Introduction: The Shofar Blast That Leaves No One Trembling
In the previous chapter, the prophet presented several introductory premises, among them: "If a shofar is sounded in a city, will the people not tremble?" - is it conceivable that an alarm warning of approaching calamity sounds, and the people do not panic? Now, Malbim explains, the prophet elaborates on the lesson behind that fourth premise. The Holy One, Blessed is He, sent His prophets; they blew the shofar, announcing to the people their transgressions and the afflictions destined to arrive - yet the people do not tremble and do not mend their ways. The chapter before us is an orderly account of five shofar blasts, five warnings that the Holy One, Blessed is He, gave the nation, each concluding with the same agonizing refrain: "Yet you did not return to Me, says Hashem."
"Come to Beit El and Transgress" - The Proclamation of the Prophets
בֹּאוּ בֵית אֵל וּפִשְׁעוּ, הַגִּלְגָּל הַרְבּוּ לִפְשֹׁעַ, וְהָבִיאוּ לַבֹּקֶר זִבְחֵיכֶם, לִשְׁלֹשֶׁת יָמִים מַעְשְׂרֹתֵיכֶם. - "Come to Beit El and transgress; at Gilgal transgress even more! Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days."
וְקַטֵּר מֵחָמֵץ תּוֹדָה, וְקִרְאוּ נְדָבוֹת הַשְׁמִיעוּ, כִּי כֵן אֲהַבְתֶּם בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל נְאֻם אֲדֹנָי ה'. - "And burn leavened bread as a thanksgiving offering, and proclaim freewill offerings, make them heard; for this is what you have loved, O Children of Israel, says the Lord God."
Malbim interprets the word "הַשְׁמִיעוּ" ("make heard") as an address to the prophets: Go and proclaim in Beit El, announce there everything Hashem commanded. In Gilgal they sinned even more than in Beit El, as it says, "All their wickedness is in Gilgal," which is why it says, "at Gilgal transgress even more." And make heard to them also the service rituals they practice: that they bring sacrifices every morning, tithes every three days, and burn a thanksgiving offering from leaven - just as in the House of Hashem the Todah offering was accompanied by loaves of leavened bread. In this line of interpretation, which is close to Radak's approach, the intent is: announce and publicize these matters so they will repent. After all, you prophets love the Jewish people - on the contrary, draw them near and bring them back in teshuvah. And that is the meaning of "for this is what you have loved, O Children of Israel," an address to the prophets who love Israel.
In contrast, according to Radak, all these verses are a continuation of the prophet's address to the people themselves, spoken with sarcasm: Go ahead, come to Beit El and transgress, transgress even more at Gilgal - after all, that is what you love, that is what you desire! Continue in your corrupt ways, and see what you will receive in return. And immediately afterward, the punishment arrives.
Regarding "and burn leavened bread as a thanksgiving offering," Targum Yonatan offers another interpretation: "and they offer thanksgiving offerings from extortion." The Targum interprets chametz as related to chamas (robbery and extortion), as in "relieve the oppressed (chamotz)" - which refers to judging the robber, where chamotz is the extortionist and wrongdoer. According to this, the prophet's intention is: you burn the thanksgiving offering from what you have plundered and extorted from others.
"Cleanness of Teeth" - The First Shofar Blast
וְגַם אֲנִי נָתַתִּי לָכֶם נִקְיוֹן שִׁנַּיִם בְּכָל עָרֵיכֶם וְחֹסֶר לֶחֶם בְּכֹל מְקוֹמֹתֵיכֶם, וְלֹא שַׁבְתֶּם עָדַי נְאֻם ה'. - "And I also gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities and lack of bread in all your places; yet you did not return to Me, says Hashem."
This is likely the only place in Tanach where the expression "cleanness of teeth" appears, and it has nothing to do with a toothbrush and toothpaste, but rather is cleanness of teeth as a curse. Radak explains: You withheld the sacrifices and tithes and did not bring what was required of you to My House - therefore you will lack bread and meat in all your cities and in all your places. And how does "cleanness of teeth" fit here? When a person eats, food gets stuck between his teeth and he needs a toothpick to remove it, but one who is starving and fasting - his teeth are clean, for there is no food to get lodged in them. This is similar to the verse, "The meat was still between their teeth," which is an expression of abundance; when there is no food, the teeth remain clean.
Targum Yonatan translates this as "bluntness of teeth" (dullness). For when a person eats, it is as though he sharpens and hones his teeth through use, but when he does not eat, the teeth are out of use and lose their sharpness. Rashi cites both interpretations: "bluntness of teeth," and another explanation - a lack of eating meat, which gets stuck between the teeth. According to Rashi, there is no redundancy here: "cleanness of teeth" refers to meat, since what usually gets stuck between the teeth is meat, while "lack of bread" refers to bread. Radak, on the other hand, views this as poetic parallelism: cleanness of teeth means having nothing to eat, and lack of bread is the exact same thing. According to Rashi, the passage corresponds perfectly to the previous verses: since you withheld the sacrifice, which is meat, and the leavened bread from the House of Hashem - measure for measure, you will lack meat and bread.
The Malbim explains: "And I too" - I too blew the shofar. I decreed famine upon you and gave you clean teeth, yet you see that these things had no effect. I called upon the prophets, the prophets rebuked you, and after they rebuked - the troubles actually arrived, yet despite all this, you did not return to Me. Is it possible that after so many warnings, no one trembles and no one changes his ways? And on the redundancy of "in all your cities" and "in all your places", the Malbim explains: in the large cities, no food at all will be found, and therefore the teeth are completely clean; while in "the places", meaning the settlements and small villages where some kinds of fruit can still be found since they are places of agricultural produce - there will be "lack of bread", meaning the grain from which bread is made will not be found, and even if other fruits exist, there will be no bread.
"And I also withheld the rain from you" - The Second Blast
וְגַם אָנֹכִי מָנַעְתִּי מִכֶּם אֶת הַגֶּשֶׁם בְּעוֹד שְׁלֹשָׁה חֳדָשִׁים לַקָּצִיר, וְהִמְטַרְתִּי עַל עִיר אֶחָת וְעַל עִיר אַחַת לֹא אַמְטִיר, חֶלְקָה אַחַת תִּמָּטֵר וְחֶלְקָה אֲשֶׁר לֹא תַמְטִיר עָלֶיהָ תִּיבָשׁ. - "And I also withheld the rain from you when there were still three months until the harvest, and I caused rain to fall on one city and on another city I did not cause rain to fall; one field was rained upon, and the field upon which it did not rain withered."
From here on, the prophet describes how the Holy One, Blessed be He, blew the shofar five times: three decrees of famine, one decree of pestilence, and one decree of the sword - yet despite all this, "will the people not tremble?" And here is the warning: I withheld the rain from you when there were still three months until the harvest, at the exact time when the land needed rain. Yet I did not withhold the rain completely, so that you would know that this came from Me. For a person might see a drought and not connect it at all to the Master of the Universe: you come to speak to him about Divine Providence, and he answers you that according to the synoptic weather map, this was simply the forecast for this year. Therefore, the Holy One, Blessed be He, says: See Divine Providence tangibly - rain fell on one city and did not fall on its neighbor; and moreover, a wonder even greater than this, one field was rained upon while the adjacent field withered. Is there any natural explanation for this?
The Malbim adds that this is not merely proof of general Divine Providence, but meticulous providence over deeds: that field upon which rain falls belongs to a person who repented or whose transgressions are few, while the field that withers belongs to one who acted wickedly. Likewise with the cities: a city with many iniquities received no rain, while a city with few iniquities received rain. One would be able to see with one's own eyes that this is from Hashem, guided by providence over your deeds - and if so, why do you not take a lesson from it?
Seemingly there is a difficulty here: the passage is dealing with punishment, so how could a city that received rain have received abundance? According to the Malbim there is no difficulty, since those who repented rightfully received the rain. But Rashi brings another resolution from the Gemara in Masechet Taanit: "The Master said: Both are for a curse" - this one rots and that one withers. That is, even the city upon which rain falls is stricken, for rain fell upon it so torrentially that from the excess of water the grain rots. Thus, both are a curse. According to the Malbim, however, there is no need to resort to this.
The Malbim further explains a nuance in the phrasing: lest one mistakenly think that if rain fell on one field, it would be possible to channel water from it to the adjacent field. Therefore it says, "one field shall be rained upon" - the rain will fall in measured precision, only according to the exact need of that field alone, leaving no surplus; consequently, the second field will wither completely.
And know that this occurred in reality. We learned in the Mishnah in Masechet Taanit (Chapter 3, Mishnah 3): "And similarly, a city upon which rain did not fall, as it is written: 'And I caused rain to fall on one city and on another city I did not cause rain to fall; one field was rained upon...' etc. - that city fasts and sounds the shofar, while all its surroundings fast but do not sound the shofar; Rabbi Akiva says: they sound the shofar but do not fast." That city, which is in dire straits, fasts and sounds the blast, while those surrounding it only fast.
And the Gemara in Taanit (page 9) cites that there is a reality where rain falls even for an individual, and not merely for an individual, but almost on demand. "And Reish Lakish also holds that rain falls for an individual, as Reish Lakish said: From where do we derive that rain falls for an individual? As it is said: 'Ask rain of Hashem in the time of the late rain, Hashem makes storm clouds and gives them showers of rain, to every man grass in the field.' Could this mean for everyone? The verse states 'to a man' [individually]." And it was taught in a Baraita: If "to a man", might one think for all his fields? The verse states "field", even a single field; could it mean for the entire field? The verse states "grass", even for a single blade of grass. That is, even if all his fields are well watered and only one plot needs water, or even a single crop - focused and targeted rain falls for it.
And this is not mere theory, for the Gemara says: "Like this case of Rav Daniel bar Ketina, who had a garden" - not a field and not a valley, but a garden. "Every day he would go and inspect it" - every day he would go out to inspect his garden and say: This garden bed needs water, and that garden bed does not need water. "And rain would come and water wherever water was needed" - rain would come and water precisely the place that required it. Here you have: "one field was rained upon, and the field upon which it did not rain withered."
Regarding the grammatical phrasing, one should note: "one field will be rained upon" is understood, as it is in the passive niphal conjugation; but "and the field upon which it did not rain" - it should seemingly have said "upon which I did not cause rain to fall". The Radak explains that this is a transitive verb referring to a third party. The first person says "I will cause rain", the second person "you will cause rain", and the third person "he or it will cause rain". The verse's intent is: upon which the clouds and the rain did not cause rain to fall, or upon which the Shechinah did not cause rain to fall - and that field withers. There are other explanations as well, but this suffices for our purposes.
וְנָעוּ שְׁתַּיִם שָׁלֹשׁ עָרִים אֶל עִיר אַחַת לִשְׁתּוֹת מַיִם וְלֹא יִשְׂבָּעוּ, וְלֹא שַׁבְתֶּם עָדַי נְאֻם ה'. - "So two or three cities wandered to one city to drink water, and were not satisfied; yet you did not return to Me, says Hashem."
The inhabitants of two or three cities would wander to the city upon which rain had fallen, just to drink water. Meat was already gone, bread was gone, and now there was not even water. And even when they arrived there, they were not satisfied, because a curse entered their intestines. It can also be understood simply: Chazal taught that in a time of famine, a person is always hungry. When someone has bread in his basket, he feels satisfied and does not feel a compulsive urge to eat. A person goes to work with his sandwich, and amidst the rush of work and clients he only remembers to eat it at two in the afternoon, skipping his morning snack entirely. But on a day when he forgot his sandwich at home - already by nine in the morning he is ravenous, stressed, and searching for somewhere to buy food. Such is the reality during a famine: there is no bread in the basket, so one is perpetually hungry. So it was during the drought: they would drag themselves from place to place and drink, yet they were not sated, deriving no satisfaction from what they drank. And here was yet another warning - "yet you did not return to Me."
"I smote you with blight and mildew" - The Third Blast
הִכֵּיתִי אֶתְכֶם בַּשִּׁדָּפוֹן וּבַיֵּרָקוֹן, הַרְבּוֹת גַּנּוֹתֵיכֶם וְכַרְמֵיכֶם וּתְאֵנֵיכֶם וְזֵיתֵיכֶם יֹאכַל הַגָּזָם, וְלֹא שַׁבְתֶּם עָדַי נְאֻם ה' - "I smote you with blight and mildew; the multitude of your gardens and your vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees the shearer-locust devoured, yet you did not return to Me, says Hashem."
Here is the third blast, an even harsher famine: Hashem smites the grain with blight and mildew, and the fruit of the tree that still remains is devoured by the shearer-locust. Do not say that I failed to admonish you - I warned you, yet your ears were sealed.
A difficulty arises here: earlier, the prophet spoke of "cleanness of teeth" and absolute lack of bread, where there was nothing at all; how is it that here there are vineyards, olive trees, and grain, only that blight, mildew, and locusts consume them? The Radak explains: this refers to a different year, a year in which rain did fall, but the afflictions took a different form. Bread was lacking because of blight and mildew striking the grain, while the shearer-locust ate the fruits.
Furthermore, the very variety of afflictions proves that everything is guided by divine providence. Just as earlier, "one field would receive rain" while another did not - specifically to show that this is Providence - so it is here. If there were one prolonged period of a single hardship, a person might say: throughout history there were periods of famine, periods of plague, and periods of blight and mildew. But when Someone changes the cassette each time and puts in a different disc - it is a clear sign that Someone is pursuing you, demanding something of you, urging you to awaken and pay attention. And despite all this - "yet you did not return to Me."
"I sent pestilence among you in the manner of Egypt" - The Fourth Blast
שִׁלַּחְתִּי בָכֶם דֶּבֶר בְּדֶרֶךְ מִצְרַיִם, הָרַגְתִּי בַחֶרֶב בַּחוּרֵיכֶם עִם שְׁבִי סוּסֵיכֶם, וָאַעֲלֶה בְּאֹשׁ מַחֲנֵיכֶם וּבְאַפְּכֶם, וְלֹא שַׁבְתֶּם עָדַי נְאֻם ה' - "I sent pestilence among you in the manner of Egypt; I slew your young men with the sword along with the captivity of your horses, and I caused the stench of your camps to rise into your nostrils, yet you did not return to Me, says Hashem."
Rashi explains: I sent pestilence among you just as I sent against you in the wilderness upon your departure from the land of Egypt. This does not refer to an event that occurred on the road to Egypt, but rather: I sent pestilence into your dwellings just as I sent back then, when Hashem repeatedly unleashed His burning wrath and a plague broke out in Israel.
The Radak offers an interpretation closer to the literal sense: because of the famine, they went down to Egypt to search for food, and there I sent pestilence against you and the enemy's sword along the road - you went looking for natural solutions, thinking, "We will take from Egypt, we will bring from there," instead of returning to Me. "I slew your young men with the sword along with the captivity of your horses" - according to Rashi, the enemies killed the horses as well; according to the Radak, the emissaries sent to fetch grain from Egypt were the young men, and the enemies confronting them would slay the young men and capture their horses. "And I caused the stench of your camps to rise into your nostrils" - they traveled in caravans, and when the first caravan fell by the sword and its horses were captured, the second caravan arrived, its nostrils filled with the foul stench of the rotting corpses of the first group. You smelled the stench of the slain with your own nostrils, which ought to have stirred you to repent - and yet, you did not return to Me.
The Malbim focuses these events on the era of King Hoshea, during which many from the Ten Tribes fled to Egypt because of the fury of the oppressor, and there Hashem sent pestilence upon them, as it says: "Egypt shall gather them, Moph shall bury them" (Moph being a city in Egypt, like Noph and Tahpanhes). Along the road, the king of Assyria struck them down with the sword, as it says: "As they go, I will spread My net over them... for their princes shall fall by the sword." After all, they had turned to Egypt to secure help against the Assyrian empire, provoking the king who subjugated them to march out and strike them down. Because they were slain by the sword and their horses captured, the stench of human and equine corpses strewn across the open field arose - and this was not merely an offensive odor, for wherever corpses lie unburied there is grave danger of contagion, and from that stench the plague spread all the way into the Land of Israel. This was the fourth warning - "yet you did not return to Me."
"I overturned some of you as God overturned" - The Fifth Blast
הָפַכְתִּי בָכֶם כְּמַהְפֵּכַת אֱלֹהִים אֶת סְדֹם וְאֶת עֲמֹרָה, וַתִּהְיוּ כְּאוּד מֻצָּל מִשְּׂרֵפָה, וְלֹא שַׁבְתֶּם עָדַי נְאֻם ה' - "I brought overthrow among you as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were like a brand plucked from the fire, yet you did not return to Me, says Hashem."
This refers to the exiles carried out by the king of Assyria, through which the Land of Israel was laid waste. After the first two exiles, nothing remained except Samaria and its surrounding towns, and you were left like a brand plucked from the fire - like a log of wood charred at both ends and scorched in the middle, yet somehow saved from the blaze. And if you were spared in such a manner, repent! Yet even so, you did not return to Me. Rashi explains that an ud (brand) connotes something black, dark, and gloomy, while the Radak explains that the comparison to Sodom and Gomorrah means that only a tiny remnant was left, like a brand saved from the fire. And despite all this - you did not listen to My voice.
"Prepare to Meet Your God, Israel"
לָכֵן כֹּה אֶעֱשֶׂה לְּךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל, עֵקֶב כִּי זֹאת אֶעֱשֶׂה לָּךְ, הִכּוֹן לִקְרַאת אֱלֹהֶיךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל - "Therefore, thus will I do to you, Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, Israel."
After five warnings that went unheeded: since you did not return to Me, and you hear from My prophets yet do not repent, therefore I will bring upon you all the calamities I warned you about. Rashi's language implies that everything mentioned above was still merely a warning, and because you did not listen, I will be compelled to bring it upon you. From the Radak, however, as well as from the Malbim, it emerges that all these misfortunes had already actually struck - you received the blows, yet you were not shaken awake.
According to the Radak, what is the meaning of "Prepare to meet your God, Israel", given that He had already brought all these troubles upon them? According to Rashi, the meaning is: repent of your wickedness so that they do not come. According to the Radak, the meaning is: if you turn back from your wickedness, Hashem will transform the misfortune into good for you. That is, repent, and through this, matters will not get worse. And what is worse? Exile. After all, you are still here, you have not yet been fully exiled; all these troubles were meant to awaken you, and if you wake up in time, you will not suffer exile.
The Malbim summarizes: This entire portrayal is the meaning behind "Shall a shofar be blown in a city and the people not tremble?", and "If there will be evil in a city, did Hashem not cause it?" Behold, I gave advance warning and the trouble arrived, thereby demonstrating that everything happens through Divine Providence. And as we saw: "For the Lord Hashem does nothing without having revealed His secret to His servants, the prophets." Why does the Holy One, blessed be He, give advance warning? Because the misfortune is not an end in itself, but a tool to inspire repentance. One who wishes to harm another does not warn him in advance; he seeks the element of surprise. But One who does not want the harm to occur - on the contrary, He warns in advance. The purpose of the tribulation is that you realize that I am the One bringing this upon you, and thereby be awakened. For when a person is in distress and does not know the "address" responsible, what can one expect of him? But if I warned you in advance that trouble is coming and told you that I am the address - come to the address to see how the affliction can be averted! Yet as we saw above, not only did they fail to come, but they went searching for solutions far away, in Egypt and elsewhere, anything to avoid turning to Hashem. Therefore He tells them: "Prepare to meet your God, Israel" - prepare yourself, appease Him with repentance and good deeds; do not wait for the calamity to reach you, but go out toward Him even before that.
Two Punishments: "The Reward of a Sin is a Sin"
There is a puzzling repetition in the verse: "Therefore thus will I do to you, Israel; because I will do this to you..." The Malbim explains homiletically: The Holy One, blessed be He, has no desire to bring harm upon you; on the contrary, His will is to do good and bestow kindness, for He is the perfection of goodness. When you cause the Holy One, blessed be He, to bring harm upon you, you compel Hashem, as it were, to act against His will. You thus cause pain to the Shechinah twice over: first, when a Jew suffers, the Shechinah suffers with him - "My head is heavy, My arm is heavy," "I am with him in distress"; and second, you have forced absolute goodness to bring about evil. This is the meaning of "the reward of a sin is a sin" - the very punishment you receive constitutes another sin, for where did the punishment come from? From Hashem. This explains "because I will do this to you": since I am forced to do this to you, you will be punished for that very fact - for compelling Me to suffer pain and bring calamity upon you. Therefore, the counsel is: prepare to meet your God, Israel.
Notice the difference between the Malbim's two explanations. According to the first explanation, the repetition indicates the ultimate purpose: "Therefore thus will I do to you" - all the troubles are not intended to harm, but rather so that, "because I will do this to you", in the wake of recognizing that I am the One acting, you will "prepare to meet your God, Israel." According to the second explanation, there are two punishments here: one for the sin itself, and another for having forced the Holy One, blessed be He, who is the essence of goodness, to bring evil upon you, which itself brings pain to the Holy One, blessed be He.
"For Behold, He Forms Mountains and Creates Wind"
כִּי הִנֵּה יוֹצֵר הָרִים וּבֹרֵא רוּחַ וּמַגִּיד לְאָדָם מַה שֵּׂחוֹ, עֹשֵׂה שַׁחַר עֵיפָה וְדֹרֵךְ עַל בָּמֳתֵי אָרֶץ, ה' אֱלֹהֵי צְבָאוֹת שְׁמוֹ - "For behold, He forms mountains and creates the wind, and declares to man what his thought is; He turns dawn into darkness, and treads upon the high places of the earth - Hashem, the God of hosts, is His name."
The Ibn Ezra explains: Hashem forms mountains - and mountains stand forever, alluding to the might of the Holy One, blessed be He. "And creates the wind" - for the wind does not stand firm like the mountains, but moves and shifts by the will of Hashem. "And declares to man what his thought is" - through this, Hashem reveals His will to man. "Makes the dawn darkness" - He turns light into darkness, for "eifah" means darkness, as in "and behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish" (Yeshayahu 8:22), and "a land of darkness... though it be dark, it shall be as the morning" (Iyov 10:22, 11:17) - that the darkness will become bright as morning. Ibn Ezra further explains in the name of Yefet, and Radak follows this approach as well: Scripture comes to show that Hashem's power is limitless. Mountains are visible to the eye; the spirit within living bodies is invisible; and man's thoughts and the musings of his heart are entirely hidden - yet Hashem rules over them all. His power is above any physical force you can conceive. Therefore, He also has the power to turn bad into good; all that I showed you previously with afflictions and catastrophes - I have the power to alter and reverse, for the Holy One, blessed be He, is boundless.
The Malbim offers an additional explanation here, seeing in this verse proof of Hashem's Divine Providence. At the beginning of Creation, everything was water: "and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters" - the element of water covered the entire globe. In his commentary on Ma'aseh Bereishit (the Creation narrative), the Malbim elaborates that initially, the element of earth was mixed with the element of water - in simple terms, mud - and there was no separate earth and separate water; this is "and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The element of air/wind was also mixed with the water and did not exist as a separate entity. The distinction was that the element of earth was mixed with the water in its lower portion, while the element of air was in its upper portion - which makes sense, as air is lighter than earth. Afterward, through the expansive force of wind and air and by means of light, the element of air separated from the element of water, and the mountain peaks were uncovered. Subsequently, the Holy One, blessed be He, gathered the waters further - "let the waters... be gathered, and let the dry land appear" - creating the separation between dry land and sea.
This is the meaning of "He forms mountains and creates wind": because the element of earth was separated on its own, the mountains became noticeable and earth became distinct; and because the element of air was separated, the atmosphere became an independent entity. All this was because Hashem wished to prepare a place for human habitation, since it is impossible to settle in a place without solid ground. On this we recite every day in our morning blessings: "Who stretches the earth over the waters." If Hashem had not spread out the earth above the waters, upon what would we stand? And even had He spread out the earth, without oxygen, how would we survive? Therefore, both earth and air had to be separated so that life could be possible on the face of the earth.
From this, consider how closely the Holy One, blessed be He, oversees everything. If all of this was created solely so that man could exist here, understand that His Providence is so meticulous that He "declares to man what his thought (sicho) is." And what is "sicho"? The Malbim explains that there is a difference between formal speech (dibbur) and spontaneous utterance (si'ach): si'ach refers to the movements or utterances blurted out by a person in an emotional stir, things a person does emotionally without specific intention and without pondering what comes out of his mouth - yet even this, the Holy One, blessed be He, knows and declares to man, for everything is revealed before Him. This is similar to "whether he is talking (si'ach) or he is pursuing" said regarding Eliyahu at Mount Carmel, when he told the prophets of Ba'al to cry out aloud.
Just as the Holy One, blessed be He, established nature and creation with complete Providence and created everything for the benefit of man, so too, if He wills it, He can in a single moment destroy and lay everything to waste: "Makes dawn darkness" - He will turn the time of light into darkness and cancel the light He created at the beginning of Creation, by whose power the air was separated from the water; consequently, the wind will return and be absorbed back into the water, which is the exact opposite of "creates the wind." "And treads upon the high places of the earth" - He will sink the mountains back down, the reverse of "forms mountains," and the earth will once again become mixed into the water. The One Who did this can return everything to its initial state; by His will He maintains it, and by His will He can annul it. From this you must understand that you must mend your ways and nullify your will before the will of your Maker. The Malbim adds that "eifah" denotes darkness and is related to the word af'af (eyelid) - when a person closes his eyelids, he experiences darkness, as in "will you set (hata'if) your eyes upon it, and it is gone?" (Mishlei 23:5) - that Hashem will shut out the light and there will be darkness.
In conclusion, let us mention the words of Rashi, who cites Targum Yonatan: "For behold, He is revealed Who formed the mountains and created the wind, to declare to man what his deeds are" - Hashem formed mountains and created wind to tell man what his actions are; "to prepare light for the righteous like the light of morning"; "and to bring darkness upon the wicked, to break the wicked of the earth." Thus Hashem prepared light and prepared darkness: light for the righteous, which is the aspect of the World to Come, and darkness for the wicked, which is the darkness of Gehinnom.
"Even Casual Conversation" - The Homily of Chazal and the Ben Ish Chai
Well-known is the teaching of Chazal on this verse: "'He forms mountains and creates the wind, and declares to man what his thought is' - even casual conversation between a man and his wife is recounted to a person at the time of judgment." The Ben Ish Chai asks: what does "He forms mountains and creates the wind" have to do with this? He explains: Consider, mountains are enormous and mighty, yet Chazal said, "a wind uproots a mountain" - there is a reality where the wind breaks a mountain and even uproots mountains. Look at terrifying, dreadful hurricanes, in whose aftermath you suddenly find a car perched on the roof of a house with no clear explanation of how it got there; wind brings floods, tsunamis, or earthquakes that claim hundreds of thousands of lives in a single moment. And if someone asks you: what is wind, after all? Can you hold it? It is completely intangible, merely air. And yet, the wind uproots a mountain.
From this, says the Ben Ish Chai: understand the power of speech. What is speech? Merely breath, a "speaking spirit" (ru'ach memalela). A person says: "What did I do? I didn't touch him, I only said words!" But that very same breath is what uproots mountains. Speech possesses such immense power: "for in their anger they slew a man" - through speech, a person can shoot sharp arrows that destroy a soul. How careful a person must be with what leaves his mouth! And this is "and declares to man what his thought is": they reveal to a person the significance of his speech. You thought you only spoke? Know that a wind uproots mountains!
In Summary:
The chapter presents the fulfillment of the parable, "Can a shofar be blown in a city and the people not tremble?": The Holy One, blessed be He, sounded five shofar blasts to His people - famine and cleanness of teeth; withholding of rain in a way that proves meticulous Providence; blight, mildew, and the shearer-worm; pestilence and the sword on the road to Egypt; and an overthrow like Sodom and Gomorrah - each concluding with, "yet you did not return to Me." The prophets were warned to announce and proclaim this so that the people would repent, and the troubles themselves came only as an instrument of awakening, for "the Lord God will do nothing unless He has revealed His secret to His servants the prophets," and He Who desires to do good gives advance warning. Therefore, the chapter concludes with the call, "Prepare to meet your God, O Israel" - go out to meet Him in repentance and good deeds before calamity strikes. And the One Whom we are summoned to prepare to meet is that very Former of mountains and Creator of wind, Who by His will established the world and by His will can annul it, and Who knows even the casual conversation of man - and from this stems an eternal warning regarding the immense power of speech, for even the slightest wind can uproot mountains.