This week's Haftorah (Isaiah 54:1-55:5 according to the Ashkenazi custom) contains an extraordinary Divine promise to the Jewish people.
But what makes it so striking is not merely what Hashem promises. It is how He chooses to express it: "For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great compassion I will gather you in" (Isaiah 54:7).
When Hashem speaks of abandoning the Jewish people, He measures it in time: "for a brief moment." But when He speaks of gathering them in, He uses an entirely different measure: "great compassion."
Why the difference?
Had Isaiah said, "I abandoned you for a short time, but I will gather you for a long time," the promise would still be comforting. Yet both sides would be measured by the same yardstick.
Instead, the prophet measures abandonment in time, which is finite, and the ingathering in Divine mercy, which is infinite.
The next verse reinforces the contrast: "For a moment I hid My face from you, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you" (54:8).
What is temporary is set against what endures forever.
But this raises a difficult question. How can Isaiah describe Jewish suffering as a mere moment? The Jewish people have endured exile lasting centuries, the destruction of entire communities and tragedies whose effects are felt long after the events themselves.
The Radak (Rabbi David Kimchi, 1160-1235), commenting on Isaiah 54:7, offers an answer. Even though the days of exile have been long, he explains, they will be considered a brief moment compared with the great compassion of the eventual ingathering and the years of blessing that follow.
Isaiah is not minimizing the suffering of generations who lived and died in exile. A thousand years is an enormous span in human terms. But it remains a finite span. Viewed against the enduring kindness Hashem promises His people, even the longest exile is not the final chapter.
To drive home the promise, Isaiah invokes the Flood from this week’s Parsha: "For this is like the waters of Noach to Me. As I swore that the waters of Noach would never again pass over the earth, so I have sworn not to be angry with you or rebuke you" (54:9).
The rain fell for forty days and forty nights, and the waters covered the earth long afterward. For Noach and his family, shut inside the ark, the devastation must have seemed endless.
But the waters eventually receded, the door to the ark opened and life began again.
The covenant Hashem established afterward, promising never again to destroy all life through a flood, endured. Isaiah invokes that covenant to assure the Jewish people that exile, too, cannot annul Hashem's commitment to them.
And there is more to the promise than the end of suffering. Hashem says, "I will gather you in." He is promising not merely that the exile will end but that a scattered people will return to their homeland and rebuild their lives.
After nearly two thousand years of dispersion, the return of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel gives those words an especially powerful resonance. Generations who could only dream of seeing Jerusalem have been followed by generations privileged to live there.
The return to Zion does not erase the suffering of generations who lived and died in exile. But it reminds us of the extraordinary promise contained in Isaiah's words. However long the exile may last, it is ultimately measured in time.
But the ingathering of the Jewish people is rooted in something far greater: Hashem's infinite mercy, which knows no bounds.