Tafsiran yang Mengutip untuk Yehezkiel 36:25

And you shall give it to Eleazar. And not through Aaron, because he was a cause of the [golden] calf. And we find that Moses prayed that [Rabbi] Eliezer, who interprets the law of the [red] heifer, would be among his descendants. And here it also says Eleazar which implies that there is an allusion to the help [ezer] of God [El], blessed be He, for purification, as it is written And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, etc. (Ezekiel 36:25). For without the help of God, blessed be He, this purification alone would not have been effective for them. And since it says a heifer [parah] is two years old and a calf [eglah] is one year old, this implies that the cause is twice as great as the effect. Therefore, a person needs more alacrity to remove the cause, as mentioned. And the reason for the sprinkling on the third and seventh days is because the impurity gradually decreases, as they said (Moed Katan 27b), Three days for weeping, seven for eulogizing. Therefore, the sprinkling is at these two times.

The meaning of sprinkling. The word זרק is an expression meaning the same as as in, “And I will sprinkle ( וזרקתי ) purifying water upon you” (Yechezkel 36:25). But it does have the meaning as in, “And let Moshe cast ( ויזרוק ) it heavenward” (Shemos 9:8), which means actual throwing.

Rabbi Akiva said: Happy are you, Israel! Who is it before whom you become pure? And who is it that purifies you? Your Father who is in heaven, as it is said: “And I will sprinkle clean water upon you and you shall be clean” (Ezekiel 36:25). And it further says: “O hope ( of Israel, O Lord” (Jeremiah 17:13--just as a mikveh purifies the unclean, so too does he Holy One, blessed be He, purify Israel. As is typical, the tractate concludes with some words of “aggadah.” Rabbi Akiva gives a message of hope to all of Israel, telling us how blessed we are that God cleanses us of our sins. The verses in Ezekiel talk about God’s redemption of the people of Israel, what we usually call the Messianic age. Rabbi Akiva seems to be alluding to this ultimate cleansing of sin, one in which God will give us a “new heart” (v. 26). Rabbi Akiva also makes a pun on the word “mikveh” in Jeremiah the word in its context means hope, but means “ritual bath” in other places. God acts as a purifier for Israel, cleansing us both in the here and now and in the redemptive future for which we long. Congratulations! We have finished Yoma. It is a tradition at this point to thank God for helping us finish learning the tractate and to commit ourselves to going back and relearning it, so that we may not forget it and so that its lessons will stay with us for all of our lives. If you’ve been following along with the Mishnah Yomit schedule then you have just completed Yom Kippur and in a couple of days Sukkot will begin. We could not have asked for better timing this year! Yoma contained a long description of how the day’s ritual was carried out in the Temple and it concluded by hinting at a message central to the world of the rabbis. We no longer have a Temple, but through repentance, through prayer, through study, through acts of loving kindness and through the observance of the commandments we can maintain and repair our relationship with God. I can’t think of any message more relevant to this time of year. As always, congratulations on learning another tractate of Mishnah. May you have the strength and time to keep on learning more! Tomorrow we begin Sukkah.