Redemption, Then and Now

In Parshat Bo, we read that the period of slavery lasted 400 years – and not a moment longer.  

Hashem tells Avraham that “your children will be strangers in a land that is not theirs.” The first of his children, the people of Israel, was Yitzchak.  He was born in the Jewish year 2048, on Pesach.  Four hundred years later, in 2448, on Pesach, God liberated us.  He did it exactly at midnight.  How precise was His promise that our wanderings will be exactly four hundred years? 

Moshe tells Pharaoh that the last plague would happen at around midnight.  Why did he say “around midnight”? It was because the Egyptians could not clock the exact time for midnight. Hashem would begin the plague at exactly midnight, to the nanosecond.  

Egypt would record it as midnight plus three seconds, or midnight minus two minutes. Then they would tell Moshe that he was wrong, and the plague did not start when he prophesied.  God was so exacting that Moshe could not rely on the most advanced civilization to be as accurate.  

That is what God’s timetable means. When He says something will happen, it will happen at that time absolutely.  It does not matter what the world looks like. It does not matter how unlikely such a thing could occur given the state of the world just a moment prior.  

Consider this:  At 11:59 PM Pharaoh refused to let us out of Egypt. None of the most powerful people could dissuade him. Nine plagues that reduced the most powerful empire on earth to rubble could not sway him. Even the threat of another plague did not budge his resolve.  

From our perspective, it looked like we would never leave. We were there for 210 years, and by all accounts – at least from our physical senses – it looked like we would be there for another 190 years. 

Within minutes Pharaoh himself was running through the streets begging us to leave immediately. This night happened exactly 400 years after Yitzchak was born and Avraham’s children were strangers in a Land they did not possess.  

All in Due Time

Men wearing dresses? Thieves being protected by the government?  

A nation replaces its ancient name, “Persia,” to proclaim its loyalty to the Nazis. “Iran” is Persian for Aryan – the Iranian ambassador to Nazi Germany recommended the name change, and it was adapted in 1935. Today, Iran would be given a bomb to murder another six million Jews. 

What is going on?  
 

For sure, we are on the path to Armageddon.  That is what they said about the Jewish People on the eve of our Great Redemption.  In the blink of an eye, Hashem took 2 million Jews out of Egypt laden with the wealth of that empire.  

That is how it will happen today.  Do not get mad when the people who are determined to destroy mankind are being given all the means to do so.  It is only so we can see with clear and open eyes the Redemption Hashem is giving us. It will be miraculous because the plotters of destruction have gone so far, the only way for us to be redeemed is through open miracles.   

It’s Happened Before 

In 1945 we suffered a 12-year plague of darkness. A third of our family was murdered. Amid the rubble of what was left of the Jewish Nation, redemption could not have been more distant.  
 
 

Instead of showing us mercy, Britain and the rest of the world threw the survivors into the very same death camps the Germans did.  For years, it looked like we would remain a nation torn apart, waiting for its inevitable extinction.  

Then, in the blink of an eye, the Soviet Union, China, and South America voted to partition Eretz Yisrael into a Jewish State.  It did not matter that all we had were 600,000 farmers with pitchforks to fend off seven Arab nations led by British generals who defeated the near untouchable Nazi commander Edwin Rommel. It did not matter that our entire air force was stuck in Panama and Czechoslovakia while the Egyptians pummeled Tel Aviv from the sky.  

HaKadosh Baruch Hu decreed redemption for the Jewish People. The world could only look on in astonishment as seven months later the Arabs and English begged us to stop. Our tanks were headed for the Sinai Desert!  

The same will happen today.  
  

Regardless of the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons, the Sodomite and Sadducee decrees of our Hellenistic government, the handover of land to hundreds of thousands of Arabs in pre-1967 Israel, and the denial of the same rights to our brothers settling the heart and soul of our homeland:  Redemption will come in the appointed time.  

When that happens, the world will once again watch in astonishment. They will watch because that will be the only thing Hashem allows them to do. 
 

Then our mouths will be filled with laughter and our tongues with songs of praise; then they will say among the nations, “The Lord has done great things with these.” Psalms 126:2 

Hashem reminds us of this every time we are commanded to be happy. When we eat a meal on Shabbat, Yom Tov, and Rosh Chodesh, we recite this Psalm right after the meal.  Measure for measure, as the world laughs each time they cut off a path to our ongoing redemption, we will laugh when Hashem cuts off their path to harming us – ever again. 

Right On Time  

The Gemara teaches that three things come as a complete surprise: Finding a lost item, encountering a scorpion, and the coming of Mashiach.  

We are commanded to remember every day, the night we left Egypt.  Hashem commands us never to forget that when He decrees, it happens. It is a commandment of trust: good tidings await the Jewish People and no matter what it might look like today, the moment Hashem wills it, we will be liberated. 

Every day we must remember. Every celebration we must recall and rejoice.   Hashem’s salvation for Torah, the Jewish People, and all those who seek Him is inevitable, unstoppable, and imminent.    

* * * 

David Ben Horin lives in Afula with his wife and children. Since moving to Israel in 2002, David has discovered Torah, writing hi-tech, hiking, coding ReactJS Apps, and hearing stories about the Land of Israel from anyone excited to tell them. Check him out on Highway 60 or email him your favorite Israel story at:  david.ben.horin@spreadyourenthusiasm.com.