이사야 33:2의 인용 해설

The Torah also explains how long it will be until we will achieve this goal. We will achieve our goal in two stages, 1) כל הלילה, by means of enduring the whole night of exile; in Isaiah 21,11 the prophet already compared exile to night when he said: שומר מה מלילה שומר מה מליל. "Watchman what of the night, watchman what of the night?" as a reference to the duration of the exile. They also interpret Ruth 3,13: "stay the night until morning" in a similar vein. When "morning" arrives, G'd will pour over us His glory, etc. This time will arrive after the middle of the sixth millenium as we know from G'd's own words that 1000 years are equivalent to a "day" in His calendar (compare Bereshit Rabbah 8,2). Reason tells us that the first 500 years of that "day" are part of the "night" so that the time of the redemption will occur during the second five hundred years of that millenium. The words עד הבוקר in our verse make it plain that we cannot expect the ascent until some time during the latter 500 years of the present millenium. It was unclear from the time of the destruction of the Temple whether the "morning" referred to was the second half of the fifth millenium or the second half of the sixth millenium seeing that the Temple was destroyed in the latter half of the fourth millenium. G'd therefore revealed His secret by means of His prophets when Isaiah in chapter 33,3 spoke of "mornings." The verse reads: "Be their arm לבקרים, on mornings, also our deliverance in times of stress." Isaiah meant that if the deliverance does not occur on the first "morning," (i.e. the second half of the fifth millenium) it will surely occur during the second half of the sixth millenium. The word עד הבוקר is a reference to a "well known morning," i.e. the second one of these possible "mornings." Perhaps Isaiah even hinted in chapter 21,12 when he spoke about the morning having arrived and having been followed by another night, (without the redemption) that if Israel had been worthy it would have been redeemed already on the first of these two "mornings."

When our sages claimed that no more than one day of exile had been decreed on the Jewish people, we may have to understand this in terms of Psalms 20,2: "The Lord will answer you on the day of trouble;" the "day" the Psalmist refers to being the "day" In G'd's calendar, i.e. 1.000 years in our calendar. According to this calculation the most that we would have have had to wait since the destruction of the Temple until redemption should have been 672 years, i.e. 172 years which were left in the fourth millenium when the Temple was destroyed plus the 500 years which represent the "night" of the fifth millenium. Upon the arrival of the "morning" of that half of the millenium the ultimate redemption should have materialised. Alas, due to the fact that our people have not rehabilitated themselves that "day" passed without our being redeemed. This was Isaiah's lament when he said in Isaiah 33,2: "O Lord, be gracious to us! It is to You we have looked." The word קוינו, "we have looked," refers to our hope to experience redemption on the first "morning" which has been disappointed. At any rate, the prophet continues, היה זרועם לבקרים, "be their arm on mornings," i.e. on the second morning after two nights of exile have passed.

in the morning You shall hearken to my voice In the morning, I call out to You about them, because it is a time of judgment for the wicked, as it is stated (below 101:8): “Morning by morning will I destroy all the wicked of the land”; (Isa: 33:2), “Be their arm every morning”; (ibid. 28:19), “for every morning it shall pass.”