Haftarat Shabbat Nachamu
A Difficult Haftarah
Haftarot like this one raise a thorny problem. What if important truths about how the world works, how our relationship with God should work, how our future as a people and individuals can, should, and will go, was embedded in a difficult text?
I ask because I recognize how hard certain sections of navi are to read, particularly Yeshayahu. Grappling with how to present a haftarah such as this one, and to do so briefly enough to be read in a few minutes, reminds me that the vast majority of Jews will not even get that much out of this week’s haftarah. How can the truth reach them if they refuse to hear?
Comfort: A Hard Topic, Even for Yeshayahu
We should remind ourselves that tradition divides the haftarah into small sections, each with their own perspective of comfort. That comfort, let us remember, is not of the kind we like to read, where the prophet waxes rhapsodic about the future (although Yeshayahu knows how to do that—see the coming haftarot). It seems like a first stage of comfort is figuring out how to bring it, dealing with such issues as what background will shape it and who will be the major actor in inaugurating it.
By background, I mean Yeshayahu’s statement that Yerushalayim will be comforted for having taken “double” for all her sins. While some commentators minimize the implications of this (such as Targum Yonatan, who reads it as meaning we will be comforted as if we were punished double what we deserved), Rashi understands it literally, that we will have been punished both for our actual sins as well as for having continued the sinful ways of our forefathers.
That latter concept is so foreign in our times that it bears explaining. Rashi assumes that we bear culpability not only for the evil we create, but also the evil we inherit and continue. According to Rashi, if I was taught at home that it was proper to focus on sacrifices rather than the poor, my responsibility is to learn that that is incorrect and change. Failure to do so, Rashi is telling us, will itself be a whole new level of guilt, punishable as much as the sin itself.
For the minimizers, our punishment will have been within reason, so the Redemption will only mean an end to that understandable process. For Rashi, who in this case represents the more literal reading, we will need comfort for having borne the burden not only of our own sins, but those of our forefathers’ sins that we made part of our lives. (Rembmber the verse in Eicha that speaks of us bearing our forefathers’ iniquities), which would then need a comfort that differs in kind and degree from that of the other commentaries.
Flattening the Way Physically or Metaphorically
Yeshayahu is told in verses 3-5 to predict that the way will be flattened before God. Rashi and some midrashim read the verse as telling us that at the time of the Redemption, the roads will be flattened to ease the path home. Since Midrashim think that happened when the Jews left Egypt as well, this reading sees the Exodus from Egypt as a first example of the kind of progression to Israel we will experience in the future. There is an implication here that had we only acted properly, that might have been the only time we entered the Land of Israel.
Befitting the rationalist he was, Radak assumes the verse should be taken metaphorically, that it means that the road back will be as easy as if the road had been flattened. That ease, according to Radak, will itself lead Jews and others to recognize God’s hand (with interesting ramifications for whether going back on a plane, almost at one’s will, counts as redemption).
Verses 3-11: The Link Between Our Involvement in Redemption and Hashem’s
These nine verses contain three versions of how the Voice will go out to announce the redemption, each assuming a different level of Divine involvement in the redemption. At first, we are told of a Voice calling from the desert, a distant Voice, to speak of the flattening of the roads. The distanc of the Voice means the involvement of Hashem will only be perceivable to those who pay attention.
Then, the Voice tells Yeshayahu to call out, confusing him as to what he, a human, could have to say. At the same time as he is being encouraged to shape his call, he is told that the Jews should only rely on Hashem, not other peoples. After that, in the third version, the harbinger of Zion is told to call out, with no details at all, seeming to leave up to him how to phrase this Call. It is precisely here, however, that Hashem speaks most directly of coming “Himself” as it were.
The verses don’t say it explicitly, but seem to me to hint at a linkage between how active we are in bringing redemption and how involved Hashem will be. Counterintuitively, the more active we are, the more direct a Divine role we can expect. As the Midrash says elsewhere, if we make a small opening for God, God will expand it almost immeasurably.
The Might of Hashem: Believing is the First Step
The rest of the haftarah focuses on Hashem’s power, His not needing advice or assistance, His plans being largely beyond human ken, implicit discussions of how Hashem created the world, the nature of the Heavens and His relationship to the world through those Heavens, and other esoteric matters of God’s power as compared to the powerlessness of the idols.
At the close, the last two verses add one more element to that discussion, speaking of how Hashem knows the stars by name. The idea that the Divinely Other also relates directly to aspects of Nature stresses the tension between transcendence and immanence we have seen so often before.
In our context, it perhaps explains why the comfort message here is muted. The physical appurtenances of comfort that we seek can only arrive after we solve our faith and practice challenges. How we will get back, how we will have experienced our punishment, how we can gather the necessary faith to act ourselves and see Hashem’s acting, and how we can experience a God both other and close, are all the building blocks of the redemption we once again remind ourselves is out there, we hope arriving speedily.
Shabbat Shalom.
Isa.40
[1] Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.
[2] Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD’s hand double for all her sins.
[3] The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
[4] Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain:
[5] And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.
[6] The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field:
[7] The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass.
[8] The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.
[9] O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!
[10] Behold, the Lord GOD will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him: behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him.
[11] He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.
[12] Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?
[13] Who hath directed the Spirit of the LORD, or being his counseller hath taught him?
[14] With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and shewed to him the way of understanding?
[15] Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing.
[16] And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering.
[17] All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.
[18] To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him?
[19] The workman melteth a graven image, and the goldsmith spreadeth it over with gold, and casteth silver chains.
[20] He that is so impoverished that he hath no oblation chooseth a tree that will not rot; he seeketh unto him a cunning workman to prepare a graven image, that shall not be moved.
[21] Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth?
[22] It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:
[23] That bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity.
[24] Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be sown: yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: and he shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble.
25] To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One.
[26] Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.