Hashem Establishes the Barren
The Barren Woman
Now Dovid is saying another story that he knew about personally. מוֹשִׁיבִי עֲקֶֽרֶת הַבַּֽיִת – There was a woman who had no children, and Hashem established her as an אֵם־הַבָּנִים שְׂמֵחָה. I'll tell you the story. There was a man that had two wives. One wife was fruitful and she had many children. The other wife, her name was Chana and she was barren and had nothing at all. And therefore her life was a torment. It's human nature; she had no ayin hara but when she saw all the children of her rival it tore her heart apart. She didn't have a single child of her own.
But what did Hakadosh Baruch Hu do? He took this עֲקֶֽ רֶת הַבַּֽ יִת, the childless woman, and He made her אֵם־הַבָּנִים, a mother of sons. She has a child now. Things started happening and now שְׂ מֵ חָ ה – and she began rejoicing. She became the most important one in the family because her son became the leader of the Am Yisroel. Shmuel Hanavi, the son of Chana, became the leader of the Klal Yisroel: מֹשֶׁה וְאַהֲרֹן בְּכֹהֲנָיו וּשְׁ מוּאֵל בְּקֹרְאֵי שְׁ מוֹ. He’s compared even to Moshe and Aharon.
Now, Dovid knew this story well because Shmuel Hanavi was his teacher, his confidant. So Dovid looked at that example. Just like he was elevated from the ashpah to sit next to a king, so also Chana was elevated.
The Barren Women
But not only her; every woman is the same story. מוֹשִׁיבִי עֲקֶֽרֶת הַבַּֽיִת – Here’s a woman that is childless. And Hakadosh Baruch Hu makes her אֵם־הַבָּנִים, a mother of a lot of children. What does that mean? It doesn’t mean a woman is barren and suddenly she has six, seven children at once. No, it didn’t happen that way. She was a barren girl; when she was fourteen years old she was barren—she didn’t have children. She got married, let’s say, at sixteen, and she got busy having babies, one after the other. Now she has a big family. Baruch Hashem!
And now her sons and daughters are married, and there are granddaughters, and grandsons, and great-grandsons. And she sits at the weddings of her grandchildren and she looks—huge family pictures are being taken. She and her husband are in the middle, her daughters and sons are here, and sons-in-law and daughters-in-law next to them, the granddaughters and grandsons next to them, and the greats are next to them. It’s a tribe!
“Where did this tribe come from?!”, she’s thinking. “A whole village!”
So she says, “Well, I was interested in having a big family.”
No! She says, “You Hashem! מוֹשִׁיבִי עֲקֶֽרֶת הַבַּֽיִת – You took a barren woman and you made her an אֵם־הַבָּנִים שְׂמֵחָה. And therefore, הַלְלוּיָ-הּ! I am going to praise You forever and ever.”
The National Renewal
And we, the Am Yisroel, use that as a mashal on a national scale. Because there are times in our history when we are like an akarah; אִשָּׁה עֲקָרָה שֶׁלֹּא יָלְדָה. So much has been destroyed; we lost so much. We lost our land. We lost our Beis Hamikdash. We lost our power. We lost the Shechinah. We lost our nevuah. And now we're in golus and we're mourning. And so Dovid Hamelech encourages us; he says the time will come when Hakadosh Baruch Hu will raise us up again. That's the nevuah he's saying here. The nation that is beaten down will become eim habanim semeichah. Once more the Jewish nation will be full of children, full of sons and daughters.
We see a little bit of this today, baruch Hashem. There's a big movement of people coming back to yiddishkeit and people having big families. Baruch Hashem, there's a hope in the course of time that the Jewish frum population will be so big that the entire world will start thinking maybe we’re the ones whom they should join. Baruch Hashem there's a big increase. Of course it's nothing compared to what we need, but the fact that today you find families of ten and twelve children; you see the streets full of boys and girls. Boro Park, full of chassidishe Jews; wherever you look you see people with beards. It's baruch Hashem a nachas ruach. Once upon a time you couldn’t see it in America. And therefore אֵם־הַבָּנִים שְׂמֵחָה, the time will come when the Jewish nation will rejoice when it regains all that it once had.
And so even now we sing with the confidence of what’s going to be in the future. Besides for all the happiness in our private lives, our families, our friends, that we sing to Hashem about, a Jew goes into the new month with the confidence that not only does the present belong to us, but the future too is ours.
