Ari Levisohn: Welcome to Into the Verse, where we share new and unexpected insights about an upcoming holiday … diving deep into the verses to uncover the Torah’s own commentary on itself.

This is Ari Levisohn. Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day, is coming up. It celebrates our return to the Land of Israel and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The growth and development in Israel over the last 75 years is nothing short of a miracle. It’s something that actually seems to be prophetically described in Psalm 107, which speaks about the revitalization of the land and the ingathering of Jews from all four corners of the world. It’s no surprise, then, why Israel’s Chief Rabbinate included this psalm in their special liturgy for Yom Ha’atzmaut. There is this surprising verse, though, towards the end of the chapter which seems oddly out of place in this psalm, which is primarily about giving thanks to God. 

When I came across this perplexing verse, I sat down with my colleague Daniel Loewenstein to dig deeper into Psalm 107. In the end, our discussion gave us a new perspective on Yom Ha’atzmaut and uncovered some really powerful messages for how we look at history as a whole and how we look at the events of our own lives. Here we are.  

Hey Daniel. Thanks for joining me.

Daniel Loewenstein: Hey Ari, pleasure to be joining you today.

Ari: So let's jump in. If you just open up Psalms 107 here, so at the very beginning: Praise God, for He is good, for His kindness is everlasting. יֹאמְרוּ גְּאוּלֵי יְקוָה אֲשֶׁר גְּאָלָם מִיַּד־צָר – Let the redeemed of Hashem say so, when He has redeemed them from the hand of… either the hand of the enemy, or the hand of the adversity. Really no clue what story it's talking about here, and I think it could be talking about any story of salvation.

Daniel: It's a constant tension when you're learning Psalms, if you're meant to read it as reference to some sort of local events or if it's meant to be a vehicle for prayer for generations, or if it's meant to be both at the same time.

Ari: Yeah. And so I think part of the reason that we read this on Yom Ha'atzmaut is that I think we see a lot of language that reminds us of the fact that we've returned to Israel and what we see playing out in Israel. So if you just keep reading one verse here, to verse three: וּמֵאֲרָצוֹת קִבְּצָם מִמִּזְרָח וּמִמַּעֲרָב מִצָּפוֹן וּמִיָּם – He gathered them from all the directions of the land, right? East, west, north, south. And then there's more language. If you jump all the way down to 35, יָשֵׂם מִדְבָּר לַאֲגַם־מַיִם וְאֶרֶץ צִיָּה לְמֹצָאֵי מָיִם – He turned the wilderness into a pool of water and the dry ground into wellsprings. It reminds us of the way they were able to irrigate the desert here in Israel. וַיּוֹשֶׁב שָׁם רְעֵבִים וַיְכוֹנְנוּ עִיר מוֹשָׁב – and there He gives the hungry a place to dwell, and He establishes for them a habitation, a real dwelling place. וַיִּזְרְעוּ שָׂדוֹת וַיִּטְּעוּ כְרָמִים – they plant fields and vineyards, וַיַּעֲשׂוּ פְּרִי תְבוּאָה – which yield fruits of increase (verses 36-37). So they come to this desert and they're able to establish a home there, and they plant crops and vineyards. It really reminds us a lot of what we see going on in Israel today.

Daniel: Yeah. I can see how, whatever the original intention or original referent was for these verses, it definitely feels like, if a person was going to choose a psalm to honor the foundation of the current state of Israel – so much of the development of the country in the big Aliyot in the mid-1900s was – so much of it was that – the land being barren, and really strong efforts to irrigate and to plant and turn it from a wasteland into, you know, the place that is famous for the Jaffa oranges and all of the rich lushness… that does feel like it's a very appropriate thing to want to pay homage to God for, if you're looking at the current state of Israel and you have a little bit of a sense of the context of history.

Ari: Yeah, absolutely. I've always read this on Yom Ha'atzmaut and found it to almost be prophetic, the way it's describing the situation that we see playing out with our own eyes. 

A Puzzling Verse

So here we are reading this beautiful chapter of Psalms that describes beautifully the redemption, the salvation, turning deserts into vineyards. But then we kind of run into this problem, this section. It really just throws you off or snaps you out of this magical dreamland. Take a look at verse 40. שֹׁפֵךְ בּוּז עַל־נְדִיבִים וַיַּתְעֵם בְּתֹהוּ לֹא־דָרֶךְ – He pours contempt on the nobles and causes them to wander in the… tohu, like tohu va-vohu in creation of the world, right (Genesis 1:2)? The chaos without direction. It seems pretty out of place, doesn't it?

Daniel: Yeah, interesting. Right, I'm looking at this mizmor (psalm), and it seems like it's been pretty kind of positive, upbeat, but now we're getting these, like, the bad guys, like the people that you know we need to be booing, as opposed to doing all the cheering we've been doing. So I don't know who these nedivim (nobles) are, but obviously there's context here that I'm not following, that I don't know. So I'm really curious where you're going to take us.

Ari: So I love that you're leaning on that question of, who are these nedivim? So it turns out that this whole phrase is copy-and-paste the same language from somewhere else in Tanakh.

Daniel: Really.

Ari: Twenty bucks if you can guess.

Daniel: Oh man, twenty bucks if I can guess…

Ari: I should make it higher.

Daniel: Hold on. I'm not looking at a search engine. Let me think about this for a second.

Ari: I'll give you a hint. Anyone we know in Tanakh who seemed to be somewhat of a nadiv, things were going really well for them, they were a mighty person, they were a noble, to a certain extent. And then God seemed to, just out of nowhere, turn His wrath against him and take away everything he has.

Daniel: Oh. Is this Iyov (Job)?

Ari: It's in Iyov. So, just to give everyone a kind of recap of this book of Iyov, or Job: Basically, Job… things are going really well for him. He's got ten kids, he's got a wife, he's got lots of wealth. 

Daniel: This satanic angel comes to God, and he's bugging Him, like, why are you giving Iyov all of this stuff? And God says, No, Iyov is great, he deserves it all. And the Satan says, Well, I mean, he loves You now, but what if You take away all this stuff? Is he still going to be loyal to you? So God's like, All right, test him. And then all of a sudden, this angel, he takes all his family, and he takes away all his wealth.

Ari: At first Iyov actually starts to accept the fate that God gives him, but then eventually it starts afflicting his body, even, and at a certain point it pushes Iyov over the line.

Daniel: And then the rest of the book is his three friends coming and talking to him.

Ari: It’s like 40 chapters of existential crisis.

Daniel: Like the big DMC about how to deal with the suffering.

Ari: Right. Why did the righteous suffer? Bad things happen to good people. And his friends keep trying to convince him that maybe there's a meaning behind all of it. And he's like: No, it doesn't make sense! There's no justice in the world.

Daniel: So okay, where does this pasuk (verse) show up contextually in Iyov?

Ari: This is in the middle of one of Iyov's rants about how nothing's fair, God just took everything away from him. It's in chapter 12 verse 21, שׁוֹפֵךְ בּוּז עַל־נְדִיבִים וּמְזִיחַ אֲפִיקִים רִפָּה – it’s the exact same language. שׁוֹפֵךְ בּוּז עַל־נְדִיבִים – That's the first half of our pasuk.

Daniel: Right.

Ari: He pours contempt upon the noble ones and weakens the belt of the mighty. And then, if you look just three verses after this, 24: מֵסִיר לֵב רָאשֵׁי עַם־הָאָרֶץ – He takes away the heart of the chiefs of the people of the land, וַיַּתְעֵם בְּתֹהוּ לֹא־דָרֶךְ – exactly the second half of our pasuk, and causes them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way. 

So it's like the verse from Psalms just gets split in half, and basically it's in this section where Job is describing exactly the same situation that Psalms is. 

Daniel: Then that seems really weird. You've got me hooked. I need to know the answer. We're in the middle of this lengthy praise of how God is so wonderful and He’s done all these things and He's reversed the desert into fields and vineyards, and there's fruit yielding, and then all of a sudden we start talking about this really dark, how God – I don't know. 

Parallel Language but Inverse Meanings?

Ari: So Psalms seems to be acknowledging that yes, sometimes God destroys the mighty too. But for the most part it's focusing on the good side and about how God brings us redemption and everything. But here's Job, who was a mighty person, a person who had everything and watched as God took it all away from him. And he's like: Hey, did anybody ask the nadiv how he felt, that person who God took everything away from? Did anybody ask him if he thought that was fair at that point, that God took everything from him?

Daniel: I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying. It sounds like what you're saying is that, not only is it weird that the language is shared in both cases, but the context actually makes them mean totally different things. In Iyov, it's a sympathetic line of: God is שׁוֹפֵךְ בּוּז עַל־נְדִיבִים – and that's awful, that these nice innocent nedivim who are just trying to lead normal, happy, noble lives, all of a sudden God just upends things for them. And in here, it seems to be out of a kind of way of leveling the playing field. People who are high and haughty, God brings them down a peg.

So it's taking not the literal meaning of the words but the connotation, the moral valence of it, and flipping it on its head. Is this meant to be a heroic, triumphant Yes! God is bringing them down a peg! … or is it a tragic People who are totally innocent and God is just messing with them. That's very interesting, for it to be used that way.

Ari: It's a little troubling too, because Job is raising this deep theological problem with the way that even this happy chapter of Tehillim (Psalms) is describing how God does things.

Daniel: Beyond weird, it also feels jarring in a few ways. So help us get out of that, Ari.

Job’s Missing Perspective

Ari: So I guess the question now: Is Job right? Is there no justice of anything? Is life just completely unfair? And I think the answer is no, but then we have to ask: Well, what is Job missing when he's making these complaints?

Daniel: You're saying, when Job looks at the reality of שׁוֹפֵךְ בּוּז עַל־נְדִיבִים – let's say that's established as fact, Tehillim and Iyov agree with it – but his interpretation is that there's something unfair about it, and you're saying, maybe that's not true. So what is his misperception, Ari?

Ari: To see that, I think we have to back up just a little bit where Job seems to be making the argument that when God destroys something, He never rebuilds it. The punishments that God doles out are irreversible, and Job's life is completely ruined, and it can never be fixed. He says in verse 14, הֵן יַהֲרוֹס וְלֹא יִבָּנֶה יִסְגֹּר עַל־אִישׁ וְלֹא יִפָּתֵחַ – God destroys and doesn't rebuild. He locks up man and He doesn't release him.

So now how does that color how you read this line of שׁוֹפֵךְ בּוּז עַל־נְדִיבִים – that He pours out His wrath on the mighty ones?

Daniel: That's interesting. In other words, this sort of really fatalistic, nihilistic perspective, which is totally relatable when you're in a situation of crisis and tragedy – like, you know it doesn't really work all that often to tell someone, Well, just imagine how you're going to feel in three months when life feels regular again and all of a sudden there's still a reason to live – when you're there in that situation, if you feel like everything is hopeless, everything is pointless. 

So yes, I would assume the energy of שׁוֹפֵךְ בּוּז עַל־נְדִיבִים is, God takes people who are leading totally happy, guiltless, carefree lives, and just dumps on them and destroys them, right? וַיַּתְעֵם בְּתֹהוּ לֹא־דָרֶךְ – and leads them to wander and there's no path. And that's just the end, right? And I guess what you're saying is, maybe that – is where you're going with this, maybe the energy of that line in Tehillim is different?

Psalms’ Answer to Job

Ari: Yeah, so here's where I think Tehillim has some of the answer to Job. or in a way has a response to Job. The very next line after that, right after it says about how God dismantles those who are mighty, comes verse 41, and he says… Why don't you go ahead and read this.

Daniel: וַיְשַׂגֵּב אֶבְיוֹן מֵעוֹנִי וַיָּשֶׂם כַּצֹּאן מִשְׁפָּחוֹת – God raises up the destitute from poverty and establishes him with a family like a flock. Is that how you would translate that?

Ari: Yeah, that works.

Daniel: So there's this counterbalance, right? The nedivim get lowered and the evyonim (poor people) get raised. 

Ari: Yes, God does sometimes take down nedivim, but He also takes these completely poor and destitute people and He lifts them up. There's two sides to the same coin here, which is very different to the way Iyov is talking.

Iyov looked at the misfortune that God gives people as final: Once a person is down, there’s no getting back up. But this verse in Psalms highlights how that’s not necessarily the case. A person’s fortune may fall, but just as God lowers the nedivim, the nobles, He can also raise them up. Psalms offers a message of hope, that there’s a potential for life to take a turn for the better. 

The Intertextual Conversation Continues

So we’ve now seen how Psalms responds in a way to Job’s despair, and I think that the conversation between the two texts actually continues just a few verses later in the final pasuk of this chapter. So I asked Daniel to read it.

So come with me to the last verse in this chapter. Daniel, can you go ahead and read the last verse of this chapter, the one that’s meant to summarize everything that's come before it.

Daniel: I'm not sure I'd agree with the assertion that it’s meant to summarize anything before it, but I'm happy to read the last verse. So the last verse of mizmor kuf zayin, of Psalm 107, is: מִי־חָכָם וְיִשְׁמׇר־אֵלֶּה – Who is wise, I assume, who is wise – he will keep this, he will keep this idea that we've been talking about, and he will contemplate the chasadim, the kindnesses, of God.

Ari: There are different ways of translating this. There are some translations that read it like you're reading there. I actually read this as a rhetorical question, especially when you look at the two vavs here, that really is “and.” Who is wise and takes heed of this and understands the kindness of God.

Daniel: So explain, so how does that read together as a sentence?

Ari: So that seems to be saying that actually it's not so easy to understand the kindness of God, right? It's asking us as a rhetorical question: Who actually understands all of this? Who actually can see the true kindness of God as things are still playing out?

Daniel: Interesting.

Ari: And I think now we see that actually, Divine justice is complicated. It's not so easy to understand. On one hand, God brings us salvation, but also, why do those people need to be saved in the first place? How did God let that happen? And what's even more interesting is that Job actually seems to be arguing the exact same thing.

Let me explain what I mean. So let's go back to Job. Verse 12, and again, we're in chapter 12. So now Job asks: בִּישִׁישִׁים חׇכְמָה וְאֹרֶךְ יָמִים תְּבוּנָה – Do the elderly have wisdom, and those who have lived many days have understanding? The same language of chochmah and tevunah – wisdom and understanding. לוֹ עֵצָה וּתְבוּנָה – No, it's God that has understanding, it's God that has wisdom (verse 13). Again, this is a response to his friends who are trying to rationalize what's going on, trying to explain how it actually all makes sense. And he says: No, you can't understand it. It's impossible to understand why God does anything. None of it makes sense.

Daniel: Interesting. And in that same chapter, there's, you know, God must have His reasons, but people think they can justify, people think they can rationalize, people think they can understand – but no, they can't. And then a minute later he says: God dumps on nice people, and He leads leaders off in crazy ways, and none of it makes any sense, and none of it can make any sense, because God is the only one who can make sense of it, and we can't talk to Him.

Ari: Exactly. And this chapter of Psalms – which at first glance seems like maybe it's just this super happy, everything good, God saves the day – actually does acknowledge that things are complicated. Sometimes God is the hero in our story, and sometimes it feels like God is punishing us for no reason.

A Message To Guard

While on the whole, this chapter is recognizing God's kindness and recognizing that at the end of the day, God does come in and save the day, and God does have mercy and pity on the downtrodden, and He does lift them up and He does help them back on their feet… it's not so easy to actually see how that's all going to happen, especially when you're in the middle of it.

Daniel: I'm seeing now the energy of that last verse almost like an important message to carry forward. The experience of the Psalm is like this rejoicing, happy revelry, and whatever this deliverance is, and this turnabout of the situation, and the desert becoming fruitful, and it's wonderful.

But then there's this message of: This is God's justice. This is God providing all of this wonder and all these things to be so grateful for. That's an aspect of the way God relates to the world. And it's a mood that it's easy to connect to, it's fun to connect to. It's great to be grateful, to experience great things and then feel appreciation for them. But in the balance of things, this is one dimension of the way God relates to the world. And it’s almost like that extra word of וְיִשְׁמׇר (he will guard) which I don't think was parallel to the language in Iyov.

Ari: Right.

Daniel: Guard this knowledge, right? You have to be wise about it. You have to be thoughtful about it. You have to realize that with the good comes the bad, and there's a balance and there's an arc that God is following in the world. That sometimes there's ups and sometimes there's downs. And hold on to the preciousness of the good, and be wise and remember that this is one side of something much bigger. Kind of like a takeaway message: At the end of all the joy, just be thoughtful about that larger context of the joy.

Ari: Interesting. I was thinking of it as an acknowledgement of how hard it is to anticipate God's salvation or see God's kindness at all moments. But I like that too.

Daniel: I definitely see it both ways. It's just, you know, sharing how it landed for me. 

Job’s Missing Perspective Revisited

Ari: So what's funny about Job is that, even though here in chapter 12 he is in this really dark place – Daniel, how does the story end?

Daniel: Yes, it is kind of funny. It's a little bit strange to talk about the word “funny" in terms of Iyov, but if the point is that here in chapter 12, he's doubling down on this idea that God's ways are inscrutable, and everything is terrible and everything is going to fall apart and never be rebuilt again, and it's all for naught… actually, Iyov ends the story with everything restored, right? I don't know how you count the equivalency of losing your old family versus getting a new family. But he has a new family and new wealth, and he's in a, by all accounts, a really excellent position in life, relative to where he was when he made those comments. So the downward pattern that never goes up again actually didn't even pan out in his own lifetime.

Ari: Exactly. Even Iyov, who was so sure that things would never look up for him again, that was really kind of where he was wrong. 

So Rabbi Fohrman loves to quote his father about how if a story seems scary, it's because you're only in the middle, you're not at the end. You know, here Job is, and his story seems so scary, and he's upset, and he can't understand why this is all happening. But he's judging the story before it's over. Because his story actually has a happy ending. He just didn't believe that was possible.

Daniel: It's not the kind of thing that you can know when you're in the middle of it, if this is the end or not.

Ari: Oh, for sure.

Daniel: But it's a really good point because you know, even while things are good you don't know if it's the end of the story. While things are bad, you also don't know that it’s the end of the story. It's a really powerful point.

A Lesson for Yom Ha’atzmaut

Ari: Tying this back to Yom Ha'atzmaut now, what does this make you think?

Daniel: What this is really making me think of is: We're talking about gratitude for salvation, and we're talking about witnessing the miracles that God performs. Then we're also talking about how there exists this reality of people being brought down and people being raised up. And recognizing that we should appreciate the good times, but there's also this reality of, God does what He does, and He has His reasons, and sometimes there are downs also. 

Israel is a blessing, but you can't look at it as though it's this kind of monolithic, always rosy situation where only good happens, and God only bestows berachah (blessing). There's a place for love and there's a place for fear, and for respect. And if your religious experience is one that's completely bound up in the sense of הוֹדוּ לַיקוה כִּי־טוֹב כִּי לְעוֹלָם חַסְדּוֹ –

Ari: God is always good and nothing else but good (Psalms 107:1).

Daniel: – and there's no capacity for the up and the down, you're not setting yourself up for a very durable kind of religious experience in life. That's where my head went.

Ari: You end up in a situation like Job, where bad things happen, and then you can't explain them. And of course God is always good, but there are times where that goodness is near impossible to see. I think it's really cool how you brought up how even after we have a State of Israel now, it doesn't mean that the story is over, and it doesn't mean that there aren't going to be some dark times that continue to happen along the way, or have continued to happen along the way.

It's interesting, if you read this chapter, the verse that we quoted about שׁוֹפֵךְ בּוּז עַל־נְדִיבִים – the one where it talks about the destruction that God actually carried out – we read that as looking backwards on time to what happened previously. But you know, it also could be reading this linearly and actually saying: Yeah, things get good, but then sometimes even in the process of things getting good, they might get bad again. It's like an up and down cycle. It's a rollercoaster. But if we have the resolution, and the strength really, to be able to see into the future – and if not understand how things are going to get better, at least understand that they can – and believe in God's capacity to fix and to repair and to redeem, then I think that can give us a lot of strength. 

And we can still say הוֹדוּ לַיקוה כִּי־טוֹב even in those hard times, with understanding that just because things seem hard now, they don't always have to be that way or they won't always be that way.

Daniel: If you're going to be wise about it, hold to this principle.

Ari: That's a great point about the וְיִשְׁמׇר that you made earlier. You really do have to hang on to that. You have to hang on to that knowledge that things get better, because there are times where life really wants to rip it away from you.

Daniel: And on that note…

Ari: And I think that we're lucky enough to live in a day where I think that we see overwhelmingly good. And it seems like for the most part, God is doing a lot of chesed, a lot of kindness with us. But for much of Jewish history, that was really hard to see. There were pogroms and crusades and Holocaust. But I think now that we have already seen some redemption, now that we've seen how God has turned the desert into a fruitful land, and He has given us a place to live, fulfilling the words of this chapter of Psalms, that should give us a lot of strength next time things do seem down. It should give us a whole lot to be וְיִשְׁמׇר on, to hold onto, and a whole lot to give us that strength.

Daniel: I think that's very wise. It's almost like when Joseph told Pharaoh: Don't waste the years of plenty. Make sure to store everything up so that when the years of famine come. you have what to hang onto. So there's a way to do that with gratitude and with hope, right? Even when you’re in a really good time, being aware of the fact that it doesn't have to be this way, and that – lo aleinu – things could potentially take a turn for the worse in the future in some way, kind of lets you appreciate it and store it up in a way that makes more of it than just taking it for granted. That's really beautiful, Ari.

The Message in Job’s Daughters’ Names

Ari: Absolutely. Daniel, I just want to leave with one last thing, and I think it potentially is really cool. I want to thank Vadim Birman, one of our Producers’ Circle members, who shared this insight. At the very end of the story of Job, he gets a whole new family, new kids. Now, none of his kids the first time had any names; it doesn't give them any names in the story. But all of a sudden at the very end, it decides to tell us the names of the three daughters that he has, and those names are Yemimah, Ketziyah, and Keren Hafuch. 

Now, I want to acknowledge that there's probably a more literal way to understand the meaning behind these names, having to do with beauty, but I think there's something really cool here. It starts basically with the word ketz, right? It's like “the end.” Yemimah sounds a whole lot like…?

Daniel: Yamim.

Ari: Days, right? So Daniel, if you put those together…

Daniel: Ketz hayamim.

Ari: Ketz hayamim, the end of days. And so what happens at the end of days? The last one is Keren Hafuch. So keren is like the horn. Although it's used all the time throughout Tanakh to talk about keren David, keren Yishai, the horn of the Messiah who will come from the house of David –

Daniel: Or like the radiant lights, the way the word karan means, not Moses’s horns, but Moses’s beams of light from his head. Like the keren yeshuah, the ray of light. 

Ari: The ray of light, exactly. And hafuch can also mean like –

Daniel: Reversal.

Ari: V’nahafochu, as we say on Purim. The plot gets turned on its head. 

Daniel: So, the light that had been diminishing gets flipped around at the end of days. That's neat.

Ari: And so it seems to be this kind of hopeful message.

Daniel: It's kind of like a literal way of referencing the light at the end of the tunnel that gets progressively bigger as you get there.

Ari: Right. And it's like Job's message, if Job could go back to himself and tell him something, here's what he would tell himself. He would say: Just hang in there. It gets better at the end. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

And I'll just add, kind of one more inspiring note to close us off here. So we talked about this phrase of ketz hayamim, at the end of days. Now that is used throughout Tanakh to say “at the end of a certain number of days,” but it's almost always, if not always, referring to a set, specific amount of time. 

Daniel: Right, like מִקֵּץ שְׁנָתַיִם יָמִים (at the end of two years, Genesis 41:1).

Ari: Exactly. So it's not just this lofty goal of, one day good things will happen at some point in the forever, infinite future. It's actually referring to a very specific, set amount of time, which represents this hope that we really do believe that salvation is just right around the corner. Good things are just right around the corner. They really do come.

Daniel: This brought up a lot. I feel like it'll definitely, in a sobering but I think really good way, enrich the way I think about Yom Ha'atzmaut this year.

Ari: Me too. Thank you so much for joining me. 

Daniel: Any time.

Ari:  I hope this discussion will enhance your Yom Ha’atzmaut and allow you to see God’s kindness on this day and, really, every day.

Credits

This episode was recorded by me, Ari Levisohn, together with Daniel Loewenstein.  

Editing was done by Evan Weiner. 

Our audio editor is Hillary Guttman.

Additional audio editing by Shifra Jacobs.

Our senior editor is me, Ari Levisohn. 

Thank you so much for listening. Have a meaningful Yom Ha’atzmaut, and we’ll see you next week.