Third Reading: God’s compassion
“Yet he lingered. So, out of God’s compassion for him, the men grasped him and his wife and two daughters by the hand; they led them out, and left them on the outskirts of the city”
Travails of Lot
The Fifty Gates of Understanding correspond to the 50 times that God’s Name is associated with an adjective or adverb in the Pentateuch. In parashat Vayeira, we find the phrase, “God’s compassion” (ת הוי' לחמ). This phrase appears only once in the Pentateuch, in the story of Lot’s flight from Sodom. Two angels came to rescue Lot, Abraham’s nephew, but Lot tarries. He hates to leave his hometown, even though it is about to be obliterated by God.
As Lot procrastinates, fire and brimstone from heaven start to rain down on Sodom and Gomorrah, the twin cities of evil. The Torah tells us that God had compassion on Lot. Lot was not a tzaddik like his uncle Abraham but compared to his evil neighbors in Sodom and Gomorrah, he looked like one. More importantly, as Abraham’s nephew, he accrued special merit:
And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot lived.
Lot merited salvation as the nephew of Abraham, but he earned God’s compassion as he carried within him the spark of the Mashiach:
But he [Lot] tarried, and the men [angels] laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; God’s compassion was upon him, and they brought him out, and set him outside the city.
The beginning of this verse “but he tarried” (וימהמ) is echoed in the Book of Habakkuk in a verse relating to the Mashiach. This is a very rare word, and it is read in a very unusual way (according to the cantillation marks that indicate how to sing the melody of the words in the Torah). The most complex of the cantillation marks is called the shalshelet, which requires the voice to go up and down three times up, creating tremendous melodic tension.
Lot and His Material Possessions
In the final minutes before the total destruction of the city, Lot tarries. The sages explain that he was worried about his money. To save him, the angels had to physically take him by the hand and lead him out. Had they not done so, he would have remained.
In explaining the Torah’s commandment to love God, “with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all of your might (מאדך),” the sages interpret the word translated as “might” as possessions, i.e., money. This is said to be the highest form of love. Lot’s behavior is an example of the violation of this commandment—his money was literally worth more to him than his life. If the rectification of Lot’s mentality, which still pervades the world, would take place, then the “might,” your state of being, the root of your life, would be revealed in the world.
The numerical value of “Lot” (לטו, 45) is numerically equivalent to “very” (מאד) as well as “man” and “Adam” (אדם, 45). It is also the value of the word “what” (מה), which appears twice in the word “he tarried” (וימהמ). Lot is considered one of the incarnations of Adam, and he bore Adam’s curse—in Aramaic, Lot means “curse”—that followed Adam’s banishment from the Garden of Eden. When this curse is rectified man will be called “very” (מאד), another name for the Mashiach.
Kabbalah explains that the soul of the Mashiach was in Lot even more than in Abraham. The story of how his daughters had relations with their father, believing they were the last people left on earth who had to populate the world anew, shows the hand of Divine Providence. About this the sages say that these are the hidden secrets of God that we cannot possibly understand.
From Lot’s union with his daughters came the nations of Moab and Ammon, and from these two nations came Ruth, who was the great-grandmother of King David, and Na’amah, the wife of King Solomon, and the mother of Rechavam, through whom the lineage of the Mashiach flows.
The Mashiach and Compassion
God’s compassion for Lot was an expression of feelings of empathy or sorrow for the spark of Mashiach within this cursed person, Lot. The sages say that whenever God reveals one of His attributes in creation, He simultaneously reveals the opposite. At the Red Sea, for example, God’s right hand was uplifted to save the Jewish people, and at the same time the same right hand was destroying the Egyptians. Right always refers to loving-kindness. That same right hand of loving-kindness fulfilled two opposite functions simultaneously. In the case of compassion, God’s warmth/heat is being expressed in two opposite ways. In one form, it is God’s anger at Sodom and Gomorrah which results in the burning of the twin cities; in another form, it is the compassion for the spark of Mashiach in Lot which results in Lot’s salvation.
The concept of compassion is so great in Torah that the very first thing a Jew says every morning—a prayer which is called the foundation of the whole day—is Modeh Ani, “I am thankful that You have returned my soul to me with compassion, great is Your faithfulness.” The final words of this prayer—“great is Your faithfulness”—imply that just as I now experience Your compassion in returning my soul to me, I experience renewed faith in the Resurrection of the Dead that will be in the future. When one is asleep, one is considered one part in sixty dead. When one experiences the morning dew of resurrection in getting up from sleep, one’s faith is strengthened in the absolute Resurrection of the future.
Chasidut gives a deeper insight into this explanation. The word “great” means to expand, to grow, to be raised up. By experiencing God’s compassion, one’s faith in God becomes enlarged infinitely. The Hebrew word for “great” (רבה) has the same numerical value as “without end” (אין סוף), one of God’s most important connotations, referring to His limitlessness.
God’s compassion, as expressed in the Torah, is for the imprisoned soul of Mashiach within Lot. It should be part of our morning meditation that God has compassion on the spark of Mashiach within each one of us as well; this will enhances our faith infinitely.
(Excerpted from a manuscript on the Fifty Gates of Understanding)
