Verse 7 of Chapter 1 is one of the richest verses in the Megillah in terms of commentaries. The lament within it is not merely a description of destruction, but a profound inquiry: What exactly is Jerusalem remembering now? The good that was lost, the sin that brought about the loss, or the righteous who are no more? We will proceed through the commentaries in order, seeing how each of them opens a different window into the grief.
זָכְרָה יְרוּשָׁלַ͏ִם יְמֵי עׇנְיָהּ וּמְרוּדֶיהָ כֹּל מַחֲמֻדֶיהָ אֲשֶׁר הָיוּ מִימֵי קֶדֶם, בִּנְפֹל עַמָּהּ בְּיַד־צָר וְאֵין עוֹזֵר לָהּ, רָאוּהָ צָרִים שָׂחֲקוּ עַל מִשְׁבַּתֶּהָ׃ - Jerusalem remembered the days of her affliction and of her anguish, all her treasures that she had from days of old, when her people fell into the hand of the enemy, and none did help her; the adversaries saw her, they mocked at her desolations.
According to several commentators, "the days of her affliction and her anguish [merudeha]" refer to days gone by: the days when the Jewish people dwelt in Jerusalem in a state of closeness to God - and what did they do then? Were they consumed and occupied with how to draw closer to the Master of the Universe and perform His will? The reality was terrible. "And He sent them His prophets early and late" - yet they did not listen to them. They told Yirmiyahu explicitly that they would not heed him, refusing to cease pouring libations to the queen of heaven and burning incense to her. The nation rebelled against Hashem. And now, when the Jewish people look back, "Jerusalem remembered the days of her affliction and her rebellion" - the days when, instead of being spiritually wealthy, she was spiritually impoverished and served idols. We had the Beit HaMikdash - and what did we do? We placed an idol in the Sanctuary. These are her "merudeha," the days of rebellion [mered] against the Master of the World. "All her treasures that she had from days of old" - all those precious things we possessed, and then, "when her people fell into the hand of the enemy," everything fell to the foe. The lament is: You had days of opportunity, and instead of enriching yourselves spiritually, you were impoverished, and what is more, you rebelled.
The Ketav Sofer addresses this same question and explains that the verse comes to express the magnitude of the sorrow. Consider: over what does a person grieve more - over something he toiled and labored to achieve, or over something that came easily to him? We all know that when you exert effort for something, its loss is excruciatingly painful. A person tells himself: How many days did I invest, how many months did I work - and in a single moment, everything is gone. In contrast, for something received as a gift, he consoles himself easily: easy come, easy go. True, there is always sorrow, but it is not comparable.
This is the foundation through which the Holy One, blessed be He, persuaded Yonah: "You took pity on the gourd, for which you did not toil, nor did you make it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night; and should I not have pity on Nineveh?" - upon the work of My hands. When a person has created something, the loss hurts him; when he received it for free, the pain is not as piercing.
From here we turn to the Land of Israel. The Holy One, blessed be He, promised it to Avraham Avinu; had we received it without difficulty, without suffering, and without effort, its loss would not have been so painful either. But we all know how much effort and how much suffering we underwent until we were privileged to receive it. Eisav knew this: "And he went to a land away from his brother Yaakov" - Chazal say that Eisav heard that in order to merit the Land of Israel there was a promissory note of exile to be repaid, so he said: I want no exile, and I need no Land of Israel, and he departed for Seir. We wanted the Land, and therefore we underwent four hundred years of exile that prepared us for it, followed by forty years in the wilderness, followed by fourteen years of conquest and division, and war after war. And now, the nations come and take it from us - the hardship is immense. We fought, we suffered, we shed blood, and we labored until we acquired it, and something a person acquires through toil is exceedingly difficult to lose. This is "Jerusalem remembered the days of her affliction and her wanderings": we remember how many days of poverty and hardship we endured until we were privileged to merit the Land - and therefore, "when her people fell into the hand of the enemy," the pain is sevenfold greater.
The Midrash states: "'Jerusalem remembered the days of her affliction and of her anguish [merudeha]' - in the days of her poverty [aniyuta], she remembered the rebellions [meradin] through which she rebelled against the Holy One, blessed be He." That is to say, Jerusalem now remembers the rebellions she enacted against the Holy One, blessed be He, in the past, and this resolves the difficulty of why the verse uses "yemei oneyah" rather than "bimei oneyah."
The author of Lechem Setarim explains in another way: In the days of exile, Jerusalem remembers all the days of affliction and wandering that she experienced in the past - days of trouble, suffering, and persecution. And why does she recall specifically those times? Because those difficult days were incomparably better than the days in which she now finds herself.
After all, the Jewish people suffered troubles long before the exile. One need only open the Book of Shoftim: only the days of Joshua and the elders who were with him were days of peace, and from then on, one trouble followed another - and all through our own fault; we do not cast blame for anything upon the Holy One, blessed be He. When the Jewish people strayed from the path, Yavin king of Canaan arrived; when they strayed from the path, Eglon king of Moab arrived; when they strayed from the path, the Philistines arrived. And the Philistines were an endless ordeal: they would be subdued, only for the cycle to repeat itself again and again. This is reminiscent of the modern Philistines, and some say they share the root of those ancient Philistines - who could not be fully subdued; you strike them, and they return. The problems must be resolved with the Master of the Universe, not with them; they are not our problem, the problem lies between us and Hashem. In the days of Gideon, the Children of Israel even dug caves and tunnels in the ground - not the Palestinians, but the Jewish people - in order to flee from Midian, who invaded, devastated everything, and took it all.
Thus, there were great and harsh troubles, and long years of persecution. Why then do we say that all of these were as nothing compared to the agony of the exile? Because every affliction then ended with a judge who arose and saved them: Ehud ben Gera, Shamgar ben Anat, Deborah the prophetess, Gideon, Yiftach, Samuel, David. There was always someone who arose and extricated the Jewish people from their plight. We had righteous kings, prophets, and Torah giants who shielded us through their deeds and righteousness, and through them we were delivered. This is the meaning of "all her precious treasures that she had in days of old" - those precious treasures were those judges, prophets, and sages. Jerusalem remembers them and hopes: perhaps now too a tzaddik will arise, perhaps now too a leader will arise to take us out of this trouble.
Yet Jeremiah the prophet speaks very harsh words to them (Jeremiah 5): "Roam through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in its plazas, if you can find a man, if there is one who executes justice, who seeks faith - and I will pardon her. And though they say, 'As Hashem lives,' surely they swear falsely." Search for even one man who executes justice and seeks faith, says the Holy One, blessed be He, and I am willing to forgive. For this is the pain and this is the lament: there were hard periods, but there were tzaddikim in them; whereas now, "and there is none to protect the generation," as the kinot of Tisha B'Av lament. According to this, "The adversaries saw her, they mocked at her desolations [mishbateha]" - the enemies see and know that we have no one to rely on, that we have no tzaddik worthy of shielding the generation, and over this they mocked: over the fact that those giants and tzaddikim, pious and virtuous men who could protect us, have ceased [shavtu] from our midst. Over this it is truly fitting to lament and weep.
What exactly was the mockery with which the adversaries laughed? The author of Sefer Meshal Umelitzah explains this with a parable. A great general fought his enemies, and his army suffered a crushing defeat. They fled and he with them; he entered a city, broke into a house, and hid under a table, hoping that his pursuers would not find him. The master of the house saw him - a man in dirty clothes and a military uniform - and cried out: "Who are you and what are you doing here?" The man replied, "Shame on you! Remove your hat when you address the illustrious general!" Those present did not know whether to laugh or cry. An illustrious general? One who hides like a frightened mouse under a table, yet still demands honor? "Sir, you are confused, you are living in an illusion; you are no longer the illustrious general, you are like a hunted animal hiding under tables."
Such was the condition of Jerusalem. According to the plain meaning of the verse, "Jerusalem remembered in the days of her affliction and of her anguish all her precious treasures that she had in days of old" - she is at rock bottom, but in her memory she is still there: she still remembers herself from the good eras, from the days when she would speak a word and hundreds of people would heed her command. You have forgotten, O Jewish people, that today you are low and despised. It is comparable to a person filled with delusions of grandeur and arrogance, imagining that he can threaten superpowers and great rulers, while in his present reality he is completely insignificant. This is what evokes ridicule among the nations: "The adversaries saw her, they mocked at her desolations" - they cannot see this without laughing; they still think they are there, they still think they possess that same grandeur. And for us, this is bitter laughter, for it demonstrates just how abrupt the downfall was, and how we failed to realize that reality had shifted, that we were no longer on that lofty level, and failed to act in accordance with the new reality. And the gentile sees this - and laughs, and mocks.
The holy Ohr HaChaim, in his work Rishon LeTzion, explains the verse: "When her people fell into the hand of the adversary and she had no helper, the adversaries saw her, they mocked at her desolations." When Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, he did not initially intend to destroy the city, lay waste to the Beit HaMikdash, and overturn every stone. His objective was to subjugate the people, as is evident from the clear and explicit prophecies in which the prophets instructed them to surrender to him; after all, he offered to exile them to a land like their own. But the people refused; a nationalist zeal left no room for surrender. And there was a prophecy from Hashem that the decree had been sealed: if you remain stiff-necked, you will suffer heavier blows and sustain casualties - yet it was to no avail. The people continued to rebel, confident that they could revolt against Nebuchadnezzar and prevail, and Zedekiah also did not listen and rebelled, even though the prophet told him it was forbidden. And so we find with other righteous kings: Josiah stood up against Egypt, proclaiming that no sword would cross our land - but they were not on the spiritual level for that, and of him it was said, "The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of Hashem, was captured in their pits." They did not heed prophecy, resolving instead to fight to the last drop of blood, and in the end this caused tremendous, devastating harm, leaving Nebuchadnezzar no choice but to lay waste to Jerusalem in order to subdue the rebels, conquer by the sword, and exile the people.
The same occurred in the days of Vespasian and Titus. Although in Josephus Flavius, in Sefer Yosippon, there are very sympathetic depictions of Titus, as though he did not want the Beit HaMikdash to be burned - it is well known that these accounts must be taken with a grain of salt, since he was a court historian, and though he was Jewish, he sought to appease his Roman patrons, while in Chazal we find entirely different portrayals. But even without adopting the extremes of those descriptions, it is clear that had they surrendered, the Romans would not have burned the Beit HaMikdash nor destroyed Jerusalem. Perhaps we would have paid tribute, perhaps we would have been subjugated under Roman rule - but we would not have arrived at such horrific destruction.
And who brought this about? In part, the biryonim (zealots) of the Second Temple, who refused any dialogue, and would not even allow Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai to speak with the emperor in an attempt to reach an arrangement whereby Jerusalem would be spared, even under foreign rule. They insisted: we must fight and vanquish the enemy. Incidentally, those biryonim - those very souls - were the ones who built this land in the early days of its rebuilding, those who were unwilling to engage in any dialogue; at the time, Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld sent Professor De Haan to attempt to negotiate with the Mufti in Jordan, and there was room for discussion, yet they refused completely and went and assassinated him. Anyone who wishes may hear about this at length in Mishnat HaChalomot and on the recording for Tisha B'Av, in the section that recounts the story of the biryonim of the Second Temple, presenting an astonishing exposition of how they were the very zealots of the return of the Jewish people to their land - people who were distant from Torah and mitzvot, who built the land here, but not in the proper manner and not according to the ways of Hashem. And there is a prophetic revelation from many years before they were ever here, stating that those souls were destined to return, presenting another opportunity to build the land in accordance with holiness, rather than following their old path of saying: we will not listen to the voice of the Sages, we will go out and fight - which ultimately plunged Jerusalem into famine and caused its burning and destruction.
Over this, Yirmiyahu laments: "When her people fell into the hand of the adversary" - when they had already been struck down before the enemies - "and she had no helper," there was no longer any hope or recovery. But note carefully: now there is no helper; previously, before her people fell into the hand of the adversary, there indeed was a helper for her. Had you submitted yourselves and accepted the heavenly decree, you would have survived. But you were obstinate and fought back, and now there is no one who can help. "The adversaries saw her, they mocked at her desolation" - the adversaries rejoiced over our very stubbornness, for it handed them an opportunity to destroy us, to uproot our foundations, to raze the Beit HaMikdash and Jerusalem. In simple terms: we delivered the goods right into their hands, and so we brought a smile to their faces.
To illustrate this from our own times: we are at the tail end of the operation in Gaza, Operation Protective Edge, and may the Holy One, blessed be He, help us so that there will be quiet there until the coming of the Mashiach, and may the Mashiach come today; and if not, at least that we may have quiet from that front. We all know that the entire operation unfolded because of their obstinate refusal to accept a ceasefire; had they accepted, the operation would not have escalated. And it was the kindness of Hashem that it happened this way, for otherwise, who knows what blazing fireball would have rolled to our doorstep. After all, their plans are now clear: for all those dozens of tunnels discovered there, a detailed plot was laid, and may Hashem save us, only the wildest imagination could fathom what disaster would have ensued had they carried it out. Thus, it was Hashem's kindness that they were stubborn and did not surrender, for had they surrendered, we would never have reached the point of dismantling the tunnels. We grieve over our dead and fallen soldiers, and over this it is certainly fitting to mourn and lament, but over their obstinacy we rejoice: when one sees how they were crushed and left battered and bruised, there is a broad smile on one's face. That is precisely how the nations felt back then - they rejoiced that we were stubborn, for on account of our stubbornness, they came and destroyed Jerusalem; we gave them the justification to come and obliterate us.