How the Shepherd Comforts

Shabbat Nachamu 

by Rabbi Avi Billet

The Haftorah for Shabbos Nachamu gets its name from the first (and second) word of the Haftorah – נחמו נחמו עמי. “Console, console, My people.” Or “Be comforted, be comforted, My people.” 

Chapter 40 of the book of Yeshayahu is essentially the turning point from Yeshayahu’s exhortations and rebukes about what will lead to the Churban (destruction) of Jerusalem as he transitions to becoming the prophet of comfort. All the Haftorahs we’ll be reading over the next 7 weeks are from this latter section in Yeshayahu, and are thus appropriately classified as the שבעה דנחמתא, the 7 Haftorahs of comfort. 

Were the message to be limited to one phrase, we’d only need the one verse to be the Haftorah. As the Haftorah is 26 verses long, let us look to the middle to find a different message that goes beyond the simple comfort that comes from consolation. 

 In a 3-verse section to which he gives the caption “The Cry of the Herald of Zion” Professor Yaakov Elman (The Living Nach) translates verses 10-11 in this way: “Look, the Lord God is coming in might! His arm wins victory for Him. His reward is with Him and His compensation precedes Him. Like a shepherd pasturing his flock, He gathers the lambs in His arm and carries them in His bosom, leading the mother sheep.” 

Artscroll translates the same verses: “Behold, my Lord, HASHEM/ELOHIM, will come with [a] strong [arm], and His arm will dominate for Him; behold, His reward is with Him, and His wage is before Him. [He is] like a shepherd who grazes his flock, who gathers the lambs in his arm, who carries them in his bosom, who guides the nursing ewes.” 

Chabad.org/library (a great online resource!) translates it as follows: “Behold the Lord God shall come with a strong [hand], and His arm rules for Him; behold His reward is with Him, and His recompense is before Him. Like a shepherd [who] tends his flock, with his arm he gathers lambs, and in his bosom he carries [them], the nursing ones he leads.” 

The change in the use of the capital H when referencing “Him” v. “him” demonstrates how the translator views the verse as describing God directly or describing the shepherd that God might be imitating through gathering the sheep. 

Before going into a specific analysis of verse 11, it is worthy to note that the term translated as “Lord God” is read in Hebrew as “Adonoy Elohim,” but the spelling of those two names of God are not the typical spelling we see for either name. The former is usually the Tetragrammaton (God’s 4-letter name of yud and heh and vav and heh) and the second is usually spelled exactly as it sounds. In this case, the first name is actually spelled as it sounds, alef, dalet, nun, yud, and the second name is spelled with the Tetragrammaton (!) but pronounced as written in the quotations in the second line of this paragraph. 

This spelling is the same as the exact phrase which appears in the second verse of our parsha (Devarim 3:24), and there Ramban comments that it references God as the Master of the Attribute of Mercy (אדון במדת רחמים). (Normally the first pronounced name of this phrase is connected with God’s Mercy, while the second pronounced name is connected with God’s Judgment. Because the first word is spelled using the root of אדון, Master, Ramban uses it in that sense, while ignoring the pronunciation of the second name of God, focusing on its spelling alone to evoke God’s mercy.) 

This explanation would further indicate that it is really a doubling down of God’s quality of Mercy which is being championed here in the Haftorah, as we see God as a shepherd to His people whether directly or through a metaphor. 

The term which is translated above as “mother sheep,” “nursing ones,” and “nursing ewes” is עָלוֹת. This word is, oddly enough, translated differently by many commentaries. 

Ibn Ezra: animals that become pregnant. They are called עלות because the males go on (על) them to impregnate 

Rashi: Nursing sheep (the mother) – based on the translation of Targum Yonatan 

Radak: nursing mothers, called עלות because the term עול sometimes references baby animals (see next one) 

Metzudat Zion: the baby animals themselves, based on the phrase עולל ויונק 

Malbim: The nursing mothers (based on Shmuel I 6:7) 

Rabbi Eliezer MiBalaganzi: The newborn (born today!) animals 

 Perhaps one can argue that it doesn’t really matter which animals God (or the shepherd) is leading. If leading the nursing mothers, their babies will follow them. If leading the newborn or baby animals, their mothers will not abandon them. In either case, the image is meant to simply be a demonstration of God’s love and how much He cares. 

And so the question is “How much does He care?” Perhaps Radak’s comment says it all. “The עלות, which are the mothers, will guide them slowly and won’t push them. So will God guide Israel out of the exile at their pace, taking care of every ill and broken person.” 

Radak goes on to quote his father who noted that the word describing the flock of the shepherd is עדרו, suggesting that the flock actually belongs to the shepherd himself, which makes him have a more vested interest in the wellbeing of the sheep than if he were being paid to watch someone else’s sheep. Certainly, by extension, the same could be said for the Almighty Who has a vested interest in the story of the people of Israel, in that He wants them to return home, at the time they are worthy to do so. 

The message Radak extrapolates is a timeless messages because it speaks to every generation. We can all try to experience the Churban and feel what the absence of the Temple means to us through the motions we go through on Tisha B’Av. But in the end, we have no frame of reference beyond images from the Torah, books of the Prophets, Talmudic tales, and perhaps even artistic renderings. Even with our daily prayers asking for a return to Yerushalayim of old with God dwelling in the midst of the rebuilt Temple, there may be some people who are not quite ready for it to return. 

But everyone can relate to being sick. We all know people who have been broken in one form or another. There is no ignoring the news story that doesn’t seem to go away from every media outlet we may turn to. 

As we pray for our own health and that of our loved ones, friends, and humanity, may we find comfort in knowing that while God made a world in which illness has its place, the role He plays is in helping us through it when He sees us as having been through enough, and when we have achieved what we need to achieve to move forward. 

The opening words of that verse (40:11) is reminiscent of the next Biblical holiday on our calendar - כְּרֹעֶה֙ , עֶדְר֣וֹ יִרְעֶ֔ה בִּזְרֹעוֹ֙, “like the shepherd who counts his flock” of which we speak on the High Holidays. This is, of course, a reminder that Rosh Hashana is six weeks away. But it is also a reminder of how we have always viewed God’s role in His relationship with us. 

Every generation has its own challenges and crises. As we begin our way through the weeks of comfort, hopefully we can indeed tap into Yeshayahu’s words and continue to find messages that speak to us, in the effort of our being consoled over our own difficult experiences, including most recent, less recent, and the ones we’ve been mourning for generations.