מְמֵנִי [מזמור ‘לדוד ה’ אורי’
For He will hide me in His succah on a day of distress; He will conceal me in the shelter of His tent; upon a rock He will elevate me (LeDavid, Hashem Ori, Tehillim 27:5).
Rashi explains: “I am confident that He will hide me in His holy Beis Hamikdash.” Seder Olam says that this pasuk refers to Yoash ben Achaziah, whom Yehosheva, his aunt, hid in the upper chamber of the Kodesh Hakadashim, as it is states (Melachim II 11:3), ‘ מִתְחַבֵּא שֵׁשׁוַיְהִי אִתָּהּ בֵּית ה שָׁ נִ ים - And he was with her, hidden in the House of Hashem for six years.”
When all the kings of Yehudah were gone except for the infant Yoash ben Achaziah, Yehosheva, Achaziah’s sister, saved him and hid him from Ataliah, who sought to rule and would have killed him. Thus, the pasuk describes Yoash as hidden in the House of Hashem—in the upper chamber of the Kodesh Hakodashim—for six years until, at the age of seven, he was brought forth to sit on the throne of his kingdom and did what was right in the eyes of Hashem all his days.
King David, Yoash’s ancestor, prophecies this pasuk: For He will hide me in His succah on a day of distress; He will conceal me in the shelter of His tent. Although the upper chambers were not sanctified (Pesachim 85b), they were still part of the Beis Hamikdash, which is called a succah, as in (Tehillim 76:3), וַיְהִי בְשָׁלֵם סֻכּוֹ וּמְעוֹנָתוֹ בְצִיּוֹן - And His succah was in Salem, and His dwelling in Tzion. There he was well-hidden and protected beneath the wings of the Shechinah, in the tzila deheimnusa, “the shade of emunah.”
On Succos, when we say, For He will hide me in His succah, it alludes to the holy succah in which we are hidden in the shelter of His tent, under the shadow of emunah and beneath His blessed wings.
Our holy succah is like the upper chamber of the Holy of Holies—a place where one can hide and be safeguarded in the House of Hashem from all adversaries and accusers, both physical and spiritual.
Moreover, the succah also represents the inner succah—the dwelling of the Shechinah within a person, as it says (Tehillim 78:60), וַיִּטֹּשׁ מִשְׁכַּן שִׁלוֹ אֹהֶל שִׁכֵּן בָּאָדָם - The tent that He established among men. Every Jew has within an “upper chamber of the Holy of Holies,” the place of the Divine spark—the root of their soul and vitality. It is within the hidden recesses of this inner chamber that one can hide and protect oneself from the Satan—the evil inclination—that confuses, incites, and uproots a person from his spiritual foundation.
As the great Rav, the Kol Aryeh, writes in the introduction to Yefeh Einayim on the Gemara: “When external and internal disturbances increase, and distractions from Torah abound, the solution is to imagine oneself creating a small upper chamber in the mind as a sanctuary for thoughts of Torah, where no distraction can enter.”
Thus, we pray: For He will hide me in His succah, referring to the inner succah, the upper chamber of the Holy of Holies within a person, the dwelling place of his essence and true inner being. There, one can shield himself from all external disturbances that seek to uproot and unseat him and prevent him from being blown like a leaf in the wind, chas veshalom. Succos is the appropriate and auspicious time to establish this inner sanctuary and settle within it firmly, unmoved by the storms of the world, until we are joyfully brought to our land and planted in our borders, speedily in our days. Amen.
