Psalm 94 stands alongside the psalms that precede it. Radak explains that all these chapters deal with the era of redemption and the war of Gog and Magog, where the psalmist prays: Master of the World, bring the redemption near and take vengeance upon the wicked just as You promised through the prophets, in the words of Malachi, "For behold, the day comes, burning like an oven, when all the wicked and all evildoers will be stubble, and the coming day will burn them up." Malbim, however, explains that the chapter addresses the claims of those who deny Divine providence - people who say, "Hashem has forsaken the land," pointing as proof to the fact that the wicked prosper while the righteous are afflicted and persecuted. Malbim connects this psalm to the "Song for the Shabbat Day" (Psalm 92), where he likewise explained that the psalm serves as a refutation of the deniers of providence, as all these chapters share a single theme.
אֵל־נְקָמוֹת יְהֹוָה אֵל נְקָמוֹת הוֹפִיעַ׃ - O God of vengeance, Hashem, God of vengeance, shine forth!
Rashi explains: "God of vengeance, shine forth" - reveal and manifest Your vengeance against the nations. This aligns well with Radak's approach, according to which this is a prayer: Master of the World, You are the God of retribution; You possess the power of vengeance, so shine forth upon us and avenge us against the nations who have oppressed us throughout our long exile. Ibn Ezra explains the repetition: "Hashem is a God of vengeance" is a historical description, for we have already seen the Holy One, blessed be He, exact retribution from Pharaoh, Sennacherib, and Nebuchadnezzar. History proves that Hashem is a God of retribution. Therefore, "God of vengeance, shine forth" is a plea: please shine forth with that same retribution in the future. The first phrase describes the past, and the second is a request for the future.
הִנָּשֵׂא שֹׁפֵט הָאָרֶץ הָשֵׁב גְּמוּל עַל־גֵּאִים׃ - Arise, O Judge of the earth; render retribution to the arrogant!
עַד־מָתַי רְשָׁעִים יְהֹוָה עַד־מָתַי רְשָׁעִים יַעֲלֹזוּ׃ - How long shall the wicked, Hashem, how long shall the wicked exult?
יַבִּיעוּ יְדַבְּרוּ עָתָק יִתְאַמְּרוּ כָּל־פֹּעֲלֵי אָוֶן׃ - They gush forth, speaking arrogance; all workers of iniquity vaunt themselves.
Simply understood, we read "Hashem is a God of vengeance" as praise of the Creator. According to Malbim, however, this is cited as a defiance. The deniers challenge: If there is a God of vengeance, why does He not appear? Why does He remain silent before the wicked when they deserve punishment? They base this on three arguments. First, from the premise that Hashem is a God of vengeance - let Him then take revenge on them! Second, "Arise, O Judge of the earth" - Hashem is the Judge of the earth, so how can the Judge of the earth allow injustice to reign without repaying the arrogant? Third, basic justice demands it: "How long shall the wicked exult?" How long will their triumph endure? All this "they gush forth, speaking arrogance," and through this argument, "all workers of iniquity vaunt themselves" - elevating themselves and finding justification for their stance, claiming that there is no Creator, or that the Creator has abandoned the earth and does not supervise what occurs here. For otherwise, why does He not punish the wicked who ruin His creation?
Radak explains "Arise" as an appeal to fulfill the promise, "Now I will arise, says Hashem, now I will be lifted up" (Yeshayahu 33) - so that all the arrogant will realize there is Someone above them, that there is a Creator of the universe. When will You repay them according to their evil deeds and show Your supremacy over those who pride themselves against You? And "How long" is an expression of an outcry: Master of the World, how much longer must we endure this protracted exile, and how much longer must we suffer the wicked who exult and lord it over us?
Rashi explains "yitammaru" (they vaunt themselves) as an expression of self-praise, similar to "You have affirmed (he'emarta) Hashem" and "Hashem has affirmed you (heemircha) today." Ibn Ezra interprets that they gush forth and speak words of insolence, exalting themselves against Hashem, connected to the word "amir" - high, lofty, and elevated, as in "at the topmost bough (amir)." Radak explains "yabbi'u" (they gush forth) as an expression of speech, as in "My lips shall utter (tabba'nah) praise," since speech springs forth (nove'a) from a person like a fountain. And in Radak's usual approach, the repetition of an idea in different words serves to reinforce it: they gush forth and speak words of insolence, words of contempt against the Holy One, blessed be He. Moreover, "atak" denotes strength - speech that is brazen and forceful - as they boast and aggrandize themselves over us.
The Malbim examines these three verbs precisely. Yabbī'u (gush forth) denotes words flowing from their source, and man's source is thought - that is where words emanate from. When one asks where something stems from, he searches for its source, like water gushing from its spring. Dibbūr (speech), on the other hand, is the elaboration of matter with proofs and arguments. Amirah (saying) is concise, whereas dibbūr is lengthy: in colloquial terms, when one says "I need to have a talk with you," he means an extended conversation. But "I told him" can be a single word: "Come," period. An amirah is a definitive declaration, as in "For He spoke [amar], and it came to be," and it is the conclusive outcome emerging from discussion and debate.
Here the Malbim adds a fundamental rule mentioned many times, which other grammarians affirm as well: anything written in the hitpa'el conjugation denotes pretense or imagination. "There is one who feigns wealth [mit'asher] yet has nothing" - it does not say wealthy, but mit'asher, feigning to be rich; "one who feigns poverty [mitroshesh] yet has great wealth" - as if he were poor. Therefore, according to the Malbim, yit'ammeru does not stem from amir (treetop) and elevation, but from amirah (speech), yet it is an imagined assertion. It seems to them that they possess definitive proof that the Holy One, blessed be He, has forsaken the earth and does not supervise it - an assertion that seems absolute and clear to them, but it is entirely a delusion, devoid of truth.
עַמְּךָ יְהֹוָה יְדַכְּאוּ וְנַחֲלָתְךָ יְעַנּוּ׃ - They crush Your people, Hashem, and afflict Your heritage.
אַלְמָנָה וְגֵר יַהֲרֹגוּ וִיתוֹמִים יְרַצֵּחוּ׃ - They slay the widow and the convert, and murder the orphans.
Israel are called Hashem's people and Hashem's heritage, as it is written, "Yet they are Your people and Your heritage." Those among Israel who are strong - the nations and kingdoms crush them, humble them, and dominate them. But one who is already weak needs no crushing: the widow and the convert they kill outright, and the orphans they murder. Whoever is strong, they weaken; whoever is weak to begin with, they slay. That is to say: See, Master of the Universe, how the nations inflict every evil upon Israel without fearing anything, because there is no one to hold them accountable and extract retribution from them. It is regarding this that we pray, according to the Radak: "O Hashem, God of vengeance" - avenge our blood at their hands. They fear neither earthly authority nor Heaven, for they claim that Hashem does not see the deeds of mankind.
The Radak notes the verb yeratzeḥu (they murder), which we find in other places as well: "so they murder on the road to Shechem," "and now murderers [meratzeḥim]." It can be explained that a meratzeaḥ is one who instructs another to murder, murder through others. However, we have explained several times based on the Malbim that whenever a verb is written in an intensive conjugation, it indicates that the action is performed with heaviness and force. Rotzeaḥ is in the simple conjugation, whereas meratzeaḥ is an intensive verb, heavy on the organs of speech, meaning the deed is done with great violence and intense power, unlike rotzeaḥ where the act is done, as it were, with ease. And so it is with all intensive verbs.
The Malbim explains these verses as the continuation of the words of the evildoers: Where do we see the Holy One, blessed be He, appearing to take vengeance on those who torment Israel? If so, it is proven that Hashem has forsaken the earth. Here the wicked crush His people, afflict His heritage, slay the widow and convert, and murder the defenseless - how long will Hashem refrain from executing justice? All this is part of their "proof," arguing that if He were truly present, why does He not exact retribution from them?
In his lexical analysis, the Malbim explains the distinction between "Your people" and "Your heritage." "Heritage" denotes the spiritual bond - the Holy One, blessed be He, possesses a spiritual connection with us; that is His portion in us. "People" denotes the bond between a nation and its king, an earthly relationship, the union of subjects under a sovereign who rules over them. Likewise, affliction in the Malbim's thought is always connected to the soul, whereas crushing pertains to the body. Therefore, "They crush Your people" refers to the corporeal dimension of the people's bond with the King, and thus physical crushing; "and afflict Your heritage" refers to the spiritual dimension of our being the heritage of the Creator, blessed be He, and thus psychic, spiritual affliction.
וַיֹּאמְרוּ לֹא יִרְאֶה־יָּהּ וְלֹא־יָבִין אֱלֹהֵי יַעֲקֹב׃ - And they say, "Yah will not see, neither will the God of Jacob understand."
The Ibn Ezra explains: they say that He has no eye, so He will not see, and He has no ear, so He will not understand; thus, seeing and understanding do not apply to Him. The Radak adds: among the nations, none is called the true God except the God of Israel; therefore, those who harm Israel claim that their God neither sees nor understands human deeds. Look and see - Israel is persecuted and suffering, yet no judgment is meted out to the wicked. From this, the nations feel emboldened to continue tormenting us, because the Holy One, blessed be He, does not extract retribution from them.
The Malbim explains that "the Lord will not see" means that Hashem does not exercise divine providence over the world; for if He did, He would administer justice for the oppressed and retribution upon the wicked. Inevitably, then, they claim He does not look upon this lower world. And "nor will the God of Jacob understand" - He does not contemplate what happens here. Why this duplication? Because among the deniers there were two factions, as the Rambam cites in The Guide for the Perplexed in the name of the philosophers (Part 3, Chapter 16).
One faction denied only individual divine providence (hashgachah peratit), but not divine knowledge itself. In their view, Hashem knows everything in terms of the general whole, and there is general providence over the preservation of the human species, but He does not descend to individual details and does not know what happens with each individual person at every moment. Why? According to their conception, in order to perceive details one needs eyes, and in order to hear details one needs ears. Since the Holy One, blessed be He, has no physical organs, it is impossible for Him to know the specific, changing events of the world. To a modern reader this seems utterly absurd, but that was their view. Regarding this they say, "the Lord will not see" - He has no physical instruments of sight. And their proof: the wicked succeed and are not punished immediately, which they take as a sign that He does not delve into particulars; for had He done so, He would have seen what they did and punished them at once.
The second faction went further and denied even foreknowledge from cause to effect, denying general foreknowledge entirely. Their proof came from "They crush Your people, Hashem" and "They slay the widow and the stranger": if He possesses advance knowledge, why did He create people who were destined to commit such evil deeds in the first place? As if He created a world and something went wrong along the way. In their view, this was proof that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not call forth the generations from the beginning. Concerning this they say, "nor will the God of Jacob understand" - He does not grasp from prior to posterior so as to see what will happen in the future; for had He foreseen the future, He would never have created such people. These arguments and the responses to them are explored at length in the debates between Iyov and his companions.
בִּינוּ בֹּעֲרִים בָּעָם וּכְסִילִים מָתַי תַּשְׂכִּילוּ׃ - Understand, you senseless among the people; and you fools, when will you become wise?
הֲנֹטַע אֹזֶן הֲלֹא יִשְׁמָע אִם־יֹצֵר עַיִן הֲלֹא יַבִּיט׃ - He Who plants the ear, shall He not hear? Or He Who forms the eye, shall He not see?
הֲיֹסֵר גּוֹיִם הֲלֹא יוֹכִיחַ הַמְלַמֵּד אָדָם דָּעַת׃ - He Who chastises nations, shall He not reprove, He Who teaches man knowledge?
The "boors" (bo'arim) are the senseless of the world, as in the phrase "a fool and a boor" (kesil uva'ar), and ba'ar is related to be'ir, a beast - coarse, animalistic people. The verse calls to them: Contemplate and open your eyes; how long will you persist in your foolishness and fail to acquire the sense to understand that the Holy One, blessed be He, knows all? For, as the Radak explains, "He Who plants the ear, shall He not hear?" - how can you claim that Hashem neither hears nor sees your deeds, when He Himself fashioned within you the faculties of hearing and sight? He planted within you the ear through which you hear, and the eye through which you see. Is it conceivable that He Who planted these capacities within man lacks those very capacities?
The Radak cites the Rambam's parable: Had the blacksmith or tailor not known the concept of sewing, comprehended it, and envisioned it in his mind, he would never have crafted a needle with the precise characteristics required to make sewing possible. Can anyone imagine that the needle's maker did not understand what sewing is? If he did not, why did he make it sharp? Why did he place an eyelet at its end to thread a string through? He could just as well have made a fork or a knife. Clearly, he understood the needle's purpose: he knew that to pierce fabric it requires a sharp point, and to pull thread behind it, it requires an eye. The same applies here: had the concept of sight not been known to the Creator, how could He have fashioned in us an eye capable of seeing and an ear capable of receiving sound? The eye is the instrument designed to attain sight, and the ear is the instrument prepared to attain hearing.
Reflecting on this, one can observe how much the world has advanced. When reading the opinions of these ancient philosophers, they almost sound feeble-minded, whereas in reality they were brilliant thinkers, and the Rambam engaged in serious philosophical debates with them. Yet despite their intellect, look at the absurd arguments they put forth: that the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot hear or see because He lacks physical eyes and ears. What is really happening here? The familiar principle applies here as well: when a person wishes to act as he pleases, he devises rationalizations and claims that no one is watching and that Hashem does not know. He constructs a convenient reality in which he can indulge every desire, and to justify it, he fabricates philosophies and theories. This explains how such sharp minds could arrive at such bizarre ideas and distorted conceptions.
This mechanism serves as the defense system for deniers in every generation. When a skeptic feels constrained, in matters of modesty for instance, he argues: this is simply a legitimate lifestyle; some people live this way and others live differently, so do not impose your values on me. A distortion is taken, an ideology is built around it, and suddenly it is treated as entirely legitimate. A person might seek help and a remedy for unhealthy inclinations, only to be told: you are completely healthy, everything is fine, and you can even take pride in it. Rather than freeing him from the deviation, they relieve him of his pangs of conscience, convincing him that this is a valid way of life, that anyone who thought otherwise was primitive and unenlightened, and that now society "knows better." It has always been this way: whoever wished to deny divine authority constructed an ideology around his desires and proclaimed it to be the correct path.
The Malbim explains that here lies the refutation to the claims of both factions. He challenges and rebukes them: Behold, Hashem is the One Who disciplines nations and teaches man knowledge, and you, the boorish among the people and the fools, consider - does the One Who plants the ear not hear? You claim that He has no physical faculties to hear, and therefore He does not know particulars and is unaware of what happens to His creatures at every moment. Yet whoever crafts an instrument could never produce it unless the function performed by that instrument was first conceived in his mind, as the Rambam explains, cited by the Radak. If so, how can you claim that the Holy One, blessed is He, lacks hearing, when He Himself fashioned our organs of hearing?
The Malbim adds that he already explained this in his commentary on Yeshayahu (Chapter 29): "O your perversity! Shall the potter be considered like the clay? Shall the work say of its maker, 'He did not make me,' or shall the crafted thing say of its crafter, 'He does not understand'?" We, creatures of matter, perceive things in reverse order: first through the coarse sensory faculties, and only afterward do impressions enter the internal faculties of thought and contemplation. A person first needs the external camera and the physical ear. But the true, direct order, found in an intellect abstracted from matter, is the opposite: He hears the thing because He apprehends and understands it in its essence, and has no need for physical vessels whatsoever.
People who have undergone near-death experiences - and today there is extensive documentation of many such accounts, even among the nations of the world - describe encounters they had there, meeting relatives and hearing things said to them. They describe it as a form of telepathy: I spoke with them and heard what was said, but not through a physical ear; it was a transmission of thought. This illustrates the idea: in a spiritual reality, one sees and hears by apprehending and comprehending the thing itself. The Holy One, blessed is He, comprehended the essence of sight and hearing before He planted the ear or fashioned the eye, and through this He hears and sees without needing corporeal instruments. To what can this be compared? A person who is hard of hearing needs an aid precisely because of a limitation; someone whose hearing is unimpaired needs no external devices. The Holy One, blessed is He, perceives all things at their root and inner essence through pure intellect, not through external aids. We, being physical creatures, require sight and hearing in order to perceive. This is the meaning of "O your perversity!" - in your minds things are inverted: you judge the Creator according to material reality, arguing that He lacks physical eyes and ears, and the crafted thing says of its Maker, "He does not understand."
The Malbim notes a precise distinction: regarding the boor it is written, "Understand" (binu), while regarding the fool it says, "When will you gain intellect" (taskilu)? The ba'ar (boor), as noted, shares the root of be'ir (beast) - one who is devoid of knowledge and unrefined. The kesil (fool), by contrast, can be brilliant, a doctor or a professor, yet remains a fool because he follows the desires of his heart.
A story was once related from about thirty years ago, when such a bizarre incident could still make headlines in the newspaper: the Israeli police in Haifa caught a university professor at four o'clock in the morning prying the hubcaps off his neighbor's car. They asked him: How can you do such a thing? You are a professor with a respectable salary and university students! He replied: This is the third time I have come down to my car in the morning only to find my hubcaps stolen. I told myself that this time I am not buying new ones - what was done to me, I will do in return; someone took mine, so I am taking someone else's. But what do you want from this neighbor - did he steal from you? "No, but mine were taken, so this is just replenishing equipment." Sir, you may be a professor, but you are a fool. In the same way, one often sees highly educated people sitting in prison: a person had an urge he could not control, followed by a trial, scandal, and everything that comes with it. A man with multiple degrees and an esteemed position, yet completely lacking wisdom - desire robs him of his senses and drives him to irrational acts.
The Malbim further clarifies the distinction between binah (understanding) and sechel (intellect). Binah cannot reach everywhere; the axioms of divine wisdom and transcendent matters cannot be deduced through binah alone. Through human contemplation alone, one cannot determine absolute morality; had the Torah not been given to command what is right and wrong, one might have thought that destroying an Ir HaNidachat (subverted city) or eradicating Amalek is immoral. What teaches us true morality? The Torah. "A plumb line was set" - the plumb line is a spiritual standard against which one must measure himself. Sechel, by contrast, is a penetrating faculty that grasps even truths that transcend rational analysis (binah), as the Malbim elaborates in Mishlei.
Therefore, the fools are admonished, "When will you gain intellect (taskilu)?" Since they possess intelligence, the demand placed upon them is high: to elevate themselves to the level of sechel, which perceives higher, transcendent truths. From the boors, however, who remain coarse and base, there is no expectation of sechel - that is far too lofty for them, and one cannot skip stages. For them, it is enough to acquire binah. Thus, each person is called upon to rise one step above where he currently stands.