Audio Summaries of the daily Chumash portions In loving memory of Ousher Zelig ben Myer HaLevi Z”L
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G-d Laments
Moshe continues with his song, saying that G-d saw the way the Israelites betrayed him and got angry and said that He would hide His face from them and see what will come to them in the end. G-d bemoans that the Israelites transform G-d's will to do good into anger and that they are no longer recognizable and deviated from how He reared them to be.
G-d laments how the Israelites incited his anger with a false deity and says that in response he will cause them to be angry with a "false" nation (i..e with nations that don't deserve to exist - namely the "Chaldeans" (i.e. the Babylonians) who destroyed the first Temple) and Esav's descendants (Rome) who destroyed the second Temple).
The fire in G-d's anger burned till the very foundation of the Israelites, consuming their land and produce and setting Jerusalem (which is surrounded by mountains) ablaze.
G-d warns that He will mete evil with evil and use up all of His arrows on them. Rashi notes here that this "curse" like all the others stated is really an implicit blessing. Although G-d's arrows come to an end, Israel never will.
The famine they experience will be so severe they will grow hair on their skin* (according to Rashi, this is what happens to an emaciated person), be attacked by demons, excised by a particular demon named Meriri, at one point be bitten to death by sheep and be attacked by snake venom.
*Side note: Or alternatively, according to Onkelos, the famine will calls them to become swollen. However Rashi notes that he does not see any Scriptural evidence to support this.
Enemy troops from outside of the city will kill their young men, women, babies and elders. And in attempting to run away, their hearts within them will pound out of fear, eventually killing them. Or alternatively, there will be a perpetual fear of plague.
Alternatively, Oneklos explains the references to "outside" and "inside" verse as meaning that they will be killed for what they did out on the street in public as well as what they did inside in the privacy of their homes.
G-d said to Himself that he would bring an end to them, removing all memory of them. An alternative reading of this verse is that He would cast them away as ownerless.
G-d notes that if the Israelites were to be defeated by their enemies' anger, these enemy nations would attribute their greatness to their false deities rather than to G-d.
In so doing, these nations display that they are lacking in guidance and do not have any understanding.
Ha'azinu, 4th Aliya