ציטירנדיקער פּירוש אויף דניאל 7:4

On that day will I cause the horn of the House of Israel to blossom out I have neither heard nor found the explanation of this verse. What is the blossoming of the horn of Israel in the downfall of Egypt? Was not Israel exiled eight years before the downfall of Egypt? [Therefore,] I say that “On that day” refers back to the above section, (verse 13): “At the end of forty years, I will gather the Egyptians.” That count ends in the year that Belshazzar assumed the throne, and we find in Daniel that in that year the kings of Persia began to gain strength, and downfall was decreed upon Babylon, as it is said (Dan. 7:1): “In the first year of Belshazzar,...Daniel saw a dream, etc.”; (verse 4) “The first one was like a lion” - that is Babylon. And it is written (ad loc.): “I saw until its wings were plucked off, etc. (verse 5) And behold another, second beast, resembling a bear” that is Persia. And it is written (ad loc.) “And thus it was said to it, ‘Devour much flesh.’” i.e., seize the kingdom. And the kingdom of Persia was the blossoming of the horn of Israel, as it is said regarding Cyrus (Isa. 45:13): “He shall build My city and free My exiles.” Now, how do we know that the forty years of Egypt ended at that time? [The proof is that] Egypt was given into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar in the twenty-seventh [year] of Nebuchadnezzar, in the year that this prophecy was said to Ezekiel. Add forty years, and you have sixty-seven. Deduct from them forty-five for Nebuchadnezzar and twenty-three for Evil- Merodach, as we say in Megillah (11b), one of these years counting for both [kings], as we say there: “they were incomplete years.”

A Midrashic approach to our verse: the word ציצית is related to “seeing.” The root appears in that sense in Song of Songs 3,9 מציץ מן החרכים, “looking through the shutters.” When someone wears tzitzit he must take care not to commit any sins as he is under observation by G’d from the celestial throne of glory, a throne which resembles the colour of the blue thread on the tzitzit.
The sages call a garment fitted with tzitzit a טלית, talit, a word denoting something superior, exalted; we find the word used in that sense in Daniel 7,4 ונטילת מן ארעא, “and it was removed (elevated) from earth,” This is an allusion to G’d who is exalted above all, and we have been commanded to drape ourselves in a talit based on an interpretation of Exodus 34,6, “the Lord passed in front of him (Moses).” If we did not have a specific verse in scripture to this effect it would have been presumptuous for any human being even to write such a line. At any rate, the meaning of the verse is that G’d wrapped Himself in a talit, just like the cantor in the synagogue, and showed Moses what He wanted to show him at Mount Sinai, telling him that whenever Israel is guilty of a sin, he should drape the talit over himself as he had seen G’d do, and then his prayers would result in G’d forgiving them.

A Midrashic approach to the verse commencing with the words “these are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom.” These kings were direct descendants of Esau as appears from the reading of the text. According to Shemot Rabbah 15,4 [not exactly, Ed.] these were all descendants of Esau, idol worshippers, indulging in promiscuous sex, and possessing great material wealth. Bereshit Rabbah 83,4 states that the name Mehetabel is an allusion to the fact that they tried to please many deities. The name “daughter of Matred” is interpreted as an allusion that she who had first been prepared and beautified for her husband was subsequently a source of trouble for her husband as the people of his generation indulged in illicit sex with her. The word “daughter of golden waters,” is an allusion to the material wealth of these people. They said of gold and silver: “so what?” (they had so much of it they did not treasure it). The whole paragraph teaches that the descendants of Esau were all wicked people. These verses contain further allusions to the characteristics of Esau’s descendants throughout the ages.
We are told, in the same Midrash for instance, that the name אלוף מגדיאל “chieftain of Magdiel,” is an allusion to Rome and its Empire. In Pirke d'Rabbi Eliezer chapter 38 we are told that Esau received 100 provinces or countries during the period between then and the ascendancy of the Roman Empire as a reward for clearing out all of his belongings from the land of Israel at that time and leaving Yaakov free to live there unimpeded by his presence or the presence of any of his belongings. This is derived from the wording אלוף מגדיאל אלוף עירם, suggesting that the former name is that of a city, the latter that of a person.
Daniel prophesied concerning the Roman Empire (Daniel 11,36) “The king will do as he pleases and he will exalt himself greater than any god, and about the G’d of the gods he will speak fantastic things.” This is why the term מגדיאל is applied to this king in the Torah, a reference to גדול, “great”. Actually, he was the tenth of these Alufim, ”chiefs.” This is what Daniel said (7,24) ”And the ten horns- from that kingdom ten horns will arise, and another will arise after them who will be different from the former.” What Daniel had in mind was that ten kings would arise of whom the tenth would rule over Rome, and that his Empire would spread from Rome outwards. encompassing most of the civilised part of the globe. Concerning that nation, the Torah did not provide us with its name. All our prophets also constantly mention the greatness of that Empire without revealing its name. Daniel, who compared various Empires to “the lion,” “the bear,” and to “the leopard,” did not reveal the name of the fourth beast to which the fourth Empire could be compared. All he said concerning this unnamed beast (7,7) was that “it is excessively terrifying, awesome and strong; with immense iron teeth, it was eating and crumbling and trampling the rest with its feet.” Isaiah (13,1) also speaks of messages to or concerning the Empire of Egypt, (19,1) the Empire of Babylon (15,1) and the Empire of Moav. When it comes to specifying to whom the fourth message is addressed, all he said was (21,11) “a call comes to me from Seir:” משא דומה אלי קורא משעיר, שמר מה מלילה, שמר מה מליל, “watchman, what of the night? Watchman what of the night?” Elsewhere (Isaiah 35,9) the prophet speaks of ”no lion shall be there, no ferocious beast shall set foot on it, these shall not be found there but the redeemed shall walk it.” We also find that the prophet Jeremiah mentions all these various Empires without naming the last one. Compare Jeremiah 5,6: ”therefore the lion of the forest strikes them down, the wolf of the desert ravages them; a leopard lies in wait by their towns whoever leaves them will be torn to pieces.” In the whole Torah only Moses, and in Psalms only Assaph, mentions the name of the fourth beast. The name עירם is a reference to Rome and it is the subject of Psalms 80,14 in Assaph’s psalm where he wrote יכרסמנה חזיר מיער, “wild boars gnaw at it (Israel).” You will note that the letter ע in the word מיער has been suspended above the line. leaving the letters that remain as an allusion to Rome, i.e. רמי, this is why here when the tenth chief is mentioned, the Torah amplifies by adding the word עירם in addition to the name אלוף מגדיאל, the letters in the word עירם being the same as those in Assaph’s psalm where he speaks of מיער. In other words: “who is this אלוף מגדיאל? Answer: none other than the חזיר מיער, the wild boar mentioned in Psalms 80,14. The letters in the word עירם may be read as מעיר, an allusion to Numbers 24,19 והאביד שריד מעיר, “he (the redeemer of Israel) will destroy the remnant of the city (Rome).” Isaiah 25,2 may also be understood in the same vein כימת מעיר לגל קריה בצורה למפלה, “forYou have turned a city into a stone heap never to be rebuilt.” The letters in the word מעיר can also be rearranged to read ירעם. Concerning this word, David said in Psalms 18,14 וירעם בשמים ה’ ועליון יתן קולו ברד וגחלי אש, that in “the future the Lord will thunder from heaven, the Most High will give forth with His voice- hail and fiery coals.” He will destroy Rome.
Daniel prophesied similarly concerning the end of the Roman Empire when he wrote in Daniel 7,11 “I was watching. Then because of the sound of the haughty words which the horn spoke, I watched till the beast was slain and its body destroyed and consigned to the fire’s burning” The prophet Ovadiah also prophesied concerning the destruction of Edom when he wrote (Ovadiah 1) that the Celestial Court had ordained the destruction of Edom and his entire prophecy concerns only this subject and the justification for the destruction of Edom.
The Midrash (Yalkut Shimoni near the end of Isaiah) remarks that only two prophets described their prophesies as חזון, “a vision,” i.e. Isaiah and Ovadiah. The numerical value of the combined letters in that word totals 71. Isaiah cursed Edom in the Celestial Court, whereas Ovadiah judged Edom in that same Court. There is a book called פרקי היכלות, from which our author quotes on occasion in which the various afflictions that Rome will experience in the future are discussed, i.e. that the decline of that Empire will be so drastic that a person will offer it for sale for a small copper coin and he will not find anyone willing to buy it even at that price.
Included in these ten אלופים you also find one who is described here as אלוף עלוה, whereas in Chronicles I 1,51, he is described as אלוף עליה. In order to maintain the uniformity of the Torah and to counter accusations of inaccuracy, the name in Chronicles is read as אלוף עלוה just as in the Torah. The reason the spelling is different is that it is an illusion to the negative characteristic of the descendants of Esau who speak untruths and do not even write their names truthfully. Psalms 144,8 alludes to such practices and refers to people who speak lies in order to make G’d’s words appear not to be true.
Bereshit Rabbah 83,1 describes the fact that in the early stages, before Israel had kings of its own, the Edomite nation was in a state of some turmoil, as evident from the fact that their leaders are referred to as merely אלופים, whereas subsequently, after the Israelites had elected a king, the Edomites were presided over by kings who possessed the authority which the word implies. Eventually they would suffer the fate predicted in Ovadiah 21 when “the liberators would march up on Mount Zion to wreak judgment on Mount Esau; and dominion shall be the Lord’s.”