Zohar on the Torah

Parshat VaYechi – Zohar, Page 229b

Translated and adapted by Mr. Simcha Treister

Rabbi Yehuda opened his discourse with the verse: “Please don’t hold our previous iniquities in mind against us; let Your tender mercy come quickly to meet us for we have been greatly impoverished.”[1] Come and see. Because of the great love that the Holy One Blessed be He has for Israel, no other Heavenly Court judges them other than He Himself. When He looks into their actions to judge them, He is filled with tender mercy, because He is like a father who has mercy on his children. This is referred to in the verse: “As a father has mercy on his children, so the Lord has mercy on those who fear Him.”[2] When He finds that they have acted sinfully, He passes over those misdeeds, one after the other until they are all passed before Him. Now when they have all passed before Him, there are no more sins to review and as a result the harmful forces of the “other side” have no source from which to harm Israel.

However, if Israel’s sins are brought to His attention again, then those sins that were at first passed over are reviewed again. This is why we pray that Hashem not “hold our previous iniquities in mind against us.”

We pray that “Your tender mercies come quickly” because Israel would not be able to withstand the negative forces against them if this were not the case. This is because there are many possessing harsh judgements against Israel and many accusers on high waiting to ambush her spiritually. If G-d didn’t precede them to awaken mercy on behalf of Israel by removing their sins, they would not be able to exist in the physical world. This is the reason we plead “Come quickly to meet us with Your tender mercy because we have been greatly impoverished”. Impoverished of good deeds and mitzvot.

Come and see. If Israel would only bring mitzvot before G-d, no people in the world would ever have power to dare lift up their heads against them. The forces of evil are empowered by the divine abundance that should rightfully come to Israel but is displaced by their misdeeds. If Israel did not sin before G-d then all the other nations would be subservient to her. If Israel didn’t draw these negative forces to her by her misdeeds in the land of Israel, then, as we have learned, foreign powers would not have ruled in the Holy Land, and they would not have been exiled. This is the meaning of the words: “for we have been greatly impoverished”. Our mitzvot are not sufficiently fitting in their intention and cleaving to G-d, and so we pray that the “tender mercies come quickly” – before empowering the forces of negativity and evil – to give Israel its fitting existence in this world.