The Malbim says: "On the basis of these matters my heart shall open, and with Hashem's help I shall be aided. For this will not be counted against me as insolence or as arrogance, that I pitched my tent of commentary far from the camp of the holy commentators, our Rabbis. And I called it 'Sacred Readings, the Tent of Meeting,' as if to say: whoever seeks Hashem, whoever desires to understand His holy words, let him go out beyond the camp. There the prophets removed the veil and covering, for the skin of their faces shone when speaking with Him." He is saying: therefore it should not be counted against me as insolence if I now come to resolve these questions: why the length, how, why there is no beauty of eloquence here, why he repeats a matter four times. Let it not be counted against me as insolence when I now come to offer explanations on the matter, even though these explanations differ from the interpretations of the other commentators. And as the holy Or HaChaim explained to us, a commentator may interpret whatever he wishes, as long as it does not contradict some halacha or hashkafa, then he is not revealing faces in the Torah improperly, so even if it is not like the other commentators, a person may interpret. Of course he must be a man of Torah, yes? Not, not some fool. You know that once Shuli said something, and they said to her, where do you invent this from? So she said, there are seventy faces to the Torah. That is what she said, seventy faces to the Torah. So they told her: yes, it is true that "the face of the generation is like the face of a dog" is also a kind of face, and we have just now been exposed to them, yes? You understand, not every face is a face in Torah, it could be that this is the face of the dog. That is not a face in Torah. There must be a face in Torah, a person who is great in Torah, and then he can offer an explanation, can offer an idea, but that a person should simply say, out of some spirit of folly within him, all sorts of delusional ideas, then surely that counts neither as a face nor even as a fraction, surely these are words of vanity. And therefore the Malbim says, there is no prohibition to offer an interpretation that differs from the other commentators. "And I called it 'Sacred Readings.'" The Malbim gave each of his works on Tanach, on one of the books, a name. Yes? Each work has a name. We say "the Malbim," but he called each book by a separate name. On Sefer Yehoshua, on Shoftim, on Shmuel, on Melachim, he called each one by a separate name. And the name of this book, on Yechezkel, he called "Sacred Readings, the Tent of Meeting." As if to say: whoever seeks Hashem, whoever desires to understand His holy words, let him go out beyond the camp. And why beyond the camp? Because there the prophets removed the veil and covering. That is, the skin of the prophet's face shone when he spoke with Him, so it is as if there is a veil upon his face. And I have as it were leaned myself out beyond the camp, yes, in order to try to understand, for the skin of his face shone, and there he removes the veil, and then one can understand what was actually transmitted. There it will no longer appear to him entirely like the words of a sealed book, closed with none to open. The meaning is in the sense that there is no understanding of the matters. No longer will the preachers of righteousness and uprightness speak to him with mocking lips and in another tongue with no understanding. "For their tongue holds a scale and balances of justice." Everything they say is measured precisely by scale and balance. There is no excess in their words and no deficiency. No superfluity and no lack. For every word is counted and apportioned according to the thought of knowledge and with the wisdom of a skilled artisan and with His holy spirit.
And therefore he says: "Not in defiance of the honor of the early ones did I speak thus." "Not in defiance" (lo lamrot), the meaning is from the expression of "defying their word." Not in defiance of the honor of our forebears from whose days we draw. Only to poke out the eyes of fools who are wise in their own eyes, who say that just as the prophets composed eloquence, so too will they do with their enchantments. Just as the prophet wrote a book with words of eloquence, so too can I write something eloquent. And then if each one writes himself a poem and eloquence, and becomes a national poet, and he is certain that he has something to say, and his words do not fall short of the words of the prophets. Who say that they too, like them, will raise up a song and be exalted in their eloquence. So he says: I have come with my words, with what I have written here and with what I write in my commentary, to poke out their eyes. Those people who think that everything is song and eloquence, and they think that through song and eloquence they can introduce lofty ideas. And they do not understand that the prophets wrote their words with precision, without lack and without deficiency, and every word stands in its place with a lofty idea within it. They think that the main thing is what is called external beauty. To poke out the eyes of the rebellious sons, who say of the singers of God, the Greeks have surpassed them in their songs, the poet excelled in his eloquence, and the fools in the songs of their idols. Or: the poet excelled in his eloquence and the fools in the songs of their idols. Can they breathe a spirit of life into worn out idols aged with wear? Let the simpletons now speak. He says: I have come with my words to poke out the eyes of the rebellious sons, meaning those who come to defy the word of the prophets or to defy the word of Hashem, "meri" means rebellion, who say of the singers of God that the Greeks surpassed them in their songs. The Greeks had more beautiful poems. The poet had more beautiful eloquence. The fools with the songs of the idols had finer things in terms of language, in terms of the beauty of eloquence. He says to them: can you breathe a spirit of life into worn out idols aged with wear? These are idols worn out with wear, do you think to breathe into them a spirit of life? In simple words, what he means to say is: the words of the prophets are living words. They are words with a message, words full of content. Whereas there it is devoid of all content, it is only eloquence. So it is an idol already worn out with wear, do you think to breathe into it a spirit of life? Or when did wisdom ever dwell within them? When was folly a dwelling place for understanding? How, since when has folly, these people who are the very symbol of folly, since when have they become a dwelling place for understanding? Have they become the home of understanding? These foolish people? Or how can you compare the eloquence of fools to the eloquence of the seer of God? "Your memorials are proverbs of ashes." Or how can you liken the eloquence of the fools to the eloquence of the seer of God? To a prophet who beheld Godliness? To a prophet who received messages from Hashem? "Your memorials are proverbs of ashes" is a verse in Iyov whose meaning is: you have been likened to ashes. That is the meaning.
But it is mere lip service, a fading, withered blossom with no life in it. Behold the saplings of the tree of life, planted in days of old on the holy mountain, exalted like the cedars of God, still fresh, still bearing fruit, their shoots still spreading like a flowering palm, having the splendor of the olive and the fragrance of Lebanon. Eat of their fruit and let your soul live, for he who eats of the tree of life shall live forever. He says: "But it is mere lip service," which as I said earlier is a shortcut. "But it is mere lip service, only leading to lack." That is, why should I multiply words? Why should I increase speech? Mere lip service. A fading, withered blossom with no life in it. What is this? These are the songs of the Greeks, of the other poets. He says to them: come and see and distinguish. Behold the saplings of the tree of life, these are the words of prophecy, the words of the prophets. Planted in days of old on the holy mountain, exalted like the cedars of God, meaning uplifted, from the expression of loftiness. Still fresh, still bearing fruit, meaning there is still a message in these matters even for our own time, it is not something that was written back then and is no longer relevant. Their shoots still spreading like a flowering palm, having the splendor of the olive and the fragrance of Lebanon, they have the splendor of the olive and the fragrance like the cedars of Lebanon. Eat of their fruit and let your soul live, for he who eats of the tree of life shall live forever. Behold, my commentary is arranged in all and preserved. Built as a beacon and set in order. In such a way that in the words of God no superfluous words or duplicated matters will be found. You will not find here duplicated language, redundant, in the words of the prophet, and so that no husks without kernel will be found there, meaning external matters without inner content. Dead forms without a soul of life. But rather an intellectual intention hidden in every statement, good instruction, understanding, and knowledge. So that all flesh may know that the living God does not speak as man speaks. When a person speaks, he speaks many words of chatter and babble without content. But the living God, every word is vitality. Every word is the word of God.
In every place where a matter is repeated in different words within a single chapter, I have clarified the matter according to the ways and paths that I revealed in my introduction to the commentary on Yeshaya. Yes? Every place where a matter is repeated in different words within a single chapter, meaning he returns to the same matter, in the same place, with several other words about the same thing, the Malbim says: I have in this regard ways and paths that I revealed in my introduction to the commentary on Yeshaya, for I paved these ways throughout all the holy Scriptures and did not deviate from them. Throughout all the holy Scriptures these rules hold true. And the reader must gaze with an intellectual gaze, with a discerning eye, upon every statement, as I instructed in the aforementioned introduction. That is, to contemplate properly and study the matters that I wrote. He will also be alerted to the duplications, the superfluities, and the oddities that appear in every statement according to the interpretation of the commentators. That is, the commentators often explain in a more simplistic manner, and then there are difficulties. He raises these difficulties by way of the questions that I arranged before him in the commentary "Nahar." "Nahar" refers to the Early Prophets. The meaning of this is: there the Malbim, in his first section on the Prophets, arranged it in the form of questions and afterward the explanation. In the later sections he already skipped the section of questions and went straight to the explanation. But essentially, what did he want to show us in the first sections? Come and see, that if you learned this according to the explanations of all the commentators, then I will ask you first, second, third, and fourth, that with all their interpretations, according to all their approaches, explain to me what is written. The Malbim says: I will now give you an explanation that will explain to you everything that is written. You will understand why he said the first thing and why he said the second and why the third and why he phrased it this way and why after this he returns again and why afterward he had to say in the future tense what he had earlier spoken in the past tense, and so on. So he arranged a series of difficulties, and then you see that if you learn the other commentators, you open your hands empty, you are left with a difficulty, you have no answer. He says: and I explain to you according to the grammar of the holy tongue, and you will see how everything is found and explained from the verses themselves. And this is what we said is the special virtue of the Malbim's explanation, that every phrase and every expression is all precise there, and the idea as a whole takes shape. For many of the commentators interpreted pointwise. They interpreted this verse, then the next verse. The Malbim's way, in particular as we learned in Iyov, where it comes to expression in a far more powerful way than the rest of Tanach, for in Iyov the verses truly seem disconnected from one another, and there the Malbim takes from each statement and summarizes it for you and shows you how the matters are in fact a complete idea.
The Malbim says: and then he will read my commentary, the explanation of the matter and the explanation of the words. His commentary is divided into two, as is known. The explanation of the matter is the idea, and the explanation of the words is where he explains specific words. And he will know my labor that I labored in the garden of God, which is in the Eden of the holy Scriptures. You will know what labor I invested there. As is known and famous, the Chafetz Chaim frequently brings the "Artzot HaChaim" at the beginning of the Mishnah Berurah. Why does he not bring it further on? Because the Malbim, author of "Artzot HaChaim," did not compose it on the continuation of the Shulchan Aruch, he did not compose such a work. Only on the first part. And this pained the Chafetz Chaim greatly, since almost everywhere the "Artzot HaChaim" expresses itself, he mentions it. He esteemed it very much. And it pained him greatly. So he said to him: why did you not continue to compose your work? Why, why did you stop? He said: you have a wonderful explanation, continue with it. The Malbim said to him: if you take upon yourself my labor on Tanach, he told him, I will find the time and I will continue "Artzot HaChaim." He said to him: but the need of the generation today, given the state of the Maskilim then, who as is known engaged much with Tanach, and the Malbim was a very very great counterweight for them. He said: but according to the need of the generation, this is what I am required for now. The Chafetz Chaim said to him: no, that I cannot do. What you did on Tanach, that I cannot do. And as is known, he was greatly persecuted. The Chafetz Chaim said to him: do not worry. He says: a generation will yet come when no one will remember any of them. He says: but you they will remember forever. That is what he said to him about the Malbim. He said to him: then they will appreciate your work and the special deeds that you accomplished and did. The Malbim says: and from this you will understand how much investment and labor he put into his commentary on Tanach.
Also all the difficult places, the sealed and the hidden ones, I removed, thanks to God, the tight seal locked upon them, and I solved their riddle in new, true, and wondrous ways. And behold, the divine spirit that rested upon our prophet had a wondrous special quality, that it always clothed itself in parables and riddles. Until he himself was alerted to this, to what they say of him: "Is he not a maker of parables?" And not only did the words of his prophecies come in parable, but he himself became a parable, a sign and a wonder. He will explain. And you will not find another prophet whom Hashem commanded to perform many acts in practice, and among them strange acts, over a long period of time, as this our prophet was commanded, and it became a wonder. The Malbim says: another thing unique to Sefer Yechezkel, which does indeed sometimes appear in other places as well, but here without any measure or limit compared to the other places, is the parables. The book here speaks abundantly in parables and riddles. Note well, do not confuse parables with eloquence. Eloquence, we said, there is not much of in the book. Language, eloquent speech, there is not here. But parables, what are parables? Like the parables of the Maggid of Dubno. That I give you, tell you a story and it is a parable about something else. Parables, he says, there are many here. He speaks abundantly in parables and riddles, until he was alerted to this in chapter 21, that they say of him that he is a maker of parables. For he speaks abundantly in parable, he does not speak of the matter itself directly, but speaks of it by way of parable. He says: and not only are his prophecies a parable, but Hashem made him himself into a parable. What does this mean? If I tell you to do a certain thing so that they will see you and learn from it, then you are the parable, and the moral is what they need to learn. Now he says: come and see that Hashem commanded him to perform many acts in practice, so that he would be in the category of the parable, and among them strange acts, over a long period of time. There was no prophet like this. He gives an example. Such as his lying 430 days on his two sides. 430 days, He told him to lie on this side and afterward on that side. We will see this further on. Passing a razor over his head and beard. Another command that Hashem commanded him. And not to mourn the death of his wife, and the like. All of these are in fact parables intended to say something to the people, such as the matter of mourning, intended to say that, God forbid, they will be in the category of mourners, and so on. These parables came to express a moral, but the parable here is the prophet himself. He says: and regarding this, he himself was a parable for the congregation as a whole, and his deeds and his fate a parable for their deeds and their fates. What happens to you is a parable for them, thus will it happen to them. Similar to what we saw, that the Holy One, blessed be He, told Yeshaya to go and take a wife, Gomer daughter of Divlayim, and so on, and the children are not his and so on, and not his, afterward to divorce her, all of this was in fact a parable about some message to the people. There, some say it was a message to the prophet, but in any case it is a parable. Behold, you see that there is a reality in which the prophet himself undergoes certain experiences intended to give a parable and example to the rest. Also these parables and riddles I took care to reveal their hidden matters, and to explain always the correspondence of the parable to the moral and to what is intended by it. He says: I placed emphasis on showing how the moral corresponds to the parable. Often you hear a parable and the moral does not, does not fully overlap. He says: but I in my commentary will show how the parable and the moral overlap one with the other.
The most wondrous riddle is the awesome and sealed vision that he saw with the spirit of God upon the river Kevar at the beginning of his prophecy. This we will see shortly, it is the first chapter, the chapter opens with it immediately. And after it, a second time in other arrangements, chapters 8, 9, 10, which is called in the language of Chazal by the name Maaseh Merkava (the Account of the Chariot). It blocks those who pass by the entrance of this sealed book. Do you hear? This book is sealed, and moreover at the very beginning there is, as it were, a high mountain that entirely blocks the passage. As soon as you want to begin learning Sefer Yechezkel, the Maaseh Merkava immediately leaps out. An incomprehensible matter, a deep matter, what does he see there, what is the chashmal, what is the merkava, and Chazal also said not to gaze into these matters. It emerges, then, that whoever wishes to begin Sefer Yechezkel, he says, it emerges that there is here a Maaseh Merkava that blocks those who pass by the entrance of this sealed book. And it is sealed, a seal within a seal, closed and shut. He means to say that the matters here are deep and closed and cannot be understood. Besides which we were warned by Chazal to conceal the matter and about covering the secret and hiding it. Together with the fact that the matters are covered in themselves, hidden and concealed. "Covered in themselves" means that whoever tries to read them does not understand, so the matters are of themselves covered. And you already know the interpretation that the Guide of Righteousness made on this vision in the Guide. Meaning the Rambam in the Moreh Nevuchim made an explanation of the Maaseh Merkava that appears in Sefer Yechezkel. And besides which the archers assailed it, meaning many came out against him regarding his interpretation, this interpretation has already been nullified with the nullification of the foundations upon which he built his interpretation. He says: the Rambam's explanation is nullified with the nullification of the foundations. What does this mean? For the foundations of the science of astronomy and nature and the ancient philosophy, which are the support of his interpretation and its foundations, meaning the Rambam's, all of them were demolished and nullified with the breakthrough of inquiry in recent generations, which built the edifice of the structure of the heavens and the palace of the studies of nature upon other foundations, strong and reliable. Who today studies the books of Aristotle as books from which one can learn something about nature? On the contrary, they are looked upon as books of ignorant men, whose instruments were very very very basic, with which they tried to attain, according to all sorts of estimations and all sorts of conjectures, what happens with the heavenly bodies, what their directions and courses are, and so on. That is to say, no one today relates to the ancient inquiry, to astronomy, nature, and philosophy as the ancients understood them. For it is clear to all that their ability in investigating those matters was poor and meager. The Malbim says: so consequently I do not need to refute the Rambam's interpretation. Since the Rambam's words are based on astronomy, nature, and the ancient philosophy, with the fall of the foundation the edifice fell. So consequently the Rambam's explanation, which is based upon them, likewise does not stand.
And through Hashem's kindness and mercy, windows and gates were opened for us to look, with the imagery of the heart, into the inner chambers. Like one peering from between the lattices, rays and torches, radiance and lightning, from the hidden light, a bright light and in the heavens. And the wise shall shine like the radiance of the firmament, in the light of Hashem, light sown for the righteous. And I spread the screen over the mystery, and I covered the curtain over the concealed and over the nothingness. Into what is beyond you do not inquire, and with the wagon of the secret do not plow. I covered the curtain over the concealed and over the nothingness, that which is "nothingness" (blimah), meaning "without anything," without understanding, and that which is meant to be concealed, I covered over it the curtain. In what you were permitted to contemplate, then build and establish. To recognize the one who clothes himself in his garment, and the hidden from within its revealed, guard yourself from ascending the mountain and touching its edge. He says, in short: I revealed and I concealed. The meaning of this is: on one hand I revealed, in order to understand the plain meaning of the matters, and on the other hand I concealed that which we have no permission to engage in, with the wagon of the secret do not plow, I covered the curtain over the concealed and over the nothingness, that which is "nothingness" means "without anything," without understanding, and that which is meant to be concealed, I covered over it the curtain. What you were permitted, contemplate, then build and establish, and the hidden from within its revealed, guard yourself from ascending the mountain and touching its edge. That is, only from what is revealed to us are we permitted to understand, but do not ascend the mountain and touch its edge in a place where you were not permitted.
The Malbim continues and says: Do not approach the thick darkness, there are God and His camp, but rather crown in formation around the throne of the kingdom. "Crown in formation" (otrim be'maaracha), "crown" from the expression of a crown, "maaracha" meaning formation. They would crown in formation around the throne of the kingdom, for around the keruvim dwells the flame of the ever turning sword. Cloud and thick darkness surround Him, fear your God and bow down to Him, and in His sanctuary all say: glory. Until when shall Your inheritance be a disgrace in the hands of strangers, the sons of iniquity on the mountaintops, and the building that we saw in spirit and thought, may our eyes behold in Your sanctuary, Hashem, in Zion, the city of our appointed gathering, for You are Hashem our God. And I hope to You, for You have made and founded and built, on the heights Your sanctuary, meaning upon the lofty mountains, show it to us in Your kindness, and our eyes long and our souls yearn, to establish it and build it, and to see it eye to eye. And may Hashem comfort us, and establish for us the work of our hands, and Your word with our deeds, we live and we shall live before You, and prepare Your word for those who serve You, which is for the fear of You, and do not remove from me Your holy spirit, grant me understanding and I shall keep Your Torah, and do not hide from me Your commandments. He signs: Rosh Chodesh Shvat 5627, Luntschitz, Meir Leibush Malbim. Thus far the Malbim's introduction, and we, with the help of Heaven, shall begin to learn the book.