Introduction: The Final Verse of the Chapter
We have reached the final verse of Chapter 1 in Eicha. After the author of the lamentation details all the afflictions, the destruction, the exile, and the enemies' gloating over our misfortune, he concludes with a prayer and a plea: Master of the Universe, exact retribution from them. This seemingly short verse contains fundamental questions: Why are the nations punished at all for what they did to us, given that they were merely agents of the Holy One, blessed be He? And why does it say "just as You have dealt with me" (כַּאֲשֶׁר עוֹלַלְתָּ לִי) rather than "just as they dealt with me"? Let us examine the matters in order.
תָּבֹא כָל רָעָתָם לְפָנֶיךָ וְעוֹלֵל לָמוֹ כַּאֲשֶׁר עוֹלַלְתָּ לִי עַל כָּל פְּשָׁעָי כִּי רַבּוֹת אַנְחֹתַי וְלִבִּי דַוָּי׃ - Let all their evil come before You, and deal with them as You have dealt with me for all my transgressions, for my groans are many and my heart is faint.
"All Their Evil" - Even What Was Not Carried Out
The author of Lechem Dim'ah explains: What does "all" their evil come to include? Master of the Universe, before You the hidden secrets of the heart are revealed. You also know what they plotted and did not succeed in carrying out. When You present them with the reckoning, let everything come before You - even what they merely wished to do but did not manage to accomplish. And although the Holy One, blessed be He, does not reckon an evil thought as a completed deed, that applies to Israel; with the nations of the world, however, the Holy One, blessed be He, exacts retribution even for evil intent.
"And deal with them as You have dealt with me" - they rejoiced at my downfall. We have already mentioned the principle, "Lest the Lord see it, and it displease Him, and He turn away His wrath from him" (Mishlei 24:18), meaning that one who gloats over another's misfortune draws divine wrath upon himself. If so, Master of the Universe, punish them. But as for me, I will not rejoice at their downfall. Why? Because I have no room for joy in my heart. My heart is full of sighs and pain: "for my groans are many and my heart is faint" - my heart is sick and suffering, and my entire being is filled with sorrow and grief. How could I possibly harbor any gloating within me? Furthermore, Master of the Universe: You must execute vengeance upon them, for I have no strength left - "for my groans are many and my heart is faint." Only the Almighty Master of all capability can exact retribution from them.
Why Was Pharaoh Punished? Two Approaches - and Two Measures of Punishment
The author of Bnei David explains: "Let all their evil come before You" - Master of the Universe, punish them for all the evil, and not only for the harm they inflicted upon Israel beyond what was decreed. To understand this, let us examine a well-known question: Pharaoh afflicted Israel with mortar and bricks and all manner of work in the field, so why was he punished? After all, the Holy One, blessed be He, proclaims the generations in advance, and He announced: "And they shall serve them, and they shall afflict them for four hundred years" (Bereishit 15:13) - it was a decree. Pharaoh could seemingly argue: I was merely the executor of the decree, pay me my reward! Yet not only does he not receive a reward, but "And also that nation whom they shall serve will I judge" (ibid. 15:14). This is truly wondrous.
Two answers are given for this. The first: the Holy One, blessed be He, decreed "and they shall serve them, and they shall afflict them," but He did not specify who would afflict them. You, Pharaoh, volunteered to be the executioner out of the wickedness of your own heart; therefore, you must pay the price. The second answer, given by the commentators: Pharaoh added stringencies to the decree. The Holy One, blessed be He, said "and they shall serve them, and they shall afflict them" - He did not say to slaughter one hundred and fifty children in the morning and one hundred and fifty in the evening and bathe in their blood; that was your own cruel stringency. He did not say to take their infants and embed them into the walls of the buildings; that was your own addition. He did not say to assign men's work to women and women's work to men in order to compound their suffering, nor did He say, "No straw is given to your servants, yet they say to us: Make bricks!" You could have fulfilled the decree with far less than this, and for that excess you are held accountable.
What is the practical difference (nafka mina) between these two approaches? The measure of the punishment. According to the first approach, you were not commanded at all; you volunteered, so you must pay for everything. According to the second approach, regarding the core of the decree you carried out the will of God, and therefore one should be punished only for the excess, for what was compounded beyond measure. This is precisely the plea of the prophet: "Let all their evil come before You" - for all the evil, not just the excess; "and deal with them as You have dealt with me for all my transgressions" - even for what You brought upon me as justly deserved for my sins. Let the gentile not claim, "I merely fulfilled the decree of Hashem; they had it coming" - hold that against him in the reckoning as well. "For my groans are many and my heart is faint" - out of the depth of my heartache, I plead that You exact retribution from them for everything, and not only for the excess.
Verbal Oppression - For Which the Holy One, Blessed Be He, Exacts Retribution Himself
The author of Alon Bachut explains based on the words of Chazal: There are three sins before which the heavenly curtain (pargod) is never locked - verbal oppression (ona'ah), robbery, and idolatry. That is to say, the Holy One, blessed be He, as it were, never turns His eyes away from them; this sin always stands before Him. And Rabbi Elazar said: Retribution for everything is exacted through an intermediary, except for verbal oppression, for which the Holy One, blessed be He, exacts retribution Himself.
And this is the plea: Master of the World, for how they tormented us with words, for how they rejoiced over our downfall - as we learned, "all my enemies heard of my trouble, they rejoiced" - there was terrible agony here, someone standing beside me and laughing at all my suffering. "Let all their wickedness come before You, and deal with them as You have dealt with me for all my transgressions, for my groans are many" - a great and heavy sigh when I see the enemy gloating over my misfortune, "and my heart is sick" over this matter. And since this is never hidden from before Your eyes, and You exact retribution for it without an emissary - let them receive their punishment directly from You.
"All at Once" - Not in Installments
In the sefer Chut Shel Chessed, he explains: The Holy One, blessed be He, collects punishment from Israel little by little, for if He were to exact retribution from us all at once, who could endure? A parable illustrates this: A man lent money to his friend. If he loves him, he tells him, "Pay me back in installments." But if he does not love him, he takes him to court and demands all the money on the spot. The borrower is forced to drain all his funds, sell his home and his belongings, and perhaps his business collapses as well, since he needs immediate cash to repay the debt.
And this is the plea: Master of the World, may it be Your will that "all their wickedness come before You" all at once. Do not exact retribution from them little by little, but rather let all their sins be gathered together and enter before You. "And deal with them as You have dealt with me for all my transgressions" - for this time You did not collect from me in installments; rather, You immediately exiled us and destroyed the Beit HaMikdash, striking me for everything with a single, devastating blow. Do the same to them: one great and crushing blow from which they will never rise.
The Three Camps Before the Shechinah
The Chut Shel Chessed further explains based on what the holy sefarim wrote in the name of the sages of Castile: Before the holy Shechinah there are three camps, one inside the other, with the Shechinah in the center. Every sin is caught and detained in one of the camps: the first sin is held in the first camp, the second in the second camp, and the third penetrates further inward and is held in the third camp - but the fourth sin enters within and, as it were, touches the holy Shechinah. This, then, is the plea: "Let all their wickedness come before You" - not that one sin should be halted at the beginning, the second behind it, and the third behind that, but that all the wickedness should penetrate all the way inward, so that the indictment will be far more severe and the punishment far greater.
"My Groans Are Many and My Heart Is Sick" - Two Matters
The verse appears to repeat itself. The Torat Chaim explains: "My groans are many" - over my own afflictions; "and my heart is sick" - over their tranquility. My heart aches because I see myself suffering so greatly, while they are so happy and all is well with them.
The Binyan David offers another explanation: A single sigh breaks half of a person's body, and here "my groans are many" - so is it any wonder that "my heart is sick," that my heart has become sick and broken from those very groans?
An Agent Who Exceeded His Master's Instructions - The Explanation of the Chatam Sofer
A well-known question is asked: Why are the nations punished for afflicting us, given that ultimately they are agents of the Holy One, blessed be He? We say, "Woe to Ashur, the rod of My anger" - Assyria is merely like a rod; why exact retribution from the rod? Likewise in Egypt: "And they shall serve them, and they shall afflict them four hundred years" - and they carried out Hashem's decree, so why "and also that nation whom they shall serve will I judge"?
The Ramban explains that had the nations been satisfied with fulfilling the decree strictly to the letter, they indeed would not have been punished. However, they added and went far beyond it, being exceedingly "stringent" in executing the decree. They drowned our sons in the Nile; Pharaoh bathed in the blood of one hundred and fifty babies in the morning and one hundred and fifty in the evening; they embedded their children as bricks in the walls; "straw is not given to your servants, yet they say to us, 'Make bricks!'"; they assigned the labor of men to women and the labor of women to men. There was tremendous cruelty and creativity in Pharaoh's decrees that the Holy One, blessed be He, never commanded - and for that they are punished.
However, according to this, one might have thought they should be punished only for the excess: suppose we deserved a punishment of sixty percent, and they dealt out a hundred - let them be judged for the additional forty. And even if we add the words of Tosafot that with a gentile the Holy One, blessed be He, combines bad intention with action, it still seems unreasonable that the gentile should be punished for what Hashem decreed. The gentile could claim: in this part, I was merely the rod of the Holy One, blessed be He; if the rod grew longer, punish me for the lengthening, but not for the striking itself that was decreed.
The explanation lies in Halachah. The Gemara in Masechet Me'ilah, and also in Ketubot, states: An agent who adds to the instructions of the principal - the agency is uprooted. If I sent you on a mission and you added something of your own to it, you have completely uprooted my agency; you are no longer my agent, but acting entirely on your own volition. Nor is this divided into parts, such that you are an agent for one portion and not for another - from the moment you failed to carry out my words properly, from start to finish you are an agent acting solely on your own behalf.
Based on this, the Chatam Sofer explains: "Let all their wickedness come before You" - everything, the entirety of the evil. Exact retribution from them for all of it, not just for the forty percent, but also for the sixty that Hashem decreed. "And do to them as You have done to me for all my transgressions" - even for what You dealt to me and which I deserved, even for that part where they were merely the rod - exact retribution from them for that as well. And the reason: since they added, and an agent who adds is considered an agent acting on his own authority, he is judged for everything. The proof that they acted on their own authority is the addition itself. Had you done only what you were commanded, you could have claimed to be the yada arichta (extended arm) of the Holy One, blessed be He; from the moment you added of your own accord, you revoked the agency of the master, and as an independent agent - pay the full price for everything. A truly magnificent explanation.
"As You Have Done to Me" - Divine Foreknowledge and Free Will
We must understand why it says "as You have done to me" (ka'asher olalta li), as if Hashem inflicted the troubles upon me, when in reality it was the gentiles who did it; the verse should have said "as they have done to me." Especially since the prayer here asks Hashem to exact retribution from the gentile, in which case one should emphasize the gentile's guilt and arouse divine wrath against him - yet instead, the blame is ostensibly directed toward the Holy One, blessed be He!
The Maharam Banet, Rabbi Mordechai Banet, offers a wonderful explanation based on the Rambam. The Rambam addresses the question discussed earlier: Why was Pharaoh punished so severely, given that it was already decreed, "and they shall serve them, and they shall afflict them four hundred years" - meaning that he was compelled in his actions and was even fulfilling a supreme decree? The very same question applies to us: the Jewish people engaged in idol worship, were punished, and were exiled from the Land, seemingly earning this justly - yet here, too, it was preceded by a decree, as it is written: "And Hashem said to Moshe: Behold, you are going to sleep with your fathers, and this people will rise up and stray after the foreign gods of the land where they are going." While this was not a command but a description of what would happen, the very foreknowledge of the Holy One, blessed be He, raises the difficulty: if He already knows what you will do, seemingly you have no free choice left.
This is the famous paradox of Divine foreknowledge and free will (yedi'ah u-vechirah), addressed by the Rambam, challenged extensively by the Ra'avad, and explored by the Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh, the Tiferet Yisrael, and many others. It is an apparent dilemma: if I am able to act differently, it would imply that Hashem did not know - which certainly cannot be said; and if I have no possibility of acting differently, it implies that I have no free choice, meaning that free will is merely an illusion, while in practice I am compelled to fulfill the Creator's foreknowledge.
Through this, we can understand the verse. We come before Him and say: Master of the Universe, behold all the evil the nations have done to us. But immediately the question arises - was this not decreed, as in "and they shall serve them, and they shall afflict them," or "Assyria, the rod of My anger"? Everything is from Hashem; so how can they be punished? To this we answer: "And do to them as You have done to me" - just as You exact retribution from me even though You foretold it, having said, "and this people will rise up and stray after the foreign gods of the land," which functions like a decree since Your foreknowledge seemingly compels actions, and nonetheless You punish me - so too, "let all their wickedness come before You." Even though the decree came first, exact retribution from them for the deeds they committed.
As for the matter itself, one must know that free will truly exists, and one should not conclude, Heaven forbid, that we had no choice and were compelled to sin because Hashem knew in advance. This is certainly not the case, and there are many answers to this question which will not be delved into here. Those who wish can listen to the series on Sefer Iyov, where an entire lesson titled "Foreknowledge and Choice" is dedicated to explaining "For My thoughts are not your thoughts," and how Hashem's knowledge does not compel human action, unlike the knowledge of a prophet or mortal flesh and blood. Several explanations are presented there, culminating in a comprehensive approach that resolves the matter and puts the mind at ease.
"Cut and Paste" - Transferring the Evil to Them
The Lechem Dimah cites: The gentiles have always rejoiced at the downfall of Israel, taking pleasure in seeing how the Jewish people stumble, how they suffer, how the whole world attacks us, how missiles are fired at us - and the world relishes it. "All my enemies have heard of my trouble, they rejoice" - they heard how bitter my plight is, and to them, it is a celebration.
Therefore we plead: "And do to them as You have done to me for all my transgressions." The meaning behind this is based on the verse in Mishlei: "When your enemy falls, do not rejoice, and when he stumbles, let your heart not be glad, lest Hashem see it and it displease Him, and He turn away His anger from him." This has already been explained in the study of Mishlei, and one who wishes can hear several explanations there. The plain meaning is: when you rejoice at the fall of your enemy, you cause the Holy One, blessed be He, to remove His wrath from him and apply it to you. "And He turn away His anger from him" - and toward whom will He turn it? Toward you, who rejoiced at his downfall.
And this is the plea: Master of the Universe, the nations rejoice in our downfall, and it is already enough that all their wickedness come before You, and that You do to them as You have done to me - meaning, transfer to them what You have done to me. Notice that this is not "copy and paste" as we might simply understand it, but rather "cut and paste": take it away from us and apply it to them. For when someone rejoices in the downfall of his fellow, Hashem removes the wrath from the fallen one and places it upon the one who rejoiced.
And why does the verse continue, "for my sighs are many and my heart is sick"? Seemingly, if the affliction is transferred to them, we might rejoice in their downfall, and then the affliction would return to us, and then they would rejoice and it would transfer back to them - creating an endless game of ping-pong. To this we say: Master of the Universe, do not worry, transfer the evil to them and we will not rejoice. Why? "For my sighs are many and my heart is sick" - we are in such a state of mourning, grief, and heartache that my heart is truly faint. In such a state, there is no concern that transferring the affliction to them will lead us to gloat. We have enough with nursing our own wounds, and we will not be available to rejoice in the misfortune of our enemies.
Midrash Eicha: "Had You Merited"
Midrash Eicha states regarding "Let all their wickedness come before You": Had you merited, you would have read in the Torah, "You will bring them and plant them in the mountain of Your inheritance" (Tevi'eimo veti'ta'eimo); but now that you have not merited, you read, "Let all their wickedness come before You" (Tavo chol ra'atam). Seemingly, this sounds like a puzzling Midrash, a mere semantic connection between tavo and tevi'eimo.
In the sefer Birkat Chaim, he cites an explanation from the Ketav Sofer. When the Jewish people possess no merits of their own, with what can they approach Hashem? With what voucher, with what merit? We come and say: Master of the Universe, look how wicked the nations are, look how corrupt they are; what they do, we do not do. When a person has nothing good to say about himself, he speaks ill of others. While it is true that speaking ill of the nations is no crime, it reveals our own spiritual poverty. Had we been wealthy in good deeds, we would not need to say anything about them; we would speak directly of the good we possess. But when that is lacking, we seek praises for ourselves such as, "I do not rob banks, I am not a burglar, I am not a murderer."
And this is what the Midrash means: "Had you merited" - had you purified yourselves and acquired merit through mitzvot and good deeds, possessing merits of your own, you would have read, "You will bring them and plant them in the mountain of Your inheritance," where the Holy One, blessed be He, brings and plants you on account of your own merit. But now that you have not merited, you read, "Let all their wickedness come before You," where all you can find to your credit is that the nations are worse than you.
Why Exile Specifically? Ten Shekels Beside Pennies
The Chida explains in Tzavarei Shalal: Why did the Holy One, blessed be He, punish us specifically with exile? After all, a parent who wishes to punish his child does not cast him out of the house; he keeps him at home and punishes him there. If the Holy One, blessed be He, wishes to exact retribution from us, let Him do so here in the Land; being cast into exile is itself an additional penalty beyond the suffering endured within it.
Furthermore, had He afflicted us here, it would have been far easier for us to repent and mend our ways. Klal Yisrael would be gathered together, experiencing the affliction as a unified community. But when scattered to the far corners of the earth, what one group does does not impact another, making return and rectification far more difficult and complex. In contrast, when Klal Yisrael receive the blow together, they strengthen one another together, and it is far easier to achieve a collective rectification.
What is more, when we are exiled among the nations and they hate us, afflict us, beat us, and torment us, we immediately say, "It is an established halachah that Eisav hates Yaakov," and that is that. There is no soul-searching; it is simply a gentile who hates a Jew, and there is nothing to be done. One does not look inward, does not say, "Hashem is righteous, for I have rebelled against His word," and does not say that one must rectify one's deeds because of which the gentile persecutes him - there is someone else to blame. In contrast, when one remains in the Land and suffers directly from Hashem, it is far easier to recognize the sin and see it as retribution for one's deeds. A plague or calamity brought directly by Hashem is easy to interpret, far more than the abuse inflicted by a gentile in the land of exile, which will naturally be blamed on his malice rather than recognizing that "Assyria is the rod of My anger" and merely a staff in the hand of the Chastiser. If so, why did He not keep us here and afflict us here?
He explains: There are things whose value and significance exist in their own right, and there are things that have no intrinsic value, whose entire worth exists only relative to something else. If you were to ask: Is a ten-shekel coin valuable or not? I would tell you that it has little value. But placed next to an agorah (a penny), ten shekels is very significant indeed. When discussing the purchase of an apartment, however, a ten-shekel coin is entirely negligible; perhaps it might cover a single phone call to an attorney. Yet relative to an agorah, even ten shekels are significant. A diamond, by contrast, is precious in its own right.
And the Imrei Binah notes: The stature of the holy Patriarchs was that they were beloved to the Holy One, blessed be He, in their own right - "Only in your fathers did Hashem delight," He delighted in them for who they were, possessing intrinsic worth, precious pearls. But regarding the descendants, it is said, "and He chose their descendants after them" - our virtue is not on our own account; it is not that Hashem delighted in us, but rather that He delighted in Avraham, and we are his seed.
Thus we find that there is kindness and mercy here: even though our state is very degraded, relative to a Gentile, every Jew is a pearl, every Jew is an immense power, the seed of Avraham wherever he may be. We are like a ten-shekel coin - what is its value? Next to pennies, its value is great. And what does the Holy One, blessed be He, do so that we have value? He places us among many pennies. This is the exile: the Holy One, blessed be He, planted us among many zeroes, and suddenly even this ten shekels shines and has value. Had He left us here - what are we and who are we? But among the nations, every spark in the darkness flickers and becomes a great lantern.
And this is what the Midrash means: "Had you merited" - had you been pure and refined your deeds, you would have merited "You shall bring them and plant them in the mountain of Your inheritance," for then in Jerusalem our deeds would be improved, upright, and just, and we would be beloved to Hashem on our own merit. But now that we did not merit, and corrupted our actions, and we are not in Jerusalem, what is fulfilled in us? "Let all their wickedness come before You" - what merit do we claim for ourselves? That the nations are worse than us. In order to possess any virtue, I am forced to go into exile, and there, next to the Gentile, I am decent. This is the reason the Holy One, blessed be He, exiled us: here we have no merit on our own, but there, even in our fallen state, one can see that even a meager sum has value when placed alongside many zeroes.
"Hashem Has Forsaken Me, and the Lord Has Forgotten Me" - Mercy for Us and Judgment for Them
The Chida further explains in Tzavarei Shalal, through which we can understand the verse. Scripture says: "And Zion said, Hashem has forsaken me, and the Lord has forgotten me." Let us examine the exact wording: the first uses the Name of Havayah, while the second uses the Name of Adnut. And what is the difference? In pronunciation they sound identical, but according to the Kabbalists the difference is immense: the Name of Havayah is a name of mercy, whereas the Name of Adnut has the same letters as dina (judgment), a name pointing to strict justice.
"Hashem has forsaken me" - the attribute of mercy and lovingkindness has forsaken me. But notice: He has forsaken me (azavani), not forgotten me (shechechani). He cast me away from the Land, yet nevertheless I am still, as it were, remembered before Him, and even in the land of their enemies, "I have not rejected them neither have I abhorred them, to destroy them utterly." In contrast, "and the Lord has forgotten me" - the attribute of strict justice has forgotten me. Yet would we not expect the attribute of justice to remember us? Not for our sake, but to exact punishment from the nations: to remember that here is an agonizing, suffering people, so that harsh justice will fall upon the Gentiles who afflict us, abuse us, and oppress us! And this is the grievance: the attribute of justice has forgotten my plight and does not exact retribution from the nations.
Regarding this she cries: "Let all their wickedness come before You" - do not act in the manner of "having forgotten me"; rather, let all their wickedness come before You, and then let the attribute of justice execute its verdicts against the enemies who torment us and against the Gentiles who harm us. Thus everything is restored to its proper place: the attribute of Havayah upon us for mercy, and the attribute of strict justice upon the nations for retribution.
In summary:
The concluding verse of chapter 1 is simultaneously a prayer for vengeance and a prayer for consolation. "Let all their wickedness come before You" - all of their evil, even the sinful thoughts that were never carried out, and even the portion that was part of the original divine decree and not just their excessive cruelty, for an agent who exceeds his master's instructions has his agency nullified and is judged for everything; and let it all come at once and deep within, and let the Holy One, blessed be He, exact retribution Himself and not through an emissary, for in cases of wrongful anguish He avenges in His own glory. "And do to them as You have done to me" - transfer the evil onto them, according to the judgment of one who gloats over misfortune; and do not fear that we will rejoice, "for my groans are many, and my heart is faint" - my heart is sick over my troubles and over their tranquil ease, and a single groan breaks half a person's body, all the more so many groans. And amidst all this, we learned a moral lesson: when a person possesses no merits of his own, all that remains for him is to point to the baseness of others - and for this purpose, too, exile was designated, so that precisely among the nations, the worth of Israel would shine forth. May Hashem redeem us with an everlasting redemption, send us our righteous Mashiach speedily in our days, bring all the wickedness of the nations before Him and exact retribution from them as they deserve, redeem us from all our troubles, and transform these days into days of joy, amen and amen.