Chapter 8 Verse 1. Verse 2. Verse 3. Verse 4. Verse 5.
CHAPTER 8
Verse 1. O that thou wert as my brother, &c.] And when the King Messiah {a} shall be revealed unto the congregation of Israel, the children of Israel shall say unto him, Be thou with us for a brother, and let us go up to Jerusalem, and let us suck with thee the senses of the law, as a sucking child sucketh the breasts of its mother; for all the time that I was wandering without my own land, whenever I remembered the name of the great God, and laid down my life for the sake of his Deity, even the nations of the earth did not despise me.
Verse 2. I would lead thee, and bring thee, &c.] I will lead thee, O King Messiah, and bring thee to the house of my sanctuary; and thou shalt teach me to fear the Lord, and to walk in his paths; and there will we keep {b} the feast of leviathan, and drink old wine, which has been reserved in its grapes ever since the day the world was created, and of the pomegranates, the fruits which are prepared for the righteous in the garden of Eden. Verse 3. His left hand should be under my head, &c.] The congregation of Israel said, I am chosen above all people, because I have bound the tephillin {c} upon my left hand, and upon my head, and have fixed the mezuzah {d} on the right side of my door, in the third part thereof, over against my chamber, so that the noxious spirits have no power to destroy me.
Verse 4. I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, &c.] The King Messiah shall say, I adjure you, O my people, the house of Israel, wherefore do ye stir up yourselves against the people of the earth to go out of captivity? and why do ye rebel against the army of Gog and {e} Magog? tarry a little while until the people which come up to make war against Jerusalem are destroyed; and after that the Lord of the world will remember unto you the mercies of the righteous, and then it will be his good pleasure to redeem you.
Verse 5. Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, &c.] Solomon the prophet said, When the dead shall live, the Mount of Olives shall be {f} cleaved asunder, and all the dead of Israel shall come out from under it; yea, even the righteous, which die in captivity, shall pass through subterraneous {g} caverns, and come out from under the Mount of Olives: but the wicked which die and are buried in the land of Israel shall be cast away, {h} as a man casts a stone with a sling; then all the inhabitants of the earth shall say, What is the righteousness of this people, which ascend out of the earth, even ten thousand times ten thousand, as in the day they came up out of the wilderness to the land of Israel, and are deliciously fed by the mercies of the Lord, as in the day when they were hid {i} under Mount Sinai to receive the law; and in that very hour Zion, which is the {k} mother of Israel, shall bring forth her sons, and Jerusalem receive the children of the captivity.
Verse 6. Set me as a seal upon thine heart, &c.] The children of Israel said in that day unto their Lord, We pray thee, set us as the signature of a ring upon thine heart, as the signature of a ring upon thine arm, that we may not be carried captive any more; for strong as death is the love of thy Deity, and mighty as hell is the envy which the people bear unto us; and the hatred which they have reserved for us is like to the coals of the fire of hell, {l} which the Lord created on the second {m} day of the creation of the world, to {n} burn therein those who commit idolatry.
Verse 7. Many waters cannot quench love, &c.] The Lord of the world said unto his people, the house of Israel, If all people {o} which are like to the waters of the sea, which are many, were gathered together, they could not extinguish my love unto thee; and if all the kings of the earth, which are like to the waters of a river that runs fiercely, they could not remove thee out of the world: but if a man will give all the substance of his house to obtain wisdom in the captivity, I will return unto him {p} double in the world to come; and all the spoils {q} which they shall take from the armies of Gog shall be his.
Verse 8. We have a little sister, &c.] At that time the angels of heaven shall say to one another, We have one nation in the earth, and her righteousness is very little, and the kings and governors do not bring her forth to make war with the armies of Gog. What shall we do for our sister, in the day when the nations shall speak of going up against her to war? Verse 9. If she be a wall, &c.] Michael {r} the prince of Israel shall say, If she is fixed as a wall among the people, and gives silver to procure the {s} unity of the name of the Lord of the world, I and you, together with their scribes, will surround her as borders of silver, that the people may have no power to rule over her, even as a worm hath no power to rule over silver; and though she {t} is poor in the commandments. we will seek mercies for her from the Lord; and the righteousness of the law shall be remembered to