In this part of Psalm 108, we continue from the verse "Be exalted above the heavens, O God" through the end of the psalm. The entire psalm is King David's prayer for the revelation of Hashem's glory in the world and for the salvation that comes only from Him, concluding with absolute recognition: "Vain is human salvation - through God we shall achieve valor." We will proceed through the verses in our usual manner, guided by the explanations of the Rishonim and the teachings of Chazal and the commentators.
רוּמָה עַל שָׁמַיִם אֱלֹהִים וְעַל כָּל הָאָרֶץ כְּבוֹדֶךָ׃ - Be exalted above the heavens, O God, and let Your glory be above all the earth.
First, regarding the reading: we read "Rumah" mile'el (stressed on the first syllable), because the cantillation mark is placed under the letter Reish. Had the mark been placed under the Mem, it would be milra (stressed on the final syllable), and we would pronounce it "Romah".
The Radak explains that this is spoken, as it were, allegorically. In the time of exile, it is as though the Holy One, blessed be He, is not exalted above the heavens, because His kingship is not apparent, and Hashem is, so to speak, concealed within nature. But when Hashem redeems us, He is, as it were, uplifted and exalted above the heavens, and then it becomes manifest that the Holy One, blessed be He, is the Savior and the Sovereign. The Radak cites the words of the prophet Yirmeyahu (chapter 14): "Why should You be like an astonished man, like a mighty man who cannot save?" - this is how matters appear during exile, as if He lacks the power to save us. In contrast, regarding salvation, Yeshayahu 33 states: "Now I will be exalted, now I will be lifted up," and similarly in chapter 46: "I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." When redemption comes, there is an elevation and exaltation of the Creator, and through this His kingship becomes manifest.
"And let Your glory be above all the earth" - this is part of the supplication: show Your glory over all the earth. This is fundamentally our plea throughout our prayers: "And You, in Your mercy, take delight in us and be pleased with us, and may our eyes behold Your return to Zion" - that we may merit seeing the Name of the Holy One, blessed be He, magnified and sanctified over all the worlds He created. This entire concept of "And I will be magnified and sanctified" is the ultimate purpose of the redemption. His Name, blessed be He, is certainly great in and of itself, but it is not recognized among the nations and not recognized in the world; a person can transgress Hashem's word and feel no concern whatsoever. We therefore pray for the knowledge of God to fill the world: "Let every creature know that You created it, and let every formed being understand that You fashioned it, and let all who have breath in their nostrils say: Hashem, the God of Israel, is King, and His kingship rules over all."
Rav Yeruchem of Mir said: If there is an African tribesman somewhere deep in the virgin rainforests who does not know the Holy One, blessed be He, then His kingship is, so to speak, lacking. When will His kingship truly be revealed? When there is not a single creature that does not know: "Let every creature know, let every formed being understand that You created it." This is the divine revelation we await and anticipate: "Be exalted above the heavens, O God" - may Your Name be uplifted, and may all the earth recognize Your glory.
When the nations of the world do not recognize Him, divine revelation is deficient, and Kevod Shamayim (the honor of Heaven) is lacking. To what can this be compared? To a person you dearly wish to honor, yet no one knows him; you always make a point of telling people, "Do you know who this person is?" because he is important and dear to you, and you want people to respect him. Similarly, when we yearn for Hashem's glory to be magnified throughout the world, it means that His honor is precious to us; the more the world recognizes Hashem, the more Kevod Shamayim there is. Not that Hashem needs this honor, for He lacks nothing, but rather it depends upon our actions: when we sanctify the Name of Heaven, Kevod Shamayim is revealed through that.
And the redemption - on whom does it depend? On the Jewish people. "In its time" (be'itah) will occur in any case, but if you bring the redemption, everyone will come to know through that. When the redemption arrives, this truth will become known throughout the entire world, just as the Rambam writes that the Mashiach will compel the entire world to serve Hashem and draw them near to His service.
If someone had been asked a thousand years ago: "How could the entire world suddenly know about something?" - the question would have seemed impossible. Today, it is a ridiculous question. With a single keystroke, something goes viral and the entire world knows. An event occurs in some remote corner, and ten minutes later the whole world knows - a submarine vanishes, a person pays two hundred and fifty thousand dollars only to meet his death there, and immediately everyone knows everything. What does this reality teach us? Just how shortsighted we are. A person living three hundred years ago, with no modern communications, could never have conceived how everyone could know something all at once. Do not worry - the Holy One, blessed be He, runs the world; let Him manage affairs, and when the time comes that people need to know something, in a single instant the entire world will know.
Satellites are already being launched with global networks, so that even a person walking in Africa can hold a device and know everything happening - not that this is recommended, but the reality is that everything reaches the entire world in no time today. This is preparation for the coming of Mashiach: when Mashiach comes, the entire world will need to know, and the Holy One, blessed be He, is preparing the world step by step. Of course, Mashiach has no need for these devices - this was cited merely as an example of how things once incomprehensible to us now seem completely natural. When a Heavenly voice, a bas kol, issues forth from Hashem, no physical medium will be required.
By the way, there are those who claim the earth is flat, that everything is fiction and deceit - yet the earth has been photographed from space! "And do not associate with changers" (ve'im shonim al tit'arav): there are strange people; leave them be. These are usually the conspiracy theorists, the same eccentrics we came to know during the COVID era, who believe someone is always duping and deceiving us. It is best not to listen to such a person, for it is a waste of time to indulge in delusions; sometimes a person simply wants publicity, and so he talks nonsense.
First, Chazal state: "A generation that is wholly deserving or a generation that is wholly guilty" - meaning, do not be astounded even if wickedness prevails, for Mashiach can come even in a generation that is wholly guilty. And to look at things practically: if someone had been asked thirty years ago whether religion would spread or shrink, what would they have said? Ben-Gurion remarked that a few should remain in Meah Shearim, like a tribe for anthropologists, so people could one day study how things once looked - like Native American reservations in the United States, where anyone wishing to see how the natives lived when the Americans arrived goes to see them. They wanted Meah Shearim to be such a reservation. Yet the reality today is completely different, to the point that on his own yahrtzeit there is not even a minyan at his grave. Meanwhile, Yom Ha'atzmaut has turned into a day of barbecues, a mere single-day outing, while throughout the Torah world it has become a day devoted entirely to Torah study.
The reality is that the public is moving toward strengthening in Torah and mitzvos. Compared to three decades ago, there is a marked awakening in tradition and mitzvah observance - and that is precisely what frightens those circles. They see this strengthening, and they feel the country slipping from their grasp - those who saw themselves as the "builders of the land," while considering Moshe Yoel Salomon and his colleagues as nothing. What are they fighting over? They realize their numbers are dwindling, having brought demographic decline upon themselves: when one household has an only child and a dog, while a settler has eight children and a Jew in Bnei Brak has ten, it is obvious that it will not take long.
Where, in the past, was there a media channel broadcasting to people of faith, with some of its presenters wearing yarmulkes, reaching viewing figures on par with the secular channels? The media was entirely theirs; no one else could utter a word. They broadcast and echoed only their own opinions, while anyone wearing a yarmulke or observing mitzvos was branded as delusional, messianic, a settler, someone about whom anything could be written. And suddenly there is a press and a broad media sphere run by people who see things differently, to whom faith is not alien - not that this is our daily bread or that we derive our hashkafah from them, but at least a different direction is evident. This reality robs them of sleep: until now they were the sole mouthpiece, and suddenly Torah-observant Jews are speaking out as well.
Hence the fierce opposition to judicial reform in the High Court of Justice (Bagatz). In their eyes, Bagatz is the barrier: who consistently blocks the religious, the settlers, and the right wing? They never issued a ruling favoring the Torah-observant; the rulings were always against them, all while presenting themselves as defenders of minorities - "Who will protect you?" - when in truth they never protected us. And if one wishes to understand why we were plunged into an endless cycle of elections, it began with the disqualification of the Draft Law. They bring the country to chaos, and in their eyes this serves their purpose: ensuring the right has no peace and cannot govern, preventing any change to the state's foundations, and preventing the country from becoming more faithful. The fear they constantly trumpet is that tomorrow burqas will be forced upon women, tomorrow travel will be banned, tomorrow Shabbos will be legally imposed and government will pry into everyone's plate; hence the revulsion and demonization of Torah-observant Jews, and hence the tens of thousands in the protests. According to the hysteria they feed themselves - that this country will soon become Iran - it is truly frightening, and the average secular person is alarmed. But we all know how false it is.
And how characteristic of their approach to silence and stifle opposing voices! Even during the Altalena affair, they did not hesitate to shell Jews who opposed them. That is also why, in all the violent protests, no one is arrested - when the State Attorney's Office, the police, and the judiciary belong to the same camp, anything goes; it is sheer anarchy. A former prime minister, who rightfully earned the title of the most failed prime minister in history, stands up and declares that a rebellion is needed. Anywhere else, such a person would have long been behind bars. Why is he not there? Because he is on the "correct" side. That is the reality.
And one must understand: a secular person has no inherent problem living anywhere else in the world, and indeed they themselves threaten to leave. So leave! Why do you assume we would collapse without you? A Jew of faith has no other land. For us, this is the Promised Land; this is the place we yearned for across two thousand years and to which we have returned. You have many other options, and if the benefits abroad are greater and the Milky pudding is cheaper, why stay here? Merely to embitter our lives? A Torah Jew has no other options. We will live in Eretz Yisrael even if it is very difficult and even if our lives are made bitter - Eretz Yisrael is acquired through suffering. Now let us return to the subject.
לְמַעַן יֵחָלְצוּן יְדִידֶיךָ הוֹשִׁיעָה יְמִינְךָ וַעֲנֵנִי׃ - That Your beloved ones may be delivered, save with Your right hand and answer me.
Radak notes that from this verse through the end of the psalm, he has already explained these matters in that other psalm, chapter 60, and therefore does not comment here. As is our practice, we will explain the straightforward meaning of the verses: "In order that" - so that Your beloved ones may be delivered from distress, save them with Your right hand; and so, please answer my prayers, so that through their power Your beloved ones may be delivered.
אֱלֹהִים דִּבֶּר בְּקָדְשׁוֹ אֶעְלֹזָה אֲחַלְּקָה שְׁכֶם וְעֵמֶק סֻכּוֹת אֲמַדֵּד׃ - God has spoken in His holiness; I will exult, I will divide Shechem, and measure the valley of Succoth.
Hashem spoke in His holiness that I would reign, and the time will come when I will exult in His word. According to Rashi, these are King David's words speaking as king: Hashem said that I would reign - "God has spoken in His holiness" - and the time will come when I will rejoice in His word. Note how much emunah was required here: before King David attained royalty, how relentlessly was he pursued, and how much did he suffer! Yet despite everything, "the time will come when I will exult in His word" - I believe this with complete faith.
"I will divide Shechem" - Rashi explains that I will divide the land of the enemies among the people of Israel. Here, "Shechem" is from the language of a portion, as in "And I have given you one portion (shechem) above your brothers" - one portion more than your brothers. Thus, "I will divide Shechem" means I will divide the portion of the nations among the Jewish people. "And measure the valley of Succoth" - the valley of Succoth is a place name, and I will measure that place with a measuring line, in order to take it for us, for the people of Israel.
Metzudat David explains that "spoke in His holiness" refers to ruach hakodesh, through the prophets, where Hashem promised us that we would defeat the nations. Therefore, "I will exult, I will divide Shechem" - I will vanquish them and divide their territories among the people of Israel with a measuring line; we will measure them, and they will be apportioned to the people of Israel.
לִי גִלְעָד לִי מְנַשֶּׁה וְאֶפְרַיִם מָעוֹז רֹאשִׁי יְהוּדָה מְחֹקְקִי׃ - Gilead is mine, Menasheh is mine, Ephraim is the stronghold of my head, Yehudah is my lawgiver.
Metzudat David explains that David foresaw through ruach hakodesh that the kingdom was destined to split - between Yerovam and Rechavam: Rechavam would rule over Yehudah and Binyamin, and Yerovam would rule over the other ten tribes. Therefore he says: in my days, all of them are under my dominion, unlike what will happen later. "Gilead is mine, Menasheh is mine" - all of it belongs to me. "And Ephraim is the stronghold of my head" - they are the mighty force that guards my head, as it were, against the enemy. "Yehudah is my lawgiver" - my ministers are from Yehudah, and the ministers are called lawgivers (mechokekim) because they establish the statutes, judgments, and halachot, as in the verse, "by the lawgiver, with their staffs"; this is because Yehudah took the lead. Thus, in my time the kingdom has not yet divided.
מוֹאָב סִיר רַחְצִי עַל אֱדוֹם אַשְׁלִיךְ נַעֲלִי עֲלֵי פְלֶשֶׁת אֶתְרוֹעָע׃ - Moav is my washpot; upon Edom I will cast my shoe; over Philistia I will shout in triumph.
Rashi explains "Moav is my washpot" - my servant and attendant, like a pot used for washing; Moav will serve me, like a utilitarian vessel put to use. "Upon Edom I will cast my shoe" - Rashi explains that this refers to servitude: they will remove my shoes from my feet, meaning they will perform my menial labor and service, and I will cast my tasks upon them. One can also explain "I will cast my shoe" as a gesture of contempt - as is well known in Arab culture, throwing a shoe is a classic sign of humiliation, and locally there was even someone who threw a shoe at a judge and paid dearly for it. Casting a shoe carries great disgrace, and that may well be the intent here. "Over Philistia I will shout in triumph" - from the root of teruah, a sounding shout: I will shout against them with a great cry to terrify them and instill dread in them, throwing them into panic and confusion.
מִי יֹבִלֵנִי עִיר מִבְצָר מִי נָחַנִי עַד אֱדוֹם׃ - Who will lead me into the fortified city? Who has guided me unto Edom?
Rashi explains that these words refer to the Messianic era: "Who will lead me into the fortified city?" - that I may stretch out my hand against Esau, into his fortified cities; who will do this? "Who has guided me unto Edom" - the One Who already guided me unto Edom. Scripture records that King David struck down eighteen thousand of Edom in the Valley of Salt. In other words: the One Who brought about salvation for me back then against Edom will do so for me now as well, leading me into the fortified city to stretch out my hand against Esau in their fortified strongholds.
הֲלֹא אֱלֹהִים זְנַחְתָּנוּ וְלֹא תֵצֵא אֱלֹהִים בְּצִבְאֹתֵינוּ׃ - Is it not You, O God, Who has forsaken us, and will You not go forth, O God, with our armies?
Everything is from You, Master of the Universe: until now You have forsaken us, until now You did not go forth with our armies. All the distress we have endured until now is because You withdrew from us, and therefore salvation can come only from You, and will not occur by mere happenstance. The declaration "Is it not You, O God, Who has forsaken us?" is not uttered in defiance, but out of the profound recognition that everything comes from Him, blessed be He.
A story was once related in the name of Rav Galinsky: A wagon driver entered a beit midrash somewhere in Europe where everyone was sitting and learning. He walked up to the Aron Kodesh, opened it, and began to cry out: "Master of the Universe! Why did You kill my horse? What will I do now? I have no livelihood, I have a wife and children, how will I support them? Why did You kill my horse?" The learners in the beit midrash snickered to themselves: "Are you serious? Does one come to shout at the Master of the Universe for killing your horse? After all, everything is from Heaven, everything is from Him, blessed be He, and everything is for the best!" Rav Galinsky remarked: In truth, the one who saw things correctly here was the wagon driver. For us, it is very easy to say "everything is from Heaven," but on some level, this keeps us distant from the Holy One, blessed be He. He, however, sees the Holy One, blessed be He, at every single turn - if something happened to me, it was Hashem, and that is why he comes to cry out to Him. This reveals just how close he feels to the Holy One, blessed be He, whereas for us, everything is rationalized by numerous secondary causes and explanations, because it is easier for us to get through events without connecting them directly to the Master of the Universe.
Consider the exact same dynamic with Iyov. We find statements by Iyov that sound like defiance against the Holy One, blessed be He, and one feels uncomfortable: How could he speak that way? The answer is that he truly sees the Master of the Universe. When someone torments you and stings you, you confront him directly and even express your anger - that is how Iyov felt: This is the Master of the Universe, He is right here, and I am speaking directly with Him. But one who searches for all kinds of external causes and natural circumstances does not truly see the Master of the Universe, and therefore never comes to pour out his complaints before Him, since as far as he is concerned, it does not come directly from Him. It is precisely someone who sees the Master of the Universe who can utter even difficult words, and on the contrary - this reflects his deep clinging to God and his sense of direct connection, knowing that everything that happens to him comes from Hashem.
Therefore, there is a complete realization here: Master of the Universe, everything we go through is solely because You have forsaken us. Not because all the nations are against us, not because we are dispersed, and not because we do things that provoke them - set all that aside, those are trivialities. Why do we suffer afflictions? "Is it not You, O God, Who has forsaken us?" - because we lack Divine assistance, because Hashem has left us. And why did we reach this state? For that, we must search within ourselves: what did we do wrong, where did we hide our faces from Hashem, bringing about "And I will surely hide My face from them"? Certainly, it begins with us, but the recognition that everything comes from Him, blessed be He, is already a profound spiritual attainment. And now, as we await the redemption, we look for it from You as well - because salvation is from You; just as our troubles were from You when You withdrew from us, so too redemption can come only from You.
הָבָה לָּנוּ עֶזְרָת מִצָּר וְשָׁוְא תְּשׁוּעַת אָדָם׃ - Grant us help against the adversary, for futile is the salvation of man.
Grant us help against the oppressing adversary who denies the existence of the Creator, for human salvation has no real substance - it is only temporary. We ask that You Yourself save us, Master of the Universe, because we recognize with complete clarity that everything up to this point has come from You, and therefore, the only One Who can extract us from it is You. As for placing hope in man, I harbor no such expectation - "futile is the salvation of man"; human salvation has no permanence, it is a false and fleeting salvation; what I seek is a complete and absolute redemption.
In the sefer Yosef Tehillot, he explains "Grant us help from trouble" based on what Chazal taught: that the Holy One, blessed be He, brings salvation forth from the trouble itself. Take Haman, for example: we do not need salvation from elsewhere, rather from within the trouble itself comes the salvation. For Haman fell out of favor in Achashverosh's eyes - here he is holding banquets, here Esther invites only him - and the king begins to feel that this man is taking his place, and then said, "Hang him on it!" What happened? From Haman himself came the salvation. We saw Haman as the center of the trouble, and the verse comes to say: do not worry, salvation will sprout from him himself.
So too with the survival of Moshe Rabbeinu. How did Moshe Rabbeinu ultimately survive? By virtue of the decree, "Every son that is born you shall cast into the river." This decree was what caused him to be cast into the Nile; Pharaoh's daughter comes and sees a child in the river, brings him to the palace, and Pharaoh raises the future savior of the Jewish people and teaches him royal etiquette. Out of the trouble grew the salvation: later on, Moshe Rabbeinu has no problem standing before Pharaoh and saying to him, "Let My people go." When the seventy elders walked with him, he discovered they had vanished - out of terrible fear of standing before Pharaoh. And who is the only one who has the courage? The one who knows the palace from the inside, who was a child there. And who raised him for this? You, Pharaoh. Out of the trouble sprouted the salvation. And this is what the verse means by "Grant us help from trouble" - where does the help come from? Specifically from the persecutor itself.
There was a story about a Jewish tourist from abroad who came to travel, arrived in Netanya, and was caught - God protect us - in a terror attack at the entrance to a shopping mall, where he was injured by shrapnel. They rushed him to the hospital, opened his abdomen to remove the shrapnel, and discovered a tumor in his abdomen, realizing that the shrapnel was trivial compared to the condition he was in. They rushed him into emergency surgery, removed the tumor, and told him: know that the best thing that ever happened to you was being there in the terror attack, because had the tumor progressed just one more stage, just a few more days - it would no longer have been treatable. They succeeded in removing it because they caught it a moment before it was too late. And how did it happen that they opened his abdomen in the first place? Precisely due to the terror attack and the need to extract the shrapnel. There you have "Grant us help from trouble" - out of the affliction grows the help, and precisely there lies the salvation. Just as Chazal said, "It was for my benefit that my cow's leg was broken": what seemed to us a disaster - that the cow broke its leg - was precisely where he found the treasure.
בֵּאלֹהִים נַעֲשֶׂה חָיִל וְהוּא יָבוּס צָרֵינוּ׃ - Through God we shall do valiantly, and He will trample down our adversaries.
With God's help we do valiantly and gather strength, and through Him, "He will trample down our adversaries" - He will tread down and crush those who distress us, those who torment us. Note the progression: out of the realization "Grant us help from trouble," that salvation comes solely from You, Master of the World, and that "human salvation is vain" - what do we look toward? That only "through God we shall do valiantly." Not through America will we do valiantly, nor through the nuclear bomb will we do valiantly.
When a person walks with such faith, he merits salvation. But when he says, "My strength and the power of my hand," the Holy One, blessed be He, says to him: manage on your own. You think you can? Manage on your own. And we see how managing on our own looks: the State of Israel with a nuclear weapon cannot stand up against a guerrilla organization; an outpost of theirs has been sitting in our territory for weeks and we have not even shelled it, while "the matter is being handled." They chase us off with a stone. Understand how history has turned upside down: we were David who fells a mighty Goliath with a stone, and suddenly a Palestinian with a stone chases us away. You have a nuclear weapon, fighter jets, stealth aircraft - and what comes of it all? The Holy One, blessed be He, says: "Human salvation is vain."
And as it says in Chovot HaLevavot: when a person relies on something, the Holy One, blessed be He, leaves him in the hands of what he relied upon. But here we come and say: no, Master of the World, we rely on no one - "human salvation is vain," "through God we shall do valiantly, and He will trample down our adversaries," salvation comes from You. Here one merits salvation; here one merits the chesed of Hashem.
In this section, Psalm 108 opens with the plea, "Be exalted above the heavens, O God" - that His glory be revealed and the entire earth recognize His kingship, for in exile God is, as it were, concealed within nature, whereas in the redemption, "Now I will arise, now I will be lifted up"; and this is our entire request in prayer, that every creature may know that You have created it. From there, King David turns to Hashem's promise in His holiness regarding David's kingdom and the victory over the nations - "I will divide Shechem," "Gilead is mine, Menashe is mine," "Moab is my washbasin" - and to the double recognition that closes the psalm: "Have You not, O God, forsaken us?" - that all troubles come from Hashem, and therefore "human salvation is vain" and rescue comes only from Him; and even the help itself sprouts specifically out of the adversary, as with Haman, as with Moshe Rabbeinu, and as in that story where the trouble itself was the salvation. And from this comes the conclusion: "Through God we shall do valiantly, and He will trample down our adversaries" - one who relies on his own strength is handed over to whatever he relied upon, while one who depends on the Holy One, blessed be He, merits complete salvation.