he has
the power to teach himself to be a new man and follow a good path (see Rashi,
Metzudas David).

Vv 20: If Job will come to his senses and distance himself from any sins he may
have committed, his suffering will pass and he will have a good end.

Chapter 12
Job's answer to Tzophar occupies the whole of Chapters 12-14. Job's opening words
can be construed as if he is denigrating his companions for thinking that they alone
have wisdom. However Ramban prefers to interpret that Job shows respect for his
companions, who were the choicest sages of their generation and could fittingly be
called a "nation" since other people were animals compared to them. Nevertheless,
Job protests that he is no less than them, and he also knows that God is exalted
and concealed from the understanding of His creations, who cannot fathom His
ways (Ramban on Job 12:2-3).

Job complains that he has become a laughing stock to his friends, who maintain
that he must have been wicked when in fact he knows he is innocent.

Vv 5ff: Job suggests that his friends, smugly satisfied with their own success, show
contempt for him because he has stumbled. He implies that as they sit back,
unscathed and complacent, they are like the wicked who enjoy tranquility and
prosperity.

Vv 7ff: "But ask now the beasts and they shall teach you…" Tzophar and his
companions had spoken as if they had a monopoly of wisdom, but Job retorts that
the unfathomable depth of God's wisdom can be inferred by all from the animals,
birds and fish of the sea in all their manifold variety.

V 11: "Does not the ear try words as the palate tastes food…" Many things can be
understood from experience or through reason. V 12: "With aged men is wisdom…"
Through many years of experience men can become wise: wisdom is not
exclusively in the hands of Job's companions.

Vv 14ff: Job is no less aware than Tzophar of the paradoxical nature of God's ways.
These beautiful verses in which Job depicts how the high and mighty are brought
down and the wise are shown to be ignorant serves as an introduction to the next
part of Job's answer to Tzophar, which comes in the following chapters, because he
wants to break out of simple explanations and conventional categories in seeking
an answer to his question about why the innocent suffer.

Chapter 13
Chapters 13 and 14 are the continuation of Job's answer to Tzophar, which began
at the start of chapter 12. Tzophar had been the third of Job's companions to
address him, and his was the last of the first cycle of speeches. Having heard the
arguments of all three of his companions, Job now addresses his answer to all three
collectively.

In the opening section of his reply in the previous chapter, Job had denied
Tzophar's view that he had attained little wisdom and that Tzophar and his
companions were wiser, Now Job castigates the three of them for "flattering" God
and finding justifications for His chastisements, as if Job was a great sinner when in
fact he was not. Job refutes Tzophar's opinion that his suffering had come upon him
because he was not as wise as he should have been on his level. Job argues that,
being born in and through impurity, it is impossible for any man to be completely
pure and it would not make sense that God would punish him because of this
(Metzudas David on Job 14:22).

Chapter 13 v 1: "Lo, my eye has seen all this…" Job protests that he is no less wise
than his companions.

V 3: "Yet I would speak to the Almighty…" Job wants to get to the real truth and
not accept his companions' glib answers.

V 4: "But you are forgers of lies…" Granted that the wicked suffer because of their
sins, Job maintains that his companions' answers still fail to explain why the
innocent suffer, and therefore their answers are lies.

V 7: "Will you speak wickedly for God…?" It is wickedness to condemn an innocent

man in order to justify God (Metzudas David).

V 8: "Will you show Him partiality…?" If the companions show favor to God in this
debate and satisfy themselves with easy answers in order not to impugn His honor,
this is an affront to truth and justice.

V 13: "Hold your peace, let me alone, that I may speak and let come on me what
will." With extraordinary boldness and courage, Job is determined to press his
question without compromise.

V 15: "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him; but I will maintain my own ways
before Him." Job will prove himself innocent, no matter what he may have to
endure to do so.

V 20: "Only do not do two things to me…" The two things Job asks God not to do to
him are enumerated in v 21: (1) Not to deal him any blow during their "debate" so
as not to throw him into confusion. (2) Not to frighten him so that he will not
shrivel into silence out of fear (cf. Metzudas David).

Vv 23f: Job returns to his fundamental challenge to God to make known to him
what sin or transgression he has committed to deserve such suffering, because he
is not aware of any (Metzudas David).
V 28: "And he is consumed like rottenness, like a garment eaten by moths" – "This
body that you are persecuting will be consumed like rottenness: it does not befit
Your glory to persecute me!" (Rashi).

Chapter 14
Vv 1-3: "Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble… And do
you open Your eyes on such a one and bring me into judgment with You?" Since
man is so fragile and evanescent, Job questions why God watches over and judges
a creature as lowly as this.

V 4: "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one!" Man comes from a
putrid, impure drop – how is it possible for man to be pure? There is not a single
man who is entirely pure: even the righteous are conceived in sin (cf. Psalms 51:7;
Metzudas David, Ramban).

V 6: Again Job appeals to God to take away his suffering and let him live out the
remainder of his short life in peace before he is ready to die.

V 7: "For a tree has hope…" Even after a tree is cut down, the stump can still put
forth new shoots and regenerate, but this is not so in the case of a man:

V 10: "But man dies and is laid low; yes, man perishes, and where is he?"

V 14: "If a man dies, shall he live again?" If man could to come back to life after
death this might provide the basis for an answer to Job's question about the
meaning and purpose of the suffering of the innocent. However, while reincarnation
and the resurrection of the dead are articles of our faith, in this life we see no clear
and indisputable proof of them, leaving us in our existential anguish about the
futility of our lives.

V 19: Just as stones are worn away by water until nothing is left, so man's life is
wasted away.

V 22: "Only when his flesh is on him does he feel pain, and while his soul is within
him does he mourn." Since man is condemned to this life of pain and futility, Job
pleads with God to let him alone. The Talmud interprets this verse very differently
from the way it is rendered in English, learning that after a person's burial the soul
hovers over the body, weeping and mourning and feeling the very bites of the
maggots (Shabbos 152a-b).

Chapter 15
Job's lengthy speech in Chapters 12-14 brought to an end the first cycle of
arguments and counter-arguments by Job and his three companions. Eliphaz'
answer to Job in our present chapter begins the second of the three cycles of
speeches, in which each of the companions successively addresses and is answered
by Job.

Metzudas David in his comment on Job 15:35, explains that in his present speech
Eliphaz is challenging Job for having said he had not sinned when in fact these very
words cause others to sin even more because they plant in people's hearts the idea
that no-one watches over men or judges them for their actions. As to Job's
complaints about his suffering after all the good he had done, Eliphaz answers that
he had already received his reward for his good deeds whereas he still had sins and
transgressions in hand for which he was now paying the penalty. Eliphaz brings
proof of God's providence over man from the way that the wicked eventually fall
without being able to rise up, and even when times are good for them, they are
filled with anxiety and apprehension about the evil that is destined to come upon
them, which is not so in the case of the righteous.

Ramban in his comment on Job 15:2 points out that in his previous speech (in
chapter 4), Eliphaz had not explicitly condemned Job but had simply urged him to
bear God's reproof without chafing. However, now that Job had sought to justify
himself and debate with God, Eliphaz argues that Job's very words show that he
was wicked and lacked the proper fear of God.

V 1: "Should a wise man utter windy knowledge…." In Job's answer to Tzophar he

had chastised his companions, telling them that they had no monopoly of wisdom
(Job 12:2ff). Now Eliphaz retorts that Job's words do not befit a wise man.

V 4: "Indeed, you cast off fear and you slight the prayer that is made before God…"
Eliphaz is saying that despite his great wisdom, Job is undermining people's fear of
God (which ought to make them afraid to sin) in saying that everything that befalls
people is determined mechanistically by the heavenly order of stars and planets,
implying that there is no such thing as any reward for righteousness or punishment
for sin. In addition, Eliphaz accuses Job of discouraging people from praying to God,
because if everything is determined mechanistically there is no place for prayer
since it has no power to change anything, and doing such a thing is in itself a great
sin (Metzudas David).

V 5: "For your mouth utters your iniquity…" – "The very words of your mouth teach
others to sin, because by saying it is futile to serve God you encourage other
people to hold by the same opinion and to sin just like you" (Metzudas David).

V 6: "Your own mouth condemns you…" Job's companions do not need to condemn
him because his sin is glaringly obvious from his own words.

Vv 7-10: Job had accused his companions of speaking as if they had a monopoly of
wisdom, but Eliphaz retorts that Job was the one who spoken as if he had a
monopoly of wisdom, and this is manifestly untrue.

V 12: "Are the consolations of God too small for you when a matter is hidden within
you?" Metzudas David explains this verse as follows: "Why should you complain
over your suffering just because you practiced goodness and righteousness to some
extent. Is it a small thing to you that God has already given you consolation over
the pain of your suffering through the goodness and success that you enjoyed
previously, whereby you received sufficient reward for the good you did. But you
still have sin hidden and concealed within you and now you must receive the
punishment for your evil just as you previously received a reward for your
goodness. Indeed that previous reward should itself be your consolation for the
suffering that has now come upon you."

V 14: "…and how can one born of a woman be righteous?" – "How can any man
claim that he is so righteous that God has perverted justice so as to punish him for
nothing?" (Metzudas David).

V 17: "I will tell you: hear me…" The lesson that Eliphaz wants to teach Job is
contained in v 20ff: "All the days of the wicked man, he is in travail…" The apparent
success of the wicked is illusory, because even during their time of good fortune
they are filled with fear and anxiety, and eventually calamity is bound to strike.

V 27: "Because he has covered his face with his fat and has put collops of fat on his
flanks." It is noteworthy that obesity is the leading health problem in all of today's
advanced societies.

Vv 29ff: Eliphaz concludes his speech by emphasizing that the wicked cannot
succeed forever and that calamity always comes in the end.

Chapter 16
Ramban on Job 16:2 states that Job's answer to Eliphaz in Chapters 16-17 does not
contain any new ideas. Job only says to his companions that their words are vain
and empty and that in order to offer him comfort they are resorting to falsehood in
arguing that the destruction of the wicked is intentional in order to carry out justice.
Job complains over his pains and sickness, which he considers to have come upon
him for nothing, and this is his proof that there is no providence. He complains
against his companions for denying his innocence, for in his own eyes he is
righteous.

V 4: If you were in my place, would I speak to you in the same way?

V 6: "Though I speak, my pain is not assuaged, and even if I forebear, will any of
my suffering go away?" Job is saying that it is not true that his words of complaint
are undermining people's fear of God and are themselves responsible for bringing
suffering upon him. For just as if he speaks, his pain is not assuaged, so if he will
refrain from speaking it will not reduce his suffering. This is because, being
innocent, his suffering has come upon him for no reason and it cannot be expected
to disappear merely through not complaining about it (see Metzudas David).

Vv 7ff: Job complains that not only is he suffering because of the afflictions that
were sent to him, but also because his enemy (=the Satan, Rashi on v 9) is
persecuting him by sending his companions to abuse and denigrate him.

Vv 12ff: Job further depicts his terrible suffering, all of which in his opinion has
come upon him for no reason (v 17).

V 19: Job's companions may think he is a sinner, but Job himself is confident that
God in heaven will testify to his innocence.

Chapter 17
Our present chapter completes Job's answer to Eliphaz' second speech, which
began in Chapter 16. Job continues to bemoan his lot, the pain of which is
exacerbated by what he perceives as the mockery of his companions.

V 3: "Give now a pledge…." Job turns from his companions to address the Creator
directly (Rashi), appealing to Him to give him a guarantee that he will be able to
pursue his disputation to the very end and arrive at the truth.

V 4: Job complains that his companions' hearts are closed to true wisdom and that
God's glory will not be enhanced through their arguments (Rashi).
V 5: His companions have used slippery talk in their debates with him and they will
be punished as a result, because their children will languish (Rashi).

V 6: "He has made me also a byword of the nations and I shall be a horror to every
face." Job has indeed become the proverbial archetype of human suffering. By
simply switching around the order of the middle two Hebrew letters of Job's name,
EEYOV turns into OIYEIV, "an enemy" – as if God has turned him into His enemy
and is persecuting him.

V 8: "Upright men are astonished at this, and the innocent stirs himself up against
the godless." Job asserts that if truly righteous people were to hear the mockery of
his companions, they would be shocked.

V 9: "Yet the righteous will hold on his way, and he that has clean hands will grow
stronger." Eliphaz had accused Job of undermining people's fear of God through
implying that there is no reward for righteousness and no retribution for sin (Job
15:4). Now Job retorts that the opposite is true. "The righteous man will not
abandon his pathway thinking that it is futile to serve God, because he knows that
he will receive goodness – the delights of the soul. One whose hands are clean of
robbery and exploitation will become even more resolute in his path when he sees
how easily worldly acquisitions and success can be totally lost. This will make him
despise them and place his hope only in the attainment of success in his spiritual
endeavors, keeping well away from engaging in the oppression of his fellow man"
(Metzudas David).

V 10: Job is certain that eventually his friends will come to realize that the truth is
with him.

Vv 11ff: Again Job complains how all his hopes in life have been dashed, and how
his companions' mockery turns his nights into day – because the pain it causes him
drives away his sleep – while the light of day is short because of his troubles, which
are dark as night (Rashi on v 12).

Vv 13-16: Contrary to his companions' promises that if he will repent, God will give
him a good end, Job complains that his only hope is to die in order to find relief
from his pain. "And where, then, is my hope?"

Chapter 18
Bildad HaShoohi, the second of the three companions in order of seniority, now
gives his answer to Job in this second cycle of their speeches. Metzudas David (on
Job 18:21) summarizes Bildad's argument as follows: "He answers Job by saying
that he cannot agree to his claim that God does not watch over the world
providentially, despite Job's cries that he is suffering despite having committed no
crime such as to deserve it. Bildad brings proof from the way the fall of the wicked
comes about through their very own counsels and stratagems to the point that their
name is forgotten. This does not happen in the case of the righteous. As to the evil
that has come upon Job, it is likely that it has come to him because he fell short in
the service of God and attained less wisdom than was befitting to a man of such
abundant understanding as he had. In this respect he was equivalent to a sinner."

V 2: The commentators differ as to whether Bildad is addressing Job, telling him to

stop interrupting the companions but to hear them out in order to understand what
they are saying (Rashi) or addressing his companions, asking why they put an end
to their words in order to give Job the opportunity to answer each one in turn, since
there is nothing to what he is saying and it is worthless to hear him out (Ramban).

V 3: Bildad asks rhetorically why Job looks on his companions as if they are on the
level of animals, without wisdom?

V 4: Bildad castigates Job for tearing himself to shreds through his rage and anger
over his suffering. "Shall the earth be abandoned because of you or shall the Rock
be removed from His place?" – "Just because you are crying out that you are
righteous and that you are suffering for no crime, why should we therefore
conclude that the earth has been abandoned to the rule of the heavenly order of
stars and planets and that the Creator has withdrawn from the world and does not
watch over it providentially?" (Metzudas David).

Vv 5ff: In returning again to the theme of the inevitable downfall of the wicked,
Bildad once again implies that Job is guilty of some sin even though he will not
admit it. "Indeed, the light of the wicked shall be put out…" The apparent success
of the wicked (="light") will be put out and turn into darkness.

Vv 8ff: "For he is cast into a net by his own feet…" The very counsels and
stratagems employed by the wicked contain hidden traps that bring about their
downfall.

Vv 13-14: The children of the wicked shall be consumed by "the firstborn of death"
– this is the angel of death (Rashi). "He shall be cut off from the tent of his
security" – this is the sinner's wife (Metzudas David). "And shall be brought to the
king of terrors" – this is the king of the demons (Metzudas David).

Vv 16-21: In the end, the wicked face total extirpation of themselves and their seed
for ever.

Chapter 19
Our present chapter contains the whole of Job's answer to Bildad HaShoohi in this
second round of his exchanges with his three companions.

Ramban (on Job 19:2) comments: "In this answer Job does not innovate any new
idea but complains at length about his pains and the evils that have come upon him.
Again he protests that they have come upon him for no reason and that they are a
perversion of justice. His intention is to negate the opinion of his companions that
his suffering has been sent as a rebuke, and to weep and mourn over his soul in
the way that people do when in pain. He takes his terrible illness as proof of his
opinion that man is not under God's watchful providence. Job ends up by saying to
his companions that they will be punished for not having wept with him over the
harsh time that has struck him and for not having been shaken over the great evils
he is suffering and the strange blows to which he is being subjected."

V 3: "These ten times you have put me to shame…" – "Up until this point in the
book Job has made five speeches and his companions have answered him
reprovingly five times. They have shamed him not only in their answers but also in
not accepting what he has had to say" (Metzudas David).

V 4: "And if indeed I have erred, my error remains with me" – "Even if I have made
some unintentional error and done something wrong, it remains with me alone for
you have never seen me commit any wrong. While it could be that I have done
some wrong privately, what claim does that give you against me – for how could
you know my hidden secrets?" (Metzudas David).

V 6: "Know therefore that God has overthrown me…" The Hebrew word rendered in
the English translations as "has overthrown me" – EEVTHANEE, is from the root LE-
AVEITH, to twist, pervert or corrupt. "God has twisted my case, and the very net
He has surrounded me with in order to trap me is a perversion of justice"
(Metzudas David).

Vv 7-11: Job complains how God is persecuting him as if he is His enemy, as if

EEYOV (Job) is His OIYEIV (="enemy").

V 12: "His troops come together… they are encamped around my tent" These are
the troops of pains that Job is suffering (Metzudas David). The "troops" also seems
to allude to his "companions", who came initially to comfort him but have been
castigating him ever more strongly.

Vv 13-19: Here Job expresses how all those that used to be close to him and show
him respect have become alienated from him because of the horrific nature of his
suffering. Unfortunately the great majority of people do indeed back away from
those going through very severe and extreme forms of suffering, especially when
their bodies have become seriously misshapen and repulsive. While the reaction is
very natural, it leaves the suffering person with a terrible sense of isolation and
shame. [Franz Kafka's story of "Metamorphosis" in which the central character has
turned into a huge beetle, much to the horror of his family, is a study in the
psychology of repulsion.]

V 20: "My bone clings to my skin and my flesh, and I have been saved by the SKIN
OF MY TEETH". Rashi explains that all Job's flesh was afflicted with boils and worms
except for the gums of his teeth.

Vv 21ff: "Have pity on me, have pity on me, O my friends…" Job's plaintive appeal
cries out until today from the ancient text.

Vv 23ff: "O that my words were now written…" It is from this verse that the Talmud
(Bava Basra 15a) infers that Job lived in the time of Moses and that the latter wrote
this book.

V 25: "But I know that my Redeemer lives…" Rashi explains that this phrase harks
back to v 22: "You, the companions, are persecuting me, but I know that my
Redeemer lives and will exact retribution from you".

V 26: "…and from my flesh I see God." Like so many verses in the Hebrew text of
Job, this verse is darshened to produce very important teachings, in particular the
idea that man can attain perceptions of God through contemplation on the form and
structure of his own physical body. At the same time, no verse ever departs from
its PSHAT (the simple meaning of the text). Rashi notes that the Hebrew name of
God in this verse is ELOAH, having the connotation of "Judgment" and punishment.
Job is facing God's harsh judgments on his own flesh. Metzudas David explains this
verse as part of Job's lament that he is going through terrible suffering despite the
fact that he had attained such an apprehension of God that he saw and perceived
Him more than he saw and perceived his own flesh.

V 29: Job concludes his answer to Bildad HaShoohi by warning his companions that
their lack of willingness to understand the meaning of his suffering would elicit
God's retribution.
 Chapter 20
Tzophar HaNaamathi, the third of the companions, now takes his turn to answer
Job in this second cycle of speeches.

Ramban (on Job 20:2) comments that in this speech Tzophar teaches only about
the calamity that awaits the wicked, which he greatly emphasizes. Ramban refers
students back to his comment on Job 11:2 where he explained that the companions
do not address Job's essential issue – why the righteous suffer – because this
problem is not very evident to the wider world since whenever someone is
destroyed it can always be said that he must have done something to make himself
liable. The suffering of the righteous is only a question to one who knows within
himself that he is genuinely righteous and guilty of no sin and that he does not
deserve the evil that has come upon him. This is why from chapter 11 onwards the
companions dwell only on the destruction of the wicked and the extirpation of their
seed, because this is the problem that was most evident to them, as it was to the
prophets, such as Jeremiah and Habakuk, who asked why the wicked prosper. And
each time the companions emphasize the retribution exacted from the wicked in
the end, Job goes back to protest his innocence, and argues further that there are
many wicked people who die in tranquility (see Ramban loc. cit.)

V 3: "I have heard the censure which insults me…" In his previous answer, Job had
complained of how deeply his companions had insulted him. Tzophar now turns this
back against him, asserting that on the contrary, it is Job who has insulted his
companions.

Vv 4ff: Tzophar emphasizes that no matter how high the wicked may ascend, they
are eventually be cast down and thrown away like excrement.

V 10: The descendants of the wicked man will have to conciliate the very poor
people whom he oppressed: he will have to return everything he took unjustly.

Vv 12-13: The wicked person may secretly nurse his sinister plans, keeping them to
himself so that nobody will be able to thwart them. But on the day of his
destruction, "his food will be turned in his bowels" (v 14). He will have to vomit out
all that he swallowed (v 15).

V 27: The very heavens will reveal the iniquity of the villain. "This is the portion of
a wicked man from God" (v 29).

Chapter 21
Job's answer to Tzophar, contained in our present chapter, is his last speech in the
second cycle of arguments and counter-arguments between Job and his
companions, which began with Eliphaz' second speech contained in Chapter 15.

Ramban (on Job 21:2) explains: In his present speech in answer to Tzophar, Job
emphasizes that there are wicked people who have it good in this world because of
their wealth and possessions, status, children and peace of mind. Job mocks his
companions for arguing that the seed of the wicked is cut off after them, seeking to
demolish their claims with undeniable proofs. Earlier, he had argued with all three
of his companions that he was innocent of wrongdoing, but they would not accept
this on account of the fact that the suffering of the righteous is not a self-evident
philosophical problem. This is because any time a person goes to ruin, it can always
be said that he sinned and rebelled. The companions also argued that if one sees a
wicked person who has it good, it can always be said that he will be destroyed in
the end and likewise his seed after one or more generations. The companions had
accused Job of hidden sins in order to establish his guilt and they warned him that
the seed of the wicked will eventually be cut off.

Ramban continues: For this reason, Job now answers that he has seen with his own
eyes how the wicked are successful and how their offspring and houses are tranquil
in their lifetimes. If the companions argue that their descendants will be cut off
after hundreds of years, how will that harm the wicked themselves and what pain
will they suffer as a result? The companions must admit that the judgment is
perverted and for this reason it is impossible to believe their claim that the seed of
the wicked will be cut of on account of their sins. Likewise even if a righteous
person like Job is destroyed today, the companions should not condemn him,
because judgment is not in God's hands but is a matter of chance (see Ramban loc.
cit.).

Vv 2-3: If Job's companions really want to comfort him they should have the
patience to hear him out before mocking him.

V 4: "As for me, is my complaint to man? Why should I not be impatient?" – "A
mortal man may not have the wisdom to answer me, but my challenge is to God,
who knows everything. If He will not answer me, how could I not be impatient?"
(Metzudas David).

Vv 5-6: In these verses, Job warns his companions that he is about to mention
something that is truly shocking – that in fact the wicked enjoy every kind of
success, as he goes on to show in vv 7ff.

V 7: "Why do the wicked live, become old, and indeed grow mighty in power?" The
Talmud (Sanhedrin 108a), Midrash (Yalkut) and commentators (Rashi on Job 21:6
etc.) all see the coming verses as alluding to the generation of the Flood, who
enjoyed legendary prosperity and tranquility until their destruction. Similarly the
rabbis relate sections of Eliphaz' answer to Job in the chapter that follows to the
generation of the Flood and the overthrow of Sodom. While to us these may seem
like far-off events that took place in the remote past and which may appear
irrelevant to the present, for Job and his companions, living in the time of Moses or
not long afterwards, they were relatively recent cataclysms of enormous magnitude
that cried out with moral lessons for future generations.

V 13: "They spend their days in wealth and in a moment descend to She'ol (=the
grave)" – "After enjoying such a good life, when his day of death arrives, the
wicked man dies peacefully without pain and suffering" (Rashi).

Vv 14f: "Therefore they said to God, Depart from us for we do not desire the
knowledge of Your ways…" If this was the motto of the generation of the Flood and
the people of Sodom, it would seem also to be the motto of many of the prosperous,
contented exponents of freedom and license in our time.

V 17: "How often is the candle of the wicked put out…?" Job denies his companions'
argument that in the end the wicked are always destroyed, because there are
numerous cases where this is manifestly not so.

Vv 19-21: Even if the offspring and house of the wicked are eventually destroyed,
what does he care when he is no longer in the world?
V 22: "Shall anyone teach God knowledge, seeing that He judges those who are
high?" Rashi (ad loc.) offers two interpretations of this verse: (1) Job is telling his
companions that not one of them is able to explain the manifest success of the
wicked or the suffering and retribution exacted from the righteous. (2) Does Job
need to teach God wisdom so as to judge the world in truth when He Himself knows
that this is so? But in His exalted height and greatness He passes lofty judgments
without taking care to be exact. [That is to say, God is so exalted that He does not
pay attention to this world with the result that the judgment comes out crooked.]

Vv 23-26: The wicked die prosperous and tranquil, while the righteous die with a
bitter soul having tasted no goodness – and in the end both lie in the ground and
are eaten by the worms! Where is the justice???

V 27: "Behold, I know your thoughts and the devices you wrongfully imagine
against me." Metzudas David renders the end of this verse somewhat differently,
"the devices you WITHHOLD from me". He explains that Job is saying that he
knows not only the arguments his companions will bring against him in support of
their claims but also the counterarguments that refute their views and which they
seek to withhold from him and conceal.

Vv 28ff: The companions have argued that the houses of the wicked are eventually
destroyed, but it is common knowledge that even when a major calamity comes to
the world the wicked are often saved (Metzudas David).

Chapter 22
Eliphaz' third and final address to Job contained in Chapter 22 begins the third and
last cycle of arguments and counter-arguments between Job and the companions
who came to "comfort" him in his misery. However, in this third cycle Tzophar does
not speak: only Eliphaz (ch 22) and Bildad (ch 25) address Job, whose lengthy
response to the latter (chs 26-31) finally silences the three companions, prior to
the entry of a fourth interlocutor in Chapter 32, Elee-hu son of Barach-el.

Ramban (on Job 22:2) explains Eliphaz' intent in his present speech, stating that of
the three companions, he was the greatest in wisdom, which is why the text gives
him precedence. Eliphaz had inferred from Job's opening speech that he did not
believe in God's watchful providence over this world. Ramban writes that the most
reasonable way to understand Job's standpoint is that he did not deny God's justice
in the world of the souls (after death), because if so he would have rebelled even
more, yet he said "Even if He kills me, I will hope in Him" (Job 13:15). What Job
could not accept was that the Tzaddik only receives his reward in the world of the
souls – for why should God send harm in this world to those who perform His will,
and conversely, why should He benefit those who rebel against Him? Job's main
complaint thus related to the seeming lack of justice in the world of the bodies (this
material world), for in Job's view the human body was no different from the body of
an animal which is born under the dominion of the planets and stars and which is
subject to chance, while only the soul is from God who gave it.

Ramban explains that in Eliphaz' present speech he introduces a new idea, saying
that God wants man to do what is good and righteous in the eyes of God and man
and to turn aside from evil only for the benefit of the created beings, and this is his
proof that God wants to deal righteously with His creations and to show mercy on
the work of His hands. This is why He gives them commandments and watches over
them providentially. If so, Job's troubles have come upon him either because of his
evil deeds – as Eliphaz specifies in his speech – or because of his denial of God's
providence and his rebellion against God's testing and reproving him. Eliphaz
concludes by saying that if Job will repent, God will return and benefit more in the
end than at the beginning (see Ramban loc. cit.).

Vv 2-3: God gains nothing from man's service: it is man himself who benefits.

Vv 4-5: It is not through any fear of Job that God is chastising him but because of
his own evil deeds. Eliphaz is not suggesting that Job was some kind of common
villain. Metzudas David (ad loc.) explains that for a man on Job's great level even
apparently minor deviations were very serious because others would learn from and
follow him.

Vv 6-9: Metzudas David explains each of Eliphaz' accusations against Job in these
verses as specifying how he must have perverted justice through abusing his own
position of authority as an elder, leader and judge in his community: "For you have
taken a pledge from your brother for nothing" (v 6) – "you imposed monetary fines
and took pledges even when people owed you nothing." "…and you stripped off the
clothes of the naked" (ibid.) – "from those who had nothing to pay as a fine, you
took their garments as a pledge." "You did not give water to the weary to drink and
you withheld bread from the hungry" (v 7) – "for if you had someone put in prison,
he was denied bread and water." "The land belongs to the man with a strong arm…"
(v 8) – "while you acted cruelly to the poor, you gave honor to the wealthy and
powerful", oppressing widows and orphans…

V 10f: It is because of these subtle crimes that Job's troubles have come upon him.

V 12: "Is not God in the height of the heavens…" – "If indeed you committed all
these crimes and yet you deny them and say that you were righteous, this is only
because you think that God is so high and exalted above everything that He is
remote from the earth" (Metzudas David).

Vv 13-14: Eliphaz argues that Job considers that God knows nothing of the deeds
of men, as if He is separated from the world by a dark fog.

V 15: "Have you marked the old way which wicked men have trodden…" As in the
case of Job's speech in the previous chapter, the rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash
and the later commentators saw in Eliphaz' depiction of atheistic power and
pleasure-hungry villains in the following verses allusions to the generation of the
Flood and the wicked men of Sodom, who were destroyed by rivers of water and
fire respectively.

Vv 21ff: Eliphaz draws his discourse to a close by appealing to Job to make his
peace with God so that good can come to him in the end.

Vv 27f: If Job will repent, his prayers will be answered, and "You shall decree a
thing and it shall be established for you" (v 28). The true Tzaddik has the power to
decree what will be through the power of his prayers (see Ta'anis 23a on this
verse).

Vv29-30: God delivers the humble and innocent. Eliphaz' conclusion is that in order
to be saved from his suffering, Job must repent.

Chapter 23
In his reply to Eliphaz in this and the following chapter, Job – angered by his
companions' suspicions that he had been evil towards God and men – does not
answer them directly. Rather, he wants to argue with God alone over the fact that
despite his innocence he was plagued with suffering, while the wicked sin yet enjoy
success and die quickly without pain (Ramban on Job 23:2).

In the words of Metzudas David: "Job denies Eliphaz' accusations against him,
insisting that he had followed the ways of God and practiced justice in all that he
did. Job fulminates over the fact that God shows patience to the wicked and does
not destroy them despite the fact that they themselves destroy many souls. What
sense does it make that He has mercy on them but not on the people they destroy?
Success accompanies the wicked not only in their lifetimes but even when they die,
because they die quickly without the pain of protracted illness. This is because their
success is determined at the time of conception and birth by the heavenly
apparatus of stars and planets. Job asks why God does not bend the heavenly order
so as to rule justly since He established it (Metzudas David on Job 24:25).

V 2: "Today also my complaint is bitter; the blow to me is heavier than my

groaning" – Despite all the "consolations" offered by his companions, Job has found
no comfort, and his actual suffering is greater than the groans of pain he emits.

Vv 3-7: "Oh that I knew and could find Him…" Job yearns to fathom the answer to
the mystery of why he has to suffer despite his innocence. He is convinced that if
he could argue his case before God, he would be able to prove his innocence.

V 8: "But if I go east, He is not there, and if I go west I cannot perceive Him. I go

to the left hand [=north] where He works, but I cannot behold Him; He hides
Himself on the right side [=south] but I cannot see Him." Job is scouring for
answers in all directions of the universe, but God remains invisible and inscrutable.

Vv10-12: The reason why Job wants to argue with God and not with his
companions is because he knows in his own heart – and he knows that God knows
– that he acted justly and followed His commandments, treasuring His teachings
more than his own food.

V 13: "But He is unchangeable [Heb. BE-ECHAD] and who can turn Him…?" The
literal meaning of the verse is that despite the fact that Job's innocence was known
to God, He remained with one and the same intention and did not desire to remove
his suffering. The Hebrew rendered as "unchangeable" – BE-ECHAD – literally
means "in one". This alludes to the secret of God's transcendence beyond the world
simultaneously with His immanence within it – "for Job was a sage and a MEKUBAL
who know the secret of Godliness and of His unity" (Ramban ad loc.)

Vv 14ff: "For He will complete what is appointed for me…" The decree seems to be
irreversible and the Judge implacable, despite Job's innocence – and "THEREFORE I
am shaken by His presence" (v 15) – Job is shaken by contemplating the fact that
God apparently does not treat a person according to his ways (Rashi).

Chapter 24
Chapter 24 consists of the continuation of Job's answer to Eliphaz, in which he now
turns in a new direction. In the previous chapter Job complained that he could not
find an answer to the question of the suffering of the righteous, while in the present
chapter he complains about the success of the wicked.

V 1: "Why are the times not hidden away from the Almighty, and why do those who
know Him never see His days?" – "Since Job erroneously held that everything
depends upon the influence of the heavenly order of stars and planets at the time
of conception and birth, he now asks why the rulings made at those moments were
not put away in the sense of being made subject to the superior power of God who
created that order. All who know God know that He is timeless – no limit can be set
to His days – and therefore He surely has the power to bend the influence of the
heavenly order so as to do justice (see Metzudas David ad loc.).

In verses 2-11 Job's catalogues the crimes of the wicked: They take other people's
land; they take away the livestock of widows and orphans who cannot pay their
debts; they push aside the poor, forcing them to flee. They are like wild donkeys,
plundering in the plains. They steal people's crops but leave the vineyards of the
wicked untouched. They strip poor people of their clothes, leaving them freezing in
the cold…

V 12: "Men groan from out of the city, and the soul of the wounded cries out, YET
GOD LAYS NO BLAME ON THEM." Here is the very essence of Job's question about
why the wicked cause such suffering to others yet God does not appear to exact
retribution from them.

Vv 13-17: "They were of those who rebelled against the light…" In these verses Job
poetically evokes how the wicked pervert God's order of light and darkness, day
and night. By day they blatantly defy Him by committing daylight murder, while
they take advantage of night-time, when people are asleep, to steal (v 14). The
adulterer goes about in the twilight hours, thinking that in the semi-darkness he is
concealed from God…

V 18: The Hebrew in this verse can be construed in various ways: the simplest
PSHAT is that these wicked people are swift in making their getaway and succeed in
escaping being caught (Metzudas David, Ramban).

V19: "Dryness and heat steal the waters of snow, and so does She'ol [=the grave]
steal those that sinned" – "When their time comes, they die with a quick, easy
death, just as dryness and heat quickly and easily "steal" and evaporate the waters
that drip from snow. For She'ol quickly destroys the wicked, who despite their sins
do not suffer the pain of illness" (Metzudas David).

V 20: The very womb that gave birth to the sinner quickly forgets him: the worms
eat him up leaving no trace, and he is broken quickly like a chopped down tree – all
without the protracted pains of illness and suffering (Metzudas David).

Vv 21-22: Despite the fact that the wicked prey on the barren woman and show no
favor to the widow, God shows great patience – until He draws the mighty away
with His power quickly, on one day, without causing them great suffering.

V 23: "All the days of his life God allows him to dwell securely – it is as if His eyes
are upon the wicked to ensure that they will not stumble" (Metzudas David).

V 24: Job concludes his bitter speech with a challenge to anyone to prove him
wrong.

Chapter 25
In this brief chapter Bildad HaShuhi, second in seniority out of the three
companions who had come to "comfort" Job in his misery, gives what turns out to
be their final answer to him – after Job's speeches in the chapters that follow, the
companions could find no more to say to him to try to change his attitude. As we
end this third cycle of the interchanges between Job and the three companions, we
note that the third companion, Tzophar HaNaamasi, does not even attempt to
answer Job.

Job had said, "I shall set forth my case before Him!" (ch 23 v 4). Bildad's short
reply to Job is in the form of a KAL VA-CHOMER (an argument from a light to a
serious case, or vice versa). So great is God, with His countless armies of angels,
that the very heavens are impure in His eyes – how much less can a putrid mortal,
destined to be eaten by the worms, justify himself before God?

V 2: "Dominion and fear are with Him…" – "'Dominion' is the archangel Michael
(CHESSED); 'Fear' is the archangel Gabriel (Gevurah) – you are quite incapable of
answering even one of them!" (Rashi). This is Bildad's answer to Job's saying he
would put his case before God. In the words of Metzudas David (ad loc.): "Great is
the dominion and the fear that are with HaShem. Each one of them makes peace in
the celestial order of the stars and planets so as not to work contrary to the other
in running the lower world [=earth] and so as not to change their mission. It is not
as you [Job] say – that the celestial order is not subject to God. For they do indeed
bow to Him, whether through awe at His exaltedness or fear of punishment."

This verse contains the phrase "He makes peace in His high places," which is
recited daily numerous times, at the conclusion of Birchas HaMozon (the Blessing
after Bread), the Shmonah Esray prayer and the full Kaddish.

The Midrash comments on this verse: "Rabbi Yaakov said: Even the celestial beings
need peace. The constellations ascend, and Taurus says, 'I am first' – and does not
see what came before him. Gemini says, 'I am first' and does not see what came
before him, and likewise each one says 'I am first'. They complement one another
and they do not harm each other. See how the celestial beings need peace. Rabbi
Shimon bar Yochai said: The firmament is made of water and the angels are made
of fire and they live with each other. It is not only a matter of the relationship
between one angel and another. Even within one angel himself, half is fire and half
is water, and He makes peace within him! Great is peace, for the celestial beings
need peace… Is it not a case of KAL VA-CHOMER: if peace is necessary in a place
where there is no hatred, no enmity and no contentiousness, how much more so in
a place where all of these exist – on earth!" (Tanchuma).

V 5 alludes to the mystery of the diminution of the moon because of her jealousy of
the sun (Hullin 60b; see Metzudas David on this verse). Even though her rebellion
was very minor and her status was very great, she is nothing in comparison to God
and even her small rebellion is considered very great. Similarly, even the stars are
not pure in God's eyes –

V 6: How much more contemptible is man – destined to be eaten by the worms –

and even a minor rebellion on his part against God is considered very great. Where
then is Job's "righteousness"?

Chapter 26
Job now replies to Bildad, saying that his words cannot help or avail either Job or
other men seeking to investigate the question of apparently meaningless suffering,
and they do not have the power to penetrate the secret. For when a person says
that the judgment meted out to man is subject to chance, he says so because of
the very greatness of God – for man is too insignificant for Him to pay him any
attention (Ramban on v 2).

Metzudas David explains: Job mocks Bildad for having stated what everybody
knows while speaking very minimally about the wonders of God. Job describes His
wonders at even greater length and says that nevertheless, he too has not come to
tell of more than a small portion of His wonders. It is as if he is saying to Bildad:
What does it matter if considering God's greatness and man's lowliness, even a
small rebellion is considered to be very great. In that case the rebellion of the
wicked must be considered even greater – why then does God apparently not exact
retribution from them? (Metzudas David on Job 26:14).

Vv 2-4 Job mocks Bildad for failing to provide any help. "To whom have you uttered
words" (v 4) – "Who is there who does not already know what you have said?"
"…and the soul of whom came forth from you?" (ibid.) – "Whose spirit was speaking
through you – who did you hear these words from: Job is speaking scornfully"
(Metzudas David).

V 5: Job begins to speak about the mysteries of the REPHA-IM, the "shades" – i.e.
the dead, who go down to Gehennom, which weakens (ME-RAPEH) the creations,
and which consists of seven chambers beneath the sea and those that dwell in it
(see Rashi and Metzudas Tzion). Job is saying to Bildad: If you have come to tell of
the greatness of God, I know even more than this and I too will speak of it
(Metzudas David).

V 6: "She'ol is naked before Him" – "Even though it is in the depths of the earth
beneath the waters, God still knows all that is in it, as if it is naked before Him
without a covering" (Metzudas David).

V 7: "He stretches out the north over the empty place…" Metzudas David explains
that he is referring to the earth, because the main inhabited areas are in the north.
The wonder is that the earth stands with nothing holding it up.

V 8: "He binds up the waters in His thick clouds and the cloud is not rent under
them" – "He binds the rain-waters in the clouds to be stored up so as to send them
down only drop by drop, and the cloud is never rent apart under the water so as to
pour it all down in one moment" (Metzudas David).

V 9: "He closes in the face of the throne…" The "throne" is the heaven, for "the
heaven is My throne" (Isaiah 66:1). God sets the boundaries of the heaven as one
encloses a house with walls (cf. I Kings 6:10; see Ramban on our verse).

V 10: God sets boundaries for the sea for ever.

Vv 11-12: His rebuke causes the very heavens to tremble, and He stirs up the sea
with His power. He smites Rahab – this is Egypt , which was overthrown in the Red
Sea .

V 13: "…His hand slew the slant serpent" – This is Pharaoh. The "slant serpent" is
also considered to be an allusion to the mystery of the TELI mentioned in Sefer
Yetzirah 6. Some identify this with the constellation of Draco. For an extensive
discussion of this concept, see the commentary on Sefer Yetzirah by Rabbi Aryeh
Kaplan pp. 231ff.
V 14: Job concludes his answer to Bildad by saying that he has only described a
small portion of the wondrous ways of God.

Chapter 27
V 1: "And Job ADDED, bearing his parable, and he said…" When Job saw that his
companions had stopped answering him (for which Eli-hu later castigated them, Job
32:16), he added further arguments, raising his voice and speaking in similes,
metaphors and parables. The following chapters are replete with such parables (e.g.
in Job 28:16, where wisdom is said to be incomparable with finest gold; see Rashi,
Metzudas David and Ramban on our verse).

V 2: "By the living God – who has turned away my just cause, and the Almighty
has embittered my soul". With these words Job takes a solemn oath that God has
caused him evil despite his being innocent, for in turning Job over to the forces of
nature He has not fairly requited his righteousness. The Midrash comments that the
fact that Job swore in the name of God shows that his service was the service of
love and did not derive from fear of punishment, "for no man swears by the life of
the king unless he loves the king" (Tosefta Sotah on this verse). Out of love of God,
seeking to justify His ways without flattery, Job was seeking a true answer to the
problem of why the righteous suffer in this world.

Vv 4-6: "My lips shall not speak wickedness nor my tongue utter deceit." Protesting
his complete innocence of any of the evil of which his companions had accused him,
Job declares that he cannot say that the truth is with them, because this would be
untrue and then he would be a hypocrite and a villain – either through flattering
them by saying they were telling the truth when they were not, or through
flattering God by giving a glib answer to the question of why the righteous suffer –
because they are not righteous – which does not solve the problem at all (see
Ramban). The problem of why the righteous suffer remains – because Job knows in
his heart that he never departed from his righteousness.

V 7: "Let my enemy be as the wicked…" So detestable to Job is any trace of

wickedness that he would curse his enemy that he should be wicked (Metzudas
David).

V 8: "For what is the hope of the hypocrite…" Job is asking why he would want to
be a villain and a robber – for what happens to the villain and the robber in the end
(Rashi). Metzudas David explains Job to be saying that although in his view
everything that happens in this material world is given over to the implacable
government of the heavenly order of the stars and planets so that there is no
difference between the lot of the righteous and that of the wicked, nevertheless he
would still not choose the path of evil. For what hope will the villain and the robber
have when God takes his soul from him. Even though the righteous may have
suffered in this world, they can still hope for spiritual delight in the world of the
souls. But what hope have the wicked? (Metzudas David ad loc.). The above-quoted
explanation by Metzudas David fits with Ramban's explanation (on Job ch 22, see
our commentary thereon) that while Job could see no justice in the dispensation of
health, children and wealth in this material world, which he saw to be governed by
fate as determined by the astrological signs, he did believe in justice in the non-
physical world of the souls.
V 11: "I shall teach you concerning the hand of God; that which is with the
Almighty I will not conceal." Metzudas David explains that Job is saying it is not his
intention to incite people to choose wickedness. He only wants to teach his
companions the true nature of the government that comes from God's hand, and he
will not refrain from speaking in order that people should not attribute the apparent
injustice of the suffering of the righteous and the wellbeing of the wicked to any
imperfection in God since everything comes down through the heavenly order of
stars and planets (Metzudas ad loc.).

V 12: "Behold, all you yourselves have seen it – why then do you thus altogether
breathe emptiness?" Job is saying that the destruction of the wicked which the
companions had so emphasized is a well known, regular phenomenon to which
everyone can bear witness, and he will not deny it – so why should the companions
suspect that Job had chosen the path of wickedness? (Metzudas David).

Vv 13-23: In these verses Job acknowledges that no matter how great the success
of the wicked, their wealth will eventually be taken from them and given over to
others and retribution will come to their descendants. Ramban (on v 13) explains
Job to be saying that even if all the troubles in the world come to the descendants
of the wicked man while his glory flies away when he dies, this still does not resolve
the problem of the success of the wicked because he has no interest in his house
after his death. In addition, there is the problem of the righteous who suffer, over
which he complained from the outset and his main outcry is against this.

Chapter 28
There is no break in the Hebrew text between the end of Chapter 27 and the
beginning of Chapter 28. They are one continuous discourse until Ch 28 v 12, which
starts a new section.

V 1: "Surely silver has its source…" Rashi on this verse explains the connection of
thought between the opening of Chapter 28 and the earlier part of Job's discourse
in the previous chapter. "Surely silver has its source…" – "This too provides another
argument in support of what he said earlier, 'I have held by my righteousness'
(27:6). For why should I be wicked? If it would be for the sake of silver and gold –
everything has its origin and its end. But 'from where does wisdom come?' (ch 28 v
20) – wisdom is more precious than everything, and for that reason I set my heart
all my days to learn" (Rashi on v 1).

Vv 1-11: Job lists some of the wondrous, paradoxical ways in which natural
phenomena come into being, each from its own unique source. Four different
metals – silver, gold, iron and copper – each have their own source (vv 1-2). God
has set a fixed time for darkness to rule – there is a "stone (EVVEN) of darkness
and the shadow of death", a kind of black hole from which punishments come forth,
and it is called a "stone" after the way in which a man stumbles on a stone and gets
hurt (Rashi). The literal meaning of verses 4ff is explained by Ramban to refer to
the hidden source of water-courses, which come up from under the ground, while
the source of bread is from the ground, yet paradoxically, if one digs deep beneath
the surface of the ground, one finds the element of fire in the form of sulfur and
salt. The ensuing verses speak about other mysterious sources of natural
phenomenon.

Verses 4ff were also darshened by the sages as referring to the calamity that
overtook Sodom, when rivers of fire and sulfur burst out over them. A most lovely
habitation that had wealth in plenty and was never subject to marauders, foreign
spies and hostile enemies was turned into a barren, uninhabitable waste (Sanhedrin
109a).

Verses 12ff: Having expressed how material wealth and resources have their source
and also come to an end because they are finite, Job now contrasts this with the
inestimable wealth of true wisdom. "But where shall wisdom be found?" The
Hebrew text can also be construed as, "Wisdom comes forth out of nothingness".
"Rabbi Yohanan said, From this verse we learn that Torah wisdom endures only in
one who makes himself as nothing" (Sotah 21b). Wisdom comes from humility. And
Kabbalistically, the Sefirah of Chochmah, Wisdom, emanates out of AYIN, referring
to Keter which is beyond any form of conceptualization.

V 14: "The depth says, It is not in me…" – "If you ask those who go down to the
depths to find pearls or to the sources of gold and silver in the depths of the earth,
they will tell you, It is not in me – because they are not proficient in Torah law! The
people who go across the sees to trade will tell you wisdom is not with them,
because they cannot purchase it for money like other merchandise" (Rashi).

Vv 20: Job continues in this most beautiful discourse, asking where Wisdom and
Understanding can be found – because they are hidden from all the living.

V 23: "God understands its way…" – "He knows where wisdom dwells, and thus
they praise wisdom, saying of it that 'God understands its way' – He looked into the
Torah and created the world through its letters: according to their order and their
values He formed all the creations as is written in the secret Sefer Yetzirah" (Rashi
on v 23).

V 25: "He makes a weight for the winds and he weighs the waters by measure" –
Everything in the world is precisely measured (see Rashi on this verse).

Vv 27-28: "Then He saw it, and declared it, he established it and indeed He
searched it out. And to man he said, Behold the fear of Hashem – that is wisdom,
and to depart from evil is understanding." True wisdom is known only to God, who
"looked into the Torah and made the creation" as alluded to in verse 27, which
kabbalistically refers to the four worlds. However, to man God says: Since your
mind is insufficient to attain the depths of the hidden secrets of wisdom, know that
fear of HaShem is the entry into wisdom while turning aside from evil is the way to
attain understanding. This means that through fear of God one may attain hidden
secrets that cannot be understood through natural means, for then God will put
wisdom into the person's heart (see Metzudas David on v 28).

Metzudas David summarizes the intent of Job's argument in chapters 27-8 along
the following lines: Job is arguing that wisdom is better than all possessions, and it
is impossible to acquire it except through fear of God. For this reason, even though
there is no distinction between the righteous and the wicked in the accidents of fate
that befall them in the material world, one should still follow the path of
righteousness in order to attain wisdom, which is worth more than anything, for it
provides spiritual delight. If so, who would choose wickedness and loose the beauty
of wisdom because of it? This is part of Jobs self-vindication from his companions'
accusations that he was wicked (see Metzudas David on v 28).

Ramban on verse 28 elaborates on the esoteric interpretation of Chapter 28

beginning from verse 1, explaining that the passage alludes to the four elements
(bound up with the mystery of the four metals), the ten Sefirot and the 22 letters
of the Aleph Beit. 10 plus 22 = 32: These are the 32 Pathways of Wisdom known to
the sages. (The 50 Gates of Understanding are alluded to later on in Job ch's 38ff,
as discussed in detail by Raavad, Introduction to Sefer Yetzirah.)

Chapter 29
V 1: "And Job ADDED, bearing his parable, and he said…" After the conclusion of his
sublime praise of Wisdom in the previous section, Job saw that none of his three
companions had any answer to give him. Accordingly he continued speaking further,
again with the use of MASHAL – the metaphors and parables with which the
following poetic passages are replete.

Until this point in the book, we have largely seen Job only in his suffering and
misery – a man crushed and broken physically (though not in his spirit). Even if we
have had references to what Job was in his time of glory, they have been only
fleeting and indirect. Despite his protestations of innocence and righteousness, we
have seen little of the actual content of this righteousness. On the contrary, from
the castigations of his companions, we may have come to wonder whether Job was
not seriously flawed. In order for us to see who the real Job was in all his true
righteousness and purity – he was compared in greatness to Abraham (see Rashi
on Job 30:19 & Tanchuma Ki Teitzei 5) – he now gives us his own supremely
eloquent and moving self-vindication in the present chapter and the two chapters
that follow it, which in the Hebrew text are one continuous parshah (section).

V 2: "O that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me" – "If
only I could be now as I was in earlier times" (Metzudas David).

V 3: "When His candle shone upon my head…" In the simple sense, this verse
refers to the time when Job was at the height of his greatness as a most respected
sage, elder, leader and protector of his people, guiding them through darkness with
the light of God's Torah. A well known Midrash explains the REMEZ (allusion) in the
verse as being to the time when the embryo is in the womb and the soul – His
"candle" – can see from one end of the universe to the other, prior to the moment
of birth, when an angel comes and taps the baby on the mouth and makes him
forget the entire Torah (Niddah 30b).

Vv 4ff: Job now begins to evoke the days of his youth, as a prophetic figure with
whom God dwelled, making him a fountain of wise counsel and leadership.

Vv 7-10: When Job used to come out to the "gate of the city", the gathering place
of the elders, young and old would show him the deepest respect and reverence.
The leaders would remain silent, awaiting his words.

Vv 12-13: Job imitated his Creator in saving the poor, the orphans and the widows.
"He used to steal a field from orphans, invest in it and improve it, and then return it
to them. Wherever there was a widow that nobody wanted to marry, he would go
and attach his name to her, saying he was her relative, and then people came
wanting to marry her" (Bava Basra 16a).

V 14: "I put on righteousness and it clothed me…" – "I pursued justice and it was to
be found with me like a beautiful ornamental cloak and a turban" (Rashi).

V 16: "…and the cause which I knew not I searched out." Job was not one of those
complacent judges who did not trouble to dig deeper to find the real truth. If
something did not make sense to him, he made it his business to investigate and
discover the truth.
V 17: Job was a fearless champion of the poor against those who oppressed them.

V 18: At the peak of his glory, Job could not imagine that it could all be taken from
him.

V 19: "[I thought] my root would remain spread out to the waters and the dew
would lie all night upon my branch" – "Job said, Because the doors of my house
were always wide open for all, everyone else used to harvest dry ears of corn but I
would harvest fat ones… Because I used to engage in Torah, which is compared to
water, I merited to be blessed with dew" (Bereishis Rabbah 68).

Vv 21-23: Again Job describes the profound respect and deference that he was
accorded.

V 24: If Job smiled at the people, they could not believe that he would act so
informally with them because of his great importance in their eyes, and they were
still afraid to come closer and act casually with him (see Rashi).

V 25: Job was not too proud to visit those in morning. He had the majesty and
graciousness of a king. This verse is the source of some laws relating to comforting
mourners (Mo'ed Katan 28b).

Chapter 30
V 1: "But now they that are younger than me laugh at me…" In contrast to his one-
time position of prestige and honor, Job now describes how he has become the
laughing stock of low-down people. While ostensibly Job is talking about all the
common people who now mock him in his pathetic state, the Midrash implies that
he is actually complaining against his companions for abusively having claimed he
was a villain. "…whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of
my flock" – "Job said to Eliphaz, Are you not the son of Esau. If your father had
stood begging me to give him food with my dogs I would have disqualified him!"
(Tanchuma).

V 2-8: Job describes the utter lowliness and worthlessness of the people who now
mock him.

V 4: "They cut off mallows from upon some bush (SI'ACH) and their bread is the
root of broom-plants" – "Anyone who abandons Torah wisdom and engages in idle
conversation (SI'ACH) is fed with coals of the broom-plant" (Hagigah 12b). Those
who mock at Job are ignoramuses.

V 9: "But now I have become their song…" Job's enemies – such as wrong-doers
whom he punished – now triumph over him. In the words of Ramban (on Job
30:1): "Job complains about people's mockery of him even more than over his
illness and the loss of his children and possessions. He speaks emphatically and at
length about his pain over his enemies' joy over his trouble… For this reason an
ancient book of parables says that when they asked Job what was the worst of all
his troubles, he replied that it was the joy of his enemies over the evil that struck
him." Shame and humiliation can be the worst torment of all.

V 15: "Terrors are turned upon me, my DIGNITY (Heb. NEDIVASI, lit. 'my generous
one') is pursued as by the wind" – "This refers to the soul" (Metzudas Tzion).
Vv 16ff: Job now again elaborates on the excruciating physical suffering caused by
his illness.

V 18: "By the great force of my illness, my garb is changed…" Job's clothes were
filthy with sweat and the morbid discharges from the boils in which he was covered.

V 19: "He has cast me into the MUD, and I am become like dust and ashes" – Job
had to sit in mud to try to cool the burning inflammation of his boils. "Rabbi
Berachiah said, 'In my righteousness, I [Job] am compared to Abraham, who called
himself 'dust and ashes' (Gen. 18:27), yet God has judged me like the villains of
the generation of the dispersal, who rebelled against him with the building of the
Tower of Babel, of whom it is written that 'the MUD was cement for them' (ibid.
11:3)" (Rashi; Tanchuma, Ki Teitzei 5).

Vv 20f: "I cry to You but You do not answer me…" All Job's cry and complaint is
addressed not to his companions but to God alone.

V 25ff: Again Job complains that he acted righteously and with profound sensitivity
for those suffering, yet now he is sunk in affliction. Why do the righteous suffer???

Chapter 31
In the Hebrew text of Job, Chapter 31 is the direct continuation and climax of the
final section of Job's last discourse in answer to his three companions, contrasting
his former glory with his present abject state and protesting his complete innocence
of any sin that could be accounted its just cause. (The discourse began in Chapter
26, and the final section started at the beginning of Chapter 29.)

V 1: "I have made a covenant with my eyes…" In the last verses at the end of the
previous chapter, Job had detailed the enormity of the physical suffering that has
come upon him in spite of his righteousness. Now he is saying, Why has all this
suffering come upon me? Did I not strike a covenant with my eyes not to look at
anything that it is forbidden to look at?!? (Metzudas David). "Come and see Job's
righteousness. Every man is permitted to look at a virgin to see if he wants to
marry her or marry her to his son or one of his relatives. If Job did not even look at
what was permitted, how much less did he ever look at another man's wife, at
whom it is forbidden to look. This is why the sages said that a woman should not go
out in public in all her ornaments even on a weekday [let alone on Shabbat]
because people would look at her. For God gave ornaments to the woman only in
order that she might adorn herself with them in the privacy of her own home, for
one does not present even someone who is pure with a breach in the wall [a grave
temptation], let alone a thief" (Tanhuma). [I have quoted this Midrash at length not
only because of the light it throws on Job but also because it contains the answer
as to why modest married women do not go with uncovered hair etc. in public when
they could say that men who don't want to should simply not look at them.]

And after all Job's righteousness, he continues in verse 2: "And see now what is the
share that has been given to me from God above in payment for my deeds! Surely
destruction is due to the wicked…"

In vv 4-6 Job asserts that God, who sees and knows everything, will testify to his
innocence.

Verse 5 begins a series of seventeen oaths and affirmations by Job continuing to

the conclusion of his speech at the end of this chapter, in each of which he swears
himself to be innocent of the crime specified in each case. Each of the oaths or
affirmations begins with the Hebrew word EEM, "if". Seventeen is the gematria of
TOV, "good".

Vv 7ff: Job invokes upon him the severest sanctions if it be true that he strayed
from the path. If he ever stole anything, he curses himself that his seed should be
cut off; if he committed any kind of adultery even by merely passing by his
neighbor's door to look at his wife, he curses himself that his own wife should be
taken by others, for adultery is the most terrible abomination.

Vv17ff: Written thousands of years before the "emancipation of slaves" (which

simply heralded new kinds of human enslavement to the powers that be), Job's
timeless declaration in these verses of the proper Torah way to treat slaves and
servants rings out as an affirmation of the ultimate, existential equality of all men,
for "Did not He who made me in the belly make him?"

Vv 16-20: Job never withheld support from the poor or the orphan, the hungry and
the naked. "For from my youth he (=the attribute of charitableness) raised me like
a father, and I have practiced it from the belly of my mother" (v 18, see Rashi and
Metzudas David).

Vv 21-22: Job curses himself that his very arm should fall out of his shoulder and
be broken if he had ever oppressed a helpless orphan.

V 23: Job abstains from sin out of terror of God's retribution.

Vv 24-25: Job never turned wealth into an idol.

Vv 26-28: He never entertained a thought of idolatrous worship of the sun or moon

worship, which was prevalent throughout antiquity and vestiges of which remain
until today.

V 29f: Job never showed vengefulness or rejoiced in the downfall of his enemies.

V 31: The people of Job's household hated him and wanted to eat him up because
he was always burdening them with the many people to whom he provided
hospitality.

V 33: Job never tried to hide his sins as most people do.

V 34: In the time of his greatness, Job showed no fear of anyone, reproving even
the mightiest. But now that he has fallen, the most contemptible of people frighten
him and he dare not venture out of his house (Metzudas David).

V 35: "Oh that someone would hear me! Here is my mark [or 'my desire'] – let the
Almighty answer me and let my adversary write a book" Job's poignant cry is that
SOMEONE should hear what he is saying. Let God testify for Job in his case.
According to the simple meaning of the verse, Job is ready for his very adversary to
write the book about him, as even the adversary will find nothing with which to
damn him. On the level of allusion, the adversary is He who sent Job his suffering.
And indeed, in answer to Job, God's testimony about him is written in chapter 1
verse 8 in His words to the Satan: "…there is none like him in the land, pure,
righteous and God-fearing." Moreover, Moses, who wrote his own book and that of
Job, came to testify for Job (see Rashi on this verse).
V 38-40: "If my land cry against me, or its furrows complain together…" Job's very
gravesite – which is all that he can ultimately call "my land" – will attest to his
righteousness (see Yalkut Shimoni). Rashi comments that Job's field could never
cry out that he had failed to give away the gifts of the corner of the field, the
gleanings, forgotten sheaves and tithes to the poor: he was correct and orderly in
all of his affairs and never ate at anyone else's expense – and if not, let his fields
sprout weeds!!!

"The words of Job are ended." The commentators take this not as an editorial gloss
marking the end of Job's speeches – because we see that Job does speak again
briefly later on in answer to God (ch 40 vv 3ff and ch 42 vv 1ff). Rather Metzudas
David explains that Job is saying, I have already set forth the innocence of my
ways and the enormous suffering that has come upon me after the utmost
greatness and success, and if so what more can I add?

Chapter 32
ENTER ELI-HU BEN BARACH-EL

The three companions who came to "comfort" Job had been reduced to silence
because their essential answer to the question of why he was suffering was that he
must have committed some sin, yet Job protested his absolute innocence to the
very end. The companions had tried to resolve the question of why the righteous
suffer by saying they must have done something wrong. But while this may have
"let God off the hook", as it were, for sending apparently meaningless suffering to a
Tzaddik, it did not satisfy Job, who knew in his heart of hearts that he was innocent.
Indeed, their answer was outrageous in his eyes because it covered over a seeming
perversion of justice on the part of the Creator by smearing Job.

It is at this moment of impasse – with the companions silenced and Job still finding
no answer to his question of why the righteous suffer – that Eli-hu ben Barach-el, a
fourth sage enters. Although younger than the first three companions (he waited
respectfully for them to finish before intervening), Eli-hu turns out to have attained
greater wisdom than them. At the conclusion of the book, after God has spoken to
Job, He tells Eliphaz that He was angered by him and his TWO companions (Bildad
and Tzophar) and that they must bring sacrifices of atonement (ch 42:7ff).
However no criticism whatever is voiced over the lengthy discourses of Eli-hu,
which occupy a total of six chapters (Job 32-7).

As we shall see in the ensuing chapters, Eli-hu patiently and systematically explains
the flaws in the answers of the first three companions in trying to resolve Job's
problem over the suffering of the righteous, and he offers a different answer. Eli-
hu's discourses are a further ascent in unlocking the mystery of human suffering, in
preparation for the very climax of the book, when God finally answers Job out of
the whirlwind (chs 38ff).

Eli-hu ben Barach-el was enumerated by the Talmud as one of the seven prophets
who prophesied to the nations, together with Eliphaz, Bildad, Tzophar and Job
himself, and Bila'am and his father (Bava Basra 15b). The same Talmudic passage
implies that Eli-hu was an Israelite, because he is described as coming from the
family of Ram (i.e. of Avraham), and that he is called a prophet to the nations
because his prophecies are directed to all the nations as opposed to being directed
to Israel specifically. A different opinion is brought down by Metzudas David, who
learns from his being called the Buzite that he was from the family of Buz, the
second son of Nahor, brother of Avraham (Gen. 22:1). Talmud Yerushalmi Sotah 5
records a discussion in which Rabbi Akiva darshens that Eli-hu is Bila'am, while
Rabbi Eliezer objects that this is not so and darshens that Eli-hu is Isaac.

V 2ff: Eli-hu is angry with Job and he is angry with his companions. He is angry
with Job "because [Job] justified himself MORE THAN GOD" – i.e. NOT because Job
claimed innocence – this Eli-hu does not dispute – but because he reproved God, as
it were, for abandoning him to blind fate ("the heavenly order of the stars and
planets") and the accidents of the flesh in spite of his great righteousness, which
made it seem as if God is not just. Next Eli-hu is angry with Job's companions,
because they had not found an adequate answer to his basic question about why
the righteous suffer, and as long as his question was unanswered, this too made it
seem as if God is not just.

V 6: "I am young and you are very old" (cf. Rabbi Nachman's story of the Blind
Beggar).

V 7: "I said, Days should speak and a multitude of years should teach wisdom."
Initially Eli-hu had believed that just as after a given period of time a child develops
the ability to speak, so years of experience and investigation should develop
wisdom in people (see Metzudas David).

V 8: "But there is a spirit in man and the breath of the Almighty gives them
understanding" – Having heard the first three companions, his seniors in years,
speak, Eli-hu now knows that there is an intelligent spirit in man that can teach him
wisdom regardless of whether he is old or young.

Vv 11ff: Eli-hu explains that he has patiently waited to hear out his elders but that
when he carefully considers what they have said it is clear that they have failed to
give Job an adequate answer.

V 13: "Beware lest you say, We have found out wisdom, God has thrust him down,
not man." Metzudas David renders: "Lest you would think to say that you have
found an intelligent and sophisticated answer in telling Job that he must have
committed a great sin seeing that God Himself has turned against him and not a
mere mortal like me, because the Holy One is not suspected of practicing injustice.
Eli-hu is saying that the companions had not spoken with wisdom because this is
not an answer fit to silence the turmoil in Job's heart since he himself knows that
he was not guilty of great sin" (Metzudas David on v 13).

V 14: "Now that he has not directed his words against me, so that I will not answer
him with your speeches." Despite the failure of the companions to answer him, Eli-
hu is saying that Job should not think he is right, because all the arguments that he
had advanced against his companions, protesting his innocence, would not stand up
to the explanations that Eli-hu has in mind to give in the coming chapters. Eli-hu is
not going to advance the same arguments that the companions had already
advanced: he is going to say something new.

Vv 18ff: Eli-hu is bursting to speak, and he will not soften his blows in order to give
respect to any man, because if he were to try to cover over anything it would be
such an offence that he feels he wouldaz be burned up by God (see Rashi,
Metzudas David).
 Chapter 33
Having completed his prologue (Chapter 32) explaining why he had not intervened
earlier in the discussion, Eli-hu ben Barach-el now begins to set forth his arguments
against Job, quoting point by point things that the latter had said and answering
them one by one. From the fact that Job does not answer Eli-hu or dispute what he
says, we may infer that he accepted his arguments.

Verses 6-7: "Behold I am just like you before God, I too am formed out of clay.
Behold my terror shall not make you afraid, nor shall my pressure be heavy upon
you." Job had earlier complained that God is not like a man on his own level whom
he could challenge to come with him to an independent arbitrator to determine who
was right – one who would not throw Job into fear, terror and confusion so as to
prevent him putting his case (see Job 9:32-5). Eli-hu is now reassuring Job by
saying that although he will, as it were, speak on behalf of God, he is still only a
man, just like Job, and he will not cast him into fear and prevent him from
answering back if he has any question that is not fully resolved.

Vv 8ff: Before King Solomon would pass judgment, he would first repeat the claims
of the parties to the case to show that he understood them correctly (see I Kings
3:23). Likewise Eli-hu first restates succinctly each of the various points Job had
made in his arguments with his three companions before going on to answer them
one by one. Job had said that he was innocent of any sin yet God had treated him
like an ENEMY – EEYOV (=Job) had become like an OIYEIV (="enemy") – and was
seeking pretexts against him.

V 12: "Behold in this you are not right. I will answer you – for God is greater than
man." Metzudas David explains Eli-hu to be saying that God's level is far higher
than that of man. If a mature man would not seek out pretexts to needlessly
persecute someone, all the more so that God would not do such a thing. "I will not
answer you as your companions did – that you are not innocent but are full of sin –
because it could well be that you are righteous, yet you are still not justified in
fulminating, because God is certainly just – this will be explained in ch 35 v 2 ff
(see Metzudas David on v 12).

V 13: "Why do you strive against Him [saying] that He will not answer all a man's
words?" Metzudas explains: "Why do you claim that He does not inform a person in
what respect he has sinned or transgressed in order that he may cease from his
sins and repent quickly?" (cf. Job 13:23, "make known to me my transgressions
and my sins").

Vv 14ff: Eli-hu now explains to Job that God has his own unique ways of
communicating with man. God speaks once to a person, and if the person does not
understand, He speaks to him again.

Vv 15-16: The first way God communicates with man is through dreams, showing
him through dream images what has been decreed against him, measure for
measure, because of his deeds (Metzudas David).

V 17: "…that He may withdraw man from his purpose and hide pride from man":
The purpose of God's communications to man is PREVENTIVE. He sends people
messages to deter them from committing acts they have been intending to do. This
is in order to save man's soul from destruction. Eli-hu here introduces a new
dimension in the understanding of pain and suffering that was not present in the
discourses of Job's first three companions.
Vv 19ff: If the person ignores the message sent in his dreams, the "preventive
medicine" becomes steadily stronger, and he is afflicted with the pains of illness
and disease in order to stir him to repent.

Vv 22-24: Man veers ever closer to death and the grave. But "If there is an angel
over him, a defender, one among a thousand, to declare to man his righteousness,
then He is gracious to him and says, Deliver him from going down the pit; I have
found a ransom." In the words of Metzudas David: "When the person will be judged
then in the heavenly court, if even a single angel will be found arguing in his merit
and telling the righteousness of some deed that he performed, even if this angel is
the only one arguing in his favor against 999 accusing angels, God will be gracious
to him and tell the defending angel that he has redeemed him from destruction,
because his righteous deed outweighs everything else."

V 27: Even after having been saved, the true penitent continues publicly admitting
his earlier sins.

V 29: "Behold, God does all these things twice or three times with a man." Even if a
person reverts to sin, God will again send him dreams or "communicate" with him
through the "language" of the illness He sends him in order to stir him to repent.
"Rabbi Yose bar Yehudah says: When a person sins for the first time, he is forgiven,
and likewise when he sins a second time, he is forgiven, and likewise when he sins
a third time, he is forgiven. But if he sins a fourth time, he is not forgiven, as it is
written, Behold, God does all these things twice and three times with a man" (Yoma
86b).

V 32: "If you have anything to say, answer me; speak – for I desire to justify you"
– "It is best for you to speak out everything that is in your heart, and I will answer
you about everything in order to guide you on the true path. For if you stop
speaking and keep your words stored up in your belly you will remain with a false
view and you will not be innocent any more" (Metzudas David). It is better to speak
things out than to keep everything bottled up inside one.

Chapter 34
Vv 5-6: "For Job has said, I am righteous and God has taken away my proper
reward. Despite my right I am counted a liar; my wound is incurable though I am
without transgression." Prior to answering Job, Eli-hu again repeats his claims,
which were that: (1) God had not given him his reward for his righteousness, and
(2) even worse, He had sent him terrible suffering instead.

V 7: "What man is like Job, who drinks up scorning like water?" Eli-hu is particularly
angry with Job for these claims, because, as he explains in verse 8, this way of
thinking is likely to encourage sinners.

V 9: "For he has said that man does not profit even if he is willing to be with God
[and follow His ways]." The perverse view that man gains nothing from serving God
is the logical corollary of Job's attitude that he is suffering terribly despite being
innocent of any sin, and that everything happens purely by chance without any
divine providence.

Vv 10ff: "Far be it from God that He should do wickedness…" Not only does Eli-hu
emphasize that God deals with men measure for measure (v 11). He also argues
that it is inconceivable that God would needlessly cause His creatures suffering
since if He wanted to he could sweep away the entire creation in a moment, so why
should we imagine he comes against His creatures with pretexts? (see Metzudas
David on v 14).

Vv 16ff: Eli-hu now adds a further argument. Job had complained that the
government of the world had been handed over to the implacable heavenly order of
stars and planets and that one and the same fate strikes the righteous and the
wicked indiscriminately and without justice. But Eli-hu asks how it is possible that
the righteous God would have entrusted the government of the world to an unjust
system (v 17, see Metzudas David).

Vv 19ff: The Almighty has no need to show partiality to any of His creatures
whether in the higher realms or the lower – for He created them all. He knows
everything and deals with each individual strictly according to his ways.

V 23: "For He will not lay upon man anything more that he should enter into
judgment with God" – "It is not His way to give a person a punishment greater than
befits him such that he should say he will take Him to court for giving him a greater
punishment than he deserves" (Metzudas David). In the following verses (24-30)
Eli-hu describes the punishment of the wicked, measure for measure.

V 31: "For surely it is fitting to say to God, I suffer, I will no more offend" – "That is
to say, since it is evident that He does what He does with justice, it is proper to say
to God that I will bear my pain and not behave wrongly from now on" (Metzudas
David).

V 32: It is fitting for the person enduring suffering to pray to God asking Him to
show him what he does not see himself in order that if he has sinned in the past he
will not do so any more.

V 33: "Eli-hu asks Job: Was the Holy One blessed be He required to consult you as
to how to exact payment from you, such that you say you are sick of living. Do you
imagine that He must exact retribution according to the way you choose?" (Rashi).

V 36: Eli-hu would prefer Job to be tested continuously with suffering to see if he
will regret what he has said and then discover that the suffering will leave him only
after he repents – this in order to teach other sinners to repent when they see that
nothing helps except repentance (Metzudas David).

Chapter 35
V 1: "And Eli-hu answered and said…" (v 1). In Eli-hu's second discourse, contained
in the previous chapter, he had answered Job regarding the question of reward and
punishment, whereas now he is going to discuss the suffering that came upon Job
himself. For this reason he paused between one subject and the other in order to
gather his thoughts… (Metzudas David ad loc.)

V 2: "Do you think this to be right, that you say, My righteousness is more than
God's?". Ramban (ad loc.) explains that Eli-hu will repeatedly blame Job for having
said he was more righteous than God. For Job was convinced that he was righteous
and that the terrible calamities that befell him were not because of any crime. He
gave expression to this in different ways, sometimes arguing that God considered
him His enemy, sometimes that He does not watch over the creatures of the lower
world providentially. In addition Job had complained that man's sin does not harm
God nor does his merit benefit Him and if so, He does not need or want man to
repent – for Job had wanted to fear God but suffering came upon him anyway, so
what more could he do to conciliate Him? This is another argument against
providence. Eli-hu now addresses this in the coming section of his discourse (ch 35
vv 3-16).

V 3: "For you say, What advantage will it be to you? What profit shall I have more
than if I had sinned?" – Eli-hu reviews Job's argument prior to answering him: "You
say that if everything comes through fate as decreed by the heavenly order of the
stars and planets, what benefit do you have from serving God and refraining from
sin: (Metzudas).

V 4: "I will answer you and your companions with you." Ramban (on v 2) explains
that the reason why Eli-hu included Job's companions with him in this verse is
because their leader, Eliphaz, had also implied that man's merits are of no benefit
to God (see Job 22:2-3). Eli-hu will answer that it is true that sin neither harms nor
benefits God, but nevertheless He commanded man to act righteously and warned
him against sin for the good of His creatures. For this reason He sends punishment
and does not accept the prayers of one who cries to Him and wants to fear God –
on account of his acts of oppression against others, of which he may not even be
aware. Thus Job is exonerated from the charge of having been a liar in his claims
about his righteousness, yet God is shown to be the righteous one (see Ramban at
length on v 2).

V 5: "Look to the heavens…" – "Since He is exalted and you are lowly and He has
no benefit whether you are wicked or righteous, why should you boast to Him about
your righteousness?" (Rashi).

V 8: "Your wickedness may hurt a man as you are and your righteousness may
profit the son of man" – "He is saying that evil is only called wickedness on account
of the harm it does to a man on Job's level, while righteousness and charity are
only called good on account of the fact that they benefit another man – for God
commanded his creations to practice justice and righteousness for their own
benefit" (Ramban).

Vv 9-10: The oppressed cry out because of the strong arm of their oppressors, and
no one asks "Where is God my Maker…" The simple meaning of the verse is that
the oppressors do not stop to think about and heed God's law forbidding oppression,
despite the fact that they themselves are His creatures. Metzudas David construes
the phrase "he gives songs in the night" as referring to the righteous man, who
may offer his prayers to God yet is nevertheless accounted responsible for the sins
of the wicked if he does not stand up to protest against them. According to
Metzudas David, Eli-hu is implying in this and the following verses that Job's
suffering came to him not because he was not righteous but because he did not
protest against the wicked for their oppression. [This fits with the Midrash telling
that when Pharaoh consulted Bilaam, Job and Jethro as to whether to enslave Israel,
Bilaam agreed and was later killed, Jethro disagreed and was rewarded, while Job
failed to protest and had to suffer.]

V 12: "There when they cry He does not answer…" At times God may not answer
the cries of the righteous – this, according to Metzudas David, because they have
not protested against the wicked.

V 13: Metzudas David construes: "But it is false to say that God does not hear and
that the Eternal does not see it" – God may appear hidden at times, but this does
not mean He does not hear and know everything that is going on.
V 14: "Even though you say, You do not see it, nevertheless, there is law before
Him – and you must have hope in Him" – God watches over everything, and
therefore there is a place for prayer to Him (Metzudas).

Chapter 36
V 1: "And Eli-hu ADDED" – "Until now, Eli-hu has given three discourses (chapters
33, 34 & 35 – chapter 32 was merely introductory) corresponding to Job's three
companions. What follows is a fourth, and this is why it is called ADDITIONAL"
(Rashi).

Ramban comments: "In this discourse Eli-hu does not attack Job, for he had
already blamed him enough in each of his first three discourses. Now Eli-hu comes
like the companions to speak the praise of God, telling how He watches over the
world. Since God watches over His world constantly despite His loftiness and
exaltedness, it is impossible to believe that He has entirely removed His providence
from the beings of the lower worlds on account of His exaltedness and the lowliness
of man. For the lower worlds were created for the sake of man, for none besides
him recognizes his Creator. If so, all God's providence over the varieties of lower
creatures is for the sake of man – so how could it be that He pays no attention to
him? Moreover we must attribute Justice to the Creator of all when we see Him to
be a great King and a righteous Judge who watches over everything providentially
(Ramban on v 1).

V 2: "Wait for me a little…" – "Eli-hu did not want Job to think that he had finished
everything he had to say in case he would interrupt, therefore he asked him to wait
a little longer" (Metzudas David).

V 5: "Behold God is mighty and will not despise anyone…" This verse is cited in the
Talmud as proof that when many people pray together God does not reject their
prayers, and for this reason one should try to worship with a congregation, or at
least – if this is not possible – at the time the congregation are praying (Berachos
8a).

Vv 6-7: It is not true that God is indifferent whether people are righteous or not, for
He will not give life to the wicked, whereas He will eventually vindicate the poor.

Vv 8-12: Poverty and other forms of suffering are a test. "Then He declares to them
their work" (v 9) – "For through this suffering He informs them that they have
sinned before Him" (Rashi) – suffering is a message sent to man from God. If man
heeds the message, he will end his days well, but if not he will pass from the world
and die without ever having attained true understanding.

V 13: Those who flatter their hearts – giving way to all the desires of their evil
inclination – chaff against suffering and do not cry out to God when they suffer
despite the fact that it is He who sends them the suffering.

V 15: "He delivers the poor by means of his affliction and opens their ears through
oppression" – "On account of their having been afflicted, He delivers them from
Gehennom, and through the oppression He brings upon them He opens their ears
to hear Him when He says, Return to Me" (Rashi).

V 17: Metzudas explains: "Even if you have been filled up with the judgment of
suffering that would be fit for the wicked, so what – because it must really be
considered a benefit since the judgment and suffering that have come upon you will
sustain you and save you from the punishment of hell so that you will delight in the
world to come."

Vv 18-21: Eli-hu warns Job not to prefer the success of the wicked to his own
suffering, for their success leads only to ultimate destruction.

Vv 22-26: God is exalted above all, and no one can accuse Him of any miscarriage
of justice.

Vv 27ff: The detailed way in which God watches over the world providentially is
exemplified in the way He sends the rains – sometimes in abundance, sometimes
very sparingly. "For through them He judges the peoples…" (v 31) – It is through
sending abundant rain or withholding them that God sends each nation its deserts.
He also judged the generation of the flood with excessive rain, and rained down fire
and sulfur on the wicked inhabitants of Sodom (Rashi, Metzudas David).

Chapter 37
CONCLUSION OF ELI-HU'S SPEECH

The concluding section of Eli-hu's answer to Job, which occupies the whole of our
present chapter, is a direct continuation from the previous chapter. In the Hebrew
text there is no section break between the two chapters. Moreover the chapter
break in the printed Bible texts actually violates the thematic continuity of Eli-hu's
speech. This is because in the closing verses of chapter 36 vv 26-33, he had begun
to give expression to God's unfathomable power and His detailed providence over
the universe through depicting specifically the wonders of rainfall, which is the
foundation of human prosperity and which is responsive to men's behavior and
their prayers. Now in the conclusion of his speech in Chapter 37, Eli-hu expands on
the theme of the wonders of thunder and lightning, storms and rain clouds, lifting
our eyes and our inner thoughts steadily higher, level by level, to the heavens and
beyond, to the inscrutable Ruler of all, who knows man's thoughts before he even
speaks…: "Hear this, Job, stand and contemplate the wonders of God!" (v 14).

After Eli-hu concludes his speech, Job does not answer him – he had no answer
because apparently, he accepted Eli-hu's arguments. This enabled him to rise to the
level of prophecy (see our commentary on the next chapter), and immediately after
the end of Eli-hu's speech, HaShem Himself answers Job out of the storm-wind
(chapters 38ff).

Eli-hu's speech thus marks a transition from what might be seen as the lower level
of wisdom on which Job and his three companions conducted their debate about the
problem of suffering, to a higher level where new hints and suggestions are offered
as to how to approach this inscrutable mystery. Eli-hu's repeated challenges to Job
in our present chapter to acknowledge that the mysteries of creation are beyond us
constitute a preparation for God's own direct challenges to Job to acknowledge the
inscrutability of His ways.

Before discussing comment on individual verses in the present chapter, let us see
the chapter as a whole in the context of Eli-hu's entire discourse, as summarized by
Metzudas David (on Job 37:24): "Eli-hu affirms that God indeed watches
providentially over the very details of creation, and separates the wicked from the
goodness that comes into the world while also separating the righteous from the
evil in it. If at times evil befalls a Tzaddik, it comes providentially to open his ear to
rebuke when he turns somewhat from the straight path. Eli-hu answers Job that in
his case too, suffering has come to open his ear to rebuke so that he will repent
and return to God, and this way he will be saved from the judgment of hell and will
delight in spiritual lushness. For if he had had a life of constant tranquility he would
have rebelled against God because of the abundance of everything, and he would
have been lost eternally like the generation of the Flood. Eli-hu also reproves Job
for not humbling himself before God since everything is in His hand and there is
none like Him. Eli-hu proves God's providence: He formed the eye, so how could it
be that He does not see? Eli-hu adduces the wonders of God that are known to us
and those that are concealed. Thus he answers Job by saying, Surely you know
something of the natural phenomena of this world, why do you not understand
more? You must admit that everything comes from God and is under His
providence and we cannot understand it all. For this reason we may not question
His deeds, for man's intelligence is too limited to be able to understand God's work
and how He governs the world (Metzudas David on Job 37:24).

Vv 1-5: Eli-hu's heart shudders at the thought of the flashes of lightning and
roaring thunder that God sends as part of the water cycle.

V 6: "For He says to the snow, be [on] the earth…" The simple meaning of the
verse refers to the ecological phenomenon of snow as part of the water cycle. On
the esoteric level, this verse is quoted in the Midrash (Pirkey d'Rabbi Eliezer 3 etc.)
and in [some but not all editions of] Sefer Yetzirah 1:11 as referring to the mystery
of the "congealment" (Tzimtzum) of the "fluid" spiritual levels of Creation – i.e. the
letters of the Hebrew alphabet – so as to form the "solid" material world (see R.
Aryeh Kaplan's edition of Sefer Yetzirah loc. cit.).

V 7: Metzudas David offers a simple PSHAT on this verse relating it the preceding
verses explaining that knowledge of coming weather developments is hidden from
men, whereas the animals (next verse) exhibit behavior patterns showing their
intuitive knowledge of coming rains and storms etc. However, on the level of Drash,
this verse is famous as teaching that "at the time when a man leaves this world for
his eternal home, all his deeds go before him and they say, You did such and such
in a certain place on a certain day, and he replies, Yes. They say to him, Sign, and
he signs, as it is written, ;In the hand of each man will he put a sea'l, and
moreover, he accepts the justice of the verdict and says to them, You have judged
me beautifully!" (Ta'anis 11a).

V 12: "…and it is turned about through His counsels…" The infinitely complex
tapestry of interconnected causes and factors in blowing the clouds, each one
exactly where He wants it in order to bring about His desired effects, is evidence of
His absolute providence over everything. The Talmud darshens from here that if
Israel's repentance on Rosh Hashanah warrants a judgment of abundant rainfall but
later in the year they sin, He does not revoke the decree but rather makes the rains
fall where they are not needed, while sometimes it is the other way round (Rosh
Hashanah 17b see Rashi on our verse).

Vv 18-19: Did you stretch out the heavens with Him?... Tell me what arguments
can we bring against Him? We cannot argue against Him because of the darkness
and concealment that surround Him (see Rashi).

Vv 20f: God knows man's thoughts before he even speaks.

V 21: Metzudas David explains: "As Eli-hu comes to complete his speech, he says,
And now I say to you in general terms: sometimes people do not see the light of
the sun because the clouds cover it – yet even so, it is bright in its place in the
heavens and shines very greatly. But when a wind passes and "cleanses" the skies
of the clouds, the sun becomes visible." As if to say, God's light shines all the time
whether man sees it or not – His providence is constant.

V 22: "Gold comes out of the north (TZAPHON=hidden)"… -- "The good 'gold' is
hidden away for those who bring themselves to fulfill the commandments of the
Holy One blessed be He and who believe in God, who is most awesome" (Rashi).

V 23: "The Almighty (we cannot find Him out) He is excellent in power and in
judgment, and with plenty of justice, He will not oppress" – "God does not send
judgments against His creations according to His own great power but rather with
mercy, accepting their atonement according to their limited ability… He does not
oppress anyone to excess and He does not oppress the righteous man more than is
necessary" (Rashi).

V 24: The bottom line is: Fear of God. God does not regard the "wise of heart" –
those who come against Him with sophistry – for their wisdom is nothing in His
eyes (see Rashi).

Chapter 38
V 1: "Then HaShem answered Job out of the storm wind (SE'ARAH)…"

Ramban explains: "Job now attained the level of prophecy because he was
'innocent and righteous, God-fearing and one that turned away from evil' and he
had been proven through being tested. And even though he had sinned in doubting
God's justice on account of a lack of wisdom, the test helped to bring him close to
God, for he accepted Eli-hu's arguments and saw that they were a sufficient answer
to his question, and he was now God-fearing and an innocent Tzaddik. God speaks
to him 'out of the storm wind', because his prophecy was not on the level where the
heavens were opened up to him so that he saw clear visions of God as in the case
of Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel etc. He attained the level that the prophets reach first
at the beginning of their vision, as in the case of Ezekiel, who first saw a "STORM
WIND coming out of the south" (Ezekiel 1:4; cf. Elijah's vision I Kings 19:11)… Out
of the storm wind came a voice to Job answering him with tremendous power…

"The purpose of His answer is to let Job know that He is perfect in knowledge in
general and in particular over all the created entities in their entirety and He
watches providentially over all of them, while man is too brutish to understand
even the phenomena of nature, let alone to understand God's justice and its
foundations. He also hints to him that Eli-hu's answers were based on the truth, for
so far Job only accepted that he MIGHT be correct and that accordingly even the
phenomena of the suffering Tzaddik and the wicked man who has it good might be
based on justice. However, Eli-hu had no decisive proof and man cannot know this
except through received tradition. Now God tells Job that this is true…" (Ramban on
Job 38:1).

In Ramban's Introduction to the book of Job, he notes that only in the opening two
chapters of the book and in this final section of the work does the "essential name
of God", HASHEM, the Tetragrammaton, appear, while throughout the main body of
the work, in all the speeches of Job and his companions including Eli-hu, He is
called by other names such as E-L, ELO-AH and SHA-DAI. (Out of respect, these
are pronounced respectively as KEIL, ELOKAH and SHAKKAI except when used in
prayer or when reciting as opposed to merely quoting of the Hebrew Biblical text).
The work begins and ends with the absolute unity of God, who rules over all with
complete justice, but in the quest of Job and his companions for answers in the
main body of the text, they invoke the different attributes of God as expressed in
His various other names.

The Talmud teaches: "Rabbah said, Job blasphemed with a storm wind (see Job
9:17) and He answered him with a storm wind. Job said to Him, Perhaps a storm
wind passed before you and you mixed up EEYOV (Job) and OIYEV ("enemy")… And
He answered him with a storm wind (SE'ARAH)… He said to him, I have created
many hairs (SE'ARAH="hair") in man and for each hair I created its own follicle so
that no two hairs should suck energy from one and the same follicle, because if two
were to draw from one follicle they would darken the light of man's eyes. I do not
mix up one follicle with another – how much less would I mix up EEYOV and
OIYEV!" (Bava Basra 16a).

In the words of the Midrash: "A gentile asked Rabbi Meir how it could be since He
fills the heaven and earth that He could speak to Moses from between the two poles
of the Ark. Rabbi Meir asked him to bring a mirror that enlarges the reflected object
and told him to look at his face in it. He then had him bring a mirror that diminishes
the reflected object and likewise told him to look at his face in it. He told him: If
you are flesh and blood yet you can change the way you appear at will, how much
more so can He that spoke and brought the world into being… Sometimes the entire
world cannot contain His glory, and at times he speaks to a man from between the
hairs of his head!!!" (Bereishis Rabbah 4).

God's answer to Job is one of the most sublime passages in the Bible, evoking the
inscrutable mysteries of creation, the elements, the constellations, stars and
planets, the manifold forms of animal, bird and fish life on land, in the air and in
the sea, as well as so much more. As mentioned in our commentary on Job ch 28,
embedded allusively in the present passage (chapters 38-41) are the Fifty Gates of
Understanding (BINAH), as explained in detail by Raavad (Rabbi Avraham ben
David of Posquieres, Provence, c. 1128-1198) in his lengthy Introduction to Sefer
Yetzirah. Thus verse after verse in God's series of challenging questions to Job
opens with the word MI ("Who…?), alluding to the Fifty Gates of Understanding
(MEM, 40 + YOD, 10 = 50!).

Let us have the humility to know the limits of our own understanding and start our
quest for wisdom with the cultivation of true fear of Heaven.

Chapter 39
Our present chapter is the continuation of God's first answer to Job out of the storm
wind, which began in chapter 38 v 1 and runs until the end of chapter 39. In the
Hebrew text there is no pause or break between the end of chapter 38 and the
beginning of chapter 39.

Metzudas David (on Job 39:30) summarizes the main import of this first answer to
Job as follows: "God rebukes Job asking how he had the temerity to question His
ways – Do you understand all My works? He relates wonders that cannot
conceivably be thought of as deriving from the forces of blind fate working through
the heavenly system of stars and planets but which are clearly providential. For this
reason, it is impossible to deny the resurrection of the dead even though it may
seem contrary to nature. There is thus no room for Job's complaint about reward
and punishment, because after the resurrection of the dead, each one will receive
according to his works. God relates His awesome works at length as if to say, If so,
why were you not afraid to have doubts about Me? In addition He answers Job that
he was not right in deciding that God does not watch over the lowly creatures
providentially, for it is not so: I watch over everything, including even the animals,
and He relates some of the ways in which He watches over them."

The reference to the resurrection of the dead mentioned by Metzudas David is

contained in the earlier part of God's first answer to Job, in chapter 38 vv 13-17.
Having first spoken about the wonders of the creation of the world, it says in v 13 –
"To take hold the corners of the earth and the wicked shall be shaken off it": this
clearly refers to the judgment of the wicked. The specific allusion to the
resurrection of the dead comes in the following verse (38:14) "It is changed like
clay under the seal and they stand as a garment" – "Even though the seal of the
form of a man changes at the time of his death to be like clay and mud,
nevertheless they will stand at the resurrection and be as they were at first, just
like a garment, which may be folded up but when afterwards it is unfolded, it is just
as it was at first. This comes to answer Job's denial of the resurrection of the dead
(see Job 7:9) on account of his view that everything comes about through blind
fate and nature, while the resurrection of the dead defies nature. God's answer is
that since He watches over all, there is no need to wonder at the resurrection of the
dead" (Metzudas David on Job 38:14). In the same passage in v 17 God challenged
Job as to whether the "gates of death were revealed to him" – for if not, how could
he know that the dead will not be revived?

The ensuing passage in chapter 38 went on to give example after example of the
unfathomable mysteries of creation – light and darkness, snow, hail, rains, ice, the
stars and constellations and the livelihood of lions and ravens.

Our present chapter (Job 39) now continues with further examples of the mysteries
of the behavior of different species of wildlife – the mountain goats, the wild
donkey, the buffalo, the ostrich, the stork, the horse, the hawk and the vulture. In
each case it is God alone who gives each one its unique powers and traits, provides
for them and watches over them to ensure their survival – so how can Job claim
that God does not watch over the lower realms providentially?

Chapter 40
In the Hebrew text there was a pause at the end of the previous chapter, indicating
that God wanted to give Job an opportunity to answer Him but that since he
remained silent and gave no answer, God spoke to him again (Metzudas David):
"And HaShem answered Job and said…" (v 1). God pressed Job to speak: "Shall a
reprover contend with the Almighty? Let he who reproaches God answer it!" (v 2).

Forced to answer, Job admits that he is truly humbled. In the words of Metzudas
David on v 4: "Behold I recognize in myself that I am very insignificant and I have
not learned sufficient wisdom to understand that everything comes under
providence. What can I answer you? There is no answer in my mouth and for this
reason I have put my hand to my mouth and I said nothing when You stopped
speaking."

V 5: "Once I have spoken but I will not answer, yea, twice, but I will proceed no
further" – "The first thing I said at the beginning of my speeches was in complaint
over Your having entrusted everything into the hands of blind fate. I spoke then,
but now I will not say any more in answer to Your words in order to strengthen
what I said, for now I see that You have not entrusted anything to fate but
everything is in Your hands. As to my other question as to why – if all is under
providence – does evil befall the righteous while good comes to the wicked, even
though I still do not know the answer, nevertheless I shall not proceed any further
and ask more questions, for I am afraid to entertain doubts about You" (Metzudas
David).

In order to answer the latter question, God now gives His second answer to Job,
challenging him:

V 8: "Will you also negate My justice, will you condemn Me in order that you may
be in the right?" – "It is as if He is saying, Is not your asking this question a more
serious offense than the first – if you think My justice is nothing because it appears
that I do not pay a person back according to his deeds, and if you condemn my
justice because you consider yourself a Tzaddik? For the question as to why the
wicked have it good is not such a wonder since nobody knows whether deep inside
another person is righteous or wicked. Job's main question was over the Tzaddik
who suffers because he considered himself a Tzaddik and he was asking about
himself since he suffered terribly. God said to him, Just because of what you
THOUGHT, will you condemn My justice?" (Metzudas David).

V 9: "Do you have an arm like God or can you thunder with a voice like Him?"
Metzudas David explains that man is made in the image of God and when he
perfects himself and does not turn aside even slightly from the path of God, his
strength is very great and he has power over everything, including even the hosts
of heaven, as in the case of Joshua, who caused the sun to stop (Joshua 10:12f).
God is here asking Job how he can hold himself to be so righteous – does he have
the power in his arm like God to rule over everything? Can he thunder like Him and
give commands to the hosts of heaven as would a truly perfect Tzaddik?

Vv 10-14: If Job is so perfect, God challenges him to cast down the wicked as
would be befitting for a perfect Tzaddik, and if he can do it, God will concede that
he is indeed a complete Tzaddik (Metzudas David).

Vv 15-24 speak about BEHEMOTH, while vv 25-32 speak about LEVIATHAN. Having
previously challenged Job to take on the wicked, God now asks him if he could take
on these two wonders of His creation. Ramban (on v 15) comments: "BEHEMOTH is
a generic term for all large animals and beasts, while LEVIATHAN is a generic term
for enormous fish. However, our rabbis of blessed memory had a tradition that
BEHEMOTH and LEVIATHAN mentioned here are two unique creatures bearing these
names." The aggadic traditions about them are contained in Talmud Bava Basra
74bf, while deep kabbalistic teachings relating particularly to LEVIATHAN are
contained in the writings of the Vilna Gaon.

"Rabbah said in the name of Rabbi Yohanan: In time to come the Holy One blessed
be He will make a feast for the righteous from the flesh of Leviathan, as it says,
'The companions (a drush on the Heb. HABARIM) will heap up payment for him,
they shall divide him among the traders' (Job 40:30) – the 'companions' are the
Tzaddikim while the 'traders' are those who will portion out the flesh and sell it in
the streets of Jerusalem… And Rabbah also said in the name of Rabbi Yohanan: In
the future, God is destined to make a SUCCAH for the Tzaddkim out of the skin of
Leviathan, as it written, 'Can you fill his skin with barbed irons (SUCCOTH)?' (ibid. v
31). If someone is worthy, they will make him a Succah. If he is less worthy, they
will make him a belt; if he is less worthy, they will make him an ornament; if he is
less worthy, they will make him an amulet… There are different groups (HABUROT)
of companions. Some are masters of the Bible, others are masters of the Mishneh,
others are masters of Gemara, some are masters of Aggadah, some are masters of
many Mitzvoth, some possess good deeds… and each group will come and take
their share…"
"Rabbi Levi said, Everyone who fulfills the mitzvah of Succah in this world will be
seated in the Succah of Leviathan in time to come… And if you say that the skin of
Leviathan is not so remarkable, our rabbis have taught that the different colors it
contains make the sun look dark!" (Psikta).

Chapter 41
In the original Hebrew text, chapter 41 is the direct continuation of God's second
answer to Job, which began in ch 40 v 6. The conventional chapter break between
chapters 40 and 41 is quite arbitrary as it falls in the middle of the description of
Leviathan. The last verse of the previous chapter contained God's challenge to Job
to try to fight against Leviathan – "Lay your hand upon him – you will no more
think of fighting" (Job 40:32). The first verse in our present chapter then goes on to
say that the hope of anyone who does try to fight him will be disappointed since it
is enough just to look at him to make a person backtrack in fear.

The powerful evocation of Leviathan's awesomeness and might in this part of God's
answer to Job provides the foundation for the KAL VA-CHOMER (argument from a
light to a serious case) in verse 2: If nobody dares to arouse Leviathan (who in all
his awesome might is the "light" case), then "Who is able to stand before Me?" (this
is the "serious" case). Who can protest over what God does? This continues the
rebuke to Job implicit in the previous chapter that however righteous he may have
been, he was still not on the level of the perfect Tzaddik who could "raise his hand
and stop the sun" (see our commentary on Job 40:9). It is as if God is telling Job:
"If you had been a true Tzaddik in the proper way, I would have rewarded you,
because no one can protest or stop Me doing anything" (Metzudas David).

V 3: "Who has a claim on Me from before that I should repay him?" – "This means
that there is no one who has ever taken the initiative to perform some act of
righteousness before God first did him some favor" (Metzudas David). "Who gave
praises before Me before I first gave him a soul? Who ever stepped forward to
circumcise his son unless I first gave him a son? Who made Tzitzith before I gave
him a Tallith? Who made a parapet unless I gave him a roof? Who made a Succah
before I gave him a place? Who separated PE'AH (the corner) before I gave him a
field? Who separated the Terumah and Maaser tithes before I gave him a granary?
Who separated firstborn animals and animal tithes before I gave him a flock?"
(Tanchuma).

The Hebrew words of verse 4 are susceptible to a number of different

interpretations. Rashi (ad loc.) explains them as an affirmation that if there is
indeed a truly righteous Tzaddik, God will protect and reward his offspring on
account of his constant determination to do only goodness and righteousness.
Metzudas David, on the other hand, connects this verse to the coming passage
which continues to evoke the great might of Leviathan, explaining: "There is
enough in what I have told you already to answer your arguments, but
nevertheless I will not refrain from telling you more of the might of Leviathan and
his limbs and his majestic greatness compared to the other creatures, in order that
you should gain deeper understanding of My supreme exaltedness" (Metzudas
David on v 4).

From verse 5 until the end of the present chapter is all a further description of
Leviathan. It starts with his fearful lips and mouth (vv 5-6), his armor of scales (vv
7-9), the bolts of flashing light emerging from his sneezes, eyes, mouth, nostrils
and his very soul (vv 10-13), the power of his neck and his solid flesh and heart…
(14-16). The mightiest warriors are in terror of him, because he is impregnable to
human weapons of any kind (vv 17-22). He plows through the sea leaving a trail of
gleaming foam (vv 23-4).

After all this, it is interesting to find that the sages determined that Leviathan is
kosher! "Rabbi Yose ben Dourmaskis says: Leviathan is a pure species of fish, as it
says, 'his SCALES are his pride' (Job 41:7) and 'his underparts are like sharp
potsherds' (ibid. v 22) – these are the FINS with which he swims" (Chullin 67b; see
Leviticus 11:9). Let us hope that we too will be worthy of a taste of the kosher flesh
of Leviathan together with the true Tzaddikim!

"None on earth can be compared to him: he is made without fear. He beholds all
high things; he is a king over all the children of pride" (vv 25-6). Metzudas David
(on v 26) comments: "Even though he is in the water beneath the earth, he sees all
who are high and mighty upon the earth and knows of all kinds of amazing
creatures, and he is not afraid of anyone. He is the king and head over all men of
pride, for he is prouder than all of them. As if to say: I have told you about the
wonders of a creature made by My hands – understand from this the greatness of
My exaltedness!"

Metzudas David continues with a summary of God's answer to Job: "This is an

answer to his complaint about his terrible suffering after all the good he had done.
God answers that a true Tzaddik has a power in his arm like that of God to rule
below and above. See now if you can punish the sinners with the words of your
mouth and then I too will acknowledge that you are a perfect Tzaddik. So what if
you praise yourself as having been a Tzaddik if it was not the case? For if you had
been a true Tzaddik My hand would not have been short in repaying you, because
none can protest against Me. He relates the wonders of the wild ox and the
wonders of the whale in order to know something of God's greatness through them
– for no-one can prevent Him from paying someone their reward, even though He
has no obligation to pay a reward because He already did the person a favor before
he performed the mitzvah. Nevertheless He will yet pay a reward out of His loving
kindness and likewise He would have paid Job a good reward if he had been a
complete, perfect Tzaddik."

Chapter 42
Deeply humbled, Job admits his error in having thought that God had put men's
destinies in the hands of blind fate, confessing that this was because he had been
"without DA'AS, knowledge" (v 3) because he did not understand the wonders of
His watchful providence. For all that God had related about His great providence
was previously hidden from him, whereas now, after he had been told, he admitted
that it is true that He watches providentially over everything (see Metzudas David
on v 3).

V 4: "Hear, please, and I will speak: I will ask You and You inform me" – "For I
cannot know anything of Your wonders unless You Yourself in Your loving kindness
make it known to me" (Ramban).

V 5: Rashi explains: "Many times I heard reports but now my eyes have seen Your
Shechinah (Indwelling Presence), and because I have been worthy to see Your
Shechinah, I despise my life and I will be content to dwell in the grave and return
to the dust and ashes from which I was taken."

On vv 5 and 6, Ramban explains: "I had a tradition (KABBALAH) about Your

Godliness, but now I have attained prophecy and I know the truth of Your existence,
and that You exist and know and watch over all providentially, and that You are a
righteous Judge and full of loving kindness and truth. Therefore I despise what I
always wanted until now – the life of this world and the tranquility that I desired
and over whose loss I complained. I repent over my having favored the body –
which is dust and ashes – thinking that having the life of the body is kindness while
death to the Tzaddik is an outrage. Now I repent over having desired the body and
I want only to be attached to You and to live in the light of Your face and that my
soul should be bound with You in the bond of life."

V 7: "…and HaShem said to Eliphaz the Teimanite, My anger burns against you and
your two companions [Bildad the Shoohite and Tzophar the Naamatite] – because
you have not spoken of Me the thing that is right – like My servant Job." Metzudas
David explains that Eliphaz and his two companions had failed to give a correct and
true answer to Job although supposedly arguing on God's behalf. For they had said
that his suffering came upon him because of his many sins, yet this was not so,
because he had not sinned greatly even though he may not have attained the
ultimate perfection of saintliness, which was why he was not fit to receive God's
kindness, since the reward for a person's deeds is because of kindness. "…LIKE My
servant Job" – for Job too did not speak correctly when he said that everything
comes about through blind fate as governed by the heavenly system. Yet even
though Job had not spoken correctly, He calls him "My servant", and from this the
rabbis learned that a person cannot be faulted for what he says when in pain, for it
was only because of his harsh suffering that Job had said what he said (Bava Basra
16b; Metzudas David on v 7).

V 8: "Take for yourselves seven cows…" – "Their sin had been unwitting, and could
be atoned for through a sacrifice in the same way as the Torah provides for the
atonement of unwitting sins through sacrifices" (Ramban). The companions had to
go to Job and appease him, and he would then be the Cohen-priest who would offer
their sacrifices and pray for them. The rabbis compared Job's prayer for his
companions to that of Abraham for Avimelech after he was afflicted with illness on
account of having kidnapped Sarah (Genesis 20:7; Tosefta of Bava Kama ch 8).
The rabbis also learned out from Job 42:10 – "And HaShem restored the fortunes of
Job when he prayed for his friends" – that "Whoever begs for mercy for his friend
when he himself is in need of that same thing is answered first" (Bava Kama 92a).

V 11: All Job's siblings and friends from before his tribulations now came to comfort
him – for during his suffering they all kept away from him, as he said: "and my
friends have become estranged from me" (Job 19:13; Metzudas David).

V 12: The numbers of Job's flocks, camels, teams of oxen and donkeys were all
exactly doubled (see Job 1:3).

V 13: "He also had SHIV'ANAH sons": Rashi explains the unusual Hebrew
grammatical form SHIV'ANAH (in place of SHIV'AH=seven) as a dual form, implying
that Job now had two sets of seven sons. [Likewise the seven Hebrew letters –
BeGeD KaPoReTh – are doubled, since they can be either "hard" or "soft".]
Although Job's daughters were not doubled in number, they were doubled in beauty.
YAMIMAH was as radiant as the daylight; KETZIAH was as fragrant as frankincense,
while KEREN HAPOUKH was as graceful as a garden crocus (Bava Basra 16b).

With the death of Job, "old and satisfied of days" (v 17), we complete a work that
might be called MASECHES YISSURIM, "Tractate Suffering" – inasmuch as the
sublime heights of Biblical poetry are combined with the thoroughness of incisive
Talmudic examination and analysis of all of the different answers and approaches to
this most inscrutable subject, until we finally arrive at God's truth, if we have the
humility to accept it.
 Book of Song of Songs
Chapter 1
Rabbi Akiva said: "The world was never so worthy as on the day on which the Song
of Songs was given to Israel, for all the Biblical writings are holy, but Song of Songs
is Holy of Holies!" (Yadayim 3:5). The rabbis taught: "When a person reads a verse
from Song of Songs and makes it into a kind of song lyric, he brings evil into the
world, because the Torah swathes herself in sackcloth and says before the Holy One
blessed be He, 'Master of the World, your children have turned me into a kind of
guitar played by jokers'" (Sanhedrin 101a).

Taking the form of a dialogue between a youthful lover and his beloved, Song of
Songs is particularly susceptible to gross misinterpretation by those who are so
sunk in the material that they are unable to conceive of the love between male and
female as anything but physically erotic. But Song of Songs is "holy of holies"
precisely because the relationship is purely and completely spiritual. Thus the work
can be understood on many different levels, in particular as a dialogue of spiritual
love between God and the Soul or between God and His chosen people of Israel.
Besides the simple meaning of the verses, every single word and letter is laden
with a multiplicity of allusions on all the levels of PARDES, Pshat (the plain
meaning), Remez (allusion), Drash (homiletic lessons) and Sod (the mystical,
esoteric and kabbalistic "secret" level).

Rashi writes in the introduction to his commentary on Song of Songs: "'God spoke
one thing; I heard two' (Psalms 62:12). A single verse may be susceptible of
numerous explanations, but in the end no verse ever departs from its plain
meaning. And even though the prophets spoke all their words metaphorically, it is
necessary to explain the metaphor according to its own internal logic as it develops
verse by verse… I have seen many aggadic midrashim on this book, but they do not
always fit with the language and order of the verses… I say that Solomon saw with
holy spirit that Israel were destined to go into exile after exile and suffer
destruction after destruction, and that in exile they would grieve over their first
glory and remember God's first love when they were His treasure above all the
nations. They would say, Let me go and return to my first Husband, for it was
better for me then than now (Hosea 2:9) and they would remember His kindnesses
and their wrongdoing and all the goodness He promised to do to them at the end of
days. Solomon therefore wrote this work with holy spirit, using the metaphor of a
woman bound up as a widow while her husband is still alive. She longs for him and
remembers her youthful love for him, acknowledging her wrongdoings. Likewise her
lover is pained over her pain and remembers the kindnesses of her youth and her
beauty and good deeds, in virtue of which he is bound with her with strong love, in
order to let her know that he is not tormenting her intentionally and that her
divorce is no divorce, for she is still his wife and he is still her husband and he is
destined to return to her."

These study notes will be mainly based on the explanations contained in the
TARGUM (ancient Aramaic interpretation attributed to R. Yonasan ben Uzziel) and
the commentary of Rashi.
V 1: "Song of songs…" This is the ninth of ten great songs. (1) The song of Adam
when he was forgiven his sin and sang the song of the Shabbos day (Psalm 92). (2)
The song of Moses and Israel after crossing the Red Sea. (3) Israel's song over the
well given in the wilderness, Numbers 21:17ff. (4) Moses' song before leaving the
world Deut. 32; (5) Joshua's song after the battle at Giv'on Josh. 10:12. (6) The
song of Deborah, Judges ch 5. (7) Hannah's song on the birth of Samuel, I Sam. 2.
(8) David's song, Psalms 18, II Sam. 22; (9) SONG OF SONGS. (10) Israel's future
song on going out of exile, Isaiah 30:29.

"Song of songs of SOLOMON (SHLOMO)…" – "Every time the name SHLOMO

appears in Song of Songs, it is a holy name of God, who is the King of Peace"
(Talmud Shevuos 35b).

V 2: The "kisses of His mouth" are the teachings of His Torah, which are better than
"wine" = YaYiN = 70, the seventy nations.

V 3: "Therefore the maidens love You" – these are the righteous proselytes.

V 4: "The King has brought me to His chambers" – "even today I still have joy and
delight because I have attached myself to You" (Rashi).

V 5: "…daughters of Jerusalem …" The nations of the world are called "daughters of
Jerusalem" because Jerusalem is destined to become the capital city of all of them,
as prophesied by Ezekiel 16:61, "And I shall give them to you as daughters".

V 6: Do not look down upon me if I appear blackened with sin, because I was not
so from birth but only because the mixed multitude that came up with me from
Egypt (the "children of my mother") caused me to go after idols (Rashi).

V 7: Knesset Israel speaks to God like a flock asking how she can escape the
seductions of the "wolves" = the nations.

V 8: The Shepherd answers, Go in the pathways of the righteous… teach your

children to go to the synagogue and the study hall, and this is how you will survive
the exile (Targum).

V 9: When God destroyed the Egyptians at the Red Sea, He almost destroyed Israel
because of the scoffers among them (Targum).

V 10: The "circlets" and "beads" with which God adorned Israel are the teachings of
Torah He gave them in the wilderness (Targum).

V 12: "While the king still sat at his table" – at Sinai – "my spikenard (which smells
foul) gave forth its fragrance" – Israel sinned with the golden calf.

V 13: Even so, God forgave Israel , commanding them to build the Sanctuary in
order to atone. The "bag of myrrh" alludes to Mount Moriah , the Temple Mount .

V 14: Henna, KOPHER, alludes to atonement, KAPARAH.

V 15: Despite Israel's sin and shame, God encourages her with praise of her true,
essential beauty.

V 16: Israel replies that the beauty is not hers for it all comes from God (Rashi).
V 17 speaks in praise of the wilderness Sanctuary and the Future Temple (Targum;
Rashi).

Chapter 2
V 1: "Knesset Israel says: When the Master of the Universe causes His presence to
dwell with me, I am compared to a lily and a rose that are moist from the Garden
of Eden" (Targum).

V 2: Even though the nations seek to entice Israel to whore after their idols, she
remains faithful to God (Rashi).

V 3: Israel compares God to the TAPU'AH (=Ethrog, Targum), whose fruit is

excellent in taste and fragrance.

V 4: "He brought me to the house of wine" – this refers to the giving of the Torah
at Sinai (Targum). "And his banner (DIGLO) over me is love" – "When an
ignoramus or a little child mispronounces words when trying to study Torah, God
says, 'And his stammering (LIGLUGO) over Me is LOVE" (Midrash Shir HaShirim).

V 5: Even in exile, Israel is love-sick for God and craves His dainties.

V 7: "I adjure you, O nations, that you will be abandoned and consumed like the
gazelles and hinds of the field if you try to spoil the love between me and God and
try to entice me to go after you" (Rashi).

V 8: God "leaps over the mountains" and "skips over the hills" in redeeming Israel
even before the appointed time (Targum).

V 9: When the Israelites sat in their houses in Egypt eating the Pesach sacrifice
with Matzah and bitter herbs, God was looking in through the windows and
protected them from the destroying angel that came to overthrow the Egyptians.

V 10: The following morning He told Israel to get up and leave Egypt .

V 11: For the time of exile had passed.

V 12: "The flowers appear on the earth" – these are Moses and Aaron, who
appeared in Egypt and performed the miracles of the redemption.

V 14: "O My dove, you are in the clefts of the rock" – "This refers to when Pharaoh
chased after them and caught up with them encamped at the Sea, and they had
nowhere to turn. At that moment they were like a dove fleeing from a hawk. The
dove tries to enter a cleft in the rocks only to find a serpent hissing there. How can
she escape? But God said to them, Let Me hear your voice – 'And the Children of
Israel cried out to God' (Ex. 14:10)" (Rashi).

V 15: The "foxes" allude to the Amalekites, who attacked Israel after the crossing
of the Red Sea (Targum).

V 16: "My beloved is mine and I am His" – "Everything He requires He demands

only from me: celebrate Pesach, sanctify the first-born, build a sanctuary, offer
sacrifices… He did not demand this of any other nation" (Rashi).
V 17: Owing to the sin of the golden calf, the protective shadows fled, but God did
not destroy Israel on account of His covenant with the patriarchs, who were swift as
a gazelle and a young hart in serving Him (Targum).

Chapter 3
V 1-2: When Israel sinned, the Divine Presence departed. In her distress in the
night-time of exile, Israel – the soul – seeks out God but cannot find Him, "for I
shall not go up in your midst" (Exodus 32:11).

V 3: "The watchmen that go around the city found me…" The watchmen or guards
are the Tzaddikim, such as Moses and Aaron, who entreat God on behalf of Israel.

V 4: "Only a little after I passed on from them…" After 38 years in the wilderness,
just after Aaron and Moses departed the world, Israel "found" God when Joshua
brought them into the Land of Israel, miraculously defeating the 31 kings of
Canaan. "I held him and would not let him go until I had brought him into my
mother's house and into the chamber of her that conceived me" – After entry into
the Land, Israel built the Sanctuary at Shilo.

V 5: "I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem …" Israel tells the nations not to spoil
God's love for her by enticing her to abandon Him and go after their idols (Rashi).

V 6: "Who is this that comes out of the wilderness…" When the nations saw Israel
miraculously cross the River Jordan and enter the Land, they could not but wonder
at the greatness of this upright nation advancing in the merit of the patriarchs
(Targum).

V 7: The ultimate purpose of the entry into the Land was to build the Temple, which
is the "bed" upon which the King of Peace causes His presence to rest (cf. II Kings
11:2). The "sixty mighty warriors" allude to the 600,000 souls of Israel ordered
around the Sanctuary (in Hebrew, 600,000 is expressed as 60 REEBO, where each
REEBO is 10,000). The "sixty warriors" also allude to the sixty Hebrew letters that
make up the Priestly Blessing (Numbers 6:24-26) recited daily in the Temple.

V 8: "They all handle the sword and are expert in war…" – "The priests and Levites
and Israelites are all expert in the Torah which is compared to a sword" (Targum).
"Every man has his sword on his thigh" – This alludes to the sign of the Covenant
cut into the flesh by the thighs: this gives protection against all the forces of evil
(Targum).

V 9: "King Solomon made himself a palanquin…" This alludes to Solomon's Temple,

built from the precious timbers of Lebanon.

V 10: Having completed the Temple, Solomon brought in the Ark of the Covenant,
and the Divine Presence dwelled between the cherubs on its cover. "…the seat of it
of purple (ARGAMAN)" – this alludes to the woven Parochet-screen that was hung
in front of the Ark. As an example of the deep allusions contained in every word
and letter of Song of Songs, it may be noted that ARGAMAN is an acronym of the
initial letters of the names of the archangels, Oori-el, Repha-el, Gavri-el, Micha-el
and Noori-el, who are the "seat" or "chariot" upon which the Divine Presence
"rides".

V 11: "Go forth and gaze, O daughters of Zion, upon the King of Peace, upon the
crown with which His MOTHER crowned Him on the day of His wedding and on the
day of the joy of His heart". "Rabbi Elazar the son of Rabbi Yosse said, This is like a
king who had an only daughter whom he loved very greatly. He had such great
affection for her that he called her 'my daughter' (Psalms 45:11); so great was his
affection for her that he did not move until he called her 'my sister' (Songs 5:2). So
great was his affection for her that he did not move until he called her 'my mother'
(cf. Isaiah 51:4 where the Hebrew text reads 'My mother') – (Rashi on Songs
3:11).

Chapter 4
Chapter 4 vv 1-7 is the Lover's description of the beautiful features of his Beloved.
Kabbalistically, this description alludes to the PARTZUF of the Shechinah, Malchus
(kingship), the Nukva (female), for with the completion of Solomon's Temple, the
attribute of Malchus was fully revealed.

V 1: The "eyes" are the leaders of the assembly and the sages of the Sanhedrin.
The "hair" alludes to the rest of the people: even the merest of the "people of the
land" (AM HA-ARETZ) are righteous like the sons of Jacob, who heaped up stones
on Mt Gilead, Gen. 31:46 (Targum).

V 2: The "teeth" are the priests and Levites, who eat the meat of the sacrifices and
the Terumah and Maaser tithes of the people. They are compared to flocks that are
clean after having been washed since they are guiltless of any theft or robbery
(Targum).

V 3: The "lips" are those of the High Priest, whose prayers on the Day of
Atonement whitened the "scarlet" sins of the people (Targum).

V 4: The "neck" alludes to the NASI, President of the Sanhedrin, whose merit is a
tower of strength to the nation, who thereby win all their wars as if holding every
kind of weapon in their hands (Targum).

V 5: "Your two breasts are like two fawns…" The two breasts allude to Mashiah ben
David and Mashiah ben Yosef (who nurture and redeem Israel): they are compared
to two fawns = Moses and Aaron, who "feed among the lilies" – during their 40
year leadership of the people in the wilderness, they provided them with Manna, fat
quails and Miriam's well (Targum).

Rashi interprets the two breasts as alluding to the Two Tablets of Stone. They are
called "twins" because the five commandments on one are intrinsically bound up
with the five commandments on the other. "I am HaShem…" – "Do not murder": a
murderer destroys the divine form, since man is created in God's image. "You shall
have no other gods" – "Do not commit adultery": idolatry is like marital disloyalty.
"Do not bear God's name in vain" – "Do not steal": a thief ends up swearing falsely.
"Remember the Sabbath" – "Do not bear false testimony": Desecration of the
Shabbos is like bearing false testimony against the Creator. "Honor your father and
mother" – "Do not covet": One who covets another man's wife ends up bearing a
son who despises him and honors one who is not his father.

V 6: "As long as the House of Israel practiced the craft of their saintly forefathers,
all the destructive forces fled from them, just like they fled from the incense offered
in the Temple built on Mount Moriah" (Targum).

V 8: "With Me from Lebanon, my bride, come with Me from Lebanon …" – "When
you go into exile from this Lebanon (= the Temple), you will go into exile with Me,
for I will be in exile with you. And when you return from the exile, I will return with
you. And through all the days of the exile, I shall share in your sorrow" (Rashi).
"Look from the top of Mount Amanah ". Mount Amanah is the northern boundary of
the Holy Land (=Hor HaHar, Numbers 34:7). Amanah = Emunah, Faith. "When I
gather in your dispersed exiles, examine and contemplate what is your reward for
your achievements, from the beginning of the Emunah with which you believed in
Me when you went after Me into the wilderness…" (Rashi).

V 9: "You have ravished My heart… with one bead of your necklace" – even your
smallest is righteous as one of the rabbis of the Sanhedrin! (Targum).

V 12 praises the great modesty of the women of Israel.

V 13: "Your offshoots are an orchard of pomegranates" – "Even the smallest of

Israel are moist in good deeds like an orchard of pomegranates" (Rashi).

V 16: "Awake, O north wind…" God says, Since your fragrance is so sweet to me, I
command the north and south winds to blow, gathering in all your exiles, and
bringing them as an offering to Jerusalem. Then Israel answers: Let my Beloved
come to His garden – if You are there, everything is there!" (Rashi).

Chapter 5
V 1: "I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride…" – With the completion of
the Temple , God's presence enters, accepting the incense offerings and wine
libations, and He invites the priests to eat their share of the sacrificial offerings.

V 2: "I am asleep…" With the passage of time, even having the Temple, Israel
became lax in God's service and began to sin. "…but my heart is awake…" – The
"heart" is the Holy One blessed be He, who is called "the rock of my heart" (Psalms
73:26). "…the voice of my Beloved is knocking…" – God repeatedly sent His
prophets to warn the people, asking His "bride" to open up and admit Him into her
house just as a lover seeks to steal in to visit his beloved even at night despite
getting wet from the rain or dew (Rashi).

V 3: The beloved bride replies like a faithless wife making excuses why she cannot
admit her husband. "I have taken off my coat" – "I have already fallen into other
habits (idolatry) and I can no longer return to You" (Rashi).

V 4: "My beloved put in his hand through the hole of the door…" – God began to
strike Israel, first sending the tribes of Reuven, Gad and half of Menasheh into exile
some generations before the destruction of the Temple (Targum). This caused a stir
of repentance among those who remained.

Vv 5-6: However, even this arousal of repentance in the last generations before the
destruction was insufficient to revoke the decree and restore the divine Presence to
the Temple (Rashi on v 7).

V 7: "The watchmen that go about the city found me…" These are the Babylonians,
who slaughtered and exiled Judah (Targum). "They took away my mantle from me"
– the mantle alludes to Tzedekiah, the last king of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar
killed (Targum).

V 8: "I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, what will you
tell him? That I am love-sick" – Israel adjures the Babylonians to bear witness on
the future day of judgment how even in exile, she remained faithful, with Tzaddikim
like Daniel, Hananiyah, Mishael and Azaria being willing to sacrifice their lives to
sanctify God's name (Rashi).

V 9: The nations ask Israel how God is different from their gods such that she is
willing to be burned and hanged for His sake.

This question of the nations elicits Israel's praiseful description of God's attributes,
which is in parallel with God's description of the attributes of Israel in ch 4 vv 1-5.
Just as that description kabbalistically refers to the Partzuf of
Malchus/Nukva/Shechinah, similarly the description here in chapter 5 vv 10-16
alludes kabbalistically to the Partzuf of Zeir Anpin/Kudsha Berich Hu. The
commentary on the coming verses is mainly based on Rashi's lengthy comment on
Ch 5 v 16 where he discusses the entire passage.

V 10: "My beloved is white and ruddy…" God "whitens" and cleanses sins out of
loving kindness (Chessed). He is "ruddy" in punishing His enemies (Gevurah). He is
"pre-eminent above ten thousand" – many "troops"=angels surround Him.

V 11: "His head is like the finest gold" – the "head" is the first of the Ten
Commandments, in which He asserts His kingship. Having done so, He then
proceeds to make His decrees: "His locks are curled…" – this alludes to the
multitude of laws of the Torah. "…and black as a raven" – the primordial Torah was
written with black fire on white fire.

V 12: "His eyes are like doves…" Just as doves look to their cotes, so God's eyes
are upon the synagogues and study halls, where the Torah, which is compared to
water, is found. "…washed with milk…" When God's eyes look in judgment, they
clarify the true verdict, justifying the righteous and condemning the wicked,
requiting each according to his ways.

V 13: "His cheeks…" refers to His revelation at Sinai; "…his lips…" refers to the
Torah portions that He revealed out of the Tent of Meeting (the laws of sacrifices in
Leviticus).

V 14: "His hands…" refers to the Tablets of Stone. "His body…", lit. the torso, refers
to the book of Leviticus, which is in the middle of the Five Books of Moses just as
the torso is in the middle of the body.

V 15: "…his aspect is like Lebanon …" – one who studies and contemplates His
words (in the Torah) finds them like a forest that is constantly in blossom, because
they are always fresh.

V 16: "His mouth is most sweet…" Could anything be sweeter than the Torah code,
which even gives us a reward for fulfilling a mitzvah such as not causing ourselves
injury (Leviticus 19:28) and which guarantees that if a wicked man repents his very
sins are turned into merits? (Rashi).

Chapter 6
V 1: "Where is your beloved gone…?" The nations taunt Israel, asking why He has
left her as an abandoned widow. "Let us seek him with you!" When God restored
Judah from exile to Jerusalem and they began to build the Second Temple, the
surrounding nations asked to participate in the building in order to try to stall it.
V 3: "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine…" Israel replies to the nations that
they have no share in the building of Jerusalem (cf. Ezra 4:3; Nehemiah 2:20).

V 4: "You are beautiful, O my love…" God praises Israel for this reply to the
nations. "…comely as Jerusalem …" – With the rebuilding of the Temple, Israel was
restored to her former glory. "…terrible as an army with banners…" God struck fear
into the heart of the adversaries so that they were unable to stop the rebuilding.

V 5: "Turn away your eyes from me, for they have overcome me…" God speaks to
Israel like a lover so overwhelmed by his beloved that he has to ask her to turn her
eyes away from him. This alludes to the fact that the Second Temple lacked the Ark
of the Covenant etc. which in the First Temple caused such overwhelming passion
that this in itself led Israel into betrayal (Rashi).

V 6: "Your teeth are like a flock of lambs…" Every part of the lamb can be used for
holy purposes: its wool is dyed TECHEILES (sky blue) for tzitzith, its flesh is offered
as a sacrifice, its horns are used for shofars, its leg-bones for flutes, its innards for
stringed instruments and its skin for drums, while the nations are compared to dogs
(Psalms 22:17 etc.), no part of which is used for holy service (Rashi).

V 8: "Sixty are the queens and eighty are the concubines…" The sixty queens allude
to Abraham and his descendants as listed in Genesis, while the eighty concubines
allude to Noah and all his other descendents as listed there. (See Rashi on this
verse for the complete listings.) "…and maidens without number…" – these are all
the families into which the primordial souls later became divided (Rashi).

V 9: "My dove, my undefiled, is but one…" Out of all of them, only one is God's
choicest. Israel is compared to a dove because the dove is completely loyal to her
spouse.

V 10: "Who is she that looks forth as the dawn…?" Israel in the time of the Second
Temple are compared to the dawn, which little by little becomes lighter and lighter,
in that initially they were subject to Persia and Greece but under the Hasmoneans
became an independent kingdom.

V 11: "I went down into the garden of nuts…" God sent His presence to dwell in the
Second Temple. Israel is compared to a garden of nuts, because from the outside a
nut appears to be all wood but when you crack it you find it to be full of
compartments of edible food. Also, even when a nut falls into the mud (= exile), its
contents are not spoiled.

V 12: "And since it is revealed before God that they are righteous and occupied
with the Torah, God says, I shall strike them no more, nor shall I destroy them, but
I shall set myself to show them beneficence…" (Targum).

Chapter 7
These notes on the final chapters of Song of Songs consist of a translation of the
Aramaic Targum, which is exceptionally beautiful and inspiring. While the Targum
may appear far-fetched and distant from the surface meaning of the text as
rendered in the standard English translations, those who have some understanding
of the Hebrew original and of the methods of Midrash will be able to see that every
word and idea in the Targum is soundly based on the actual Hebrew text.
Chapter 7 v 1: Return to Me, O Assembly of Israel, return to Jerusalem, return to
the Torah study hall, return to the prophets who prophesy in the Name of HaShem
– why should the false prophets seek to lead the people of Jerusalem astray with
prophecies that are contrary to God's word in order to defile the camp of Israel and
Judah?

V 2: King Solomon said with prophetic spirit from God: How beautiful are the feet of
Israel when they go up to appear before God three times in the year and bring their
sacrifices, and their children are beautiful as the gems in the crown that the
craftsman Bezalel made for Aaron the Priest.

V 3: The head of the Academy, in whose merit the entire world is sustained like an
embryo is sustained in the womb of its mother, shines in Torah like the crescent of
the moon when he comes to rule pure or impure, innocent or guilty. Words of Torah
are never lacking from his mouth, just like waters are never lacking from the great
river that goes forth out of Eden. Seventy sages surround him like a round
threshing floor, with their store-houses full of the holy tithes that Ezra the Priest
and the Men of the Great Assembly – who are like roses – assigned to them in
order that they should have strength to engage in Torah day and night.

V 4: The two redeemers that are destined to redeem you, Mashiach son of David
and Mashiach son of Ephraim, will be like Moses and Aaron, who are compared to
two fawns, twins of a gazelle.

V 5: The father of the court of law that judges your cases takes pity on the people,
disciplining them, giving lashes to those who deserve it, as did King Solomon, who
built a tower of elephant's tusk and mastered the people of Israel , restoring them
to the Ruler of the Universe. Your sages are full of wisdom like fountains of water,
and they know how to calculate the months and leap years, fixing the new moons
and new years in the gates of the great Sanhedrin, while the leader of the House of
Judah is like King David, who built the Fortress of Zion, which is called the Tower of
Lebanon, all who stand on which can count all the towers of Damascus.

V 6: The king appointed as head over you is righteous like Elijah, who was zealous
for the King of Heaven and killed the false prophets on Mt Carmel, restoring the
House of Israel to the fear of God. Even the lowliest of the people who go with their
head bowed down are destined to wear purple, as did Daniel in Babylon and
Mordechai in Shushan, in the mert of the patriarchs.

V 7: Said King Solomon: How beautiful are you O Assembly of Israel when you bear
upon you the yoke of my kingship when I chastise you over your sins and you
accept this with love.

V 8: At the moment when your priests stretch out their hands in prayer and bless
their brothers the House of Israel, their fingers are spread like the branches of a
palm and their stature is like the date palm, and your assembly stand face to face
with the priests, their heads bent over to the ground like bunches of grapes.

V 9: God says: I will go and test Daniel and see if he can withstand one test just as
Abraham, who was straight like the Lulav, withstood ten tests, and I will also test
Hananiyah, Misha-el and Azariah, and if they stand firm I will in their merit redeem
the people of Israel, who are like a bunch of grapes, and the fame of those
Tzaddikim will be known throughout the earth and their fragrance will spread like
the fragrance of the apple trees of the Garden of Eden.
V 10: Daniel and his companions said, Let us accept God's decree as did Abraham,
who is compared to old wine, and let us go in His paths like Elijah and Elisha, in
whose merit the dead – who are like a man asleep – came to life, and like Ezekiel,
through the prophecy of whose mouth the dead were revived in the valley of Doura.

V 11: Jerusalem says: As long as I go in the ways of the Master of the Universe, He
rests His Presence upon me and His desire is upon me, while if I stray from His
paths, He withdraws His Presence and makes me wander among the nations and
they rule over me as a man rules over his wife.

V 12: When the House of Israel sinned, God sent them into exile in the land of
Edom. Then the Assembly of Israel said: Master of the Universe, please accept my
prayer, which I offer to you from the cities of my exile and the provinces of the
nations.

V 13: The Children of Israel say to one another, Let us rise early in the morning
and go to the synagogues and the study halls and study the scroll of the Torah and
see if the time has arrived for the redemption of Israel, who are compared to the
vine, and let us ask the sages – since it is revealed before God that the righteous
are full of merits like the pomegranate – if the end has come so that we may go up
to Jerusalem to give praise there to the God of Heaven and to offer holy sacrifices
and libations.

V 14: And when God's desire will be to redeem His people from exile, King
Mashiach will be told: The time of the exile has reached its end, and the merits of
the righteous are fragrant as the scent of balsam, and the sages of the generation
are constantly by the gates of the study hall engaging in the teachings of the
scribes and the words of the Torah. Arise now and receive the kingship that I have
stored up for you.

Chapter 8
V 1: At that time King Mashiach will be revealed to the Assembly of Israel, and the
Children of Israel will say to him, Come and go with us like a brother and we will go
up to Jerusalem, and we will feed upon the deep wisdom of the Torah just as a
baby suckles at his mother's chest. For all the time that I was wandering about
outside my land, when I remembered the Name of the great God and sacrificed
myself for His sake, even the nations of the land did not despise me.

V 2: I will take you, King Mashiach, and bring you up to my Temple, and you will
teach me to fear God and go in His ways, and there we will partake of the feast of
Leviathan and drink the old wine that has been hidden away since the day the
world was created and partake of the pomegranate fruits destined for the
Tzaddikim in the Garden of Eden.

V 3: The Assembly of Israel says: I am the choicest of all the nations, for I bind the
Tefilin on my left arm and upon my head, and I fix the Mezzuzah on the right hand
door post, so that no destructive spirits have the power to harm me.

V 4: King Mashiach will say: I adjure you, my people the House of Israel, why do
you provoke the nations of the earth in trying to go out of exile, and why do you
rebel against the forces of Gog and Magog. Tarry here a little while until the nations
that go up to make war against Jerusalem will be destroyed, and afterwards God
will remember in your favor the kindnesses of the Tzaddikim, and it will be His will
to redeem you.
V 5: Solomon the prophet said: When the dead will come to life, the Mt of Olives
will be split and all the dead of Israel will come up from beneath it, and even the
righteous who died in exile will go through tunnels under the earth and come out
from under the Mt of Olives, while the wicked who died and were buried in the Land
of Israel will be cast out as a man casts a stone. Then all the inhabitants of the
earth will say: What is the merit of this people who go up from the land in their
multiple thousands upon thousands as on the day when they went up from the
wilderness to the land of Israel, delighting in the kindnesses of their Master as on
the day when they surrounded Mt Sinai to receive the Torah? At that hour Zion ,
who is the mother of Israel , will give birth to her children and Jerusalem will
receive the children of the exile.

V 6: On that day the Children of Israel will say to their Master: Please place us like
the seal of a ring upon Your heart, like the seal of a ring upon Your arm, so that we
will be exiles no more. For the love of Your Godliness is strong as death, and the
people's jealousy of us is fierce as hell, and the hatred they bear against us is like
the coals of fire of Gehennom which God created on the second day of creation in
order to burn up the idolaters.

V 7: The Master of the Universe says to His people the House of Israel: Even if all
the nations, who are compared to the many waters of the sea, were to gather
together, they cannot drown My love and make it depart from you. And even if all
the kings of the earth, who are compared to the waters of a mighty river, gather
together, they will not be able to obliterate you from the world. And if a man pays
all the money of his house to acquire wisdom while in exile, I will return him double
in the world to come, and all the spoils of the camp of Gog will not be enough to
compare with this reward.

V 8: At that time the angels of heaven will say one to another: We have one nation
on earth whose merits are slender and she has no kings or rulers to go out to do
battle with the camp of Gog. What shall we do for our sister on the day that the
nations say they will go up against her in war?

V 9: Michael the guardian angel of Israel will say: If she stands like a wall among
the nations and pays money to unify the Name of the Master of the Universe,, then
I and you, together with their scribes, shall surround her like walls of silver and the
nations will have no power to rule over her, just like worms have no power to
destroy silver. And even if she is poor in merits, let us entreat God for mercy upon
her and remember the merit of the Torah written on the tablets of the heart which
the children study, and she will stand against the nations like a cedar.

V 10: The Assembly of Israel answers and says: I am firm as a wall in following the
teachings of the Torah, and the children are strong as a tower. At that time the
Assembly of Israel will find favor in the eyes of her Master, and they will seek the
peace of all the inhabitants of earth.

V 11: One nation went up as the share of the Master of the Universe to whom
peace belongs. She is compared to a vineyard. He settled her in Jerusalem and
entrusted her into the hand of the kings of the House of David to guard her, just as
a tenant tends a vineyard. After Solomon king of Israel died, they were left in the
hands of his son Rehaboam. Jeraboam came and divided the kingdom with him and
took ten tribes from him in accordance with the words of Ahiyah of Shilo.

V 12: When King Solomon heard the prophecy of Ahiyah, he sought to kill him, and
Jeraboam fled from Solomon and went to Egypt . At that hour King Solomon was
told in a prophecy that he would rule over the Ten Tribes all his days, but that after
his death Jeraboam son of Nevat would rule over them, while the two tribes of
Judah and Benjamin would be under the rule of Rehaboam son of Solomon.

V 13: Said King Solomon at the end of his prophecy: At the end of days, the Master
of the Universe will say to the Assembly of Israel: You, O Assembly of Israel, that is
compared to a small garden among the nations, and you sit in the study hall with
the members of the Sanhedrin while the rest of the people listen to the voice of the
head of the Assembly and learn from the words of his mouth. Let Me hear the
sound of your words of Torah when you sit in judgment, whether to vindicate or
condemn, and I will agree with everything you do.

V 14: At that hour the elders of the Assembly of Israel will say: Run, my Beloved,
Master of the Universe, from this impure land and let Your Presence dwell in the
heavens above. And in times of trouble, when we pray to You, be like a gazelle,
which when it sleeps keeps one eye closed and one eye open, or like a young hart,
which when it flees looks behind it. So too may You look upon us and see our pain
and suffering from the heavens above, until the time when You will show favor and
redeem us and bring us up on the mountain of Jerusalem, and there the priests will
offer the incense spices before You.
 Book of Ruth
Chapter 1
The book of Ruth – an enchanting agricultural allegory replete with some of the
deepest Torah mysteries – centers on the theme of embrace of the Torah itself
through conversion and the practice of the Kindness it teaches, which is the very
pillar of the Universe. It is the union of Torah and Kindness that leads to
redemption. Ruth is the archetypal convert who accepts the Torah. Her need to
benefit from the agricultural gifts to the poor, an integral part of the pathway of
kindness it teaches, leads her to the field of Boaz. And out of their encounter
springs the line that leads to David, the Messianic king and redeemer of Israel
(Ruth 4:13-22).

It is customary to read the book of Ruth in the synagogue on the morning of the
festival of Shavuos, the summertime harvest festival celebrating the Receiving of
the Torah at Sinai. Ruth is read prior to the Torah reading, which describes the
revelation at Sinai, where all those who accepted the yoke of the Torah were
"converts". Shavuos is also by tradition the anniversary of the birth and death of
King David.

"Why was she called Ruth? Because she merited that out of her came David, who
delighted (REEVAH) the Holy One blessed be He with songs and praises" (Berachos
7b). Ruth herself was a royal princess, daughter of Eglon king of Moab, who
merited such a righteous descendant as David because he rose from his throne in
honor of God when Ehud called him (Judges 3:20). Yet Ruth gave up her royal
status and its luxuries in order to follow Naomi into a life of abject poverty. She was
willing to do this in order to attain the greatest wealth of all, the life of Torah. She
was prepared to descend to the very bottom of the social ladder and play the role
of 'ANI, the poor man, who is needed by the BAAL HABAYIS, the rich householder,
in order to fulfill the mitzvos involved in the practice of kindness and charity. First
and foremost among these in a simple agricultural society are the gifts to the poor
of PE'AH, the unharvested corner of the field, LEKET, the gleanings of fallen ears of
corn, and SHICH'HAH, the forgotten sheaf.

Ruth starts off as the receiver of kindness, but "More than the rich householder
does for the poor man, the poor man does for the rich householder" (Midrash Ruth
4), because in the merit of the householder's kindness to the poor man, he receives
a blessing that he could not have attained without the poor man serving as the
recipient of his gift. In the merit of Boaz' kindness to Ruth, she becomes attached
to him and bears him a son who fathers the father of Mashiach.

V 1: "And it was in the days when the judges judged…" This was prior to Samuel,
some say in the time of Barak and Deborah, others say in the time of Shamgar and
Ehud (Yalkut Shimoni). The Hebrew phrase "the judges judged" can also be
construed as meaning that people used to judge the judges. "Woe to the generation
that judged their judges and whose judges needed to be judged!" (Introduction to
Midrash Ruth). VAYEHI, "and it was", is an expression of woe (Megillah 10b).
"And there was a famine in the land." Targum on this verse enumerates ten major
famines – in the times of Adam, Lemech, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Boaz, David,
Elijah and Elisha, "…and the tenth famine will be in time to come, not a famine to
eat bread and not a thirst to drink water, but to hear words of prophecy from
HaShem."

R. Ovadiah of Bartenurah (author of the standard commentary on the Mishneh)

wrote a kabbalistic commentary on Ruth. He states that "in the days when the
judges judged" means it was a time when the Attribute of Judgment was judging
Israel, and the blessing was taken from her. "There was a famine in the land"
means that the Shechinah left the throne and ascended on high, and
correspondingly down below, the kings of Israel (Elimelech and family) left their
"thrones" and went out into exile.

"…and a man (ISH) went out from Bethlehem…" The word ISH teaches that he was
very wealthy and the leader of the generation (Rashi). "ISH alludes to the Holy One
blessed be He, cf. Exodus 15:3" (Bartenurah).

"…to dwell in the fields of Moab, he and his wife…" – "The Holy One blessed be He is
the 'man', Israel are His wife, and when the wife is among the nations of the world,
represented by the fields of Moab, the "man" is also with them, as the Rabbis
taught: wherever Israel were exiled, the Shechinah went with them" (Bartenurah).

V 2: "And the name of the man was Elimelech…" – ELI is the name of the Holy One,
blessed be He, and to Him alone is the kingship (MELECH) fitting" (Bartenurah).

The ten Hebrew letters of the names of Elimelech's two sons, MACHLON and
CHILYON (which have the connotations of Forgiveness and Destruction
respectively), correspond to the Ten Sefiros.

V 4: "And they took for themselves Moabite wives…" Bartenurah explains:

MACHLON and CHILYON are the places from which influence flows into the world,
and now, because of our sins, they send blessing to the wicked, while Israel receive
troubles and evils through them because they are weak in performance of the
commandments and turn the back (OREPH) of their heads to God instead of their
faces, and for this reason they are saturated (RAVVIM) with troubles and evils, and
this is alluded to in the names of ORPAH and RUTH.

V 5: "And the two of them died also, Machlon and Chilyon…" Bartenurah explains:
"The text says 'also' to suggest that this was not literal death but rather it is a
metaphor for the absence of the Shechinah, so that even though there is blessing
in the world, it cannot be compared to the blessing that flows when Israel are
meritorious, and the blessing that comes down to Israel is not as it was in the days
of old when they received it from the hand of the Holy One blessed be He. But
when they are in exile they receive it through the angels, who are alluded to in the
"lads of Boaz". For Boaz alludes to the Holy One blessed by He, who is destined to
rule over Israel with might ('OZ) and power when He will be aroused from His
"sleep", but in the meantime He hides His power and might from them and does
not fight their wars.

V 8: "Let HaShem perform kindness to you just as you have done kindness with the
dead and with me." The "kindness" of the two daughters-in-law to the dead was
that they made them shrouds (Yalkut Shimoni). Giving honor to the dead is
CHESSED SHEL EMES, T R U E Kindness since one can expect no recompense
whatever from the recipient. The theme of the practice of Kindness recurs
repeatedly in Ruth because this is one of the three pillars on which the universe
stands (Avot 1:2).
Vv 7ff: Orpah and Ruth accompany Naomi on her way home to the Land of Israel,
but Naomi seeks to dissuade them from going with her. Three times she tells them,
"Return!" (vv 8, 11 & 12) teaching that the would-be convert is rejected three
times, and only if he makes an exceptional effort is he received (Yalkut Shimoni).

V 14: Orpah eventually turned her back on Naomi and ended up giving birth to four
sons who became formidable adversaries of David, including Goliath (II Samuel
21:22).
However, Ruth persisted. Her beautiful words to Naomi in vv 16-17, "wherever you
go I will go", were darshened by the rabbis as stating her complete acceptance of
the Torah (her "conversion"). "Wherever you go, I will go" – I will only walk within
the Sabbath limits. "Wherever you lie down to rest, I will lie down to rest" – I will
not go into forbidden seclusion with a male. "Your people is my people" – I accept
the 613 commandments by which your people are distinguished from all others.
"And your God is my God" – I will not worship idols. "Where you die, I will die" – I
accept on myself the Four Death Penalties of the Court (stoning, burning,
decapitation and strangulation). "…and there I will be buried" – I accept that there
are separate areas in the cemetery for executed sinners (see Rashi on vv 16-17).

V 21: "I went out full but HaShem has brought me back empty…" Having returned
to Israel, Naomi is now the very epitome of poverty, lowliness and humility, and
with her is Ruth, the former princess, who must now go out into the field to gather
fallen gleanings in order to survive. Poverty and humility are the attributes that God
chose as the most fitting vessel through which to receive His Torah!

Chapter 2
V 1: "Now there was a relative of Naomi's husband…" The rabbis taught that
Elimelech and Sal'mon (the father of Boaz, Ruth 4:21), Peloni Almoni (Ruth 4:1)
and Naomi's father were all brothers, the sons of Nachshon ben Aminadav, Prince
of Judah.

"And his name was Boaz…" Bartenurah explains: "The allusive meaning is that the
name of the Holy One blessed be He has the power and might to restore the
captivity of Israel.

V 3: "…and she happened to come." A higher Hand was guiding Ruth to her destiny.
Of the Hebrew words, VA-YEEKER MEEKRE-HA, Rabbi Yochanan said, "Everyone
who saw her had a KERI" (Yalkut Shimoni) – Ruth was exceptionally beautiful.

V 4: "…and he said to the reapers, HaShem be with you". From here we learn that
HaShem's name may be invoked in blessing others (Berachos).

V 5: "And Boaz said… Whose maiden is this?" – "Could it be that Boaz was in the
habit of asking after women? No! Rather, he saw in her the ways of modesty and
wisdom. Two fallen ears she would take, but if three had fallen together, she would
not take them [as prescribed by the halachah]. Ears that were standing up she
picked while standing; those lying on the ground she sat down to pick in order not
to bend over…" (Rashi).

Vv 8-9: "And Boaz said to Ruth…" The deep allegory contained in this verse is
darshened at length by Rabbi Nachman (Likutey Moharan I, 65, see "Rabbi
Nachman on Suffering" translated by R. Avraham Greenbaum, pub. Breslov
Research Institute).
Vv 10-11: Why did Boaz show Ruth exceptional kindness going beyond the letter of
his obligations under the laws of LEKET? Because of Ruth's exceptional kindness to
Naomi and her having left her parents, homeland and native culture in order to join
a people she had not known before. Kindness begets kindness.

Chapter 3
V 1: "And Naomi her mother-in-law said to her…" Having seen how God's guiding
hand had brought Ruth to reap in Boaz' field and how generously Boaz had
responded, Naomi now seized the initiative, priming her widowed daughter-in-law
to throw herself before him in the hope that he would marry her. (It is a sad reality
that the convert is not generally perceived as having a high value in the marriage
market, particularly not a Moabitess for the reason that will be discussed in the
commentary on Chapter 4.) The dramatic initiative whereby Ruth at the bidding of
her mother-in-law went into Boaz to plead with him directly is somewhat
reminiscent of Esther's dramatic appeal to Ahasuerus at the bidding of Mordechai.

V 2: "And now, is not Boaz our relative…" Naomi was not merely trying to make a
good match for Ruth. From the ensuing narrative we learn that Naomi wanted Boaz
to fulfill the Biblically-ordained role of the "redeemer" of an impoverished relative's
field, as laid down in Leviticus 25:25. Naomi and Ruth had been reduced to
complete poverty, and they were forced to sell the field that had been the ancestral
portion of Ruth's late husband Machlon. In order not only to retain the family
property but also to keep the name of Machlon alive, Naomi wanted Boaz to buy
the field AND marry Ruth so that Machlon's name would live on when people would
see her going in and out of the field and say "She was Machlon's wife" (see Rashi
on Ruth 3:8).

What Naomi wanted to accomplish was NOT exactly identical with YIBUM, the
"levirate" marriage in which the widow of a man who dies childless is married by
her dead husband's surviving brother in order that the child she will hopefully bear
him will perpetuate the dead brother's name (Deuteronomy 25:5-6). Nevertheless,
the mystery of YIBUM lies at the very center of the story of Ruth and Boaz, just as
it lies at the heart of that of Boaz' illustrious ancestors, Judah and Tamar (Genesis
ch 38). Thus the ceremony described in Ruth ch 4 whereby Boaz in the presence of
the elders at the gate "purchased" the field, and Ruth with it, from the other
candidate for "redeemer", including the taking off of the shoe as a mark of the
transaction, is conceptually bound up with the ceremony of HALITZAH in Deut.
25:7-10.

V 3: "Wash yourself and anoint yourself and put your dress on…" – "Wash yourself
from the filth of idolatry, and anoint yourself with mitzvoth" (Rashi). Was Ruth
naked so that Naomi had to tell her to put a dress on? No! She was telling her to
change her clothes and put on her Shabbos dress! (Yalkut Shimoni). Ruth,
symbolizing repentant Israel, was about to go to seek out her Redeemer, and she
had to prepare herself.

V 6: "And she went down to the threshing floor and did according to all that her
mother-in-law had instructed her". In fact Ruth reversed the order, because Naomi
had told her to get ready first and then go to the threshing floor. Wisely, Ruth
understood that if she were to go through the streets adorned and bedecked people
could get a very bad impression, which is why she adorned herself only after
arriving at the threshing floor. All of this took place at NIGHT-TIME, signifying the
darkness of exile, whereas the redemption of Ruth by Boaz, symbolizing God's
redemption of Israel, takes place in the full light of the morning.
V 8: "And it came to pass at midnight…" These are exactly the same words as in
Exodus 12:29 when Israel was redeemed from Egypt.

"…the MAN was startled… and behold there was a WOMAN lying at his feet" – "The
MAN alludes to the Holy One blessed be He, while the WOMAN lying at his feet
alludes to Israel, as in the Talmudic phrase '[the sign of the 3rd watch of the night
is] a WOMAN talking to her HUSBAND' (Brachos 3a; Bartenurah on Ruth 3:8).

V 9: "And she said… spread your garment over your handmaiden, for you are the
redeemer." Rashi (ad loc.) explains that the spreading of his garment over her is a
euphemism for marriage. On the esoteric level, Bartenurah explains that Ruth was
requesting that God Himself should redeem Israel rather than a mortal hero like
one of the ancient judges such as Samson or Gideon, for He is their true Redeemer.

V 10: "And he said, blessed are you to HaShem…" – "Reish Lakish said, A man
should never hold himself back from going to an elder to bless him, for Ruth was
forty years old and she had never had children [the rabbis said she was
congenitally barren, Yalkut on Ruth 4:13 'And HaShem GAVE her conception'], but
after that Tzaddik prayed for her she was granted a child" (Yalkut Shimoni).

V 12: "…and also there is a redeemer who is closer than me". The other candidate
to fulfill the Biblical precept of redeeming Ruth's field was a relative "closer" than
Boaz, because, as the rabbis explained, this PLONI ALMONI, "Mister Someone"
(Ruth 4:1), who was also called TOV (in our present chapter in the very next verse
if we construe the Hebrew text literally) was the surviving BROTHER of Elimelech
and Sal'mon (who had also died already), whereas Boaz was Sal'mon's SON and
therefore not as close (see Rashi on our present verse).

Bartenurah, discussing the mystery of the other candidate for redeemer, explains
that the redemption of Israel can take place in one of two ways. Either Israel
repents and they are redeemed immediately, or they fail to repent and have to be
redeemed by God Himself. The first way in which redemption takes place is
"closer", and indeed there were times in the history of Israel when they merited
redemption in virtue of their repentance, as in the time of Hezekiah. (This explains
the opinion of R. Hillel in Sanhedrin 99a that Israel will not have any further
Mashiach, because they already "ate" him in the days of Hezekiah.) The second
way in which redemption takes place is "further off" because it will only happen at
the end of days.

Bartenurah explains that esoterically, Boaz' praise of Ruth for "not going after the
young men, whether poor or rich" (Ruth 3:10) indicates that even though
redeemers like Samson and Gideon etc. had great power and strength, Israel
prefers that the redemption should come from God Himself. "You have shown more
loyalty at the end than at the beginning" – because Israel wants the final
redemption to come from God, as opposed to the earlier redemptions, which came
about through human leaders, the earlier redemptions were followed by further
exile while God's redemption will be final and everlasting.

V 13: "Stay this night and it shall be in the morning…" If Israel waits for God to
redeem them, they may have to stay longer in the darkness of exile, but in the end
the morning will arrive and then God will redeem them (Bartenurah). The rabbis
taught that the oath that Boaz took in this verse was that despite being sorely
tempted, he would not lie with Ruth without first formally marrying her (see Rashi
ad loc.)

V 15: "And he measured SIX measures of barley…" – "He hinted to her that a son
would come forth from her who would be blessed with SIX blessings, 'a spirit of
wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and strength, a spirit of knowledge
and the fear of God' (Isaiah 11:18; Rashi on our verse).

Chapter 4
V 1: "Then Boaz went up to the gate…" Boaz' intended marriage with Ruth was
fraught with halachic complications since Ruth was a convert from Moab, and the
Torah clearly states that "an Ammonite and a Moabite shall not enter the assembly
of HaShem even in the tenth generation (=forever)" (Deuteronomy 23:4).
According to the oral tradition, the use specifically of the masculine form of
AMMONI and MOAVI in the verse teaches that the prohibition does NOT apply to
Ammonite or Moabite WOMEN. However, this halachah flies in the face of the
apparent simple meaning of the text to the point that it was frequently forgotten.
This happened in the generation of David after he killed Goliath, when Saul's
counselor Do'eg argued that David was not even eligible to enter the assembly,
being descended from a Moabitess (see Rashi on I Samuel 17:55 and Yevamos
77b). And according to our commentators, the same forgetfulness was also present
in the time of Bo'az, because the even closer relative who was the other candidate
for redeeming Ruth thought that the Biblical prohibition applied to Moabite women
as well as men, and he was afraid of marrying her for fear of putting an inerasable
blemish on his issue.

"And [Bo'az] said, Turn aside, wait here Mister so-and-so [PLONI ALMONI]." The
Hebrew word PLONI is from the root PELE meaning something hidden (cf. Deut.
17:8) – Rashi explains that his actual name is not written in the text because he did
not want to redeem Ruth. Rashi explains ALMONI (from the root EELEM,
"speechless", "dumb") as meaning that he is "without a name", and also that he
was dumb and a "widower" (ALMAN), bereft of Torah, because he did not know that
the halachah forbids only a MOAVI from entering the assembly but not a
MOAVIAH!!!

V 2: "And he took ten men from the elders of the city…" Boaz intentionally
assembled a MINYAN (quorum) of men of stature in order to publicly teach the
correct halachah that a MOAVIAH is indeed PERMITTED to enter the assembly
(Kesuvos 7b). We also learn from this verse that the marriage ceremony must be
performed in the presence of a MINYAN of ten men (ibid.).

Vv 3ff: When Boaz began to explain to PLONI ALMONI, the other candidate for
redeemer, that he was being asked to buy Elimelech's field, initially he was willing
to do so (v 4, "I shall redeem it"), until Boaz started to explain that there were
some "strings attached" as he would also have to marry Ruth. At this point PLONI
ALMONI baulked "lest I harm my own inheritance" (v 6), because he thought Ruth's
children would not be Israelites.

V 7: "Now this was the custom in former time…" The removal of the shoe is parallel
to the present-day custom of formalizing an act of KINYAN, "acquisition", through
the parties lifting up a SOODAR ("scarf" or other garment or vessel, often a
"gartel") whereby through the law of CHALIFIN the acquisition comes about
(KINYAN SOODAR). As discussed in the commentary on the previous chapter, the
taking of the shoe also relates to the mystery of YIBUM and HALITZAH. In this way
Bo'az formally acquired Ruth.

V 11: "And all the people that were in the gate said with the elders as witnesses,
Let HaShem grant that the woman coming to your house shall be like Rachel and
like Leah…" Boaz and the people of Bethlehem were from the tribe of Judah, Leah's
fourth son, yet they gave primacy to Rachel as Jacob's principal wife (Rashi). Judah
must respect Joseph and his offspring!!!

V 13: "And Boaz took Ruth and she was his wife…" The rabbis taught that on the
very night that Boaz came into her, he died (Yalkut Shimoni). This is why the child
was raised by Naomi.

Vv 18-21: "And these are the generations of Peretz… and Yishai begat David". The
whole purpose of this remarkable story of Ruth is to trace the origins of Melech
HaMashiach.
 Book of Lamentations
Chapter 1
The original Hebrew name of Lamentations is KINOTH, "Mourning Dirges" (see II
Chronicles 35:25), but the work is more generally known by the name of EICHAH
after the Hebrew word with which chapters 1, 2 and 4 all open, meaning "How???"

The book of EICHAH was written in stages by the prophet Jeremiah. He wrote
Chapter 4 as a mourning elegy over King Josiah, the last righteous king of Judah,
who was slain in battle at the height of his efforts to cleanse Israel, and whose
death signified that the sun had gone down for the House of David (Ta'anis 22b).
"And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah, and all the singing men and singing women
spoke of Josiah in their laments to this day, and he made them an ordinance in
Israel, and behold they are written in the laments (KINOTH)" (II Chron. 35:25).
Rashi writes on this verse: "When they are struck by some trouble or occasion for
weeping and they mourn and cry over what happened, they recall this trouble with
it, as for example on the Fast of Tisha B'Av, when mourning dirges are recited over
those who died in the decrees that have occurred in our days, and likewise they
weep over the death of Josiah" (Rashi ad loc.).

The other chapters of EICHAH were written prophetically by Jeremiah not many
years after the death of Josiah, in the fourth year of the reign of his son, the wicked
King Yeho-yakim, as a warning of the disaster that was to strike Judah and
Jerusalem if the people did not repent. The full account of how Jeremiah composed
Eichah and how it came to be read before Yeho-yakim, who cut the scroll to shreds
and burned it in the fire, is contained in Jeremiah ch 36. Jeremiah had previously
prophesied to the women of Judah: "Teach your daughters wailing and each one
her neighbor lamentation" (Jer. 9:19). Now in the scroll that he composed as a
graphic warning to the people of the coming doom, he depicted the relentless
destruction of Jerusalem as if it had already happened, penning words of mourning
and lamentation that the people would have to repeat from generation to
generation in order to make amends for having failed to repent in time to avert it.

The Mishneh in Mo'ed Katan 3:9, discussing mourning practices, explains that a
KINAH dirge (e.g. at a funeral) would be recited responsively: "One woman speaks
a verse and all the others answer, as it is written, '…and each one her neighbor
lamentation'". Chapters 1-4 of EICHAH are written in the form of alphabetical
acrostics. Chapters 1, 2 and 4 each consist of 22 verses starting with successive
letters of the Aleph-Beis, while Chapter 3 consists of 66 verses, the first three of
which begin with Aleph, the second three with Beis and so on. Prior to the
availability of printed texts for everyone, alphabetical acrostics were a useful
mnemonic device. Moreover, "Rabbi Yochanan said, Why were Israel punished with
troubles depicted in verses beginning with the letters of the Aleph Beis? Because
they violated the Torah, which was given with the letters of the Aleph-Beis!"
(Sanhedrin 104a).

"Rabbi Abahu began expounding on the scroll of EICHAH quoting the verse, 'And
they, like the man (KE-ADAM), have violated the Covenant' (Hosea 6:7). What does
'like the man' mean? The verse is comparing the people to Adam, the first man.
The Holy One blessed be He said: I brought Adam into the Garden of Eden and
gave him a commandment, but he violated My commandment so I drove him out
and banished him and mourned over him with the phrase, 'Where are you?'
(=AYEKAH, Genesis 3:9, consisting of the same Hebrew letters as EICHAH).
Likewise I brought his children to the Land of Israel and gave them commandments,
but they violated My commandments and I banished them, and I mourned over
them with the word EICHAH!!!" (Introduction to Eichah Rabbah).

This Midrash is teaching us that the disaster which befell Judah and Jerusalem must
be seen as part of the greater cycle of human sin and consequent suffering and
chastisement that began with Adam and continues until today. Just as God's call to
Adam, "Where are you???" (Gen. 3:9) was a call to repentance, so is the scroll of
EICHAH, a call to repentance, challenging us to see the meaning and purpose of the
suffering with which Israel has been afflicted. There are many ways in which
humans react to terrible reverses and suffering. Sometimes they fall into the depths
of helpless grief, despair and depression. In other cases, they react with rage and
anger, kicking and rebelling against God or "fate" for sending them such troubles.
But in putting the laments of EICHAH onto the lips of Israel, the prophet Jeremiah
was providing them with words and images by means of which they could not only
give expression to their pain and grief but also come to terms with their suffering
by understanding its meaning and purpose through the recognition that it was
divinely sent to chasten and purify them from their sins. The prophet (NAVEE)
draws his words from the level of BINAH, "understanding", sweetening the bitter pill
of suffering by justifying the ways of God. "For great as the sea is your breach:
Who (MEE) can heal you?" (Lam. 2:13). Kabbalistically, the word MEE alludes to
BINAH, which lies at the root of God's judgments and through which they are
"sweetened" when we gain deeper understanding of their meaning and purpose.

Not only is EICHAH full of allusions to the historical disasters that struck Israel with
the destruction of the Temple and the exile. The multi-layered text is also replete
with allusions to the metaphysical roots of Israel's fall, which lie in the "Breaking of
the Vessels" as explained in the Kabbalistic writings. For "He cast from heaven to
earth the glory (TIFERET) of Israel and did not remember the stool of His feet
(=MALCHUS) on the day of His anger. The Lord has swallowed up (BEELA) and has
not shown pity" (Eichah 2:1-2). BEELA has the same Hebrew letters as Bela son of
Be'or, first of the Seven Kings of Edom, who correspond to the shattered vessels of
the Sefirot.

Rabbi Hayim ben Attar, author of the commentary OHR HA-HAYIM on the Five
Books of Moses, explains in his commentary RISHON LE-ZION on EICHAH that the
way the Elegist accomplishes his purpose, which is to arouse weeping in his
listeners, is by crafting each and every verse as "a lamb's tail with a thorn caught in
it". Without digressing to give expansive explanations and background, each verse
is designed to pierce the listener in the heart with a sharp evocation of some detail
of the calamity.

The opening verses of EICHAH chapter 1 contrast the lost greatness, power and
prestige of Jerusalem with her present abject state of subjection, isolated like a
leper, having been betrayed by those she thought were her friends.

"She weeps sore in the night" (v 2). The doubled Hebrew verb for weeping alludes
to the weeping over the destruction of the two Temples, which came about because
of the needless weeping of the Children of Israel in the wilderness on the night after
they received the Ten Spies' negative report about the Land (Numbers 14:1). This
was on the 9 th day of the month of Av, which was thereafter marked out as a day
of weeping for all the generations (Ta'anis 29a; see Rashi on Lam. 1:2).

Already in verse 5 the Elegist weaves into his depiction of the overthrow of Israel at
the hands of their enemies the understanding that it came about "because HaShem
has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions" (Lam. 1:5) – for
"Jerusalem has sinned a sin…" (ibid. v 8).

Israel is depicted as a widow (v 1), an unclean Niddah-woman (v 8) and a raped

virgin (v 15). The pathos of Israel is increased by the fact that there is none to
comfort her. This leads the Elegist to call upon God Himself to look on her in her
wretchedness (verse 9), thereby drawing into us the understanding that everything
is under His watchful providence. The Elegist depicts the full horror of the calamity,
evoking the fire that burned in the people's very bones, their sense of being
helplessly trapped in a snare (v 13), the destruction and devastation of the youth
(vv 15-16) etc. Yet after all this he says, "HaShem is righteous, for I have rebelled
against His mouth…" (v 18).

Israel's pain over her suffering at the hands of the nations brings her to call for
vengeance against them, but this is because they are truly guilty. For if Israel must
suffer because of her sins, so should they (vv 21-22).

Chapter 2
The first nine verses of Chapter 2 depict the calamity that struck Zion in such a way
as to emphasize that it was God who sent it. As the text states explicitly later on in
the chapter: "HaShem has done that which He devised: He has fulfilled His word
that He commanded in the days of old…" (Lam. 2:17). The cycle of sin and
consequent suffering that culminated with the destruction of Jerusalem is deeply
rooted in God's plan for the world, which is laid down in the Torah: "If you will not
listen to me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins" (Lev. 26:18,
see Rashi on Lam. 2:17).

The Elegist makes no attempt to "sweeten" the suffering by trying to minimize how
terrible it was. On the contrary, he heightens our sense of the horror by repeatedly
emphasizing the way in which the kind, merciful God became like an enemy in the
fury with which He brought death and destruction upon the people and their land
(vv 1-8). All who were pleasant to the eye were slaughtered (v 4). The precious
Temple was ravaged (v 6). The rejoicing of the Sabbath and the festivals became
forgotten. Without respect for person, the king and the princes were sent into a
humiliating exile, the prophets were bereft of vision, and all that was left for the
people to do was to mourn as children fainted in the streets and little babies
starved (vv 7-12).

It is precisely through articulating the full intensity of the horror and showing how
the soothsaying false prophets had betrayed the people while their mocking
enemies gloated triumphantly over their plight that the Elegist leads his listeners to
the understanding that they have no recourse except to cry out to God (vv 18ff).
The moral of EICHAH is: "Rise, cry out in the night at the head of the watches, pour
out your heart like water before the face of the Lord…" (v 19).
 Chapter 3
Like Chapters 1, 2 and 4 of EICHAH, Chapter 3 takes the form of an acrostic built
upon the Aleph-Beis, except that in this case each of the letters of the Aleph-Beis is
used in succession as the initial letter of three short verses or triplets.

"I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath" (v 1). Starting with
this verse, the first six triplets in this elegy (vv 1-18) all pour forth from the heart
of the Elegist himself – a righteous prophet – complaining that God has set him up
as His target: "He is to me like a bear lying in wait and like a lion in secret places"
(v 10). The entire passage is somewhat reminiscent of Job's complaints that God
was tormenting him for no reason, and the rabbis of the Midrash point to a
GEZERAH SHAVAH (identical phrase in two disparate texts indicating a midrashic
connection between the two) between the first verse of our present chapter, "I am
the man (GEVER)…", and a verse in Job where his interlocutor Eli-hoo criticizes him,
saying "Which man (GEVER) is like Job, who drinks up scorning like water?" (Job
34:7). "Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi commented: 'I am the man…' – I am the same as
Job, of whom it is written, 'Which man is like Job, who drinks up scorning like
water?' Everything You brought upon Job, You have brought upon me!" (Eichah
Rabbah). The Elegist is simultaneously pouring out his own pain and giving
expression to the national pain. Rashi on v 1 explains the pain of Jeremiah himself:
Jeremiah was complaining that he "witnessed greater affliction than all the other
prophets who prophesied about the destruction of the Temple , because it was not
destroyed in their days but in mine!"

In Job's case it was Eli-hoo who brought him to understand that although he may
have been righteous, he had perhaps not been righteous enough and that was why
he suffered. But in the case of the present elegy here in EICHAH, it is Jeremiah
himself who is in dialog with the thoughts in his own heart, and simultaneously with
those in the hearts of his people, who felt that the cruelty of their plight meant that
God had become their enemy. [Many have felt similarly about the Holocaust.] "And
I said, My strength and my hope are perished from HaShem" (v 18). But
immediately after this expression of despair, there is a change in the tone of the
elegy in the seventh triplet (vv 19-21). Having given expression to the real feelings
of despair in his heart, Jeremiah begins to pray to God to remember his suffering
even as his soul is bowed down within him, and he discovers how to reply to that
inner voice of despair: "With this shall I give an answer to my heart, therefore I
have hope" (v 21).

The ensuing message of hope begins in the beautiful passage in vv 22ff: God's
kindnesses and mercies are truly unending. They are renewed every morning! It is
this gives the Elegist the courage to address God directly: "Great is Your
faithfulness!" (v 23). Since we can rely on the constant renewal of God's kindness,
there is always hope, and because there is always hope, it is fitting for man to bear
his suffering patiently in the knowledge that God sends it for his own ultimate
benefit. Having delicately reached this point, Jeremiah now teaches the suffering
people the proper way to respond to their suffering. [1] We must always wait for
God's salvation (v 26). [2] It is necessary to bear our suffering with patience (v 27).
[3] We must "sit alone and keep silent"(v 28) – i.e. enter into deep personal self-
reckoning without railing against fate. Here in EICHAH is one of the foundations of
the pathway of HISBODEDUS – secluded meditation and prayer – that Rabbi
Nachman of Breslov emphasized more than anything. [4] We must "put our mouths
in the dust" (v 29). Dust or earth is =APHAR, the vessel that receives the three
higher elements of Fire, Air and Water. APHAR is MALCHUS, the acceptance of
God's kingship, which we do through prayer. [5] We must "turn the other cheek" to
our detractors (v 30), for it is through the silence in which we bear their insults that
we attain God's glory (Likutey Moharan I, 6).

Continuing on his delicate path of helping the people to accept and come to terms
with their suffering, the Elegist explains beginning in the eleventh triplet (vv 31ff)
that God will not reject Israel forever (v 31), and that if He has afflicted them, He
will eventually have mercy (v 32), for His chastisements are not sent arbitrarily (v
33ff). Addressing deep questions about the justice of God's providence (which is
also the subject of the book of Job) Jeremiah affirms that the Righteous God never
twists any man's judgment, and that nothing in the world comes about except
through the command of the King (v 37).

"Out of the mouth of the Most High do not the bad things come and the good?" (v
38). The original Hebrew words of this verse are necessarily susceptible to a variety
of interpretations that may even appear contradictory to one another. This is
because the verse contains the mystery of how good and evil emanate from the
One God, who is perfect goodness. Rashi (ad loc.) paraphrases: "If I were to come
to say that it was not from His hands that this evil came upon me but that it was a
chance occurrence that happened to me, this is not so. For whether bad things or
good things occur, 'Who is this that spoke and it came to be if not that HaShem
commanded it?' (v 37)… 'Why then does a man complain while he yet lives, a man
over the punishment of his sins?' (v 39). Each man must complain about his own
sins because it is they that bring evil upon him. 'From the mouth of the Supreme it
does not go forth' (v 38): Rabbi Yohanan said, From the day that the Holy One
blessed be He said, 'See, I have set before you life and goodness, death and evil'
(Deut. 30:15) [i.e. man has been given free will], 'the bad and the good do not go
forth from His mouth', but rather, evil comes by itself to those who do bad while
goodness comes to those who do good. Therefore what should a man complain and
be upset about if not about his own sins?" (Rashi on v 38).

The moral is clear: "Let us examine and search out our ways and return to
HaShem" (v 40). "Let us lift up our HEARTS to our HANDS to God in heaven" (v 41)
– It is not enough merely to stretch out our HANDS in prayer: our HEARTS must be
in our prayers – we must be sincere and mean what we say, not like those who
"immerse in the mikveh while still clutching the defiling unclean creature in their
hand", verbally expressing their intention to repent while still holding onto their bad
ways (see Taanis 16a).

"We have sinned and rebelled, but You have not forgiven us" (v 42). This verse
marks a transition from the Elegist's exhortations about prayer and repentance to a
further outpouring of the pain, grief and tears caused by Israel's protracted
suffering – for he knows that even his wise advice in the previous section (vv 21-
41) cannot that quickly assuage the pain and hurt. Yes, we continue to weep –and
we will weep "until Hashem will look down and see from heaven" (v 50). Again and
again the Elegist delicately steers us back to knowing that we must turn only to
God. "I called Your Name, HaShem, from the bottommost pit" (v 55). The following
verse, "You have heard my voice; hide not Your ear at my sighing" (v 56) is among
the six verses customarily chanted in unison by the congregation immediately prior
to the blowing of the Shofar in the synagogue on Rosh HaShanah.

The final section of this elegy (vv 57-66) are a ringing affirmation of faith that God
will redeem Israel and wreak His vengeance on their enemies for all their evil.
 Chapter 4
As discussed in the commentary on EICHAH Chapter 1, the elegy contained here in
Chapter 4 was said by the rabbis of the Talmud to have been composed by
Jeremiah on the death of the saintly King Josiah in Megiddo at the hands of Pharaoh
Necho (II Chronicles 35:25; Rashi ad loc.).

"How is the gold become dim!" (v 1) – "This lament was said over Josiah, and with
it he wove in the other children of Zion" (Rashi on v 1). Rashi here is explaining
why it is that if this is an elegy for Josiah, almost all of its contents relate not
specifically to the slain king but to the entire people. The elegy is truly about the
loss of Josiah, whose importance lay in the fact that he "went in the ways of David
his father without turning to the right or the left" (II Chron. 34:2). As such Josiah
was the last hope of Judah – had he had time to complete his mission of bringing
the people to genuine repentance, he could have saved Jerusalem from destruction,
and thus he had the potential to be Mashiach (as he is indeed called here in verse
20). But he was cut down in his very prime and his death sealed the fate of
Jerusalem, making the destruction of the Temple and the cruel exile all but
inevitable.

Thus with the death of Josiah twenty-two years prior to the actual destruction,
Jeremiah already prophesied the horrors of the coming calamity. "The hallowed
stones are poured out at the top of every street" (v 1) – "these are the children,
who radiated like precious jewels. And there is also a Midrash telling that Jeremiah
gathered every cupful of blood that flowed out of each of Josiah's arrow wounds
and buried it in its place, chanting, 'The hallowed stones have been poured out…'"
(Rashi on v 1).

The children are cast out like broken shards (v 2). Their starving mothers, who
ignore their pleas for food in order to find something to eat themselves, have been
reduced to a cruelty that even jackals do not show to their young (v 3, see Rashi).
Those brought up in the lap of luxury are thrown out on the streets clutching at the
garbage heaps (v 5). Even as Jeremiah depicts the horror, he weaves in his
teaching about its cause: "For the sin of the daughter of my people is greater…" (v
6). The fire that was to consume Zion was from God (v 11). The enemy was able to
do the unthinkable and enter the gates of Jerusalem "on account of the sins of her
prophets, the transgressions of her priests" (vv 12-13).

Verse 15 portrays the terrible victimization of Israel in their places of exile, rejected
as an unclean caste by the sanctimonious nations. The face of anger God shows
them in their exile is the penalty for their having failed to give the proper respect to
their priests and elders in their time of tranquility (v 16, see Rashi).

"As for us, our eyes do yet fail for our vain help: in our watching we have watched
for a nation that could not save" (v 17). The kings of Judah who followed Josiah
expected that Egypt would intervene to save Israel from the clutches of Babylon,
but in vain (see Rashi ad loc.). In our time it seems that many in Israel somehow
expect the country they see as her closest ally to come to her defense, but as the
threats around little Israel grow ever more menacing with the apparent complicity
of her ally, it seems that any hopes that this ally will ever help may also prove to
have been in vain.

After the Elegist's depiction of the horrors of the calamity that was to come as a
result of the death of Josiah, we now understand why it was such a disaster that
"The breath of our nostrils, HaShem's anointed, has been captured in their pits – he
of whom we said, Under his shadow we shall live among the nations" (v 20).
The concluding verses of this elegy promise that God will take vengeance upon the
nations that persecuted Israel and destroyed the Temple. Although Jeremiah was
living at the time of the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians, he
already sees prophetically to the eventual destruction of Edom, i.e. Rome , which
perpetrated the destruction of the Second Temple .

Targum on verse 21 identifies "the daughter of Edom who dwells in the land of
Ootz" with "KOUSTANTINA (=Constantinople), the city of the wicked Edom that was
built in the land of Armenia with a great population from the people of Edom – upon
you too is He destined to bring punishment, and the Persians will destroy you…"
Constantinople was indeed until its demise in the Middle Ages the center of the
Latin Empire, which was actually called the Roman Empire. The Talmudic rabbis had
a tradition that " Rome is destined to fall by the hand of Persia " (Yoma 10a) and
"this will take place just before the coming of Mashiach" (Tosfos on Avodah Zarah
2b). Zion's punishment will then be complete and they will know no more exile (v
22).

Chapter 5
"Remember, HaShem, what has come upon us; look and see our shame" (v 1). The
concluding chapter of EICHAH, unlike all the previous chapters, is not an
alphabetical acrostic. It is a prayerful elegy enumerating the painful details of
Israel's terrible suffering at the hands of the nations throughout their various exiles.

"Because of this our heart is faint" (v 17). The Hebrew word translated here as
"faint" has the connotation of menstrual impurity (cf. Lev. 12:2, 15:33 & 20:18). In
the words of the Midrash: "On account of the fact that a menstruating woman has
to separate herself from her house for a number of days, the Torah calls her 'faint'.
How much more so are we – who have been separated from the House of our life
and from our Temple for so many days and so many years – called 'faint', and that
is why it says, 'Because of this our heart is faint'" (Eichah Rabbah).

"But You, HaShem, dwell forever… Why do You forget us forever and forsake us for
so long? Turn us to You, HaShem, and we will return; renew our days as of old!"
(vv 19-21).

With this prayer for God to turn our hearts to Him in repentance the Elegist
concludes EICHAH – AYEKAH? "Where are you???" – a call to repent. Since verse
22 has a negative tone, it is customary to repeat verse 21 thereafter in order to
conclude the reading of EICHAH on a positive note.

This final chapter of EICHAH is included in the readings included in TIKKUN RACHEL,
which is the first part of TIKKUN CHATZOS, the Midnight Prayer, recited every night
by the very devout. TIKKUN RACHEL consisting of laments over the destruction of
the Temple is recited only on those weekdays on which Tachanun is recited but not
on Sabbaths, festivals and other days with a semi-festive character. However, the
second part of TIKKUN CHATZOS, known as TIKKUN LEAH, may be recited every
night of the year (see "The Sweetest Hour" by Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum, Breslov
Research Institute).
 Book of Koheles
Chapter 1
KOHELES (or Koheleth) is the "pen name" of King Solomon. The name comes from
the Hebrew root KAHAL, which means a "gathering" or "assembly". The Hebrew
grammatical form of KOHELES means "the gatherer", and the name signifies that
"he gathered much wisdom" (Rashi on v 1). It also signifies that he assembled the
people (cf. Deut. 31:12). In the words of Midrash Koheles Rabbah: "Why was
Solomon called Koheles? Because his words were spoken in the assembly of the
people, as it is written, 'Then Solomon gathered (yaK'HAL) the elders of Israel ' (I
Kings 8:1)". Likewise the traditional name for Koheles, ECCLESIASTES, is from the
Greek word ECCLESIA, a regularly convoked assembly, and ECCLESIASTES is one
who takes part in this assembly – i.e. the Preacher.

"The WORDS (DIVREI) of Koheles…" (v 1) – "Wherever the text says DIVREI, 'the
words of', these are words of REBUKE" (Rashi ad loc.). Solomon son of David – "a
king the son of a king, a tzaddik the son of a tzaddik" (Midrash) – had pursued
wisdom all his life. "When God said to Solomon, 'Ask what I should give you' and he
asked not for silver and gold but only that 'You should give Your servant an
understanding heart', holy spirit immediately rested upon him and he composed the
book of Proverbs, Song of Songs and Koheles" (Midrash Koheles Rabbah). Solomon
wrote Song of Songs in his youth, on the day of the dedication of the Temple ; then
in his prime he composed Proverbs, the rich fruits of his wisdom. But having
reached the very heights, he fell to the lowest depths (as we shall see in the
commentary on v 12). Finally, at the end of his life, after having seen everything,
he composed Koheles – his last testament to his people: REBUKE.

The wisest man that ever lived comes in Koheles to clarify what is man's destiny
and purpose in this world, and what he should do to fulfill it. Everything leads up to
the conclusion of the work: "The end of the matter, when all is said and done: Fear
God and keep his commandments, for that is the whole duty of man" (Koheles
12:13). The intent of Koheles may to some extent be compared with that of the
book of Job, which also examines man's existential situation and possible solutions
as to how we may come to terms with it. While the approach and structure of the
two works are radically different, they both consider the most fundamental
questions in life with astonishing boldness and candor.

Perhaps it was this very boldness and candor that almost lost the book of Koheles
its place in the Bible canon ordained by the sages, who argued as to whether it
should be included. "The sages sought to hide away Koheles because his words
contradict one another. Then why did they not hide it away? Because it begins with
words of Torah and ends with words of Torah…" (Talmud Shabbos 30b, where the
"contradictions" between Koheles 7:3 and 2:2 and between 8:15 and 2:2 are
reconciled). The dispute over the inclusion of Koheles in the canon is also discussed
in Mishneh Yadayim 3:5, where the Tosephta explains that those opposed to its
inclusion maintained that it consisted of Solomon's own wisdom.
The prevailing opinion, however, is that it was composed through holy spirit. For
this very reason we must bear in mind that in our study of the divinely-inspired last
testament of the wisest man that ever lived, we can touch little more than the
surface of a work that is replete with infinite layers upon layers of Pshat (simple
meaning), Remez (allusion), Drush (midrashic interpretation) and Sod (esoteric
wisdom). As we learn these holy words, our aim should be to derive personal
lessons that we can apply in our own lives as to how to know and fear God and
serve Him through practical action: ASIYAH.

THE PROLOGUE

The opening section of Koheles (vv 2-11), a complete parshah in itself, is a

hauntingly poetic evocation of man's existential situation in this world of endless
repeated cycles – the cycles of the generations, the planets, the waters of the
rivers and the sea…

"Vanity (1) of vanities (2)… vanity (1) of vanities (2), all is vanity (1)" (verse 1).
The Hebrew word traditionally translated as "vanity", HEVEL, means a "vapor",
something barely substantial or tangible. Taking into account the singular and
plural forms of the word HEVEL in the verse, a total of SEVEN "vanities" are
enumerated, corresponding to the Seven Days of Creation and the seven "Sefiros of
Construction" (Chessed-Gevurah-Tiferes-Netzach-Hod-Yesod-Malchus). "Koheles
cries out and complains that the entire work of the Seven Days of Creation is all
vanity of vanities!!!" (Rashi on v 2).

"What profit does a man have in all his labor with which he labors under the sun"
(verse 3). In this verse King Solomon poses man's most fundamental existential
question: What is the purpose of all his efforts in this world? The Talmud points out
that Solomon is specifically asking about man's efforts "under the sun". "It is from
his labor 'under the sun' that he has no profit, but his labor in the realm that
existed before the sun he does have profit. And which is that? This is his labor in
the Torah!" (Shabbos 30b). In other words, Solomon is asking what people gain
when they devote all their endeavors to the transient material world instead of
laboring in Torah, which brings an eternal reward.

"Under the sun" (v 3): "This signifies ever-changing time. For the sun alone gives
birth to time, for the day depends on the sun from the time it rises to the time it
sets, while night is from the time the sun sets until the time it rises… Likewise
sowing and harvesting, cold and heat, summer and winter all depend on the
inclination of the sun to the north or south… Even though the moon and stars all
have their influence, it cannot be compared to that of the sun" (Ibn Ezra ad loc.)
"Therefore the sun is called the 'king of the skies' (Jer. 44:17). Solomon is saying:
What is the benefit of all of a person's acquisitions in this world when surely
tomorrow he will die taking nothing in his hand?" (Metzudas David on v 3).

"One generation passes away and another generation comes…" (v 4) – "No matter
how much the villain toils to steal and rob, he cannot outlive and enjoy his gains
because his generation passes away and another generation comes and takes
everything from the hands of his children, as it says, 'his children will conciliate the
poor'" (Job 20:10; Rashi on v 4). "…but the earth endures for ever" (v 4) – "And
who are those who endure? The meek and lowly who lower themselves down to the
earth, as it says, '…and the meek shall inherit the earth'" (Psalms 37:11; Rashi on v
4).

Verses 5-6 describe the endless daily circuits of the sun in summer and winter,
while verse 7 evokes the endless recycling of water from the rivers into the sea and
back again to the rivers. "All things are laboring…" (v 8) – "This continues from the
question above, 'What profit does a man have…' (v 3): If instead of engaging in
Torah one follows idle pursuits, they all involve constant labor and he cannot attain
everything. If he goes after sights, his eye will not be satisfied; if he goes after
sounds, his ear will not be filled" (Rashi on v 8).

"That which has been is that which shall be, and there is nothing new under the
sun" (v 9). This refers to the created material world, but not to the realm of the
Torah, where our studies can constantly generate new understandings
(CHIDUSHIM; see Rashi on v 9). "He is saying that just as there is nothing new in
the created world, so this fundamental fact will never change – that nothing in this
world ever yields the gains for which one hopes in one's labor and exertion, just as
nothing ever has in the past" (Metzudas David ad loc.). Even if we imagine we have
found something new "under the sun" that might indicate that this fundamental fact
of the futility of devotion to material pursuits has changed, this is an illusion,
because this seemingly new thing has in fact already been (v 10). It is just that
nobody is left from the earlier generations to remember it, just as nobody in
generations to come will remember us (v 11).

"I KOHELES WAS KING OVER ISRAEL IN JERUSALEM " (v 12)

Following the prologue to his book, King Solomon now presents his "credentials" for
writing it. "I Koheles WAS king…" (v 12). "King over all the world. Then in the end
king over Israel. Then in the end king over Jerusalem alone. And finally, over
nothing by my walking stick! For it says, 'I WAS king in Jerusalem ' – i.e. but now I
am not king" (Rashi ad loc.). "When King Solomon sat on his royal throne his heart
swelled because of his wealth and he transgressed God's decree, gathering many
horses, chariots and riders, silver and gold, intermarrying with foreign nations.
Immediately God's anger was aroused and He sent Ashmodai king of the demons to
drive him from his royal throne. He took the ring from his hand, forcing him to
wander around in exile in order to chastise him. He went round all the cities of
Israel weeping and crying, 'I am Koheles, who was called Solomon. Before this I
was king over Israel in Jerusalem!!!" (Targum on verse 12).

Just as the most successful of worldly kings, Nebuchadnezzar, was driven from his
throne and brought down to the level of a wild beast in order to chastise him for his
pride (Daniel chapter 4), so King Solomon, the Torah king who literally had
everything – wisdom, wealth, women, power, glory, palaces, gardens, attendants,
singers – had to be cast down to the very bottom in order to rise to the ultimate
wisdom.

"I gave my heart to seek and search out through wisdom…" (v 13). Rashi (ad loc.)
explains that Solomon used his Torah wisdom to contemplate and understand the
whole futile world of wickedness "under the sun", coming to the conclusion that
everything was created by God to test man through being exposed to the need to
choose between life and goodness on the one hand and death and evil on the other
(cf. Metzudas David ad loc.).

In vv 16ff Solomon explains that even the pursuit of wisdom can be dangerous and
break a person's heart – "for with too much wisdom a person depends on his own
wisdom and does not avoid what the Torah prohibits, causing God great anger"
(Rashi on v 17). Moreover, "a wise person understands the true nature of men's
deeds and when he sees that they are not good, he himself becomes angry because
these things are contrary to his will, and anger is very damaging. And someone
who understands one thing from another increases his pain because he can now
understand the consequences of his own faulty behavior and this brings pain to his
heart" (Metzudas David on v 18).

Chapter 2
"I said in my heart, Let me try you (i.e. myself) with mirth" (v 1). In the words of
Rashi (ad loc.): "Since it is so (i.e. since wisdom is dangerous and painful) let me
stop pursuing wisdom and devote myself to SIMCHAH (happiness and joy) at all
times". Those seeking to fulfill Rabbi Nachman's "great mitzvah to be in Simchah at
all times" will surely want to know the lessons Koheles teaches based on his trying
out the path of happiness and joy as an answer to man's existential dilemma.

These lessons are brought out in the Talmudic resolution of one of the apparent
"contradictions" in Koheles. Here he says, "I said of laughter, It is mad; and of
Simchah, What does this accomplish" (v 2) whereas later on he says, "And I
PRAISED Simchah…" (ch 8 v 15). "'And I praised Simchah…' – This is the Simchah
of a mitzvah. '…and of Simchah, What does this accomplish?' – This is Simchah that
is not connected with any mitzvah. This comes to teach you that the Shechinah
does not rest in a state of sadness or lethargy or through laughter, light
headedness, chatter and idle pursuits but through the Simchah of a mitzvah"
(Shabbos 30b).

In verse 3 Solomon explains that in pursuit of his goal of understanding if Simchah

is the purpose of life, he sought to continue guiding his heart with wisdom while
simultaneously indulging in "wine" and laying hold of "folly" (SICHLUS). The latter
refers to all the things that people crave for in the material world, such as beautiful
buildings, musical instruments, etc. (see Metzudas David ad loc.).

In verses 4-10 Solomon describes his palaces, orchards, gardens, fountains,

servants, sheep and cattle, gold, silver and other treasures and delights. "Does the
text tell us only about Solomon's wealth? It is surely speaking only about Torah… 'I
built myself houses' – synagogues and study halls. 'I planted vineyards' – these are
the Torah scholars, who sit in rows as in a vineyard. 'I made myself gardens and
orchards' – these are the MISHNAYOS. 'I planted in them every kind of fruit tree' –
this is the Talmud. 'I made myself fountains of water' – these are the preachers. 'To
water the forest with them' – these are the children. 'I acquired male and female
servants' – these are the gentiles… 'And also cattle, oxen and sheep' – these are
the sacrifices. 'I also gathered silver and gold' – these are words of Torah… 'I
acquired men singers and women singers' – these are the Tosephtas. '…and
delights' – these are the aggadas (narrative midrash)…" (Koheles Rabbah).

"…and THIS was MY share from all my labor" (v 10) – "And after my having done
all this, I have nothing from all of it except THIS. One of the pair of Talmudic rabbis,
Rav and Shmuel, said that THIS refers to his walking stick while the other said it
refers to the earthenware pot from which he drank" (Rashi ad loc.; Gittin 68b). In
other words, after his downfall, left with nothing but his stick and a primitive mug,
Solomon realized that all his endeavors to pursue Simchah "under the sun" were
nothing but vanity and striving after wind (v 11).

Having followed one possible answer to the existential dilemma to its ultimate
conclusion only to find it a dead end, in verse 12 Solomon turns to clarify how the
pathway of wisdom (i.e. Torah wisdom, Rashi on v 12) is superior to madness and
folly (i.e. sin and the embrace of the material world). "For what can the man do
who comes after the king?" (v 12) – "How can a man despise folly as if he is wiser
than the King of the world, seeing that He has already created folly? Even though it
is proper to despise folly, nevertheless He has not created it for nothing, for the
superiority of wisdom is revealed precisely through the contrast with folly, without
which the beauty of wisdom would not be recognized, because a thing can only be
know in relation to its opposite, just as the benefit of light is known only through
darkness, which is its opposite…" (Metzudas David on vv 12-13).

In verses 14ff Solomon explains that wisdom is superior to folly even though the
wise man and the fool both die in the end. This existential fact poses a challenging
question to the wise man (v 15), but Solomon rejects the possibility that the
eternal destiny of the wise man after death could possibly be identical with that of
the fool (v 16, see Targum, Rashi and Metzudas David ad loc.).

In verses 17ff Solomon explains another vexing issue for the wise man – that after
all his efforts "under the sun", when he leaves this world all his achievements are
liable to fall into the hands of someone who may not be wise or worthy at all. The
issue was greatly sharpened for Solomon himself by the fact that he knew
prophetically that in the reign of his son and successor Rehaboam, the kingdom
would split, leading to the eventual destruction of Jerusalem and the Holy Temple
and the exile of Israel (see Targum on Koleles 1:2).

This thought almost brought Solomon to the point of despair (v 20) until he came
to a new conclusion: "There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and
drink and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor" (v 24). "Rabbi
Yonah said: Wherever the concept of eating and drinking appears in this Megillah, it
is speaking of Torah and good deeds" (Koheles Rabbah). In other words, true joy in
this world comes through doing one's best to pursue the path of Torah and mitzvos.
"…But this also I saw – that this is from the hand of God" (v 24). It is a gift of God
to reach this level. If so, we must earnestly ask and beg Him to grant us this
precious gift.

Chapter 3
The conventional chapter breaks in Koheles in our printed Bibles whether in Hebrew
or translation are mainly for convenience of reference but do not correspond to
section-breaks (parshiyos) in the hand-written Hebrew scrolls, where the entire
Megillah consists of only three parshahs: (1) The "prologue" – Koheles ch 1 vv 1-
11; (2) The lengthy section from ch 1 v 12 to ch 6 6 v 12; (3) The lengthy section
from 7:1 to the end of the book.

The first verse of our present chapter is thus the direct continuation of the
preceding passage, which ended in the last verse of the previous chapter (2:26)
with the contrast between the chosen Tzaddikim to whom God grants true wisdom
and joy in life as opposed to the sinner who tries to make gains by force, only to
end up seeing them pass to the righteous.

The futility of trying to force matters in order to make gains in this world is
underlined by Koheles' exploration – beginning in verse 1 of the present chapter –
of how God has already foreordained the entire order of time in creation, so that if
a person makes unlawful gains today, he will be brought to justice tomorrow,
whereas if he had trustfully waited for the right time, he could have made
legitimate gains.

"To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven" (v
1) – "Let not he who gathers vain wealth rejoice, for if it is now in his hand, the
time will come when the righteous will inherit it, except that the time has not yet
come because everything has a fixed time when it will come about" (Rashi ad loc.).
 TWENTY-EIGHT TIMES

Each of the seven verses from v 2 to v 8 contains two pairs of contrasting "times",
making a total of twenty-eight different times. All of the various different changing
times in the entire creation are subsumed under these twenty-eight paradigmatic
"times", which span everything from birth to death (v 2) from total war to complete
peace (v 8). God is perfect unity, but His creation is one of multiplicity, all of whose
many facets are crafted to bring the whole, stage by stage, to perfect repair. Thus
these twenty-eight times of creation are rooted in the twenty-eight Hebrew letters
of the first verse of the Torah (Gen. 1:1), which are the root and power (KO-ACH,
Kaph 20 & Ches 8 = 28) of all creation.

Many Midrashim explore the different connotations of the various "times" in our
text, which relate not only to the life of the individual but to that of entire nations.
Rashi's explanations are as follows: "There is a time to give birth…" – after nine
months; "…and a time to die" – after the appointed life-span of each generation. "A
time to plant…" – a nation and a kingdom; "…and a time to uproot" – the time will
come for it to be uprooted. "There is a time to kill…" – a complete nation on their
day of retribution; "…and a time to heal" – to heal their destruction. "There is a
time to weep…" – on Tisha B'Av; "…and a time to laugh" – in time to come. "A time
to lament…" – when mourning the dead; "…and a time to dance" – in honor of
brides and grooms. "A time to throw stones…" – these are the youths of Israel, who
were cast out at the time of the destruction of the Temple , as it says, "the holy
stones have been poured out" (Lam. 4:1); "…and a time to gather in stones" – to
gather them in from the exile. "A time to embrace…" – as when God "attaches"
Israel to Himself like a belt (Jer. 13:11); "…and a time to refrain from embracing" –
as when God "banishes the man= Israel " (Is. 6:12). "A time to seek…" – the
outcasts of Israel; "…and a time to lose" – those lost in exile. "A time to keep…" –
"HaShem will bless you and keep you" (Num. 6:24); "…and a time to cast out" –
"And He cast them out to another land" (Deut. 29:27). "A time to tear apart…" –
the kingdom of David; "…and a time to sew" – to join back the Ten Tribes with the
House of David. "A time to be silent…" – sometimes a man says nothing and gains
a reward, as in the case of Aaron the High Priest (Lev. 10:3); "…and a time to
speak" – "Then Moses sang" (Ex. 15:1), "and Deborah sang" (Judges 5:1). "A time
to love…" – "And I shall show you love" (Deut. 7:13); "…and a time to hate" – "for
there I hated them" (Hosea 9:15).

Having surveyed all these different times, Solomon moves to the inference he
wants to make about the futility of trying to make gains by force. "What profit does
the worker have from his toil" (v 9). Rashi explains: "What profit does the worker of
evil have from all his toil – his time will also come and everything will be lost!"
(Rashi on v 9). "He has made everything beautiful in its time" (v 11) – "Everything
that the Holy One blessed be He has created in His world is all beautiful, but only
when one uses each thing in its own appointed time, not at any other time"
(Metzudas David). Instead of trying to force matters NOW, one should trust that
God will send what one needs at the right time!

"…also He has put the world in their hearts without man being able to find out the
work that God has made from beginning to end" (v 11). Rashi explains: "Although
He has put the wisdom to understand the world in people's hearts, He did not put
all of it into the heart of each and every person. Rather, one person has a small
portion and someone else another, in order that man should never be able to
fathom and understand God's entire work. This way he never knows when his time
of judgment will come and how he will stumble. The purpose is that he should set
himself to repent and live in a state of anxiety, saying, Today or tomorrow I will
die" (Rashi ad loc.). In the light of Rashi's explanation, we see that Koheles is
giving expression to man's basic existential predicament, which derives from his
having only partial knowledge and understanding of the world around him and the
consequences of his deeds. This indeed is what gives man his freedom, for if he had
perfect knowledge of the evil his bad deeds cause to himself, he would never do
them.

Thus Koheles comes to his conclusion: "I KNOW that there is nothing better for
them than to rejoice and to do good in his life" (v 12) – "There is nothing better for
a person than to rejoice in his share and do good in the eyes of his Creator as long
as he is still alive" (Rashi). This is further reinforcement of the point made earlier,
"There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink…" (Koheles
2:24) – i.e. eat and drink Torah and good deeds – for these are the ways that God
knows will bring him true gain, for God has perfect knowledge of all the different
pathways and their consequences to all eternity.

"I KNOW that whatever God does, it shall be forever…" (v 14). God has created all
of the twenty-eight paradigmatic "times" and their offspring in order to bring the
universe to ultimate perfection. If the times change, sometimes very dramatically
(as in the case of Noah's flood, see Rashi), the only purpose is to bring men to
know that there is a God and to fear Him. There is thus no point in men's trying to
force matters in order to make unlawful gains through robbery, exploitation and the
like, because it is a fundamental law of creation that "God seeks out the
persecuted" (v 15) – "He exacts retribution from the persecutor, so what does the
worker of evil gain from all his toil?" (Rashi ad loc.).

"And I have seen yet more under the sun…" (v 16). Koheles now brings a further
observation about this mysterious creation and its many paradoxes: "In the place
of righteousness there is iniquity…" (ibid.). With bold candor, Koheles confronts the
fact that in our world here "under the sun", we witness again and again the most
abominable wickedness perpetrated under the guise of Justice and Equity.

"But I SAID IN MY HEART…" (v 17). Koheles knew that we must not let the outer
appearance of this world reduce us to cynicism. He answered his own doubts about
the justice of creation with his firm conviction that "…God shall judge the righteous
and the wicked" (ibid.). The reason is because "there is a time for every purpose" –
as explained at length earlier in the enumeration of the Twenty-Eight Times: God
has all the time in the world to do perfect justice "…over all the work there". "Over
all the work that a man did, there (i.e. in the judgment after death) they will judge
him when the time of retribution comes" (Rashi ad loc.).

This leads Koheles to give expression to another article of conviction in verse 18 as

the verse is explained by Rashi: "Having seen all this, namely that men have
adopted the arrogant trait of ruling and lording it over those weaker than
themselves, I know that the Holy One blessed be He will make them know that
their power is nothing, and so too that of lords and kings, for they are simply like
animals and wild beasts – out for themselves".

This brings Koheles to muse on the mysteries of the body and the soul and the
differences between man and the animals. When a man dies, his cadaver may seem
to be no different qualitatively from that of an animal – so where is his superiority
and success? But "Who knows whether the spirit of the children of men goes
upwards and the spirit of the animal goes downwards to the earth?" (v 21). "'Who
knows' – i.e. he who knows and understands, knows that man's soul goes above
after death to stand trial, while the soul of the animal goes down to the earth and
she is not required to give a reckoning and accounting. The moral is that man must
not conduct himself like an animal that does not care what she does" (Rashi on vv
20-21).
At last comes the moral of the whole discussion: "So I saw that there is nothing
better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his portion…" (v 22).
Again this harks back to v 12 in the present chapter and ch 2 v 24: Man should
rejoice in the labor of his own hands and eat – Torah and mitzvos – for this is the
share given to him by Heaven and in this he should rejoice. What point is there in
amassing ill-gotten gains if he will not see what his children will do with them when
he dies? (see Rashi on our verse).

Chapter 4
"So I returned and considered all the oppression under the sun…" (v 1). "'I returned,
i.e. I changed my mind and went back on what I had thought, that it is good for a
man to rejoice, on account of the fact that he is unable to rejoice and be happy.
This is because there is robbery in this world, and his property will be taken from
him by force, or he will be exploited when some judge or officer takes a bribe or by
a thief" (Ibn Ezra ad loc.).

With further daring candor, Koheles confronts the terrible cruelty of this world,
where the oppressed shed tears again and again yet no-one comforts them. It is
noteworthy that the phrase "they have no comforter" is repeated twice in the verse
in order to give emphasis to their helpless misery.

While Ibn Ezra's above-cited explanation of the verse addresses the material
exploitation and oppression of men by men in this world, Rashi illumines the
esoteric dimension of the verse in his comment that the tears of the oppressed are
those of the wicked in hell, who instead of the Torah embraced this world "under
the sun", and who now weep over their souls which are oppressed by the cruel
vengeful angels of destruction (see Rashi on v 1). Are we not all robbed in this
world by the wicked Evil Inclination, which tempts and tricks us into doing wrong,
leaving us bereft of goodness having to face terrible retribution? From the depths of
the existential mire in which we find ourselves, is it any wonder that Koheles goes
on to praise those who are already dead (v 2) and to say that it would be better not
to be born at all (v 3)?

So what are we supposed to do in this world? Even people's good deeds are
motivated by jealousy of others etc. "Again I saw all the labor and every skill in
work, that it comes from a man's rivalry with his neighbor" (v 4).

Are we then to fold our arms and do nothing? "The FOOL folds his hands and eats
his own flesh" (v 5) – "The fool is the wicked man, who makes no effort to labor
honestly and robs to eat" (Rashi). We may not desist from our labors for good in
this world, even if we have mixed motives. "Better is a handful with quietness than
both hands full of labor and striving after wind" (v 6). "It is better to acquire a
modicum of possessions through one's own toil, thereby giving pleasure to His
Creator, than to acquire many possessions sinfully, causing vexation and anger
before Him" (Rashi ad loc.).

"Then I returned and I saw a vanity under the sun" (v 7). Having established that
we are to toil in the Torah and mitzvos, Koheles goes a step further in verses 7-12
with his observations about how partnership and teamwork are better than trying
to go it alone. A person may have great ambitions, but if he will not join and couple
– with a friend, a partner, a wife etc. – selfishly wanting all the gains for himself,
this is vanity. God wants us to link up and join together in our work to repair the
creation.
Then who will lead us? "Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish
king…" (v 13). "The poor, wise child is the good inclination (YETZER TOV). And why
is it called a child? Because it does not enter a man until the age of 13. It is wise
because it gives the person the intelligence to follow the path of good. The old and
foolish king is the evil inclination (YETZER RA), which rules over all the person's
limbs. It is 'old', because from the moment the baby is born it is put in him, as it
says, 'Sin crouches at the entrance' (Gen. 4:7). It is 'foolish' because it leads the
person astray on the path of evil. It 'does not know to take care any more' because
having become old in his ways, the person does not accept rebuke" (Rashi on v 13).

"And I saw all the living who wander under the sun – they were with the second
child who was to rise up in his stead" (v 15). "All the living" are those who are
righteous in their deeds. What caused them to be alive under the sun – their going
after the second child, which is the good inclination" (Midrash Koheles Rabbah).

However: "There is no end of all the people who come to acclaim the one who goes
before them and also those who come after shall not rejoice in him, for this too is
vanity and vexation of the spirit" (v 16). This verse is speaking of the foolish and
wicked people who follow the old and foolish king. "There is no end to all the
generations that the Evil Inclination has destroyed, and also those who come after
will not rejoice if they obey him" (Midrash Koheles Rabbah).

Koheles has taught us to follow the poor wise child, the Good Inclination and travel
the path of the Torah and the mitzvos. Finally in verse 17 he teaches that we
should be quick and eager to heed the Torah, doing good from the outset, rather
than being lax and careless, ending up having to bring the sacrifices of fools – sin
and guilt offerings. "Guard your legs when you go to the House of God…" (v 17).
Besides the plain meaning of this verse, it is also the foundation for the law that in
preparation for prayer we must cleanse ourselves of our bodily wastes, which come
from between the legs (Berachos 23a).

May God help us to follow His path and purify ourselves so as to come to His House
and serve Him in truth! Amen.

Chapter 5
Koheles cautioned in the last verse of the previous chapter to "Guard your foot
when you go to the house of God" (Koh. 4:17). In verses 1-6 of the present
chapter he continues to give advice about the proper way for man to relate to God.

"Do not be rash with your mouth and let not your heart be hasty to utter a word
before God…" (v 1). All too often people are quick to protest against what they
perceive as the injustice of His dealings with them or with others and to doubt and
question His providence, as in the case of those who ask where He was in the
Holocaust. Koheles cautions us to remember that we are puny, transient creatures
on earth, while God is in heaven, way above our realm, and we cannot expect to
understand His ways. Therefore we should be sparing in our words, for "silence is a
protective fence for wisdom" (Avos 3:17), whereas talking too much is the hallmark
of the fool (verse 2).

"When you make a vow to God, do not delay paying it…" (v 3). A vow is a solemn
verbal commitment that a person makes, binding himself to perform a certain
meritorious act, give to charity, offer a sacrifice etc. In the case of charity, people
often make commitments in the heat of the moment – sometimes to impress others,
or simply to get the charity-collector off their back – only to go cold afterwards and
find every reason to defer and forget their obligation. But Koheles teaches that it
would be better not to make the vow than to make it and fail to pay (v 4).

"Do not let your mouth cause your flesh to sin and do not say before the MALACH,
messenger, that it was an error…" (v 5). Rashi interprets this verse as a
continuation of the counsel against taking a vow that one fails to fulfill. This can
bring down retribution on a person's "flesh" – his offspring. According to this
interpretation, the "messenger" is the charity officer who comes to collect the sum
pledged in public. However, the Targum and Midrash give the verse a broader
application to sinful speech in general – LASHON HARA – which brings the
punishment of Gehinnom on the person's very flesh, limbs and body. According to
this interpretation, the MALACH is the cruel accusing angel who grills and punishes
the person after death. It will harm the sinner even more if he claims he made his
disparaging remarks innocently.

"For this comes about through the multitude of dreams and vanities and many
words…" (v 6) – "Dreams, vain prophets and many other things may tell you to
separate yourself from God! Don't listen to dreams but just FEAR GOD" (Rashi).
"Even if the master of dreams tells a person that he is to die tomorrow, never
despair of the power of prayer" (Berachos 10b).l

"If you see the oppression of the poor and the violent perversion of judgment in the
state, do not marvel at the matter…" (v 7). Ibn Ezra (ad loc.) explains the
connection between this verse and the verses that preceded it: "You may think that
He does not keep watch on what you say because you see the violent perversion of
justice and nobody comes to save the oppressed… Know that there is a Watcher
who sees this corruption". In the words of Metzudas David: "Do not wonder why
God shows patience and does not exact retribution. For there is One who is high
above all the high ones and rules over them all at every moment, but He waits until
the sinners' measure is complete and only then exacts retribution. 'And there are
higher ones over them': He has many agents who are high above the men of that
state and can rule over them and through them repay them for their deeds"
(Metzudas David ad loc.)

"Moreover, land has an advantage (YITHRON) for everyone (BA-KOL)…" (v 8).

According to the simple interpretation of this verse, "after he has finished giving
instructions about fear of God, he comes back to teaching about the affairs of this
world, discussing what occupation can best enable a person to make a living
without sinning" (Ibn Ezra ad loc.). Lovers of the land will rejoice to hear that
agriculture is the first choice. According to this interpretation, even a king is
beholden to the field, for without it there is nothing to eat (see Targum). However
Rashi and Metzudas David see the verse as the continuation of the previous verse,
rendering the Hebrew word YITHRON (translated above as "advantage") has having
the connotation of overweening pride (from YETHER, too much). According to this
interpretation, the punishment of those who pervert justice in the state may be
sent BA-KOL – "through everything", i.e. through any of His many agents (as in the
case of the Roman emperor Titus, who suffered agony for years as his brain was
eaten alive by a mosquito). The "king" who is beholden to the field is the Holy One
blessed be He, who toils on behalf of Zion (which has been ploughed as a field) in
order to avenge her shame at the hands of those who destroyed her and to pay a
reward to those who build her" (see Rashi on v 8).

Similarly, verse 9 – "He who loves money will not be satisfied with money – is
subject to a variety of interpretations on the simple (PSHAT) and midrashic levels.
On the level of PSHAT, the whole passage in verses 9-16 is a teaching about the
folly of people's unquenchable craving to amass wealth, which can cause them the
greatest harm, while those who toil honestly, satisfied with their lot, sleep sweetly
without anxiety. On the level of Midrash, Rashi explains that "He who loves money"
refers to one who loves the mitzvos. Such a person will never be satisfied even
after performing many mitzvos as long as they do not include at least one specific
and highly conspicuous mitzvah, such as the building of a synagogue or the writing
of a beautiful Sefer Torah (Rashi on v 9).

"Sweet is the sleep of the laboring man, whether he eats little or much…" (v 11).
Targum's rendering of this verse is: "Sweet is the sleep of a man who labored
wholeheartedly for the Master of the World and he has rest in his grave, whether he
lived few years or many, because he worked for the Master of the World in this
world, and in the World to Come he will inherit the work of his hands and have the
wisdom of God's Torah. And when a man who was rich in wisdom and toiled and
made efforts in it in this world lies in his grave, his wisdom will dwell upon him and
will not leave him alone, just as a wife does not leave her husband alone to sleep."

In verses 12-16 Koheles preaches against the folly of wanting great wealth, which
may be kept by its owner to his hurt. If the person has no true enjoyment from his
wealth, his entire life and all his efforts will have been in vain when he goes naked
and bereft to his grave.

Verses 17 and 18 return to the same conclusion about the answer to man's
existential predicament as Koheles gave in chapter 2 v 24 and chapter 3 v 12:
"What I have seen is that it is good and beautiful to eat and drink and see good in
all one's labor in which he toils under the sun…" (v 17) – "To eat and drink, i.e. to
toil in the Torah, which is a good teaching, and not to amass great wealth but to
rejoice in the portion he has been given, for that is his share" (Rashi ad loc.)

Chapter 6
In contrast to the honest laborer who is satisfied with his lot, the man who has
wealth, possessions, honor and long life but no enjoyment from them is worse off
than a still-born foetus that had no life at all (vv 1-6). Rashi on verse 3 cites King
Ahab as an example of the case of one who has no enjoyment since he had many
children and great wealth but he coveted what belonged to others and had no
satisfaction from his own wealth, and in the end he was eaten by the dogs. On the
level of Midrash, "Even if a Torah scholar has 'wealth, possessions and honor' – i.e.
he knows Bible, Mishneh and Aggadah, but 'God does not give him the power to eat
of it' – i.e. he does not attain to the level of understanding Talmud and therefore is
unable to determine the correct legal ruling – then 'a stranger will eat it' – this is
the master of Talmud" (Rashi on v 2).

"For all a man's labor is for the sake of his mouth…" (v 7) – "That he should eat in
this world and the World to Come" (Rashi).

"For what advantage does the wise man have over the fool or over the poor man
who knows how to make his way among the living?" (v 8). Even one who is "rich" in
wisdom but has no satisfaction from his "wealth" (as in the case of the scholar who
does not know how to give practical rulings) is no better than the fool, or the poor
man who is satisfied with his portion and who knows how to reach the life of the
World to Come through the simple performance of the mitzvos (see Rashi on v 8).

"Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the soul…" (v 9) – "It would
be better if a man would see with his eyes the journey of the soul after death and
to which place the soul of the righteous goes and to which place that of the wicked
man goes, for if so, he would understand the difference between them, and as a
result he would straighten his path" (Metzudas David ad loc.). For even the greatest
man cannot escape "the one who is mightier than he" (v 10) – i.e. the angel of
death (Rashi).

We therefore need to find out "what is good for a man in life during the limited
number of days of his life of vanity" (v 12), because life passes like a shadow.
"With only this verse I would not know if it is like the shadow cast by a wall or a
palm tree, which have some substance. But King David came and specified: "His
days are like a PASSING shadow" (Psalms 144:4) – like the shadow of a bird that
flies past and its shadow flies off with it" (Koheles Rabbah).

Chapter 7
The letter Teth at the head of the Hebrew word TOV ("good", "better") with which
Chapter 7 begins is traditionally written large (RABASI) in the parchment scroll,
emphasizing how much better is a good name than even the best oil. Above all else
is the Name of HaShem, to which the verse alludes on the level of SOD (esoteric
wisdom). In the handwritten Hebrew scrolls this large letter marks the beginning of
a new Parshah (section) of the Megillah, which runs continuously without any
further breaks until the end of the book.

Compared to the earlier part of the work, this last section often seems to be less of
a continuous discourse and more of a succession of proverbs, each of which is a
precious jewel joining with those that precede and follow it to make a Torah mosaic
providing the deepest insights into the meaning and purpose of life in this world
with its many paradoxes and mysteries, in order to clarify how man should best
spend his days of vanity here.

The present commentary, which is largely based on Targum and Rashi, seeks to
throw light on the PSHAT (plain meaning) and REMEZ (allusions) contained in these
verses while touching only in passing upon some the many levels of DRASH
(rabbinic interpretation) and SOD (esoteric wisdom) they contain.

Verse 1: "A good name is better than precious ointment…" – "Better is the good
name that the righteous acquire in this world than the anointing oil that was poured
on the heads of kings and priests. And better is the day on which a man is released
and lies in his grave with a good name and with merit than the day on which a
wicked man is born into the world" (Targum).

Verse 2: "It is better to go to the house of mourning…" – "It is better to go to the

house of a man who is in mourning in order to comfort him than to go to the house
of drinking and lasciviousness, because everyone must eventually go to the house
of mourning, because the decree of death applies to everyone, and by going to the
house of mourning the righteous man will take to heart the fact of death and let go
of any evil in his hands and return to God" (Targum).

Verse 3: "Anger is better than laughter…" – "Better is the anger which the Master of
the World displays to the righteous in this world than the smile He shows to the
wicked, because the frown on the face of the Shechinah brings dearth and
retribution into the world in order to rectify the hearts of the righteous so that they
should pray to the Master of the World to have mercy on them" (Targum).

Verse 4: "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning…" – "The heart of the
wise dwells on the destruction of the Holy Temple and is pained over the exile of
Israel, whereas the heart of fools is filled with the joy of their house of follies: they
eat and drink and indulge themselves, paying no attention to the suffering of their
brothers" (Targum).

Verse 5: "It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise…" – "It is better to sit in the
study hall and listen to the rebuke of a Torah sage than to go to hear the jingles of
fools" (Targum).

Verse 7: "For the oppressor mocks the wise man…" – "For the oppressor mocks at
the wise man because he does not go in his way, and with his evil words he can
destroy the wisdom in the heart of the sage that was given to him as a gift from
heaven" (Targum). "When the fool taunts the sage, he can throw him into
confusion and cause him to stumble, as in the case of Dathan and Aviram, who
taunted Moses (Ex. 5:21) until he spoke against the Holy One (ibid. 6:1) with the
result that he did not enter the Promised Land (see Rashi on our verse).

Verse 8: "Better is the end of a matter…" – "Better is the end of a matter than its
beginning. For at the beginning a person does not know what will be at the end, but
at the end of something good, a person knows that it is good. And better in God's
eyes is the man who is in control of his spirit and subdues his evil inclination than
the one who goes in the arrogance of his spirit" (Targum).

Verse 9: "Do not be hasty in your spirit to be angry…" – "If rebuke is sent to you
from heaven, do not be quick to let your soul rage and speak rebellious words
against heaven. For if you are patient your sins will be forgiven, but if you rebel and
rage, know that anger dwells in the lap of fools until it destroys them" (Targum).

Verse 10: "Do not say, How was it that the former days were better…" – "In your
time of trouble do not say that the reason why there used to be good in the world
was because the earlier days were better. For the reason is because the deeds of
the people of that generation were more beautiful than now and this was why they
were sent good. Not with wisdom do you ask about this" (Targum).

Verse 11: "Wisdom is good with an inheritance…" – "Even if someone has a house,
wealth and an ancestral inheritance, wisdom is still of benefit, because without it
his inheritance will not endure in his hands" (Metzudas David).

Verse 12: For whoever is in the shade of wisdom is in the shade of wealth…" – "For
when a person takes refuge in the shade of wisdom, likewise he can take refuge in
the shade of wealth as long as he performs charity with it. But the excellence of
knowledge of the wisdom of the Torah is that it brings its owner from the cemetery
to the life of the world to come" (Targum).

Verse 13: "Consider the work of God…" – "Consider the work of God and His might.
For He has made the blind, the hunchback and the lame prevalent in the world, but
who is wise enough to rectify a single one of them except for the Master of the
World, who caused them to be flawed?" (Targum).

Verse 14: "On the day of goodness, be good…" – "On the day that God does
goodness to you, you too be good and do goodness to the entire world, in order
that no evil day should befall you …"

"…God has made the one corresponding to the other" (verse 14). On the level of
SOD (esoteric wisdom) this verse is frequently cited in the literature of Kabbalah
and Chassidus as an allusion to God's creation of the SITRA ACHRA ("the Other
Side", source of the bad days, bad times) as the counter-image of the Side of
Holiness (source of the good days, good times) in order to give man the freedom of
choice between good and evil in this world, so as to test him and enable him to
earn his reward in the world to come.

Verse 15: "I have seen everything in the days of my vanity: there is a righteous
man who perishes in his righteousness…" – "Good and evil are sent into the world
through God's decree on account of the destinies with which people are created. For
there is a righteous person who perishes in his righteousness in this world while his
merit is guarded for him in the world to come, and there is a guilty person who
lives a long life despite his sins, but the account of his evil awaits him in the world
to come in order to exact retribution from him on the great Day of Judgment"
(Targum).

Verse 16: "Do not be over righteous…" – "Do not be over righteous at the time
when a sinner is condemned to death in your law court so that you take pity on him
so as not to kill him. And do not be excessively wise so that you follow the wisdom
of the wicked in your generation: do not learn from their ways, for why should you
ruin your ways?" (Targum).

Verse 17: "Do not do much wickedness…" – "Do not go after sinful thoughts in your
heart so as to be exceedingly sinful and do not keep your path far from the study
house of God's Torah so as to be a fool – for why should you cause death to your
soul and cause the years of your life to be cut short so that you die before your
time?" (Targum).

Verse 18: "It is good that you should take hold of this but do not withdraw your
hand from that…" – "It is good for you to rejoice in the affairs of this world and
benefit yourself as traders do, but also do not abandon your share in this book of
the Torah…"

"…for he that fears God fulfills his duty according to them all" (v 18). This rendering
of the closing words of the verse is intended to bring out the halachic prescription
which it contains. Many different and often apparently conflicting halachic opinions
and approaches are found in the Talmud and among the various Poskim (legal
authorities). Where possible, a God-fearing Jew strives to take account of as many
of the different opinions as possible in the way he performs the various
commandments, and it is this principle that guides the rulings of the Torah Codes
(Mishneh Torah, Shulchan Aruch, Mishneh Berurah etc.).

Verse 19: "Wisdom strengthens the wise more than ten rulers who are in the city."
"The 'ten rulers' are the ten things that make a person guilty: his two eyes, which
show him sinful things, his two ears, which make him listen to idle matters, his two
hands, with which he robs and oppresses, his two legs, which transport him to the
sin, and his mouth and heart" (Rashi ad loc.). "Wisdom means repentance and
good deeds" (Nedarim 32b).

Verse 20: "There is not a just man on earth…" – "…but if a man has sinned, he
should make sure he repents before he dies" (Targum).

Verses 21-22: "Another benefit of wisdom is that it will teach you not to pay
attention if people speak to you insultingly and disparagingly. Do not listen and pay
attention even if it is your servant who insults you and you have it in your power to
take vengeance on him… For you know in your heart that you have many times
cursed others…" (Metzudas David).
Verses 23-24: "All this I tried with wisdom" – that is the Torah. "…I said, I will be
wise, but it was far from me." And what is this that was far? "Far is what was" – i.e.
the far off things that took place at the very formation of the creation. This is
"…deep, deep – who can find it out?" One is not permitted to speculate about them
and ask what is above and what is below, what is inside and what is behind (Rashi).

Verse 25: "I cast about in my mind to know and to search…" – "…To find out the
calculation of the reward of the deeds of the righteous and to know the retribution
for the sins of the fools and the intelligence and trickery of the government
(MALCHUS)" (Targum).

Verse 26: "And I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and
nets and her hands are fetters…" – "This 'woman' refers to heresy" (Rashi). This
"woman" is thus none other than the "strange woman" against whom Solomon
warns repeatedly in the book of Proverbs (2:16ff, 5:3ff etc.).

Verse 27: "Behold this I have found, SAYS Koheles…" It is noteworthy that in this
verse, the Hebrew word for "says", AMRAH, is in the feminine form, which agrees
with the grammatical form of KOHELES, which is also technically feminine, even
though in other appearances of the name Koheles in the Megillah the accompanying
verbs are in the masculine form (1:2; 12:8, 9 and 10). Rashi here renders: "Says
the assembly (KEVUTZAH, fem.) of wisdom, and says his intelligent soul (NEFESH,
fem.), which gathers wisdom".

"…counting one thing to another to find the sum" (v 27) – "I drew a line joining one
constellation with another to find the sum of the sons of man – what will be at the
end" (Targum).

Verse 28: "One man among a thousand I have found, but a woman among all those
I have not found" – "I have not found anyone whole and righteous without flaws
from the day the first man was born until the righteous Abraham, who was found
faithful and worthy among the thousand kings that gathered to make the Tower of
Babel. And I did not find a single worthy woman among all the wives of those
kings" (Targum). "It usually happens in this world that a thousand enter into the
study of the Bible but out of them only a hundred emerge fit for the Mishneh, and
out of those hundred who entered into the Mishneh only ten go forth to the Talmud,
and of those ten who enter into the Talmud, only one is fit to give legal rulings – i.e.
one in a thousand" (Rashi).

Verse 29: "God has made man upright, but they sought out many calculations" –
"HaShem made the first man worthy and righteous but the serpent and Eve
deceived him into eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and
brought down death upon him and all the generations of the earth, and they sought
out many calculations in order to bring disaster upon the generations of the earth"
(Targum).

Chapter 8
Verse 1: "Who is like the wise man and who knows the interpretation of a thing?" –
"Thus we find that through Daniel's wisdom in the fear of heaven, the secrets of the
interpretation of dreams were revealed to him" (Rashi).

In verse 2 Koheles counsels that the greatest wisdom is to observe the word of
God's mouth – the Torah – which Israel are sworn to keep.
Verse 3: "Be not hasty to go out of His presence…" – "In the time of God's anger,
do not leave off praying before Him… Beg Him for mercy so that you do not get
involved in something evil, for HaShem is the Master of the World: He does
everything that He desires" (Targum).

Verse 5: "He who keeps a commandment shall know nothing evil" – "Whoever
fulfills a mitzvah in the proper way will not be the recipient of bad news" (Shabbos
63a).

Verse 6: "For every matter (CHEFETZ) has its time and judgment (MISHPAT)…" –
"When a person follows his own desire (CHEFETZ) and violates the law of Torah,
there is a time to exact retribution, and justice and punishment stand ready"
(Rashi).

Verses 7-8: Man does not know when the time of retribution will come: no-one
warns him, and it is impossible to keep one's soul in one's body because one has no
control on the day of death.

Verse 9: "…There is a time when one man rules over another man, to his own
hurt." This verse alludes to the mystery of how the SITRA ACHRA (the "other",
impure side of creation) may hold the righteous in subjection for a certain period,
but the ultimate purpose is to bring about the overthrow of the wicked (as in the
case of Amalek, Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar and Sennacherib, all of whom held Israel
in subjection but were eventually destroyed, see Rashi).

Verse 10: "And in truth I saw how the sinners were buried and they were destroyed
from the world and removed from the holy place where the righteous dwell, and
they went to be burned in Gehinnom on account of their evil sins of robbery,
oppression and theft, and they were forgotten from among the dwellers of the city,
and just as they did to others, so they had done to them" (Targum).

Verse 11: It is because God is patient and slow to exact retribution that people
imagine they can escape the consequences of doing evil.

Verse 14: "There is a vanity that is decreed on the face of the earth: this is that
there are cases of Tzaddikim who suffer evil as if they had acted like sinners, and
there are sinners who receive a flow of good as if they had acted like Tzaddikim,
and I saw with holy spirit that the evil that befalls the righteous in this world is not
because of serious sins but in order for them to pay the penalty for any light sins
they may have committed in order for their reward to be complete in the world to
come. But the good that comes to the sinners in this world is not because of their
merits but in order to pay them the reward for any minor merits they may have so
that they may eat their reward in this world in order to destroy their share in the
world to come" (Targum).

Verse 15: "And I praised SIMCHAH!!!" The Talmudic reconciliation of the apparent
contradiction between our present verse and Koheles' earlier question, "What does
SIMCHAH accomplish???" has already been discussed in KNOW YOUR BIBLE
commentary on Koheles 1:17. Whereas there he was referring to fools' happiness,
our present verse speaks about the holy SIMCHAH of keeping the Torah. This verse
is seen as the BINYAN AV (paradigm case) proving that wherever Koheles speaks
about "eating" and "drinking", he is talking about taking joy in the study of Torah,
observance of the mitzvos and the performance of good deeds, for this alone is
what accompanies man to the grave after all his toil in this world (Koheles Rabbah).
 Chapter 9
In the closing verse of the previous chapter Koheles declared that "a man cannot
find out the work that is done under the sun" (Koheles 8:17) – "The creatures are
unable to fathom the ways of the Holy One blessed be He and understand what is
the reward for men's actions under the sun, because they see the wicked succeed
while the righteous keep sinking lower" (Rashi).

Yet even though His ways may be incomprehensible, in the opening verse of our
present chapter Koheles affirms that "the righteous and the wise and their deeds
are in the hand of God". That is to say, there is a special divine providence which
governs all those who endeavor to go in God's ways. "He helps them and He judges
them in order to benefit them in the end" (Rashi). God does not love or hate one
person more than any other even when He helps one more than another in his
endeavors to serve Him. Rather, "…all is before them" – i.e. everyone has free will.
If there is a difference in the degree of divine assistance apparently given to
different people, this is in proportion to the goodness of each person's intentions in
his efforts to serve Him (Sforno on v 1).

Notwithstanding the special providence that God extends to those who serve Him,
we must confront the fact that "there is one event to the righteous and to the
wicked, to the good and pure and to the impure…" (verse 2). This is death, which
makes no discrimination whatever between one person and another. How to come
to terms with this key factor in our existential predicament in this world is the
theme of the passage in verses 2-12.

What can be so confusing to us is precisely the fact that even the best of people
apparently come to the same bad end as the worst. Thus the midrashic
interpretation of verse 2 cites the parallel fates of the righteous Noah and the
wicked Pharaoh Necho, both of whom limped; of the good Moses and the pure
Aaron on the one hand and the impure Ten Spies on the other, none of whom were
permitted to enter the Promised Land; of King Josiah, who sacrificed to God and
King Ahab, who did not sacrifice, both of whom were killed by arrows; and of
Tzedekiah, who swore and broke his oath, and Samson, who took oaths very
seriously (Judges 15:12), both of whom had their eyes gouged out.

As a result, "the heart of the sons of man is full of evil" (verse 3) – "Because they
say that there is no retribution against the wicked, but everything is pure chance"
(Rashi ad loc.).

But "for him that is joined to all the living there is hope" (verse 4) – "Whoever
attaches himself to all the teachings of the Torah so as to acquire the life of the
world to come has hope" (Targum). "For as long as he is alive, even if he has been
wicked and attached to other wicked people, he can still repent before his death".

"For a living dog is better than a dead lion" (verse 4) – "Nevuzeradan

(Nebuchadnezzar's captain, who executed the destruction of the Temple) was a
wicked servant but he converted before he died and was thus better off than
Nebuchadnezzar his master, who was called a lion (Jer. 4:7), and who died in his
wickedness and lies in hell while his servant sits in the Garden of Eden" (Rashi).
"When King David died, it was Shabbos, and Solomon sent a message to the sages
in the study hall asking what to do because his father's body was lying in the sun
and the household dogs were hungry. They replied that the maximum that would
be permissible would be to cut up carrion meat to throw to the dogs (to divert them
from the body), and the only way the corpse (which was MUKTZEH, not to be
touched on Shabbos) could be moved would be if this were done indirectly, as by
carrying it together with a loaf of bread or a baby. This was a case where a living
dog was better off than the dead 'lion' – David" (Shabbos 30b).

Verse 5 teaches the fundamental article of Torah faith that as long as a person is
alive in this world of ASIYAH, action, he can repent, serve God and acquire merits,
but after death "they do not have a reward any more" – "There is no possibility for
them to fulfill any further commandments in order to receive a reward for their
performance" (Metzudas David).

Verse 6: "Also all their love and their hatred and their envy are now long
perished…" – "After the death of the wicked, there is no further need for them.
Their love, hate and envy are already perished from the world, and they have no
good share with the righteous in the world to come, nor do they have any benefit
from all that is done in this world beneath the sun" (Targum).

On the other hand, verse 7 addresses those who follow the path of righteousness:
"Go, eat your bread in joy…" (v 7) – "You, the tzaddik, whose good deeds God has
already accepted and who will merit the World to Come: go eat your bread in joy"
(Rashi). "Solomon said with a prophetic spirit from God: The Master of the World is
destined to say to all the Tzaddikim – to each and every one by himself – Go and
joyously taste the bread that has been prepared for you in return for the good
bread that you gave to the poor and needy when they were hungry, and with a
good heart drink the wine that has been hidden away for you in the Garden of Eden
in return for the wine that you poured out for the poor and needy when they were
thirsty…" (Targum).

Thus after death, the destiny of the souls of the righteous is quite different from
that of those of the wicked, and it therefore behooves the righteous to do
everything in their power to acquire merits as long as they are alive in this world.
Therefore – "Let your garments always be white" (verse 8): "Rabbi Yochanan ben
Zaccai said: If the verse is talking literally about white garments and good oils, we
see how many white garments and good oils the idolaters have! Rather, the verse
is talking only about mitzvos and good deeds. Let your garments always be clean of
sins, and never let the oil of mitzvos and good deeds be lacking from upon your
head" (Shabbos 153a).

"See life with the wife whom you love all the days of your vanity…" (verse 9). Our
sages interpreted this prescription to "see LIFE" with your wife as a counsel to
pursue a worthy occupation in order to make a livelihood, learning from our verse
that just as a father has an obligation to help his son to marry, so he must teach
him a trade (Kiddushin 30b). "See and understand that you must learn a craft in
order to make a living together with your study of the Torah. And if you do so, your
share will be life in this world through the livelihood you gain from your craft, and
life in the world to come. For toil in both of them – Torah and making a living –
causes sin to be forgotten" (Rashi on verse 9).

"Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your strength…" (verse 10). In this
verse, Koheles drives home the message that "there is no action or reckoning… in
She'ol where you are going". After death, it is impossible to take any further
ACTION in order to acquire merits to be added to the RECKONING. For the only
place of action is this world of ASIYAH. Accordingly, as long as we are alive here,
we must apply ourselves with all our strength to the acquisition of merit through
mitzvos and good deeds. This is because neither the swift nor the mighty nor the
wise nor those of understanding can escape death, which spells the absolute end of
the period assigned for action and endeavor (verse 11). Man never knows when his
time will come: we are helplessly trapped in this world – like fish in a net or birds in
a trap (v 12).

Since the key to our taking advantage of our life in this world to acquire merits lies
in CHOCHMAH, Koheles now turns to acclaim the virtues of CHOCHMAH in the
closing verses of our present chapter (ch 9 vv 13-18) and opening verses of the
next (ch 10 vv 1-4). "Having said above that the wise do not necessarily have
bread (v 11), he now goes back to praising wisdom, for even though it may not
help to bring in bread, one should not reject it because there is a certain wisdom
that is of great importance in this world" (Metzudas David). The "wisdom" to which
Koheles refers is not a matter of intellectual brilliance but rather the practical Torah
wisdom that enables us to escape the traps of the evil inclination.

"There was a little city and few men within it…" (v 14). The allegory of the "little
city" is explained in the Talmud: "The 'little city' is man's body. The 'few men' in it
are the limbs of the body. The 'great king' who comes against it is the evil
inclination, while the 'poor wise man' found there is the good inclination, which
saved the city through wisdom, i.e. repentance and good deeds. But 'nobody
remembered that poor man', because at the hour when the evil inclination holds
sway, nobody remembers the good inclination" (Nedarim 32b). The allegory of the
"little city" in this passage harks back to the allegory of the "poor wise boy" who
came to rule the country in Koheles 4:13-15.

"Wisdom is better than instruments of war, but one sinner can destroy much good"
(v 18) – "A person should always look at himself as if he is half guilty and half
worthy, and therefore if he performs a single mitzvah, happy is he because he
swings himself into the scale of merit, but if he carries out one sin, woe is he
because he swings himself into the scale of guilt… On account of a single sin that a
person commits, he may loose many benefits" (Kiddushin 40b).

Chapter 10
The opening verses of chapter 10 continue with the praises of wisdom and the
disparagement of folly. The same destructive power of folly that was the subject of
the last verse of the previous chapter is the theme of verse 1 of our present
chapter. "Dead flies cause the perfumer's oil to give off a foul odor" (v 1): "For
example in wintertime when flies have no strength and are near death, even if a
single one falls into perfumer's oil and gets mixed up in the spices, it makes it give
off a foul odor causing a scum with little bubbles to rise to the surface… In the
same way a little folly can have more weight than wisdom and honor because it can
swing everything into the scale of guilt" (Rashi).

Verse 2: "A wise man's hand inclines to his right hand (CHESSED, expansive
kindness, revelation) but a fool's heart is to his left (GEVURAH, strength, constraint,
restriction and concealment)". "The heart of the wise is directed to the acquisition
of the Torah, which was given from God's right arm, while the heart of fools is bent
on the acquisition of wealth, silver and gold" (Targum).

Verse 3: "Even in the way the fool walks his heart is lacking and he tells everyone
he is a fool". "The fool thinks that everyone else is stupid, but he does not realize
that he is the one who is stupid while others are wise" (Koheles Rabbah). For
examples of how fools walk, see M. Python's "Ministry of Silly Walks".

Verse 4: "If the spirit of the ruler rises against you, do not leave your place". "If the
spirit of the evil inclination rules in you and attacks you, do not abandon your good
place – the good practices you have been following – for the Torah was created as
a healing remedy in the world in order to cause many sins to be forgiven and
forgotten by God" (Targum).

In verses 5ff Koheles continues his moral discourse on the path of life which the
righteous should follow with a bold and candid examination of one of the greatest
challenges that this world of mysterious paradoxes presents to our faith in God's
justice. "There is an evil that I have seen under the sun – it is LIKE A MISTAKE that
went forth from before the Ruler: folly is set in great dignity while the (spiritually)
rich sit in a low place" (vv 5-6). Many sincere people are indeed deeply perplexed
by the seeming injustice whereby the most unworthy people enjoy glory and
splendor while the truly worthy seem to be despised and rejected. It seems all
wrong – like some kind of ERROR perpetrated by the Ruler of the world!!! How
could this be???

Targum's rendering of verses 6-7 is: "God has given the wicked, insane Edom
mighty good fortune and heaven-sent success and his forces are haughty and
multitudinous, while the House of Israel are subject to him in exile, and because of
their many sins those who were wealthy have become poor and sit in lowliness
among the nations. King Solomon said through the spirit of prophecy: I have seen
nations that were formerly subject to the House of Israel holding sway and riding
horses like governors, while the nation of the House of Israel, their masters, walk
like servants on the ground".

While the warning in verse 8 that "he who digs a pit will fall into it" applies to the
machinations of any wicked person, Targum's rendering follows on from his
application of the previous verses to Israel: "The Attribute of Judgment spoke up
and answered: They themselves brought all this upon themselves, for just as when
a man digs a pit at the crossroads he is brought there to fall into it, so the nation
that transgressed God's decree and attacked the fence of the world will fall into the
hand of a wicked king who will bite them like a serpent" (Targum on v 8).

Verse 10: "If the iron is blunt and one does not whet the edge, then one must put
in more strength…" – "When the people of Israel sin and cause the heavens to
become hard as iron so that no rain falls, if that generation does not pray before
God the whole world is ruined by famine. But when they repent and gather together
and overcome their evil inclination, appointing prayer leaders to beg for mercy
before God in heaven, they find favor…" (Targum).

Verse 11: "If the serpent bites and cannot be charmed, then there is no advantage
in the master of the tongue" – "When fiery serpents are let loose to frighten and
harm the world, it is because of the sins of Israel in not engaging in words of Torah
uttered in a whisper. Likewise there is no benefit to a person who speaks LASHON
HARA (evil speech) because he is destined to burn in the fire of hell" (Targum).

Following further disparagement of those who follow the path of folly in verses 12-
15, Koheles continues in verses 16-17 by contrasting the fortune of the land
(=Eretz Israel) when under the rule of a king and judges who behave like young
lads with its fortune under the rule of those whose might is combined with wisdom
and understanding (see Rashi ad loc.). We badly need the latter today.

Verse 18: "By much slothfulness the beams collapse…" – "When a person fails to fix
a small crack in the roof of the house the entire structure will collapse" (Rashi).
Don't leave little flaws to become bigger.
Verse 19: "For laughter they make bread, and wine will bring joy to the living, and
money answers over everything" – "For laughter the righteous make bread to feed
the hungry poor, and the wine that they pour for the thirsty will be for them for joy
in the world to come, and their redemption money will testify to their merit in the
world to come in the eyes of all" (Targum).

Verse 20: "Do not curse the king even in your thought…" – "Do not anger the King
of the world" (Rashi). Do not think that your words and thoughts are not heard and
registered! "At the hour when a man sleeps, the body tells the lower soul and the
lower soul tells the higher soul, and the higher soul tells the angel and the angel
tells the cherub and the cherub tells the master of wings – that is the Saraph – and
the Saraph takes the word and tells it before the One Who spoke and brought the
world into being" (Koheles Rabbah).

Chapter 11
Our allotted time in this mysterious world of paradox is very short. Koheles moves
towards the conclusion of his work with a few last words of counsel as to what we
should do here to make the best of our situation.

"Cast your bread upon the water, for you shall find it after many days" (v 1) –
"Practice goodness and kindness even to a person whom your heart tells you that
you will never see again, like a person throwing food into the water, for the days
are coming when you will receive your reward" (Rashi).

Verse 2: "Give a portion to seven and even to eight…" The simple meaning of the
verse is that one should give a share of one's food and drink to seven needy people
and even to another eight who come after them, without saying "That's enough"
(Rashi). On the level of Midrash, "Rabbi Yehoshua says, 'Give a share to seven' –
These are the seven days of Pesach; '…and even to eight' – these are the eight
days of Succos, while the word 'even' (GUM) comes to include Shavuos, Rosh
HaShanah and Yom Kippur" (Eiruvin 40b). "Rabbi Eliezer says, 'Seven' refers to the
seven days of the week. Give one day, Shabbos, as the share of your Creator! Eight
refers to circumcision on the eighth day" (Koheles Rabbah).

Verse 3: "If the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth…" –
"If the clouds are full of water, they don't keep it for themselves but pour it out
onto the ground, and then the ground gives rise to vapors so that the clouds
become filled up again. Similarly a person who has wealth should not keep it all for
himself but rather, he should share his blessings with others. Then, when his time
of need comes, he will receive blessings from others. As long as a tree provides
fruit, people come to water it, but if it falls, nobody comes to tend it any more since
it gives no fruit. Similarly if a person does not give help to others, nobody will help
him in his time of need" (Metzudas David).

Verse 4: "One who waits for the wind will not sow, and one who watches the clouds
will not reap." Even though the wind may help the sower by spreading the seed, if
he waits for the perfect wind to blow he will never sow! Likewise if we wait for
perfect circumstances before carrying out our mitzvos and good deeds, we will
never do what we have to do. We must understand that nothing can ever be
completely perfect in this world, but we have to carry out our obligations NOW!!!
Verse 5 thus goes on to teach us that man can never have full knowledge of all
aspects of God's creation, just has he cannot know the nature of an embryo while it
is still in the womb. He should therefore perform acts of kindness, marry, have
children, study the Torah etc. without worrying if he might go lacking materially as
a result, because he cannot know God's decrees as to who will be poor and who will
be rich (see Rashi ad loc.).

Verse 6: "In the morning sow your seed and in the evening do not withhold your
hand" – "If you learned Torah in your youth, learn Torah in your old age; if you
taught students in your youth, teach students in your old age; if you had a wife and
children in your youth, marry a woman with whom to have children in your old age;
if you practiced charity in your youth, practice charity in your old age" (Rashi).

Verse 7: "The light is sweet…" – "The light of the Torah is sweet, enlightening
darkened eyes so that they see the glory of the face of the Shechinah, which in
time to come will illumine the faces of the Tzaddikim, making them as beautiful as
the sun" (Targum).

Verse 8: "For if a man lives many years…" – Once again, Koheles reminds us to
rejoice in the share God has given us in this world and use our precious time here
to acquire many merits. For the "days of darkness" that come after the death of the
wicked are longer than the days of their life in this world, and only merits – Torah
and mitzvos – can save us from this darkness (see Rashi ad loc.).

Verse 9: "Rejoice, young man, in your youth…" – "This is like a man who
sarcastically tells his servant or his son, 'Go ahead and sin! Sin! For the time will
come when you will be punished for all of them!' Likewise the wise man here says,
'Rejoice, young man, in your youth and go after the ways of your heart… but be
assured that the Judge will bring you to judgment for all this'" (Rashi ad loc.).

Verse 10: "And put aside anger from your heart and remove evil from your flesh" –
"Put aside the things that make God angry and remove the evil inclination from
your flesh so that you will have a heart of flesh" (Rashi ad loc.).

Chapter 12
"And remember your Creator (BOR'ECHA) in the days of your youth…" (verse 1).
The letters making up the Hebrew word BOR'ECHA, "your Creator" also spell out the
words BE'ERCHA, "your well" and BOR'CHA, "your pit". It was on this verse that
Akavia ben Mehalalel based his teaching, "Gaze on three things and you will not
come to sin. From where did you come? A putrid drop (the 'well' from which you
were drawn). Where are you going? To a place of maggots and worms (the grave or
'pit'). And before whom will you have to give an account and a reckoning – your
Creator" (Yerushalmi Sota 2:2).

Verse 1 warns about the onset of "the years of which you will say, I have no
pleasure in them" – i.e. the final years of life – thereby introducing the haunting
and evocative passage in verses 2-7, which our sages taught to be an allegory
about the pains and troubles of old age and bodily deterioration (Talmud Shabbos
151b). Rashi explains the details of the allegory as follows:

"Before the sun and the light, the moon and the stars are darkened…" – The "sun"
is the forehead, which shines and radiates when a person is young but which brings
up wrinkles when he is old and does not shine. The "light" is the nose, which is the
glory of the face. The "moon" is the soul, which radiates to a man, but when it is
taken from him there is no light in his eyes. The "stars" are the cheeks. "…and the
clouds return after the rain" – a person's light is darkened after his tears of weeping
over the many troubles he has endured.
"On the day when the keepers of the house tremble…" – These are the ribs and
flanks, which protect the entire hollow of the body."…and the strong men bow
themselves" – these are the legs, on which the whole body rests. "…and the
grinders cease because they are few" – these are the teeth, most of which fall out
in old age. "…and those looking out of the windows are dimmed" – these are the
eyes.

"And the doors are shut in the street" – these are the bowels. "…when the sound of
the grinding is low" – this is the sound of the digestive organs grinding up the food.
"…and one starts up at the voice of the bird" – When a person is old, even the
sound of a bird can wake him. "…and all the daughters of music are brought low" –
An aged person has no interest in listening to singers (cf. II Sam. 19:36).

"When they are also afraid of that which is high and terrors are in the way" – An old
person is afraid to go out into the streets for fear of stumbling on little bumps and
clods. "…and the almond tree blossoms" – this is the thighbone, which protrudes in
old age like the blossom of a tree. "…and the grasshopper drags itself along" – A
person feels his buttocks like a heavy weight. "…and the caper-berry fails" – the
desire for women departs. "…for the man goes to his eternal home" – the grave –
"…and the mourners go about the streets."

"…Before the silver cord is loosed" – this is the spinal cord, which is white like silver
but which after death shrivels and dries and becomes crooked inside the vertebrae,
becoming like a chain. "…or the golden bowl is shattered" – this is a man's member,
which used to gush with water. "…and the pitcher is broken at the fountain" – this
is the stomach, which bursts after death. "…and the wheel is broken at the cistern"
– the eyeball disintegrates in its hollow. "…and the dust returns to the earth as it
was and the spirit returns to God who gave it."

In addition to the above explanation of Koheles' allegory of old age and decline,
Rashi also gives an equally detailed explanation of the same allegory as Solomon's
call to Israel to remember their Creator while the Temple still stood, before the
onset of the exile, when the light of Torah and the sages would become dimmed as
trouble after trouble would strike.

Koheles now sums up his rebuke and final testimony to Israel in the same words
with which he began: "Vanity of vanities… all is vanity" (Chapter 12 v 8 harking
back to chapter 1 v 2). That which does not endure – this world – is mere vapor
and vanity, and therefore we should focus all our efforts on keeping God's Torah in
order to attain the enduring life of the World to Come.

If we ask why we should heed Koheles rather than any other wise preacher, smart
thinker or philosopher, he explains: "And more than Koheles' having been wise, he
also taught wisdom to the people and weighed and sought out and set in order
many proverbs" (v 9). In the words of Rashi: "Koheles was even wiser than might
appear from what is written in this book. He made 'handles' for the Torah, which
was like a box without any handles to hold onto it. Thus he instituted the laws of
ERUVS as a fence around the keeping of Shabbos, and washing of the hands as a
fence to purity, and he prohibited 'secondary' incest relationships as a fence against
incest…"

"Koheles sought to find out acceptable words…" (v 10). Metzudas David (ad loc.)
explains: "Everything he wanted to know he sought to discover, and he exerted
himself to find out the truth." The Talmud comments on this verse: "Koheles sought
to be like Moses, but a heavenly voice came forth and told him: 'and words of truth
written in proper form' – 'And no other prophet arose in Israel like Moses'" (Deut.
34:10; Rosh Hashanah 21b).

"The words of the wise are like goads…" (v 11) – "Just like the goad directs the
plow-ox in its furrow, so the words of the wise direct a man in the pathways of life"
(Rashi ad loc.).

There is no end to the books of wisdom that could be written. We should not say
that if we cannot complete studying them all, it is not even worth starting. For the
moral – the "bottom line" – can be stated very simply: "The end of the matter,
when all is said and done: Fear God and keep his commandments! For that is the
whole duty of man!" Amen.
 Book of Esther
Chapter 1
In the public reading of the Torah in the synagogue, only one person at a time may
read aloud to the congregation, because hearing more than one voice would be
distracting to the listeners. However, so beloved is the story of the Purim miracle
told in Megillath Esther that the halachah permits two or even ten people to read
aloud at the same time. The reason given for this is precisely because the Megillah
so beloved (Megillah 21b; Shulchan Aruch Orach Hayim 690:2): it is intrinsically
captivating.

Although the book of Esther is not strictly speaking considered a prophetic work,
the sages were agreed that it was written by Esther and Mordechai through Ru'ah
HaKodesh, "holy spirit", and the text of this deeply veiled allegory is laden with
layer upon layer of meaning and allusions.

"Where in the Torah do we find an allusion to Esther? In the verse, 'And I shall
surely hide (ASTEER) My face on that day…'"(Hullin 139b). The "face" of God is His
revealed presence. Esther alludes to the concealment of His presence in exile as a
result of Israel's sins. Yet the story of Esther proves that even when His presence is
concealed, God is in complete control of everything. The revelation of God's power
through the miracle of Purim came about in the merit of the Tzaddik Mordechai.
"And where in the Torah do we find an allusion to Mordechai? In the pure myrrh of
the holy anointing oil made by Moses, which in Hebrew is MAR D'ROR (lit. "master
of freedom") and in the Aramaic Targum is MEIRA DECHYA=MoRDeCHaY" (Hullin
ibid.)

With the killing of Nebuchadnezzar's son (or grandson) Belshazzar and the fall of
Babylon to Darius the Mede and his son-in-law Cyrus king of Persia, the focus of
power shifted to their twin empires of Medea and Persia, centered in the western
regions of present-day Iran. With the collapse of Babylon and the consolidation of
the Persian Empire many of the exiles from Judea, including Mordechai and his
orphaned protégé Esther, moved to Shushan ( Susa or Seleukia, about 150 miles
east of the R. Tigris in Khuzestan province of Iran ). According to the dating system
of Midrash Seder Olam, the fall of Babylon took place in the year 3389 (=371
B.C.E.) exactly 70 years after Nebuchadnezzar rose to power. Even the greatest
Tzaddikim were confused as to why the Temple was not then rebuilt since Jeremiah
had apparently prophesied that God would punish Babylon and restore the people
to Jerusalem after seventy years (Jeremiah 29:10; cf. Daniel 9:2 and
commentators there). They did not realize that the Temple itself could not be
rebuilt until seventy years after its destruction, which had taken place eighteen
years after Nebuchadnezzar rose to power. The redemption prophesied by Jeremiah
was the first wave of returning exiles under Zerubavel, which took place in the first
year of the reign of Cyrus and with his encouragement (Ezra 1:1). But Cyrus
reigned no more than two years, and when Ahashverosh (Ahasuerus) ascended the
throne of Persia (in 3392=368 B.C.E.), royal support for the rebuilding of Jerusalem
ceased as a result of letters of denunciation sent to the new king by the returning
Jews' adversaries, who according to rabbinic tradition were the sons of Haman
(Ezra 4:6). Ahashverosh's feast, at which he brought out the vessels captured by
the Babylonians from the Temple in Jerusalem (Esther 1:7), was intended to
celebrate the uneventful passing of the prophesied date of the restoration, which
the gentiles took as a sign that it would never take place.

The thwarting of the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Temple undoubtedly

generated the darkest despair among the exiles in Shushan, many of whom reacted
by allowing themselves to fall into laxity in their Torah observance, as exemplified
by their participation in Ahashverosh's feast (Esther 1:5, see Targum there). The
deepening Jewish assimilation was itself the fulfillment of God's warning in the
Torah that "I shall surely hide My face on that day". But despite the fact that his
Jewish brothers were running to join the gentiles in their celebrations in Shushan,
Mordechai refused to participate in the consumption of TREIF (unkosher food), just
as his saintly counterpart Daniel had refused in Babylon (Targum on Esther 1:5;
Daniel 1:8). Purity of the food we ingest is the foundation of purity of mind and
soul.

Through Mordechai's outstanding sanctity and that of Esther, they were worthy of
one of the greatest miracles of all time: everything was completely turned around
(VE-NAHAPHOCH HOO, Esther 9:1), with the result that "the Jews fulfilled and took
upon themselves (KEEYEMOO VE-KIBLOO) and their seed…" (Esther 9:27). The
sages taught that the phrase KEEYEMOO VE-KIBLOO implies that the Jews
FULFILLED (KEEYEMOO) in the days of Ahashverosh what they had already
RECEIVED (KIBLOO), i.e. the Torah which they received at Sinai. Out of despair and
assimilation came a national return to the ancestral Torah, and the Second Temple
was built shortly afterwards. The Purim miracle took place in the thirteenth year of
the reign of Ahashverosh in 3405 (=355 B.C.E.) while the Second Temple was built
in 3408 (352 B.C.E.).

Yet this great salvation was only revealed at the very climax of the story of Purim,
which began with the most terrible darkness in which Mordechai and Esther had
only their perfect faith in God to sustain them. In the book of Esther more than
anywhere else in the Bible, the hand of God is concealed to the point that the very
Name of God does not even appear explicitly anywhere in the Megillah. It appears
only in ways that are not discernable to the casual reader: for example the initial or
concluding Hebrew letters of certain phrases spell out various names of God. At
least forty such cases are listed in the Kabbalistic Kavanot. (One of the most
obvious examples is Esther 5:4, YAVO HAMELECH VEHAMAN HAYOM). Although the
Megillah appears to be talking about King Ahashverosh, the text frequently refers
simply to HA-MELECH (the King). The sages teach that this term simultaneously
refers to the temporal Ahashverosh while also alluding to the King of kings (Midrash
Esther Rabbah). The story of Purim apparently unfolds like a completely natural
series of events, but as it develops, it becomes visible that each event was
flawlessly planned and designed by the Ruler of all the world to teach a great lesson
in how His providence governs every single detail of creation. How often the most
enormous consequences flow from a single slight gesture or movement that nobody
could have imagined would bring so much in its train.

The essence of the story of Purim is nothing less than God's war against evil from
generation to generation "for HaShem will have war with Amalek from generation
to generation" (Exodus 17:16). Amalek is the embodiment of the evil of the
primordial serpent, glorying in cruelty, bloodshed and murder of men, women and
children accompanied by the amassing of God-denying power and wealth. The
extirpation of Amalek, who had perpetrated a barbaric attack on the newly freed
people of Israel immediately after their exodus from Egypt, was the second of three
commandments they were instructed to fulfill after their entry into the Land of
Israel . The first was to appoint a king. He was to lead the people in fulfilling the
second of these commandments by making war against Amalek. This was the
necessary preparation for the fulfillment of the third, the building the Temple in
Jerusalem (Rambam, Laws of Kings 1:1).

The first king of Israel, the Benjaminite King Saul, was intended to fulfill the second
commandment by wiping out all the Amalekites. However Saul failed because he
allowed the people to leave the Amalekite king Agag alive, and the latter succeeded
in fathering a child even after his capture, before being hacked to death by the
prophet Samuel (I Samuel ch 15). Because of Saul's failure, Samuel told him: "God
has torn the kingship over Israel from you today and He has given it to your
companion who is better than you" (I Samuel 15:28). This was David, from the
tribe of Judah.

It was Mordechai and Esther who brought about the TIKKUN ("repair") of the
terrible flaw left by King Saul in the form of Agag's descendant, Haman, who tried
to destroy the entire Jewish people. Just like Saul, Mordechai was from the tribe of
Benjamin (Esther 2:5), and moreover, he was the descendant of Shimi, who had
come out to deliver the worst curses against King David when the latter fled from
Jerusalem to escape Absalom (II Samuel 16:5-10). When David returned to
Jerusalem after the thwarting of Absalom's rebellion, he spared Shimi, who was
able to bear a son before eventually being killed by King Solomon (II Kings 2:8 &
40ff). Not only did Mordechai and Esther rectify Saul's flaw through the downfall of
the Amalekite Haman. They also rectified the breach between the tribes of
Benjamin and Judah, because Mordechai the Benjaminite is specifically called
MORDECHAI HA-YEHUDI (Esther 2:5) – the Judean. To repair the MALCHUTH,
"kingship" having been taken from King Saul and given "to your companion who is
better than you", the royal title of Queen was taken from Vashti and "the king will
give her MALCHUTH to her companion that is better than she" (Esther 1:19). Thus
it was that Saul's descendant, the royal Esther, became queen.

The TIKKUN, "repair", accomplished by Mordechai and Esther is expressed in the

language of Kabbalah by Rabbi Moshe Hayim Luzzatto (RaMHaL) in his Kavanot (1
st edn. p. 138, Secret of Purim and Reading the Megillah):--

In the days of the exile in Babylon the Shechinah was turned away "back to back".
It was necessary to build her in order for her to return "face to face". This is
accomplished through Abba and Imma, which enter into her and build her. Now
Yesod of Abba is long and goes out from Yesod of Imma, and it enters into Yesod of
Zeir Anpin as well, unlike Yesod of Imma, which ends at the chest. Even in Nukva
(=Shechinah) Yesod of Abba also reaches her Yesod, and indeed her Yesod is short
so that the part of Yesod of Abba that is clothed therein protrudes even more. It
was from this aspect that the soul of Mordechai the Tzaddik was drawn. This took
place immediately before the redemption. The wicked Haman wanted to thwart the
building of this Nukva and to thwart Mordechai. Mordechai received an illumination
from the above-mentioned aspect, which is his root, which had already been in
existence for a very long time, and Haman, who was jealous of him, wanted to
thwart him and thwart the whole repair. But the Holy One blessed be He performed
a miracle and the MOHIN ("brain power") began to return to Zeir Anpin. This is the
secret of "the sleep of the king fled" (Esther 6:1). This did not negate Mordechai,
because the illumination which he had attained remained in all its strength, while
Haman became weak and fell before him so that he was unable to harm the Jews,
because the King of the Universe was already aroused. Mordechai's illumination
strengthened him and enabled him to accomplish the great feat of saving Israel.
Esther is the Malchuth, which was for Mordechai a "daughter" (BAS) and a "house"
(=wife, BAYIS) through the mystery of the repair of the Nukva… (Ramchal,
Kavanot).
Lovers of Rabbi Nachman will be delighted to know that ESTHER has the numerical
value of 661 = TIKUN HAKLALI, the Complete Remedy!!!

Esther Chapter 1 Verse 1: "And it was (VAYEHI) in the days of Ahashverosh" – "We
have a tradition handed down from the Men of the Great Assembly that wherever
the text says 'and it was (VAYEHI) in the days of…' it means they were days of
suffering, VAY!!!" (Megillah 10b).

Vv 1-8 illustrate the wealth, grandeur and magnificence of Ahashverosh's world

center, capital of an enormous empire of hugely diverse nations, languages and
cultures.

V 9: Queen Vashti was the daughter of Belshazzar and because of her own lineage
from Nebuchadnezzar was somewhat contemptuous of Ahashverosh, whom she saw
as a self-made upstart (cf. Megillah 11a, "he made himself ruler"). Our sages
taught that through the hidden hand of God, Vashti was smitten with leprosy on the
day Ahashverosh called her to appear naked except for her crown at his banquet,
and she did not wish to go out of shame. She was afflicted by the leprosy as
punishment for having forced Jewish girls to work for her naked even on Shabbat.

V 16: "And Memuchan answered…" Having been mentioned last among

Ahashverosh's advisors (v 14), why did he jump in first to tell the king to have
Vashti killed? Our sages teach that this MEMUCHAN was none other than Haman
(Targum ibid. etc.), who was MUCHAN, prepared by God for the purpose of bringing
about punishment. What motive had Haman for wanting to kill Vashti? It is said
that he knew from astrology that he would die at the hand of Ahashverosh's wife,
and he mistakenly thought that this prediction referred to Vashti when in fact it
referred to Esther. By killing Vashti Haman wanted to get Ahashverosh to marry his
own daughter so that he himself could then become king.

Chapter 2
Verse 5: "There was a Yehudi man (ISH)…" – "this teaches that Mordechai in his
generation was the equivalent of Moses in his generation, as it is written, "And the
man (ISH) Moses was very humble" (Numbers 12:3; Midrash Esther Rabbah).

Mordechai's proactive genius was displayed in his allowing Esther to be taken to

Ahashverosh when he could have hidden her away from the king's talent scouts.
Mordechai had perfect faith that if God sent such an opportunity to win the jackpot
and propel his adoptive exile daughter directly onto the throne of the world empire
of the time, there must be some great purpose in it.

Verse 15: "And Esther found favor (HEIN) in the eyes of all who saw her…" The
attribute of HEIN, charismatic charm and favor, is precisely the attribute of
MALCHUTH. "In the eyes of all who saw her" = "this teaches that each and every
person imagined she was from his people" (Megillah 13b). "In the eyes of all who
saw her" – "in the eyes of the supernal beings and in the eyes of the beings of the
lower world" (ibid.).

Verses 21-3: The apparently quite irrelevant conspiracy of Bigthan and Theresh,
which was thwarted by Mordechai, archived in the king's book of chronicles and
promptly forgotten by everyone, eventually turns out to have been the event that
brings about the denouement of the whole story, because Ahashverosh wanted to
belatedly reward Mordechai just when Haman was on his way in trying to get him
hanged (Esther 6:1-10). "God prepared the remedy for Israel 's trouble even before
He brought the trouble upon them" (Rashi on Esther 3:1).

Chapter 3
V 1: "After these things Ahashverosh promoted Haman…" Ahashverosh's feast had
taken place in the third year of his fourteen-year reign (Esther 1:3), while Esther
became queen four years later, in the seventh year of his reign (Esther 2:16). It
was not until five years after that, in the twelfth year of Ahashverosh's reign, that
Haman laid his plot to exterminate the Jews (Esther 3:7). During all these years
Haman kept himself busy. Targum Yonasan (on Esther 3:1) states that he traveled
in person from Shushan to Jerusalem to prevent the building of the Temple [not
unlike the foreign "activists" until today who travel to Israel to monitor and thwart
every move Jews make to assert their sovereignty in their land]. Targum continues:
"The attribute of Justice rose before the Master of the World to accuse Haman… but
the Master of the World answered, 'So far he is not well known in the world, leave
Me until he becomes great and known to all the nations and then I will exact
punishment from him for all the persecution perpetrated by him and his fathers
against the House of Israel.'" God allows the wicked to rise to the very peak of their
power and fame before casting them down, and His glory is thereby enhanced.

Vv 2-4: "And all the king's servants bowed…" Haman hung an idolatrous figurine on
his coat so that all who bowed to him to show their respect were also bowing to the
idol (Targum Yonasan etc.). [Such personality cults should not surprise us since in
our day entertainment and other celebrities are explicitly referred to as idols.]
Targum states that Mordechai would not bow to Haman for two reasons. (1)
Mordechai would never bow to an idol since this contravenes the Second
Commandment. (2) In any case Haman was Mordechai's slave ever since one time
when Haman had nothing to eat and sold himself to Mordechai for bread – this
Midrash echoes the fact that Esau had sold the birthright to Jacob for food and was
thus subject to him (cf. Genesis 27:37; cf. also Rabbi Nachman's story of "The
Exchanged Children", a major theme of which is the mystery of Jacob and Esau).

Vv 5-6: The thought of taking personal vengeance on Mordechai was not to

appease Haman for the affront to his self-importance. Only the destruction of
Mordechai's entire people could assuage his wrath because the existence of even a
single remaining adherent to the Sinaitic Covenant would always be a slap in the
face to Haman's worldview.

V 7: Like many prominent world leaders through history up until the present day,
Haman used astrology and occult arts to accomplish his goals. The Second Targum
on Esther, which is far more elaborate than Targum Yonasan, bringing a rich array
of supplementary Midrashic lore, tells how Haman rejected month after month as
being unsuitable for scheduling his planned extermination of the Jews because each
month had some Jewish festival in whose merit they would be protected. The
reason why Haman chose the twelfth month – Adar – was because it was on the 7
th of Adar that Moses had left the world, and the loss of their leader left Israel
completely vulnerable.

V 8: Haman's artful speech to Ahashverosh is one of the outstanding all-time

masterpieces of anti-Semitic insinuation and slander.

Vv 9-11: Haman offered to pay ten thousand talents of his own silver to
Ahashverosh in order to "buy" the Jews from him so that he could then do to them
as he pleased. (The reason for the sum of 10,000 talents of silver that Haman
offered was that this was equivalent to paying one zuz for each of the 600,000
Israelites who went out of Egypt.) Yet we see from verse 11 that Ahashverosh did
not even take the money, telling Haman he could keep it as a gift: "The money is
given to you and the people to do with them as is good in your eyes". This shows
that Ahashverosh was quite as happy as Haman at the thought of getting rid of the
Jews, who were an affront to his own world-view as well. Rather than taking
anything from Haman, Ahashverosh GAVE HIM his own ring: i.e. he gave Haman
authority to do whatever he wanted. "Rabbi Abba bar Kahaneh said: "The removal
of Ahashverosh's ring accomplished more than forty-eight prophets and seven
prophetesses who prophesied to Israel. None of them succeeded in persuading
Israel to repent, but the removal of the ring [and the dire threat of extermination to
which this led] caused them to repent!" (Megillah 14a).

Vv 12-15: Haman now set in motion the enormous governmental apparatus across
the entire vast, sprawling Persian empire in order to execute his dastardly Jihadist
plot of staging a global one-day massacre of all the Jewish men, women and
children everywhere and anywhere on 13 th Adar.

V 16: "…and the city of Shushan was in consternation" – because the exultation of
all the Jews' enemies was mixed with the sound of Jewish wailing (Targum
Yonasan).

Chapter 4
Verses 1-3: "And Mordechai knew…" – "The master of the dream told him that the
Heavenly Court had agreed to the decree because they had bowed to the idol in the
time of Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel ch 3) and enjoyed themselves at Ahashverosh's
banquet" (Rashi). Mordechai now showed his mettle as Tzaddik of the Generation,
single-handedly going out to arouse the people and induce them to repent. With the
dire decree staring them in the face, the people finally began to do so.

Vv 5ff: "Then Esther called for Hathach…" According to rabbinic tradition, the go-
between who went back and forth from Esther to Mordechai was none other than
Daniel, who had been the leading advisor of Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar and
Darius the Mede. He was called HATHACH because "all the matters of the kingdom
were determined (mithHATH'CHim) in accordance with the words of his mouth"
(Targum Yonasan). Our text tells us that Hathach went from Esther to Mordechai
and back again. However, while in verses 10-12 we see that Esther gave Hathach
instructions for a second mission to Mordechai, Hathach's name is not mentioned
again thereafter, while in verse 12 it is written that "THEY told Mordechai the words
of Esther". Targum Yonasan on verse 12 tells that Haman (who was obviously a
control-freak) saw that Hathach-Daniel kept on coming and going to Esther and
promptly killed him. Indeed a tomb said to be that of Daniel exists in Shushan.
Targum on v 12 tells us who THEY were.

V 11: "All the king's servants and the people of the king's provinces know that
every man and woman who comes to the inner courtyard of the king without being
called is to be put to death…" Targum states that Esther told Mordechai that Haman
had instituted that nobody could go into the king without his permission, which
again testifies to his having been a paranoid control freak.

V 12: "And they told Mordechai the words of Esther…" Since Hathach-Daniel had
been killed, it was the angels Michael and Gabriel who now relayed Esther's
message to Mordechai, who sent them back to her with his reply (Targum
Yonasan).
Vv 13-14: Mordechai's reply to Esther shows his complete faith that even if she did
not go to the king to try to intercede for the Jews, relief and deliverance would
definitely come to them from elsewhere: no one individual is indispensable because
God has many messengers!

V 15-16: Esther stood to loose everything if her mission was unsuccessful. The
rabbis taught that Mordechai had taken Esther as his wife (darshening the word
BAS, "daughter", in Esther 2:7 as BAYIS, "house"=wife). Having originally been
taken to Ahashverosh B'O-NESS, "under duress", she was still halachically
permitted to go back to her husband Mordechai since only a priest is forbidden to
take back his wife if she is raped, but not an Israelite. However, the moment Esther
went into Ahashverosh OF HER OWN FREE WILL, her adultery was intentional and
she would subsequently be forbidden to Mordechai in any event -- even if failed in
her mission. Despite the fact that the erratic and unpredictable Ahashverosh was
quite likely to kill Esther for coming to him of her own volition (just as he had killed
Vashti for showing that she had a mind of her own), Esther was willing to sacrifice
her entire life and future in order to save her people. "Go gather together all the
Jews who are present in Shushan and fast for me…" Esther knew that her only
chance of success was if all the Jews repented.

V 17: "So Mordechai went his way (VA-YA-AVOR)…" The root of VA-YA-AVOR is
AVAR, which has the connotation of transgression. The rabbis stated that Mordechai
"transgressed" because he agreed to the public fast despite the fact that it took
place during the festival of Pesach when fasting is normally forbidden (Rashi on
Esther 4:17).

It must be understood that while the events described in Esther 1:1-3:6 were
spread out over NINE YEARS, the events described from 3:7 until 8:2 were
concentrated in the space of FIVE DAYS. Haman cast lots at the beginning of the
month of Nissan, and the decree became public knowledge on the 13 th of Nissan
(Esther 3:12). Mordechai went into action immediately, and his exchanges with
Esther took place on the very same day. The three day fast called by Mordechai
started on 14 th of Nissan and continued on the 15 th and 16 th (both of which
were Yom Tov in Shushan since it was in the Diaspora). It was on the 16 th of
Nissan – the third day of the fast -- that Esther invited Ahashverosh and Haman to
the first banquet (Esther 5:4) and it was held on the same day. Ahashverosh's
sleep was disturbed that night (eve of the 17 th Nissan, Esther 6:1) and the second
banquet, Haman's downfall and hanging took place the next morning – the third
day of Pesach. Despite the fact that we today celebrate Purim in Adar, which is
when the decree of extermination was intended to be fulfilled, the actual miracle
took place during Pesach, the festival of redemption.

Chapter 5
V 1: "And it was on the THIRD day…" – " Israel are not left in trouble for more than
three days. Joseph put his brothers 'into custody for THREE days' (Genesis 42:17);
Jonah was in the belly of the fish 'THREE days and three nights' (Jonah 2:1); and in
time to come, 'on the THIRD DAY He will raise us up and we shall live in His
presence' (Hosea 6:2)" (Midrash Esther Rabbah).

"…and Esther clothed herself in royalty" – "The verse should have said 'she clothed
herself in garments of royalty'. Rabbi Haninah said, 'She clothed herself in holy
spirit, as it says, "and the spirit CLOTHED Amassay" (1 Chronicles 12:19). From
here we learn that Esther was a prophetess'" (Talmud, Megillah 14b).
"…and she stood in the inner court of the king's house over against the king's
house…" In accordance with the principle that when the word MELECH appears in
the Megillah without further qualification it alludes to God, this verse is interpreted
to mean that Esther prayed before the Heavenly Temple, which is aligned directly
with the earthly Temple in Jerusalem (cf. Targum Yonasan).

V 2: "And it was when the king saw Esther the queen standing in the courtyard…" –
"When she reached the chamber of the idols, the Divine Presence left her. At that
moment she said, 'My God, my God, why have You abandoned me?' (Psalm 22:2).
Immediately, the king saw her and she found favor in his eyes" (Megillah 15b). It is
customary to recite Psalm 22 on Purim at the end of the morning prayers. The
"deer of the morning" alludes to the Shechinah.

V 3: "Then the king said to her, What is your wish… it shall be given to you even up
to half the kingdom." The simple meaning is that Ahashverosh said that even if she
asked for half the kingdom he would give it to her, but Targum Yonasan renders:
"Even if you ask for half my kingdom I will give it to you but not if you ask to build
the Temple which stands on the boundary of half my kingdom: that I will not give
you, because I have made an oath to Geshem the Arab and Sanvalat the Horonite
and Tuviah the Ammonite slave (see Nehemiah 2:19) not to permit it to be built,
because I am afraid of the Jews in case they will rebel against me, so I cannot
grant this request but I will grant you anything else you ask."

Vv 4-9: What was in Esther's mind when she did not give the king an answer at the
feast that same day but instead pushed him off to the next day? Some explain that
despite the three day fast of the Jews, Esther as yet still saw no sign of redemption.
It was only the next day, after Haman had already begun to fall when he had to
dress Mordechai in finery, that Esther knew that God was smiling and that she
could ask Ahashverosh for what she really needed with impunity.

V 9: "Then Haman went out that day joyful and with a glad heart…" Pride comes
before a fall!

"But when Haman saw Mordechai in the king's gate and that he did not stand or stir
for him…" Not only would Mordechai not bow to the idolatrous figurine that Haman
wore. When Haman passed by, Mordechai – who was sitting in his Sanhedrin, "the
King's gate" (Deut. 16:18) – merely stretched out his right leg and showed Haman
the deed of purchase attesting to how he had once purchased him as his slave in
exchange for bread (Targum Yonasan). This appears to allude to how Jacob holds
Esau by the heel (Gen. 25:26).

V 10: Targum Yonasan includes the interesting information that Haman's wife
Zeresh was the daughter of Tathnay, governor of the Persian imperial provinces
"over the river", i.e. west of the Euphrates, including the Land of Israel. We have
encountered Tathnay in Ezra 5:3ff as a key figure in the diplomatic efforts made by
the adversaries of the Jewish returnees from Babylon to Jerusalem to impede the
building of the Second Temple. It would make sense that as an Edomite-Amalekite,
Haman's origins lay in the desert regions south and east of the Dead Sea, which
were part of the provinces "over the river" under the governorship of his father-in-
law Tathnay.

V 14: In elaborating the counsel of Haman received from his wife and friends,
Targum Yonasan explains that they detailed various failed plots to kill Tzaddikim:
"If he is one of the Tzaddikim, then if we kill him by the sword, the sword will turn
around and strike us. If we stone him, David already stoned Goliath. If we roast
him in a copper pot, King Menasheh already escaped from such a pot (II Chronicles
33:11ff). If we throw him into the sea, the Israelites already split the sea and
passed through on dry land. If we throw him into a fiery furnace, Hananiah, Mishael
and Azara already escaped from such a furnace. If we throw him into the lion's den,
the lions left Daniel unharmed. If we throw him alive to the dogs, the mouths of the
dogs were closed when Israel left Egypt. If we exile him to the wilderness, they
were already fruitful and multiplied in the wilderness. If we throw him into prison,
Joseph came out of prison to rule. If we stick a knife in his neck, the knife could not
harm Isaac's neck. If we gouge out his eyes he will kill us like Samson killed the
Philistines. We don't know what to do. The only solution is to set up a great TREE
(ETZ) for a gallows at the gate of his house so that all the Jews and all his friends
will see…" (Targum Yonasan on v 14).

"Where in the Torah is there an allusion to Haman? In God's words to Adam after
his sin: 'Is it that you have eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat
from it?' (Genesis 3:11; Talmud Hullin 139b). The Hebrew for "is it that… from" is
HA-MIN (grammatically the HA is interrogative, while MIN means "from"). Since
Hebrew is written without vowels, these letters could equally well be read as HA-
MAN. Haman was the embodiment of the serpent that caused man to eat from the
tree of knowledge of good and evil. Haman's TREE was FIFTY cubits high,
corresponding to the fifty gates of the unholy Binah ("Understanding") whose power
he wanted to use to destroy Mordechai, the Tzaddik of the Generation, who was
teaching his people to reach God through the Fiftieth Gate – prayer. Thus the
Midrash tells that when Haman passed Mordechai as he sat teaching his students,
he asked him what he was teaching. Mordechai told him he was explaining the laws
of the Omer offering, which would have been offered on the second day of the
festival of Pesach had the Temple been standing. The Omer offering begins the 50
day count to the festival of Shavuos celebrating the Giving of the Torah,
corresponding to the 50 th Gate.

Chapter 6
V 1: "On that night the sleep of the king was disturbed…" It is customary for the
BAAL KOREI reading the Megillah in the synagogue to raise his voice while saying
these words, because the king's disturbed sleep was the root of the miracle
(Shuchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 690:15, Mishneh Berurah #52).

"Why was his sleep disturbed? He was trying to understand why Esther had also
invited Haman to the feast, and he began wondering if they might not be plotting to
kill him. He thought to himself: 'Is there nobody who loves me enough to warn me?
Could it be that someone did me some favor and I never paid him back, and as a
result people are holding back from revealing information to me?' He immediately
gave instructions to bring the book of records!" (Talmud, Megillah 15a).

V 2: "And it was found written…" If something written in the world below for the
merit of the Jews was not erased, how much more can that which is written above
[God's promises in the Torah] never be erased" (Megillah 16a).

V 6: "And Haman came and the king said to him, What shall be done to the man
whom the king delights to honor?" If Ahashverosh had asked Haman directly what
should be done to his arch-enemy Mordechai, he would surely have given a very
negative reply. Ahashverosh thus phrased the question in such a way that Haman
would not know whom he intended to honor – and of course the pompous Haman
immediately assumed it was himself and answered in the grandest terms. A
somewhat parallel method of ascertaining indirectly what a person really thinks was
used by the prophet Nathan when he went to David to reprove him for having taken
Bathsheva (II Samuel 12:1ff).
"And Haman said in his heart, To whom would the king delight to give honor more
than to myself?" – "The wicked are in the power of their own heart, and thus, 'and
Esau said IN HIS HEART' (Gen. 27:41), 'and the wicked says IN HIS HEART'
(Psalms 14:1), 'and Jeraboam said IN HIS HEART'(I Kings 12:26). But in the case
of the Tzaddikim, their hearts are under their control, and thus 'Hannah spoke TO
HER HEART' (I Sam. 1:13), 'and Daniel put it UPON HIS HEART' (Daniel 1:8) 'and
David spoke TO HIS HEART' (I Sam. 27:1), and in this they are like their Creator,
of Whom it is written, 'And HaShem said TO HIS HEART' (Gen. 8:21; Midrash
Esther Rabbah).

V 12: "But Haman was pushed back to his house MOURNING and WITH HIS HEAD
COVERED" – "Haman was going on his way through the streets leading Mordechai
when they passed through the road where Haman's house was situated. Haman's
daughter, who was standing on the roof, saw them and assumed that the person
riding the horse was her father and the person walking in front of him was
Mordechai. She took the toilet pan and threw it at the one walking in front, but
when she looked and saw that it was her father she fell from the roof to the ground
and was killed. This is why Haman was MOURNING, over his daughter, WITH HIS
HEAD COVERED – because of what had happened (Megillah 16a).

Chapter 7
Seeing Esther invite Haman to her feast with the king had brought the Jews of
Shushan to the highest peak of Teshuvah. Previously they believed that in the
Jewish queen they had a strong ally in the royal household who might yet save
them by asking the king to kill Haman, but here she was inviting their worst enemy
to her feast! "At that moment the entire house of Jacob poured out their hearts and
trusted only in their Father in Heaven" (Targum Yonasan on Esther 5:14).

Vv 1-2: "So the king and Haman came to drink with Queen Esther. And the king
said again to Esther on the second day at the feast of wine, What is your petition…
even to half the kingdom?" Targum Yonasan explains here as on Esther 5:6 that
when Ahashverosh offered Esther up to half the kingdom, he was explicitly refusing
to allow the rebuilding of the Temple, except that in his explanation of the present
verse, Yonasan adds that the king said to Esther, "Wait until your son Darius will
grow up and inherit the kingdom and that too will be done".

Vv 3-4: The directness, simplicity and heart-rending pathos of Esther's plea to the
king to save herself and her people from destruction makes this a model that all of
us can follow in our prayers to God to redeem Israel.

"…for the oppressor is not concerned about the damage to the king" – "Esther was
saying to Ahashverosh, This oppressor [Haman] does not care about any loss to the
king! He was jealous of Vashti and killed her, and now he has become jealous of me
and wants to kill me!" (Megillah 16a).

By openly identifying with the Jews, Esther finally revealed her origins and people
to Ahashverosh for the first time since Mordechai had instructed her not to do so
(see Esther 2:20).

V 5: "And the king Ahashverosh said, and he said to Esther the queen…" In this
verse the word VAYOMER, "he said" is repeated twice. While the second VAYOMER
is directed to Esther, the first VAYOMER is not directed to anyone and is apparently
redundant. Thus Rashi (ad loc.) states: "In every place where a verse reads
VAYOMER… VAYOMER twice, this is can only be explained through Midrash. The
Midrashic teaching that comes out from this verse is that previously Ahashverosh
had spoken to her through an intermediary, but now that he knew that she was
from a family of kings [Saul] he spoke to her himself directly (see Megillah 16a).

Vv 6-8: With Haman now falling faster and faster, his every move just made things
worse. He tried to appeal to Esther, but when the king saw him falling over Esther's
couch he was all the more convinced that Haman was up to no good.

V 9: "And Harvonah, one of the chamberlains, said before the king, Also see the
gallows fifty cubits high that Haman made for Mordechai who spoke good for the
king…" Harvonah's timely intervention settled Haman's fate. Some rabbis said that
it was Elijah the prophet who appeared to the king in the guise of one of his
chamberlains (see Ibn Ezra on this verse). However the opinion of Rabbi Elazar in
the Talmud is that Harvonah had in fact been in on Haman's conspiracy to have
Mordechai hanged but that when he saw that Haman was obviously going down fast
he quickly abandoned the sinking ship and changed his colors (Megillah 16a; cf.
Targum Sheni on Esther 7:9).

V 10: "And they hanged Haman on the gallows that he prepared for Mordechai…" –
"He hewed out a pit and dug it out, and he fell into the ditch which he made"
(Psalms 7:16). Similarly, Jethro saw the hand of God's justice in the way that the
Egyptians were drowned in the waters of the Red Sea after having plotted to drown
the Hebrew babies in the waters of the river (Exodus 18:11, see Rashi ad loc.)

Chapter 8
Verses 3-6: "And Esther spoke once more before the king…" The death of Haman
had removed the Jews' worst persecutor but it did not undo the fact that a few days
earlier messengers had been dispatched at top speed to all the provinces of the
empire telling all the gentiles to mobilize for the 13 th of Adar to exterminate, kill
and destroy all the Jews, young and old (Esther 3:12-15). This was why Esther now
asked Ahashverosh to revoke the letters Haman had sent out in the name of the
king.

Vv 7-8: Ahashverosh replied that this was impossible, because "writing that is
already written in the king's name and sealed with the king's ring cannot be
revoked". This was in accordance with a law in the empire of the Medes and
Persians that once promulgated, no governmental decree could ever be changed, as
we find in Daniel 6:16, where even Darius king of Medea was unable to intervene to
save his favorite Daniel from the decree made by his ministers' to kill anyone found
worshipping any other god besides the king. Our present text also alludes to the
impossibility of changing even a single word or letter of the Torah.

Nevertheless, Ahashverosh now gave Mordechai and Esther permission to

promulgate a new decree in the name of the king that would not revoke the
previous decree but would allow the Jews to stand up against their enemies on D-
Day, the 13 th of Adar, and do to them exactly what they sought to do to the Jews.

V 10: "…and he sent letters in the hand of couriers on horseback riding on the swift
horses used in the royal service bred from the stud mares." The phrase "used in the
royal service bred from the stud mares" is a translator's device to find an intelligible
rendering for the Hebrew/Persian words HA-AHASHTRANIM B'NEY HARAMACHIM,
whose exact meaning is not known. Targum renders HA-AHAHSTRANIM as
ARTOULYONEY, which has the connotation of "naked" and apparently refers to the
riders, who were stripped to the minimum gear necessary in order to be able to
travel at top speed. Targum explains that the runners had their spleens removed
and that the soles of their feet were arched so that only their toes touched the
ground. Using couriers of this kind was the only way to communicate at high speed
across a vast empire in the days before phones, faxes, Internet and satellite
technology.

V 11: The king permitted the Jews not only to defend themselves and kill and
destroy their enemies [which the United Nations and Israel's "allies" still do not
allow until today] but also authorized them "…to plunder their goods". The last
provision was exactly parallel to the provision made in Haman's letters that the
enemies were to plunder the Jews (Esther 3:13). However, when it came to it, the
Jews did NOT plunder their enemies (Esther 9:10), thereby showing everyone that
they did not do what they did for monetary gain (Rashi on Esther 8:11).

Vv 15-16 are two of the four "Verses of Redemption" (together with Esther 2:5 and
10:3) that are read out aloud, each in its proper place, by all the congregation
during the public reading of the Megillah prior to their being read out of the scroll
by the BAAL KOREI ("reader"; Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 690:17).

"The Jews had light and gladness and joy and honor." – "Light" is Torah;
"Gladness" is YOM TOV, festive celebration; "Joy" refers to circumcision, while
"honor" refers to Tefilin (Megillah 16b).

V 17: "And many of the people of the land became Jews…" Seeing the hand of God
in the miracle performed for the Jews convinced them to become converts.

Chapter 9
Verse 1: "…and it was turned to the contrary…" Through the grace of Heaven and in
the merit of the patriarchs (Targum), in the Purim miracle, everything was turned
around diametrically opposite to the way it all seemed at first. For this reason, the
celebration of Purim every year on the anniversary of the miracle is also
characterized by turning everything around, such as by wearing disguises, joking
and upsetting many of the social conventions that govern normal everyday life (as
long as this does not turn nasty in any way).

Vv 2: On the very day that had been designated by Haman's lot for the destruction
of the Jews and what he hoped would be the death of their faith, they suddenly
staged a one-day national Intifada against their enemies throughout the Persian
empire, with complete success. Not only was this Jewish Intifada accomplished
without the international chorus of condemnations, UN resolutions, sanctions etc.
etc. that follow any genuine act of Jewish self-defense today; it was actually carried
out with the full support of the Persian imperial governmental apparatus.

V 4: "For Mordechai was great in the king's house…" This depiction of Mordechai's
greatness is reminiscent of the description of Moses' greatness in Egypt, "for the
man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt in the eyes of Pharaoh's servants
and in the eyes of the people" (Exodus 11:3).

Vv 5-18: Following the general account of the Purim miracle in the previous verses,
the text now details (1) how the Jews rose up and killed their enemies throughout
the Persian empire on the 13 th Adar and rested and celebrated on the 14 th ;(2)
what they did in Shushan the capital, where they needed a second day to complete
the work and only rested on the 15 th Adar. This narrative completes the story of
the Purim miracle and also explains the reason why Purim is celebrated throughout
the world on 14 th Adar except in Shushan and certain other ancient walled cities,
where it is celebrated on the 15 th , as we read below in vv 19ff.

V 6: "And in Shushan the capital the Jews slew and destroyed five hundred men…"
Targum adds that these were all high ranking members of the house of Amalek.

Vv 7-9: In the handwritten parchment scroll of Megillath Esther it is obligatory to

write the Hebrew word ISH at the end of verse 6 and the names of the ten sons of
Haman who were killed one under the other, each at the beginning of a new line,
while the ten occurrences of VE-ETH are written one under the other at the end of
each line. Each name is thus separated by a wide space from the VE-ETH that
follows it at the end of the line. This way of writing the names is identical with the
way the names of the 31 defeated kings of Canaan are written in the parchment
scroll in Joshua 12:9-24. Separating the words with wide spaces is also how
SHIRAH, "song", is written, as in the case of Israel 's song after crossing the Red
Sea (Exodus ch 15) and the Song of Deborah (Judges ch 5). However in SHIRAH,
the first, third and fifth lines etc. are written with one word at the beginning, middle
and end of each line, while the second, fourth and sixth lines etc. have only two
words each of which is positioned where the spaces between the words appear in
the lines above and below them. This arrangement of the text of SHIRAH has the
appearance of a solid brick wall. However, in the case of the names of the kings of
Canaan and the sons of Haman, nothing is written in the middle of each line. This
signifies that there is nothing to support the entire structure from collapsing, and
that once it has collapsed it can never stand up again (Megillah 16b).

Vv 11-15: King Ahashverosh appears to have been anxious to monitor what was
going on in his kingdom, but through the hand of Heaven he did not try to
interfere, and when Esther explained that in Shushan more time was needed to
complete the work, he gave the green light to go ahead. In verses 6ff the text only
said that the sons of Haman were killed. Now in verse 13 Esther requested that
their corpses should be strung up on the tree-gallows Haman had made. This was
doubtless in order to strike fear into the hearts of the Jews' enemies. Targum Sheni
on Esther 9:23 explains what made Esther violate the Torah prohibition against
leaving the corpse of an executed criminal hanging from the tree for more than a
few moments before nightfall (Deut. 21:23). "Esther answered and said to them,
Because King Saul killed the Gibeonite converts, his sons were hanged for six
months (II Samuel 21:8ff). If this was done because their father killed Gibeonite
converts, how much more should Haman and his sons, who wanted to destroy the
entire House of Israel, be left hanging for ever."

Targum Yonasan and Targum Sheni on verse 15 both give detailed though slightly
different mathematical explanations of exactly how Haman and his ten sons were
hung on the fifty cubit tree, one underneath the other, with equal spaces between
them. Haman (disunity, separation) had wanted to extirpate Mordechai to the point
that he and his people and everything they represented would be completely
forgotten. On the other hand, Mordechai and Esther specifically wanted to have
Haman and his sons "hung from the tree" – the tree of the Torah – to show that
even evil has a place in the creation of the One God, and that the ultimate destiny
of evil is to hang there dead and completely defeated, to show that God rules over
all.

Verse 19ff. Having completed the story of the Purim miracle, the Megillah now
explains how Mordechai and Esther instituted the celebration of the festival of
Purim the following year and every year forever afterwards in order to remember
the miracle and give thanks and praise to God for it. The Torah forbids adding to
the 613 commandments given in the Five Books of Moses, but the miracle of Purim
was outstanding because without it, there would have been no Jews left in the
world to keep the Torah. For this reason the sages of the generation agreed with
Mordechai and Esther in establishing the celebration of Purim not as a new
commandment MI-D'ORAISA but as an institution MI-DIVREY SOFRIM. Their
initiative in writing and disseminating the Megillah as part of the KESUBIM, "holy
writings" in order to explain the reasons for their institution has its foundation in
God's words to Moses after the battle against Amalek: "Write this for a memorial in
a book" (Exodus 17:14). The annual Purim exercise in heightening our
consciousness of God's eternal war against Amalek is also an aspect of the Torah
commandment, "Remember what Amalek did to you…" (Deuteronomy 25:17ff).

V 20: "And Mordechai wrote these things…" – "This refers to this very Megillah just
as we have it" (Rashi). After the Purim miracle, the first step in the institution of
the festival was its celebration for the first time one year after the actual miracle.

V 22 refers to the three main Mitzvoth of Purim besides the reading of the Megillah:
(1) feasting; (2) sending of two portions of ready-to-eat food to at least one friend
and if possible to many more; (3) giving gifts of charity to at least two poor people
and preferably to many more.

V 25 on the simple level refers to Ahashverosh's having given permission in writing

(IM HASEPHER) to the Jews to rise up against their enemies to thwart the earlier
decree to exterminate them. The phrase IM HASEPHER, "with the book", is also
taken by Targum Sheni as an allusion to the Torah commandment to "blot out the
memory of Amalek from under the heavens" (Deut. 25:19).

V 26: The festival is called PURIM because everything started with Haman's casting
of the lot – PUR (Esther 3:7). He himself thereby predestined the day of his own
destruction. We also see from this verse that Megillath Esther is called an IGERETH
("letter"), from the root AGAR, to "gather" (cf. Proverbs 6:8), since it gathers and
puts together all the events that make up the story (Ibn Ezra). However in Esther
10:32 the Megillah is called SEPHER, a "book" or "scroll" from the root SAPER, to
recount or relate. The word Megillah is from the root GALAH, "reveal". As discussed
in the commentary on Esther chs 1-2, the light that was revealed through the
miracle of Purim derives from the Kabbalistic Partzuf of ABBA, and in this aspect
the Megillah is called SEPHER. However, this light had to spread and be revealed in
all the worlds, and in this aspect the Megillah is called IGERETH, which could loosely
be translated as a "broadsheet". For this reason it is customary for the reader in
the Synagogue to unroll and spread out the entire Megillah before reading it
(somewhat as one spreads a newspaper over a table), alluding to the spread of the
light of ABBA in all the worlds.

V 27: The acceptance by all the Jews of the injunction to celebrate Purim every
year for ever was a KABBALAH, an "undertaking" which under the laws of Nedarim
("vows") applied not only to themselves but also to all their offspring to all the
generations. The celebration of Purim is thus binding on every Jew until today.

V 28: "…and these days should be remembered and observed…" We REMEMBER

them through the reading of the Megillah on Purim night and morning, and we
OBSERVE them through the giving of charity to the poor, sending portions of foods
to our friends, and feasting. The Hebrew phrase NIZKARIM VE-NA'ASIM also alludes
to the fact that every year during this season the same light that shone in the time
of Mordechai and Esther shines all over again and the same events are repeated
cyclically though often in a new guise. "…and these days of Purim shall not pass
from among the Jews and their memory shall not cease from their seed". This
teaches that Megillath Esther will never become defunct – not even in the end of
days. Rabbi Nachman taught that originally all beginnings were traced to the
Exodus from Egypt , but he hinted that now all beginnings come from the Purim
miracle (Likutey Moharan II:74). As we today watch the rising power of Persia-Iran
and her leader's publicly stated desire to destroy Israel, we should ponder the
miracles that God performed for our ancestors in that very country of Persia and
trust that if we repent with the same fervor as our ancestors then, God will surely
save us from all our enemies and everything will be turned to the contrary!!!

Vv 29ff: After the celebration of the first Purim one year after the actual miracle,
Esther and Mordechai established Purim as an annual festival forever after. This is
why they wrote "this SECOND letter of Purim".

V 30: "…words of peace and truth". Mordechai taught a lesson in effective outreach:
start with PEACE and lead into TRUTH.

V 31: "as they had decreed for themselves and for their seed with regard to the
fastings and the order of lamentation". Ibn Ezra points out that after the
destruction of the First Temple the Jews took upon themselves the four annual
public fast days mourning the breach of the Jerusalem walls and the burning of the
Sanctuary (17 Tammuz, 9 Av, 3 Tishri and 10 Tevet, cf. Zechariah 8:19). Having
taken upon themselves fasts of mourning, they now took upon themselves to
celebrate the great miracle of Purim with eating and drinking.

Chapter 10
The Megillah started with Ahashverosh, and he is mentioned here at the end in the
unpopular role of imposing taxes on his entire empire. However Targum Sheni
indicates that in recognition of the great miracle performed for them, the Jews were
relieved of having to pay these taxes (HALEVAI!!!). However, the leading
personality at the end of the Megillah is not Ahashverosh but rather the real hero of
the whole story, Mordechai HaYehudi. He was beloved by "most" of his brothers but
not all, because, as Ibn Ezra points out (on Esther 10:3), it is impossible for
someone to please everyone owing to the natural jealousy that exists even between
brothers. Notwithstanding this jealousy, Mordechai was always "seeking the good of
his people and speaking peace to all his seed", and thus the Megillah ends with
what we all await daily: SHALOM.
 Book of I Chronicles
CHAPTER 1
DIVREY HAYAMIM – literally, "The Words, or Matters of the Days" – known in
English as the Book of Chronicles, may be seen as the royal archive of the records
of the House of David, tracing the genealogy of King David and his seed from Adam
and the Patriarchs, and following their history until the destruction of Solomon's
Temple, the exile to Babylon, and the return of the Jews to Jerusalem under the
leadership of Zerubavel, who as grandson of King Yeho-yachin was himself heir to
the Davidic kingship.

DIVREY HAYAMIM was written by Ezra the Priest at the time of the return of the
exiles in order to establish the pedigree of Zerubavel and the House of David and
also that of the Levites and Priests who would minister in the rebuilt Temple, the
foundations of which had already been laid. Thus DIVREY HAYAMIM seals the
unbreakable bond between the House of David and the Temple Priesthood,
embodied in the marriage of Aaron the Priest to Eli-sheva, daughter of Aminadav,
Prince of the House of Judah.

In Rashi's opening comment on the Book of Chronicles (I, 1:1) he explains: "Ezra
wrote this book of genealogies with the help of the prophets Haggai, Zechariah and
Malachi during the eighteen years from when Zerubavel and Yehoshua the Priest
came to Jerusalem in the time of Cyrus I [the "first aliyah" shortly after the collapse
of Babylon, when the first foundations of the Second Temple were laid] until the
reign of Cyrus son of Esther [who authorized the completion of the Second Temple,
which had been held up for eighteen years through the machinations of Haman and
his sons until after the death of Ahasuerus, Cyrus' father.] And the entire purpose is
to provide the genealogy of King David and that of the Levite Temple gate-keepers,
guards and singers and the Cohen-Priests in accordance with the order that David
laid down for them."

Rashi continues: "Accordingly he traces their lineage from Adam until Abraham.
And because he had to trace the line of Abraham, he also mentions the other
peoples – his [other] sons and their sons. And on account of Abraham's sons, he
had to trace the other peoples – the children of Canaan – to show how Abraham
inherited their land. And since he had to trace the line of Canaan , he also traces
that of the other peoples. He mentions them little by little and casts them aside
until he reaches the main subject of interest. This can be compared to a king who
was traveling from one place to another when he lost a precious jewel. The king
stopped and took a sieve to sift the dust… until he found the jewel. Likewise the
Holy One blessed be He said, Why do I need to trace the line of Shem,
Arpachshad… Terach? Only in order to find Abraham, of whom it is said '…and You
FOUND his heart faithful before You' (Nehemiah 9:8). And for the sake of the honor
of Isaac, he traces the sons of Esau and Ishmael and the sons of Keturah, casting
them aside little by little and leaving them behind…"

For many students, the opening chapters of DIVREY HAYAMIM, which consist
entirely of detailed genealogies, can often seem a formidable barrier to entry into
the study of the book. Those who find it difficult to assimilate long lists of names
may find comfort in the fact that the continuous, dense genealogies run only until
the end of chapter 9 (only four and a half days of study at the rate of two chapters
a day!) after which the narrative sections begin with the account of the death of
King Saul (ch 10) and the beginning of David's kingship (chs 11-12, which give the
names of his warriors). From chapter 13 on, the entire remainder of I Chronicles &
the whole of II Chronicles consist of almost continuous narrative tracing the history
of David, Solomon and their successors until the destruction of the First Temple .
The historical narrative in Chronicles runs parallel to and supplements the narrative
in the "historical" books of the NaCh – II Samuel and Kings I & II – but Chronicles
is more focused on the kingdom of Judah, while Kings traces the history of Judah
pari passu with that of the Ten Tribes.

As we stand at the beginning of nine chapters consisting mainly of names and

lineages, let us remember that these records of the names of the primary souls of
the progeny of Adam and of the house of the messianic King David are an integral
part of the precious treasure-house of the King of kings. The very names and
Hebrew letters, with all the Midrashim that arise out of them, possess the same
intrinsic holiness as all of the writings of the Prophets, and even their mere recital
brings holiness into the soul, even if it seems difficult to assimilate or remember
every detail.

ADAM, SETH, ENOSH…

"The text does not mention Cain and Abel because they had no surviving offspring,
whereas from Seth came the line that led to Noah and Abraham and from Abraham
to David" (Rashi on v 1). The focus is not on history but on genealogy.

Commenting on the genealogy of Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth,
starting in v 4, Rashi (ad loc.) clarifies the organizational "method" underlying the
arrangement of the genealogies in Divrey HaYomim, which can be highly confusing
to beginning students since they often go back and forth. A line is taken up but
then apparently dropped while another line is traced, and then the first is picked up
again. Rashi writes: "He should have traced the children of Shem immediately in
order to find the jewel, Abraham, and likewise then traced the line immediately
down to David. But instead he briefly picks up and quickly throws aside the
subsidiary lines and only then takes hold of the main line. This is the way of this
entire genealogy in Divrey HaYamim. Likewise when he speaks of the children of
Abraham – Isaac and Ishmael – he recounts the children of Ishmael before those of
Isaac, and similarly, he traces the generations of Esau – the subsidiary – before
focusing on Israel (Jacob), the essence."

Vv 1-4: The generations from Adam down to the children of Noah.

Vv 5-7: The children of Japheth.

Vv 8-12: The children of Ham.

Vv 13-16: The children of Canaan.

Vv 17-27: The names of the descendants of Shem down to Abraham.

Vv 28-33: The children of Abraham down to Israel .

Vv 34: The children of Isaac – Esau and Israel.

Vv 35-42: Children of Esau.

Vv 43-50: The Seven Kings of Edom. The names of these seven kings, who "ruled
and died", allude to the vessels of the seven lower kabbalistic Sefirot, which "broke"
and had to be rectified.

Vv 51-54: The Princes of Edom.

All of the above genealogies parallel and supplement the corresponding genealogies
in Genesis chapters 5 (Adam-Noah), 10-11 (Noah-Abraham), 25 (Ishmael and the
sons of Keturah) and 36 (Esau and Seir).

Chapter 2
Vv 1-2: Names of the sons of Jacob.

Vv 3-4: Names of the sons of Judah .

V 5: Sons of Peretz.

Vv 6-9: Descendants of Zerach – Karmi, Eithan – and Hetzron, son of Peretz. Rashi
on v 6 states that the descendants of Zerach enumerated there were outstanding
sages who lived in the generations of David and Solomon (cf. I Kings 5;11).
K'LUVOI listed in verse 9 as one of the three sons of Hetzron is identified by Rashi
as Kaleb, founder of the line that led to Naval (I Samuel 25:3). His was the only
line that was not "flawed" (because his brother Yerachmiel married Atara, who was
not an Israelite, see our present chapter v 26, while his brother Ram's descendant,
Bo'az, married Ruth the Moabitess. This is why Naval spoke so disparagingly about
his kinsman David: see I Samuel 25:10; Rashi on our present chapter v 9).

Vv 10-17: The line from Ram, second son of Hetzron down to David and his family.

Vv 18-20: Children of Kaleb son of Hetzron. The Talmud associates this Kaleb with
Kaleb son of Yephuneh, who together with his comrade, Joshua son of Nun,
rebelled against the other spies sent by Moses to scout out the Promised Land
(Numbers 13-14; Temurah 16a). However, this identification is questioned by
RaDaK (on v 18). Bezalel (v 20) was the craftsman who made the wilderness
Sanctuary and its vessels.

Vv 21-24: Children of Hetzron from the daughter of Makhir of the tribe of Menasheh.

Vv 25-41: Children of Yerachmiel son of Hetzron and his descendents. Yerachmiel's

"other wife", Atarah (v 26) was said to be a non-Israelite (Yerushalmi Sanhedrin
2:3). From her son Onam derived the line that went down to Elishama (v 41),
grandfather of Ishmael son of Nethanyah, who assassinated Gedaliah son of
Ahikam, thereby destroying the last vestiges of Judean autonomy after the
destruction of the First Temple (see Rashi on I Chronicles 2:35; cf. Jeremiah 41:1
and RaDaK ad loc.).

Vv 42-45: Additional children of Kaleb son of Hetzron.

Vv 46-49: Children of Kaleb from his concubine.

Vv 50-55: Children of Kaleb son of Hur (see Rashi on v 50 noting the ambiguity in
the Hebrew text, which makes it uncertain whether this Kaleb is identical with Kaleb
son of Hetzron mentioned above in vv 18f or was a different Kaleb, the firstborn of
Hur).

Rashi commenting on verse 42 gives another clue to understanding the "method" of

these genealogies, which is apt to be somewhat confusing. "…And thus the way of
this entire genealogy is not to trace the lines in order. Rather, he traces part of the
line of a certain family and then picks up a different family, and after having traced
the line of this second family he starts again tracing the line of the first family, and
then goes back again to the second. Thus this whole book of genealogies is
somewhat ME-URAV – MIXED UP!!!"

It is noteworthy that the genealogy of the tribe of Judah not only gives the names
of the members of its various clans but also in many cases the names of the towns
and settlements in which they lived, some of which are still to be found on the map
of present-day Israel.

Chapter 3
Having traced some of the principle family lines of the tribe of Judah in the previous
chapter, including the line leading to King David (I Chron. 2:10-15), the chronicler
now gives us the names of David's wives and children and his royal descendants,
looking ahead to Melech HaMashiach, as we shall see on v 24.

As a royal archive, DIVREY HAYAMIM contains many secrets, hints and allusions,
some of which are explained by our commentators but many of which remain
hidden except to the most assiduous students. Every family has its own codes and
may call certain members by different names (or nicknames) at different times and
for different reasons. Thus David's son by Avigail, called in our present chapter (v
1) Daniel ("God judges me"), because people suspected he was really the child of
Avigail's first husband, Naval, is in II Samuel 3:3 called KIL-AV ("all like his father")
because he looked completely like David so there should be no doubts about his
paternity (Rashi). David's wife EGLA (v 6) is Michal daughter of Saul, who was dear
to David like a calf (EGLA, Rashi on v 6).

Vv 1-4 give the names of the wives of David and the sons they bore him in Hebron.

Vv 5-9 give the names of the sons of David born in Jerusalem. Bath-shoo'a
daughter of Ami-el mentioned in verse 5 is Bath-sheva, mother of King Solomon.

Vv 10-14 trace all the kings of the House of David from Solomon to Josiah, who
was the last saintly king of Judah one generation prior to the destruction of the
First Temple.

Vv 15-16 give the names of the last three kings of Judah – Yeho-yakim, Yechoniah
(=Yeho-yachin) and Tzidkiahu – all sons of Josiah. [It was Tzidkiyahu son of Josiah
– mentioned in verse 15 – who was the last king of Judah, not Tzidkiyahu son of
Yechoniah mentioned in verse 16, for after Nebuchadnezzar exiled Yechoniah, he
installed his UNCLE as king.]

Vv 17ff: The miraculous story of how the royal line of King David was saved from
extirpation when Yechoniah's wife was allowed to visit him in his narrow prison cell
when in exile in Babylon has been told in our commentary on Ezra ch 2
( http://www.azamra.org/Bible/Ezra%202-3.htm ). Zerubavel, mentioned here in
verse 19, was the leader of the "First Aliyah" of returnees from Babylon to
Jerusalem. Our text traces Zerubavel's descendants in vv 19-24. According to
tradition, ANANI (="He has answered me") mentioned in verse 24 is Melech
HaMashiach who is destined to be revealed in time to come (see Targum Rav Yosef
ad loc. and Rashi on our chapter v 11; see also Daniel 7:13 "and behold… with the
CLOUDS – ANANEI – of heaven"). Thus DIVREY HAYAMIM encompasses the whole
of the history of man from Adam (I Chron. 1:1) all the way to Mashiach (I Chron.
3:24).

Chapter 4
In chapter 2 we were given some of the main family lines of the tribe of Judah in
order to trace the genealogy of King David, and chapter 3 then went on to trace his
royal line until the end of days.

Our present chapter (vv -23) returns to the tribe of Judah in order to complete the
genealogy of this tribe and to trace in fuller detail certain lines that were mentioned
only in passing in chapter 2. After this our text then goes on to trace the family
lines of the tribe of Shimon (vv 24-43), who had no territory of their own but
occupied territories from the portion of Judah as specified in our chapter.

Vv 1-8: Names of the sons of Judah and his descendants.

Vv 9-10: The greatness of Ya'abetz and his exploits. This Ya'abetz is identified by
the rabbis with Othniel ben Knaz (see Targum) who is mentioned explicitly in our
present chapter v 13, and whose exploits are narrated in Joshua 15:17, Judges
1:13, 3:9ff. "And Ya'abetz was more HONORED than his brothers" – "From the
beginning of DIVREY HAYAMIM you find no HONOR until you reach Ya'abetz. This is
because he engaged in Torah, and 'the sages will inherit honor' (Proverbs 3:35)"
(Yalkut Shimoni). "Ya'abetz was a good, pure man of truth and kindness. He sat
and darshened the Torah, as it says, 'And Ya'abetz called to the God of Israel
saying, Surely bless me…" (Avot d'Rabbi Nathan). Darshening the Hebrew letters of
his names, the Talmud says: "He was called OTHNI-EL because God ANSWERED
him. He was called YA'ABETZ because he gave COUNSEL and SPREAD Torah in
Israel … In his prayer, he was asking God to bless him with Torah, to expand his
boundaries to encompass many students, and that God's hand should be with him
so that he should not forget his studies. He prayed for companions like him and
that his evil inclination should not swell his heart to the point that he would stop
reviewing his studies" (Temurah 16a).

Vv 11-12: Names of the men of Reichah.

Vv 13-14: Sons of Knaz.

Vv 15-20: Sons of Kaleb and of Yehalel-el and his descendants.

While these lists of names may have little meaning for beginning students,
particularly when reading them in translation and without commentary, diligent
study of the Hebrew text reveals many overtones and allusions, some of which are
discussed in the classical commentaries. At times what may at first seem like a dry
text can be fleetingly perceived to have a unique poetry of its own and to signify
something quite other than what appears on the surface.

This is true in the case of verse 18, which at first appears to contain a string of
seemingly unconnected family names. But according to rabbinic drash, "his wife
Yehudiyah" alludes to Batyah daughter of Pharaoh (Exodus 2:5ff) whose name is
mentioned explicitly at the end of the verse, and whom Kaleb ben Yephuneh
married. She is called YEHUDIYAH because she rejected idolatry. The names of the
"children" whom she "bore" – YERED, AVI-GDOR, HEVER, AVI-SOCHO, YEKOUTHI-
EL and AVI ZANO'AH – are not the names of her children from Kaleb but all allude
to Moses. She was considered to have given birth to Moses because, having drawn
him from the river, she raised him as an orphan. He was called YERED because he
brought down the Manna for Israel; AVI-GDOR because he healed the breaches in
Israel ; HEVER because he joined Israel with their Father in heaven; SOCHO
because he was like a protective Succah to them, YEKOUTHI-EL because Israel
hoped in God in his time; ZANO'AH because he cleansed the sins of Israel … (see
Megillah 13a).

Vv 21-23: Sons of Shelah, third son of Judah (Gen. 38:5). Although Shelah was
born to Judah by his first wife long before his daughter-in-law, Tamar, bore him
Peretz and Zerach, the genealogies of the latter were given earlier in Chapter 2 in
order to give honor to King David, who came from the line of Peretz.

The rabbis interpreted the Hebrew codes in verse 22 as alluding to the prophets
and scribes who issued from the line of Joshua, to the Gibeonites, who lied
(CHOZEIBA) to the princes of Israel, to Machlon (=Yo'ash) and Chilyon (=Saraf),
the sons of Elimelech and Naomi, who took Moabite wives, and to Boaz, who
dwelled in Bethlehem engaging in the Torah of the Ancient of Days (see Targum).

V 23: "These were the potters (YOTZRIM) and those who dwelt among the
plantations and hedges; there they dwelt occupied with the king's work" – "These
are the students of the Torah for whose sake the world was created, who sit in
judgment and bring stability to the world and who rebuild the ruins of the House of
Israel with the Indwelling Presence of the King through their labor in the Torah and
the intercalation of the months and the fixing of the dates of the New Year and the
festivals…" (Targum).

Vv 24-33: Sons of Shimon and the names of their habitations. The tribe of Shimon
had no real share of their own in the land of Israel, because in his blessings to his
sons, Jacob had said of Shimon, "I will DIVIDE them in Jacob and I will SCATTER
them in Israel (Genesis 49:7). Thus we find in Joshua 19:9 that members of the
tribe of Shimon, which was relatively small in numbers, occupied some of the
territories of Judah, which were extensive (see Rashi on v 27).

V 31: "…these were their cities until the reign of David." Complaints by members of
David's own tribe of Judah about the encroachments on their territories by
members of the tribe of Shimon led him to drive the latter out from the cities in
which they had been living (see Rashi ad loc.)

Vv 34-38: Names of the princes of the tribe of Shimon.

Vv 39-43: Under pressure to find new territories, members of the tribe of Shimon
went to conquer land from the remaining Canaanites and from the Edomites and
Amalekites. They dwelled there "until this day" (v 43) "because they returned to
dwell there when they returned from the exile in Babylon" (Metzudas David).
 Chapter 5
Vv 1-10: Lineage of the tribe of Reuven and their habitations.

As mentioned a number of times, the primary purpose of DIVREY HAYAMIM was to

establish the credentials of the House of David and the royal line that came from
him. Accordingly, pride of place was given to the genealogy of the tribe of Judah
from which David came. The tribe of Shimon was mentioned next (at the end of the
previous chapter) because they initially lived in territories that were part of the
tribal inheritance of Judah.

The chronicler now continues with the genealogy of the tribe of Reuven, because
Reuven was actually Jacob's firstborn and should thus have taken precedence over
all the other tribes. Our text notes that the birthright was taken from Reuven
because "he defiled his father's bed" (see Genesis 35:22f). The "double share" of
the inheritance that is due to the firstborn (Deut. 21:17) was given instead to
Joseph (from whom came TWO tribes, Ephraim and Menasheh), but the "birthright"
itself – the kingship – was given to Judah, whose traits of character made him
uniquely fit for the kingship (see Rashi on vv 1 & 2 of our present chapter).

As recounted in Numbers ch 32, the tribe of Reuven took their tribal inheritance
EAST of the River Jordan in territories that were taken from Sichon king of the
Emorites.

It is interesting to note that the war waged by the Reuvenites in the time of King
Saul (verse 10 of our present chapter) was against the HAGRI'IM, who were none
other than Ishmaelites (descendants of HAGAR, see Rashi ad loc.) – indicating that
the Middle East conflicts of today are an ongoing recycling of a very ancient conflict
(see below on vv 18ff). The area of Gil'ad that was occupied by the Reuvenites lies
to the east of the River Jordan between the River Yarmoukh (which flows into the
Jordan a few kilometers south of the Sea of Tiberias/Kinneret) and the River Yabok
(which enters the Jordan further south at the Adam Bridge).

Vv 11-17: The tribe of Gad and their place of habitation. In the time of Moses the
tribe of Gad joined with that of Reuven in requesting their tribal inheritance east of
the Jordan. The region of Bashan where they took their lands lies to the east of the
Kinneret in the hinterlands of the Golan, north of Gilead.

Vv 18-22: Wars of the tribes east of the Jordan with other nations. The tribes of
Reuven, Gad and half Menashe were living on the border and had no option but to
practice the martial arts (v 18). These they combined with faith and trust in God,
and in the wider war they made in the later First Temple period against the
Ishmaelite Hagri'im and other related nations (Yitur and Nafeesh v 19 were tribes
founded by sons of Ishmael, Gen. 25:15), they turned to God for salvation, which
was granted to them (v 22).

Vv 23-24: The half of the tribe of Menasheh who settled east of the Jordan took
their territories in the Bashan, Golan Heights and Mt Hermon.

Vv 25-26: Our text laconically relates that the tribes east of the Jordan fell into
idolatry and were exiled by the king of Ashur. Whereas the book of Kings deals at
length with the idolatry of the Ten Tribes and the moral that must be learned from
their resulting exile, the purpose of DIVREY HAYOMIM is different and accordingly
the exile is mentioned only in passing.
Vv 27-41: Lineage of the High Priests. This begins a new section devoted to the
tribe of Levy. It is introduced here because the previous section dealt with the
pedigree of Reuven, who came next in order of precedence after Judah since he
was Jacob's biological firstborn. (The tribes of Gad and half Menasheh were
mentioned with Reuven only because they took their territories adjacent to those of
Reuven east of the Jordan.) After Reuven and Shimon (whose genealogy was given
in Chapter 4), Leah's third son was Levy, and the most prestigious of the scions of
Levy were the Cohanim-Priests, who were an elite separate from the rest of the
tribe of Levy since they alone were authorized to conduct the Temple sacrificial rites
and they were bound by unique laws of ritual purity and marital restrictions that did
not apply to the other Levites.

The line of the High Priests given in this section traces the priesthood down to
S'rayah (v 40) who was the father of Ezra the Scribe, the author of DIVREY
HAYAMIM, as well as of Yeho-tzadok mentioned in vv 40-41. Yeho-tzadok did not
serve as High Priest in the Temple but his son, Yehoshua, led the first return of the
exiles from Babylon to Jerusalem, and served there as the High Priest (see Rashi on
v 41).

Chapter 6
Vv 1-6: The lineage of the sons of Gershom son of Levy. Gershom was Levy's
firstborn, but the lineage of his descendants is given only after that of the priestly
descendants of his younger brother Kehath (previous chapter vv 27-41) since the
latter took precedence, being the ancestor of Moses, Aaron and the priestly line.

Vv 7-13: Lineage of the sons of Kehath, Levy's second son. Kehath had other sons
besides Amram father of Moses and Aaron. Among the most famous (or infamous)
of Kehath's descendants was Korach, (son of Kehath's second son, Yitzhar) who
was swallowed up alive by the earth after fomenting conflict against Moses
(Numbers ch 16). Nevertheless Korach's sons were saved from the depths of hell,
and his most illustrious descendant was the prophet Samuel, mentioned in our
present text in v 13.

Vv 14-15: Lineage of the sons of Levy's third son, Merari.

Vv 16-17: It was necessary to re-organize the Levites in the time of King David
because he had brought the Ark of the Covenant up to Jerusalem, marking the end
of the era when the Sanctuary had traveled from place to place prior to reaching its
final resting place. As long as the Sanctuary was "portable", it was the task of the
Levites to carry its component parts and vessels, but as soon as it came to rest,
their role changed, and now they became the Temple singers and gate-keepers.
These roles were allocated to specific families and it was not permitted to change
from one role to another.

Vv 18-23: The most prestigious of the Levitical roles was that of the Temple singers
since music contains the deepest wisdom. The genealogy of Heyman the Temple
Singer – mentioned as author of Psalm 86 – is traced back through Korach all the
way to Jacob (see Rashi on Genesis 49:6).

Vv 24-28: Lineage of Asaph the Gershomite, author of Psalms 50 and 73-83. Note
that Asaph stands to the RIGHT (Chessed) of Heyman the Kehati, who is in the
middle (Tiferet).
Vv 29-32: Lineage of the sons of Merari. They are positioned to the LEFT (Gevurah)
of the Kehati singers.

Vv 33-34: Functions of the Levites and the Cohanim. Besides their functions as
Temple singers and gate-keepers, the Levites also skinned the sacrificial animals
(see II Chron. 35:11). None of the Levites were permitted to take part in the actual
burning of the sacrifices or other Temple rites that were "holy of holies", as these
were restricted entirely to the Cohanim.

Vv 35-38: The abbreviated line of the High Priests in these verses is traced down
only to the time of King Solomon.

Vv 39-45: Names of the cities of the Priests in the territories of the tribes of Judah
and Benjamin. First among the priestly cities was Hebron (cf Joshua 21:11). The
fact that this was in the territory of Judah underlies the close bond between the
royal tribe and the priesthood. The priests also received habitations in some of the
cities of refuge for unwitting killers – the presence of the priests in these cities was
a beneficial influence helping to rehabilitate such people.

Vv 46-66: Names of the cities of the Levites among the other tribes. The cities of
the Levites were scattered throughout the inheritances of the Tribes – this was how
Jacob's curse of "I will scatter them in Israel" (Genesis 49:7) was fulfilled in the
case of Levy. In addition, the presence of the Levites throughout the land was
intended to ensure that teachers of Torah were at hand in all the different
population centers since the Levites were given their MAASER tithes in order to be
freed from the burden of earning a living so as to be able to devote themselves to
the study and teaching of Torah.

Chapter 7
In the previous chapters we have been given the lineages of Judah, Shimon, Levy
and Reuven (all sons of Leah) – and with Reuven, who settled east of the Jordan,
we were also given the lineages of Gad and half the tribe of Menasheh, who also
settled there. Altogether that is a total of six tribes.

In the present chapter we are given the lineages of most of the remaining tribes of
Israel: Issachar, Benjamin, Naphtali, the other half of Menasheh, Ephraim and
Asher.

It is noteworthy that the genealogy of Naphtali in our present chapter is brief in the
extreme compared with those of the other tribes, while no genealogy at all is given
for the tribe of Zevulun (although the territory of Zebulun was mentioned in
connection with the Levitical cities in ch 6 vv 48 & 62). Nor does there seem to be
any mention in our text of the tribe of Dan (although Danites and Zebulunites are
both mentioned among the warriors who came to give the kingship to David in
Hebron (I Chron. 12:34 & 36).

Members of the tribes of Naphtali, Dan and Zebulun may have been among the
early members of the Ten Tribes who went into exile. Zebulun was a tribe of
merchants, who very likely traveled and may have found it easier to adapt to
foreign lands. As to Naphtali and Dan, in II Chronicles 2:4 we learn that when King
Asa of Judah was under attack from Ba'sha king of Israel, Asa bribed Hadad king of
Aram to hit the northern territories of Israel, including Dan and some poor cities of
Naphtali.
Commenting on the brevity of the genealogy of Naphtali as given in our present
chapter in v 13, Rashi makes a comment that throws some more light on Ezra's
methods: "The reason why no further details of the genealogy of Naphtali are given
is provided at the end of Yerushalmi Megillah (cf. Sifrei on Ve-Zos Habrachah
33:27): it says that Ezra discovered three books, each of which contained various
genealogies. What he found, he wrote and what he did not find he did not write –
and he simply found no further details about the tribe of Naphtali. For this same
reason all of the genealogies in Chronicles skip around, because he skipped from
one book to the other and joined them together, and what he could not write in this
book he wrote in the book of Ezra. The proof is that it says further on in our text,
'And all Israel were reckoned by genealogies and surely they are written in the
book of the kings of Israel; and Judah were exiled to Babylon ' (I Chron. 9:1). This
is saying, 'If you want to know the genealogy of the Ten Tribes, go to Halah and
Habor, Nahar, Gozan and the cities of Medea [where they were exiled], for their
Book of Chronicles went into exile with them, but as for Judah, I discovered their
book in Babylon and what I found I have written."

Rashi in his comment on I Chron. 8:29 mentions more about the books of
genealogies that Ezra found in Babylon. They were called SEPHER ME'ONIM (the
book of "residences"???), SEPHER ZATOUTI (the book of "lads", "children" or
possibly "slaves" cf. Jastrow s.v. ZA'TOUTI) and SEPHER HE-ACHIM (the book of
"brothers"). According to Rashi, in cases of discrepancy between them, Ezra would
follow the opinion of two of the books against one. Likewise in cases where they
found many genealogical scrolls, wherever there was a majority version and a
minority version, he would ignore the minority and follow the majority, while if he
found an even division of opinion, he wrote both genealogies – one in Chronicles
and one in the book of Ezra – on account of the discrepancies between them…

Vv 1-5 of our present chapter give the lineage of the descendants of Issachar and
their numbers in the time of David. The tribe of Issachar were particularly prolific
(see v 4), and as we will see later (ch 12 v 33) they attained great heights in the
deeper wisdom of the Torah, including knowledge of the "times" (astronomy and
astrology).

Vv 6-12: Lineage of the descendants of Benjamin and their numbers. RaDaK (on v
6) mentions an opinion that the Benjamin mentioned here is not the son of Jacob
and founder of the tribe of that name, but rather one of the members of Issaschar
(because the full genealogy of the tribe of Benjamin is given in the next chapter).
However RaDaK finds it more plausible that here too we are being given part of the
lineage of the tribe of Benjamin.

V 13: Lineage of the children of Naftali. This is brief – perhaps for the reasons
discussed above.

Vv 14-19: Lineage of the children of Menasheh.

Vv 20-29: Lineage of the children of Ephraim and their territories.

"And the sons of Ephraim… and the men of Gath who had been born in the land
killed them because they came down to take their cattle" (vv 20-21). Targum on v
21 brings the story of how some of the tribe of Ephraim tried to leave Egypt and
enter the Promised Land before the foreordained time, only to lose their lives: "And
Zavad his son and Shoothelah his son and Ezer and Elad were leaders of the House
of Ephraim and they calculated the date of the redemption from the time of God's
Covenant between the Pieces with Abraham (Gen. 15:9ff), but they were mistaken
because they should have counted from the day of the birth of Isaac. Thus they
went out of Egypt thirty years before the end, because the Covenant between the
Pieces was thirty years before the birth of Isaac. When they went out of Egypt,
200,000 armed warriors from the tribe of Ephraim went out with them, but the men
of Gath, who were born in the land of the Philistines, killed them because they
came down to capture their cattle" (Targum Rav Yosef on I Chron. 7:21). The
Talmud (Sanhedrin 92b) states that the dead whose bones the prophet Ezekiel
brought back to life (Ezekiel ch 37) were these fallen members of the tribe of
Ephraim. Indeed, Rabbi Yehuda ben Beseira declared that he himself was
descended from the dead whom Ezekiel had revived and that he possessed an
ancestral pair of Tefilin handed down from them.

One wonders if they went to take the cattle merely to get rich or in order to use the
skins for Tefilin. The reason the home-born Philistines of Gath had the advantage
over them was because they were familiar with the terrain, while the Ephraimites
did not know the escape routes. This teaches how well we need to learn the
geography of our land.

The genealogy of the other members of the tribe of Ephraim, that of Noon (v 27)
goes no further than his son Joshua (ibid.) because the latter had no sons. He did,
however, have daughters (he was married to Rahab, the convert from Jericho) and
among his descendants were Huldah the Prophetess and Jeremiah (Megillah 14).

Vv 30-40: Lineage of the children of Asher and their numbers. The Midrash
mentions that because of the abundance of olive oil in the territory of Asher (cf.
Deut. 33:24) their daughters were very beautiful and married kings anointed with
olive oil (Rashi on v 31; Pirkey d'Rabbi Eliezer).

Chapter 8
The whole of Chapter 8 is apparently devoted to the genealogy of the tribe of
Benjamin. In the words of Rashi (on ch 8 v 1): "He has already given their lineage,
but because he wanted to trace the lines down to King Saul he now goes back and
gives the line all the way from Benjamin. Here he calls some of them by different
names… This is because Ezra found a variety of genealogical scrolls."

I advisedly wrote that Chapter 8 is APPARENTLY devoted to the genealogy of

Benjamin, because under the surface of the names, other things are happening as
well. Verse 6 seems to be telling us of a branch of the tribe of Benjamin who were
inhabitants of GEVA but who were taken into some kind of forced exile – Targum
identifies MANAHAS at the end of v 6 with a town of Edom. Verse 7 then tells us
who it was that took those Benjaminites into exile. Verse 8 appears to be telling us
about a certain SHAHARAYIM who was one of the exiles, and who fathered a child
in the field of Moab after having been released from exile. However, the Midrash on
this verse identifies this SHAHARAYIM with Boaz (despite his having been from the
tribe of Judah) because he had been RELEASED (SHAHRER) from sins. His fathering
a child in the field of Moab alludes to his marriage with Ruth the Moabitess… "And
he begat of CHODESH his wife…" This alludes to the renewal (CHADASH) in his time
of the Halachah that the Torah forbids only the Moabite from entering the Assembly
of HaShem but not the Moabitess (Yalkut Shimoni).

Vv 1-13: Genealogy of the children of Benjamin.

Vv 14-28: Names of the family heads of the tribe of Benjamin who resided in
Jerusalem.
Vv 29-31: The Benjaminites who resided in Giv'on.

Vv 33-40: The line of King Saul and his descendants. Since Saul's kingship and
death prepared the way for King David, in whose honor DIVREY HAYAMIM was
written, Saul's genealogy comes here near the conclusion of the genealogical
section of the work, shortly before we launch into the story of the death of Saul and
kingship of David (chs 10ff).

The Talmud (Pesachim 62b) comments on the fact that in our present chapter v 38,
the name of Atzel appears at the beginning and the end of the verse, which
contains the names of her six children. "Between ATZEL and ATZEL there are four
hundred camel loads of DRASHOS!!!"

Chapter 9
V 1: "And all Israel were reckoned by their genealogies…" As explained by the
commentators, Ezra is saying: "Even though I have not set forth the genealogies of
all Israel, their lineages were all investigated and are written in the book of the
kings of Israel – and this book went into exile with them and is not in my hands in
order to copy all of their lineages from it. But Judah went into exile to Babylon
because of their sin and the book of their lineages was with them, and what I found
in it I have copied, because I am located with them" (Metzudas David, cf. Rashi and
RaDaK ad loc.).

In verse 1 of this chapter, Ezra is summarizing and sealing the contents of the
introductory genealogical chapters of DIVREY HAYOMIM (ch's 1-8). Having thus
completed his overall genealogy of the tribes of Israel, Ezra takes most of the
remainder of our present chapter (vv 2-38) to set forth the names of leading
returnees from the exile in Babylon, including the Israelites, Priests and Levites,
enumerating the duties of the latter in the Temple . This account of the population
of Jerusalem on the threshold of the Second Temple era (which parallels Nehemiah
ch 11) concludes the genealogical part of DIVREY HAYOMIM, the whole of the rest
of which is devoted to a detailed narrative of the history of the House of David from
the time of the death of King Saul until the destruction of the First Temple.

Vv 2-9: Details of the members of the tribe of Judah and other tribes who returned
from the Babylonian exile.

The returning exiles who came to Judea with Zerubavel in the first wave of "aliyah"
prior to the arrival of Ezra and his group settled mostly in their ancestral lands in
the cities of Judea rather than in Jerusalem. In addition to members of the tribes of
Judah and Benjamin, the returnees also included members of the tribes of Ephraim
and Menasheh, as specified in verse 2 of our text. Metzudas David (on v 2) states
that even though members of the Ten Tribes were exiled to Ashur, many had
remained in their land and went into exile in Babylon with the tribes of Judah and
Benjamin and returned with them.

Vv 10-16: Genealogies of the Cohanim and Levites. The text emphasizes the
strength and devotion which the priests put into their work in the Temple (v 13).

Vv 17-21: Names of the Temple gate-keepers.

V 18: "…And until now they were in the Gate of the King to the east: they are the
gatekeepers for the camp of the children of Levy" – "Just as David and Samuel had
instituted the gate-keepers, so it remained throughout all the days that the First
Temple stood, and so it was until now in the Second Temple" (Metzudas David, cf.
RaDaK ad loc.) Ezra is emphasizing the continuity between the service in the First
Temple and that in the Second Temple. This would appear to contradict the view of
those who theorize that Ezra made radical changes in the Temple, its music and
services.

V 20: "And Pinchas son of Elazar was the ruler over them; in time past HaShem
was with him." Taken at face value this verse could be construed as referring to the
governor of the Temple Levites in the time of the return (see RaDaK ad loc.).
However, the Midrashic explanation (taking off from AVOSEIHEM in v 19, alluding
to the ANCESTORS of the functionaries in the Second Temple) is that it refers to
Pinchas son of Elazar, the hero of Numbers 25:7ff, who later took over from his
father as superintendent over the functioning of the Levites in the Sanctuary.
According to tradition, God was with Pinchas initially because he protested against
Zimri's flagrant immorality, but the Divine Presence later left him because he did
not go to Jephthah to release him from his vow (Koheles Rabbah 10:17).

Vv 22-34: Numbers of the gate-keepers and their roles. It appears from our text
that certain Levitical families traditionally provided the guards at specific gates and
entrances to the Temple, and that while the captains resided in Jerusalem near the
Temple precincts, other members of these families resided in their ancestral
Levitical towns and villages, coming up to serve in the Temple at specified times
during the year.

V 22: "…these are they that David and Samuel the Seer instituted in their enduring
order." The Talmud states that Moses originally instituted a rota of eight watches of
priests and Levites, who took turns in serving in the Temple for a week at a time.
Owing to the natural increase in the numbers of priests and Levites over the
generations, David and Samuel found it necessary to reorganize these watches,
which now became twenty-four in number (Ta'anis 27a).

Vv 27ff: The duties of the Levites in the Temple included taking out and returning
the Temple vessels for use in the sacrifices and supervising the provision of
managing the necessary supplies of grain, wine, oil and incense ingredients. The
actual blending of the incense spices was reserved by the priests to themselves (v
30) because only one family of priests knew the carefully-guarded secret of the
MA'ALEH ASHAN – that minute quantity of a certain ingredient that caused the
smoke from the incense to rise in a single column directly upwards. Other duties of
the Levites included the baking of the pancake offerings brought daily by the High
Priest and of the weekly Show Bread (vv 31-2).

V 33: "And these are the singers…. they were EXEMPT FROM OTHER DUTIES for
they were employed in that work DAY AND NIGHT" – Because of the depth and
profundity of the Temple music, it was necessary to devote themselves to its study
DAY AND NIGHT!!! This just goes to prove the supreme importance of soul music!!!

Vv 35-38: Names of the Benjaminite inhabitants of Giv'on. This entire section

together with that which follows on the genealogy of King Saul (vv 39-44) appeared
at the end of the previous chapter (I Chron. 8:29-32 & 33-40), which was devoted
to the genealogy of the tribe of Benjamin culminating in the lineage of Saul.
Metzudas David (on v 35) explains that the section on the Benjamite inhabitants of
Giv'on was introduced into the previous chapter after the account of the
Benjaminites who lived in Jerusalem (at the beginning of the Second Temple
period). The chronicler then digressed from the beginning of our present chapter
until now, enumerating the priests, Levites and other inhabitants of Jerusalem at
that time. But now, since he is coming to tell of the kingship of David, which came
after the death of Saul, he goes back again to set forth the lineage of King Saul (vv
39-44).

The commentators explain that Saul's son ESH-BA'AL (v 39) is ISH-BOSHES (II
Samuel 2:8) etc.) while Jonathan's son MEREEV BA'AL (v 40) is MEPHIBOSHES (II
Samuel 4:4 etc.). Because BA'AL was the name of an idol, it was referred to as
BOSHES, "shame", while Saul and his family strove (MEREEV) against such idolatry
(cf. Gideon-Yeru-baal Judges 7:1).

Chapter 10
The sad story of the death of King Saul and his sons and their burial by the men of
Yaveish Gil'ad is told in I Samuel ch 31. It is retold here since it is the prelude to
the story of the kingship of David, who despite having been anointed by the
prophet Samuel much earlier, only actually became king with the death of Saul.

The reason why the men of Yaveish Gil'ad specifically took upon themselves the
dangerous task of burying Saul and his sons just after the Philistine victory, which
threw Israel into turmoil, was because early in his career, King Saul had come to
their rescue from the cruel ultimatum issued against them by Nachash king of
Ammon (I Samuel ch 11).

Vv 13f: "So Saul died for his transgression… and He killed him and turned over the
kingship to David son of Yishai". The chronicler is intent on telling his story and on
concisely but surely making the moral import of the story very clear.

Chapter 11
"And all Israel gathered themselves to Israel to David…" (v 1). With the setting of
the star of King Saul, the star of David now shone forth in all its radiance. The
present chapter and the next tell of his following of mighty warriors and how all
Israel came together in unity and submitted themselves to his leadership. The
people said to him, "…You shall be shepherd over God's people" (v 2). But
according to the Midrash, David replied: "How can I be shepherd? It doesn't depend
upon me, for 'God is my shepherd…' (Psalm 23:1) and only then '…I shall not want'
(ibid.) i.e. I shall not be wanting in what you need!" (see Rashi on v 2).

V 3: "And David struck a covenant with them in Hebron before HaShem": as

explained by Rashi (ad loc.), this was a three-way covenant in which the people
undertook to be God's servants and also to be servants of the king in accordance
with the law of the kingship, while King David undertook to treat his servants in
accordance with the law and to fight their wars (see Rashi on v 3). David was not
an overbearing autocrat: his monarchy was CONSTITUTIONAL!

V 4ff: "And David and all Israel went to Jerusalem …" The purpose of this passage
is not so much to relate the story of the conquest of Jerusalem from the Jebusites
as to highlight the role of Yo'av ben Tzeruyah, who thereby became David's
commander-in-chief. This introduces the account of all the other mighty warriors of
David in vv 10-47.

The inner essence of David, archetype of the messianic king and redeemer, is
deeply hidden, but we can learn more about it through knowing about his followers.
In the words of Rabbi Nachman, "It is impossible to understand the Tzaddik himself
since his intrinsic essence is beyond our grasp. Only through the followers of the
Tzaddik is it possible to understand the Tzaddik's greatness… This is similar to a
seal. The writing on the seal is unreadable because the letters are back to front.
Only when one takes the seal and stamps it on wax can one understand the letters
and designs inscribed on the seal, and one then sees what is written on the seal.
Similarly, through the Tzaddik's followers one can come to understand something of
the Tzaddik himself" (Likutey Moharan I, 140).

"And these are the chiefs of the mighty men…" (v 10). The account of David's
leading captains and warriors in the remainder of the present chapter parallels the
account in II Samuel 23:8-39 with certain variations in the names and details.

According to the surface meaning of our text, after Yo'av, his commander-in-chief,
David had an inner "panel" of three chiefs (vv 11-14): these were (1) YASHAV-AM
BEN HACHMONI (v 11); (2) EL'AZAR BEN DODO (v 12) and (3) SHAMAH BEN AGEI
who is not mentioned here in Chronicles but is mentioned in the parallel account in
II Samuel 23:11. These three chiefs were considered the most outstanding warriors
of all.

After them came another three captains, whose names are not given at all in our
texts but who distinguished themselves in the self-sacrifice which they displayed in
bringing David water from Philistine-dominated Bethlehem (vv 15-19). After them,
certain others are mentioned who came very close to their level yet were still not
considered as members of "the three": these were Avishai brother of Yo'av (I Chron.
11 vv 20-21) and Benayah ben Yehoyada (vv 22-25). The account then continues
with the names of David's other mighty warriors (vv 26-47).

The fact that David's chief warriors were arranged in trios indicates that they
represented a perfect balance of the three Sefirotic columns of Chessed-Kindness,
Gevurah-Might and Tiferet-Harmony (cf. Likutey Moharan I, 60:4). This entire
chapter and the next – which speak of the unified support that the messianic king
had from all Israel – deal with OLAM HATIKKUN, the World of Repair.

The passages in our text that deal with David's most outstanding warriors are
highly allusive spawning many midrashim. Thus Targum on v 11, which ostensibly
speaks about "YASHAV-AM", renders the verse as follows: "And these are the
numbers of the mighty warriors that were with the mighty David, head of the camp
sitting upon the throne of law with all the prophets and sages surrounding him,
anointed with the holy anointing oil. When he would go out to battle he was helped
from above, and when he sat to teach Torah the halachah came out according to
his opinion. Choice, distinguished, beautiful in appearance and noble in bearing, he
was proficient in wisdom and understanding in giving counsel, mighty in strength,
the head of the assembly, sweet in voice and multiplying songs, and a leader over
all the mighty warriors. He was bedecked in armor and took his spear, on which
was hung the sign of the ranks of the camp of Judah, and he went out in
accordance with the voice of the holy spirit and conquered in battle, carrying three
hundred dead on his spear at one time."

The exploits of EL'AZAR BEN DODO (vv 12-14) and "the three" (vv 15-19) were
courageous acts of defiance against the Philistines, who were flushed with their
victory over Saul and were making life miserable for the Israelites. According to
Rashi (on v 13) the Philistines were intending to burn the Israelites' barley, while in
v 16 we learn that they had their own garrison in Bethlehem and were evidently
putting severe restrictions on the free movement of the Judean population. The fact
that Israel was under the shadow of the Philistines at the beginning of the
messianic era marked by King David's reign may be of comfort to us today since
the shadow cast over our lives by those who continue to bear their name surely
signifies that we too are on the very threshold of Mashiach.
Rashi explains that David's sudden craving to taste the waters of Bethlehem (v 17)
was very natural since he had grown up in the place and "the water and air that a
person is used to are good for him, while if he is not used to them, they can be
harmful". [David craved a taste of the vitalizing waters of Torah he knew from his
youth.] The reason why David did not want to drink the water when they brought it
to him was that they had risked their very lives to fetch it and he looked on the
water as if it was their blood (Metzudas David). Instead he poured it out on the
Altar as a libation. (Rashi on v 18 brings the view in Yerushalmi Sanhedrin 2:5 that
it was the festival of Succoth, when a libation of water is daily poured on the Altar.)
In this way David put himself and his personal desires aside, elevating the heroic
instincts of his warriors as an offering to God.

The description of the exploits of Benayah ben Yehoyada is also highly allusive.
Targum (on v 22) states inter alia that one time he accidentally stepped on a dead
lizard, thereby becoming ritually defiled, and despite the fact that it was the coldest
snowy day, he broke the ice and immersed in the mikveh and proceeded to recite
the entire halachic Midrash Sifra D'vey Rav on Leviticus in the course of one short
winter's day in the middle of Teves. Such were David's warriors!

Chapter 12
Vv 1-2: "Now these are those who came to David in Tziklag… They were armed in
bows and could use both the right hand and the left in slinging stones and shooting
arrows from the bow…" (vv 1-2). Once again we see how David's warriors were
proficient in both hands – the right hand of Chessed-Kindness and the left hand of
Gevurah-Might.

V 2: "…from among the brothers of Saul from the tribe of Benjamin" – "Even King
Saul's own brothers came to David during the lifetime of Saul" (Rashi).

David's Benjaminite warriors had the faces of lions and the speed of mountain roes
(v 9).

Vv 15ff: After the Benjaminites who came to David, the first of the other tribes
mentioned as having come to support him are the mighty warriors of the Gad, who
lived in the territories east of the River Jordan. Verse 16 suggests that they were so
powerful that as they entered the river to wade across to make their way to Hebron,
the very waters – swelled from the spring-time melted snow – fled. The
commentators explain that it was the surrounding nations who fled.

Vv 17ff: For many of the Benjaminites, David was the rival of their fallen hero Saul.
David's noble gesture of reconciliation (v 18) elicited the immortal, divinely-inspired
words of Amasai, which are included in the collected Biblical verses of blessings
recited on the departure of Shabbos and at other junctures: "Yours are we, David,
and on your side, son of Yishai: peace, peace be to you and peace be to your
helpers, for your God helps you."

Chapter 13
At the conclusion of the previous chapter, we learned that with the acceptance of
David as king by all the Twelve Tribes, "there was JOY in Israel" (I Chron 12:41).

The new king lost no time in taking advantage of the favorable national climate in
order to try to bring the Ark of the Covenant up to Jerusalem from the house of
Avinadav in Kiryat Ye'arim, where it had remained since its return by the Philistines
following the disasters that struck them after they captured it from the Sanctuary in
Shilo in the days of Eli (I Samuel 4:11-7:1).

The taking of the Ark to Jerusalem to dwell in its eternal resting place – the Holy
Temple on Mt Moriah – would be the fulfillment of Jacob's dream as he had slept on
that very spot. "…and behold a LADDER (SOOLAM) was established on the earth"
(Genesis 28:12). The SOOLAM alludes to SINAI (the Hebrew letters of the two
words have the same Gematria). The Sinaitic Covenant would only be complete
when the Torah that Israel received in the wilderness would be brought up to God's
House in Jerusalem (symbolizing the "home" of the Shechinah in the heart of each
one of us) – from there to shine out to all the world, "For the Torah shall go forth
from Zion and the word of HaShem from Jerusalem " (Isaiah 2:3).

King David showed great humility: "And David CONSULTED with the captains…" (v
3). He asked the people what they thought. He wanted them to be wholeheartedly
with him. "And David said to all the assembly of Israel … let us BREAK THROUGH
and send to our remaining brothers…" (v 2). David fully knew that he wanted to
accomplish nothing less than a BREAKTHROUGH – to reach out to those who were
still outside the circle of Mashiach and to involve them too in the holy project of
bringing the Ark , symbol of the Torah, to its eternal home. David turned this into a
national event that was to be no less significant in its way than Moses' inauguration
of the original Sanctuary in the Wilderness.

Our commentary on the parallel narrative of this event in I Samuel ch 6 discussed

how David could have erred in having the Ark transported on a wagon when even
little schoolchildren know that it was supposed to be carried on poles resting on the
shoulders of the Levites (Numbers 7:9). Rashi (on verse 7 of our present text)
states that David was impressed by the fact that when the Philistines returned the
Ark from its captivity, they had put it on a new wagon (I Sam. 6:11).

When the oxen drawing the wagon caused the Ark to shift, making it seem as if the
Ark was in danger of falling, Uzza's stretching out his hand to steady it was
considered a deep affront to the holiness of the Ark – as if, despite the miracles
with which it had returned safely from the Philistines, the Ark could somehow not
take care of itself. The tragic death of Uzza (who was not a Levite, RaDaK on v 10)
turned this national event into a day of mourning, just as the consecration of
Moses' Sanctuary in the wilderness had been marred by the deaths of Aaron's two
sons, Nadav and Avihu, who likewise showed disrespect for the holiness of the
Sanctuary (Leviticus 10:1ff).

The revelation of the strict hand of God's Judgment brought David to a state of
deep awe and fear (v 12): he repented of his error, and when he finally brought up
the Ark from the house of Oveid Edom (who WAS a Levite, see Rashi on v 13) to
Jerusalem , as described in I Chron. Ch 15, David publicly confessed that he had
been wrong in allowing the Ark to be transported on a wagon rather than on the
shoulders of the Levites (see ch 15 v 13).

Chapter 14
"And Hiram king of Tyre sent messengers to David… and David KNEW that HaShem
had prepared him to be king over Israel …" (vv 1-2). Rashi (on v 1) notes that an
ancestral love bound Hiram to the tribe of Judah – we find in Genesis that Judah
had a friend called Hirah who came to his aid (Genesis 38 vv 1 and 20). It was
when David saw how the kings of the nations were sending him gifts that he KNEW
that God had prepared him to be His messianic king (see Rashi on I Chron. 14:2).
As noted in an earlier commentary, when David became king, it was the Philistines
who were the major challenge to the people of Israel just as those who have
chosen to bear their name in modern times remain the most immediate challenge
to Israel today. Rashi (on verse 8) explains why the Philistines were so angry at the
news that David had been anointed king over all Israel and went up precisely then
to try to catch him. "The Philistines had been dominant for the whole time until the
arrival of Saul and David (cf. Judges 15:11, 'and they said to Samson, Don't you
know that the Philistines rule over us?'). The Philistines themselves had said, 'Be
strong, and be men, O Philistines, lest you serve the Hebrews as they serve you' (I
Sam. 4:9)…. During the seven years when David ruled only in Hebron, the
Philistines did not say a word and they were not concerned over the fact that David
was ruling over Hebron because they thought that he had been appointed as
nothing but a mere local official. But when he was anointed as king over all Israel,
all the Philistines went up to seek David because they did not want there to be a
king over Israel but that they should continue ruling over them." In other words,
they feared a Messianic king over Israel, which would spell the end of their own rule
over them. It was the deepest affront to their national pride to have to serve the
Hebrews.

Before making any move of major significance, David "asked God" what he should
do (v 10), i.e. he consulted the Urim ve-Thumim – these were the lights that
appeared on the jewels of the breastplate of the High Priest, which were engraved
with the names of the Tribes of Israel and whose flashing letters spelled out the
answer to a question of national importance put by the king.

The striking defeat of the Philistines at Baal Peratzim where God "broke through"
David's enemies (v 11ff) was a consolation after the breach with which He "broke
through" against Uzza when he put his hand out to steady the Ark (previous
chapter v 11). However the Philistines soon regrouped and were ready for another
battle. When David again consulted the Urim ve-Thumim the answer came that this
time he was not to confront his enemies but to turn aside, and he was not to
engage them in battle until he heard "a sound of marching on the tops of the
mulberry trees" (vv 14-15). (This would be the "sound" of the angels, who would
be fighting the "real" battle on the spiritual plane.)

In the words of Rashi (on v 14): "The attribute of Judgment spoke before God: Why
did You remove Saul in favor of David? He answered, Because he did not wait for
Samuel seven days as the prophet had instructed him (I Sam.13:8-14). The Holy
One blessed be He then said to the attribute of Judgment, I will now test David and
instruct him to turn aside from the Philistines…"

"And David did according to how God had commanded him…" (v 16). Unlike Saul,
David followed God's commands to the letter – and was blessed with success. With
the decisive rout of the Philistines, all the surrounding nations were filled with fear
of David, who was thereby in a position to prepare to achieve his greatest goal, the
building of the Temple.

Chapter 15
The Ark of the Covenant was not intended to rest in the innermost sanctum of the
Temple as a mere ornament. The presence of the Tablets of Stone with the Ten
Commandments and Moses' Torah scroll in the Ark on the holiest spot in the
Temple came to demonstrate that the ultimate purpose of all of its services was to
bind Israel to God's Torah and to the keeping of His commandments.
Before the Temple could be built, it was first necessary to bring the Ark up to
Jerusalem. Having prepared a tent where the Ark would rest until the completion of
the Temple (v 1), David ordered the Levites to carry the Ark up to Jerusalem in the
presence of all Israel. This was an act of supreme holy boldness on the part of
David since he had been deeply burned by the death of Uzza when he put forth his
hand to steady the Ark the first time David tried to bring it to Jerusalem on a
wagon (I Chron 13:10-11). A lesser figure would have been deterred from
"tempting fate" again, but David was on the level where he could publicly admit
that the mistake had been his in having the Ark transported on a wagon instead of
on poles carried on the shoulders of the Levites as ordained by the Torah. David's
confession of his error is contained in our present chapter in verse 13.

We can understand more of the nature of the true king of Israel when we consider
the narrative in this chapter and the next telling how David himself directed the
arrangements for bringing the Ark to Jerusalem and personally organized and led
the priests and the Levites in the triumphant procession. For the essential goal of
the Messianic kingship is to establish the Temple, with the Ark of the Covenant at
its center, as the primary focus of Israel's connection with God (see Rambam, Laws
of Kings 11:4).

As the Levites carried the Ark up to Jerusalem on poles on their shoulders in the
prescribed manner, David organized the Levite singers into a choir and orchestra to
accompany it on its way (verses 16ff). David's organization of the Levite singers on
this occasion became the prototype for the organization of the Temple choir and
orchestra, and important clues about the Temple music are contained in our
present chapter and the next.

The conceptual link between the Ark of the Covenant and the Temple music lies in
the fact that through Israel's observance of the Covenant, the outer KELIPAH-husk
(ORLAH, the "foreskin") is peeled away from the world to reveal that behind every
detail of creation, including even the seemingly implacable laws of nature, lies the
detailed providence (HASHGACHAH PRATIS) of God. When this is revealed, all the
separate details are seen to interconnect like the notes and words of a song, which
links together separate details and makes them into a single whole. (The Hebrew
word for a LINK in a chain is SHER, connected with the word SHIR, "song".) Thus
the song that was sung when David brought the Ark to Jerusalem – in the next
chapter vv 8-36 – is the song of God's providence, alluding to His miracles in
bringing the Ark out of its captivity in the hands of the Philistines (see commentary
on next chapter).

We can but yearn to hear what the Temple music actually sounded like. We know
little about the actual nature of the various musical instruments that are mentioned
in the present chapter. These include the NEVEL and KINOR (v 16), two kinds of
string instruments differing mainly in the number of strings they had. Although
KINOR in Modern Hebrew usually refers to a violin, it is not clear if the Temple
KINOR was played with a bow or plucked. The METZILTHAYIM mentioned in our
text (ibid.) was a pair of very loud brass cymbals which were used by the leading
singers to direct the music (see v 19).

The ALAMOTH mentioned in verse 20 was a particular kind of instrument that was
specifically used for those Psalms that are prefixed LA-MNATZEACH AL ALAMOTH
(Psalms 46:1; see Rashi on v 20. ALAMOTH also has deeper allusions to the hidden
mysteries of God's providence, see Targum on Psalms 46:1). Similarly the
SHEMINIS mentioned in verse 21 was a particular kind of eight-stringed instrument
used in singing those Psalms prefixed AL HA-SHEMINIS (Psalms 6:1, 12:1; Rashi
on v 21). An eight-stringed instrument can produce a considerably wider range of
octaves and chords than the contemporary six-stringed guitar! The concept of
EIGHT (SHEMINI) is also bound up with that of the Covenant, which joins Malchus
(this world) with Binah (the world to come): Binah is the eighth Sefirah up from
Malchus, just as the top note of a scale is one octave above the bottom note.

In verse 21, the SHEMINIS is described as being LE-NATZEYACH, "to overcome".

Rashi (on Psalms 4:1) explains that Psalms prefixed with LA-M'NATZEYACH "were
instituted by David to be chanted by the Levites who ASSERTIVELY sing the
melodies of their songs from the Duchan ('platform'). The root NITZU'ACH applies
to the strength and assertiveness one puts into one's work".

V 22: "And Khenanyahu, chief of the Levites, was over the song: he was master in
the song, because he was UNDERSTANDING." The Hebrew word that is here
rendered as "he was master" is YASSOR, which literally means "he chastised". "He
would chastise and rebuke them over the way they were carrying the melody to
bring out the beauty of the song whether through raising their voices or lowering
them" (Rashi ad loc.) In other words, he was the CONDUCTOR of the Temple choir
and orchestra, and for this he had to possess understanding, BINAH, for BINAH
takes things piece by piece and puts them all together.

V 24: "…the priests blowing on the trumpets…" The trumpets had a special place in
the Temple services and it was the Torah-given right of the priests to sound them
(Numbers 10:8).

V 27: "And David was clothed in a robe of fine linen and all the Levites…. And David
had on him an ephod of linen." David was singing just as were the Levites and
accordingly he wore the same ceremonial garments that they wore (see Rashi on v
27).

V 29: The description of King David's whirling dancing and Michal's contemptuous
view of it as contained in our chapter is considerably less detailed than in the
parallel account in II Samuel chapter 6. Rashi (on verse 29 in our present chapter)
explains that since DIVREY HAYAMIM was written in honor of King David, Michal's
words to David were not written here since they were disparaging to him.

Chapter 16
After the Ark had been successfully brought up to Jerusalem, David concluded the
national celebration by distributing a loaf of bread, a good piece of meat (ESHPAR)
and a cake (ASHISHAH) to every man and woman. The ESHPAR was "one sixth of
an ox" (Pesachim 36b; Rashi on our chapter, v 3) while the ASHISHAH was "one
sixth of a HIN-measure" (Rashi ibid.) Perhaps this alludes to the fact that the
Sefirah of YESOD (=BRIS, the Covenant) is "one sixth" – i.e. the sixth and last of
the "Six Directions" (SHESH KETZAVOS, Chessed-Gevurah-Tiferet-Netzach-Hod-
Yesod) and contains the concentrated power of all six.

The Ark was in Jerusalem, but the Temple was not yet built and the daily sacrificial
rites were still being conducted by the priests at the great Altar (BAMAH) in Giv'on,
as we find in v 39 of our present chapter. (After the sacking of Shilo, the Sanctuary
had moved to the city of Nov, but when Saul killed the priests of Nov for supporting
David, it moved to Giv'on, where Solomon continued to sacrifice until he built the
Temple in Jerusalem.)

For the duration of the time until the Temple would be built, David instituted two
separate orders. One consisted mainly of Levites, who were to minister before the
Ark of the Covenant in Jerusalem "to invoke and to thank and praise HaShem the
God of Israel" (v 4) together with two priests to sound the trumpets there. This
order is described in vv 4-7 and 37-38 of our present chapter, while the song of the
Levites before the Ark is given in vv 8-36. There was no need for many Cohen-
priests before the Ark in Jerusalem since their primary function was to conduct the
sacrificial rites. In the absence of the Temple, the place for these was not before
the Ark but at the Sanctuary in Giv'on. Accordingly, the second order which David
now instituted was that of Cohen-priests to offer all the daily and other Torah-
ordained sacrifices in Giv'on together with some Levites to sing there during the
sacrificial services (vv 39-42).

V 4: "…to invoke and to thank and praise HaShem". These are different aspects of
prayer and song. Rashi explains that the Levites were "to invoke" the name of
HaShem by reciting the Psalms that are prefixed "A song of David LE-HAZKEER, to
make mention" – i.e. Psalm 38, which is one of deep introspection in face of God's
chastisement. "To thank" means to recite "Give thanks to HaShem, call upon His
Name" (Psalm 105:1) while "to praise" (LE-HALLEL) means to recite those Psalms
that begin with Halleluiah (see Rashi on v 4).

The text of David's song celebrating the bringing of the Ark to Jerusalem (vv 8-36)
is familiar to all regular Daveners since it is recited daily at the start of the P'SUKEY
D'ZIMRAH ("verses of song") that constitute the second of the four rungs of the
morning service. This follows the first rung, the recital of the 18 Morning Blessings,
and is in turn followed by the third rung, Shema with its blessings and the fourth
rung, the silent Amidah prayer. David's song, HODOO LA'SHEM, KIR'OO BI-SHMO…
is recited either BEFORE the blessing BARUCH SHE-AMAR introducing P'sukey
D'Zimrah (Nusach Sefard) or immediately afterwards (Nusach Ashkenaz). Either
way, David's song of HODOO facilitates the transition from the world of the Morning
Blessings (ASIYAH) to the world of Song (YETZIRAH). The transition from one level
to another is always accomplished primarily through the yearning of MALCHUS (the
davener) to reach out to and join with YESOD (the source of the higher spiritual
influence). [CHOCHMAH-BINAH-DAAS, the highest Sefirot of the lower level, which
is MALCHUS in relation to the level above it, seek to "clothe" the lowest Sefirot of
the upper level, NETZACH-HOD-YESOD.] Since David's song of HODOO alludes to
the miracles through which God returned the Ark of the Covenant (YESOD) from
captivity, it is the vehicle through which MALCHUS (David) connects with YESOD
(the Ark ).

V 7: "On that day David put it into the hand of Asaph to be the head in giving
thanks to HaShem, and his brothers." Rashi explains that David hereby instituted
the Temple custom that the leader of the singers would begin the chant and then
all his brother Levites would answer after him.

V 8: "Call on His Name" – "Call out HaShem! Let HaShem help His Ark" (Rashi).
"Make known His deeds among the nations" – "these are the acts of might and
miracles that He performed for the Ark " (ibid.) Rashi is alluding to the way that
God sent the plague of mice and other troubles to the Philistines after they
captured the Ark, and to the miraculous way in which they sent it back on a wagon
drawn by nursing cows (I Samuel ch's 5-6). These miracles show how God carries
out His inscrutable purposes with or against the consent of men. The Ark protects
itself!

V 11: "Search out (DEERSHOO) HaShem and His strength! Seek out His face
constantly" His "strength" (OOZO) is the Torah. We seek out His face by constantly
studying and darshening His Torah, thereby enhancing the prayers with which we
entreat His inner presence.
V 18: "Saying, To you (singular) will I give the Land of Canaan, the lot of your
inheritance." God promised the land of Israel to each of the patriarchs individually,
despite the fact that at the time they were mere nomads and sojourners and the
future residence of their descendants there may have then seemed entirely
improbable (see Rashi ad loc.).

The history of the people of Israel illustrates the survival of a tiny nation against all
the odds, through God's providence alone (vv 19-22).

Verses 8-22 of David's song celebrating the coming of the Ark to Jerusalem are
parallel to Psalm 105 vv 1-15. This was sung during the morning Temple service.
The ensuing passage in David's song, vv 23-33, which is parallel to Psalm 96 vv 1-
12, was sung in the afternoon Temple service (see Rashi on v 35). In this second
section, David moves from telling of God's PAST miracles on behalf of Israel to
telling of His FUTURE redemption and the ingathering of the exiles (see Rashi and
RaDaK on Psalms 96:1), which are also miraculous wonders bespeaking His loving
providence. The Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 54:4) states that these were the two
songs that the cows sang as they drew the wagon with the Ark of the Covenant up
from the Philistines to Beit Shemesh (I Samuel 6:12).

Chapter 17
Verse 1: "And David said to Nathan the prophet, Here I sit in a house of cedars but
the Ark of the Covenant of HaShem is under curtains!" As a true lover of HaShem,
David was distressed when he compared the opulence of his own royal residence
with the makeshift, temporary nature of the tent which he had erected to house the
Ark in Jerusalem. David knew that man's task is to give all the glory to God, not to
take it for himself.

One of the most important keys to understanding the messianic quality of David's
kingship is to note that the initiative to build the Temple was essentially his own:
he was not directly commanded to build it. This is brought out in Rashi's comment
on verse 6 of our present chapter on God's words to David: "Did I speak a word to
any of the judges of Israel …?" Rashi paraphrases: "This I never did, and nor did
the thought of building Me a House occur to any one of them in the way that this
thought has arisen in your mind."

It was not just now that the thought entered David's mind. When he first fled from
King Saul and went to take counsel with his mentor the prophet Samuel, "they sat
BE-NOYOS" (I Samuel 19:18). Taken literally this appears to refer to the location
where they sat, but our sages taught that they were actually sitting engaged in the
BEAUTY (NOY) of the world – i.e. investigating the proper place to build (BANAH)
the Temple (Zevachim 54b; see KNOW YOUR BIBLE commentary on I Samuel ch
19).

What gave David to understand that the time had now come to carry out his long-
cherished plan was the fact that now "HaShem had given him rest round about
from all his enemies" (II Samuel 7:1). As Rashi explains on verse 1 of our present
text, David reasoned: "God has fulfilled what He promised in the Torah, 'and He will
give you rest from all your enemies around' (Deut. 12:10). Now the obligation rests
on me to carry out what is written immediately afterwards, 'And it shall be that the
PLACE where HaShem your God will choose to cause His Name to dwell, there shall
you bring all [the sacrifices] that I am commanding you' (ibid. v 11). That is to say,
I shall make Him a Sanctuary" (Rashi on I Chron. 17:1).
Despite David's longing to build the Temple, he was not destined to do so because
he was a man of war, whereas the Temple was to rise out of perfect peace and
tranquility "for if you raise your sword upon it you will profane it" (Exodus 20:22).
The actual Temple would only be built by Solomon, SHLOMO, the man of peace.
God quickly sent Nathan prophecy that very night to stop David from carrying out
his plan. In the words of Rashi, "This man that I am sending you to is wont to take
vows – go and stop him before he swears to build it… The man I am sending you to
is quick and energetic – go and tell him before he hires builders" (Rashi on v 3).

V 9: "And I will ordain a PLACE for my people Israel …. And they shall be moved no
more, nor shall the children of wickedness waste them any more…" From this verse
the sages learned that "The enemies of everyone who has a fixed place to pray will
fall before him" (Berachos 7b).

"And HaShem tells you that He will make for you a house" (v 10) – "You [David]
thought that you would build a House to My Name. According to that exact same
measure shall be your reward. The Holy One blessed be He is announcing to you
that He will make You a house. HaShem will give you a son who will rule after you
and sit upon the throne of Israel in your place. Everything that endures in a man's
son after him is called a HOUSE, and thus He says, 'And I shall establish your seed
after you' (v 11)" (Rashi on verse 10).

V 13: "I shall be to him as a father and he will be to Me as a son." The parallel
account in II Samuel 7:14 warns that if Solomon would sin, God would chastise him,
but this is left out of the account here in DIVREY HAYOMIM as this work omits
anything that would detract from the honor of the House of David (Rashi on our
present chapter v 13).

V 16: "And King David came and SAT before HaShem." David came to pray before
the Ark of the Covenant. From the fact that he SAT, we learn that only the kings of
the House of David are permitted to sit in the Temple Courtyard (AZARAH) and no-
one else (Yoma 69b). All acts of service in the Temple (sacrifices, singing etc.) are
carried out standing.

The eloquence of David's humble prayer of gratitude to God for promising him an
eternal house vv 16-27 is unsurpassed. In the words of Rashi (on v 25): "If You
Yourself had not promised me to bring all these benefits on my seed, it would not
have occurred to me to request them, for who am I that you have brought me as
far as this, to become king, but since you have said that for Your sake you will
bring all these benefits to me, I therefore pray to you to fulfill Your words."

Chapter 18
"After David said he would build the Temple and God said 'You shall not build it',
David said, Since it is not for me to build the Temple but for my son, I shall now
prepare and order everything for him so that when my son comes to build the
Temple, he will have everything ready for him. The narrative now leaves everything
else aside in order to go on to tell how David prepared all the building needs for
Solomon through fighting with his enemies and dedicating their booty to the
building of the Temple" (Rashi on verse 1).

V 4: "…and David lamed all the chariot horses". David did this because he did not
want to infringe the Torah prohibition against the king multiplying horses for
himself (Deut. 17:16).
V 13: "And he put garrisons in Edom." The subjugation of Edom to Israel represents
the triumph of the World of TIKKUN (Repair) over the World of TOHU (chaos)
because the Seven Kings of Edom (Genesis 36:31-39) are emblematic of the seven
lower Sefirot in a state of breakage and destruction. The stationing of Israelite
garrisons in Edom indicates the repair of the broken vessels in preparation for the
building of the Temple.

V 14: "And David ruled over all Israel and he practiced justice and charity to all his
people." This indicates that David now withdrew from active engagement in warfare,
devoting himself instead to judging the people fairly and charitably. The text goes
on to tell us that Yo'av was commander-in-chief of the army, in order to make it
clear that although David himself no longer fought, this does not mean that Israel
ceased fighting (Rashi on vv 14 & 15).

Chapter 19
When Nachash (="serpent") king of Ammon died, King David felt under an
obligation to send emissaries to comfort his son Chanoon (="gracious"!!!) in his
mourning "for his father performed a kindness towards me" (v 2). This kindness
had been performed when David took his father and mother and brothers out of
Israel to his great grandmother Ruth's native country of Moab in order to escape
Saul's persecution (I Samuel 22:3). The king of Moab killed the entire family except
for David's brother Elihoo, who is the only one mentioned thereafter (I Chron.
27:18) and who escaped by fleeing to Ammon where he was received by Nachash.

Suspecting that David's emissaries had come to spy on Ammon and foment
revolution, the gracious Chanoon shaved them and cut off their garments in the
middle, exposing their private parts – just about the most demeaning and
humiliating thing it was possible to do to anyone. Realizing the dangers to which
this provocation exposed him, Chanoon proceeded to hire Aramean mercenary
chariots and riders. The Arameans were a people spread across a huge swathe of
the Fertile Crescent stretching from Aram Nahariyim (between the Tigris and
Euphrates) all the way across to Damascus and the Golan Heights. Our text refers
to three major Aramean centers – Aram Naharayim, Aram Maachah and Aram
Tzovah (v 6) all of which were offspring of the Aramean mother people (see Rashi
on v 6). The Arameans had set their evil eye against Jacob and his offspring from
the times of Laban and Bilaam.

The town of Meid'va where the Aramean mercenaries encamped was about 50 km
south west of present-day Amman, Jordan , which, as its name suggests, was the
main Ammonite center. Thus in campaigning against Ammon, David's commander-
in-chief Yo'av had one enemy army ahead of him and another formidable enemy
army to his rear (v 10). This was why he took a selected elite army under his
command to fight the Arameans, sending his brother Avishai against Ammon.
[Rashi on v 11 notes that unlike in the book of Samuel, Yo'av's brother is
throughout Chronicles called AV'SHAI, because if he were called by his full name of
AV-YISHAI (=father-Jesse) this would have detracted from the honor of King David,
whose was Yishai's son, whereas AV'SHAI, son of David's sister Tzeruyah, was
merely his grandson.]

The Arameans fled and the Ammonites returned to their city, but the Arameans
now called in reinforcements from their kinsmen east of the Euphrates. In II
Samuel 10:16 their commander-in-chief was called SHOVACH "because he was as
tall as a SHOVACH" (=a dovecote, positioned high above the reach of predators),
while in our text he is called SHOPHACH, "because he used to pour out
(SHOPHECH) blood like water" (Rashi on v 16).
It appears from verse 17 that King David himself led the entire people to battle
against the Arameans, and scored a decisive victory which left them subject to him
thereafter.

Chapter 20
Verses 1-3 of our present chapter give a highly condensed narrative of Yo'av's
campaign to subdue Rabbah, the capital of Ammon, compared with the version in II
Samuel chs 11-12. This is because it was during this campaign that David took
Bathsheva, sending her first husband Uriah HaHitti to his death in Yoab's campaign.
Since that episode does not reflect credit on King David, it is omitted from our text
here in DIVREY HAYAMIM, which was written to give honor to David and his house.

V 2: "And David took the crown of their king from upon his head… and it was on the
head of David." The sages discussed whether David actually wore this weighty
crown on his head or whether it was somehow positioned hovering above his head,
held in place, perhaps, by the magnetic force of the "precious stone" it contained
(Avodah Zarah 44a). [Lovers of Rabbi Nachman may be interested to consider the
connection between this crown and the crown above the king's head in his story of
"The Spider and the Fly".]

The judgments executed by David upon the Ammonites with saws, iron harrows
and axes may seem somewhat barbaric to those with delicate sensitivities, but
apparently David knew better how to address cruel people in the only language
they understood than those "enlightened" people today who think that terrorists
and violent criminals should be handled with kid gloves.

The account in our text (vv 4-8) of David's later wars against the Philistines and
their monstrous champions is also somewhat abbreviated compared to the
narrative in II Samuel 21:15-22, since the latter indicates that David was in mortal
danger and became exhausted, which does not reflect to his credit (see Rashi on
our present text v 4). There is some discussion among the commentators as to
whether or not Goliath of Gath (v 5) is identical with Goliath the Philistine whom
David killed at the start of his career (see Rashi and RaDaK on v 5). From Rabbi
Nachman's discussion of Goliath and his death (Likutey Moharan II, 4) it is evident
that he and the other giants and monsters described in our text embody tough
spiritual KELIPOTH (husks) covering and concealing the unity of God, and their
falling before David and his warriors was a spiritual triumph for Israel.

Chapter 21
V 1: "And an adversary angel stood up against Israel and incited David to number
Israel." The same Hebrew root used here of the Satan INCITING David to count the
people had been used by David himself when he encountered Saul face to face
while the latter was pursuing him, and he said: "…if God has INCITED you against
me…" (I Sam. 26:19). In the words of our sages: "The Holy One blessed be He said
to David: You call me an INCITER??? I will surely make you stumble in something
that even little school children know, as it is written: 'When you take the sum of the
children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for
his soul to HaShem when you number them in order that there shall be no plague
among them when you number them' (Exodus 30:12)" (Berachos 62b).

The "adversary angel" or Satan "is the evil inclination planted in man's heart from
his youth" (Metzudas David, RaDaK on v 1). "And as to the verse in I Samuel 24:1
that says 'and HaShem's anger burned increasingly against Israel and HE incited
David', from which it appears that HaShem was the inciter: the truth is that He
incited him through the intermediary of the Satan because of a sin that was present
in Israel on account of which they were fit to be punished, and he too is called an
Angel of HaShem. It was he that David saw having the appearance of an Angel of
HaShem with his sword drawn in his hand (our chapter v 16), for it is he who
deceives and he who kills" (RaDaK ibid.).

It is a mystery how David could have defied the Torah by seeking to take a direct
census of the population instead of collecting a token charity coin ("ransom") from
each person and counting the coins. It may be that as David prepared for a national
event as significant as the building of the Temple, he was in too much of a hurry to
find out the size of the population to see if it had reached some kind of "take off"
point ready for the new era in the history of the people. But having suggested to
the saintly King Saul that he might be the victim of the Yetzer Ra (evil inclination),
measure for measure David was constrained to make the painful discovery that he
himself could also be subject to the Yetzer Ra.

Rashi (on v 1) comments: "Even though this section does not reflect credit on
David, it was written here on account of what it says at the end – that David built
an altar and God answered him from heaven, and this was an honor to David."
Indeed, David's greatness and nobility of character come out from the fact that he
had the courage to admit his mistake publicly in the presence of the elders of the
people, and he asked God to punish him personally instead of striking the whole
nation (vv 16-17). And on account of David's confession, not only did God relent
but He also revealed to David the site of the Altar that was to be the centerpiece of
the Temple he so yearned to build.

"The place of the Temple Altar is aligned with the ultimate precision and its place
may not ever be changed, as it is written, '…and THIS is the altar of the burned
offering for Israel ' (I Chron. 22:1). It was on the site of the Temple Altar that our
father Isaac was bound, as it says, 'Go take yourself to the land of MORIAH, and it
says in II Chronicles 3:1, 'And Solomon started to build the House of HaShem in
Jerusalem on Mt MORIAH where God appeared to David his father, in the place
which David had prepared in the threshing floor of Arnan the Jebusite'" (Rambam,
Laws of the Temple 2:1).

It is one of the deep mysteries of God's inscrutable providence that the precise
location of the Temple Altar – the place of atonement for all mankind – could be
revealed to David only through his sin in counting the people, which led to a plague
that was only stalled when the Angel of Death stood at that very spot. With
complete self-effacement, the repentant David prayed that he should be substituted
for the people and punished personally in order to save them. As his reward, he
discovered the place where atonement for individual sinners and for the whole
nation is accomplished through the mystery of substituting an animal for the sinner.

David's Yetzer Ra had been so strong that he would not even listen to objections
from his own commander-in-chief, Yo'av, who was uneasy in the extreme about
departing from the Torah norm in order to count the people. Grasping the attendant
dangers, Yo'av did everything he could to wriggle out of making a complete count.
He did not include the Levites on the grounds that the rules for counting them had
been different from the rules governing Moses' counts of the other tribes (Numbers
3:15), and he did not include the Benjaminites because they had lost so many in
the battles following the episode of the Concubine in Giv'ah (Judges 19-21) that
they would be in danger of extinction if they lost any more through a plague on
account of being numbered (I Chron 21:6, see Rashi ad loc and RaDaK on v 5).
When the hand of God struck and David realized his sin, the prophet Gad was sent
to offer him the choice of which punishment would be sent to expiate the sin:
famine, military defeat at the hands of the nation's enemies or plague. "And David
said to Gad, I am in great distress: let me fall rather into the hand of HaShem, for
very great are His mercies, but let me not fall into the hand of man" (v 13). This
verse is recited introducing the Tachanun supplications during the daily morning
and afternoon services. David was in great pain because even the lightest of the
options was harsh. "It can be compared to the case of a man who is told, You are
going to die – which grave would you like to be buried in? Next to your father or
your mother?" (Rashi on v 13). David rejected the idea of famine because it forces
people to depend on one another yet they do not have mercy on each other
(Metzudas David) and also because the rich suffer less than the poor (Rashi). He
also rejected defeat at the hands of his enemies because he knew they would
surpass all bounds of cruelty. He preferred the plague, which is sent directly by God
– for God can always relent, as indeed He did:

V 15: "…and as [the angel] was about to destroy, HaShem SAW and relented of the
evil" – "What did He see? He saw the ashes of Isaac, as it is written, 'God will SEE
the lamb for Himself' (Gen. 22:8; Berachos 62b) – "for it was in the place of that
threshing floor that Abraham had offered Isaac his son" (RaDaK on v 15).

Vv 22-25: Just as Ephron had ostensibly offered to GIVE Abraham the Cave of
Machpelah as the burial site for Sarah FOR NO CHARGE (Genesis 23:11ff), so Arnan
offered not only the site of the Altar but even the sacrificial animals and his
threshing tools as wood for the offering FOR NO CHARGE. But David did not want
the favors of flesh and blood, which always carry a price tag. He wanted the Altar
to be a national ACQUISITION (KINYAN) and therefore paid Arnan 600 talents of
gold – fifty talents from each of the Twelve Tribes – for the site. Despite the fact
that Israel purchased the site of the Altar on Mt Moriah with real GOLD, the present
robber occupiers of the site continue to deny Israel's ownership until today, and the
same applies in the case of the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron.

Even after David built the Altar on Mt Moriah, the Sanctuary remained in Giv'on (v
29) and the Altar continued to be used for all the sacrificial services until the time
of King Solomon, who also sacrificed there until he inaugurated the Temple in
Jerusalem, which from that time on became the only place where Israel were
permitted to sacrifice.

Chapter 22
The revelation of the site of the Temple Altar was a great encouragement to David
in his mission to prepare for the building of the House. David employed new
converts in the difficult work of quarrying the great stones that would be needed.
Rashi (on v 2) explains that his reason for employing the converts was that he did
not want to burden the home-born Israelites with this work. (Perhaps he reasoned
that the Israelites had already done enough of such work in their earlier incarnation
building store cities for Pharaoh in Egypt, and it was now time for the converts to
earn their place amidst the chosen people by also having a taste of hard labor.)

Solomon was only twelve years old when he came to the throne, and he was even
younger when David began to prime him for the task of building the Temple, as
described in the present chapter.

David also gave instructions to all the officers of the nation to help Solomon (vv 17-
19). Let us take to heart David's words to the nation's leaders: "And now give your
hearts and your souls to search out HaShem your God, and arise and build the
Temple of HaShem, God…" (v 19). Just as David stood on the very threshold of the
building of the Temple and did everything in his power to make all the necessary
preparations for it, so do we stand on the threshold of the building of the Future
Temple, and each of us should make his or her own personal reckoning of what we
can do to prepare for it.

Chapter 23
V 1: "And when David was old and full of days, he made Solomon his son king over
Israel." Solomon's candidacy as David's successor was by no means uncontested
since his older half-brother Adoniyahu considered himself the obvious successor to
the throne and was already maneuvering to take over, as we see from I Kings
chapter 1. Nathan the Prophet in coordination with Solomon's mother Bathsheva
alerted King David to Adoniyahu's activities, causing the king to swear an oath to
Bathsheva that Solomon would indeed be his successor – for he knew prophetically
that Solomon was destined to become king and build the Temple, as we saw in the
previous chapter (I Chron. 22:9-10). David's giving over the kingship in his lifetime
to the son for whom such a glorious future had been prophesied was surely an
event of the utmost joy for himself and for all Israel . [Cf. Rabbi Nachman's story of
the Seven Beggars, introductory section.]

Not only did David prepare the materials for the building of the Temple so that
everything would be ready for Solomon. In this and the following chapters we learn
how David reorganized the Levites and Cohen-priests to be ready to take up their
duties in the new Temple.

V 3: "And the Levites were counted from the age of thirty years and upwards…"
Initially David counted the Levites fit for service using the same age criterion as
God commanded Moses in the wilderness (Numbers 4:3) – only those above the
age of thirty were eligible. Later, however, for reasons that will be explained below,
the age for beginning their service was reduced to twenty (see vv 24-27). The
tasks of the Levites in the Temple are specified at the end of the present chapter vv
28-32.

V 13: "…and Aaron was separated that he should be sanctified as most holy, he and
his sons forever…" Although Aaron and his sons were from the tribe of Levi, they
alone were entrusted with the actual offering of all the Temple sacrifices and with
blessing the people with the priestly blessing. They were therefore set apart from
the rest of the tribe. The Cohanim-priests were a caste on their own with numerous
mitzvos concerning limitations on their possible marriage partners, ritual purity, the
consumption of Terumah-tithe produce etc. that only they were required to keep.
As a mark of the unique holiness of the Cohanim, it is customary until today for all
the rest of the people to give them special honor. Thus whenever a Cohen is
present in the synagogue he is called first to the Torah reading, followed by a Levi,
and only then are Israelites in the congregation called to the reading. The Talmud
cites our present verse as the Biblical source of this custom (Gittin 59a).

V 14: Despite Moses' unique status as master of all the prophets and the nation's
law-giver, and despite the fact that he himself served as the Cohen when he first
inducted Aaron and his sons into their role as priests at the time of the consecration
of the Sanctuary in the wilderness (Leviticus 8:5ff), Moses' children were not
considered Cohanim but were counted with the other Levites.

V 16: "…and the children of Rehaviah multiplied above" – "Rav Yoseph taught that
they multiplied over 600,000" (Berachos 7a). Rabbi Nachman taught: "Know that
there are children that are born into this world, but in addition there are very great
'children of ascent' who are born as souls that are above the souls that are clothed
in the children born into this world. For all the souls in this world are included in the
600,000 souls of Israel , and even though there are greater numbers of people, this
is only because the sparks are divided. But the souls that cannot be clothed in this
world are above these 600,000 souls… and even when they enter this world they
are not considered part of this world at all. This is the category of the children of
Moses, of whom it is written that 'the children of Rehaviah multiplied ABOVE'. This
is why the Rabbis taught that they were 'over 600,000' – because they are not
considered to be included in the 600,000, for they are above and beyond them
(Likutey Moharan I, 273).

Verses 24ff explain why David eventually counted all the Levites who were over 20
years old rather than only those who were above the age of 30. Now that God had
"given rest to His people" and chosen to dwell in Jerusalem forever (v 25), the
burden of carrying the Sanctuary and its vessels from place to place would no
longer fall upon the Levites, who from now on would only be required to sing in the
Temple and perform guard and other duties there. For these they would not require
the full strength of a mature man of thirty but could already start to serve at the
age of twenty (Metzudas David on v 26).

V 27: "For by the last ordinances of David, the Levites were numbered from twenty
years old and above…" – "This means that even though in David's own words above
(v 3) only those Levites above the age of 30 were counted, in his final ordinances
those over 20 were also counted. Initially, however, this did not occur to him and
he counted them only as prescribed in the Torah (Numbers 4:3) from the age of 30
and above" (Metzudas David ad loc.).

Verses 28-32 give us many important insights into the varied functions of the
Levites in the Temple. It is evident from numerous Talmudic sources that they
continued carrying out the same functions allocated to them by David until the end
of the Second Temple period. "…Because their station was at the side of the sons of
Aaron [the Cohanim]" (v 28). The role of the Levites was to do everything
necessary in the Temple to enable the Cohanim to conduct the sacrificial services.
Thus the Levites were responsible for the guarding and maintenance of the entire
Temple precincts including all the different courtyards and chambers, and they also
had to ensure the ritual purity of all the Temple areas, vessels and sacrificial
offerings (v 28). They prepared and baked the Show Bread and other grain-based
offerings (v 29) as well as providing the singers for the Temple services (v 30).
They had to ensure that the requisite sacrificial animals were ready and checked for
blemishes prior to all the daily, Sabbath, New Moon and festival offerings (v 31)
and provided squadrons of guards in key positions around the Temple (v 32). There
were times when the Levites also assisted the Cohanim in flaying the sacrificial
animals (Rashi on v 31, cf. II Chron. 29:34).

Chapter 24
Having organized the Levites and allocated them their duties, David proceeded to
reorganize the Cohanim into twenty-four priestly squadrons that would serve in the
Temple on a rota basis week after week.

V 4: "And the males of the chief families of the children of Elazar were found to be
more numerous than those of the children of Ithamar." Rashi (ad loc.) explains:
"Initially in the Sanctuary in Shilo there was a total of only sixteen priestly
squadrons, eight from the descendants of Elazar and eight from those of Ithamar,
as is explained in Tractate Taanis 27a. But when David saw that the males in each
of the chief families of the descendants of Elazar were twice as many as those of
the families of Ithamar, he organized the descendants of Elazar into sixteen
squadrons while leaving the descendants of Ithamar in their eight existing
squadrons, and we find proof of this in the Hebrew text of verse 6" (Rashi on v 4;
see also Metzudas David on v 6).

V 5: "And they divided them by means of lots, these with those…" The purpose of
the lots was to determine in which order the squadrons would serve week by week
in rotation. The average Jewish year is 51 weeks. During the three annual pilgrim
festivals all twenty-four squadrons would take part in the festival sacrificial services,
leaving about 48 weeks for the regular rota. Thus each squadron had an average of
two weeks of Temple service during the year besides the time they served on the
festivals.

V 6: "And Shemayah the son of Nethan-el the scribe from the tribe of Levi wrote
them in the presence of the king…" The apparent PSHAT of this verse is that
Shemayah the scribe recorded the order in which the priestly squadrons would
serve week after week as revealed through the lots. However the Targum darshens
that Shemayah ben Nethan-el is another name for Moses, "the great scribe", and
that it was he who wrote down the original order, which was later read in the
presence of the king (see Targum Rav Yoseph on v 6).

Verses 7-18 give the names of the twenty-four priestly squadrons and their order in
the rota.

Verses 20-30 review the names of the principle families of the Levites. While many
of the functions performed by the Levites in the Temple appear to have involved
continual service throughout the year, the Levitical singers were divided into
twenty-four squadrons corresponding to those of the Cohanim, and they took turns
week by week in singing in the Temple choir. The twenty-four Levitical squadrons
consisted of nine from the descendants of Gershon, eight from those of Kehath and
seven from those of Merari (see Metzudas David on v 30).

V 31: "And these also cast lots in the same manner as their brothers the sons of
Aaron…" – "The purpose of the lots was to see which squadron would serve first,
and their work was to sing with their mouths" (Metzudas David ad loc. He specifies
that they sang with their mouths in order to distinguish them from the other
Levitical MESHORERIM who played instruments.]

V 31: "…the head of each father's house in the same manner as his younger
brother": this means that the order of the various families' seniority in terms of age
was of no consequence in determining their order in the rota of service: there
everything was determined by the lot – GORAL – which was determined by the
Almighty.

Chapter 25
Our present chapter gives us the details of King David's organization of the Levite
Temple singers into twenty-four divisions corresponding to the twenty-four
divisions of the Cohanim. The organization of the Levite Temple gate-keepers and
keepers of the Temple treasures is then set forth in the following chapter.

V 1: "And David and the captains of the army SEPARATED for the service…." "The
service" refers to the sublime service of song that accompanied the performance of
the sacrificial offerings by the Cohanim and which was the element of GEVURAH,
"might," that "elevated" the sparks of holiness to the Almighty. [Levy=GEVURAH.]
It takes focused strength and understanding – left column attributes – in order to
really sing! David "separated" the Temple choristers from the other Levites. They
were a hereditary order drawn exclusively from three Levite lines headed in the
time of David by Asaph, Heyman and Yedoothoon, as detailed in verse 1.

According to the KSIV (the Massoretic Hebrew text as written in the scroll), they
are called HANEVI'IM, "the prophets", but the KRI (traditional pronunciation) is
HANIB'EEM, which is a verbal adjective meaning that "they used to prophesy with
harps and lyres and the cymbals" (i.e. the KRI emphasizes the action and not the
person). In the words of Rashi (ad loc.): "When they would play with these
instruments they would prophesy, as we find with Elisha, who said 'Bring me a
player, and it was when the player played that the hand of HaShem was upon him'"
(II Kings 3:15). RaDaK (on our verse here in Chronicles) adds: "The children of
Asaph would play the instruments and then holy spirit would rest on Asaph and he
would start singing with his mouth to the sound of the harps. Likewise Heyman and
Yedoothoon were all prophets with musical instruments. For the book of Psalms was
composed with holy spirit and it contains prophecies and visions of the future
dealing with the exile and the redemption."

"…and the number of the workmen according to their service was:" (v 1). These
closing words of verse 1 introduce the following section (vv 2-7) which enumerate
the four sons of Asaph, the six sons of Yedoothoon and Heyman's fourteen sons – a
total of twenty-four. These became the heads of the twenty-four divisions of Levite
singers, each of which consisted of twelve singers in the time of David, making a
total of two hundred and eighty-eight, as we find in verse 7.

V 3: "The children of Yedoothoon… SIX…" – "But in the verse you only find FIVE.
This is because at that time [i.e. in David's fortieth year, when all these
arrangements were made, see chapter 26 v 31] his wife was pregnant with Shim'i
and Yedoothoon saw with holy spirit that he too was destined to be a head of a
division, and this is why the verse says six" (Rashi ad loc. cf. RaDaK).

V 5: "All these were the sons of Heyman, the king's seer, according to the word of
God, who bade to lift up his horn." Heyman's "horn" was the SHOFAR of prophecy
that spoke through him to the king (cf. Rashi). "…and God gave to Heyman
fourteen sons and three daughters" – "That is to say, If not for the fact that God
gave him these children it would not have been possible for him to have fourteen
sons and three daughters, with all his sons fit to be divisional heads" (Rashi ad loc.).
Heyman and his large family were all descended from Korach, as was the prophet
Samuel. Indeed, "It was when Korach saw the illustrious lineage was to come from
him that he thought he would be able to stand up against Moses – but while he saw,
he did not see well enough, because he did not understand that only on account of
his children's repentance would these illustrious descendants arise" (Yalkut
Shimoni).

V 7: "And their number with their brothers… was two hundred and eighty-eight."
Since there were twenty-four rotating divisions each consisting of twelve choristers,
there was a total of 288 Temple singers. The number 288 is of great significance
kabbalistically. As a result of the "breaking of the vessels", 288 holy sparks fell into
the realm of the unholy. This is alluded to in Genesis 1:2, "and the spirit of God was
HOVERING (MERACHEPHES) over the face of the depth". The first and last letters of
MeRaChePHeS spell out MEIS – "dead", while the sum of the numerical values of
the three middle letters Reish (200), Chet (8) and Peh (80) is 288. It is these holy
sparks that vitalize the realm of the unholy to perform its assigned task in creation.
These sparks are redeemed through the spread of God's CHESSED, loving kindness.
This comes about through its successive revelation in each of the four basic
expansions of the name of HaVaYaH – AV, SaG, MaH and BaN – through the
expansion of the AVs specific to each one in turn. The gematria of AV is 72. 4 x 72
= 288. Thus as the succession of twenty-four divisions of the Levites sang in the
Temple week by week, their prophetic songs elevated and redeemed all the sparks
that had fallen into the realm of unholiness. The order that David instituted for the
Temple singers derives from the World of Tikkun (Repair).

V 8: "And they cast lots…" As in the case of the priestly squadrons, the order in
which the divisions of the Levite Temple singers sang week after week was
determined not on account of seniority or expertise but purely through the will of
God as expressed through the lots.

V 9: "And the first lot came out for Asaph to Yoseph; the second to Gedaliah: he
with his brothers and sons were TWELVE." From the fact that the original divisions
of the Levite Temple singers as organized by King David consisted of twelve
choristers each, our sages taught: "There should never be fewer than twelve Levite
singers standing on the platform [although there could be more]… Twelve
corresponding to what? Rav Papa said, Corresponding to the nine harps, two lyres
and one cymbals. As it says, '…he and his brothers and sons were TWELVE'" (Erchin
13b. The cited sugya in Erchin is the most detailed of our Talmudic sources relating
to the Temple music.)

Chapter 26
The Levite Temple gate-keepers did not serve in rotation. Rather, specified Levitical
families were allocated by lot to specific Temple locations, where members of the
families in question performed their guard duties constantly throughout the year
(see Rashi on v 1).

The leaders of the families of the Levite gate-keepers are enumerated in vv 1-11.

Vv 4-5: "And the children of Oveid-Edom… for God blessed him." Oveid-Edom was
blessed in virtue of his having given his home to house the Ark of the Covenant for
three months after David's first unsuccessful attempt to bring it up to Jerusalem
when Uzza died setting his hand forth to steady it on the wagon (I Chron. 13:14).

V 12: The divisions of the Temple gate-keepers were twenty-four in number

corresponding to the divisions of the Temple singers, except that they did not serve
in rotation week by week as did the singers. Instead each division was assigned its
own hereditary location in the Temple through the casting of lots, as detailed in vv
14-19. The total of four thousand gatekeepers in the time of David (I Chron. 23:5)
were distributed more or less evenly among the twenty-four divisions (see
Metzudas David on v 12).

THE TEMPLE TREASURERS

V 20: "And of the Levites, Ahiya was over the treasures…" – "He was in charge of
the funds with which sacrificial animals etc. were purchased for the Temple" (Rashi
ad loc.).

V 24: "And Shevoo'el the son of Gershom, the son of Moses was ruler over the
treasures." According to rabbinic tradition, Shevoo'el is identical with Yehonathan,
the Levite who ministered before Michah's idol (Judges ch's 17-18, see the KNOW
YOUR BIBLE commentary there). He was called SHEVOO-EL because he returned to
God with all his heart. King David saw that he had a very great affection for money
and appointed him over the Temple treasures (Bava Kama 110a). This shows the
greatness that can be attained when one learns to elevate the very thing that
caused one to stumble so as to use it in the service of God, and also David's
greatness in perceiving clearly how to help and elevate Baaley Teshuvah! It is
noteworthy that no less than Moses' own grandson was appointed to the office of
chief Temple treasurer, which was one that involved enormous responsibility.

V 29: "Of the family of Yitzhar, Kenanyahu and his sons were for the outward
business over Israel , for officers and judges." This "outward business" refers to the
work that had to be done outside the city for the sake of the Temple, such as
preparing the timber and stones. These Levites provided the officers in charge of
supervising this work (Metzudas David).

V 31: "…in the fortieth year of the kingship of David they were sought for…" This
verse indicates that all of the organization of the Cohanim and Levites described
from chapters 23 until our present chapter was carried out in the very last year of
King David's life. This shows his extraordinary vitality and power to the very end!

V 32: "…and King David appointed them over the Reubenites, Gaddites and the half
tribe of Menashe…" These tribes lived in the territories east of the Jordan stretching
from those to the east of the Dead Sea all the way up into the Golan Heights.
Officers were required to supervise the preparation of materials from these areas
for use in the forthcoming Temple building project.

Chapter 27
Having completed the account of King David's organization of the divisions of the
Cohanim and Levites for the Temple services, our text continues with an account of
his organization of the Israelite population into twelve divisions that took it in turns
to attend to the king's business month by month. Our commentators explain that,
unlike the divisions of the Cohanim and Levites, which were instituted in their final
form as described in our text (chs 23-26) only in the last year of David's reign, the
divisions of the Israelite population as described in the present chapter were in fact
instituted at the beginning of his reign. The account of the latter is placed here
because the listing of the names of the officers whom David appointed over the
Israelite divisions follows on naturally from the previous sections listing the officers
he appointed to supervise the building and administration of the Temple (see Rashi
and Metzudas David on I Chron. 27:1).

Rashi (ad loc.) also explains that each of the twelve divisions of Israelites included
only 24,000 men even though the overall Israelite population was greater than 12 x
24,000. However, David chose only the stronger, more forceful characters and
those who possessed sufficient wealth to be able to put aside their own affairs in
order to attend to the king's business, but he did not recruit poorer people who
were preoccupied with earning a basic living.

The functions of these twelve divisions were to serve in David's army and to attend
to all the king's other business (Rashi on v 1). A later section in our chapter (vv 25-
21) enumerates the chief officers appointed over David's grain stores, agricultural
work, viniculture and winemaking, olive cultivation and oil production, cattle,
camels, donkeys and sheep, giving us a picture of some of the main areas
comprised under the heading of the king's business. Under the laws of the kingship,
the king was not allowed to confiscate other people's private property for himself
unless they were traitors, but he was entitled to requisition people, animals and
other requirements in return for compensation, and to impose taxes, customs dues
and agricultural tithes in order to provide for his own needs and those of his
household, staff and armies etc. (see Rambam, Laws of Kings ch 4).

What emerges from our present chapter is that the royal business was conducted
not by an entrenched establishment of permanent salaried administrators and
workers, but rather by the most talented, able and financially successful members
of all of the tribes taking it in turns month by month to run the royal affairs – from
the upper levels of the administration down to the actual plowing of the king's fields
and the herding of his cattle.

Conceptually, the king is the embodiment of the Sefirah of Malchus, which channels
PARNASSAH ("livelihood") by mobilizing all the resources of the twelve tribes of
Israel upon which he rides (corresponding to the twelve permutations of HaVaYaH
revealed through Malchus), just as the Sea of Solomon (the circular Mikveh in the
Temple) rested upon twelve oxen. [See KNOW YOUR BIBLE on I Kings ch 4.]

Vv 2-15: Names of the officers appointed over the twelve divisions of the Israelite
population and the months in which they served, starting from the first month of
the year (=Nissan). The officers themselves were not drawn from all of the twelve
tribes but came mainly from the tribes of Judah, Ephraim, Benjamin and the
priesthood.

Vv 16-22 give the names of the leaders of the Twelve Tribes in the time of King
David.

V 23: "But David did not count the number of those who were twenty years old and
below, because HaShem had said he would increase Israel like the stars of the
heavens." This and the following verse help throw a little more light on the
mysterious episode in which King David sought to number the Children of Israel,
only to cause a plague (above, chapter 21). Our present verse is saying that even
when David made his fateful count of the population, he did not count those aged
only twenty or below in deference to God's promise to increase Israel like the stars
of the heavens – "Just as a man cannot count the stars, so he cannot count Israel "
(Rashi ad loc.).

The text (v 24) then goes on to say that even when Yo'av tried to count those
above that age, he did not succeed in completing the count because of the anger
that broke forth against the people, because the very thought of counting the
people runs counter to God's promises to Abraham: " I will make your seed as the
dust of the earth; so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall
your seed also be numbered" (Genesis 13:16) and "Look now toward heaven and
count the stars if you can count them… so shall your seed be" (ibid. 15:5).

Vv 25-31: Names of the officers appointed over the king's agriculture and livestock.

Vv 32-34: David's inner circle of advisors. "And Houshai the ARKHI, FRIEND of the
king" (v 33). The Midrash Rabbah states that after David sinned with Bathsheva, he
asked Houshai whether, if he repented, God would accept his repentance and grant
him healing (AROUKHAH). Houshai replied in the affirmative (see Rashi on v 33).
Encouraging others to return to HaShem is an act of true friendship.

Chapter 28
At the end of his life, David assembled the entire leadership of the people, -- the
leaders of the Twelve Tribes, those of the twelve divisions of the population who
served the king, the higher and lower rank officers over the people and all his
warriors – in order to impress in their hearts and that of his successor, the tender
twelve year old Solomon, that there was now one item only on the national agenda:
building the Temple.

V 2: "And King David rose on his feet…" – "As if to say, despite the fact that his
strength was diminished on account of old age, he nevertheless determinedly stood
on his feet in honor of the leaders of Israel gathered before him" (Metzudas David).
"Hear me, my brothers and my people": in his humility, David puts himself on the
same level as the people, addressing them as his brothers.

David impresses on the people that his mission was to build the Temple, and that
having been unable to do so because his hands were bloodied with war, this
mission must now be carried out by his son Solomon, whom God had chosen for
this task out of all of his many sons. The success of the mission would depend upon
faithful adherence to the Torah by Solomon and by the entire people (vv 2-10).

Vv 11ff: "And David gave to Solomon his son the plan…" In the parallel account of
the end of David's life and the start of the reign of Solomon at the end of II Samuel
and beginning of I Kings, there seems to be no reference to David's having given
Solomon the exact plan of the Temple that he was to build. It can easily appear
from the account of the building of the Temple in the early chapters of I Kings as if
the conception and design of the Temple were essentially Solomon's,
incomprehensible as this may seem since he was only 12 years old when he
reigned. The missing link is filled in here in DIVREY HAYAMIM, explaining how David
already had the exact blueprint of every hall, chamber and courtyard in the entire
Temple complex as well as details of the functioning of the Cohanim and Levites
and precise specifications for all the different Temple vessels, including the altar,
ark, cherubs, candelabra, tables, bowls etc. etc. (vv 11-18).

"All this, [said David], is put in writing by the hand of HaShem, Who instructed me
in all the works of this plan" (v 19). Rashi (ad loc.) states that David had received
the Temple plan directly from the prophet Samuel, who darshened all the
dimensions of the Temple courtyards, buildings and vessels from the Torah through
holy spirit (See KNOW YOUR BIBLE commentary on I Samuel 19:18-19).

In the presence of the entire leadership of the people, David gave over the precious
plans to his wise young son. David had devoted his entire life to making all the
preparations necessary to implement the prophetic vision that had been entrusted
to him by Samuel. Now it was up to Solomon to take the gold, silver, bronze,
timber and stone that David had prepared and mobilize the national apparatus of
officers and functionaries that he had established in order to actually build the
Temple.

Chapter 29
In the previous chapter (I Chron. 28) we learned about the great assembly of all
the leaders of the people whom David called to Jerusalem in order to hand over the
kingship to Solomon and to deliver his last will and testament – that all the people
and Solomon in particular must follow the commandments of the Torah, and that
they must build the Temple according to the plan received by David from the
prophet Samuel.

In our present chapter David now turns to the assembly with an eloquent appeal to
contribute to the Temple building project. David's call to Israel to donate to the
building of the Temple bears comparison with Moses' call to the people in the
generation of the wilderness to contribute to the building of the Sanctuary (Exodus
35:4ff).

Vv 1-3: David emphasizes the youth and softness of Solomon, his divinely-chosen
successor, and the magnitude of the task lying ahead of him – to build a "house"
not for a man of flesh and blood but for the great and awesome One whom even
the heavens and the heavens of the heavens cannot contain (Rashi on v 1). Before
turning to the people to make their contributions, David – who knew that the best
way to teach and inspire is through example – recounts how he had put all his
strength into preparing the materials for the Temple. Before the entire assembly
David now announces that he still has a special treasury of gold and silver which a
lesser king might have kept for his successors, but which David dedicates to the
Temple project (vv 3-5). Having led the way with his own exceptional display of
generosity, David now asks the assembled leaders of the people to take up the
challenge: "And who [among you] is going to volunteer to dedicate himself to
HaShem?"

Vv 6-9: The dedications by the heads of the various families in each tribe and by
the captains of the people and the king's officers.

V 9: "Then the people rejoiced… because with a perfect heart they offered willingly
to HaShem" – "They gave with one heart with the desire of their souls and not with
two hearts. For sometimes a person gives because he is constrained to do so, not
because he really wants to – he may be ashamed of what others might think if he
doesn't. This is called 'with two hearts', but in their case, they gave with the will of
their very souls" (Rashi ad loc.)

"AND DAVID BLESSED HASHEM…" (v 10)

When David saw the people's great joy in donating to the Temple, he was
overjoyed, because all the souls of Israel were unified in this greatest of all projects
– to make a House for His Indwelling Presence in Jerusalem, the eternal city.
David's beautiful prayer of thanksgiving for God's blessings of wealth and
abundance (vv 10-13) is incorporated into the daily morning Shacharis service at
the climax of P'SUKEY DEZIMRA (the "verses of song" which precede Shema and its
blessings) after the conclusion of the Halleluiahs (Psalms 145-150), before the
Song of the Sea (Ex. 14:30-15:19).

V 10: "Blessed are You HaShem the God of Israel our father" – "The reason why he
mentions Israel (=Jacob) rather than Abraham and Isaac is because Jacob also
vowed to make dedications, as it says: 'And Jacob vowed a vow' (Genesis 28:20)"
(Rashi ad loc.).

V 11: "Yours HaShem is the greatness (=Chessed) and the might (=Gevurah) and
the glory (=Tiferes) and the victory (Netzach) and the majesty (Hod) for all-that-is-
in-the-Heaven (=Yesod) and on the earth (=Malchus) is Yours…" This verse unites
all of the seven lower Sefiros, affirming that all the plurality of creation is under the
rule and control of the One God. David thus used this occasion on which all the
leaders of Israel dedicated many different kinds of wealth to the Temple to teach
about the underlying unity of God.

Vv 14f: "But who am I and who are my people that we should be able thus to offer
willingly…?" Lest the generous donations to the building of the glorious Temple
become the cause of a swell of national self-satisfaction and arrogance, David
reminds the people that everything belongs to God and we only give Him what is
His – for we are nothing but temporary residents on His earth. "Rabbi Elazar a man
from Bartotha says, Give Him from what is His, for you and what is yours belong to
Him, and so David says, 'For everything is from You and from Your hand they have
given to You'" (Pirkey Avos 3:7). "Our days are as a shadow over the earth" (our
chapter v 15) – "And not like the shadow of a tree or even the shadow of a bird as
it flies over… but like the shadow of the wings of the bumblebee, which has wings
yet does not cast a shadow [because of the great speed at which they move]"
(Midrash Koheles 1:2, see Rashi on v 15).

V 18: "O HaShem God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel our fathers, keep this forever
in the imagination of the thoughts of the heart of Your people and direct their
hearts to You." This verse containing David's prayer that the generosity exhibited at
the time of the dedication to the Temple should be eternally planted in the hearts of
Israel is also included in the daily prayer services as part of the section U-VA
LETZION GO'EL ("And a redeemer shall come to Zion") recited after ASHREY
following the daily morning AMIDAH and TACHANUN prayers and also prior to the
afternoon AMIDAH prayer on Sabbaths and festivals and at the conclusion of the
Sabbath.

Vv 20ff: David now leads the assembly in prayer, followed the next day by
sacrifices of burnt offerings and peace offerings. But on the day of the assembly
itself the people did not have time to sacrifice because they had to go in search of
animals to buy for their offerings – Rashi on v 21.

V 22: "And they appointed Solomon the son of David king a second time…"
Solomon had already been publicly anointed as king in succession to David after the
thwarting of the conspiracy of Adoniyahu (I Kings 1:39). Now he was reconfirmed
as the new king with the mission of building the Temple. Tzaddok was concurrently
anointed as High Priest because Eviathar, who had served previously, had rebelled
by anointing Adoniahu (I Kings 1:7; Rashi on our verse).

V 23: "And Solomon sat on the throne of HaShem as king…" – "Here it is

appropriate to say that he reigned on the throne of HaShem, because the throne is
HaShem's to appoint whoever He wants as king upon it. The Midrash explains that
his throne was full just like the moon on the fifteenth of the month. For from
Abraham to Solomon there were fifteen generations: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah ,
Peretz, Hetzron, Ram, Aminadav, Nachshon, Salmah, Bo'az, Oved, Yishai, David,
Shlomo… And from Solomon onwards the kings became successively diminished in
their greatness, like the moon that steadily wanes, until Tzedekiah, whose eyes
were finally blinded" (Rashi ad loc.).

"And ALL Israel listened to him [Solomon]" – "Which had not been so in the case of
Saul – see I Samuel 10:27 – and David too initially ruled only in Hebron for seven
years" (Rashi).

V 24: Whereas David's warriors had not given their hand to Adoniahu, the entire
people and all the rest of David's sons now gave their hand in support of Solomon.

V 29: "And the acts of David the king, the first and the last, are surely written in
the book of Samuel the seer and in the book of Nathan the prophet and in the book
of Gad the seer." It is a tribute to the greatness of King David that so many books
were written recording the events of his life and times (cf. Rashi ad loc.). Metzudas
David (ad loc.) comments that the book of Samuel is that which we have in our
hands today, while Nathan and Gad wrote books that we do not have. However this
does not answer the question who wrote the sections of the book Samuel that
describe the events after the death of Samuel (i.e. from I Samuel ch 25 to the end
of II Samuel). It seems plausible that these actually consist of a weave of the
writings of Nathan and Gad, both of whom prophesied until the last days of David.
 Book of II Chronicles
Chapter 1
It is quite obvious that II Chronicles is a direct continuation from I Chronicles. In
the parchment scrolls of the prophets and holy writings (NaCh), the Hebrew
DIVREY HAYAMIM is all one book, but in printed Bibles and for reference purposes it
is divided into two books for greater convenience, to avoid an unwieldy work of 65
chapters.

Vv 1-6: The first act of Solomon's reign was to assemble all the leaders of the
people who had been present at David's final assembly in Jerusalem to Giv'on. It
was here that the Sanctuary had been located since Saul's killing of the priests of
the town of Nov, to which it had been taken after the destruction of Shilo by the
Philistines in the time of Eli the High Priest. After the Philistines returned the Ark of
the Covenant, David eventually brought it up to Jerusalem, but the sacrificial altar
still remained in the Sanctuary courtyard in Givon. Solomon's sacrifices in Giv'on
were to initiate the Temple building project with which he had been entrusted by
his father David.

"With WISDOM (Chochmah) shall the house be built" (Proverbs 24:3). Whereas the
Future Temple that we daily await is rooted in the highest Sefirah, KETER, the
crown, Solomon's Temple was rooted in the first emanation from KETER, i.e.
CHOCHMAH, as explained by Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto in "Secrets of the Future
Temple". This is why the narrative of the building of Solomon's Temple is preceded
by the narrative of his dream at Giv'on, in which he asked for the Wisdom he
needed in order to rule the people and accomplish his mission.

"The king needs a wise heart in order to know how to judge the people – and I am
but a young, soft lad! Even a thousand wise men would find it hard to judge a great
people like this. It is impossible without enormous effort because many people are
constantly coming for legal decisions and he does not have the time to examine
their cases. One person starts complaining and doesn't stop talking, and then
immediately someone else arrives and starts screaming. Who can decide a
thousand cases in one day unless he is a wise and understanding man who has the
spirit of God in him? This is what I ask – that you should give me the wisdom and
understanding to judge this great people, for this is what I need You to give me"
(Rashi on v 10).

God gave Solomon what he requested "…because a person does not ask for such a
thing except one who has fear of Heaven in his heart" (Rashi on v 11). Not only did
He give him the wisdom he asked for, but also the wealth and glory that he did not
request. "Because upon the wisdom that I am giving you depend also wealth and
glory and length of days, as it is written, 'Length of days are in her right hand, and
in her left wealth and honor' (Proverbs 3:16)" (Rashi on v 12).
 Chapter 2
The cooperation given by Hiram king of Tyre to King Solomon in building the
Temple in Jerusalem is a shining example of how the rectified Middle East should be.
In striking contrast to the ceaseless hatred and hostility shown to Israel by the
peoples of the neighboring countries in our era, Hiram, a man of outstanding vision
as well as immense practical achievement, showed genuine love for the tender,
wise young son of his old friend King David, helping to provide Solomon with the
physical means to actualize the Temple dream in this material world.

During Hiram's reign Tyre had grown from being a satellite of Sidon into the most
important of the Phoenician cities and the center of a large Mediterranean trading
empire. Through his alliance with Solomon, Hiram assured himself access to the
major trade routes to Egypt, Arabia and Mesopotamia, and with this trade both
kings became very wealthy.

As recounted in our present chapter, Hiram sent Solomon not only the immense
cedar timbers and other precious woods etc. required for the Temple building
project, but also the master craftsman who executed the work. This craftsman, who
was also called Hiram, has become a legendary figure particularly in the lore of
Freemasonry, where he is revered as the builder of Solomon's Temple. To
distinguish him from Hiram king of Tyre who sent him, Hiram the craftsman is
sometimes called Hiram Avi or Hiram Abif (based on possible interpretations of II
Chron. 2:12, see Metzudas David ad loc. and of II Chron. 4:16, see Metzudas David
& RaDaK ad loc.).

Although Hiram's father, who had himself been a master craftsman, is described as
a Tyrian man (v 13) this is not to say that he was not an Israelite but only that he
resided in Tyre . According to Rashi (on v 13) Hiram's father had been from the
tribe of Naphtali (cf. I Kings 7:14) while his widowed mother was from that of Dan.
As discussed in KNOW YOUR BIBLE commentary on I Kings ch 7, it is significant
that Dan and Naphtali were both sons of Bilhah, the handmaiden of Rachel. Just as
Moses' Sanctuary in the Wilderness had been built by Bezalel (from the tribe of
Judah son of Leah) with the help of Oholiab (from the tribe of Dan, foster son of
Rachel), so the Temple of Solomon, who came from the tribe of Judah/Leah, could
only be built with the help of Hiram the Naphtalite, who was from the children of
Rachel. Like the Sanctuary, the Temple had to be built through cooperation
between the descendants of the two Matriarchs, Rachel and Leah, who are the
embodiment of the two fundamental modes of government through which God runs
the world – the kabbalistic Partzufim of Rachel and Leah.

"And Solomon numbered all the strangers (GERIM) who were in the land of Israel"
(verse 16). As recounted in I Chron. 22:2 King David had already appointed these
GERIM in the role of hewers and carriers of the immense stones that would be used
in the building of the Temple. According to Rashi (on I Chron. 22:2) these GERIM
were converts. However, RaDaK on verse 16 in our present chapter suggests that
they may have been the residue of the Emorite, Hivvite, Perrizite and Jebusite
Canaanites whom Solomon requisitioned for these tasks and who are called GERIM
because they had ceased practicing idolatry, which was stamped out at the height
of Israelite power during the reigns of David and Solomon.

Chapter 3
"And Solomon began to build the House of HaShem in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah
…" (v 1). The text emphasizes that the Temple was built on the exact spot that had
been divinely revealed to King David. This was the place where Abraham had bound
Isaac and where Jacob had dreamed of the ladder reaching up to heaven.

In our present chapter and the next (chs 3-4) we are given an account of the
details of the Temple building and its vessels which is less than half the length of
the parallel account in I Kings chs 6-7 but which supplements it in various ways.

All of the dimensions of the Temple buildings and the design and number of its
vessels had been received prophetically by Samuel and given to David, who
entrusted them to Solomon. They all involve the deepest secrets of sacred
geometry and art, through which combinations of divine names and attributes
become embodied, expressed and revealed through the stone walls of physical halls
and chambers and through the gold, silver and bronze etc. of the vessels. The
kabbalistic meaning of the physical Temple buildings and vessels is the subject of
Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto's "Secrets of the Future Temple", which mainly
focuses on the vision of the coming Third Temple as seen by the prophet Ezekiel
(chs 40ff) but which also clarifies the principles through which the design of King
Solomon's Temple can be understood. The author of this commentary is not familiar
with any kabbalistic text that specifically discusses the meaning of the First Temple
in detail. "Secrets of the Future Temple" can be read in its entirety online at
http://www.azamra.org/secrets.shtml .

Vv 4-7: The best stone, wood, gold, silver and precious gems were used in the
Temple for the sole purpose of glorifying God and providing a fitting "House" for the
dwelling of His presence in this world. Wealth is rectified when it is devoted to the
service of God.

Vv 8-13 give the dimensions of the innermost sanctum of the Temple, the Holy of
Holies, which was to house the Ark of the Covenant. The gold-coated Ark, which
had been made by Bezalel in the time of Moses, had a golden cover (KAPORES) on
which stood two golden cherubs with outstretched wings. These are NOT the same
as the cherubs described in our present text vv 10-13, which were made for
Solomon according to the specifications given to him by King David and which stood
with their wings stretched over the Ark of the Covenant and the two cherubs of the
KAPORES (see Rashi on v 13). The Hebrew word for "cherub", K'ROOV, is explained
by the rabbis as having the connotation of "like a child" (K is the comparative "like",
ROOV from RAVIA, the Aramaic for a child or lad; Chagigah 13b, Rashi and
Metzudas David on v 10). One cherub was male and the other female, alluding
respectively to KUDSHA B'RICH HU, "the Holy One blessed be He", and His
SHECHINAH, "Indwelling Presence". They were face to face, signifying the perfect
alignment of the Supreme God and His immanent Presence.

According to our text, the span of the four wings of Solomon's cherubs was
equivalent to the entire floor space of the Holy of Holies, apparently leaving no
space for the bodies of the cherubs. Accordingly our sages stated that "the cherubs
stood through a miracle" (Bava Basra 99a), although Rashi (on verse 11) suggests
that in simple terms the cherubs' wings can be envisaged like the outstretched
wings of a bird whose body protrudes underneath. Only here in the Temple was it
permitted to make golden statues of the cherubs (see Rashi on Exodus 20:20). All
other statues in the human form are prohibited by the Second Commandment
(Exodus 20:4f).

"And before the house he made two pillars…" These two pillars flanked the entrance
to the OOLAM, the Vestibule of the main Temple building. The names given to these
pillars – YACHIN and BO'AZ – signify respectively the moon and the sun, because
the royal house of David is compared to the moon, which receives all its light from
the sun (see Rashi on v 17 where proof texts are provided establishing the
relationship between the two names and what they signify). According to another
interpretation (Rashi ibid.), Hiram called one pillar YACHIN as an allusion to the
heroic judge Samson, who came from his mother's tribe of Dan, while Solomon
called the other BO'AZ to allude to his own illustrious ancestor from the tribe of
Judah. Kabbalistically, the two pillars allude to the two "legs" of the Sefiros, i.e. the
Sefiros of Netzach and Hod.

Chapter 4
Following the description of the Temple building in the previous chapter, our text
continues with an account of the Temple vessels made by Solomon.

V 1: "And he made an altar of bronze…" Metzudas David (ad loc.) explains that the
altar that Solomon made was actually of stone (as prescribed in Exodus 20:22) but
it is described as being of bronze because it came to replace the portable bronze
altar that had been made by Moses in the wilderness (Exodus 27:1-8).

SOLOMON'S SEA

"And he made a molten sea…" (v 2). Verses 3-5 describe the great molten bronze
pool made by Solomon, while verse 6 explains that its purpose was to serve as a
purificatory ablution mikveh for the Cohanim before commencing their daily service
in the Temple.

On the basis of a careful analysis of the specifications of this pool as given here and
in the parallel text in I Kings 7:23-26, the rabbis in Talmud Eiruvin 14b deduced
mathematically that in order to contain the measure of 2000 bats of water (as
given in I Kings 7:26), the upper two cubits of Solomon's Sea must have been
round, as stated explicitly in our text, while the lower three cubits must have been
square (see Rashi on our text v 3). In contrast to the text in I Kings, our present
text gives the cubic capacity as having been 3000 bats. The rabbis explained that if
a pool of the dimensions given in our text were filled with DRY material that could
be HEAPED UP, it would indeed contain 3000 bats, while the actual cubic capacity
for LIQUID is as given in the text in I Kings. Each bat measure is the equivalent of
three SE'AH's. The minimum measure of water for a valid Mikveh is 40 se'ahs. Thus
Solomon's Sea contained sufficient water for ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MIKVEHS.

Verses 3 and 4 speak about two different sets of oxen. The two rows in the
"likeness of oxen" that circled it under its rim (verse 3) are the knobs (or
"colocynths", a lemon-shaped fruit) described in I Kings 7:24. Our text is saying
that these knobs were fashioned in the form of ox-heads. Verse four then describes
the twelve oxen on which the entire Sea of Solomon stood, three in each direction
of the compass. (The square formation of the oxen as described in our text
supports the above-cited rabbinic teaching in Eiruvin 14b that the lower part of the
pool was square.)

Solomon's "Sea" – the actual pool itself – alludes to the Sefirah of Malchus,
"Kingship", for in order to enter the service of God we must first immerse ourselves
entirely in the acceptance of the yoke of His kingship. The twelve oxen allude to the
twelve angels upon which the Shechinah "rides" in the world above – with four
camps of three angels each in each direction of the compass – and to the twelve
tribes of Israel upon which she "rides" in this world – with four camps of three
tribes each surrounding the Sanctuary in each direction of the compass. The twelve
angels and twelve tribes correspond to the twelve permutations of the essential
Name of HaShem, each of which rules through Malchus at its appointed time. The
twelve oxen of Solomon's Sea correspond to the twelve words in the verses SHEMA
YISRAEL HASHEM ELOKEINU HASHEM ECHAD and BARUCH SHEM KEVOD
MALCHUSO LE-OLAM VA-ED. When we recite these words with the intention of
taking upon ourselves the yoke of the kingship of Heaven, we bind ourselves with
all the souls of Israel – the twelve tribes – and we become the chariot of the
Shechinah (Zohar Vayechi 241a; Likutey Moharan I, 36:3).

V 6: The ten bronze lavers made by Solomon were in addition to the original bronze
laver of Moses (Exodus 30:18), which was now placed in the Temple with five of
Solomon's lavers flanking it on each side.

Vv 7-10: In accordance with the same principle as in the case of the lavers,
Solomon made ten MENORAHS (candelabra) and ten SHOW-BREAD TABLES to
stand flanking Moses' Menorah and Show-Bread Tables respectively. Moses'
Menorah stood on the south side of the Sanctuary with Solomon's Menorahs
flanking it to its south ("right") and north ("left"), while Moses' Show-Bread Table
stood on the north side of the Sanctuary with Solomon's tables to its north and
south (Shekalim 17b). There is a division of opinion in the Talmud (Menachos 98b)
as to whether all of the Menorahs were lit daily or only that of Moses and whether
bread was placed on all the tables or only on that of Moses (see RaDaK on II Chron.
4:6). In the case of the Menorahs, our text says that he made them "according to
their prescribed form" (KE-MISHPATAM). This indicates that Solomon did not make
these additional Menorahs and Tables on his own initiative but on the basis of
instructions he received from King David founded on prophecy and midrashim on
Biblical verses (see Rashi on II Chron. 4:7 and RaDaK on II Kings 8:6).

Following the account of the sacrificial vessels made for Solomon by Hiram (verse
11) the text in vv 12-18 gives a summary of all the bronze vessels that he made,
as described in detail in the previous chapter and the earlier part of the present
chapter.

V 17: "The king cast them in the plain of the Jordan … between Succoth and
Tzereidah." Rashi points out that Tzereidah was the hometown of Jeraboam, who in
the reign of Solomon's son and successor, Rehaboam, led the rebellion of the Ten
Tribes against the authority of the House of David and prevented them from going
up to the Temple in Jerusalem. Rashi brings a midrash of his uncle that
TZEREIDATHA as found in our text indicates that Jeraboam CONSTRICTED (TZAR)
the LAW of the Torah (DATH).

Vv 19-22 give a summary of the Temple vessels that were made of gold. The
"perfect gold" mentioned at the end of verse 21 was said by the rabbis to have
been the product of casting one thousand talents of gold into the crucible and
successively refining them until only a single talent of purest gold remained
(Shekalim 18a).

Chapter 5
Verse 1: "And Solomon brought in all the things that David his father had
dedicated…" Rashi (ad loc.) explains that on the level of PSHAT the verse suggests
that Solomon brought into the Temple whatever was left of his father's dedications
after using the rest for the work. Rashi also brings a midrash of the sages that
Solomon brought into the Temple treasury EVERYTHING that David had dedicated
from the treasures plundered from the nations he defeated because Solomon did
not want to use them in the Temple building. This was because he knew
prophetically that it was destined to be destroyed, and he did not want the idolaters
to be able to say that this came about through the vengeance of their gods after
the plunder from their temples was used for the Temple in Jerusalem.

Vv 2ff describe the great assembly called by Solomon in the eleventh year of his
reign at the conclusion of seven years building the Temple in order to bring in all
the vessels to their proper places and inaugurate the Temple service.

The account in our text of how the Levites brought the Ark of the Covenant to its
place in the Holy of Holies (vv 5ff) supplies the outer facts but does not give any
indication of the great drama that took place when Solomon tried to get the Ark
through the entrance of the Holy of Holies, only to find that "the gates were firmly
stuck together and could not be opened. Solomon recited twenty-four prayers but
he was not answered. He started saying, 'Lift up your heads, O gates…and let the
King of Glory enter' (Psalms 24:7) but the gates ran after him to swallow him up…
Even when he concluded, 'HaShem of Hosts, He is the King of glory, Selah!' he was
still not answered. At last he said, 'O God, do not turn away the face of Your
anointed one, remember the kindnesses of David Your servant' (II Chron. 6:42; cf.
Psalms 132:10). Only then was he answered – and all the faces of David's enemies
turned black as the bottom of a pot because the entire people and all Israel knew
that the Holy One blessed be He had forgiven him for that sin [with Bathsheva]"
(Talmud Shabbos 30a).

Verse 9: "And they drew out the poles of the Ark so that the ends of the poles were
visible from the Ark before the Sanctuary but they were not seen outside." The
commentators provide a variety of explanations of this verse. The most plausible
seems to be that of RaDaK (ad loc.): that the poles on which the Ark used to be
carried were now drawn forward towards the eastern partition of the Holy of Holies
to indicate that the Ark was now positioned in its permanent resting place and no
longer needed to be carried from place to place as in the days before the Temple
was built. However the poles could not simply be removed, because they were
needed to guide the High Priest on Yom Kippur when he had to burn incense and
sprinkle the sacrificial blood in front of the Ark and not on either side. According to
the Talmudic sages (Yoma 53b) the poles extended to the PAROCHET (screen)
dividing the Holy of Holies from the main Sanctuary, protruding just a little so that
while the poles themselves could not be seen in the Sanctuary, two protrusions
were visible on the Parochet like two nipples, in order to fulfill the verse, '…He
dwells between my breasts' (Song of Songs 1:13).

V 14: "And the priests were unable to stand to minister because of the cloud, for
the glory of HaShem filled the House of God." With all the vessels in their proper
places, the Divine Presence came to dwell in the House and the Temple was
complete.

Chapter 6
"THEN Solomon said, HaShem has said that He would dwell in the thick darkness"
(v 1) – "When Solomon saw the cloud [in the last verse of the previous chapter, II
Chron. 5:14] he said, Now I see that the Shechinah rests in the House that I have
built, for He indeed promised to come and dwell in it from the midst of cloud and
thick darkness. And where did He say so? 'For in a cloud I shall appear over the
cover of the Ark '" (Leviticus 16:2; Midrash Sifri).

The text of King Solomon's prayer on the inauguration of the Temple as given in
our present chapter, II Chron. 6:1-39, is almost completely identical with the text
as given in I Kings 8:12-52 with minor verbal differences, except that our text here
in Chronicles adds the extra detail that the king – who was aged only 23 at this
time – positioned himself on a bronze laver where all Israel could see him while he
kneeled and spread his hands to heaven in order to offer his prayer (verses 12-13,
see Rashi on v 13).

"God has spoken once; twice I have heard this" (Psalms 62:12). It is surely
significant that the lengthy text of Solomon's prayer is given twice in our Scriptures
in almost identical versions, as if to emphasize the great importance of the lessons
it teaches us about the true meaning of the Temple that he built, whose rebuilding
we await daily. King Solomon makes no mention of the animal sacrifices that are to
be brought in the Temple as ordained in Leviticus and Numbers, but only of the
prayers that Israelites and gentiles alike are to direct to God through the House and
of the repentance in the heart that is necessary in order to elicit God's forgiveness
and favor.

Solomon begins with thanksgiving for God's fulfillment of his promise to King David
to establish his son as the king who would build the Temple, because this shows His
detailed providence over all the affairs of the world. Nothing is subject to fate or
chance, and this is why prayer and repentance "work", because everything is in the
hands of God, who is responsive to men's prayers, deeds and efforts.

Vv 22-23: "If a man sins against his neighbor and an oath be laid upon him to
make him swear and the oath comes before Your Altar in this House, then hear
from heaven and do and judge Your servants by requiting the wicked by
recompensing his way upon his own head and by justifying the righteous by
rewarding him according to his righteousness." Rashi (ad loc.) explains that these
verses refer to an Israelite who is engaged in a law suit before the Beth Din
(rabbinic court) who forces his opponent to take an oath in God's name swearing
that he is telling the truth. [Under the Torah law of court procedure, imposing oaths
of various kinds on one or both sides in a case is one of the most important
sanctions that can be taken to pressure them to tell the truth or else risk the
terrible consequences of the curse included in the oath. Imposing of oaths is rarely
if ever practiced today because the great majority of people do not understand the
seriousness of lying under oath.] If the side that imposes the oath does so
truthfully while the side that swears does so falsely, God will hear in heaven, and so
will He hear if the side that imposes the oath does so unnecessarily, in which case
he is called wicked.

Another explanation of the oath in verses 22-23 is given in Tosephta of Tractate

Sotah cited by Rashi, where the man who "sins against his neighbor" is the
adulterer who goes with someone else's wife, and who is liable to the consequences
of the oath and curse administered to the wife by the priest in the Temple when she
drinks the bitter waters in accordance with the laws of Sotah, the disloyal wife
(Numbers 5:19). In the light of Rashi's explanation and that of Tosephta Sotah we
see how Solomon's prayer teaches that God watches providentially over all the
deeds and affairs of men in detail and knows the intentions in their hearts, and
repays each one according to his ways.

Vv 24-25: "And if Your people Israel are smitten before the enemy because they
have sinned against You, and they repent… forgive the sin of Your people Israel and
bring them back to the Land which You gave to them and to their fathers." With
Israel today being smitten by our enemies virtually every day on the military,
strategic and international diplomatic battlefields, we must learn from these verses
and from verses 34-39 below that the only sure way to have our territories restored
and to live in them in peace is through repentance and prayer.
Vv 26-31 teach that prayer and repentance are also the first remedy for various
natural disasters such as drought, famine, crop failure, locusts and other plagues as
well as illness and disease.

Vv 32-3: "Likewise concerning the stranger who is not of Your people Israel… and
You hear from the heavens… and do according to everything for which the stranger
calls out to You" – "In the case of an Israelite I prayed that You should give him IN
ACCORDANCE WITH HIS WAYS, but in the case of the stranger, that You should
give him according to EVERYTHING for which he calls out to You. This is because
Israel recognize the Holy One blessed be He and know that He has the power in His
hand to carry out what He wants and if the prayer of an Israelite is not answered,
he attributes it to his own sins and examines his deeds. However if the stranger is
not answered, he complains of injustice and says, I heard His fame through all the
world and I made a great effort and followed many roads until I came and prayed
in this place, and I have not found anything of substance here just as in the case of
other gods. This is why Solomon prays that 'You should do according to all that the
stranger calls out to You'" (Rashi on v 33).

Vv 36-39: Even in exile near or far from their land, Israel must direct their prayers
to God specifically through their Land, through the city of Jerusalem and through
the Temple – even if it be in ruins. For in their very essence, the Land of Israel ,
Jerusalem and the Temple all attest to God's watchful providence over all the
details of creation and to His responsiveness to prayer and repentance.

V 41: "And now arise, HaShem O God, to Your resting place… "so as not to wander
about as until now, from Shilo to Nov and from Nov to Giv'on". "…You and the Ark
of Your strength" – "The reason why it is called the Ark of Your STRENGTH is
because through it He executed His wonders and mighty deeds against the
Philistines" (Rashi ad loc.). These wonders attest to His protective providence over
the Ark and over all Israel.

Chapter 7
The parallel account of King Solomon's prayer on the inauguration of the Temple as
given in I Kings ch 8 continues in vv 55-61 with his blessing and address to the
people, asking God to incline our hearts to Him so as to follow His pathways and
keep all his commandments, and urging the people to serve Him with all their
hearts (I Kings 8 vv 58 & 61). This blessing and appeal to the people is not
recorded in our present text here in Chronicles.

On the other hand our present text adds a most important detail that is not
recorded in the parallel account in I Kings – namely the descent of FIRE FROM
HEAVEN to consume the sacrificial offerings brought by Solomon and the people (I
Kings 7:1 & 3). This was the greatest possible testimony to God's watchful
providence over the Temple and the indwelling of the Shechinah as well as being
the greatest honor to Solomon, the scion of the House of David in whose honor
Chronicles was written.

The account of Solomon's inaugural sacrifices and the conclusion of the celebration
of the consecration of the Temple as given in our present text vv 4-10 is parallel to
the account in I Kings 8:62-66.

In verse 7 of our present text, we read: "And Solomon sanctified the middle of the
courtyard that was before the House of HaShem… for the altar of bronze that
Solomon had made was not able to contain the burnt offerings and the meal
offerings and the fats" (v 7). There is a difference of opinion in the Talmud
(Zevachim 59a) as to whether Solomon literally sanctified the floor of the Temple
courtyard (AZARAH) with the sanctity of the Altar so as to be able to offer sacrifices
on it, or whether this verse in fact alludes to the Altar of stone which Solomon built
attached to the floor of the courtyard in order to replace the bronze Altar made by
Moses for the Sanctuary in the wilderness (see Rashi on II Chron. 7:7 and KNOW
YOUR BIBLE commentary on II Chronicles 4:1).

Verses 12-22 in our present text recounting God's second appearance to Solomon
in a dream (following His first dream-revelation to him at Giv'on, II Chron. 1:7-12)
are almost identical to the parallel account in I Kings 9:1-9, except for verses 13-16
in our present text, in which God specifically answers Solomon's prayers that He
should heed the people's supplications and repentance if He sends them drought,
famine and plague (see II Chron. 6:26-28 and Rashi on II Chron. 7:12-13).

God concludes His revelation to Solomon with a warning that the durability of the
House of David, the Temple and Israel's possession of their land is conditional upon
our observance of the Torah.

Chapter 8
With the completion of the Temple the Shechinah came to dwell on earth, and
during the reign of Solomon the kingdom on earth fully reflected the heavenly
kingdom just as in the middle of the lunar month the moon (MALCHUS) is directly
aligned to the sun (TIFERES) and reflects its light to perfection. Solomon's reign
was thus a time of splendor and glory in which peace reigned throughout the land
and kings, queens and princes came to listen to his wisdom.

V 2: "And as for the cities that HIRAM GAVE TO SOLOMON, Solomon built them and
settled Israelites there." In I Kings 9:12-13 we only hear of twenty cities that
SOLOMON GAVE TO HIRAM in the Galilee (which in fact did not find favor in Hiram's
eyes) while in our present text we only hear of these cities that HIRAM GAVE TO
SOLOMON. In the words of Metzudas David (ad loc.): "This is the way of the Biblical
text: what one verse passes over in silence another reveals." RaDaK (ad loc.)
suggests that Hiram gave Solomon cities in his own land in which the latter settled
Israelites in order to keep them in his possession, while Solomon gave Hiram cities
in the Galilee in order to strengthen the covenant between the two of them.

In sad contrast to the international amity that prevailed in the time of Solomon, in
today's Middle East the Arabs demand the right to settle the entire Land of Israel
while strictly prohibiting any Israelis from taking up residence in any of their
territories. But at a time when the earthly kingdom truly reflects the heavenly
kingdom as in the reign of Solomon, it is possible for the kind of "population
exchange" that is indicated by our present text in Chronicles and that in Kings, in
which Israelites can live at peace in the territories of other nations and vice versa.

V 4: "And he built Tadmor in the wilderness…" Rashi (ad loc.) notes that in I Kings
9:18 its name is written in the parchment scroll as TAMOR (the "KSIV") although it
is traditionally pronounced as TADMOR (the "KRI"). Rashi quotes the Talmud
Yevamos (16a) as saying that converts are not accepted from the TARMOODIM,
citing Bereishis Rabbah on the Akeidah giving the reason as being because they
assisted Israel's enemies, thereby CHANGING themselves (HEIMEERO, from the
same root as TAMOR, cf. TEMURAH). "This is why in Kings the name is written as
TAMOR having the connotation of exchange (TEMURAH) because they should have
acted kindly towards Israel just as Israel acted kindly to them. However in honor of
Solomon the text here in Chronicles does not call it TAMOR but TADMOR, a city of
importance, as it would not be an honor to Solomon to say here that he built a city
that rebelled against him" (Rashi on v 4). [Kabbalistically, the HEICHALEY
TEMUROS, "Palaces of Exchanges", are the source of all the confusion in this world
in which evil appears to be good and vice versa; see Rabbi Nachman's comments
on his story of The Exchanged Children, Rabbi Nachman's Stories p. 231.]

In fact, even in the reign of Solomon the seeds were planted for the disasters that
befell Israel later on, particularly through the degeneration that set in as a result of
his marriage to the daughter of Pharaoh (v 11), but in honor of the House of David,
Chronicles glozes over the negative aspects, focusing only on the positive.

Thus our text describes how Solomon built, embellished and consolidated his
kingdom on all sides (vv 3-6 and 17f). While the Canaanites who still remained in
the land despite the Israelite conquest were usually a thorn in their sides, during
the reign of Solomon they were fully subjugated and set to work to build the Torah
kingdom, while the Israelites directed the work (vv 7-9). The Temple functioned in
accordance with all the laws of the Torah and the arrangements of the Cohanim and
Levites in their various orders as established by David (vv 12-16).

Chapter 9
We cannot call the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon a case of "international
cultural EXCHANGE" because although the two exchanged many kinds of material
gifts, the cultural influence was all in one direction, from Solomon to the Queen of
Sheba.

The Targum calls her the Queen of Z'MARGAD (=Emerald? Turquoise? Cf. Targum
on Ex. 28:18). Likewise the Targum on Job 1:15, "And SHEVA struck and took
[Job's cattle]," renders: "And Lilith the Queen of Z'MARGAD attacked", thereby
linking the Queen of Sheba with the legendary queen of the demons. As discussed
in KNOW YOUR BIBLE on I Kings ch 10, there is a Talmudic opinion stating that
"whoever says that the Queen of Sheba was a woman is simply mistaken; what is
MALKHAS Sheba? It is the kingdom (MAMLEKHES) of Sheba!" (Bava Basra 15b).
However, Maharsha (ad loc.) explains that all the Talmud means here is that the
Queen of Sheba was not merely the wife-consort of a King of Sheba but that she
was actually a Queen in her own right, and the classical rabbinic commentators
relate to the story of her visit on the level of PSHAT as a visit paid by one monarch
to another.

Sheba is traditionally associated with Ethiopia, although the Arabs venerate a

Temple of the Queen of Sheba in Yemen. It is quite plausible that the sea-faring
Ethiopian kingdom colonized and held sway over the Arabian coastline, which is
quite nearby across the Red Sea. It was doubtless through King Solomon's trading
ventures from the Red Sea port of Eilat as described in the previous chapter (II
Chron. 8:17) that his fame spread to Sheba.

According to Rashi (on v 4) what impressed the Queen of Sheba about Solomon's
table was the geese and other abundant delicacies, while the way his servants sat
impressed her because each one knew his proper place according to his rank. Each
stood at his post of duty without changing it every day, yet the apparel they wore
today they would not wear tomorrow! She was particularly impressed by the special
pathways by which he would ascend to the House of HaShem (for Solomon,
everything led to HaShem) – "…and there was no more spirit in her". "She used to
think that there was no wisdom in any of the other kingdoms except for hers,
because her land was in the east and for this reason they were exceptionally wise
because they gazed at the constellations… but 'the wisdom of Solomon was more
abundant than all the wisdom of the children of the east' (I Kings 5:10; Rashi on I
Chron. 9:4).

V 17: "And the king made a great throne of ivory and he coated it with pure gold."
Solomon's throne – which expressed how the earthly kingdom reflects the heavenly
kingdom – is the subject of an abundantly rich tapestry of midrashic embellishment
collected at very great length in Targum Sheni on Esther verse 2. According to
Targum Sheni on Esther, it was made for Solomon by Hiram the craftsman to
symbolize Solomon's rule over all aspects of creation, but as a result of our sins it
was captured by Nebuchadnezzar and taken to Babylon, after which it finally came
to the hands of Ahasuerus. The latter was unable to sit on it and was forced to
order his craftsman to make an inferior version in order to make it appear as if he
was sitting on the throne of Solomon.

V 29: "And the other acts of Solomon, the first and the last, are written in the
words of Nathan the Prophet and in the prophecy of Ahiyah the Shilonite and in the
visions of Yedo the seer against Jeraboam son of Nevat." According to Rashi, the
"words of Nathan" are contained in II Samuel 12:1-25 while the prophecy of Ahiyah
is in I Kings 11:29-31.

V 30: "And Solomon ruled in Jerusalem over all Israel for forty years." In this
respect Solomon was greater than his father David, who ruled in Hebron for seven
years over the tribe of Judah and only ruled in Jerusalem over all Israel for thirty-
three years (Rashi ad loc.).

Chapter 10
"And Rehav'am went to Shechem…" (v 1). The town of Shechem had already been
marked out for troubles from the times of Jacob and Joseph (Gen. ch's 34 and
37:13). Shechem (=" Nablus ") was in the very heartland of the tribe of Ephraim,
the tribe of Yerav'am (Jeraboam). Since the book of Chronicles was written to give
honor to the House of David, our present text refrains from clarifying why Yerav'am
had fled from King Solomon to Egypt. However, what is lacking here is set forth in I
Kings 11:26-40, which tells that Yerav'am – who had been handpicked for his
diligence by Solomon to serve as his chief collector of taxes from the tribe of
Ephraim – had dared to criticize the king for encroaching on the pilgrims' right of
way in Jerusalem in order to build accommodations for Pharaoh's daughter and her
household. This turned Yerav'am into a traitor, thereby preparing him for his
subsequent role as the leading antagonist against the House of David. Thus it was
that Solomon's marriage with Pharaoh's daughter kindled the popular resentment
that culminated with the tearing of the kingdom into two at the start of the reign of
his successor Rehav'am, as had been prophesied by Ahiyah HaShiloni (I Kings
11:29ff).

V 4: "Your father made our yoke hard…" According to the simple meaning of the
text (PSHAT), the people's main grudge against the monarchy was because of the
heavy taxes they had to bear. In the words of Rashi (ad loc.): "[Your father] was a
man who was preoccupied with the exertion of building, and he put on us the
burden of financing his workers and paying taxes…"

From Rehav'am's eventual answer to the people's request to lighten their burden,
"My little finger will be thicker than my father's loins" (v 10), our commentators
infer that the new king had every intention of further enhancing the glory and
splendor of the monarchy at the expense of the people. In the words of Metzudas
David (on vv 10-11): "I am on a higher level than my father and it is necessary for
me to have many horses and to expand my household. And if I am going to have
more horses and a bigger household, seeing as my father already put a weighty
yoke upon you, I am going to add to the burden because everything will be upon
you to finance." From the program of fortifications and military strengthening which
Rehav'am later initiated in Judea and Benjamin as described in the following
chapter (II Chron. 11:5-12), we can only imagine what he initially had in mind prior
to the split in the kingdom in order to fortify the territories of the other tribes and
to build Israel into the supreme world power.

One wonders if another dimension of the dispute between Yerav'am and the
populace relates to the spiritual "burden" that Solomon had placed upon the people.
It is known that certain important rabbinic ordinances were instituted by Solomon
and his Beth Din – such as the washing of hands (NETILAS YADAYIM) before eating
HULLIN (regular food as opposed to Terumah) and the practice of using an ERUV on
Shabbos in order to permit carrying in enclosed public areas even though this is not
forbidden MID'ORAISO without an ERUV. Were the people asking Rehav'am to
adopt a new course of spiritual leadership that would involve fewer stringencies and
greater leniency? If this is so, we may discern an interesting parallel between the
split in the time of Rehav'am and the split inish "kingdom", where various halachic
stringencies (CHUMRAS) pursued in certain sections of the Torah-observant
community appear to impel other sectors to seek greater leniency and "freedom"
and even to abandon Torah observance altogether.

If there is any validity in this parallel, it may be that the elders who counseled
Yerav'am to come towards the people were offering similar counsel to that of Rabbi
Nachman, who urged us not to adopt unnecessary stringencies in our practice of
the Torah but rather to strive to keep all the commandments according to the
simple interpretation of the law without seekin today's Jewg to go beyond it (Rabbi
Nachman's Wisdom #235). However the "children" who had grown up with
Rehav'am (who in the age of Solomon would all have been brilliant Torah scholars)
advocated what a tough, inflexible front, advising the new king not to loosen up by
providing KOOLAS (leniencies) but rather to tighten up and impose even more
CHUMRAHS (stringencies, vv 8-11).

In this context it is highly illuminating to consider comments made by R. Baruch

Halevy Epstein, author of the "Torah Temimah", about his father, R. Yechiel Michel
Epstein 1829-1907, author of ARUCH HASHULCHAN, a brilliant, detailed multi-
volume analysis of every law and subject area in the SHULCHAN ARUCH by an
outstanding GAON OLAM (luminary of world stature). The Torah Temimah quotes
his father – who was a Rav in Belorussia – as having emphasized that while it is
much easier to give a stringent ruling than a lenient one, the latter requires greater
Torah wisdom, and wherever possible the Rav should endeavor to give a lenient
ruling as long as it is fully in accord with all the principles of the Halachah.

Rehav'am promised to chastise the people with scorpions, and this is indeed what
happened, because when Yerav'am led the Ten Tribes in their rebellion against the
House of David, he decided to stop people going to Jerusalem for the pilgrim
festivals (which would have led to their reconciliation) by establishing an idolatrous
festival in Beth El to rival the festival of Succoth. Yerav'am's festival was a month
after Succoth on the 15 th of Marcheshvan, the astrological sign of which is
SCORPIO!!! The month of Marcheshvan has often proved to be a time of
chastisement and suffering for the people of Israel.

"…and now, David, look to your house!" (v 16). The people's contemptuous
rejoinder to Rehav'am was, in the words of Rashi (ad loc.): "We can bear neither
you nor your Temple!" With this began the split between the Ten Tribes and those
of Judah and Benjamin under the House of David that has been the defining feature
of the history of Israel ever afterwards, and which has ramifications until today. In
many ways the gulf between today's remnant of Torah-observant faithful and the
extensive rainbow of other latter-day orientations to being Jewish or Israeli is a
manifestation of this same split.

Chapter 11
Civil wars among the tribes of Israel had recurred from the times of the Judges
until the war between the House of Saul and the House of David, and only the
generously conciliatory attitude of King David had brought peace and unity to the
nation. Eighty years after the death of Saul, Rehav'am initially wanted to use
military might to coerce the Ten Tribes into returning under his tutelage (our
present chapter, verse 1) but he had the good sense to heed the words of the
prophet Shemayah and to abstain from unleashing an all-out civil war, which could
only have led to disaster because the split in the kingdom was divinely ordained.

Instead Rehav'am had to content himself with a lower-key way of pursuing the
expansionist ambitions of his father Solomon by building new and reinforcing
existing fortified towns all over Judea and Benjamin (vv 5-12). As we learn from
our text, all these towns were well provided with abundant supplies of food and
water (see Rashi on v 5) as well as military arms.

With the Ten Tribes under the leadership of Yerav'am deviating ever further into
idolatry, they had little use for the Cohanim and Levites, whose entire function and
organizational basis were bound up with their service in the Temple in Jerusalem.
Ever since the marriage of Aaron the High Priest with Eli-sheva, daughter of
Aminadav, Prince of the Tribe of Judah (Ex. 6:23), the priesthood had been closely
bound up with the kingship of the royal tribe, and thus it was natural for the priests
and Levites to continue their alliance with the House of David and gravitate to
Jerusalem (verse 13). Yerav'am established his own religious functionaries to serve
in Beth El and other cult centers (v 15), while the remaining Torah-faithful
members of the Ten Tribes went to Jerusalem to serve the God of their fathers (v
16).

Rehav'am sensibly used a series of marriage alliances within the tribe of Judah to
consolidate his power over his fellow tribesmen (vv18-21).

V 23: "And he DEALT WISELY (VA-YIVEN, lit. 'and he UNDERSTOOD') and dispersed
all of his children throughout all the districts of Judah and Benjamin to every
fortified city." Metzudas David (ad loc.) explains: "He understood that he was faced
with a rebellion and he was afraid of it, and for this reason he consolidated his
position by scattering all his sons to all the different territories of Judah and
Benjamin and to all the fortress cities in order to guard him from any rebellion. 'And
he sought many wives' – to marry them to his sons in order to consolidate his
kingship with the help of the fathers of these wives."

Chapter 12
Our chapter traces the beginning of Judah's descent into degeneracy, which started
in the reign of Rehav'am, and the consequences to which it led.

"And it came to pass that as Rehav'am established the kingdom and strengthened
himself, he forsook the Torah of HaShem and all Israel with him" (v 1). The
conventional printed Bibles make this verse the first verse of a new chapter, but in
the Hebrew text as written in the parchment scroll it is actually the closing verse of
the previous section, which runs continuously from II Chron. 11:18 until 12:1,
while the new section (PARSHAH PESUCHAH), which opens at 12:2, relates the
consequences of their deviation from the Torah – the attack on Jerusalem by
Sheeshak king of Egypt. In concluding the previous section, which explained how
Rehav'am consolidated his hold over Judah, by saying that he then forsook the
Torah, our text seems to imply that the reason was because he fell into
complacency, saying that "My power and the strength of my hand have gotten me
this might" (Deut. 8:17).

The parallel account in I Kings 14:22-24 specifies in what way Rehav'am and the
people forsook the Torah – by making private altars after the Temple had already
been built, establishing Asherah (tree-worship) cults, and permitting the spread of
prostitution and immorality, all of which were strictly forbidden under Torah law.
We need not assume that the people totally forsook all kinds of Torah practice in
the same way that today many have become completely "secularized". The flaw lay
in the fact that while they continued following the commandments, particularly
those relating to the Temple, they simultaneously opened themselves to other cults
and practices, which weakened their loyalty to HaShem, who wants us to serve Him
with undivided hearts.

In retribution God sent Sheeshak with a vast army of Egyptians, Libyans and other
African peoples to invade Israel. It appears that Sheeshak may have been a Libyan
general who had replaced the previous dynasty of Pharaohs with whom Solomon
had been allied in marriage. Sheeshak had already showed his hostility to the royal
house in Jerusalem by giving hospitality to Yerav'am when he fled from Solomon (I
Kings 11:40). It appears that Sheeshak now wanted to take advantage of
Rehav'am's weakness in order to turn Israel back into being essentially a province
under the dominion of Egypt as it had been in former times.

Sheeshak's invasion caused a wave of repentance in Rehav'am and his officers

when the prophet Shemayah explained to them that they had brought it upon
themselves because of their own backsliding. After two generations of national
independence and dominion over others in the reigns of David and Solomon , Israel
would once again taste the bitterness of threats from and subjugation to other
nations in order to learn the difference between serving God and serving the
kingdoms of the various lands (cf. verse 8). As a result of the repentance of
Rehav'am and his officers, God did not let Sheeshak realize his imperial ambitions,
but the Egyptian king did succeed in looting many of the treasures amassed by
David and Solomon. Despite being chastened, Rehav'am did not repent completely
and is criticized in our text for failing to set himself wholeheartedly to search out
Hashem (v 14).

"Now the acts of Rehav'am… are written in the book of Shemayah the prophet and
of Iddo the seer…" (v 15). Rashi (ad loc.) writes that each prophet wrote his own
book containing his prophecies. In the following chapter (II Chron. 13:22) Iddo's
book is called a MIDRASH. It seems possible that the Book of Kings consists of a
weave (MASECHET) of such writings.

Chapter 13
Having reigned for seventeen years, Rehav'am was succeeded by his son AVI-YAH,
who in the parallel account in I Kings 15:1 is called AVI-YAM. There in Kings only
the barest outline is given of the brief three-year reign of Avi-yah, who is simply
described as having followed all the sins of his father before him and as having not
been whole-hearted with HaShem in the way that David had been (I Kings 15:3).
Our present text gives us a closer look at Avi-yah, who apparently sought to bring
back the Ten Tribes under the tutelage of the House of David through a
combination of military might (or bluff?) and intense psychological pressure. He
was bold enough to take an army of four hundred thousand soldiers against an
opponent who was able to field double that number (verse 3). In his speech to
Yerav'am and the Ten Tribes, Avi-yah asserts the legitimacy of the Davidic
monarchy against Yerav'am's rebel regime, whose sham idolatrous priesthood of
upstarts he contrasts with the authentic Cohanim and Levites who practiced all the
Temple rites in Jerusalem exactly as ordained in the Torah. In the merit of their
service Avi-yah was apparently confident that he would be granted an easy victory,
but his army was in great danger when Yerav'am sent a detachment to attack them
from the rear. They rose to the occasion with a display of trust in God, and Avi-yah
was able to deliver a mighty though not decisive blow to the Ten Tribes. According
to Midrash Rabbah cited by RaDaK on v 17 of our present text, "the great blow"
with which Avi-yah struck them was more than just killing five hundred thousand of
them. He intentionally left the bodies of the slain Israelites until their faces were
unrecognizable so that they would not be able to be identified, with the result that
women whose husbands had gone to the battle would not know definitely if they
had been widowed or not and would thus be left as AGUNAHS never able to
remarry.

"Nor did Yerav'am recover strength in the days of Avi-ah AND HASHEM STRUCK
HIM AND HE DIED" (V 20). The simple meaning appears to be that HaShem struck
Yerav'am, who died, but in fact it is clear from our texts that Yerav'am lived for two
years after the death of Avi-yah, and the Midrash learns that AND HASHEM STRUCK
HIM refers not to Yerav'am but to Avi-yah, who was punished because after
capturing Beth El he failed to uproot the idolatrous cult of the golden calf, and also
because in his speech to the Ten Tribes he castigated Yerav'am publicly (see Rashi
on v 20 and RaDaK at length ibid.).

Chapter 14
Asa already began to rule over Judah when his father Avi-yah became sick, and
after his death reigned for forty-one years spanning the rule of eight kings of Israel
(Yerav'am ben Nevat, Nadav, Ba'sha, Eilah, Zimri, Tivni, Omri and Ahab). Asa is
considered to have been a righteous king (although this was somewhat marred
towards the end of his life, as we will see in II Chron. 16).

It happened numerous times in the history of the kings of Judah that one or more
generations of kings who veered from the Torah were succeeded by a saintly
revivalist king who effected a spiritual re-arousal in the people. This was so in the
case of Asa, the fifth king after David, following Rehav'am and Avi-yah, both of
whom had strayed successively further from the true path of the Torah. Asa's first
acts were to remove the various idolatrous cult altars etc. that had infiltrated Judah,
and as we read in our text (v 5) God rewarded him with peace and quiet after the
warfare that had plagued the people in the reigns of Rehav'am (vs. Sheeshak of
Egypt) and Avi-yah (vs Yerav'am king of Israel).

"And Zerach the Kushite went out with an army of a thousand thousands…" (v 8).
According to the rabbis (Pesachim 119a), God saw Asa's righteousness and wanted
to return all the treasures that had been plundered from Jerusalem in the time of
Rehav'am. He thus arranged for Zerach to carry all these treasures with him as he
went out to battle. Zerach is identified by some historians with Pharaoh Assarchan I,
who like Sheeshak was the founder of a Libyan dynasty of kings of Egypt and who
shared his ambitions to reincorporate Israel as a province under the Egyptian
sphere of influence. Zerach advanced with his million-strong army along the coastal
plain via Gaza to Ashkelon, from where he turned eastwards to Gath and onwards
to Mareshah (which is about midway between Gath and Hebron), threatening the
very heartland of Judea.

Asa's prayer as he went out to meet these hordes in battle is in the tradition of bold
Davidic faith and trust that God has the power to help even the weak and helpless
(vv 10-11). God struck the Zerach and his African armies and Asa and his men
chased them back to G'rar (known to us from the days of Abraham, Gen. 20:1ff)
southwest of Gaza, returning with enormous plunder.

Chapter 15
The prophecy of Azaryahu ben Odeid to Asa and all the people was intended to take
advantage of the atmosphere of triumph after the defeat of Zerach and his hordes
in order to drive home the essential message of all the prophets: that if Israel will
search out HaShem and follow His Torah, their enemies will fall before them and
they will have peace in their land.

"Now for a long time Israel has been without the true God and without a teaching
priest and without Torah" (v 3). In the Hebrew text, the same words can be read as
a comment about the past or a prophecy of what was yet to come. In Midrash
Vayikra Rabbah ch 19 they are interpreted as a future prophecy that a time would
come when no justice would be visible in the world, when the role of the high priest
would become defunct and when there would be no more Sanhedrin. The Midrash
says that on hearing this, the people of Asa's generation felt completely helpless,
until a prophetic voice said to them, "But as for you, be strong and do not let your
hands become weak, for there is a reward for your work" (v 7). We may learn from
this that even though in our own times the world seems to be becoming darker and
darker in many ways, it is up to us to strengthen ourselves and continue in the path
of the Torah, "…for there is a reward for your work!"

Azariah's prophecy inspired King Asa to redouble his efforts to purify the land of
idolatry and to renovate the Temple Altar , after which he called a great assembly
of all the people in Jerusalem , including many from the other tribes besides Judah
and Benjamin who had come to join him. Being held in the third month (Sivan) this
assembly was like a new Receiving the Torah (which originally took place in the
month of Sivan) and Asa renewed the Covenant between God and Israel . Present-
day lovers of freedom and tolerance may be interested to note that any man,
woman or child who did not join in this national commitment to search out HaShem
was to be killed (v 13).

"And even Ma'achah the mother did Asa the king remove from being queen…" (v
16). There is some debate about the exact identity of this Ma'achah (see Rashi and
RaDaK ad loc. and Rashi on II Chron. 13:2). According to RaDaK she was Ma'achah
daughter of Absalom, who was not Asa's mother but his grandmother – i.e. the
mother of King Avi-yah and the widow of Rehav'am. She was thus the dowager
Queen Mother and a woman who presumably had formidable prestige and influence
in the kingdom. That Asa was able to remove her entrenched idolatry (which
according to the rabbis was sculpted with a phallus that she used regularly, see
Rashi on v 16) was an enormous achievement, and in reward for his efforts he was
spared war for most of the rest of his reign (v 19).
 Chapter 16
The last verse of the previous chapter said, "And there was no war until the thirty-
fifth year of the reign of Asa" (II Chron. 15:19). The first verse of our present
chapter then continues: "In the THIRTY-SIXTH YEAR of the reign of Asa, Ba'sha
king of Israel came up against Judah …" (II Chron. 16:1).

As the Midrash Seder Olam points out, it is impossible to take these verses literally,
because Ba'sha king of Israel had already died in the twenty-sixth year of the reign
of Asa (see I Kings 16:8). As explained by Seder Olam and the commentators
(Rashi on II Chron. 15:19, Metzudas David and RaDaK on II Chron. 16:1), Ba'sha's
attack on Judah actually took place in the SIXTEENTH YEAR of Asa's reign, which
was THIRTY-SIX YEARS after the death of King Solomon (because Rehav'am
reigned 17 years and Avi-yah for 3 years. 17 + 3 + 16 = 36).

Solomon had married Pharaoh's daughter in the fourth year of his reign, and since
he died after reigning forty years, he was with her for THIRTY-SIX YEARS. Because
of this sin, it was originally decreed that the kingdom would be split into two, Judah
and Israel, for THIRTY-SIX YEARS, ending in the SIXTEENTH YEAR of Asa's reign.
Had Asa stood up properly to the test when Ba'sha attacked Judah, trusting only in
God for deliverance, our rabbis say that He would have given him victory not only
over the Ten Tribes but over the Arameans as well, and Asa would have been able
to restore the kingdom of the House of David over all the Twelve Tribes of Israel,
thereby bringing complete redemption. But instead of relying on prayer and faith
alone, Asa employed material means to try to overcome Ba'sha through bribing
Ba'sha's Aramean allies to attack him from the rear (vv 2-3). As a result the
opportunity for the reconciliation of Judah-Benjamin and the Ten Tribes was lost,
and at the end of his Asa became angry, tyrannical and physically sick.

Ba'sha apparently wanted to recover the areas of Mount Ephraim that King Avi-yah
had captured (II Chron. 13:19; 15:8). Ba'sha imposed a blockade on the northern
border of Judah by fortifying Ramah to the north of Jerusalem, south of the
Ephraimite cult center of Beth El (our present chapter, v 1). Asa's bribe to Ben
Hadad king of Aram in Damascus (vv 2-3) persuaded the latter to stage predatory
attacks on the tribes Dan and Naftali way up in the north of Israel (v 4), and news
of these attacks caused Ba'sha to end his blockade of Judah (v 5).

V 6: "And King Asa took ALL JUDAH and they carried away the stones and timbers
of Ramah that Ba'sha built…" In the parallel account in I Kings 15:22 we learn that
not only did Asa take ALL JUDAH but also that "NO ONE WAS EXEMPT" (EYN NAKI).
Our rabbis explain that he considered the work so urgent that he mobilized all the
Torah scholars despite the law that Torah scholars are not required to go out in
person when the public is mobilized to carry out building and excavation works in
the country (Rambam Talmud Torah 6:10), and he even mobilized brides and
grooms from their marital canopies, contrary to the Torah law that a groom is
exempt from any wartime duties in his first year after marriage in order to be
"clean" and free for his house (=his wife, NAKI LE-VEISO, Deut. 24:5).

At exactly this time Hanani the Seer came to reprove Asa for having relied on the
stratagems of this world in bribing the king of Aram to attack Ba'sha instead of
relying only on God. Had Asa put all his trust in God as he had done when Zerach
the Kushi attacked with his million-strong army (II Chron. 14: 9ff), the king of
Aram would have been delivered into his hands as well as the king of Israel, "for
the eyes of HaShem run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself
strong on behalf of those whose heart is perfect towards Him" (v 9). Instead, the
Arameans continued as hostile enemies of Judah and Israel until the time of King
Ahaz, when they and the Ten Tribes fell into the hands of Pilessar king of Assyria
(see Rashi on our present chapter verse 4).

Having failed in his test, King Asa was in no mood to hear the reproof of the
prophet, whom he angrily imprisoned, after which he subjected part of his own
population to tyrannical oppression, presumably in order to stamp out protests.

V 12: "And Asa was diseased… in his LEGS, UP TO ABOVE WAS HIS ILLNESS." The
saintly Asa, whose early career had been filled with such promise, was one of five
who were "created with a semblance of the supernal form" and all of whom were
punished accordingly. These were Samson, who suffered with the loss of his
STRENGTH; Saul, whose NECK was above everyone else's but who eventually fell
with it on his own sword; Absalom, who died hanging by his Nazirite HAIR,
Tzedekiah, whose EYES were gouged out, and Asa who became sick in his LEGS
(Sotah 10a).

Asa's "podagra" (=gout), which is said to cause pain like pins in raw flesh (ibid.)
was not only a physical illness. It was UP TO ABOVE, i.e. it had spiritual
ramifications at the highest levels, because Asa had been destined to be the LEGS
upon which the House of David would rise and stand again but for his flaw of
employing the Torah scholars, who are TOMCHEY ORAISO, the LEGS and
supporting pillars of the Torah, in demeaning physical labor together with the
unlearned common people. This flaw was the spiritual root of his illness, but Asa did
not want to go to the prophet in order to seek out what God was teaching him
through this illness. Instead he tried to cure it by physical means, turning to the
doctors.

Despite this tragic end, Asa was buried with the utmost honor, having in his earlier
career succeeded in swinging Judah around from its descent into idolatry and
immorality and bringing about a spiritual revival among the people that lasted into
the reign of his son Yehoshaphat.

Chapter 17
The time of Yehoshaphat, who reigned in Jerusalem for twenty-five years, was a
golden age in comparison with the clouded times of Yerav'am, Avi-yah and the later
years of Asa. This was because "HaShem was with Yehoshaphat because he walked
in the first ways of his father David…" (v 3) – i.e. as David had walked in
righteousness before his sin with Batsheva and in conducting a census of the
population. Solomon's reign had been marred because his foreign lives led him
astray; Rehav'am had abandoned the Torah, and Asa had not depended on
HaShem in war, but Yehoshaphat was like his "father" David, who was
wholeheartedly devoted to HaShem (see Rashi on verse 3). At a time when the
prestigious kingdom of Israel under Ahab were worshipping the Baal, Yehoshaphat
remained loyal to the God of his "father" and followed His commandments (vv 3-4).

V 6" "And his heart was lifted up in the ways of HaShem…" (v 6). Despite the
material support that Yehoshaphat enjoyed from all Judah giving him enormous
wealth and glory (v 5), he did not become arrogant as a result. For him wealth and
glory were of no significance at all compared to the ways of HaShem (Metzudas
David ad loc.).
 THE OUTREACH KING

The rabbis said of Yehoshaphat that when he would see a Torah scholar, he would
rise from his throne and hug and kiss him, calling him "My teacher! My teacher! My
master! My master" (Maccos 24a). His father, King Asa, had demeaned the Torah
scholars in taking them out of the study halls to work side by side with the common
people, carrying, digging and building. But King Yehoshaphat now took the Torah
itself out to the ordinary people in order to teach and elevate them. "In the third
year of his reign he sent his ministers… to teach in the cities of Judah, and with
them the Levites… and with them the Sefer Torah of HaShem, and they went
around all the cities of Judah and they taught the people" (vv 7-9).

This mass arousal to the study of the Torah was sufficient to throw all of the
surrounding kingdoms into FEAR: "And the fear of HaShem was on all the kingdoms
of the lands that were around Judah and they did not fight with Yehoshaphat" (v
10). Here in a nutshell is Israel's true and lasting solution to the entire Middle East
problem and the hostility of all the surrounding countries: send outreach rabbis
with Sefer Torahs into all the cities and gather the people to teach them the Torah!
Simple!!! Even the Philistines (=Palestinians?) and the Arvee-im (=Arabs?) sent
gifts of gratitude to Yehoshaphat (v 11) for saving them from having to make war
with Israel!!!

"And Yehoshaphat was continuously getting greater (HOLECH VE-GADEL) up above"

(v 12). "Three were described with this same expression (i.e. using the continuous
present verbal form GADEL, instead of the adjective GADOL, which would suggest
that they had attained absolute greatness): Isaac, Samuel and Yehoshaphat. The
reason in Yehoshaphat's case is because it says that he was getting greater UP
ABOVE, and it would not be appropriate to say that he was 'great' compared to
Hashem. Similar reasons necessitate the use of the same phrase in the cases of
Samuel and Isaac. But three were described with the adjective GADOL, 'great' in
absolute terms: Moses, David and Mordechai…" (see Rashi on v 12).

Chapter 18
"And Yehoshaphat… allied himself in marriage with Ahab" (v 1). The book of
Chronicles was written in honor of the House of David and therefore, unlike the
parallel texts in the book of Kings, gives only those details of the story of the kings
of Israel that are strictly relevant to that of the kings of Judah. For better
understanding of the narrative in the present chapter about King Yehoshaphat's
joint military campaign with Ahab against Aram, which ended up with Ahab's death
on the battlefield, it is necessary to keep in mind what we already know of the story
of Ahab from the book of Kings

Yehoshaphat's marriage alliance with Ahab – Yehoshaphat married his son Yehoram
to Ahab's daughter – was itself an aspect of his policy of "outreach", which was
evident in the previous chapter in his sending sages with a Sefer Torah on a circuit
of all the cities of Judah in order to teach the people Torah. It appears that in
reaching out now to Ahab with this marriage alliance and following it up with
strategic cooperation despite the fact that Ahab "did evil in the eyes of HaShem
more than all who were before him" (I Kings 16:30), Yehoshaphat was hoping to
coax the sinful idolaters of Shomron back into the fold of the Torah. In this case
Yehoshaphat's outreach activities very nearly cost him his life when he narrowly
escaped being killed in battle (vv 31-32 in our present chapter).

Ahab's campaign against the Arameans in Ramoth Gil'ad as described in our

present chapter followed his miraculous victories over Ben Hadad of Aram when the
latter laid siege to Shomron, after which Ahab allowed himself to be enticed by the
wily Arameans into showing entirely misplaced magnanimity in not only forgiving
Ben Hadad but even making a covenant with him (I Kings ch 20). Now Ahab found
it necessary to go up to the Golan Heights to fight the Arameans again. As we learn
from the commentators on our present chapter, he was seduced into entering the
battle in which he was to die by the vengeful spirit of Naboth, whom Ahab, at the
instigation of his wife Jezebel, had killed on trumped up charges in order to take his
vineyard, which the king so coveted (I Kings ch 21).

Ahab asks his in-law Yehoshaphat if he will join him in his forthcoming campaign
and Yehoshaphat – anxious to reach out to Ahab – unhesitatingly agrees: "I am as
you are and my people are as your people" (v 3). As if to say with a face wreathed
in smiles, "You may be idolaters while we are loyal to the Torah, but aren't we all
one people?"

Despite going so far overboard in reaching out to the sinful Baal-worshipper Ahab,
Yehoshaphat was anxious to hear what the prophets would say about the prospects
for the success of the coming campaign. Rashi (on v 5) deduces that the four
hundred prophets that Ahab assembled must have been true prophets of HaShem
as opposed to the usual run of Ahab's Baal-worshiping Shomronite false prophets,
because Yehoshaphat – disconcerted by their unanimous answer – asks, "Is there
not here YET ANOTHER prophet of HaShem?" (v 6). Rashi (on v 5) explains that
Yehoshaphat had a tradition that no two prophets ever prophesy in exactly the
same style and exactly the same words, and this was why he felt uneasy.

Michayahu ben Yimla, the true prophet whose messages Ahab did not like to hear
but whom he nevertheless now summoned, may already have been held in prison
at this time, because in verse 25 Ahab orders him to be RETURNED into custody
(see Rashi on v 26). Tzidkiyahu ben Kenaanah, who made iron horns prophesying
that "with these shall you gore Aram" (v 10) and who later struck Michayahu on the
jaw, is cited in the Talmud as the archetype of the false prophet who delivers
messages he has not received prophetically (Sanhedrin 89a).

In order to hear the prophets, the two kings are seated on their thrones attired in
magnificent ceremonial garb in a threshing floor – a large open space – outside the
entrance to the city of Shomron . Rashi (on v 9) explains that the reason why our
text specifies that they were in this open space is to let us know that the entire
spectacle was witnessed by Aramean spies, who would have aroused suspicion had
they been found in the city but who could claim that they had stopped by to take a
look at the assembly outside the gates because it had caught their attention while
they were innocently passing by. These Aramean spies apparently knew better than
Ahab which of the prophets was telling the truth and they heard how Michayahu,
when pressed, told his vision of all Israel scattered on the mountains like a flock
with no shepherd and no master, which clearly indicated that while the people
would escape from the battle, it was decreed that Ahab would be killed (v 16 and
Rashi ad loc.). This was why the king of Aram gave his troops specific instructions
not to fight with any Israelite, small or great, except the king (v 30) – "targeted
assassination"!

In Michayahu's vision of the celestial court in judgment against Ahab (vv 18-22),
the RU'ACH ("spirit") that stands before HaShem offering to entice him into battle
was the soul of the murdered Naboth (Rashi on v 20). In order to avenge his killing,
this spirit was permitted to inspire even the truth prophets with a false message so
that Ahab would go into the battle and meet his death.
Sensing the danger he was in, Ahab attempted to disguise himself so that he would
not be recognizable to the Arameans, but no human ploys can thwart the will of
God and an archer innocently fired an arrow that penetrated the gap between
Ahab's helmet and body armor, killing him. Interestingly, Rashi on verse 33 argues
that the archer must have been an Israelite because Ahab's identity was not visible
while the Arameans had been instructed to attack no-one except the king. Yet on I
Kings 22:34, Rashi states that the archer was the Aramean captain Na'aman
(whom Elisha cured from leprosy, II Kings ch 5).

Chapter 19
King Yehoshaphat was fortunate to escape the battle in Ramoth Gil'ad alive and
return to Jerusalem, where Yehu ben Hanani castigated him for helping the wicked
and showing love to those who hate HaShem (v 2). But as Yehu's prophecy shows,
God prefers to look at a person's good side rather than dwelling on the bad, and He
would not abandon Yehoshaphat.

The king did not follow the example of his father Asa or that of Ahab, both of whom
chafed against prophetic rebuke (II Chron. 16:10 & 18:25ff). On the contrary, it
stirred Yehoshaphat to greater heights of spiritual endeavor. Rabbi Nachman of
Breslov taught that one of the greatest dangers to those who engage in Torah
outreach is that of falling prey to the negative influence of the very people to whom
they reach out, whose evil tends to attach itself and cling to them. Their way to
"burn out" this evil influence is through MISHPAT, judgment, scrutinizing
themselves with the utmost honesty and truth (Likutey Moharan I, 59). This seems
to throw light on why Yehoshaphat, who responded to Yehu's rebuke about his
alliance with the wicked by embarking on a massive personal Torah outreach
campaign throughout the whole of Judah from the south to the north (v 4), then
appointed JUDGES in every city in the kingdom (v 5) teaching them eternal lessons
about true MISHPAT (v 6). If the judge feels tempted to twist his judgment against
the weak and in favor of the wealthy, he must remember that it is the judgment of
heaven that he is twisting, and that everything he does is under the continuous
scrutiny of God, who knows the innermost secrets of the heart (Rashi and Metzudas
David on v 6). Yet if the judge wants to step aside so as to evade the awesome
responsibility of his role, he is not allowed to do so (Sanhedrin 6a).

In Jerusalem too Yehoshaphat established a strong judiciary "for the judgment of

HaShem and for controversies" (v 8). In this verse, the "judgment of HaShem"
refers to financial cases while "controversies" are capital cases and suits for
damages. In verse 10, "controversies… bet

Chapter 20
A LESSON IN ISRAELITE WARFARE

The story told in our present chapter appears only here in Chronicles, with merely
the faintest reference to it in the parallel account of the reign of Yehoshaphat in I
Kings 22:46. This in no way diminishes the great significance of this story as a
teaching about the proper way for Israel to react in the face of attacks by their
enemies.

The children of Moab and Ammon who now made war on Judah lived in the
territories east of the Dead Sea and the River Jordan respectively. The Hebrew text
of v 1 gives the third group of attackers as the AMMONIM, who cannot be identical
with the children of Ammon mentioned in the same verse (as it would be redundant
to mention them again) and who some commentators suggest might be identified
with the ME'UNIM (see Metzudas David ad loc.). However, Rashi, Metzudas David
and RaDaK (ad loc.) all bring the Midrash saying that these were actually
AMALEKITES from Mt Seir, which is part of the chain of mountains extending from
the southern tip of the Dead Sea down to the Gulf of Aqaba , and which was part of
the inheritance of the descendants of Esau. The main body of Edomites who lived
east of Seir were not directly involved in the present war – it was in the reign of
Yehoshaphat's son Yehoram that they rebelled against Judean sovereignty (see
next chapter). The Amalekites themselves were a clan of Edomites, and according
to Rashi and Metzudas David (ibid.) the reason why they are here called Ammonim
is because they disguised themselves in Ammonite costumes and also used the
Ammonite language in order to try to conceal their true identity (cf. Numbers 21:1
and Rashi thereon).

King Yehoshaphat was informed that this great multitude had "come… from beyond
the sea from Aram ". The "sea" is the Dead Sea, and Aram in this verse is not to be
confused with Aram to the northeast of Israel (whose wars with Ahab and
Yehoshaphat were the subject of Chapter 18). Rather, it is identified with ARAN
(Gen. 36:26; I Chron. 1:42), whose name is preserved in that of the town Jibel
Aram about forty kilometers to the east of Aqaba. (Targum on our present chapter
v 10 renders Seir as GIVLA.) This invading army was intent on striking at the very
heart of Judah and Jerusalem. They either marched around the southern end of the
Dead Sea or else they crossed its narrow tongue on rafts, after which they
advanced to the ancient strategic town of Eyn Gedi in order to make their way
inland through the mountain passes along Nachal Arugot to Teko'a in the heart of
Judea.

"And Yehoshaphat was AFRAID…" (v 3). What he did was not to summon his
military advisors but rather to "set his face to seek out HaShem". He called a
national fast, assembling all the people in the Temple in Jerusalem (vv 3-4). The
"new court" before which he rose to address the people was not a newly-built
addition to the Temple. It was "new" in the sense that – perhaps as part of the
campaign to bring everyone to higher levels of repentance and purity – a new
decree was made prohibiting the entry of a TVUL YOM (one who had only purified
himself from impurity by immersion on that same day) even into the "Levitical
Camp", the EZRAS NASHIM or "Women's Courtyard", let alone into the AZARAH
itself, the main Temple Courtyard, the "Camp of the Shechinah", which is prohibited
by the written Torah (Numbers 5:2-3; see Pesachim 92a and Rambam Hilchos Beis
HaBechirah 4:17).

Yehoshaphat was turning to God in the Temple at this moment of national

emergency in exactly the way that Solomon had taught in his prayer on the
inauguration of the Temple (II Chron. ch 6). Yehoshaphat began his prayer
affirming that it is God who rules over all the kingdoms of the nations and who
therefore has the power to defeat Israel's enemies.

"Are you not our God who… gave this land to the seed of Abraham Your friend
forever?" (v 7). Rashi (ad loc.) explains Yehoshaphat's argument: "Therefore it is
Your obligation to strengthen Israel's possession of the land and to drive these
peoples out, because even a king of flesh and blood or indeed any man who has
given a gift to his friend only to find someone else coming to rob him of it would
surely exert himself in every way to keep the gift in his friend's hand – how much
more so should You!!!"

In vv 10-11 Yehoshaphat addresses the present attack of the peoples of Ammon,

Moab and Mt Seir (the king was in no way deceived by the Amalekites' disguise),
arguing that it exemplified the utmost ingratitude since when the Children of Israel
had originally journeyed from Egypt to Israel, they had specifically refrained from
attacking the Edomites, Moabites and Ammonites (Deut. 2:4, 9 & 19). Yehoshaphat
concludes by asking God Himself to judge the invaders, because Israel had no
strength in the face of such a multitude.

In the merit of the king's prayers and the national repentance, Yahazi-el the Levite
immediately received prophecy that God would fight for Israel. Yahazi-el was one of
the Levitical Temple singers from the family of Asaph, and the spectacular salvation
that he prophesied was very much bound up with song and thanksgiving to
HaShem. Thus immediately after he delivered his prophecy (vv 14-17) Yehoshaphat
and all the people prostrated in gratitude while the Levite singers rose to sing
praises "in a great voice ON HIGH". Their songs shook the very heavens!!!

The following morning everyone went out of Jerusalem southwards to the

wilderness of Teko'a to witness the salvation that they believed with perfect faith
would surely come. Yehoshaphat led the way not with weapons but with a call to
the people to strengthen their faith in God. Marching before the armed warriors
went not an advance contingent of fighters but Levitical SINGERS offering praises
and thanksgiving. They sang HODU LA-SHEM KI LE-OLAM CHASDO, "Give thanks to
HaShem for His kindness is forever", although they omitted the words KI TOV
("…for He is good…" Psalms 118:1 etc.) because "the Holy One blessed be He does
not rejoice at the downfall of the wicked" (Megillah 10b).

It was precisely when the Levites sang that God sent His salvation by turning the
various peoples making up the invading armies against each other. First the people
of Ammon and Moab thought that the people of Seir (=the Amalekites) were
attacking them from the rear and proceeded to attack them, after which they
fought with and slaughtered each other. All that was left for Yehoshaphat and his
forces to do was to gather in the spoils of battle. After this great salvation, they did
not forget HaShem and His kindness, but went straight back to Jerusalem to the
Temple with harps, lyres and trumpets to give more thanks and praises.

[It is interesting that the Biblical commentator MALBIM, R. Meir Leibush ben Yechiel
Meir Weiser 1809-79, writes on Ezekiel 32:17 that in the war of Gog and Magog,
Edom and Ishmael will join forces to go up together against Jerusalem but that in
the course of this campaign they will become embroiled in conflict with one another
since their faiths are different and they will make war against each other, and this
is how God will judge them. The salvation of Judah from the combined forces of
Ammon , Moab and Amalek in the time of Yehoshaphat as described in our present
chapter appears to be the prototype of the future salvation as described by MALBIM,
making the lessons of our present chapter about how Israel goes to war particularly
timely.]

The reign of Yehoshaphat was a golden age compared with the reigns of the kings
who came before and after him. However, "As yet, the people had not directed their
hearts to the God of their fathers" (v 33) – the repair was far from complete, and
the people would have to endure harsh times in order to bring it about. The close of
Yehoshaphat's reign was marred by his alliance with Ahab's son Ahaziahu, with
whom he embarked on a luckless joint trading venture (vv 35-7).

Chapter 21
One of the striking features of the story of the kings of Judah is how a saintly king
was often succeeded by a very wicked king, and vice verse. The reign of
Yehoshaphat's firstborn son and successor Yehoram was marred from the outset
when he killed all his brothers in order to eliminate any possible contenders to the
throne. Yehoram was obviously following in the ways of the kings of Israel, being
married to the wicked Athaliah, who was the daughter of King Ahab (verse 6 in our
present chapter, and see next chapter v 3, where Athaliah is called the daughter of
Omri, who was Ahab's father, and who in all probability raised her, see Metzudas
David there). Yehoram himself led the people astray into idolatry (v 11).

After Isaac gave his blessings to Jacob rather than Esau, he consoled the latter by
saying that if Jacob's descendants would veer from the Torah, Esau would break
their yoke from upon his neck (see Rashi on Gen. 27:40). Eight kings had ruled
over Edom before there was a king in Israel (ibid. 36:31) but from the time when
the Children of Israel became united under Saul, Edom lost its independence and
was subject to an Israelite garrison in their territory. Edom remained subject to
Israelite rule during the reigns of eight kings: Saul, Ish-Bosheth, David, Solomon,
Rehav'am, Avi-yah, Asa and Yehoshaphat. However, when Yehoram led Judah away
from the Torah, this opened the way for the Edomites to rebel, and they have not
been subjugated until today (our chapter vv 8-10; see Rashi on Gen. 27:40; cf. I
Kings 22:48 and Rashi there).

"And there came to him a letter from Elijah the Prophet" (v 12). From the fact that
Elijah's disciple Elisha was prophesying independently during the reign of
Yehoshaphat (II Kings 3:11) we may learn that Elijah had already ascended to
heaven prior to the reign of Yehoshaphat's son Yehoram. In the words of RaDaK on
our present chapter v 12: "This letter came after Elijah's ascent to heaven. What
happened is that Elijah was revealed through prophetic spirit to one of the prophets
and he put in his mouth the words of this letter and told him to put them in writing
and to bring the letter to Yehoram telling him that this letter was sent to him by
Elijah in order that Yehoram would believe that it came to him from heaven in the
hope that he would humble his heart and understand that he had done great evil."
[The phrase in verse 12, "A letter from Elijah", MICHTAV MI-ELIAHU, was taken as
the title of a major latter-day work on Torah "Hashkafa" – worldview and outlook –
by the late saintly Rabbi Eliahu Dessler, 1892-1953.]

The illness that had taken hold of Judah was because they had failed to eliminate
idolatry from their midst, and this spiritual illness was reflected in the terrible
physical disease that gripped King Yehoram in his very bowels, the organ of
elimination, which became so morbid that they literally burst. Yehoram died just as
he had lived – BE-LO CHEMDAH, without any joy and delight – and the legacy of
turmoil he left after him almost brought the House of David to extinction.

Chapter 22
The alliance between the House of David and the house of the wicked Ahab king of
Israel almost led to the extinction of the royal line of David after the death of King
Yehoram of Judah, son of King Yehoshaphat, which we read about at the end of the
previous chapter (II Chron. 21:19-20). In retribution for Yehoram's leading Judah
into idolatry, an invading army of Philistines and Arabs had captured and
apparently killed all his sons and wives, leaving only his smallest son Yeho-achaz
(ibid. v 16-17). When Yehoram died at the age of forty, the people of Jerusalem
chose Yeho-achaz (also called Ahaziahu and Azariahu) to succeed him.

"Ahaziahu was FORTY-TWO years old when he reigned…" (verse 2). It is impossible
to take this verse at face value since this would mean that Ahaziahu had been born
before the birth of his father Yehoram, who died at the age of only FORTY (II Chron.
21:20). In II Kings 8:26 it says that Ahaziahu was TWENTY-TWO when he reigned.
Rashi on verse 2 of our present chapter explains that when Ahaziahu came to the
throne, it was FORTY-TWO years since the decree of destruction that had been
made against the House of David two years before the birth of Yehoram, when King
Asa had married his son Yehoshaphat to the daughter of Omri, Ahab's father. This
tradition is based on Midrash Seder Olam and Tosephta of Sotah, but the written
Biblical text itself nowhere states that Yehoshaphat married the daughter of Omri,
although it does say that Yehoshaphat "made a marriage alliance with Ahab" (II
Chron.l 18:1). This may refer to his marrying Ahab's sister, although it is usually
understood to refer to Yehoshaphat's marrying his son Yehoram to Athaliah,
daughter of Ahab, who plays a central role in our present chapter and the next.

From the above-quoted comment by Rashi, we see how the text alludes to
something that is not at all explicit: namely, that the association between the
House of David and the family of Omri and Ahab had already begun in the latter
years of the reign of Asa, when Omri rose to power as king of Israel. Perhaps this
was intentionally obscured in our text in order not to impugn the honor of King Asa.

Athaliah, who was the daughter of Ahab (despite her being called daughter of Omri
in v 2, see RaDaK ad loc.) and a formidable woman in her own right, was the
mother of the new twenty-two year old king Ahaziahu, and it was all but inevitable
that he would fall prey to her insidious advice and follow the idolatrous path of
Ahab that she and her late husband Yehoram had introduced in Judah.

King Ahaziahu's alliance with Ahab's son and successor, Yehoram King of Israel, in
the latter's military campaign against Aram in Ramoth Gil'ad, led to the death of
both kings at the hands of Yehu ben Nimshi, who had been anointed by the prophet
Jonah at the command of the prophet Elisha with the mission of destroying the
house of Ahab. The entire story, which is given in brief in our present chapter (II
Chron. 22:5-9), is told in greater detail in the parallel account in II Kings 8:28-9:28.

When Athaliah saw that her son King Ahaziahu had been killed, she immediately set
out to kill all male members of the Davidic royal line in Judah in order to destroy all
possible opposition to the tyranny she now intended to impose there under herself.
Rashi based on hints in the written text (II Kings 11:2) states that Athaliah used
sorcery and poison to bring a protracted, painful death upon them. "It was of this
generation that David said, 'LaMnatzeach Upon the Eighth' (Psalms 12:1). He saw
with holy spirit that in the eighth generation all his seed would be killed by Athaliah,
for from Solomon until now there were eight generations, and he prayed that his
seed should be left as a memorial and said: 'Help, HaShem, for the godly man
ceases…' (ibid. v 2)".

It was only the courage of another woman – Yehoshav'ath, daughter of King

Yehoram of Judah and sister of the slain King Ahaziahu – that saved the Davidic
line from complete extinction when she took Ahaziahu's one-year old baby son
Yo'ash and hid him in the "chamber of the beds" (verse 11). According to rabbinic
tradition, this was in the Holy Temple, either in the priests' sleeping quarters in the
Temple Courtyard where Yehoshav'ath lived with her husband Yeho-yada, who was
the High Priest, or in the upper storey over the Holy of Holies (Rashi on v 11). The
Holy of Holies is called the "chamber of the beds" because "He lays down between
my breasts" (Song of Songs 1:13,) i.e. between the poles of the Ark (see KNOW
YOUR BIBLE commentary on II Chron. 5:9). Of this moment of dire peril, when the
survival of his entire line was in danger, King David had prayed, "For He will
conceal me in His tabernacle on the day of evil" (Psalms 27:5).

Evidence of the comprehensive tyranny that Athaliah wielded over Judah lies in the
fact that Yo'ash had to be concealed in the Temple for six full years before Yeho-
yada the High Priest felt strong enough to reveal him to the people. During those
six years Athaliah raided the Temple treasures in order to pay for the construction
of the idolatrous temples and altars she was busy building in order to entrench
herself in Jerusalem and Judah.

Chapter 23
"And in the seventh year Yeho-yada strengthened himself…" Yeho-yada the High
Priest had received the prophetic tradition from Elisha and was a key link in the
transmission of the Torah tradition from Moses to the later prophets: Yeho-yada's
son Zechariah (II Chron. 24:20ff) handed the tradition to the prophet Hosea (see
Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Introduction). All the true prophets knew that God had
promised never to cut off the seed of King David completely, while Elijah and Elisha
had prophesied that the House of Ahab would be cut off. The time now came for
Yeho-yada the High Priest, heir to the prophetic tradition, to take the initiative to
overthrow Athaliah, who was the last surviving vestige of the House of Ahab after
Yehu ben Nimshi had killed all the other members, and to re-establish the House of
David through the public coronation of Yo'ash. The Cohanim and Levites, as
guardians of the Temple and its services, were also direly threatened by Athaliah
and her idolatrous ambitions, and now stood at the side of the royal line of David in
an alliance that had begun with the marriage of Aharon the High Priest to Eli-sheva
daughter of Aminadav, Prince of the tribe of Judah.

Yeho-yada took what today would be called maximum security measures in the
Temple to ensure that the coronation of the seven-year old King Yo'ash would
proceed without any danger from Athaliah and her mafia. Only trustworthy
Cohanim and Levites were to be admitted into the inner Temple precincts, and
flanking the Temple building and the young king were heavily armed guards. Yeho-
yada's public display of Yo'ash after six years of concealment must have been a
moment of consummate drama.

"And they brought forth the son of the king and put upon him the CROWN…" (v 11).
This was the crown that David had taken from the head of the king of Ammon (I
Chronicles 20:2). David had it studded with a precious magnetic (charismatic?)
stone engraved with the name of HaShem. The crown weighed a centenarium of
gold, and was testimony for the House of David, for any king who was not from the
seed of David was unable to fit the crown on his head and bear its weight. When
the people saw that it fitted Yo'ash and that he was able to bear it, they
immediately proclaimed him king (Targum on v 11, cf. Rashi ad loc.).

On hearing the celebrations in the Temple, Athaliah rushed to find out what was
happening, discovering to her dismay that a successful coup had already put an end
to her regime. Yeho-yada had her killed, after which he struck a Covenant between
himself, the people and the king returning the kingship to its true mission of
making Israel the people devoted to HaShem (v 16). While the people cleansed
Judah of the Baal worship instituted by Athaliah, Yeho-yada re-established the
Temple services of the priests and Levites, which had perhaps fallen into partial
disuse during her tyranny. The king was escorted to his palace to sit on his throne
and the people rejoiced.

Chapter 24
"And Yo'ash did what was right in the eyes of HaShem all the days of Yeho-yada
the Priest" (v 1). The wonder boy-king Yo'ash remained faithful to the way of the
Torah as long as he was under the tutelage of Yeho-yada, who had saved his life
and with it the entire royal line of David, as told in the previous chapter. However,
after Yeho-yada's death, Yo'ash went astray, as told later in our present chapter vv
17ff.

"And Yo'ash's heart was stirred to renew the House of HaShem" (v 4). From the
time of the completion of the Temple by King Solomon until the time of Yo'ash was
a period of one hundred and twenty-five years (see Rashi's calculation in his
comment on v 7). Solomon had built a mighty structure that was designed to last,
and it would not have required refurbishing after only 125 years but for the fact
that it had been pillaged and damaged during Athaliah's six year tyranny by sons
she had from another marriage previous to that with King Yehoram (Metzudas
David on v 7).

As we have learned in our studies of I Chronicles from chapter 13 onwards, King

David had seen his preparations for the building of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem as
his main mission in life, and in Rambam's Laws of Kings 11:4 we learn that the
main qualification for being accepted for certain as Mashiach is that the candidate
rebuilds the Holy Temple. There was thus unquestionably a Messianic quality in
King Yo'ash's initiative to refurbish the Temple and to establish a viable system for
financing its future maintenance, in which he showed even more zeal than the
priests (as we see from v 6 of our present chapter). After the wicked Athaliah's
efforts to shift the focus from the Temple to her own idolatrous cults, Yo'ash – who
had grown up and been revealed in the Temple itself – set himself to restore it to
its true position as the very center of the national endeavor.

The basic means of financing the Temple and its sacrifices was laid down in the
Torah, which instituted the collection of one half shekel annually from every
Israelite besides their other donations (Exodus 30:12-16). Yo'ash now reinstituted
and reorganized the collection of the Temple funds from the people as described in
our present chapter vv 5-14 and also with some additional details in the parallel
account in II Kings 12:5-17. The latter is included in the Haftara read annually on
Shabbos Shekalim, first of the four springtime Shabbosos on which special
additional Torah selections are read in preparation for the coming festival of Pesach.

Initially Yo'ash instituted that the Cohanim would collect the moneys for the Temple,
but when this proved to be ineffective he established a special chest outside the
main Temple gate where the people could deposit their contributions directly, much
to their joy (II Kings 12:5-11 and II Chron. 24:5-11). The chest had a small hole
that was large enough to insert a coin but not sufficiently large for a would-be thief
to insert his fingers. The arrangements instituted by Yo'ash were accompanied by
an ethos of financial integrity (II Kings 12:16) that should be a model for all our
financial dealings.

"But after the death of Yeho-yada, the princes of Judah came and prostrated
themselves before the king" (v 17). This sad sequel to the story of Yo'ash does not
appear in the parallel account of his reign in II Kings. According to the rabbis, the
princes of Judah made Yo'ash into a god, reasoning that it states in the Torah that
"the stranger who draws near [i.e. in the Holy of Holies] shall die" (Numbers 18:7)
whereas Yo'ash had spent six years inside the Temple and he was still alive, so that
it was only proper to offer him service as a god (Metzudas David on our present
chapter verse 18). [Some may find it interesting to note that three of the four
Hebrew letters of Yo'ash's name make up the name of another human being whose
followers turned into a god.] The new ruler-cult led the people abandon the Temple
in favor of other cults.

When a wave of prophets failed to bring about a change of heart in the people,
Yeho-yada's son Zechariah stood up in the Temple to rebuke them. According to
the Targum and other Midrashic sources, this took place on Yom Kippur, the Day of
Atonement, which that year fell on a Shabbos. The people had set up a graven
image in the Temple and were burning incense to it when Zechariah rose to protest,
thinking that his prestige as son of the saintly Yeho-yada as well as being the
present head of the Sanhedrin would save him from their ire. Displaying total
ingratitude to Yeho-yada, who had saved his very life, Yo'ash gave instructions to
kill Zechariah.

Midrash Zuta Eichah #1 (cf. Gittin 57b) tells that the blood of Zechariah that was
spilled on the Temple floor continued seething and boiling until the time when
Nebuchadnezzar's henchman Nevuzaradan came to Jerusalem and slaughtered
2,210,000 outside the city and another 940,000 in Jerusalem itself. Their blood
flowed all the way to the blood of Zechariah. When Nevuzaradan enquired whose
blood this was, the priests initially tried to conceal the scandal until he threatened
that he would comb their flesh with iron combs. After they admitted that it was the
blood of a prophet to whom they had refused to listen, Nevuzaradan killed wave
after wave of the people to avenge Zechariah until he almost killed everyone. He
said, "Zechariah, Zechariah, I have killed all the good ones. If you rest, all the
better! If not, I will kill them all!" Only then did the blood cease boiling.
Nevuzaradan said, "If Israel killed a single soul and this is what it caused them,
what will be of me after killing so many souls?" He fled and converted to become a
GER TZEDEK.

In the same year in which Zechariah was killed God's vengeance was already felt in
Judah when an invading force of Arameans entered Jerusalem and destroyed the
entire ruling class. (This was after an earlier advance by Chaza-el king of Aram
against Judah and Jerusalem, in which Yo'ash bought him off using the Temple
treasures, II Kings 12:18-19). Yo'ash himself was wounded in this attack and was
subsequently killed in his bed by a conspiracy of his own attendants. The mothers
of the two leading conspirators are specifically described as having been an
Ammonite and a Moabitess respectively, because these two nations, whose father
Lot had been saved by Abraham, showed the utmost ingratitude in their later
persecutions of Israel just as Yo'ash showed the utmost ingratitude to his savior
Yeho-yada in killing his son Zechariah (Rashi on v 26).

Chapter 25
King Yo'ash was succeeded by his son Amatziahu, the Hebrew root of whose name,
EMATZ means to be strong or courageous. Like his father Yo'ash, Amatziahu
showed initial promise, but although a righteous king (as shown by his killing only
the murderers of his father but not their children), he was not whole-hearted in his
devotion to God (v 2).

Amatziahu wanted to quell the Edomites, who had been in rebellion against Judah
since the time of his great grandfather King Yehoram (II Chron. 21:10). Thinking
that victory would depend on the deployment of sufficient manpower, Amatziahu
supplemented his 300,000-strong army with a hundred thousand Israelite
mercenaries that he hired for the colossal price of a hundred talents of silver, but
he had the good sense to defer to God's prophet, who told him not to bring the
idolatrous Israelites on his campaign against Edom because victory depends upon
God's help and not on numbers. It seems that Amatziahu found it easier to defer to
the prophet when he told him God would reimburse him for all the silver he had
paid out for nothing.

Amatziahu's campaign against the Edomites was highly successful, and he took
hold of one of their great fortresses at Sela ("the rock"), which is identified with the
site of Sela (=Petra) in the mountains south east of the Dead Sea about 8 km south
of the modern Jordanian town of Tafila. His massacre of 10,000 Edomites on this
site brings to mind the curse in Psalms 137:9.

Tragically, Amatziahu showed the same kind of fickleness that had brought his
father to ruin, because after his great victory over the Edomites, he proceeded to
adopt the idolatry of the defeated nation (v 14 of our present chapter). This time
Amatziahu would not listen at all to the rebuke of God's prophet, who left him to
find out for himself where his folly would lead him.

The Israelite mercenaries that Amatziahu had initially hired for his war were furious
that they had been sent away before having the opportunity of taking part in the
conquest and plunder of the Edomites, and they turned this affront into a causus
belli, invading and ravaging Judea (v 13). The dare-devil Amatziahu, swelled with
pride at his recent victory, decided to take on the mighty warrior king of Israel,
King Yo'ash, challenging him to stop his people's cowardly depredations and fight a
fully-fledged battle instead. Yo'ash replied that a "cedar" like himself would find a
cooperative alliance ("marriage") with the puny "thistle" Amatziahu demeaning, let
alone a fully-fledged battle, and he threatened to trample him underfoot.
Amatziahu, puffed up with a self-confidence that was sent by God in order to
destroy him because of his idolatry, refused to back down, and Yo'ash invaded
Judah and beat him on his own territory in Beit Shemesh, going on to tear down a
sizeable section of the fortifications of Jerusalem in order to ensure that Judah
would not rebel in the future.

Amatziahu's defeat put him in danger from Judean conspirators, and he was forced
to flee Jerusalem and live in the town of Lachish in the maritime plain of Philistia,
which had been fortified by King Rehav'am. It appears that Amatziahu reigned as
king in Lachish for fifteen years while his wife Yecholiah, guardian of their son
Uzziah (=Azariah), ruled in Jerusalem (see Rashi on v 27). But the hand of God's
vengeance reached Amatziahu even in Lachish , where he lost his life to assassins.

Chapter 26
The sixteen year old King Uzziah (="God is my strength") became king after
Jerusalem had been dealt a harsh blow in the reign of his father Amatziahu with the
tearing down of a sizeable section of its fortifications by Yo'ash king of Israel.

Uzziah came to the throne during the reign of Yo'ash of Israel's son Yerav'am II,
who "restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath (i.e. northern
Syria) to the sea of the Aravah (=the Dead Sea)" (II Kings 14:25). I.e. Yo'ash
succeeded in restoring the sovereignty of Israel over all the territories over which
David and Solomon had ruled. Likewise, Uzziah restored Judah as a major regional
power, beginning his career with the recapture and rebuilding of the Red Sea port
of Eilat . Our present account of Uzziah's reign here in Chronicles is considerably
more detailed than the parallel account in II Kings 15:1-7.

"And he did what was right in the eyes of HaShem according to all that his father
Amatziah had done" (v 4) – "But he did not do according to his wickedness" (Rashi).

"And he set himself to search out God in the days of Zechariahu, who had
understanding in the visions of God, and as long as he sought Hashem, God gave
him success" (v 5). According to Rashi, Zechariahu was another of the names of
Uzziah, who was also called Azariah. He was clearly devout in the extreme – to the
point that in later life he thought himself worthy of taking over the role of the
Cohen in the Temple (see vv 16ff).

Vv 6-10 describe how Uzziah expanded and strengthened his kingdom, conquering
the major Philistine centers in the coastal plain and protecting his southern flank by
overcoming the "Arvim" and "Me-unim" (cf. our commentary on II Chron. 20:1),
who were Edomite tribes. Thus "his fame reached until the entrance of Egypt " (v
8): he enjoyed international prestige. Uzziah also rebuilt the fortifications of
Jerusalem, which had been destroyed in the reign of his father by Yo'ash of Israel
(v 9). Not only did Uzziah expand and fortify his kingdom. He also invested heavily
in "infrastructure", digging wells for his many cattle and developing agriculture (v
10).

Vv 11-14 describe Uzziah's military command structure and army, while v 15 tells
of the ingenious military engines he had positioned on the towers and ramparts of
Jerusalem to fight off would-be attackers with showers of arrows and boulders.

Tragically, Uzziah's very success led to his downfall when he decided he was on a
level to enter the Temple sanctuary to offer incense, "because he said it is fitting
for a king to minister to the King of Glory" (Rashi on v 16). No matter how pious his
intentions, what he wanted to do was strictly forbidden by the Torah, which says
that "no stranger who is not from the seed of Aaron shall draw close to burn
incense before HaShem, so that he shall not be like Korach and his assembly as
HaShem spoke by the HAND of Moses" (Numbers 17:5). The wording of this
prohibition alludes to the fact that the penalty for its violation is to be struck with
leprosy, because Moses' HAND had become leprous at the Burning Bush (Ex. 4:6;
see RaDaK on II Kings 15:5).

As soon as Uzziah tried to offer incense in the Temple, leprosy burst forth on his
forehead and spread to his whole body, a cataclysmic event that precipitated an
"earthquake". The Midrash Avos d'Rabbi Nathan 22a states that "at that hour the
Sanctuary was split and the two halves moved twelve miles in each direction."

This day marked the beginning of the prophetic ministry of Isaiah, whose book we
will study after we conclude Chronicles. The first chapter of the book of Isaiah was
not his first prophecy: this is recorded in Isaiah ch 6: "In the year of the DEATH of
King Uzziah I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and exalted…" (Is. 6:1; see
Rashi ad loc.). Uzziah's "death" alludes to his plague of leprosy.

As a leper for life, Uzziah had to spend the rest of his days isolated from the
community (Lev. 13:46) and therefore lived in BEIS HA-CHOPHSHEES, literally the
"house of FREEDOM", i.e. the cemetery (cf. Psalms 88:6, "free, CHOPHSHI, among
the dead"; see Rashi on v 21 of our present chapter).

Chapter 27
Uzziah's son Yotham took over the kingship during his father's lifetime, "and he did
what was right in the eyes of HaShem according to all that Uzziah his father did
except that he did not come into HaShem's sanctuary" (v 2).

Out of all the kings of Judah, Yotham is the only one about whom not a single hint
of anything negative appears in any of our texts. (David sinned by taking
Bathsheva; Solomon's wives turned his heart astray; Rehav'am abandoned the
Torah; Avi-yah followed all his father's sins; Asa took money from the Temple
treasuries to send to the king of Aram, and he imprisoned a prophet; Yehoshaphat
allied himself with the wicked Ahab; Yehoram killed his brothers; Ahaziahu followed
his mother's evil advice; Yo'ash killed Zechariah the Priest and allowed himself to
be worshiped as a god; Amatziah bowed down to the idols of Seir; Uzziah entered
the Sanctuary to burn incense; Ahaz went in the ways of the king of Israel and
promoted Baal worship; Hezekiah's heart became swelled and the rabbis challenged
three of his rulings; Menasheh did evil in the eyes of Hashem; Yosiah did not heed
prophecy, and Tzedekiah did evil in God's eyes and did not submit to Jeremiah; see
Rashi on 27:2).

King Yotham's exceptional purity helps explain the saying of Rabbi Shimon bar
Yochai (Succah 45b): "If only Abraham our father would take on himself to atone
for all the sins of the generations until his time, I would take on myself to atone for
the sins of all the generations from Abraham until myself. And if YOTHAM son of
Uzziah was with me, we would take on ourselves everything from the time of
Abraham until the end of all the generations!"

From this we see that merely because our present text devotes only nine verses to
Yotham while the parallel text in II Kings 15:32-38 deals with his reign in only eight
verses, this in no way detracts from his greatness. From the fact that the king of
Ammon – who previously had been under the sway of the kings of Israel – now
sent Yotham tribute for three years running (v 5), we may infer that as a result of
the latter's diligent efforts to build and consolidate his kingdom, the center of
influence was beginning to swing back from the trouble-stricken regime in Shomron
to Judah.

Chapter 28
The story of the later kings of Judah is one in which, paradoxically, a saintly king
fathers a wicked king who then fathers a saintly king and so on. The saintly
Yotham's son and successor, Ahaz, went in the idolatrous pathway of the kings of
Israel and even practiced Molech-worship at a cult-center in the valley of Ben
Hinnom south of Mt Zion, passing his sons through the fire in contravention of the
explicit prohibition against Molech worship in Leviticus 18:21. According to Targum
on verse 3 in our present chapter, Ahaz also passed his son and successor
Hezekaiah through the fire, but God saved Hezekiah from being killed in the furnace
of the priests of Molech because he saw that three Tzaddikim were destined to
come forth from him who would be willing to sacrifice their very lives to sanctify
God's name by being thrown into Nebuchadnezzar's furnace: Hananiyah, Misha'el
and Azariah (Daniel ch 3).

Just as the devotion to God shown by Ahaz' predecessors, Uzziah and Yotham, had
brought them great success in building the kingdom, so Ahaz' backsliding caused
him disaster after disaster. His reign fell at a time when Assyria was developing
from being merely an aggressive predatory nation into an expanding world empire
that was changing the entire balance of power in the region. Ahaz' policy was not to
try to challenge Assyria. However, Isaiah's prophecies dating from the reign of Ahaz
(Isaiah ch 7) detail the efforts of the kings of Israel and Aram to coerce Ahaz into
joining them in campaigns intended to "contain" Assyria . The attacks on Judah by
the king of Aram and by Pekah ben Remaliah king of Israel as described in vv 5ff in
our present chapter were part of this policy of coercion.

The attack by Pekah in particular was a colossal blow to Judah in which, according
to our text, one hundred and twenty thousand men were killed in one day (v 6).
The account of the capture of two hundred thousand Judean women and children by
the armies of Israel and their subsequent release at the behest of the prophet Oded
on "humanitarian" grounds (which does not appear in the parallel account in I Kings
ch 16) gives us a fascinating insight into the psychology of the Ten Tribes, who
were to be exiled for their sins only one generation later yet still exhibited a basic
fear of God as well as the RAHMONUS, "compassion", that is one of the three
distinguishing features of true members of the people of Israel, the other two being
bashfulness and kindness (Yevamos 79a). Before Israelite armies went out to war,
the priest who addressed the troops would remind them that they should fight with
all their strength against their enemies from other nations, because if they fell into
their hands they could never expect the same kindness that the tribes of Israel
would show to each other even when they made war against one another (Sotah
42a).

The Philistines and Edomites were wresting huge swathes of territory from Judah,
yet even as his kingdom was being torn to pieces, Ahaz was not chastened. He
thought he could save himself from Israel and the Arameans by bribing the kings of
Assyria to help him (vv 16ff). They took his bribes but gave him little help, treating
Judah as no more than a subject nation. When Tiglath-Pelessar of Assyria did
attack and exile the Arameans, Ahaz went to visit Damascus and was so impressed
with the idolatrous altar he found there that he sent detailed plans and diagrams to
Uriah the priest in Jerusalem with orders to build a copy in the Temple (see II Kings
16:10ff). Ahaz' policies and pathways brought disaster on Judah, which is why
Isaiah in the opening prophecy of his book tells the people: Your country is desolate,
your cities are burned with fire, as for your land, strangers devour it in your
presence, and it is desolate as though overthrown by strangers" (Isaiah 1:7). This
was the dire state of Judah when Ahaz died and was succeeded by his son Hezekiah,
who was fit to be Mashiach.

Chapter 29
We can only speculate what caused the twenty-five year old Hezekiah to go in the
diametrically opposite direction to that of his father Ahaz from the moment he
succeeded him on the throne. Hezekiah's miraculous delivery from the furnace of
the priests of Molech must surely have left a lifelong mark on his very soul. Perhaps
this made him particularly open to the preaching the great prophets of his time –
Hosea, Amos and Micah – and particularly that of Isaiah, whose mission had begun
on the very the day on which Hezekiah's great grandfather Uzziah tried to burn
incense in the Temple, and who remained the steadfast champion of the true Torah
pathway during the reigns of Yotham, Ahaz and that of Hezekiah himself.

Our texts refer to Isaiah's active involvement in the events of Hezekiah's reign only
later in the story (II Kings 19:2 & II Chron 32:20 etc.), whereas the purification of
Judah and the Temple from the idolatry of Ahaz on which Hezekiah embarked in the
very first month of the first year of his reign is described as having been his own
initiative (v 3). He showed his boldly independent spirit even before this, when –
according to rabbinic tradition – instead of giving his father an honorable funeral,
with the approval of the sages of the time he had his bones dragged on a bed of
rope in order to bring him atonement (Pesachim 56a).

"HE in the first year of his reign in the first month OPENED the doors of the House
of HaShem…" (v 3) – whereas a few verses earlier, at the end of the previous
chapter (II Chron 28:24) we read that "Ahaz… CLOSED the doors of the House of
HaShem."

We may better appreciate the drama of Hezekiah's address to the Levites and
Cohanim whom he immediately assembled in the Temple (vv 4-11, cf. v 36,
"suddenly") by referring to some comments of Rashi later in our present chapter
and the next. In the course of his comment on v 34 of our present chapter, Rashi
writes that "the Cohanim and Levites and all those who feared HaShem had to
disguise themselves and make themselves into strangers and even go into hiding
all through the days of the wicked kings, and when Hezekiah, who was righteous,
came to the throne, they could not immediately sanctify and purify themselves for
the Temple service". In further explanation, Rashi writes in his comment on v 15 of
the following chapter: "The reason why the Cohanim and Levites delayed coming
until now was that they could not prior to that give credibility to the matter [of the
reopening of the Temple] because Ahaz had despised and rejected them from
serving as priests, and now they said, 'Is it possible that yesterday Ahaz
worshipped idols and his son Hezekiah immediately in his first year in the very first
month already tells the Cohanim and Levites to serve the One God alone, telling us
he needs us?' This was why they were apathetic and delayed coming, and the same
was true in the case of the rest of Judah whom Ahaz had despised. However, when
they investigated and ascertained that everything was for the sake of Heaven, they
all came and sanctified themselves for service" (Rashi on II Chron. 30:15).

Hezekiah's address to the Cohanim and Levites shows the devastation he and Judah
faced as a result of Ahaz' idolatry and its disastrous consequences (vv 8-9). To
repair the damage, Hezekiah wanted to renew the original Covenant between God
and Israel.

Our text relates how representatives of all the Levitical families stood up and
volunteered to embark on the work of cleansing the Temple. It was not simply a
matter of removing idols. The reason why it took them eight whole days to sanctify
the Temple building was because Ahaz had had idolatrous images carved into all
the walls (Rashi on v 17). Although a simple reading of verse 19 leaves the
impression that they now purified the Temple vessels that in the time of Ahaz had
been used for idolatrous rituals, the Talmud (Avodah Zarah 52b) states that those
vessels were put in GENIZAH ("hiding", never to be used again) and new vessels
were brought in their place, because a vessel used for idolatry is unfit to be used
for holy service.

"And they brought seven oxen and seven rams and seven sheep and seven goats
for a sin offering" (v 21). The sacrifices brought by Hezekiah to atone for the
people's idolatry do not correspond exactly to the sacrifices prescribed in the Torah
for this sin (Lev. 4:14; Numbers 15:24) – this was HORO'AS SHA'AH, a "one-time
ruling".

It is significant that for Hezekiah, an integral part of the restoration of the Temple
was the restoration of the Temple music as established by King David and the
prophets of his time (v 25). It is the Temple music that elevates the entire Temple
service, as we see clearly from our narrative (vv 27-30).

Chapter 30
When Hezekiah decided to hold a spectacular Passover celebration in the Temple,
the like of which had not been seen since the days of Solomon, he did not summon
only the people of Judah. In the true Davidic tradition, he took responsibility for all
Israel and sent messengers with letters to the members of the other tribes. This
was just six years before the Ten Tribes were taken into exile by the Assyrians (see
Rashi on verse 1 of our present chapter; cf. II Kings 18:10). The reason for their
exile becomes more understandable when we read that many of them simply
laughed at and mocked Hezekiah's messengers (v 10).

"For the king took counsel… to hold the Pesach in the second month" (v 2). There
were a number of halachic irregularities in the holding of Hezekiah's first Pesach
which were forced upon him by the exigencies of the moment. The first is that
Pesach is supposed to be held in Nissan, the first month of the Torah year, whereas
our verse states that Hezekiah held it in the second month. This was because the
work of cleansing the Temple of idolatry lasted until the sixteenth day of the first
month whereas the Pesach sacrifice must be brought on the fourteenth, and in any
case, the majority of the priests and the people had not yet had time to purify
themselves ritually for Pesach because of the suddenness of Hezekiah's initiative.
The Torah itself provides that people who are unable to offer the Pesach sacrifice
because of being ritually impure at the requisite time may celebrate PESACH SHENI,
the "Second Pesach" on the fourteenth day of the second month, i.e. Iyar (Numbers
9:9-11). There is an opinion in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 12a-b) that Hezekiah had
the entire people celebrate Pesach Sheni even though according to the halachah,
under normal circumstances only if a minority of the people were impure would
those particular people celebrate Pesach Sheni, whereas if the majority of the
community is impure they are permitted to bring the Pesach sacrifice in a state of
ritual impurity on 14 Nissan.

However, the more accepted opinion in the Talmud is that Hezekiah did not literally
hold his Pesach in the month of Iyar but rather that he decided to declare that year
a leap year, turning what should have been the month of Nissan into Adar II,
thereby gaining an extra month before "Nissan", which came in what would have
been the second month were it not for the insertion of the leap month. In the times
of the Great Sanhedrin prior to the introduction of the fixed calendar, it was indeed
at the discretion of the leading sages of the Sanhedrin to decide which year should
be a leap year. The reason why Hezekiah was criticized by the sages for adding the
extra month (Pesachim 56a) was because he waited to do so until the first of
Nissan, suddenly declaring that the new month was not Nissan at all but Adar II
and that the following month would be Nissan, whereas he should have made his
declaration a day earlier, prior to the consecration of the New Moon (see also
RaDaK on verse 2 of our present chapter).

The second irregularity of Hezekiah's Pesach was that "a multitude of the people…
had not cleansed themselves, so that they ate of the Passover sacrifice otherwise
than was written" (v 18) – i.e. in a state of ritual impurity (Rashi ad loc.). The
halachah provides that if the majority of the people are ritually impure on the first
Pesach, they still bring the sacrifice on 14 Nissan – only if a minority are impure are
they pushed off to Pesach Sheni on 14 Iyar (Rambam, Hilchos Korban Pesach 7:1).
It would appear that on Hezekiah's Pesach more people were ritually pure than
impure, yet the ritually impure still joined in the sacrifice. This was what was
against the halachah, and this is why Hezekiah had to pray to God to grant them
atonement (v 18f). It takes a giant of the stature of Hezekiah to imaginatively
transcend the halachah when the circumstances absolutely require it. The fact that
he did what he did proves that there are times when this may be done. [However,
it is dangerous in the extreme when halachic midgets take Hezekiah's initiative as
license to change the halachah any time they want.]

Again we see that the Temple music was a most important part of the Pesach
celebration (vv 21f).

Rashi (on v 26) writes that the unique great joy that accompanied Hezekiah's
Pesach was not because there were more people present than in earlier times but
rather because throughout the days of Ahaz and the other wicked kings of Judah,
the people had simply not come to Jerusalem for the pilgrim festivals, which made
this Pesach a tremendous novelty. Having not celebrated the festivals for many
years, the seven days of Pesach were too few for them and they therefore added
another seven days of celebrations (v 23).
 Chapter 31
The exuberant joy of Hezekiah's Pesach gave all those assembled in Jerusalem the
impetus to go out to the towns of Judah and Benjamin and even further afield into
the territories of Ephraim and Menasheh in order to destroy all the idolatrous cult
centers and altars. With the kingdom of Israel on the very threshold of its final
collapse, the House of David was calling to all the Twelve Tribes to return to the
way of the Torah.

Not only did Hezekiah re-establish the orders of the Cohanim and the Levites to
serve in the Temple as instituted by King David (v 2), providing the sacrificial
animals for the daily, Shabbat and festival services out of his own pocket (v 3). He
also grasped that "If there is no flour [food], there is no Torah" (Avot 3:17), and he
revived and reorganized the system of collecting the Torah-ordained Terumah gifts
for the Cohanim and Maaser tithes for the Levites so that, with their livelihood
guaranteed, they would be able to devote themselves not only to their Temple
duties but even more importantly, to the crucial task of teaching the people Torah.
Apparently the giving of Terumah and Maaser had fallen into abeyance in the days
of Hezekiah's father King Ahaz.

The sages credited Hezekiah with having made enormous efforts to spread
knowledge of the Torah throughout the land, saying that "he stuck a sword over the
entrance to the study hall announcing that anyone who did not occupy himself with
the Torah would be speared with the sword. They checked from Dan to Beersheba
and could not find a single AM HA'ARETZ (Torah ignoramus), nor did they find a
single young boy or girl who was not expert in the laws of ritual impurity and
purification (Sanhedrin 94b).

The general population were not paid to study the Torah – Torah study was the
national leisure-time activity before and after work – but in order to bring the
people to the highest levels of Torah knowledge, it was necessary for the Cohanim
and Levites to be freed from the burden of earning a living in order to devote
themselves entirely to this task.

"And as soon as the matter BURST FORTH, the children of Israel brought in
abundance…" (v 5). The simple meaning of this verse is that as soon as news of
Hezekiah's instructions to bring the Terumah and Maaser gifts "broke out" among
the people, they responded open-heartedly. However the rabbis learned from here
that while the obligation to bring Terumah and Maaser applies only to corn, wine
and oil MID'ORAISO (according to the written Torah, Numbers 18:12), the people
"burst forth" beyond the letter of the law and also brought these tithes from other
kinds of produce as well even though they were technically exempt (Nedarim 55a).
This shows the enthusiastic devotion of the people.

V 9: "Then Hezekiah questioned the Cohanim and the Levites concerning the
heaps" (v 9). Rashi (ad loc.) explains that when the king saw such enormous piles
of produce, he thought that the Cohanim and Levites must not have touched them
or eaten from them so far, but Azariah the High Priest (who had served since the
days of Uzziah, II Chron. 26:20) assured him that they had already benefited, and
that all this abundance was because of God's blessing to the people in the merit of
their renewed devotion to His commandments.

Vv 11-19 describe the administrative apparatus which Hezekiah established in the

Temple and in all the towns of the Cohanim and the Levites in order to supervise
the orderly collection, storage and distribution of their Terumah and Maaser gifts so
as to provide them with their livelihood and that of their wives and little children
both when they came to fulfill their rota duty in the Temple and when they went
about their work – teaching Torah – in and around their towns. From v 16 Metzudas
David (ad loc.) learns that the Cohanim and Levites used to bring their small male
children with them to the Temple FROM THE AGE OF THREE YEARS OLD in order to
familiarize them with the services. The fact that even the little children and other
family members of the Cohanim and Levites received shares of Terumah and
Maaser testifies to the enormous blessing and abundance in the harvests as soon as
the people separated their tithes properly (cf. Rashi on v 19).

Chapter 32
At first sight it is hard to understand why it was that precisely when Hezekiah and
his generation repented so whole-heartedly and sought out HaShem, He
immediately sent Sennacherib and his hosts to lay siege to Jerusalem (v 1). Our
sages addressed this question in their comment on the somewhat unusual phrase in
this verse, "After these words and this truth…" – "After what??? Ravina said, After
the Holy One blessed-be-He jumped and swore, saying, If I tell Hezekiah I am
going to bring Sennacherib and deliver him into your hand, he will say 'I don't want
either him or his terror' [i.e. I will forego the whole miracle]. Therefore the Holy
One immediately jumped and swore: 'HaShem of hosts has sworn… I will break
Assyria in My land and upon My mountains tread him under foot; then shall his
yoke depart from them and his burden depart from off their shoulders' (Isaiah
14:24-25). Rabbi Yohanan said: The Holy One blessed be He said, Let Sennacherib
and his supporters come and provide fodder for Hezekiah and his supporters"
(Sanhedrin 94b).

In other words, Sennacherib's advance on Jerusalem, terrifying as it was to a

kingdom that was tiny in comparison with his world empire, was not a punishment
but rather was intended to enrich Judah with the booty they would take after the
miraculous overthrow of his army. Indeed, the rabbis taught that Sennacherib and
his army had the potential to be Gog and Magog and Hezekiah had the potential to
be Melech HaMashiach and to bring about the final repair immediately – except that
Hezekiah failed to sing a song of praise to God after all the miracles and thereby
lost the opportunity (Sanhedrin 94a).

Sennacherib's advance against Jerusalem and the intense psychological warfare he

employed are described in great detail in II Kings 18:13-19:37 as well as in Isaiah
36:1-37:38. Prior to the arrival of the Assyrian armies, Hezekiah took sensible
defensive precautions and mobilized the people in preparation for a lengthy siege
(vv 3-6 in our present chapter). For the rest, he relied entirely on faith (vv 7-8) and
prayer (v 20).

Sennacherib's arrogant boasting about the powerlessness of all the gods of the
nations he had conquered to save them and his denigration of Hezekiah's efforts to
bring Judah to worship God at only one altar instead of many (which Sennacherib
mocked as a sleight to His honor, v 12 and Rashi ad loc.) were enough to cause
HaShem to overthrow him in order to sanctify His Name. The conclusion of the
Talmudic discussion about how He struck his army is that He opened the ears of all
the soldiers so that they heard the song of the angelic Chayoth, and out of sheer
rapture at such beauty, their souls flew out of them and they simply expired
(Sanhedrin 95b).

"And in those days Hezekiah fell mortally sick…" (v 24). The story of Hezekiah's
sudden illness and the heights of repentance to which it brought him, which
secured him another fifteen years' lease of life, is told in detail in II Kings 20:1-11
and Isaiah 38:1-22. What is not directly apparent from our texts is that Hezekiah
was struck down by this illness just three days before the overthrow of
Sennacherib's army (see Rashi on II Kings 20:1) – i.e. at a time when Jerusalem
was under total siege surrounded by hundreds of thousands of enemy soldiers.
Bearing this in mind we can better appreciate the magnitude of the crisis and the
subsequent miracle.

"But Hezekiah did not pay back according to the benefit done to him, for his heart
was proud, therefore wrath came upon him and upon Judah and Jerusalem" (v 25).
Hezekiah's pride came to the fore when envoys from the far-off, innocuous-seeming
kingdom of Babylon came to congratulate him on his miraculous delivery from
mortal illness, and instead of heeding the rabbinic warning that "blessing is found
only in something hidden from the eye" (Taanis 8b), he wanted to flaunt his wealth
and glory, and showed them all his treasure-houses and his most precious
possessions. Tragically, Hezekiah, for all his saintliness, was unable to stand up to
this subtle test (v 31 of our present chapter), and it was decreed that the
Babylonians would capture all the treasures of Judah and take them to Babylon
(see II Kings 20:12-19 and Isaiah 39:1-8).

Yet Hezekiah was spared seeing this decree in his days and died peacefully, being
buried with the utmost honor side by side with King David and King Solomon (Bava
Kama 16b).

Chapter 33
It is hard to understand how immediately after the tremendous Torah revival in the
time of King Hezekiah, his own son Menasheh could have simply undone all his
work and filled Jerusalem and the Holy Temple with every kind of idol and altar.

According to tradition, when Hezekiah was mortally ill, he asked Isaiah why he had
said: "You shall die [in this world] and you shall not live [in the world to come]" (II
Kings 20:1). The prophet told him it was because Hezekiah had failed to marry and
fulfill the commandment to "be fruitful and multiply". Hezekiah told Isaiah that the
reason he did not want to have children was because he had seen with holy spirit
that his son was destined to be a terrible sinner. The prophet told him that this was
not his business, after which Hezekiah asked Isaiah for his daughter's hand in
marriage, and out of this union Menasheh was born.

It is unimaginable that Hezekiah taught Torah to all Judah but did not teach his own
son. In fact, Menasheh was an outstanding Torah scholar, who was able to expound
on the book of Leviticus in 55 completely different ways corresponding to the
number of years of his reign (Sanhedrin 103b; compare the story about the lesson
Menasheh taught Rav Ashi, redactor of the Babylonian Talmud, when he appeared
to him in a dream, KNOW YOUR BIBLE II Kings ch 21). Nevertheless, the rabbis
(Sanhedrin 90a) listed Menasheh together with Jeraboam son of Nevat and Ahab as
among those who have no share in the world to come, although Rabbi Yehudah
(ibid.) dissents, arguing that Menasheh did gain a share in the world to come in the
merit of his repentance, which is described in our present chapter.

It was not the castigation of the prophets of the time that brought Menasheh to
repent. On the contrary, he killed his own grandfather Isaiah, alleging that his
prophecies contravened the Torah, as when he said, "And I SAW the Lord sitting on
a high and exalted throne", Isaiah 6:1, whereas the Torah says "For no man can
SEE Me and live" (Ex. 33:20; Yevamos 49b). Menasheh kept on refining his idolatry
– starting off by making a one-faced statue in the Temple and ending up by carving
four faces on it in order that the Shechinah should see and become enraged
(Sanhedrin 103b).
The only thing that brought Menasheh to repent was the suffering he endured when
the Assyrians captured him and took him in chains to Babylon, where "they closed
him inside a perforated copper pot and lit fires all around it. And when he was in
agonizing pain, he begged all the idols he had worshipped but they did not help him.
Finally he prayed to HaShem his God and was very greatly humbled before the God
of his fathers. But when he prayed to Him, all the angels appointed over the gates
of prayer in heaven immediately closed all the gates and windows in heaven in
order that his prayer should not be accepted. But the compassion of the Creator of
the World was aroused, because His right arm is outstretched to receive those
sinners who return and break the evil inclination in their hearts through repentance,
and He created a lattice and a channel in heaven beneath the throne of His glory
and heard his prayer and accepted his request, and He shook the world with His
mighty word and shattered the pot. A spirit went forth from between the wings of
the cherubs and brought him back, and he returned to his kingdom to Jerusalem,
and Menasheh knew that HaShem is God" (Targum on vv 11-13 of our present
chapter).

"And he removed the strange gods… and cast them outside the city" (v 15). Rashi
comments that Menasheh failed to smash these idols to bits or hide them away out
of sight, and this was why his son and successor King Ammon stumbled, as we find
later in this chapter (v 22): "And Ammon sacrificed to all the idols that Menasheh
his father had made". He simply took them from the place where Menasheh had
cast them out (Rashi on v 15). The rabbis said that Ammon burned the Torah scroll
and had relations with his own mother. When she asked him what benefit he could
possibly have from the place from which he came forth, he retorted: "I am doing it
for no other reason than to enrage my Creator" (Sanhedrin 103b). Punk culture???

Chapter 34
The same swing from idolatry and degeneracy to repentance and national
restoration that had been occurred time after time in the earlier history of the
House of David – as when Yo'ash was installed instead of Athaliah and when
Hezekiah succeeded Ahaz – took place when the eight year old Josiah was chosen
by the people to succeed his murdered father Ammon.

Unlike Hezekiah, who initiated his radical turnabout from the ways of Ahaz as soon
as he ascended to the throne, the young Josiah implemented his change in
direction in stages. He was sixteen when he seriously began to "search out the God
of David his father" and twenty when he started purifying Judah and Jerusalem of
private altars and idolatrous cult-centers and images (v 3). He took responsibility to
do the same throughout the Land of Israel, traveling to the territory of Naftali in the
far north east of the country in order to supervise the work personally (v 6).

It was at the age of twenty-six that Josiah initiated much-needed repairs to the
Temple, which had been damaged during the ravages in the reigns of Menasheh
and Ammon. Our chapter lists the Levitical officers who supervised the Temple
restoration work, including Levites who were chosen purely because of their deep
understanding of music (verse 12), because "everyone who had a masterly
understanding of music and song stood by with musical instruments in order to play
during the time of the building work" (Metzudas David ad loc.). Once again we see
the central role of music in the Temple, which even had to be built and repaired to
the sounds of song.

It was when going to an inner Temple chamber to take money to pay for the work
that "Hilkiah the High Priest found a scroll of the Torah of HaShem by the hand of
Moses" (v 14). Metzudas David (ad loc.) says: "It is likely that when King Ahaz
burned the Torah scroll, the Cohanim feared that he would try to get at the Torah
scroll that was placed at the side of the Ark of the Covenant, which had been
written by Moses from the mouth of HaShem, and they therefore took it and hid it
away. After Ahaz' death they searched for it but could not find it until the High
Priest was searching for the money when the Temple was restored." The rabbis had
a tradition that the scroll was found rolled in such a way that it fell open at the
verse in the curses: "HaShem will lead you and your king that you shall establish
over yourself to a nation that you have not known" (Deut. 28:36; Yoma 52b).
When this verse was read to King Josiah, he tore his garments, fearing that it
applied to him, since he himself had been put on the throne by the people and not
by a prophet (Rashi on v 19; cf. II Chron. 33:25).

Our rabbis taught that the reason why Josiah sent to enquire of the prophetess
Huldah in preference to Jeremiah, who was also prophesying at that time, was
"because a woman is more compassionate than a man" (Megillah 14b; Rashi on v
22). Huldah had her own chamber in the Temple, adjacent to the seat of the
Sanhedrin in the Chamber of the Hewn Stones, though it was screened off for
reasons of modesty (Maseches Middos; Rashi on v 22).

Huldah's grim message that the fate of Jerusalem was already sealed was softened
for Josiah only by the news that the disaster would not strike in his lifetime. He
immediately summoned all the elders of Judah to the Temple, where he renewed
the Torah Covenant and brought the entire Israelite population to serve HaShem
loyally for the rest of his life.

Chapter 35
In the eighteenth year of his reign – the same year as the discovery of the Torah
scroll in the Temple and the subsequent prophecy of doom by Huldah the
Prophetess, as described in the previous chapter – King Josiah held a Pesach
celebration in the Temple "the like of which had not been celebrated in Israel since
the days of Samuel the Prophet" (verse 18).

Yet even as Josiah celebrated the Pesach, he knew that it was impossible to avert
the decree hanging over Jerusalem. "And he said to the Levites who taught all
Israel , who were holy to HaShem: Put the holy Ark in the House which Solomon
the son of David king of Israel built…" (verse 3). According to the simple meaning
of the verse, it would appear that King Menasheh may have taken the Ark out of
the Holy of Holies when he placed an idol in the Temple (or if Menasheh returned it
after his repentance, his successor King Ammon may have removed it again), and
that would be the reason why Josiah now gave instructions to put the Ark back in
its place (Rashi, RaDaK ad loc.).

However, the Talmudic rabbis interpreted this verse as hinting that on the advice of
the prophet Jeremiah, Josiah had the Ark hidden away in a secret underground
chamber that King Solomon had constructed at the time of the building of the
Temple, knowing that it was destined to be destroyed. The Foundation Stone at the
western end of the Temple in the Holy of Holies covered over the entrance to the
narrow, winding passages leading down into this chamber. Josiah had the Ark put
away there together with the Two Tablets of the Ten Commandments, the Flask of
the Manna, the Flask of the Anointing Oil, Aaron's Rod and the chest which the
Philistines sent as a gift when they returned the Ark, in order that they should not
be taken into exile with the destruction of the Temple (Yoma 52b). For Josiah knew
that if they would be taken into exile, they would never be brought back (Shekalim
16a).
Despite the threat of doom hanging over Jerusalem, Josiah and the people
celebrated the Pesach wholeheartedly. Josiah himself provided 30,000 paschal
lambs and goats for the people – which indicates that many more than that number
of people ate of them, because a HAVURAH of up to a hundred people could all be
registered to eat an olive-size quantity each of the meat of a single lamb. Leading
officers of the people and the Levites provided the Cohanim and Levites with their
paschal animals. The oxen mentioned in vv 7, 8 and 9 were for SHALMEY
CHAGIGAH, the festive peace-offerings consumed prior to the Pesach offering so
that its meat may be eaten in a state of satisfaction and not out of hunger (Rashi &
Metzudas David on v 6; Rambam, Hilchos Korban Pesach 8:3).

All the details of the Pesach celebration – eating the sacrifice roasted,
accompanying the offering with the chanting of the Hallel by the Levites, etc. –
were observed in strict accordance with all the relevant Torah laws.

Rashi on v 18 offers an explanation as to why "the like of this Passover had not
been celebrated in Israel from the days of Samuel the prophet, nor did any of the
kings of Israel keep such a Passover as Josiah kept…" – "As long as the people were
split into two kingdoms, the tribes of Judah and Benjamin used to celebrate Pesach
in Jerusalem in the name of HaShem, while the other tribes celebrated in the name
of idols in Beth El and Dan. However, in the days of the judges it had never
happened that Israel was split into two families, for in each generation they never
had more than one judge, and that judge made them all go in the way of Hashem.
Thus in the times of the judges, all the Ten Tribes used to go to Shilo to celebrate
Pesach in the name of HaShem, but throughout the period of the kings of Israel
there was never a Pesach in which Israel and Judah were together. However, by the
time of Josiah the kingdom of the Ten Tribes was already defunct, and when
Jeremiah brought members of the Ten Tribes back from their exile, he did not
establish a separate king over them, but Josiah ruled over them and they all
celebrated Pesach together in Jerusalem in the name of HaShem.

After this Pesach Josiah lived on for thirteen more years before his tragic end at the
hands of Pharaoh Necho, who was marching his armies through the Land of Israel
on his way to Karkemish on the River Euphrates in order to strike a blow against
Assyria. The king of Egypt had no hostile intentions against Judah, but Josiah still
went out to intercept him because he darshened the verse, "No sword shall pass
through your land" (Lev. 26:6) to mean that in times of blessing, even the sword of
a nation who is at peace with Israel should not pass through their land, let alone
the sword of their enemies (Ta'anis 22b). Josiah thought he was sufficiently worthy
to have this blessing fulfilled in his time. What he did not know was that the people
still worshiped idols in the privacy of their own homes. He used to have inspectors
visit each house to check for idols, but the people craftily had the idols carved on
the insides of the two doors that opened up into their homes. When the inspectors
threw open the doors in order to enter, the carvings were concealed from them, but
as soon as they left, the people in the house would shut the two doors, thereby
bringing the two carvings together to make one image, which they then proceeded
to worship (Midrash Eichah Rabbah 1:53).

Josiah failed to consult the prophet Jeremiah as to whether he should go out

against Pharaoh Necho, and he was shot with three hundred arrows that left his
body full of holes like a sieve. As the king lay dying, Jeremiah noticed his lips
moving and stooped down to try to hear what he was saying. What he heard was,
"HaShem is righteous for I have rebelled against His mouth" (Lamentations 1:18;
Ta'anis 22b). With the death of Josiah the sun went down on the House of David,
and Jeremiah instituted the mourning elegy that he composed in honor of the slain
king to be recited by all Israel (v 25). This is contained in Chapter 4 of the Book of
Lamentations (Eichah), which is recited on the Fast of Tisha B'Av commemorating
the destruction of the Temple.

Chapter 36
V 1: "And the people of the land took Yeho-ahaz son of Josiah and made him
king…" It appears that Yeho-ahaz was two years younger than Yeho-yakim, yet the
people preferred him as king (RaDaK on II Kings 23:30). It seems that Yeho-ahaz
invaded Egypt and struck a heavy blow there in order to avenge the death of his
father at the hands of Pharaoh Necho, but when the latter returned from his
campaign against Assyria, he captured and exiled Yeho-ahaz and replaced him with
Yeho-yakim (RaDaK on II: Kings 23:33). It was Pharaoh Necho who changed the
new king's name to Yeho-yakim, just as Pharaoh had changed Joseph's name to the
Egyptian name of Tzophnas Pa'neah and Nebuchadnezzar gave Babylonian names
to Daniel, Hananiyah, Mishael and Azariah. The purpose was to show the ruler's
supremacy over his officers, whose names he changed at will (see Rashi on v 4 of
our present chapter).

Yeho-yakim was the object of many rebukes and prophecies by Jeremiah, whom he
tried to kill and eventually put in prison, while killing the prophet Uriah son of
Shemayah (Jeremiah 26:23). It was in the fourth year of Yeho-yakim's reign that
Baruch ben Neriyah wrote the Book of Lamentations at the dictation of Jeremiah.
After he read it to the people, it was brought to King Yeho-yakim, who on hearing
what was written in it, tore the scroll to shreds with a razor and threw the pieces
into the fire (Jeremiah 36:23).

"…and his abominations that he did and WHAT WAS FOUND UPON HIM…" (v 8). The
rabbis stated that Yeho-yakim had the name of an idol (or, according to another
opinion, the Name of HaShem) inscribed on his member (Sanhedrin 103b).

Jeremiah had prophesied that Yeho-yakim would receive the burial of a donkey (Jer.
22:19) – i.e. his flesh would be eaten by the dogs. After the rise of Nebuchadnezzar,
Yeho-yakim served him for three years but then rebelled, after which the
Babylonian king laid siege to Jerusalem and captured him. Yeho-yakim died as he
was being dragged off into exile and his corpse was thrown into an open field where
he suffered his prophesied end.

Yeho-yakim's son Yeho-yachin ruled for only three months before Nebuchadnezzar
demanded that the Sanhedrin deliver him over to be taken into exile to Babylon.
Before leaving Jerusalem, Yeho-yachin took all the keys of the Temple and went up
to the roof of the House, saying: "Master of the World: Since we are not worthy to
be the guardians of Your treasures, here are Your keys before You." Yeho-yachin
threw the keys upwards, and a hand of fire came down to receive them (Midrash
Vayikra Rabbah 19:6).

Together with Yeho-yachin, Nebuchadnezzar took all the leading royal officers,
warriors, sages and elders of Jerusalem into exile in Babylon, including Ezekiel the
prophet, Mordechai, Daniel, Hananiah, Misha'el and Azariah, so that only the poor
and lowly people were left in Jerusalem. Thus when Nebuchadnezzar installed Yeho-
yachin's uncle Tzedekiah as king of Judah (and governor of Edom, Moab, Ammon,
Tyre and Sidon as well), the population of Jerusalem over whom he ruled were on a
low moral level. Tzedekiah himself was considered by the rabbis to have been
exceptionally saintly: he was counted (together with Jesse, Saul, Samuel, Amos,
Zephaniah, Elijah and Mashiach) among eight "princes among men" (Succah 52b),
and his original name of Shaloom (I Chron. 3:15, see RaDaK ad loc.) indicated that
he was perfect (SHALEM) in his deeds (Horayos 11b). The reason why it is written
of Tzedekiah that "he did evil in the eyes of Hashem" (II Kings 24:19) was because
he failed to protest against the deeds of his contemporaries, as when they freed
their slaves only to re-enslave them immediately afterwards.

"And he also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by
God…" (v 13 of our present chapter). According to tradition, once Tzedekiah had
chanced upon Nebuchadnezzar precisely while the latter was ravenously devouring
a rabbit when it was still alive. Nebuchadnezzar made Tzedekiah swear an oath that
he would never reveal what he had seen, but eventually Tzedekiah asked the
Sanhedrin to annul his oath and told what he had seen (Nedarim 65a). It was in
vengeance for this that on capturing Tzedekiah, Nebuchadnezzar had his eyes put
out for revealing what he had seen, while the members of the Sanhedrin who
annulled his oath were tied to horses tails and dragged from Jerusalem to Lod
(Eichah Rabbah 2:18).

With the destruction of Jerusalem and the Holy Temple and the exile of all the
people to Babylon, it might have seemed as if the Royal House of David – in whose
honor Ezra the Scribe wrote DIVREY HAYAMIM, the Book of Chronicles – would soon
become extinct. However, God's watchful eye was on the seed of David, and even
as Yechoniah rotted away in solitary confinement in his narrow cell in Babylon, God
opened a way to facilitate a visit to him by his wife. She conceived and gave birth
to She'altiel, who was the father of Zerubavel (see KNOW YOUR BIBLE, Ezra ch 2).
It was Zerubavel, scion of the House of David, who went up to Jerusalem to rebuild
the Temple after Cyrus of Persia gave the signal for Judah to return there, as
described in the closing verses of Chronicles and as told in detail in the Book of Ezra.
The whole of DIVREY HAYAMIM was written to explain where Zerubavel came from
and why it was his mission to build the Temple.

And just as Zerubavel went up to Jerusalem to build the Second Temple, so may
our Righteous Mashiach quickly reveal himself and lead all Israel up to Jerusalem to
build the Temple very soon in our times. Amen.