Commentaire de citation sur Isaïe 43:16

And in the ninth year, [that] of He who scatters [mazreh, alluding to Jeremiah 31:10, which has a numerical equivalent of that year] Israel: The king of Spain conquered the entire kingdom of Grenada and Grenada the great city of many people, the princess among the states [alluding to Lamentations 1:1]. And in his power and the haughtiness of his heart, his spirit changed and incurred guilt, ascribing his might to his god [alluding to Habakkuk 1:11]. And Esau said in his heart [alluding to Genesis 27:41], “How will I find favor to my god, who girded me with might [alluding to Psalms 18:33]? With what shall I begin towards my master, he gave this city into my hands? Should it not be in bringing the people walking in the dark, the lost sheep, Israel, under his wings and to bring back the wild daughter to his his religion and to his faith? Or [otherwise] to send them away from before me to another land, that they should never return to my land and be established in front of my eyes.” Therefore the command and decree of the king [alluding to Esther 4:3] went out like the decree of Medea and Persia, and the herald proclaimed in a loud voice, “You are commanded [alluding to Daniel 3:4], all you families of the House of Israel, when you pass through the water [to be baptized], you shall pray and bow to the god of the nations, so you shall eat the bounty of the land like us today and you will settle in the land and trade in it [alluding to Genesis 34:10]. But if you refuse and rebel and not utter the name of my god and you do not bring prayers to my god, get up and get out from amidst my people, from the lands of Spain, Sicily, Majorca, and Sardinia, which are under my power. And in three months, there will not be a footprint of someone called by the name Jacob and referred to by the name Israel in all the states of my kingdom!” When I was there in the courtyard of the kings’s house, I became weary with calling out; my throat dried up [alluding to Psalms 69:4]. I spoke with the king twice and three times; with my mouth did I beseech him, saying, “Will the king save [us]? Why are you doing this to your servants? Increase greatly the dowry and the gift upon us [alluding to Genesis 34:12], gold and silver and everything that each man from the house of Israel has he will give to his land.” I called my friends, the king’s confidantes, to request [help] for my people. And princes take counsel together [alluding to Psalms 2:2] to speak to the king with great force, to reverse the decrees of anger and fury and the plan that he had thought against the Jews to destroy them [alluding to Esther 9:25]. He was like a deaf viper that stops its ears [alluding to Psalms 58:5]; he responded to no one. And the queen stood at his right to mislead him; she swayed him with her eloquence [alluding to Proverbs 7:21], to fulfill his plan from start to finish. We exerted ourselves and did not rest, I had no repose, no quiet, no rest, yet trouble came [alluding to Job 3:26]. And the people heard this evil thing, and they mourned, and in every place to which the command and the decree reached, there was great mourning among the Jews [alluding to Esther 4:3]. And there was a great harsh and overcoming trembling. the likes of which had not been seen since the day of Judah’s exile from its soil to foreign soil. But everyone said to one another, “Let us be strong for the sake of our religion and for the sake of our God’s Torah, against the voice of the curser and the blasphemer, from the enemy and the avenger. If he will let us live, we shall live, and if he kills us, we shall die. We shall not profane our covenant, nor shall we let our hearts go backward. We will walk in the name of the Lord, our God. And they went with no strength, 300,000 people on foot, I being among them, from youths to the elderly, babies and women in one day [alluding to Esther 3:13] from all of the states of the king. They walked to where the wind took them, and their King went out before them, and the Lord was in front of them. One shall say, “I am the Lord’s,” another shall mark his arm “of the Lord” [alluding to Isaiah 44:5]. Some of them went to the kingdom of Portugal and to the kingdom of Narbonne, which were close to them. But behold, it was distress and darkness and outspread thick darkness [alluding to Isaiah 8:22]. And they were met with frequent and bad distress [alluding to Psalms 71:20], wreck and ruin, famine and the sword [alluding to Isaiah 51:19]. And there were some of them who made a road through the sea and a path through mighty waters [alluding to Isaiah 43:16]. But the hand of the Lord was also upon them to confound them and to destroy them. Since many of the children of the forsaken one [alluding to Isaiah 54:1] were sold as slaves and maidservants [alluding to Esther 7:4] in all the provinces of the nations. And many drowned in the Red Sea, they sank like lead in the majestic waters [alluding to Exodus 15:10). And some also were put through fire and water – since ships burnt down, and the great fire of the Lord consumed them [alluding to Numbers 11:1]. The end of the matter is that not a man was spared from His difficult judgments, some for the sword, some for captivity, and the Lord [also] placed pestilence upon them. And they became a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth [alluding to Deuteronomy 28:25) until they were wholly swept away by terrors [alluding to Psalms 73:19]. And only a few of the many remained. And it is like the statement of our ancestors: Lo, we perish; we are lost, all of us lost! (Numbers 17:27). May the name of the Lord be blessed. I have also chosen their way, the way of the ship in the heart of the seas. And I am amidst the exile, I have come with all of my household, the children are my children, the sheep are my sheep [alluding to Genesis 31:43], here in the praised city of Naples, whose kings are kings of kindness. This year, the year of you have been sojourners [gerim, alluding to Exodus 22:20, which has a numerical equivalent of that year], I spoke to my heart, “That which I have vowed will I fulfill, to write a commentary on the book of Kings, which I have not done until now.” Also because it is a time to act for the Lord, to remember the destruction of our holy and splendorous Temple and the exiles that have come over our people that are written in this book, and as I will explain, with the grace of God. Behold, if so, Hiel the Bethelite, in building Jericho, laid its foundations with his first-born and set its gates in place with his youngest [alluding to I Kings 16:34] – I am a man who has seen my poverty in the youngest of the exiles, and the expulsion that came over me, and that was my personal exile that I had from the Kingdom of Portugal. I then made the foundation and began the commentary on these four books. And in the most senior of the exiles and the saddest of them, which is this bitter hasty expulsion and this great and terrible persecution, which devoured us and discomfited us [alluding to Jeremiah 51:34] and expelled us from having a share in Spain [alluding to I Samuel 26:19] that both ears of anyone who hears about it will tingle [alluding to I Samuel 3:11], I have put the gates of the commentary of this book in place and have completed it. And I have seen fit to begin this book with two general and comprehensive prefaces about its stories.

A Midrashic approach tinged with kabbalah: G’d had concluded a covenant with the waters in the “lower” regions of the universe .at the time these waters were separated from the “upper” waters (Genesis 1,7) that on Sukkot some of these waters laced with salt would be used as a libation on G’d’s altar. This is confirmed by Bereshit Rabbah 5,5 according to which the “lower” waters were called “crying waters” as they accepted the separation from the upper waters only after shedding salty tears. This is reflected in Job 28,11: “He dammed up the streams because they cried so much.” Rabbi Abba said that these waters separated from the upper waters by crying. The reason they cried was that they were saying “woe to us that we did not merit to ascend to the celestial regions where we would be close to our Creator.” In fact they were so upset that they dared to split “the deep” and threatened to ascend with their intrinsic power. G’d became angry at them and forced them back to their realm. We know all this from Isaiah 43,16: “Who made a road through the sea and a path through mighty waters.” Nonetheless, G’d told the “lower” waters that seeing their revolt was motivated by their desire to be closer to Him, He would not allow the upper waters to commence with the song of praise to Him until they had obtained permission from the “lower” waters to do so. This has been confirmed in Psalms 93,4: “more majestic than the sounds of the mighty waters of the sea is the voice of the Lord on high.” What is it that these waters say in order to signify their consent? אדיר במרום ה', “the Lord is majestic on high.” Furthermore, G’d promised the “lower” waters that when the time would come for the Israelites to offer sacrifices to Him on the altar, these would be accompanied by both salt and water libations. We have another Midrash in which the (terrestrial) world is described as divided into one third desert, one third habitable, and one third ocean. The oceans said to G’d: “the desert merited that the Torah was given in it; the habitable parts of earth merited that the Temple was erected on them; what are we going to get?” G’d responded saying that in the future, in G’d’s own good time, the Jewish people would include both salt and water in the sacrificial rites