Tag Archives: Kingdom of Judah

20 Things That Will Happen When Mashiach Comes

This week’s parasha, Vayikra, begins the third book of the Torah. The parasha is unique in that it is only one of two parashas (along with next week’s Tzav) where the word Mashiach appears. All four cases of the word in the Torah refer to the anointed High Priest, not to the messiah at the End of Days. Nonetheless, on a deeper level it certainly is alluding to the messiah of the End of Days. All the verses in question deal with the anointed High Priest (“HaKohen HaMashiach”) atoning for sins—both his own and the people’s—and purifying his nation. Indeed, one of the roles of Mashiach will be to prepare Israel for that final purification at the End of Days. This includes identifying one last Red Cow to produce those special waters which alone are capable of removing the impurity of death.

The early Christians saw these verses as allusions to their purported saviour, Jesus. In one place, for example, they wrote:

the Law [ie. the Torah] made those high priests who had infirmity, and who needed daily to offer up sacrifices, first for their own sins, and then for the people’s; but our high priest, Christ Jesus, was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens. (Hebrews 7:27-28)

For the Christians, Jesus was the ultimate anointed high priest. Yet, Jesus accomplished essentially nothing of what Mashiach is supposed to. This was perhaps best explained in the 16th century by Isaac ben Abraham of Troki (1533-1594). He was a Karaite Jew, and a renowned Karaite scholar. His magnum opus was a book called Hizzuk Emunah, “Strengthening of Faith”, written to debunk Christianity, silence missionaries, and convince Jews to remain Jewish. The book was so popular that it spread like wildfire, not just among Karaites but all Jews, and even Christians. In fact, it played an important role in the start of the Enlightenment, leading countless Christians to abandon their faith. One of these was the French philosopher Voltaire (1694-1778), who called the Latin translation of Hizzuk Emunah (first published in 1681) a “masterpiece”.

Because it was a Karaite text, traditional rabbis were wary of consulting it. The great Rabbi Menashe ben Israel (Manoel Dias Soeiro, 1604-1657), who opened the first Hebrew printing press in Amsterdam in 1626, ultimately refused to print it. Still, Abba Hillel Silver, in his A History of Messianic Speculation in Israel (pg. 225), points out how Troki’s text borrowed from earlier Rabbinic texts, including Mashmia Yeshua, “Announcing Salvation”, of Rabbi Isaac Abarbanel (1437-1508).

Silver goes on to summarize the sixth chapter of Troki’s Hizzuk Emunah, which includes a list of twenty clear prophecies in Scripture that must be fulfilled upon the coming of Mashiach—none of which were fulfilled by Jesus (thereby necessitating for Christians some future “second coming” yet to materialize after nearly two millennia). Briefly going over these twenty events is enlightening both as a reminder for why Jesus could not be the messiah, and for what to expect when the true Mashiach does come.

Living Waters and Dead Waters

‘Israelis – The Ingathering of the Exiles’ by Saul Raskin (1878-1966)

The first prophecy is the return of the Lost Tribes of Israel. In ancient times, following the reign of King Solomon, the Twelve Tribes of Israel split into two kingdoms: the southern Judah and the northern Israel (or Ephraim). The more sinful northern kingdom was eventually overrun by the Assyrians, who exiled its tribes. These are sometimes referred to as the Ten Lost Tribes. It should be noted, though, that they weren’t necessarily ten tribes, nor were the tribes completely expunged. In reality, there were many Benjaminites, Simeonites, and Levites already living inside the Kingdom of Judah, and members of all the northern tribes fled to Judah when the northern kingdom was destroyed.

What happened was that all the tribes eventually assimilated into the larger, ruling tribe of Judah. Over time, the tribes lost knowledge of their lineage, and today everyone is simply a Yehudi, a Judahite, or Jew. (Levites, because of their unique role, retain knowledge of their ancestry). One of the prophesied events of the End of Days is that the identity of the Lost Tribes will once more be known. Though this idea is much more developed in later Rabbinic literature, it comes from numerous places in Scripture. Troki chooses to use Ezekiel 37:15-22:

And the word of God came to me, saying: “And you, son of man, take one stick, and write upon it: For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions; then take another stick, and write upon it: For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and of all the house of Israel his companions; and join them one to another into one stick, that they may become one in your hand… And say to them: ‘Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the nations, wherever they have gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land…’”

Related to this is the second great prophecy, that of Gog u’Magog. This refers to the great world war at the End of Days, described in detail in Ezekiel 38, among other places. During the course of this war, Zechariah 14:4 states that the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem will be split in half. Then, new “living waters” will go out of Jerusalem to make Israel flourish (Zechariah 14:8).

Bab-el-Mandeb Strait (Credit: Skilla1st)

Meanwhile, Isaiah 11:15 states that God “will utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian Sea; and with His scorching wind will He shake His hand over the River, and will smite it into seven streams, and cause men to march over dry-shod.” The identity of the “Egyptian Sea” and the “River” is unclear, though Silver has it as the Red Sea and the Euphrates. On the possibility of the Red Sea drying up, we know today from geological records that the Red Sea had once (and possibly more than once) become a dry chunk of land due to the narrow and shallow Bab-el-Mandeb closing up.

As for the “River”, in context it would make more sense if it referred to the Nile, the lifeline of Egypt. Today, we are indeed seeing the Nile drying up rapidly, and the Washington Post recently reported that the Nile Delta is losing as much as 20 metres per year in some areas. With this in mind, when Isaiah prophesies that the “tongue of the Egyptian Sea” will be destroyed, it may be referring to the Nile Delta, which opens up into the Egyptian Mediterranean, ie. the “Egyptian Sea”. The Post article is quite an accurate realization of Isaiah’s prophecy, with images of men that “march over dry-shod”.

(Having said that, the Euphrates River isn’t doing much better than the Nile, so whether Isaiah meant the Nile or the Euphrates is irrelevant in light of the mass devastation that has plagued both rivers.)

A Renewed Jerusalem

The sixth prophecy in Troki’s list is also from Zechariah (8:23):

Thus said the Lord of Hosts: “In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold, out of all the languages of the nations, shall take hold of the garment of him that is a Jew, saying: We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.”

The tremendous anti-Semitism that Jews have experienced throughout history, into the present day, will finally end. The nations will be at peace with the Jews, and wish to learn from them. This is related to another prophecy: that gentiles from all over the world will come to Jerusalem to worship the God of Israel on every Rosh Chodesh and every Shabbat (Isaiah 66:20-23):

“…upon horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, and upon swift beasts, to My holy mountain Jerusalem,” said God, “as the children of Israel bring their offering in a clean vessel into the house of God. And of them also will I take for the priests and for the Levites,” said God. “For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before Me,” said God, “so shall your seed and your name remain. And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, all flesh shall come to worship before Me, said God.

The gentiles—“all flesh”—will come to Jerusalem, upon every kind of transport. One of these is a rekhev, “chariot” in ancient Hebrew, and “vehicle” in Modern Hebrew. Another two of the transports are unique words that aren’t found elsewhere in Scripture and are impossible to translate: a tzab, and a kirkar. It is possible that the former refers to some kind of slow transport (as the word is written the same as that for a “turtle”) while the latter conversely refers to a very fast form of transport. In our day and age we have no shortage of either.

Troki lists separately a related prophecy from Zechariah (14:16): “And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations that came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles.” Once a year, during the holiday of Sukkot, those nations that warred against Israel at the End of Days will come to Jerusalem to worship. The fact that it must be during Sukkot is no coincidence, for it is during Sukkot that our Sages say the offerings in the Temple atone for all the gentiles. This is why the Torah requires seventy bulls to be offered over the course of the holiday, corresponding to the seventy root nations of the world.

A Renewed World

If all the nations are coming to worship the God of Israel in Jerusalem, there is certainly no need for any “idols… false prophets… and unclean spirits” which God will entirely “cut off” (Zechariah 13:2). Zechariah further adds: “And God [YHWH] shall be King over all the earth; in that day God shall be One, and His name one.” (14:9) There will be world peace (Isaiah 2:4, Micah 4:3), which will be ensured and enforced by Israel, to whom all the kings and nations will listen (Isaiah 60:10-12, Daniel 7:27). Even the animals will be at peace with each other, as Isaiah (11:6-8) famously writes:

And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox…

On that last prophecy there is an interesting debate. Will the animals miraculously stop fighting and consuming one another? Or, is the prophecy only metaphorical and the natural order will remain? The Rambam (Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, 1135-1204) held by the latter. Silver translates here that peace will be “between wild and domestic animals”. When reading Isaiah’s verses, this makes perfect sense: a wolf with a lamb, a leopard with a goat; calf and lion, cow and bear. So perhaps what Isaiah meant is that farmers and ranchers will no longer have to worry about wild animals devouring their livestock—once a common, and particularly disturbing, problem. (Or maybe there will be no need to raise livestock at all, for we are now at the dawn of the synthetic meat revolution.)

Israel will finally be completely righteous and free of sin (Deuteronomy 30:6, Isaiah 60:21, Ezekiel 36:25), and lead the rest of the world in doing the same (Jeremiah 3:17). There will no longer be any kind of suffering or sorrow in Israel, for the prophet said “the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying” (Isaiah 65:19).

‘Going Up To The Third Temple’ by Ofer Yom Tov

Finally, the prophet Eliyahu will return (Micah 3:24), and the Temple will be rebuilt (Ezekiel 40-45). The Shekhinah will return to Israel (Ezekiel 37:26), as will the ability to prophecy (Jeremiah 31:32-33), and there will be great knowledge in the world (Isaiah 11:9). The Holy Land will be redistributed among the Twelve Tribes of Israel (Ezekiel 47:13). Lastly, at the very end, will come the long-awaited Resurrection of the Dead (Daniel 12:2).

To summarize:

  1. Return of the Lost Tribes
  2. Gog u’Magog
  3. Mount of Olives splitting
  4. Egyptian Sea and River destroyed
  5. Living waters emerge from Jerusalem
  6. Gentiles declaring to Jews “we will go with you”
  7. Israel’s former enemies coming to Jerusalem each year on Sukkot
  8. Gentile pilgrims coming to Jerusalem to worship on the new moons and Sabbaths
  9. Destruction of all idols, false prophets, and unclean spirits
  10. One religion around the world, and recognition of one God
  11. Israel’s recognized leadership on the international stage
  12. World peace
  13. Peace between wild and domesticated animals
  14. A sinless Israel and a sinless world
  15. No more suffering or sorrow in the Land of Israel and for the Jewish people
  16. Shekhinah and prophecy return
  17. Eliyahu reappears
  18. Rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem
  19. Redistribution of the Holy Land among the restored Twelve Tribes
  20. Resurrection of the Dead

The Mystical Meaning of Exile and Terrorism

This week we read the parasha of Bechukotai, famous for its list of blessings, and curses, should Israel faithfully follow God’s law, or not. In Leviticus 26:33, God warns that “I will scatter you among the nations, and I will draw out the sword after you; and your land shall be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste.” These prophetic words have, of course, come true in Jewish history. Israel has indeed been exiled to the four corners of the world, and experienced just about every kind of persecution. Yet, within every curse there is a hidden blessing.

‘The Flight of the Prisoners’ by James Tissot, depicting the Jewish people being exiled to Babylon.

The Talmud (Pesachim 87b) states that the deeper purpose of exile is for the Jews to spread Godliness to the rest of the world. After all, our very mandate was to be a “light unto the nations” (Isaiah 42:6) and to spread knowledge of Hashem and His Torah. How could we ever accomplish this if we were always isolated in the Holy Land? It was absolutely necessary for Israel to be spread all over the globe in order to introduce people to Hashem, to be a model of righteousness, and to fulfil the various spiritual rectifications necessary to repair this broken world.

The Arizal explains that by praying, reciting blessings, and fulfilling mitzvot, a Jew frees the spiritual sparks trapped within the kelipot, literally “husks”. This idea hearkens back to the concept of Shevirat haKelim, the “Shattering of the Vessels”. The Arizal taught that God initially crafted an entirely perfect universe. Unfortunately, this world couldn’t contain itself and shattered into a multitude of pieces, spiritual “sparks” trapped in this material reality. While God had rebuilt most of the universe, He left it to Adam and Eve to complete the rectification through their own free will. They, too, could not affect that tikkun, and the cosmos shattered yet again. The process repeated itself on a number of occasions, the last major one being at the time of the Golden Calf.

Nonetheless, with each passing phase in history, more and more of those lost, trapped sparks are rediscovered and restored to their rightful place. The mystical mission of every Jew is to free those sparks wherever they go. The Arizal speaks of this at great length, and it permeates every part of his teachings. Eating, for example, serves the purpose of freeing sparks trapped within food—which is why it is so important to consume only kosher food, and to carefully recite blessings (which are nothing but fine-tuned formulas for spiritual rectification) before and after. The same is true with every mitzvah that we do, and every prayer we recite.

Thus, while exile is certainly difficult and unpleasant, it serves an absolutely vital spiritual purpose. This is why the Midrash states that exile is one of four things God created regretfully (Yalkut Shimoni on Isaiah, passage 424). It is why God already prophesied that we would be exiled—even though we hadn’t yet earned such a punishment! And it is why God also guaranteed that we would one day return to our Promised Land, as we have miraculously begun to do in recent decades.

Four, Five, or Eight Exiles?

In Jewish tradition, it is said that there are four major exiles: the Babylonian, the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman. We are still considered to be within the “Roman” or Edomite (European/Christian) exile. Indeed, the Roman Empire never really ended, and just morphed from one phase into another, from the Byzantine Empire to the Holy Roman Empire, and so forth.

Babylonian Shedu

This idea of four exiles originated with Daniel’s vision of four great beasts (Daniel 7:3-7). The first was a lion with eagle wings—a well-known symbol of ancient Babylon. Then came a fierce bear, an animal which the Talmud always likens to the Persians. The swift leopard represents the Greeks that conquered the known world in lightning speed under Alexander the Great. The final and most devastating beast is unidentified, representing the longest and cruelest exile of Edom.

The Midrash states that Jacob himself foresaw these exiles in his vision of the ladder (Genesis 28). There he saw four angels, each going up a number of rungs on the ladder equal to the number of years Israel would be oppressed by that particular nation. The last angel continued to climb ever higher, with Jacob unable to see its conclusion, alluding to the current seemingly never-ending exile.  The big question is: why are these considered the four exiles. Haven’t the Jewish people been exiled all around the world? Have we not been oppressed by other nations besides these?

The Arizal explains (Sha’ar HaMitzvot on Re’eh) that while Jews have indeed been exiled among all seventy root nations, it is only in these four that all Jews were exiled in. Yet, he maintains that any place where even a single Jew has been exiled is considered as if the entire nation was exiled there. The Arizal further explains that these four exiles were already alluded to in Genesis 2:10-14, where the Torah describes the four rivers that emerged from Eden. Each river corresponds to one exile. The head river of Eden that gives rise to the other four corresponds to the very first exile of the Jews, the exile within which the Jewish people were forged: Egypt, the mother of all exiles.

Elsewhere, the Arizal adds that there is actually a fifth exile, that of Ishmael (Etz Ha’Da’at Tov, ch. 62). History makes this plainly evident, of course, as the Jewish people have suffered immensely under Arab and Muslim oppression to this very day. The idea of Ishmael being the final exile was known long before the Arizal, and is mentioned by earlier authorities. In fact, one tradition holds that each exile has two components:

We know that before the Babylonians came to destroy the Kingdom of Judah and its capital Jerusalem, the Assyrians had destroyed the northern Kingdom of Israel with the majority of the Twelve Tribes. We also know that the Persians were united with the Medians. Technically speaking, Alexander the Great was not a mainstream Greek, but a Macedonian. While he was the one who conquered Israel, his treatment of the Jews was mostly fair. It was only long after that the Seleucid Greeks in Syria really tried to extinguish the Jews. Thus, the doublets are Assyria-Babylon (Ashur-Bavel), Persia-Media (Paras-Madai), Macedon-Greece (Mokdon-Yavan), with the final doublet being Edom-Ishmael. The latter has a clear proof-text in the Torah itself, where we read how Esau (ie. Edom) married a daughter of Ishmael (Genesis 28:9). The Sages suggest that this is an allusion to the joint union between Edom and Ishmael to oppress Israel in its final exile.

The Arizal certainly knew the above, so why does he speak of a fifth exile under Ishmael, as well as a fifth (original) exile under Egypt?

The End is Wedged in the Beginning

One of the most well-known principles in Kabbalah is that “the end is wedged in the beginning, and the beginning in the end”. What the Arizal may have been hinting at is that the final Ishmaelite exile is a reflection of the original Egyptian exile. Indeed, the Arizal often speaks of how the final generation at the End of Days is a reincarnation of the Exodus generation. (According to one tradition, there were 15 million Jews in ancient Egypt, just as there are roughly 15 million in the world today.) The first redeemer Moses took us out of the Egyptian exile, and we await Moses’ successor, the final redeemer Mashiach, to free us from the Ishmaelite exile.

In highly symbolic fashion, the land of ancient Egypt is currently occupied by Muslim Arabs. The Ishmaelites have quite literally taken the place of ancient Egypt. Come to think of it, the lands of all the four traditional nations of exile are now Ishmaelite: Bavel is Iraq, Paras is Iran, Seleucid Greece is Syria, and the Biblical land of Edom overlaps Jordan. The four rivers of Eden would have run through these very territories. It is quite ironic that Saddam Hussein openly spoke of himself as a reincarnated Nebuchadnezzar, seeking to restore a modern-day Babylonian Empire. Meanwhile, each day in the news we hear of the looming Syria-Iran threat. Just as Egypt was the mother of all four “beasts”, it appears that the four beasts converge under a new Ishmaelite banner for one final End of Days confrontation.

There is one distinction however. In the ancient land of Egypt, all Jews were physically trapped. We do not see this at all today, where very few Jews remain living in Muslim states. Nonetheless, every single Jew around the world, wherever they may be, is living under an Ishmaelite threat. Muslims in France, for example, have persistently attacked innocent Jews in horrific acts—so much so that recently 250 French intellectuals, politicians, and even former presidents banded together to demand action against this absurd violence and anti-Semitism. Similar acts of evil have taken place all over the world. This has been greatly exacerbated by the recent influx of Muslim refugees to the West, as admitted by Germany’s chancellor Angel Merkel who recently stated: “We have refugees now… or people of Arab origin, who bring a different type of anti-Semitism into the country…”

In 2017, Swedish police admitted that there are at least 23 “no-go” Sharia Law zones in their country.

It is important to note that when Scripture speaks of the End of Days, it is not describing a regional conflict, but an international one. The House of Ishmael is not a local threat to Israel alone, or only to Jewish communities, but to the entire globe. Every continent has felt the wrath of Islamist terrorism, and whole communities in England, France, and even America have become cordoned off as “sharia law” zones. Ishmael is even a threat to himself. Muslims kill each other far more than they kill non-Muslims. In 2011, the National Counter-Terrorism Center reported that between 82% and 97% of all Islamist terror victims are actually Muslim. All but three civil wars between 2011 and 2014 were in Muslim countries, and all six civil wars that raged in 2012 were in Muslim countries. In 2013, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom showed that 10 of the 15 most intolerant and oppressive states in the world were Muslim ones.

The Torah wasn’t wrong when it prophesied (Genesis 16:12) that Ishmael would be a “wild man; his hand against every man, and every man’s hand against him, and upon all of his brothers he will dwell.” Every Jew—and every human being for that matter—is experiencing an Ishmaelite exile at present.

The Exile Within

There is one more way of looking at the four exiles: not as specific nations under whom we were once oppressed, but as four oppressive forces that have always constrained Israel, and continue to do so today. These are the four root issues plaguing the Jews, and keeping us in “exile” mode.

The first is Edom, that spirit of materialism and physicality embodied by Esau. Unfortunately, such greed and gluttony has infiltrated just about every Jewish community, including those that see themselves as the most spiritual. The second, Bavel, literally means “confusion”, that inexplicable madness within the Jewish nation; the incessant infighting, the divisiveness, and the sinat chinam. Yavan is Hellenism, or secularism. In Hebrew, the word for a secular Jew is hiloni, literally a “Hellene”. Just as this week’s parasha clearly elucidates, abandoning the Torah is a root cause of many ills that befall the Jews. Finally, there is Paras. It was because the Jews had assimilated in ancient Persia that the events of Purim came about. Paras represents that persistent problem of assimilation.

It is important to point out that assimilation is different from secularism. There are plenty of secular Jews that are also very proud Jews. They openly sport a magen David around their neck, worry every day about Israel, want their kids to marry only other Jews, and though they don’t want to be religious, still try to connect to their heritage, language, and traditions. The assimilated Jew is not that secular Jew, but the one that no longer cares about their Jewish identity. It is the Jew that entirely leaves the fold. Sometimes, it is the one that becomes a “self-hating” Jew, or converts to another religion. Such Jews have been particularly devastating to the nation, and often caused tremendous grief. Some of the worst Spanish inquisitors were Jewish converts to Catholicism. Karl Marx and the Soviet Communists that followed are more recent tragedies. Not only do they leave their own people behind, they bring untold suffering to their former compatriots.

While there may be literal Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Edomites out there, the bigger problem for the Jewish people is the spiritual Bavel, Paras, Yavan, and Edom that infects the hearts and minds of the nation: infighting, assimilation, secularism, materialism. It is these issues that we should be spending the most time meditating upon, and expending the most effort to solve. Only when we put these problems behind us can we expect to see the long-awaited end to exile.

The Kabbalah of Moses’ Divine Staff

In this week’s parasha, Va’era, we read about the first seven plagues to strike Egypt. These were brought about through the Staff of Moses, as were the later Splitting of the Sea, the victory over Amalek (Exodus 17) and the water brought forth from a rock. What was so special about this particular staff, and what was the source of its power?

Pirkei Avot (5:6) famously states that the Staff was one of ten special things to be created in the twilight between the Sixth Day and the first Shabbat. The Midrash (Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer, ch. 40) elaborates:

Rabbi Levi said: That staff which was created in the twilight was delivered to the first man out of the Garden of Eden. Adam delivered it to Enoch, and Enoch delivered it to Noah, and Noah to Shem. Shem passed it on to Abraham, Abraham to Isaac, and Isaac to Jacob, and Jacob brought it down to Egypt and passed it on to his son Joseph, and when Joseph died and they pillaged his household goods, it was placed in the palace of Pharaoh.

And Jethro was one of the magicians of Egypt, and he saw the staff and the letters which were upon it, and he desired it in his heart, and he took it and brought it, and planted it in the midst of the garden of his house. No one was able to approach it any more.

When Moses came to his house, he went into Jethro’s garden, and saw the staff and read the letters which were upon it, and he put forth his hand and took it. Jethro watched Moses, and said: “This one in the future will redeem Israel from Egypt.” Therefore, he gave him Tzipporah his daughter to be his wife…

God gave the staff to Adam, who gave it to Enoch (Hanokh)—who later transformed into the angel Metatron—and Enoch passed it on further until it got to Joseph in Egypt. The Pharaoh confiscated it after Joseph’s death. The passage then alludes to another Midrashic teaching that Jethro (Yitro), Moses’ future father-in-law, was once an advisor to Pharaoh, along with Job and Bila’am (see Sanhedrin 106a). The wicked Bila’am was the one who advised Pharaoh to drown the Israelite male-born in the Nile. While Job remained silent (for which he was so severely punished later), Jethro protested the cruel decree, and was forced to resign and flee because of it. As he fled, he grabbed the divine staff with him. Arriving in Midian, his new home, Jethro stuck the staff in the earth, at which point it seemingly gave forth deep roots and was immovable.

A related Midrash states that all the suitors that sought the hand of his wise and beautiful Tzipporah were asked to take the staff out of the earth, and should they succeed, could marry Jethro’s daughter. None were worthy. (Not surprisingly, some believe that this Midrash may have been the source for the Arthurian legend of the sword Excalibur.) Ultimately, Moses arrived and effortlessly pulled the staff out of the ground.

The passage above states that Moses was mesmerized by the letters engraved upon the staff, as was Jethro before him. What were these letters?

The 72 Names

Targum Yonatan (on Exodus 4:20) explains:

And Moses took the rod which he had brought away from the chamber of his father-in-law, made from the sapphire Throne of Glory; its weight forty se’ah; and upon it was engraved and set forth the Great and Glorious Name by which the signs should be wrought before Hashem by his hand…

God’s Ineffable Name was engraved upon the sapphire staff, which was itself carved out of God’s Heavenly Throne. The staff weighed a whopping 40 se’ah, equivalent to the minimum volume of a kosher mikveh, which is roughly 575 litres (or 575 kilograms) of water. (This might explain why none could dislodge the staff, except he who had God’s favour.)

A parallel Midrash (Shemot Rabbah, 8:3) also confirms that the staff was of pure sapphire, weighing forty se’ah, but says it was engraved with the letters that stand for the Ten Plagues, as we recite at the Passover seder: datzach, adash, b’achav (דצ״ך עד״ש באח״ב).

A final possibility is that the “Great and Glorious Name by which the signs should be wrought” refers to the mystical 216-letter Name of God (or 72-word Name of God). This Name is actually 72 linked names, each composed of three letters. The names are derived from the three verses Exodus 14:19-21:

And the angel of God, who went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud removed from before them, and stood behind them; and it came between the camp of Egypt and the camp of Israel; and there was the cloud and the darkness here, yet it gave light by night there; and the one came not near the other all the night. And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and Hashem caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all the night, and made the sea into dry land, and the waters were divided.

The 72 Three-Letter Names of God

Each of these verses has exactly 72 letters. Hidden within them is this esoteric Name of God, the most powerful, through which came about the miracle of the Splitting of the Sea as the verses themselves describe. The Name (or 72 Names) is derived by combining the first letter of the first verse, then the last letter of the second verse, and then the first letter of the third verse. The same is done for the next letter, and so on, for all 72 Names.

Since the Splitting of the Sea and the plagues were brought about through these Names, the Midrash above may be referring not to the Ineffable Name, but to these 72 Names as being engraved upon the Staff. In fact, it may be both.

Staff from Atzilut

The 72 Names are alluded to by another mystical 72-Name of God. The Arizal taught that God’s Ineffable Name can be expanded in four ways. This refers to a practice called milui,* where the letters of each word are themselves spelled out to express the inner value and meaning of the word. God’s Ineffable Name can be expanded in these ways, with the corresponding values:

יוד הא ואו הא = 45

יוד הה וו הה = 52

יוד הי ואו הי = 63

יוד הי ויו הי = 72

The Name with the 72 value is the highest, not just numerically, but according to the sefirot, partzufim, and universes laid out in Kabbalah. The 52-Name corresponds to Malkhut and the world of Asiyah; the 45-Name to Zeir Anpin (the six “masculine” sefirot) and the world of Yetzirah; and the 63-Name to Binah and the world of Beriah. The 72-Name—which is, of course, tied to the above 72 Names of God—corresponds to the highest universe, Atzilut, the level of God’s Throne, where there is nothing but His Emanation and Pure Light. Here we come full circle, for the Midrash states that the Staff of Moses was itself carved out of God’s Throne. This otherworldly staff came down to this world from the highest Heavenly realm!

Where is the Staff Today?

What happened to Moses’ staff after his passing? Another Midrash (Yalkut Shimoni, Psalms 869) answers:

…the staff with which Jacob crossed the Jordan is identical with that which Judah gave to his daughter-in-law, Tamar. It is likewise the holy staff with which Moses worked, and with which Aaron performed wonders before Pharaoh, and with which, finally, David slew the giant Goliath. David left it to his descendants, and the Davidic kings used it as a sceptre until the destruction of the Temple, when it miraculously disappeared. When the Messiah comes it will be given to him for a sceptre as a sign of his authority over the heathens.

This incredible passage contains a great deal of novel insight. Firstly, Jacob used this divine staff to split the Jordan and allow his large family to safely cross back to Israel, just as the Israelites would later cross the Jordan in miraculous fashion under the leadership of Joshua. It seems Joshua himself, as Moses’ rightful successor, held on to the staff, and passed it down through the Judges and Prophets until it came to the hand of David. Unlike the traditional account of David slaying Goliath with the giant’s own sword (after the slingshot), the Midrash here says he slew Goliath with the staff!

The staff remained in the Davidic dynasty until the kingdom’s end with the destruction of the First Temple. At this point a lot of things mysteriously disappeared, most famously the Ark of the Covenant. It is believed that the Ark was hidden in a special chamber built for it by Solomon, who envisioned the day that the Temple would be destroyed. It is likely that the staff is there, too, alongside the Ark.

Mashiach will restore both of these, and will once again wield the sceptre of the Davidic dynasty. As the staff is forged from God’s own Heavenly Throne, it is fitting that Mashiach—God’s appointed representative, who sits on His corresponding earthly throne—should hold a piece of it. And this symbol, the Midrash concludes, will be what makes even the heathens accept Mashiach’s—and God’s—authority. Jacob prophesied this on his deathbed (Genesis 49:10), in his blessing to Judah:

The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until the coming of Shiloh; and unto him shall the obedience of all the peoples be.

Shiloh is one of the titles for Mashiach (see Sanhedrin 98b), and his wielding of the staff will bring about the obedience of all the world’s people to God’s law. We can now also solve a classic problem with the above verse:

The verse states that the sceptre will not depart from Judah until the coming of Mashiach, as if it will depart from Judah when Mashiach comes. This makes no sense, since Mashiach is a descendent of Judah! It should have simply said that the sceptre shall never depart from Judah, from whom the messiah will come. Rather, Jacob is hinting that the Staff will one day be hidden in the land of Judah, deep below “between his feet”, and won’t budge from there for millennia until Mashiach comes and finally restores it.

May we merit to see it soon.

*Interestingly, using the same milui method, one can expand the word staff (מטה) like this: מאם טאת הה, which is 501, equivalent to דצ״ך עד״ש באח״ב, the acronym for the Ten Plagues which the Staff brought about!


The above is an excerpt from Garments of Light, Volume Two. Get the book here