Comentários de Citação sobre Isaías 57:1

And to gather the lilies: This is Thought, the luminescence of Wisdom flowing forth to the six cosmic boundaries [ketzavot]. All this takes place during the period of exile, a time bereft of festal offerings, sacrifices of thanksgiving and the meal offerings. The spiritual entities ascend and are drawn to that place from which they nurse. This is the meaning of: “on evil’s account, the righteous one dies” [Isa. 57:1].¹⁵⁷Because of this cosmic exile, the sefirot turn “upward” and tzaddik, the righteous one [yesod] is not nourished by them. For this reason, one must strive to invoke and emanate an outflow of blessing to the Fathers,¹⁵⁸Ḥesed, gevurah, tiferet, symbolized by the Patriarchs. so that the sons too be imbued with emanative energy. In this verse this process of emanation and outpouring is referred to as “gathering.”

על לב .על לבבך, wo es sonst von Worten oder deren Inhalt vorkommt, drückt nicht nur ein Vorhandensein im Bewusstsein, sondern einen Einfluss, eine gewisse Macht aus, welche die, Worte über das Herz üben sollen. So דבר על לב. (Bereschit 34, 3 und 50, 21; Jes. 40, 2; Richter 19, 3 u. s.); שם על לב (Jes. 57, 1; Jirm. 12, 11; Daniel 1, 8 u.s). Die Anforderung ist daher hier, daß die hier als unsere Verpflichtung ausgesprochenen Worte uns gegenwärtig sein und bleibenden Einfluss auf unser Herz, somit auf unser Sinnen und Denken haben sollen. Wir sollen ihrer Macht unser Herz unterstellen, sollen unser Denken und Sinnen von ihnen beherrscht sein lassen. So auch ספרי z. St. צריך להשביע את יצרו: man muss seinen inneren Sinn in Eid und Pflicht nehmen.

Inasmuch as the guilty party in this case was Israel, the insult could not have been greater seeing that Israel was G'd's chosen people. G'd Himself had indicated this by saying: "they have departed quickly from the path, etc." i.e. while Israel was still My most recently wed bride it has already abandoned Me, its groom, by whoring around. Initially, G'd felt so strongly about this that He did not think that any of the conventional ways of putting the insult into perspective would be effective and He had to take punitive action to get the feeling out of His system, so to speak. According to our sages in Shemot Rabbah 2,1 it is one of G'd's virtues that He cannot tolerate seeing His righteous people, His "friends," suffer pain. Accordingly, how could G'd inflict the pain of destroying His people on Moses? Had He not waited with the onset of the deluge so that Methuselah, a righteous man and others like him should not witness it (compare Bereshit Rabbah 32,7)? Moreover, according to the Zohar volume 1 page 206 the use of the term נשמה in Genesis 7,22 indicates that all the few good people, those possessed not only of a נפש, but even of a נשמה (a superior kind of soul), had died prior to the onset of the deluge. We also find in Isaiah 57,2 that the righteous person dies on account of the evil (which is to come). The prophet means that G'd spares the righteous the need to witness the disaster. Surely G'd was perfectly aware of how Moses would grieve over the destruction of his people! How could He even contemplate this type of revenge (retribution) for the insult He had suffered at the hands of the Jewish people? Had there ever been someone closer to G'd than Moses that he should have to witness such a disaster? When G'd considered all this and concluded that it would be better for Him to suffer the insult than to allow Moses to suffer the anguish of seeing his people destroyed, He begged Moses to allow Him to at least become angry for a moment. He asked Moses not to be upset at what He asked of him. If Moses agreed, this would give G'd an opportunity to first become angry and then regain His composure. He suggested that He would make out of Moses (his offspring in the future) לגוי גדול; He did not say He would make Moses himself into גוי גדול. This meant that though Moses was not at that moment a "great nation," He, G'd, would see to it that Moses' soul would possess the additional qualities needed to ensure that his descendants would be greater than the present Jewish people. The word אעשה also implied that G'd had to undertake a new process in order for future children of Moses to have the potential implied here.