#761: Tachanun - Shomer Yisrael (Part 8)

And then we turn to the words, Vaanachnu lo nada ma naaseh.

We don't know what we'll do.

Ki elecha eineinu, because our eyes are upon you.

Where does that come from, this pasuk? Excellent.

Divrei Hayamim Bet.

Those who are knowledgeable in Tanakh, it is a pasuk from the Navi Divrei Hayamim Bet.

Elokeinu lo tishpat bam ki ein banu koach lifnei harbeh ha'za ha'ba aleinu.

Vaanachnu lo nada ma naaseh ki elecha eineinu.

There, Divrei Hayamim Bet is telling the story of Yehoshaphat, who, uh, wages war against his enemies who are greater and stronger, and he doesn't know how he's going to defeat them.

And so he says these words, vaaanachnu lo nada ma naaseh ki elecha eineinu, Hashem.

I don't know how we'll be victorious.

I don't know what we're going to do.

I don't know how we're gonna emerge on the other side, but our eyes are upon you.

We rely, we lean entirely on you, and through that, the Navi Divrei Hayamim tells us that Yehoshaphat found the Yeshua.

He found the salvation.

So we invoke those words, too, to describe our experience.

All of us are not necessarily going to a physical war, though certainly we think about our brothers and sisters in Israel who are, and the Jewish people in some way around the world are waging war with way too many of our enemies.

But we all have personal wars, internal wars.

We have the battles we're fighting, many of which people know nothing about.

And that's what Rav Hirsch writes.

He says, "In Tachanun, we've just elaborated." David HaMelech was describing how he felt down and out.

He suffered from year, years from an illness, and his mattress, his pillow was soaked with the tears of his pain, of his loneliness.

According to some meforshim, the loneliness and the pain was not from external enemies, was rather from his, uh, feeling, his feeling, uh, facing, uh, the internal enemies.

And we relate and we identify, and then we conclude by saying, vaaanachnu lo nada ma naaseh V'Hashem.

With all of that, with our battles, internal and external, our battles that, that you can see and those that are invisible, we don't know what we would do or how we would persevere, how we would endure if it weren't for you.