Talmud - Mas. Sukkah 52a (excerpt) & [emphasis mine]
And the land shall mourn, every family apart; the family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart. 1 Is it not, they said, an a fortiori argument? If in the future 2 when they will be engaged in mourning and the Evil Inclination will have no power over them, 3 the Torah 4 nevertheless says, men separately and women separately, how much more so now 5 when they are engaged in rejoicing and the Evil Inclination has sway over them. 6
What is the cause of the mourning [mentioned in the last cited verse]? 1 — R. Dosa and the Rabbis differ on the point. One explained, The cause is the slaying of Messiah the son of Joseph, 7 and the other explained, The cause is the slaying of the Evil Inclination.
It is well according to him who explains that the cause is the slaying of Messiah the son of Joseph, since that well agrees with the Scriptural verse, And they shall look upon me because they have thrust him through, and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for his only son; 8 but according to him who explains the cause to be the slaying of the Evil Inclination, is this [it may be objected] an occasion for mourning? Is it not rather an occasion for rejoicing? Why then should they weep? — [The explanation is] as R. Judah expounded: In the time to come 9 the Holy One, blessed be He, will bring the Evil Inclination and slay it in the presence of the righteous and the wicked. To the righteous it will have the appearance of a towering hill, and to the wicked it will have the appearance of a hair thread. Both the former and the latter will weep; the righteous will weep saying, ‘How were we able to overcome such a towering hill!’ The wicked also will weep saying, ‘How is it that we were unable to conquer this hair thread!’ And the Holy One, blessed be He, will also marvel together with them, as it is said, Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, If it be marvellous in the eyes of the remnant of this people in those days, it shall 10 also be marvellous in My eyes.11
(1) Zech. XII, 12.
(2) The time alluded to in the text cited.
(3) So that levity is least to be expected.
(4) Sc. Scripture, in the statement ‘and their wives apart’.
(5) At the festivities of the Water-Drawing.
(6) And undue levity is most likely.
(7) The precursor of the Messiah ben David, the herald of the true Messianic age.
(8) Zech. XII, 10.
(9) The Messianic age.
(10) E.V., ‘Should it’.
(11) Zech. VIII, 6
Shalom U'vracha Luke,
ReplyDeleteGreat post my friend!!
- (Pesikta Rabbati 146b)
“Our Sages said, ‘King Messiah is subjected to sufferings of every generation according to the sins of that generation.’ The Holy One, blessed be He, said, ‘In that hour of the Redemption I shall resuscitate him – create him a new and he will no longer suffer.’”
Check this other info on the passage of the Talmud that you posted:
Rashi (together with Ibn Ezra) comments in this verse: “The words: ‘The land shall mourn’, are found in the prophecy of Zechariah, and he prophesies of the future, that they shall mourn on account of Messiah ben Yosef, who shall be slain in the war of Gog and Magog”. When Rashi comments: ‘the war of Gog and Magog’ he refers the notes in Targum on Zech 12:12. However, according to many sages the one who fights the war of Gog and Magog is the Messiah King (Gog and Magog are midrashic names on which commentators and sages do not have a full agreement of their meaning. Some believe to be 70 nations collectively anti-Messiah, some believe to be religions [Targum on Ezekiel identifies Gog as Rome]).
Zohar, Vayera: “In the 70th, on three, all the kings of the worlds shall gather to the (big) city, and HaShem shall awake on them hail and hailstones, and they will be lost from the world. And only the kings that shall not go there will remain in the world, to return for other wars. From that time the Messiah King will be awakened all over the world, and will gather with him few peoples and few armies from all the edges of the world. And all of the Israelites will be gathered, in all their places.”
The professor Klaussner made a study on this war (that Rashi talks about), and on the fact that Targum Onkelos doesn’t mention Messiah ben Yosef on it, and said: “we conclude with reasonable certainly that in the pre-Hadrianic period it was believed that Messiah ben David would, with the aid of Sechinah, fight against and overcome the enemies of Israel; but in the post-Hadrianic period, the fight was attributed to Messiah ben Yosef, who after a great but not decisive victory, would have to be slain. The final and decisive victory… would give the crown to Messiah ben David” (Klaussner).
In the Targum on Shir haShirim 8:4 we read:
“Don’t stir up or awaken love, until it is ready. The King Messiah shall say: ‘I adjure you, my people, beit Israel! Why do you contend with the nations of the earth in order to get out of the Dispersion and why do you rebel against the armed might of Gog and Magog? Would that you might wait but a little longer, until the nations who have gone up to wage war against Jerusalem are destroyed, and after that the Lord of the Universe shall remember for your sake the love of the righteous, and it shall be His will who deliver you”
Rey
Excellent, Rey! Particularly the P'sqita Rabbita reference and Rashi's commentary, though it's all tremendous. Thanks so much, brother - and it's very good to have you back, my friend!
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