Chapter 2 of Eicha continues the depiction of the destruction, but here the emphasis is on the hand of Hashem that destroyed. In the passage before us, we will examine one verse through which an entire gateway opens to understanding the ways of Divine providence: what is the power of a spoken curse, and why, specifically here, did the speech not prevent the actual blow. From there we will proceed to the Western Wall, to the gates that sank into the ground, and to the secret of the beginning from which the Third Temple will be built.
חָשַׁב יְהֹוָה לְהַשְׁחִית חוֹמַת בַּת־צִיּוֹן, נָטָה קָו, לֹא־הֵשִׁיב יָדוֹ מִבַּלֵּעַ, וַיַּאֲבֶל־חֵל וְחוֹמָה יַחְדָּו אֻמְלָלוּ׃ - Hashem planned to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion; He stretched out a measuring line, He did not turn back His hand from destroying; and He made rampart and wall mourn, together they languished.
The Midrash in Eicha Rabbah comments on this verse: "'Not from now, but from long ago (me'alma),' as it is said, 'For this city has been to Me a provocation of My anger and My wrath.'" That is: do not think that the thought to destroy began only now, on account of the sins of the generation of the destruction; "me'alma" - from long ago, from antiquity, from the very beginning. And the proof is: "For this city has been to Me a provocation of My anger and My wrath."
We have discussed this at length in the past: this refers to the moment when King Shlomo built the Beit HaMikdash, and at that very time took place his marriage to Pharaoh's daughter, when the joy of the wedding overshadowed the joy of the Beit HaMikdash. An angel then descended and planted a reed in the sea, a sandbar arose, and upon it was built the metropolis of Rome - the very Rome through which the Beit HaMikdash was destroyed. The inner dimension of this was explained elsewhere, in the lessons on Ein Yaakov. But the foundation is clear: the destruction did not begin now. "Hashem planned to destroy" - already from long ago, from the very time of construction there was already a plan for the Temple to be destroyed.
To understand why it is important to emphasize this point, let us cite a wonderful insight from the author of Sho'el U'Meishiv. It is written in the Torah: "And it will be, when he hears the words of this curse, that he will bless himself in his heart, saying, 'Peace will be with me...' Hashem will not be willing to forgive him, for then the wrath of Hashem and His zeal will smoke against that man, and the entire curse written in this book will settle upon him." The commentators wonder: the verse implies that specifically upon hearing the curses, a person becomes reassured - "when he hears the words of this curse, that he will bless himself in his heart, saying, 'Peace will be with me.'" Does hearing a curse reassure a person? On the contrary, one who is threatened with curses is terrified, not calmed! How is it that here he is reassured specifically after hearing the words of the curse?
This can be understood based on what the holy Alshich writes in Parashat Noach, in the name of one of the early luminaries, regarding the verse, "And Hashem relented of the evil that He spoke to do to His people." It is the way of a compassionate father who is angry with his son: before he utters what he wishes to say, inside him burns a flaming fire. He is seething, he is furious, and the words press to come out. When he meets the son and finally has the opportunity to let off steam, he lets it out, saying everything he has to say, growing angry, fuming, and threatening punishments. And what happens afterward? He calms down. In practice, he does not carry out the punishments at all. The very boiling anger that he discharged and vented in his wrath through speech created calm and relief within him. Now the child knows: Abba will not do anything to me anymore; Abba released it all, all his anger came out, and from here on, matters have settled down.
This is what the verse means when it says, "And Hashem relented of the evil" - and why? "That He spoke to do to His people." Because He already spoke it. And when He spoke, He, as it were, released the wrath. Of course, we are not speaking of flesh and blood, but speaking in human terms: the Holy One, blessed be He, so to speak, uttered all that He had to say, and once the wrath was expressed, the blow was already weakened, and one could say it does not come at all - for everything there was to say was already released through the wrath of speech. "And Hashem relented of the evil" - because "He spoke to do to His people": once You spoke it, it no longer comes to fruition.
According to this, says the author of Sho'el U'Meishiv, the plain meaning of our verse becomes clear. The wicked man hears the words of rebuke, hears the fierce wrath, hears "the wrath of Hashem... will smoke" and other harsh expressions. What does he conclude? Hashem has already spoken the words of the curse, and when one speaks, anger is vented; and when anger is vented, there is no longer an actual blow. "Peace will be with me." See how cunning this wicked person is: he reassures himself that the Holy One, blessed be He, has already said everything He had to say, vented all the anger through speech, and from here on there is nothing to worry about. There is indeed such a mode of Divine conduct, that through speech wrath is, as it were, released, and if so, everything is calm, nothing will happen.
At first glance, the wicked person is not speaking foolishly; according to the principle we explained, this is indeed how Divine providence works, and he seemingly has what to rely upon. If so, why does the verse say, "For then the anger of Hashem will smoke... and all the curse... shall lie upon him"? To what can this be compared? To a father who threatened to punish his son severely, and we say that after making the threats, he has already vented his anger. But all of this is true only when the son actually sinned first, and only then the father threatened punishments - then you can say that the threat discharged his anger. But what would you say when the son has not sinned at all yet, and the father merely warns him of severe punishments if he sins? Is there any room for the son to say: "Father already vented his anger through his threats, and therefore he will do nothing to me"? Certainly there is no room for such an idea. After all, no wrath had yet been aroused, and there was nothing to dissipate! That principle applies only when you have already sinned, wrath was aroused, and then the spoken word dissipates the fury.
This is precisely the intention of the Torah. "And he blesses himself in his heart, saying: 'I shall have peace'" - he reasoned to himself that Hashem had already vented His wrath through speech. But his mistake was that when the curses were uttered, there was no sin yet; it was before the transgression, and at that time there was no wrath to be released through speech. Over what could it have been? There was not yet any sin! Therefore it is written: "For then the anger of Hashem will smoke" - only now, after he has actually sinned, will the wrath begin. The barrage of curses stated in the Tochacha was an advance warning, and an advance warning does not discharge wrath. And now, when severe sins have been committed and there is great wrath against them that was never expressed in prior speech, the Holy One, blessed be He, will exact retribution immediately. Speech that comes after wrath has been aroused discharges the wrath; speech that precedes the transgression is nothing more than an advance warning, and discharges nothing at all. This is deeply profound.
Now we can understand the words of the Midrash here. "Hashem resolved to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion; He stretched out a line, He did not withdraw His hand from destroying" - the Midrash was troubled: why was Hashem's wrath not removed simply by the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, proclaimed and spoke against us? After all, sins were committed, wrath was aroused, and harsh words and warnings followed in their wake. According to the principles we learned, the calamity should not have actually materialized, since the wrath had already been discharged through the harsh pronouncements, as in the verse: "And Hashem relented concerning the evil that He spoke of doing to His people." Why did that not work here?
To this the Midrash replies: "Not from this, but from long ago." You think that the wrath here came as a result of the sin? That is not so. Here there was wrath that preceded the sin - for even at the time of the building of the Beit HaMikdash, before the Jewish people caused trouble, the Holy One, blessed be He, already said: "For this city has been to Me a provocation of My anger and My wrath." And wrath and warnings that preceded the sin do not let off steam, nor do they guarantee that actual punishment will not follow, since they do not neutralize the sins committed afterward. This is why the anger and fury that the Holy One, blessed be He, expressed with His mouth was not enough to avert the calamity from us, and we were forced, Heaven forbid, to endure the calamity in actuality - exactly like that wicked person who blessed himself in his heart saying "I shall have peace," failing to realize that this was wrath preceding the iniquity, which cannot avert punishment. In this way, the Sho'el U'Meshiv offers a wonderful explanation, sweeter than honey.
"Hashem resolved to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion" - and Chazal say: the Western Wall was never destroyed, as it says, "Behold, he stands behind our wall"; the Holy One, blessed be He, swore to the Western Wall that it would never be destroyed. And we have already discussed this: David built the Western Wall, and therefore it was never destroyed.
טָבְעוּ בָאָרֶץ שְׁעָרֶיהָ, אִבַּד וְשִׁבַּר בְּרִיחֶיהָ, מַלְכָּהּ וְשָׂרֶיהָ בַגּוֹיִם אֵין תּוֹרָה, גַּם־נְבִיאֶיהָ לֹא־מָצְאוּ חָזוֹן מֵיְהֹוָה׃ - Her gates have sunk into the ground; He has destroyed and broken her bars; her king and her princes are among the nations, there is no Torah; her prophets also find no vision from Hashem.
And what else did David build? The gates. Therefore the verse goes on to say, "Her gates have sunk into the ground" - they were not destroyed and broken, but rather sank into the ground intact; because David built them as well, and whatever David built is never destroyed.
Yet one must ask: the entire Beit HaMikdash was destroyed, and the Western Wall is not even part of the Temple building itself, but merely the wall of the outer courtyard - so if everything was destroyed, why did specifically this wall remain? What is the idea behind it? The answer lies in the Third Temple. Chazal teach that the Third Temple will be built miraculously, as Rashi cites in Masechet Sukkah (page 41a), that the Beit HaMikdash will descend already built of fire. Thus, anyone troubled by the question of how the Al-Aqsa mosque will be cleared away, and whether an anti-tank missile or other means are needed, does not need to be troubled at all. When the Beit HaMikdash descends built of fire, everything there will be wiped away on its own. What we need to do is build it on high: through our prayers, our spiritual awakening, and our service of Hashem. That is how redemption is brought, not through missiles and an underground movement; that way of thinking is not the Jewish way.
However, it is well known that blessing does not rest upon an empty void. Therefore, explains the author of the Sho'el U'Meishiv, in order for the Holy One, blessed be He, so to speak, to rebuild the Beit HaMikdash, there must be a foundational element from which everything can begin, for the Holy One, blessed be He, does not create here yesh me'ayin (ex nihilo). For this purpose, He left the Western Wall - so that the Kotel would serve as the starting point for what comes next, the beginning of the next Temple.
And indeed, holy sefarim teach that the Western Wall functions in a manner similar to what is taught in the holy Zohar regarding the luz bone. What is the luz bone? It is that bone at the base of a person's neck - some say at the placement of the tefillin knot - of which it is said that it never decays. It is written that if one strikes it upon an anvil, the anvil splinters and breaks, yet the bone neither burns nor is destroyed. Today, we have no clear knowledge of precisely which bone it is, and some say that this also depends on a person's merits, but we will not delve into that here. Anyone interested can learn more about the luz bone, the city of Luz, and all related matters in the shiurim on the beginning of Sefer Shoftim.
In the holy Zohar, it is written that when a person dies, there still remains within him a "kista de-chiyuta" - a slight impression of life. And where does this kista de-chiyuta reside? In the luz bone. And why is it necessary? So that when the time arrives and the entire soul descends to re-clothe itself in the body, and the body is rebuilt from it, the soul will have a place to reattach. That is, something remains, and that very element is what draws the entire soul to clothe itself once again in the body and reconstruct it.
So too it is with the Beit HaMikdash. What is the kista de-chiyuta, what is the luz bone that remained from the Temple, from which this entire body will rise anew, be established, and be built? Upon what will the miracle take hold? Upon that kista de-chiyuta preserved in the Western Wall. For the Shechinah in its full perfection dwelt in the Beit HaMikdash, accompanied by ten miracles; here, the Shechinah is not present to such an extent, but a kista de-chiyuta - more Shechinah than anywhere else in the world - is certainly there. A trace of vitality remained, ensuring that out of all this, the Temple will be rebuilt. In the holy Zohar, this is also called "hevla d'garmei", the vapor of the bones: that slight measure of vitality remaining within the bone, to which everything will return. Kista de-chiyuta and hevla d'garmei are one and the same.
"Hashem resolved to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion" - and the Midrash teaches that "it was not from now, but from long ago": the thought preceded the sin, already from the time the Temple was originally built. From here, according to the Sho'el U'Meishiv, it becomes clear why the warnings did not avert the tragedy: speech that comes after wrath has already flared dissipates the anger, but wrath decreed prior to the sin is merely an advance warning, which does not cancel the punishment for sins committed later. This is the mistake of the wicked person who "blesses himself in his heart, saying, 'Peace will be with me.'" And from the destruction itself, a point of hope remained: the Western Wall and the gates crafted by David were not destroyed. The Kotel is the kista de-chiyuta and the hevla d'garmei of the Temple - that very luz bone from which the Third Temple will be miraculously rebuilt. And our task is to build it on high, through prayer, spiritual awakening, and the service of Hashem.