Chasidut su Esodo 15:16

However, even though all of the Maharal’s words are true. Yet, all of his arguments were proffered only in order to show how there is no change in God’s will when a miracle occurs. One could still assert that God’s knowledge can change, from which it follows that His will also changes. When God arranged the work of creation, it was His will that certain miracles would happen at a definite time in the future. If this plan is delayed in any way, then the primordial will must have changed. Since God programmed into the creation the condition that the sea would split with the Exodus, therefore He knew that it would split, which it eventually did. If so, how could we be taught that the Egyptians could have repented prior to the sea’s splitting, which would have cancelled the order for the sea to split. With this in mind, we also find it difficult to understand the statement of the Talmud (Berachot, 4a, Sotah, 36a), “At the time of Ezra,³⁴⁰And the nation’s return from the Babylonian exile. the nation of Israel was worthy of experiencing a miracle of the same magnitude that happened in the days of Yehoshua,³⁴¹The miracle would have been their entering the land of Israel with a high hand, just as they left Egypt. Rashi. but the prevalence of sin prevented it.”³⁴²Instead, they could only return from Babylon by the permission of Cyrus. Rashi. The Gemara explains the verse in the Song of the Sea (Shemot 15:16), “until Your people shall pass over, O God, until they shall pass over...” is alluding to two “passing overs” into the Land – the first in the time of Yehushua, and the second in the time of Ezra. All this leads to conclusion that a miracle was supposed to happen at the time of Ezra, yet God’s will changed. R. Eliyahu Mizrahi, in his commentary on Rashi (Parshat Vayishlach), examines the situation of Yaakov Avinu returning to Israel, and confronting his brother Eisav and his army of four hundred men. The last Yaakov heard from Eisav was that he wanted to kill him, and he assumed, now twenty years later, that this was still true. Thus, the verse says, “and Yaakov was afraid,” on which Rashi comments, “He was afraid that he would be killed.” (The Lechem Mishnah, at the end of the fifth chapter of the Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah, also addresses this issue.) Yaakov was afraid that his own sins may have nullified God’s promise to protect him.³⁴³That is, G-d’s promise, made in Bereshit 28:15: “Behold, I am with you and will protect you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not abandon you until I have done that which I have promised you." Furthermore, we have the statement of the sages in the Gemara (Shabbat, 55a), “Rav Acha son of Chanina said: God never once broke His promise of bestowing good, and brought calamity in its stead.” We would have to bend over backwards with forced arguments in order to reconcile this contradiction. Based on the words of the sages, one would seem obliged to concede that God’s will can change. Yet based on all we have explained above, that all human knowledge is a created entity, and the whole order of existence is a created and arranged order, then we can also see that the borders and limits of what may change is also something that was arranged with the creation as an expression of God’s will. It is impossible that it could be only a change of will, for that very conception is no more than a created idea that can only be understood from our own greatly limited human perspective. At the time of the revelation of the miracle, it will be revealed that the miracle could occur even without any change in God’s will. It is the function of the Divine service of the Jew to arrive at this faith and to fix it permanently in his heart. Purely out of faith, man can reach a place above all orders of governance. Then it will be readily apparent that there is no difference between nature and miracles even from the perspective of created beings.

Exodus 15,16. “Your Terror and dread ‎descend upon them; through the might of Your ‎arm they are still as stone; till Your people ‎cross over;” the holy tongue is composed of ‎letters (consonants) and vowels. The “letters” without ‎the vowels accompanying them are lifeless; the vowels ‎give “life” to the consonants. All subjects that are ‎directly relevant to the “higher” worlds are alluded to ‎in the Torah by the combination of consonants and ‎vowels. As a result, at times when radical changes ‎occurred in the laws of nature, such as during the ‎splitting of the sea (waters) the “connection” between ‎these letters and the celestial domains was interrupted, ‎i.e. ‎נדמו כאבן‎, “they were silent as stone.” We know that ‎אבן ‏‎ is also referred to as ‎אות‎, letter, from the reference ‎in the Sefer Yetzirah to ‎שני אבנים‎. This is what is ‎meant by Moses saying: ‎בגדול זרועך‎, i.e. on account of ‎Your great Arm, (performing miracles) the letters and ‎vowels were completely silenced and paralysed. ‎‎[The Sefer Yetzirah revolves around ‎the basic significance of the letters as paths to ‎wisdom, the letters forming a major part of these ‎paths. Ed.]‎