Why does a Chanukah song spend its first verses on Egypt and Babylon?
Read the first three verses again. Verse one asks for the Temple to be rebuilt. Verse two is Egypt. Verse three is Babylon. Verse four is Haman, and the Greeks do not come until verse five. It is fair to ask what any of this has to do with Chanukah.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (a former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom) says in his commentary on the song that the verses after the first go in order through four rescues: slavery in Egypt, the exile in Babylon, Purim, and Chanukah. He does not say why the poet chose these, and the song never says either.
The Tanach does have someone doing something similar. In the book of Daniel, Daniel studies the books and works out how long Hashem told the prophet Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah) that Jerusalem would lie in ruins: seventy years (Daniel 9:2). Then he begins a long prayer. In the middle of it he says: "You took Your people out of Egypt with a strong hand and made a name for Yourself, as on this day" (Daniel 9:15). Al HaNissim, the paragraph we add on Chanukah, has a similar line: "You made a great and holy name for Yourself in Your world... as on this day."
So when Daniel prayed about the seventy years, he reached back to Egypt. The song puts the same two events together, in the order they happened: Egypt, then Babylon at the end of seventy years. That is a parallel, not proof that the poet had Daniel in mind.
Look also at how verse one ends: "Then I will finish, with song and psalm, the dedication of the altar." In the book of Ezra, which tells of the return from Babylon, those who came back first built the altar before anything else, because they were afraid of the peoples around them, and began offering sacrifices before the Temple's foundation was even laid (Ezra 3:2-6). In that story, coming home starts at the altar.
Rabbi Sacks, Koren Siddur commentary on Maoz Tzur,Daniel 9:2 and 9:15,Ezra 3:2-6,Al HaNissim, Siddur SefardWhy does the song say "I" about things that happened long before I was born?
In verses two and three the speaker says "my soul," "my life," "I served strangers," "I was saved." Egypt was ancient history by the time the poet wrote. So whose "I" is this?
The Mishnah (the first written collection of Jewish oral law, from around the year 200) answers for Egypt: "In every generation a person must see himself as if he left Egypt." It proves this from the Torah's own words: "It is because of this that Hashem did for me when I left Egypt" (Shemot 13:8). The verse says "me," and the Mishnah quotes it as its proof.
Then the Mishnah lists what we thank for: "from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy, ... from subjugation to redemption." Two of those words, yagon (sorrow) and shi'bud (subjugation), are in verse two of the song: "my strength was used up in sorrow" and "in slavery (shi'bud) under the kingdom of the calf."
The Rambam (Maimonides, the great medieval codifier of Jewish law, died 1204) turns it into a law: a person must show himself as if he himself went out of slavery in Egypt just now. He ties it to the commandment "remember that you were a slave," which he explains as: as if you yourself were a slave, and went free, and were redeemed.
The Mishnah and the Rambam speak only about Egypt. The song uses the same "I" for Babylon too. Whether that stretches the rule or follows the same instinct, the sources do not say.
Mishnah Pesachim 10:5,Shemot 13:8,Rambam, Laws of Chametz and Matzah 7:6Why does the song say "even there I found no rest"? Wasn't the Temple the good time?
Verse three says: "He brought me to His holy inner room, and even there I found no rest. An oppressor came and exiled me." If God brought us there, why no rest?
The next words begin with ki: "because I served strangers." Ki can mean "for" or "because." If it means because, the song is giving the reason for the exile. "Strangers" can mean foreign gods: in Yirmiyahu (the prophet Jeremiah) 2:25 the people say, "I love the strangers," and the Metzudat David (a commentary on the Prophets from the 1700s) explains that these are idols.
Serving strangers is also in Yirmiyahu 5:19. There the people ask, "Why did Hashem do all this to us?" The prophet answers: "Just as you left Me and served foreign gods in your land, so you will serve strangers in a land that is not yours." There the foreign gods are the sin and serving strangers is the punishment. The song does not say it is quoting this verse, and it may use the words differently, but the two are worth reading together.
Divrei HaYamim (Chronicles) tells the same story. God sent messengers again and again, "because He had pity on His people." The people mocked the messengers, "until there was no cure" (36:15-16). Then the Babylonians burned the Temple (36:19).
Divrei HaYamim also explains the number seventy. The land rested "all the days of its desolation, to fulfill seventy years" (36:21). It was paying back its Shabbat years. The Torah says the fields must rest every seventh year, and the people had not let them. The Torah warned of this long before: the land "will rest what it did not rest in your Shabbat years" (Vayikra 26:34-35).
That is the hard part of verse three. The hope is at its end: "at the end of seventy years I was saved." Those seventy years come from Yirmiyahu 29:10, "when seventy years are complete for Babylon, I will remember you," a promise. The verse that gives a reason for the exile and the verse that promises its end are both Yirmiyahu's.
Yirmiyahu 2:25 with Metzudat David,Yirmiyahu 5:19 and 29:10,Divrei HaYamim II 36:15-21,Vayikra 26:34-35,Vayikra 25:4