Musar sobre Isaías 26:4

And, in truth, when a man reflects upon this, he should be ashamed and humiliated. How should we not trust in the L-rd? I shall begin with my explanation of (Isaiah 26:4): "Trust in the L-rd forever; for in Kah, the L-rd, is the Rock of the worlds." I have explained that "forever" comes to teach us that even in our time, when we see some hester panim ("hiding of the Divine Countenance"), when the ordinance [of the L-rd] is not so manifest as it was before, in the time of the Temple, wherefore there are found some heretics and rebels against the Holy One Blessed be He, still, one should "trust in the L-rd."

And all of our words are included in the [aforementioned] verse, in short, viz. (Isaiah 26:4): "Trust in the L-rd forever" — even when Jerusalem is in ruins and Israel is in exile, wherefore there are many rebels against the Holy One Blessed be He — even so, trust in the L-rd and He will help you. For the ability is still in His hand as before, and He certainly did also not remove His will completely from the world. For if not so, the creation would have been entirely annulled. For it is known that the Holy One Blessed be He vivifies the whole creation, as they have formulated for us in the blessing of Yetzer ["Yotzer hameoroth"]: "Who renews in His goodness, every day, always, the act of creation." And, as it is written (Nechemiah 9:6): "and You give life to all of them [the heavens, etc.]." It is not written "You gave life" (as stated in the Zohar.) And this is the intent of the ending of the verse (Isaiah, Ibid.): "For in Kah, the L-rd, is the Rock of the worlds." As Chazal have stated (Menachoth 29b), that the Holy One Blessed be He created this world with the letter "heh" from His name; and the world to come, with the letter "yod." And "Rock" [tzur] signifies strength. That is, His name, "Kah" [yod-heh] is, up to this day, the strength of the world. (As we find in Othioth d'R. Akiva, that the ends of heaven and earth are sealed with His holy name.) And if He removed His will from them [heaven and earth], they would revert to vacuity and void, as before the creation. From all this we can understand the greatness of the trust that one should put in the Holy One Blessed be He.

He then proceeded to reveal to them additional insights of great depth, whereupon Rabbi Yehudah and Rabbi Yitzchak came and kissed him on the head and said, “Blessed is the Merciful One who allowed us to hear these things. And blessed is the Merciful One for not allowing these things to be wasted on that old man.” Then they arose and began walking. They spied a grapevine growing in a certain garden and the child began, “He will bind his donkey-foal to the vine and the son of the donkey-mare to the vine-branch” (Bereishis 49:11) — “The idea is this: The ‘foal’ and the ‘mare’ are two potent shells of impurity. In order to weaken their power so that they will not confuse the world the Holy One Blessed is He formed the world with the name Ya-h, as it is written, ‘For with Ya-h Hashem formed the worlds’ (Yeshayahu 26:4). “This is what is hinted at here, that the Holy One Blessed is He took the name Ya-h (י-ה) and included it within the word for ‘his foal.’ For the verse should have said simply ‘foal’ (עיר), but it said ‘his foal’ (עירה) instead, to include the letter heh of the name Y-h within it. “Similarly, the word ‘branch’ should have been written soreik (שׂורק) but instead it is written with an extra heh at the end, soreikah (שׂורקה), while the word ‘son’ is written with an extra yud — b’ni (בני) instead of ben (בן).” The child then went on to reveal to them other esoteric insights.