Halakhah zu Jeschijahu 65:26

On a fast day, an individual recites the sixteenth blessing according to this formula. Hear our voice, Lord our God, have pity and mercy on us and receive in mercy and in favor our prayers before you. Do not cause us to return empty-handed, our King. Answer us, our Father, answer us on our fast day because in this great distress we do not turn your face from us and do not block your ears from hearing our pleas and may our salvation be soon. Before we call, you answer, we speak and you listen as it is said, "And it will be that before they call, I will answer (Isaiah 65:23)." They also say, "And I will hear because you hear the prayer of of every mouth." Blessed are You, Adonai, who hears prayer. And the representative of the community recites this blessing on behalf of himself. After the seventh blessing, he says "Answer us, etc." until "because you answer at a time of trouble, redeem and rescue us at every time of trouble and distress. Blessed are You, Lord who answers at times of trouble."

And you already knew that the words of our rabbis follow the Torah’s means of expression, and so in the Torah there are permitted and prohibited foods: this you shall eat; this you shall not eat, and it is written, “from their flesh you shall not eat.”²⁷Lev 11:8. You wouldn’t say that this is an allegory – God forbid! – but it’s the actual literal meaning. And so they went on to say The Holy One, blessed be He, will in time to come make a sukkah for the righteous from the skin of Leviathan; for it is said: “Can you fill sukkot with his skin?”²⁸Job 40:31. Sukkot here is spelled with a sin, not a samekh as in sukkah meaning “tent,” and means “darts.” Thus, the meaning of the verse in context is “Can you fill his skin with darts?” If a man is worthy, a sukkah is made for him; if he is not worthy, a shadow [tzel] is made for him, for it is said: “And his head with a fish covering [bi-tziltzel].”²⁹Job 30:41. R. Bahya following the Talmud takes the two parts of this verse in Job as contrasting: the first part hints at the reward of the worthy, the second part to the punishment of the unworthy – “shade.” After this he skips a few lines of Talmud that expand on this theme of the worthy and unworthy’s “rewards.” The rest [of Leviathan] will be spread by the Holy One, blessed be He, upon the walls of Jerusalem, and its splendor will shine from one end of the world to the other; as it is said: “And nations shall walk by Your light.”³⁰Is 60:3, in b. Baba Batra 75a.

Out of all this it will be explained explicitly that the words are meant literally: about the actual flesh of Leviathan, about his actual skin.³¹In his insistence on the literal meaning of the Talmudic description of the banquets in the world to come, R. Bahya follows the position of his teacher, R. Solomon ben Adret (Chavel). However, there’s a certain irony here that R. Bahya uses rather non-literal midrashic interpretations of scriptural verses to support his contention that the statements about the food and setting of the banquets in the world to come are indeed to be taken quite literally. The actual flesh of Leviathan will be the food of the righteous who “bothered themselves” with the Torah and mitzvot, and his actual skin to make their dwelling place glow in order to proclaim their high status among the nations, how they served the Holy One Blessed be He and took hold of His Torah and His qualities, to what is written here refers: “And you shall come to see the difference between the righteous and the wicked, between him who has served God and him who has not served Him.”³²Mal 3:18. And likewise it is written, Behold my servants shall eat, and you shall hunger; My servants shall drink, and you shall thirst… My servants shall cry out in gladness and you shall cry out in anguish, howling in heartbreak.³³Is 65:13-14.