49. For all these points comp. Ber. 58 b; 59 a; Sot. 48 a; Shabb. 138 b; Baba B. 12 a, b .
50. Vayyikra R. 19.
51. Sukk. 55 b.
52. Pesiqta, 1 ed. Buber, p. 145 a, last lines.
53. Midr, on Ps. cxxxvii.
54. Pes iqta
148 b.
55. This is the Pesiqta, not that which is generally quoted either as Rabbathi or Sutarta.
56. Chag. 13 b.
57. This in very many Rabbinical passages. Comp. Castelli, II Messia, p. 176, note 4.
58. Shemoth R. 2. ed. Warsh. p. 7 b, lines 12 &c.
59. In proof they appeal to such passages as 2 Chr. vii. 16; Ps. iii. 4; Cant. ii. 9, proving it
even from the decree of Cyrus (Ezra i. 3, 4), in which God is spoken of as still in desolate
Jerusalem.
60. The passage from Yalkut on Is. lx. 1 is quoted in full in Appendix IX.
61. Ber. 3 a; 59 a.
62. Pesiqta 119 b; 120 a.
All this is to be gloriously set right, when the Lord turneth the captivity of Zion, and the
Messiah cometh. But when may He be expected, and what are the signs of His coming?
Or perhaps the question should thus be put: Why are the redemption of Israel and the
coming of the Messiah so unaccountably delayed? It is here that the Synagogue finds
itself in presence of an insoluble mystery. The explanations attempted are, confessedly,
guesses, or rather attempts to evade the issue. The only course left is, authoritatively to
impose silence on all such inquiries - the silence, as they would put it, of implicit,
mournful submission to the inexplicable, in faith that somehow, when least e xpected,
deliverance would come; or, as we would put it, the silence of ever-recurring
disappointment and despair. Thus the grand hope of the Synagogue is, as it were, written
in an epitaph on a broken tombstone, to be repeated by the thousands who, for these long
centuries, have washed the ruins of the Sanctuary with unavailing tears.
5. Why delayeth the Messiah His coming? Since the brief and broken sunshine of the days
of Ezra and Nehemiah, the sky overhead has ever grown darker, nor have even the
terrib le storms, which have burst over Israel, reft the canopy of cloud. The first capitivity
passed, why not the second? This is the painful question ever and again discussed by the
Rabbis.63 Can they mean it seriously, that the sins of the second, are more grievous than
those which caused the first dispersion; or that they of the first captivity repented, but not
they of the second? What constitutes this repentance which yet remains to be made? But
the reasoning becomes absolutely self-contradictory when, toget her with the assertion
that, if Israel repented but one day, the Messiah would come,64 we are told, that Israel
will not repent till Elijah comes.65 Besides, bold as the language is, there is truth in the
expostulation, which the Midrash66 puts into the mouth of the congregation of Israel:
'Lord of the world, it depends on Thee that we repent.' Such truth, that, although at first