Draft. This siddur is waiting for a rav's review. For a halachic question, ask your rav.
King Shlomo (Solomon), at the dedication of the first Temple in Jerusalem. He had just finished a long prayer asking God to hear everyone who prays toward the Temple, even a foreigner from a far country. Then he rose from kneeling, hands spread toward heaven, and blessed the whole people in a loud voice. The last part of this paragraph is that blessing: "May Hashem our God be with us, as He was with our ancestors."
Siddur Sefard puts it near the end of the morning service, after Uva LeTzion and right before the Song of the Day. On days with Tachanun it comes right after Tefillah LeDavid (Tehillim 86), a psalm of pleading. The sources we checked do not say who first placed it here or why.
Melachim I 8:41-43, 8:54-60; Peninei Halakhah, Prayer 23:4Hebrew, then English. Open "What it means" under any line for the explanation.
Skipped on days when El Erech Apayim is skipped too. Then go straight to the Song of the Day.
בֵּית יַעֲקֹב לְכוּ וְנֵלְכָה בְּאוֹר יְיָ.
House of Yaakov, come, let us walk in the light of Hashem
Radak (Rabbi David Kimchi, Provence, around 1200) says the light of Hashem in this verse is the Torah and the mitzvot.
Radak on Yeshayahu 2:5כִּי כָּל הָעַמִּים יֵלְכוּ אִישׁ בְּשֵׁם אֱלֺהָיו, וַאֲנַחְנוּ נֵלֵךְ בְּשֵׁם יְיָ אֱלֹהֵינוּ לְעוֹלָם וָעֶד.
Though all the peoples will walk, each in the name of his god, we will walk in the name of Hashem our God forever and ever
Though all the peoples walk, each one in the name of his god, we will walk in the name of Hashem our God forever and ever.
יְהִי יְיָ אֱלֹהֵינוּ עִמָּנוּ כַּאֲשֶׁר הָיָה עִם אֲבוֹתֵינוּ, אַל יַעַזְבֵנוּ וְאַל יִטְּשֵׁנוּ.
May Hashem our God be with us as He was with our ancestors, may He not leave us and not abandon us
Metzudat David (a line-by-line commentary on the Prophets and Writings, 1700s) says "our ancestors" here means the generation in the desert, when God's presence stayed with them all the time.
Metzudat David on Melachim I 8:57לְהַטּוֹת לְבָבֵנוּ אֵלָיו, לָלֶכֶת בְּכָל דְּרָכָיו, וְלִשְׁמֹר מִצְוֹתָיו, וְחֻקָּיו, וּמִשְׁפָּטָיו, אֲשֶׁר צִוָּה אֶת אֲבֹתֵינוּ.
to turn our hearts toward Him, to walk in all His ways, and to keep His commandments, laws and rulings that He commanded our ancestors
May He turn our hearts toward Him, so that we walk in all His ways and keep His commandments, His laws and His rulings, which He commanded our ancestors.
וְיִהְיוּ דְבָרַי אֵלֶּה אֲשֶׁר הִתְחַנַּנְתִּי לִפְנֵי יְיָ, קְרֹבִים אֶל יְיָ אֱלֹהֵינוּ יוֹמָם וָלָיְלָה, לַעֲשׂוֹת מִשְׁפַּט עַבְדּוֹ, וּמִשְׁפַּט עַמּוֹ יִשְׂרָאֵל דְּבַר יוֹם בְּיוֹמוֹ.
And may these words of mine, which I pleaded before Hashem, be close to Hashem our God day and night, to give His servant his due and His people Israel theirs, each day's need on its day
And may these words of mine, which I pleaded before Hashem, be close to Hashem our God day and night, so that He gives His servant his due, and His people Israel theirs, each day's need on its day.
"Mishpat" usually means justice, and Rashi reads it that way: God should demand payment from the enemy for His people's humiliation. Radak says it means what is due, as in Shemot 21:9 ("the due of daughters"), so the request is: give us each day what we need.
Rashi and Radak on Melachim I 8:59; Shemot 21:9לְמַעַן דַּעַת כָּל עַמֵּי הָאָרֶץ, כִּי יְיָ הוּא הָאֱלֹהִים, אֵין עוֹד.
so that all the peoples of the earth will know that Hashem is God, there is no other
Why ask all this? So the nations will know that Hashem is God. Radak says they will see that people who hold on to Him are full of good and guarded from harm. Metzudat David says they will know when they see how closely He watches over His people.
Radak on Melachim I 8:59; Metzudat David on Melachim I 8:60Now Tehillim 124:
שִׁיר הַמַּעֲלוֹת לְדָוִד לוּלֵי יְיָ שֶׁהָיָה לָנוּ יֹאמַר נָא יִשְׂרָאֵל.
A song of ascents, by David. If not for Hashem, who was on our side, let Israel now say it
לוּלֵי יְיָ שֶׁהָיָה לָנוּ בְּקוּם עָלֵינוּ אָדָם.
If not for Hashem, who was on our side, when a person rose up against us,
The Gemara (the rabbis' discussions built on the Mishnah) says Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak, one of the sages, used these two verses to open the story of Purim: "a person," he points out, "and not a king." Rashi says that person is Haman, the king's top minister.
Megillah 11a; Rashi on Megillah 11aאֲזַי חַיִּים בְּלָעוּנוּ בַּחֲרוֹת אַפָּם בָּנוּ.
then they would have swallowed us alive, when their anger burned against us
אֲזַי הַמַּיִם שְׁטָפוּנוּ נַחְלָה עָבַר עַל נַפְשֵׁנוּ.
then the waters would have swept us away, a torrent would have passed over us
The word nachla splits the commentators. Rashi says it is a word for sickness. Radak says it is a rushing stream, and the water stands for troubles. Our translation follows Radak.
Rashi and Radak on Tehillim 124:4אֲזַי עָבַר עַל נַפְשֵׁנוּ הַמַּיִם הַזֵּידוֹנִים.
then would have passed over us the raging waters
Then the raging waters would have passed over us.
Verse 5 says verse 4 again with the words in a new order. Metzudat David says the poet repeats a picture two or three times to make it stronger. Radak says the raging waters are ones that sweep along with wickedness and arrogance.
Radak and Metzudat David on Tehillim 124:5בָּרוּךְ יְיָ שֶׁלֹּא נְתָנָנוּ טֶרֶף לְשִׁנֵּיהֶם.
Blessed is Hashem who did not give us as prey to their teeth
Verses 1 to 5 all say what would have happened without Hashem. This is the first line about what did happen. Ibn Ezra (a Spanish commentator who died in the 1160s) says "Blessed" goes back to the picture of being swallowed alive: He did not hand us over.
Tehillim 124:1-6; Ibn Ezra on Tehillim 124:6נַפְשֵׁנוּ כְּצִפּוֹר נִמְלְטָה מִפַּח יוֹקְשִׁים הַפַּח נִשְׁבָּר וַאֲנַחְנוּ נִמְלָטְנוּ.
Our souls escaped like a bird from the trappers' trap. The trap was broken and we escaped
Nobody breaks the trap in this verse. It just "was broken." Radak says a bird cannot get out unless the trap it is in is broken, and so it is with us among the nations.
Radak on Tehillim 124:7עֶזְרֵנוּ בְּשֵׁם יְיָ עֹשֵׂה שָׁמַיִם וָאָרֶץ.
Our help is in the name of Hashem, maker of heaven and earth
Metzudat David says our help comes when we call on the name of Hashem, maker of heaven and earth, and not through the strength of our own hands.
Metzudat David on Tehillim 124:8In Yeshayahu (Isaiah) the line follows a picture of the end of days, when many nations say, "Come, let us go up to Hashem's mountain." Rashi (the great French commentator, 1000s) says the nations are the ones calling "House of Yaakov, come." Radak (Rabbi David Kimchi, a Bible commentator, about 1200) says it is the prophet urging his own people. Same words, two speakers.
Rashi and Radak on Yeshayahu 2:5Beit Yaakov is a collage. "House of Yaakov, come" is Yeshayahu 2:5. "Though all the peoples walk..." is Michah (Micah) 4:5. From "May Hashem be with us" to the end is Melachim I (1 Kings) 8:57 to 8:60. The two prophet verses sit right after the same vision of nations coming to learn. And all three speak of walking: lechu, yelechu, lalechet.
Yeshayahu 2:5; Michah 4:5; Melachim I 8:57-60When King Shlomo finished his Temple prayer he blessed the people with these words, and "my words" meant that prayer. In the siddur, one way to hear "my words" is as the prayers you have just said. The Hebrew for "I pleaded," hitchananti, shares its root with Tachanun, the prayer of pleading said earlier in the morning service.
Melachim I 8:54-59; Metzudat David on Melachim I 8:59; Siddur Sefard, instruction before Beit YaakovBereshit Rabbah (a collection of teachings on Bereishit, about 1,600 years old) quotes Rabbi Nechemyah: all twenty years Yaakov stayed in Lavan's house, he never lay down. Yaakov himself says there, "Sleep fled from my eyes." So what was he saying? Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi answers: the fifteen Songs of Ascents. His proof is Tehillim 124, "Let Israel now say." That Israel, the midrash says, is old Israel: Yaakov himself.
Bereshit Rabbah 68:11; Bereishit 31:40Tehillim 124 is the fifth of the fifteen Songs of Ascents, Tehillim 120 to 134. The Yishtabach prayer tells how the Mishnah ties them to fifteen steps in the Temple, where the Levites sang.
Mishnah Middot 2:5Rabbi Eliezer Melamed (a leading Israeli halacha writer today) writes that Nusach Sefard adds Tefillah LeDavid, this Beit Yaakov paragraph, and Tehillim 124 before the Song of the Day. Chassidic Nusach Sefard siddurim print them too, but many people who use them skip them and say only the Song of the Day, as Nusach Ashkenaz does.
Peninei Halakhah, Prayer 23:4In the early 1300s, Rabbi Yaakov ben Asher ended the introduction to the Tur (a code of Jewish law) with Yeshayahu's call: "House of Yaakov, come, let us walk in the light of Hashem. Amen." Later writers record a custom of saying it when leaving a city. The Halacha section has that custom.
Tur, Orach Chaim, Introduction; Eliyah Rabbah, Orach Chaim 110:8; Kaf HaChaim, Orach Chaim 110:26It can sound like a put-down. Read it next to its neighbors in Michah (Micah) and it gets more complicated. The verses just before describe a future when many nations say, "Let us go up to Hashem's mountain," and ask to be taught His ways. Swords become farm tools. Everyone sits under their own vine, with no one to scare them. Then comes our line.
The commentators do not read it the same way. Rashi (the great French commentator, 1000s) says the nations "go to destruction" because they served idols, following the old Aramaic translation of the prophets. That is the sharpest reading.
Radak (Rabbi David Kimchi, a Bible commentator, about 1200) takes it as a description of the time before that future. Until the Messiah brings the nations back to the good path, after the war of Gog and Magog (a final war described by the prophet Yechezkel, or Ezekiel), each people goes its own way. As for us, he says, even if the Temple is destroyed and we are sent into exile, we will not swap our God for another.
Metzudat David (a commentary from the 1700s) reads it as the reason we deserve that good future: they each follow their own gods, and we did not learn to copy their ways.
Now read the last line of the paragraph. In Shlomo's Temple prayer he asks God to answer the foreigner who comes from far away, "so that all the peoples of the earth will know Your name." The paragraph ends on the same hope, that all the peoples will know that Hashem is God.
So the sources disagree on how sharp the contrast is. The text itself puts the nations coming to learn first, and the line about each people's god after.
Michah 4:1-5,Rashi on Michah 4:5,Radak on Michah 4:5,Metzudat David on Michah 4:5,Melachim I 8:41-43, 8:60The paragraph asks for something that sounds odd: "May He turn our hearts to Him, to walk in all His ways." If God does the turning, what is left for you to do?
The HaMaavir Sheinah and Uva LeTzion pages take up a question like this one. There the Gemara (the central book of the Oral Torah, about 1,500 years old) gives Rabbi Chanina's rule: everything is in God's hands except fear of Heaven. And Resh Lakish (a sage of the Gemara) says that someone who comes to make themselves pure gets help.
A third teaching, in Makkot 10b, says that the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings all show that a person is led in the way he or she wants to go.
One way to put them together: you pick the direction, and the prayer asks for the push. Radak says "turn our hearts" is attached to the line before it, "May Hashem be with us." Metzudat David (a commentary from the 1700s) reads it as asking God to turn our hearts the way He turned our ancestors' hearts, back when prophecy was common.
None of these sources draws an exact line between your effort and God's help. In all three Gemara teachings, you are the one who sets the direction.
Melachim I 8:58,Berakhot 33b,Makkot 10b,Shabbat 104a,Radak and Metzudat David on Melachim I 8:58It is a fair question. The psalm uses huge pictures: enemies who would have swallowed us alive, a flood, a bird in a trap. It never says what the danger was.
Radak says the pictures are not literal. "Swallowed alive" is a way to show how hungry the enemy was, since people do not normally eat meat raw. The waters stand for troubles. The trap, he says, is exile.
The rabbis tie the words to particular stories. The Gemara says "a person rose up against us" means Haman in the Purim story, a person and not the king. A midrash says Yaakov said it during his sleepless twenty years in Lavan's house.
But look at who is speaking. "Let Israel now say" is a we-psalm, and verse 6 begins "Blessed is Hashem," so it reads as a thank-you for getting out. Ibn Ezra (a Bible commentator, 1100s) explains the bird: we had no power of our own to escape, and we got out "by the name of Hashem alone."
That also ties the psalm to the paragraph before it. There we say "we walk in the name of Hashem." The psalm ends: "Our help is in the name of Hashem."
The sources do not say that you personally must have lived through a flood. The psalm speaks in the voice of a whole people with a long memory, and you join in.
Tehillim 124,Radak on Tehillim 124:3, 124:4, 124:8,Megillah 11a,Bereshit Rabbah 68:11,Ibn Ezra on Tehillim 124:7Short ideas from the Chassidic masters, the Kabbalah and the Mussar teachers.
Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (a Chassidic teacher in the early 1800s) starts from a Gemara: Avraham called the Temple place a mountain, Yitzchak called it a field, and Yaakov called it a house. A house is where people actually live, so more people can understand it than a mountain or a field. He says that is why the nations of the world, whom he calls idolaters, can come to know God through Yaakov. He quotes Yeshayahu: "My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples." Now read the next line, about all the nations.
וְיַעֲקֹב קְרָאוֹ בַּיִת, שֶׁהוּא מְקוֹם יִשּׁוּב
Likutei Moharan I, 10:3Tehillim 124 begins "let Israel now say." In the Zohar (the central book of Kabbalah), Rabbi Yehudah says that this "Israel" is Yaakov, called Israel Saba, "Israel the elder." He says the merit of Yaakov protected the people. The Zohar says this in a passage about the night at the sea, when the Israelites left Egypt. Now read "let Israel now say" again.
זְכוּתָא דְּיַעֲקֹב אַגִּין עָלַיְיהוּ דְּיִשְׂרָאֵל... יִשְׂרָאֵל סָבָא
Zohar, Parashat BeshalachNear its end, Tehillim 124 describes a bird that escapes a trap. The Sefat Emet (Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter, the Rebbe of Ger in Poland) says the verse is about desire. The urge to sing to God was always inside the people, but before the Exodus it could not come out. He says the will was locked up in Egypt. He adds that every Shabbat frees the soul and its will in the same way, which is why Shabbat is a reminder of the Exodus.
נפשנו כצפור נמלטה. שהי' הרצון נאסר במצרים
Sefat Emet, Parashat Beshalach, 5661 (1901)Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner of Izbica (a Chassidic teacher in Poland in the 1800s), in his book Mei HaShiloach, notes that in Shemot God says "I brought you to Me," and then adds a condition: "if you listen." Even after being brought that close, he says, a person still needs mercy and must always pray to be set straight. His proof is King Shlomo's prayer at the dedication of the Temple, which this prayer borrows: "May He not leave us and not abandon us, to turn our hearts to Him."
צריך אתה לרחמים... ותמיד אתה צריך להתפלל
Mei HaShiloach, Volume II, Parashat YitroTehillim 124 thanks God that "the raging waters" did not sweep over us. Rabbi David Solomon Eibeschutz borrows that phrase in his book Arvei Nachal (written around 1800). He repeats a teaching he calls well known: the Hebrew word for Noah's ark, teivah, also means "word." While you pray or learn, he says, raging waters, meaning stray thoughts, try to overpower you. The fix is to put all your thinking inside the words of the prayer, the way Noah was hidden inside the ark.
תיבה פירושו מלה
Arvei Nachal, Parashat NoachThe practical laws. For a final ruling, ask your rav.
The Tefillah LeDavid page gives the first rule: on days when Tachanun (the plea after the Amidah) is not said, skip Tefillah LeDavid and begin here, at Beit Yaakov. The Sefard siddur (Metsudah edition) adds a second rule above this prayer: on days when El Erech Apayim (a short plea before the Torah reading) is also left out, skip Beit Yaakov too and go to the Song of the Day.
Siddur Sefard (Metsudah), instructions before Beit YaakovSome do. The Kaf HaChaim (a Sephardic law commentary by Rabbi Yaakov Chaim Sofer, early 1900s) records a custom: when leaving through the city gate, say the first two verses of this prayer, from Beit Yaakov through "forever." He cites the Eliyah Rabbah (a commentary on the Shulchan Aruch, the main code of Jewish law, written around 1700), which quotes an older book, Tzidah LaDerech: people of good deeds say it as they leave the city. Both describe it as a custom, not a requirement.
Kaf HaChaim, Orach Chaim 110:26; Eliyah Rabbah, Orach Chaim 110:8Pri Etz Chaim (Rabbi Chaim Vital's record of the practice of the Arizal, the great Kabbalist of Tzfat who died in 1572; this passage is from notes by his fellow students) gives the order after Uva LeTzion: Tefillah LeDavid, counted as 18 verses together with the verse Beit Yaakov, then Shir HaMaalot, then the Song of the Day.
Pri Etz Chaim, Gate of Reading the Torah 5:10בית יעקב לכו ונלכה באור ה'
House of Yaakov, come, let us walk in the light of Hashem.
כי כל העמים ילכו איש בשם אלהיו ואנחנו נלך בשם ה' אלהינו לעולם ועד
Though all the peoples walk, each in the name of his god, we will walk in the name of Hashem our God forever and ever.
יהי ה' אלהינו עמנו כאשר היה עם אבתינו אל יעזבנו ואל יטשנו
May Hashem our God be with us, as He was with our ancestors. May He not leave us and not abandon us.
האומות יאמרו להם כן והמקרא הזה הוא מוסב על והלכו עמים רבים
The nations will say this to them, and this verse goes back to "many peoples will go."
אף על פי שיחריב הבית ונגלה מארצנו לא נמיר אלהינו באל אחר אלא נלך בשמו כל הימים
Even if the Temple is destroyed and we are exiled from our land, we will not exchange our God for another god. We will walk in His name all our days.
כל עשרים שנה שעמד בביתו של לבן לא שכב ומה היה אומר רבי יהושע בן לוי אמר חמש עשרה שיר המעלות שבספר תהלים
All twenty years he stayed in Lavan's house, he did not lie down. And what was he saying? Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: the fifteen Songs of Ascents in the book of Tehillim.
שיר המעלות לולי ה' שהיה לנו יאמר נא ישראל לולי ה' שהיה לנו בקום עלינו אדם אדם ולא מלך
"If not for Hashem who was on our side, let Israel now say. If not for Hashem who was on our side, when a person rose up against us." A person, and not a king.
בדרך שאדם רוצה לילך בה מוליכין אותו
In the way a person wants to go, they lead him.
בנוסח ספרד מוסיפים לומר לפני שיר של יום מזמור תפלה לדוד ... ולקט פסוקים הפותח בבית יעקב ומזמור שיר המעלות לדוד
In Nusach Sefard they add, before the Song of the Day, the psalm Tefillah LeDavid, a collection of verses that opens with "Beit Yaakov," and the psalm "A Song of Ascents of David."
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