לַמְנַצֵּחַ לִבְנֵי־קֹרַח מִזְמוֹר׃ - For the Conductor, by the sons of Korach, a psalm.
Radak notes that some commentators interpret this psalm as referring to the Babylonian exile. However, he himself leans toward the view that it does not speak of that seventy-year exile, but rather of the long exile in which we currently find ourselves - the exile following the destruction of the Second Temple. He offers two proofs for this: later the text states, "Will You be angry with us forever?" (הַלְעוֹלָם תֶּאֱנַף־בָּנוּ), and one cannot say "forever" regarding a mere seventy years; "forever" refers to an extended era, such as two thousand years. Furthermore, it later says, "Truth will sprout from the earth" (אֱמֶת מֵאֶרֶץ תִּצְמָח), and this was not fulfilled during the return from Babylon, for among those who returned were many transgressors who had married foreign women, "half speaking Ammonite" and half "Ashdodite," and their children were non-Jews. That era was far from ideal, and one cannot say that "truth will sprout from the earth" was realized then. Therefore, this is a prophecy concerning the future exile, the protracted exile in which we currently remain.
The Malbim explains that the psalm was composed in the days of Ezra and Nechemiah, who ascended from the Babylonian exile and began rebuilding the Beis HaMikdash, and the psalmist prays that this redemption should be an eternal redemption. This was the prayer of Ezra and Nechemiah - that the redemption be everlasting; and later in the psalm, the response of the Holy One, Blessed is He, to their prayer is also presented.
רָצִיתָ יְהֹוָה אַרְצֶךָ שַׁבְתָּ (שבות) [שְׁבִית] יַעֲקֹב׃ - You have favored Your land, Hashem; You have returned the captivity of Yaakov.
It is possible to interpret the verse conditionally: if You return the captivity of Yaakov, if You forgive their iniquity, if You cover their sin, if You turn back from Your burning wrath - all the matters mentioned in the subsequent verses - then we will know that "You favored Your land, Hashem," then we will know that Your goodwill is with us and that we have found favor in Your eyes. But as long as these things are absent, Your land and Your world are not appeased. When are we truly favored before You? Only when You bring back the exiles, forgive our iniquity, cover our sin, and remove Your wrath from us. Radak explains that the first three verses are a prophecy, followed by the prayer of the children of the exile, after which comes the response of the Holy One, Blessed is He, assuring them that He has heard their prayer and promising both the redemption and its destined time.
Others explain it differently: "You favored Your land, Hashem" - just as You showed favor in the days of the Second Temple, when "You forgave the iniquity of Your people" and "withdrew all Your wrath," so too "restore us" now from this exile. In other words: Master of the Universe, after seventy years of exile You redeemed them back then - deal with us now in the same manner and redeem us as well.
Radak analyzes the word "shavta" (שַׁבְתָּ): in its simple sense, it is an intransitive verb - you returned. Here, however, it functions as a transitive verb, referring not to what You Yourself did, but to what You caused another to do - as though it said "heshavta," You restored the captivity of Yaakov. Others maintain that there is no transitive usage in the kal conjugation from this root in this context, for one does not say "shavta the object to its place." In their view, while it is indeed transitive, it derives from the concept of rest and repose, as in "Return (Shuvah), Hashem, to the myriads of thousands of Israel," "and He will restore (veshav) your captivity," and "Restore us (shuveinu), God of our salvation" - not in the sense of returning, but in the sense of setting at ease and calming. Thus the meaning here is: grant rest to the captivity of Yaakov, that Hashem should lead them gently and bring them relief from the afflictions of exile. This is the opinion of Rabbi Yehudah Chayyuj, as cited by Radak. In Radak's own view, "shevut Yaakov" and "shevit Yaakov" are synonymous - though we will soon see that the Malbim does not explain it this way, distinguishing between the two terms.
The Malbim explains that the Holy One, Blessed is He, showed favor to His people in three areas: First, the land had lain desolate, and now Hashem favored it, which is "You favored Your land, Hashem." Second, the people of Israel were in exile, and the Holy One, Blessed is He, brought them back, which is "You returned the captivity of Yaakov." Third, we were laden with sins and iniquities, and the Holy One, Blessed is He, pardons them, which is "You forgave the iniquity of Your people... Selah" (and "Selah," following the Malbim's regular approach, marks the conclusion of the topic). Yet in each of these three areas, the psalmist notes a particular condition containing a flaw and a limitation, from which he understands that this was not yet the ultimate, eternal redemption.
In the first verse, he says, "Hashem, You favored Your land" - mentioning the Tetragrammaton, which represents the attribute of Mercy, rather than the name Elokim, which represents the attribute of Justice. And the deficiency is that You favored Your land solely out of the attribute of Mercy. An influx that comes strictly from Mercy is inherently precarious: as long as I feel compassion, I bestow, but when I feel no compassion, I withhold. To what can this be compared? If you receive a salary from me purely out of charity, at some point I may lose the desire to give it to you; but when it is owed to you by right, by law, it does not depend on my mood - you can go to labor court and extract the payment. It is always better to receive by right than by favor. You saw the desolation of the Land and took pity on it; had this redemption come from the attribute of Justice, it would have been an eternal salvation, but when it stems from Mercy, it is entirely possible that at some point the mercy will cease.
In the phrase "You returned the captivity of Yaakov" (שַׁבְתָּ שְׁבִית יַעֲקֹב), the Psalmist likewise detects a deficiency, for the word shevit indicates that they were still in captivity - still subordinate to the Persian Empire. True redemption must be complete redemption, whereas here the Jewish people went up to rebuild the Beis HaMikdash solely by permission granted by a foreign monarchy. Cyrus granted the initial authorization; later, adversaries wrote defamatory accusations and construction was halted; and subsequently Darius - the son of Esther - granted permission to resume the building. The historical order of monarchs: Darius I, who was Darius the Mede, who wrested the kingdom of Babylonia from Belshazzar; Belshazzar had inherited it from Evil-merodach, and Evil-merodach from Nebuchadnezzar; and Belshazzar, grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, was conquered by Darius the Mede. After him came Cyrus the Persian, followed by Ahasuerus, followed by Darius the Persian, the son of Esther. (Those studying the Daf Yomi will soon encounter this on daf 11-12 [Megillah], where this entire chronological sequence is laid out.)
It turns out that during those eras we remained subject to a foreign empire - acting only behurmanuta, by decree and permission of the Persian crown, rather than possessing our own sovereignty. Just as today one cannot build a balcony in the settlements without Uncle Sam's approval; you can think you are independent, you can imagine you are sovereign, but if someone over there withholds approval, you find yourself in serious trouble. Regarding this, the Psalmist laments that this was a fundamental shortcoming: "You returned the captivity of Yaakov" - even after our return, we were still in captivity, subject to the rule of Cyrus and Darius.
The Malbim notes a precise textual nuance: the written text (ketiv) is shevut, but the traditional reading (keri) is shevit. Shevut connotes restoration, while shevit connotes captivity. Yet even in shevut there is a flaw: the language of bringing back refers to the mortal king who returned them - a restoration executed through human agency. When I am redeemed by the Holy One, Blessed is He, I am beholden to none other than the Holy One; but when I am redeemed through the power of a specific empire, I am first and foremost subordinate to them, and second, I am indebted to them, for they were the ones who granted me authorization to ascend and rebuild the Beis HaMikdash. It hung entirely upon the license of Cyrus - and that is not the promised redemption we await, an absolute redemption wrought directly by the Holy One, Blessed is He, speedily and in our days.
On this subject of who builds authentically and who merely craves recognition: there are those who come here simply to stir up controversy. The Reform movement has no genuine interest in the Kotel - they themselves once described the Beis HaMikdash and the Kotel as a slaughterhouse, a wall of a slaughterhouse, speaking of it with disdain. "Our home is Berlin, our home is America, not Israel" - and suddenly they demand the Kotel? What would they even pray for there? For the rebuilding of the Beis HaMikdash, which they reject? Do they go to the Kotel on Tishah B'Av? They have no genuine interest in any of it. Their sole aim is to secure official recognition. In the United States their strength has eroded considerably, particularly in the Trump era, and they have no third generation, no viable continuity - so they come here to make noise.
Nor have they managed to gain traction with the Israeli public, which is far too cynical to swallow American "schmaltz." Over there it sells; here in Israel it falls flat. An Israeli may say, "I am secular" - but he is secular in relation to authentic, traditional Orthodoxy, not to Reform; to him, the entire movement is absurd. Those who champion the Reform do so merely to poke a finger in the eye of the Orthodox public, not out of any genuine religious conviction. Are there Reform temples lining North Tel Aviv? If the public truly supported them, the area would be filled with temples. Rather, the entire campaign is designed to manufacture a pseudo-Judaism through which authentic Torah Judaism can be undermined and the rabbinic authority weakened. That is their whole agenda.
Yet we are not worried in the least. The Rambam writes that the Torah guarantees that in any dispute waged against a heretic or an evildoer, we will emerge victorious, as it is stated: "No weapon formed against you shall succeed, and every tongue that rises against you in judgment you shall condemn; this is the heritage of the servants of Hashem" (Yeshayahu 54:17). We need not lose sleep over debates with them. Over the long span of time, not a single heretical movement has ever survived. Where are the Sadducees? Where are the Essenes? Where are the Jacobites? Where are Shabbetai Tzvi and his followers? Survey all the heretical movements throughout history - you will find no living continuity. Even the Karaites and Samaritans, what remains of them? A tiny handful of individuals who occasionally stage a ceremony somewhere, and even the few who remain no longer understand their own religion or what it teaches. There is a divine promise in the Torah: "וְאַתֶּם הַדְּבֵקִים בַּה' אֱלֹהֵיכֶם חַיִּים כֻּלְּכֶם הַיּוֹם" - "And you who cleave to Hashem your God are alive, all of you, today" (Devarim 4:4). The promise of eternity belongs exclusively to the Jewish people who preserve the Torah in its authentic purity, in the very form in which it was transmitted. And all those who deviated have been erased from history's ledger, discarded into the recycling bin of time.
נָשָׂאתָ עֲוֺן עַמֶּךָ כִּסִּיתָ כׇל־חַטָּאתָם סֶלָה׃ - You have borne the iniquity of Your people; You have covered all their sin, Selah.
The third matter is the forgiveness of iniquities, and here too the Psalmist sees a deficiency. It is said that Hashem "bore" their iniquity and "covered" their sin. "Bearing iniquity" (nesi'at avon) means that the Holy One, blessed be He, did not eradicate it entirely: the iniquity still exists, and Hashem bears it so that it will not weigh down upon us. There is no total erasure here and no complete pardon, but rather a forgiveness in the sense of nosei avon (bearing iniquity) - it remains, yet Hashem endures it.
And what does "endures it" mean? This is explained at length in the sefer Tomer Devorah by the Ramak, in his exposition of the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy regarding this attribute of Nosei Avon. The meaning is: the moment a person sins, he creates a destructive force (mashchit). If the Holy One, blessed be He, were to unleash this destroyer, the person could not survive for even a single moment, for it seeks to draw sustenance from the one who created it, and its feeding brings illness, death, and harm. What does the Holy One, blessed be He, do? In His immense mercy and kindness, He sustains and nourishes this destroyer until repentance is done. And this is what we say in the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy: "Bearing iniquity, transgression, and sin" - Hashem carries it, nourishing and sustaining it, until the sin is completely cleansed. But initially, the Holy One, blessed be He, merely bears the iniquity, and this is not yet complete forgiveness.
Similarly, the chet (unintentional sin) still has existence, as it says, "You have covered all their sin" - it does not say "You have forgiven." The sin still exists, but You have covered it. This is similar to what is said, that "a transgression extinguishes a mitzvah": when a person commits a transgression, it extinguishes a mitzvah he performed - and note carefully, it does not say "nullifies," but "extinguishes," meaning that if he repents for the sin, the light of the mitzvah shines once again. Another example: when someone gets married, Chazal use the expression that "his sins are stopped up (nifkakim)." What does nifkakim mean? They have been placed in a bottle and sealed with a stopper (pekkak). Let us now see how you conduct yourself; you got married, a clean slate. If there is indeed a new path, wonderful; but if not, the stopper is removed and the sins return to their full standing.
As a humorous aside: there was once a person who said he preferred working with checks rather than cash, because when you hand over cash you never see it again, whereas with a check you see it bouncing back again and again. They asked him: "What, do your checks have no cover?" He replied: "Of course they have a cover; I always make sure to hand them over inside an envelope!" This is the meaning of "You have covered all their sin, Selah" - it is covered, but it still exists inside.
From this, the Psalmist understands that this was not the complete redemption, not the future redemption; for in the ultimate redemption, Hashem will eradicate sins entirely until they have no reality at all, and He will abolish evil completely.
1. That there will be a complete gathering and a full redemption without human effort, unlike the first deficiency of shevut, which came through a human being - through Cyrus who returned us. 2. That it will not stem from the attribute of mercy alone, which is temporary, but for eternity, as it is written, "And with everlasting kindness I will have mercy on you," and not something fleeting. 3. That His anger will be entirely nullified, unlike now when Hashem merely bears their iniquity and covers their sin, as it is written, "For you will forget the shame of your youth" - where the anger is completely abolished.
אָסַפְתָּ כׇל־עֶבְרָתֶךָ הֱשִׁיבוֹתָ מֵחֲרוֹן אַפֶּךָ׃ - You have withdrawn all Your wrath; You have turned back from the heat of Your anger.
As a grammatical aside: we do not read "Asafta kol evratecha" with a dagesh in the chaf, but rather "chol evratecha." Even though the general rule is that the letters beged kefet at the beginning of a word always receive a dagesh, here the dagesh is dropped because of an adjacent quiescent vowel letter (ehevi). You might ask: Where is the ehevi? After all, "asafta" ends with a tav. The answer, as noted several times, is that a word ending with a kamatz, such as asafta, apecha, and the like, is treated as though it has a hidden hei - as if written asaftah. This hei is unwritten but considered present, for one can say natatta with a kamatz or natattah with a hei, and there is no difference. Therefore, asafta causes the dagesh to drop from the chaf.
Turning to the explanation of the matter: What is the difference between asafta ("You gathered" or "withdrew") and heshivota ("You turned back"), and between evratecha ("Your wrath") and charon apecha ("the heat of Your anger")? The Malbim explains that there is a difference between evrah and charon af. Charon af is directed at the sinner himself; evrah means that through the wrath directed at the sinner, the Holy One, blessed be He, so to speak, is also angry with those who do not deserve it. As the Malbim explains in several places, the term evrah always denotes anger that exceeds the measure - going beyond (over) what is strictly deserved. Charon af is upon the one who deserves it, while evrah means that the Holy One, blessed be He, as it were, spills over in His anger and is angry even with those who did not sin. For example, when part of the community sins and the Holy One, blessed be He, punishes the collective - as with Achan, who violated the ban, and the entire nation of Israel suffered casualties at Ai - toward Achan there was charon af, while toward the rest of Israel there was evrah.
Accordingly, the expression "burning anger" (charon af) applies to the Jewish people, because they genuinely sinned. But the land itself did not sin, and when the Holy One, blessed be He, brings brimstone and salt upon it, that is "fury" (evrah) - going beyond what it actually deserved. Therefore the Psalmist says: You, Hashem, favored Your land, and thus "You gathered in all Your fury" (evratecha) - for previously there was a fury of brimstone and salt directed at the land, but when You saw it You gathered in Your fury, because the land truly deserved no punishment. Afterward, when You returned the captivity of Yaakov, "You turned back from the heat of Your anger" (charon apecha) - because we indeed deserved punishment, since we had sinned, and toward us it is burning anger; so when You returned the captivity of Yaakov, You also turned back from the heat of Your anger.
From here stems the Psalmist's question: since there is now neither fury nor burning anger, why should the prophecies of the prophets regarding the eternal salvation not be fulfilled right now? Why should this be merely a temporary salvation, where all the characteristics we found in the psalm are those of a temporary salvation rather than the complete Redemption?
According to the Radak, this psalm refers to the long exile in which we currently find ourselves, while according to the Malbim, it was established in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah as a prayer that the redemption be eternal. The Holy One, blessed be He, favored His people in three matters: favoring the land, returning the exiles, and forgiving iniquities - and in each of them, the Psalmist found a limitation: the appeasement came through the attribute of mercy rather than justice; the return came through the agency of a mortal king while we remained "the captivity of Jacob" under the Persian Empire; and the forgiveness was the bearing of iniquity and covering of sin rather than total erasure. From this, the Psalmist defined the hallmarks of the true Redemption: a universal gathering without human agency, eternal loving-kindness rather than temporary mercy, and the complete nullification of divine anger. In the words of the verse: "You gathered in all Your fury" toward the land that did not sin, and "You turned back from the heat of Your anger" toward us who did sin - and from here arises the petition that the prophecies of the eternal salvation be fulfilled already now, speedily in our days.
And though the road is long, we have the promise: "And you who cling to Hashem your God are all alive today" - the promise of eternity is preserved for the Jewish people who safeguard the Torah in the authenticity with which it was given, while all the movements that denied it have been wiped out from history.