In the middle of Yaakov’s final blessings to each of his twelve sons, he suddenly cries out in prayer–
לישועתך קיויתי ה
I hope for Your salvation, O Lord! (Genesis 49:18)
How do we make sense of the strange placement of this prayer in the middle of a speech? What might it teach us about the role of hope and prayer in our daily activities?
Context: Blocked and Stuck
Consider the context in which this prayer arises. The parsha begins with a sense of something being closed and stuck. It is a parsha stumah, “a closed up parsha,” meaning that typographically, on the page of a Torah scroll, there is no break between last week’s parsha and this one; the words run right along, on the very same line, with no space at all. Rashi famously explains that the satum state of the parsha represents Yaakov’s own state. There is something he is wanting to do at the end of his life – he is wanting to reveal to his children the ketz, the end of time redemption, to tell them how things will turn out – but alas, the ability to do this, to see clearly and make this revelation, is nistam mimenu, closed off from him (Rashi on 49:18). His eyes are heavy and he is unable to see (48:10). He is blocked and frustrated and stuck.
We often feel this sense of stuckness in our own endeavors. We keep trying, but sometimes it feels like the way is blocked before us, like each day, each problem, piles up inside us, all lined up, like the words of the Torah here, no space between them, and no ketz, no end in sight. It feels impossible to break through. We feel blind and despairing, like Yaakov, unable to see a way out.
Yaakov pushes forward and tries anyway, as we often do. He looks at each of his children and thinks of their essence and their destiny, and he speaks these words to them. But in these words, too, we sense a twinge of his heaviness and despair. He sees the strengths of his children, but also their weaknesses, their flaws and struggles, the complicated reality of being a human in this world. We, too, feel that heaviness sometimes, looking at our own future and that of our children, both rejoicing in what we see ahead, and at the same time, perceiving the complexity of the struggles of our human temperaments, struggles that seems to go on and on into the future, no end and no redemption in sight.
The Prayer:
And into the midst of all of that struggle and stuckness and impossibility, into the heaviness of all of those many words that Yaakov uses to try to make sense of it all, to bring some clarity to his blindness, into all of that, comes this simple prayer of three words –
לישועתך קיויתי ה
I hope for Your salvation, O Lord!
There is spaciousness in these words, the spaciousness of dropping what we are doing and suddenly turning toward God amidst it all. Something can shift and clear. What was blocked and satum, can begin to open inside us.
The last time the root kaveh, “hope,” was used in theTorah was in the creation story. It was used differently there, not meaning “hope,” but referring to the gathering of the waters to create dry land – yekavu hamayim vetera’eh hayabashah, “let the waters gather and dry land appear (Genesis 1:9).” That is what is happening right now on the page of the Torah as well as inside Yaakov, a clearing of water so that some dry land, some space of possibility, can appear. All the struggles and frustration, all the stuckness and hopelessness, all the endless myriad difficulties, the trying to make things happen and running up against obstacles, they are all still there inside, but they are clearing to either side so that a way through it can appear, like the way through the waters of Yam Suf, a bridge over troubled waters. Some space. Some air. Where before the way was satum, now, a path clears before us.
Kiviti, Yaakov says. “I hope.” The midrash comments: hakol bekivui , everything happens through hope (Breshit Rabbah 98:13). Hope is the great opener, the great transformer. It’s not that the situation has changed. The stuckness, the struggles,the obstacles, they are all still there. And yet somehow hope arises from their midst, from within them, hope opens a road through them. Yes, it is hard. Yes, it feels closed. But somehow there is still hope. A window opens and then a door. There is fresh air now, new possibilities, new options. Hope opens our closed eyes.
What enters through this new pathway, this new door, this fresh air, is transcendent. It is divine. “I hope for Your salvation, O Lord.” What is carried in through the window of this prayer is the divine spirit, the knowledge of an alternative transcendent plane where everything is possible, where love reigns and there is shefa, the neverending flow of divine light and energy and life force and goodness. It is to this that Yaaakov opens amidst his toil, amidst his complicated struggles with his children, it is this window that he suddenly opens when he pauses and prays, when he remembers God and says – oh, yeah, it’s You that brings salvation. I can let your energy in. I don’t have to do this alone.
It’s as if we have been toiling away at difficult math problems, looking down at our desks, when right in front of the room is a brilliant math teacher who can help us in an instant, who understands everything on a totally different plane. And Yaakov, engrossed in his problems, looking down, suddenly remembers to look up and see this other force in the universe and to ask for help, not just to ask, but to hope, to trust, to believe, to wait, to know that there is help.
When we pray and hope in this way, we create space inside, we open a channel for the divine to flow through us, we draw down salvation into our bodies. And this strengthens us – kaveh el Hashem, hazak ve’yeametz libekha (Ps 27:14) – hope in God, and your heart will be strengthened. Hoping in God makes us strong in ourselves. We begin to know our own capacities, to feel God inside us and to know that there are options, there are pathways, there are still ways to be in the world that can, despite the obstacles, bring salvation and healing, for ourselves, for each other and for the world.
Shimshon (Samson):
Yaakov cries out this prayer right after he blesses his son Dan, and commentaries suggest that, in speaking to Dan, he saw the future of the tribe, including Shimshon (Samson), one of Dan’s most famous descendants. Shimshon was a powerful fighter for Israel, but when the Philistines found out that his strength came from his long hair, they cut it and gouged out his eyes; he was captured, placed in bronze fetters and imprisoned. Yaakov’s prayer in his own blindness and stuckness was the forerunner to Shimshon’s prayer in his blindness and imprisonment. Shimshon was brought into a temple among thousands of Philistines, shackled and humiliated as they laughed at his downfall, and in the midst of this stuckness – this sense of no recourse, of being satum, closed out from any options – Shimshon cries out to God and asks for one more moment of strength. And through that prayer, hope enters him, some strength returns and things become possible once more. He breaks free of his shackles, grabs hold of the central pillars of the temple and brings the whole place down on all of the Philistines, killing more in his death than in his life.
We all at times feel like Shimshon, shackled and blind, seeing no way out, no recourse. And we can, like Yaakov and Shimshon, turn in hope and in prayer to some other realm, to let in the divine energy that wants to flow through us so that we have the strength to break our shackles and topple down walls and obstacles. We are strong and capable and free. We have options. Things can change.
Of course our shift is unlikely to be like Shimshon’s, a sudden burst of strength. The word kiviti doesn’t just mean “hope;” it also means “wait,” to wait as for the coming dawn, shomrim laboker (Ps 130:5-6), to wait in anticipation and trust for the unfolding of God’s salvation and healing in our lives, to believe in it even when it seems otherwise, even when it tarries – af al pi sheyitmahme’ah – even when we seem to be going in the opposite direction, to still trust and wait with patience, knowing that it is slowly coming in its own mysterious way, and allowing it to take its time to manifest in us.
God’s Own Salvation:
Leyeshuatekha kiviti Hashem – “for Your salvation I hope, O Lord.” There is a Hasidic interpretation of the word yeshuatekha which understands it quite literally as God’s own salvation. God, as it were, is also in need of salvation; it is as if God, too, is waiting, waiting for us to hope and to pray and to believe, and when we do, when we bring down the energy of salvation into ourselves and activate it in the world, we do so not just for ourselves, but also for God. We redeem ourselves and we redeem God at the same time.
Returning to Human Effort:
Yaakov didn’t stop his work after the prayer. The prayer was said in the middle of the work. He prayed, and then he returned to his toils, picked right back up with the human work of blessing his children. We pause, as on Shabbat, to rest and to remember the divine plane, to let the air of hope and possibility enter us, and then we return to our efforts with renewed vigor and strength and confidence. We are still human and flawed, and there are still obstacles before us, and we will still struggle. But we infuse our work with hope. There is human effort on either side, but right in the middle is an abiding, patient trust in divine healing and redemption, and it is out of this place of trust, from this place in our heart, from this center-point, that our work proceeds.
Photo by Lukas at Pexels
