10 Shevat 5768 – Parshas Beshalach 17 January 2008

Yeshaya Perokim 9 - 15

Hi Everyone (again) –

I enjoyed writing last weeks ‘episode’ in yeshaya – hopefully the same will apply to this week’s.

Before I begin on this week’s perakim, I would like to point out an important ‘not-to-be-missed-when-learning-Yeshaya’s point on last week’s perakim:

Famously, Yeshaya Hanavi - after having spent so many chapters on rejecting Avoda Zarah and anything connected with not believing in “Hashem Echad” (See perakim 40-46ish) – is slated with having referred to the beginnings of Christianity many times. Ironic really, isn’t it?! When we get to Chapter 53, we will try to deal more fully with Christianity (and its patent falsehoods), but we can’t just pass one of their major claims, and not deal with it, so here goes:

[Yeshaya 7:14] – (as we know that the kingdom is split and Achaz is King of 2 tribes while Remalyahu is the king of the 10 tribes…Remalyahu made a pact between 10 tribes and Aram to conquer the 2 tribes. Achaz is told by Yeshaya not to worry about the other 10 tribes conquering Yehuda and Binyamin – because ‘it will come about’ and as a sign, he says the following pasuk:) “Therefore Hashem will give you a sign: Behold the YOUNG GIRL (almah) will conceive and give birth to a son, and you shall call him Emman E-l (Hashem is with us)”….. The Meforshim tell us that this was a reference to Chizkiyahu, the son of Achaz, who was a tzaddik and in whose times Klal Yisrael were saved from many disasters, including Sancherev trying to destroy Yerushalayim (as we will see in perakim 37-39).

However, the Christian claim is that this is a reference to their Messiah. Obviously, it must have been a silly mistake in early Christian thought, for a number of reasons;

Firstly, because this was a prophecy of encouragement to Achaz… now Achaz lived in the middle of Bayis Rishon (about 2600 years ago), but their “savior” only lived 2000 years ago - at the end of Bayis Sheini! It seems very strange to make such a claim from a prophecy given 600 years earlier and was as an encouragement to someone at the time of the prophecy…

Secondly, and most obviously, and almost ridiculously, the church misunderstood, or rather, mistranslated the passuk to be “Behold the VIRGIN will conceive and give birth to a son…” However, everyone knows that the word used by the Tanach for ‘Virgin’ is ‘Besulah’. A very strange mistake to have made! [We all know that until about 200 years ago the majority of the population was illiterate, so no-one could really verify what the church was saying… until a thousand years later, by which time Christianity would have a couple of billion adherents…]

As I mentioned I don’t want to get into a full discussion about Christianity before we get to Chapters 52-53….

So, back to the future – back to chapter 11: Yeshaya is full of discussion about ‘The Times of Moshiach’, or for those of us who collect large and almost useless words – Eschatology. I almost never get to use the word (look it up in your handy ‘advanced oxford dictionary for geeks’) so I will use it now: Yeshaya’s eschatological description in chapter 11, is subject of interesting controversy amongst the medieval commentators – or more concisely; we find a machlokes in the rishonim as to how to understand the pesukim in perek 11….

11:2 – “And on him (the melech hamashiach) will rest the spirit of Hashem…” [see the shalsheles song for musical accompaniment]

11:6 – “The wolf shall lie with the sheep, while the leopard will crouch with the goat…”

11:7 – “The cow and bear will graze…. And the Lion, like cattle shall eat stubble”

11:8 – “The young child (suckling) will play at the entrance to an adder’s lair…”

Sounds like a magical time period. Sounds like something extraordinary – unnatural. How do we read or understand these prophecies?

The Gemara (in the last perek of Sanhedrin, about daf 97a/b – around there…) brings different opinions about Yemos HaMoshiach. “The Land of Israel will bring forth cakes…” instead of having to plough, plant water, reap, harvest, crush, sift, and bake – there will be no physical effort involved in maintaining physical life. Pretty magical sounding! However Shmuel (in the Gemara) says, “The world is going to continue the way it always did”… Some say magical some say not….. [As usual in Judaism we have difference of opinions…. 2 Jews, three opinions… joke about the shuls on the island, etc…]

This argument about Yemos HaMoshiach, affected the way in which different Rishonim viewed Moshiach:

Rambam (Last chapter of Hilchos Melochim – Last chapter of the whole Yad HaChazakah of the Rambam) – “Don’t even think that anything will change during the times of Moshiach…. So what about that which it says in Yeshaya, ‘The wolf shall lie with the sheep’ (surely the sheep won’t sleep very well), is all a mashal – a parable – that Klal Yisrael will finally be able to live in peace…”

(Well worth looking up – the Hebrew of the Rambam is very easy. He wrote it in Mishnaic Hebrew so that everyone will be able to understand it… Melachim 12:1)

Ramban (Parshas Nitzavim, Devarim 30:6) describes that the world will change. Nature will change. Man will no longer have a yetzer hara. All the prophecies are to be taken literally. (Most Rishonim and Acharonim work with this view – including the Ra’avad, Rashba, Maharal, Ramchal, Gra, etc.)

But who is correct? We don’t really know; However – here is one theory: The pasuk later in Yeshaya (60:22) says, “I am Hashem, at its correct time, I will bring (the geula) early”… Any student of logic can see the problem here: The “right time” is not “early”, and “early”, is before the “right time”!!!???!!!

The Gemara asks this question in Sanhedrin 98a. The response is “If they merit it, it will come early. If they don’t then it will come at its right time.”

Maybe if we merit it, then it will come ‘early’, and it will be magical (like the Ramban). If we don’t merit it, then it will come at its ‘right time’, and then it will just be natural (Like Shmuel in the Gemara, and the Rambam)…

SO WHAT ABOUT US: ARE WE IN A SITUATION THAT WE MERIT IT, OR NOT…. ARE WE “A GENERATION THAT IS MERITORIOUS” OR “A GENERATION THAT IS COMPLETELY CHAYAV” ????? (the gemara’s terminology.)

I know that we are a generation that is ZAKAI. We are Meritorious. Although we live so distant from Hashem, and He isn’t always in the forefront of our minds the way in which he may have been in earlier generations… but….

We live in a world where the choices we have to make, and the media we are confronted with, and everything that goes on around us, is so against what we really stand for and who we essentially are. Every billboard around us is trying to get us to focus on anything but mitzvos. It is very hard to resist the temptations that are with us every second of every waking moment. BUT STILL “bechol zos shim’echa lo shachachnu” – we still are Jews, doing mitzvos, believing in Hashem, after 2000 years, after all the persecutions, after the holocaust - still hoping for the closer relationship with Hashem promised to us in Yeshaya.

We certainly look like a bad generation (last mishna in sotah), but we have so much going against us that each and every mitzvah that we do is so precious to Hashem.

Hopefully, we will soon see the pesukim in Yeshaya coming true – 11:9 –Magically - and “The whole world will know Hashem, like the water covers the sea”.

By R’ Shmuel Kimche

shmuelkimche@hotmail.com