“O bring them and plant them
On the mountain You possess.
The place You dwell in
Is Your accomplishment, God.
The Temple, O God,
Your hands have founded.
God will reign for ever and ever.”
(from the “Song of the Sea,” Exodus 15:17–18)
Let us understand: The whole point of the Exodus from Egypt was to bring the Jewish people into the Land of Israel. So why did they still need to pray for it to happen, when surely God would protect them and bring them into the Land of Israel and to the holy Temple? Also, why do we say of the Temple, “The Temple, O God, Your hands have founded,” when the Temple was built by the Jewish people?
Rashi’s explanation (ibid.) is well known: The Temple is an object of great affection to God because, while the Universe was created using one hand—as it is written (Isaiah 48:13): “Yea, My hand hath laid the foundation of the earth”—the Temple was built by two hands—as it is written here in our text, “The Temple, O God, Your hands have founded.” When will God, using two hands, build it? At the time when “God will reign for ever and ever.”
It may perhaps be as follows. We learn in sacred literature on the verse (Psalms 119:89) “Forever, O Lord, Your word stands in heaven,” that the world of Speech is higher than the world of Action. Therefore, even when God bespeaks salvation of the Jewish people, and it has been called into being, it may yet happen that salvation remains out of reach. It is still above this world, in the world of Speech, and so there can exist some delay before it is drawn down into this world, the world of Action. The verse “Forever, O Lord, Your word stands in heaven” is taken to mean that there is some delay—that even when salvation has been commanded, it may yet be standing in heaven, above the world of Action. This is why the holy prophets sometimes performed metaphorical actions. An example of this is described in the prophets (II Kings 13:15–19), when the prophet Elisha commanded the King of Israel to shoot a bow and repeat three times “Smite Aram,” and so forth. The action resembles the salvation it is trying to bring about, and is performed to draw the salvation down into the world of Action more immediately.
In these times, although we have neither prophet nor seer, our observance of the commandments is also a drawing down of the word of God, because God’s word is in the commandments. To physically perform the commandments is to draw them down into the world of Action, and when this happens God’s words of salvation are also drawn down to the world of Action. How much more is this so now, during Passover, when the practical commandments we observe are God’s words of salvation. One instance of this is our observance of the commandment to eat unleavened bread (matzo) because our ancestors’ dough did not have time to rise before the King of Kings, the Holy Blessed One, revealed Himself to them and redeemed them. The four cups of wine and the recitation of the four divine promises of redemption, etc., also serve to draw down the redemption immediately and straight away, that it should not, God forbid, be delayed.
With this understanding, we can answer a well-known question. How can we say, as quoted above from the Haggadah, that the reason for matzo is because the Jewish people did not have time for their dough to become leavened before they left Egypt, when we know that they had already been commanded to eat matzo before leaving Egypt (see Exodus 12:15)?
From what we have said above, it can be explained as follows: When God first gave the commandment to eat matzo with the Paschal Lamb, He was commanding the Jewish people to perform an action resembling the salvation they were trying to bring about. The reason for this was to enable them to visualize and act out a speedy salvation, and thus bring it about immediately.
Thus, at the end of the Song of the Sea, when the Jewish people prayed to be brought to the Land of Israel they were praying for something immediate. While they knew that God would eventually bring them to the Land of Israel and to the holy Temple, they were praying that it not be a long and drawn-out process. “O bring them and plant them on the mountain You possess. . . . The Temple, O God, Your hands have founded.” God’s expressed promise to bring them to the Land of Israel had been tied to the promise of redemption from Egypt. The Exodus and the Crossing of the Red Sea had already, so successfully, been brought down into the world of Action through the active visualization of the observance of commandments. And so, they prayed that God’s promise to bring the people into the Land of Israel should also be manifest in the world of Action, also brought into being by the observance of God’s commandments. The world of Action is, so to speak, the world of God’s hands. “The Temple, O God, Your hands have founded.”