King David vs Hamas (Psalm 140) - Tehila Gimpel: The Land of Israel Fellowship

hi everyone okay well first of all I want to thank everyone who watched my video last week on the tourah portion and the feedback I received was so warm and so overwhelming that it really gave me strength to keep on going and trying to share so I have a dirty little secret since the beginning of the war so many friends and members of our fellowship have been sending me beautiful Psalms and referring me to different chapters of the psalm saying read this it'll give you strength and this Psalm gives me strength so maybe it'll be powerful for you and you know my kids are so good about this my little kids they don't go to bed with like little kid books anymore they each fall asleep with a book of tahim a book of Psalms in their little hands they don't ask for fairy tales anymore they just want to say Psalms together for the captives and for the soldiers they're so good and I want to be good too honestly I do but I just haven't had it in me I know it sounds horrible it's like embarrassing as I'm even saying it but that's the honest truth I tried and I tried and I could not make it through the Psalms I could not make it through even one and you know I was working on the last video that I made about Noah and his fight with Kamas and I was reading an article in that context by khanan Pat I'm sure many of you have heard of Kanan but for those who haven't khanan is one of the greatest heroes and role models of our time besides for being a tremendous Torah scholar and a member of the knesset he was one of the first and strongest leaders of resettling Judea and Samaria after The Six Day War and he led the way to the establishment of gusion and he passed away only a little more than 10 years ago in 2011 he was a tremendously righteous individual and had a huge um impact on Jeremy and me and he wrote many Torah articles and last week I was reading his article about the portion of Noah and then he finishes his article signs his name it's a really old article and at the bottom under the article there's like a note like a PS I don't even know if he wrote it how it got there but there's this note and it says like this it says look deeply at Psalm 140 as if it was written for us today in our fight against Hamas that's what is written there and it says the strings of David's harp in this Psalm shoot arrows at the Kamas and I was like stunned there was no continuation no explanation no context I felt like I'm getting like a message here that I need to read this Psalm and it's so weird cuz I was just thinking about how how it's so hard how weird it's so hard for me to say the Psalms and it's like this note was buried here for many years and like unnoticed I think and I decided I was going to try to carefully look at this Psalm and you know sometimes we just read the Psalms without really understanding them but Kanan is saying this is a Psalm that speaks to our current fight with Kamas come back pray this Psalm but from a place of true cavana true intention and understanding so I want to look at this carefully so it starts the first verse for the conductor a song of David so this is a Psalm written by David that even Ezra says that David wrote this Psalm while he was hiding from King Saul from King sha now just to understand the reality that when we're living in just to kind of share a picture into our life when our younger kids went to bed on Shabbat dinner after Shabbat dinner on Friday night that's usually a time we talk with our older teens about you know the Torah portion what you do this week just the normal stuff but if you were in our house you actually would have been honestly horrified we were literally walking around our house looking for weak spots and having conversations that a person should never have with their children like if God forbid a terrorist came in from this window you go that way I'll take the kids that way this son should take a gun this son should go hide and I'm sure we were not the only ones talking about this and God forbid it should never come to pass and we have faith in Hashem and we have faith in the soldiers protecting us that this should never happen but after seeing the massacre two weeks ago I don't think anyone really is able to not think or plan for that kind of worst case scenario because it just happened to so many people and this is an actual conversation and we're debating suddenly well is it better if God forbid this happened to try to run into the safe room and lock ourselves in but then be stuck inside kind of vulnerable and concentrated together or should we run to the caves that are behind our house beneath our house and you know our house if you've been to the arot farms you know that the arote Farms sits at the edge of the mountains of Ze where David actually hid in the caves that are here when he was hiding from Shaul and he wrote the Psalms and we're arguing back and forth this way or that way and one of our s says okay you know what just in case I'll go down tomorrow to the caves and I'll put some food and water in there so that we can make a run for it if we have to without needing to carry a bag and just to understand like the meeting of the Bible and our actual modern lives I said to myself oh my my God are we actually making practical real life considerations about going to hide from murderous terrorists God forbid in the actual caves where David himself hid from murderous sha like your ears don't believe what they hear your mouth saying and then I started to try to think what it felt like to be David at that time on the one hand he's been already anointed by Samuel by Shu he knows the end of the story he knows hashem's will for the Jewish people is to create a kingdom of David that will be a light to the world to build the BAM mikas the temple and yet his reality is that he's hiding like a a criminal like an animal in a cave from someone wants to kill him it's so much how we feel in Israel like on the one hand we've returned to our land so many people see hashem's hand in our return and want with all their hearts to build a beautiful Garden of Eden here in Israel to be a you know sent Torah from Zion and yet here we are in a reality it feels so far away it feels so painful and as I'm studying this Psalm I discover that the sporno says that this experience in David's life in this particular Psalm 140 will be repeated on a larger scale before the coming of mashiah RAB Ys actually goes even further and says that this specific Psalm describes what's going to happen in the end of days and it is a divinely inspired description of what will happen when evil meets its final defeat and it says save me from an evil man from a man of Hamas when I first read that it sounded like a lot of other Psalms oh you know Hashem they're bad guys and save me well why is Kanan sending us to this Psalm well first of all it actually uses the word Kamas but it doesn't only use it in this verse three times in this Psalm does the word Hamas appear and it's the only Psalm with so many uses of the word Hamas and that's the first thing you notice it's like a giant neon sign with no there's no other psalm like this that mentions Hamas so directly and then I looked at it even closer when you look at the explanation of the malim he says read this Psalm carefully every verse has a double description of evil each time it describes evil that's being faced in the psalm it describes it in two ways that are not quite the same and the verse just goes like one two one the verses go one two one two like one description a second kind of description one and a second and it struck me so powerfully because anyone who's following this war is first and foremost noticing that it's being fought on two fronts first of all there's the actual war with Hamas like the genocidal terrorists that want to kill and kidnap and rape and burn and behead but there's also the battle beyond the physical battle that if you were paying attention you see as being waged by a whole other type of people people that would have told you just a few weeks ago that the biggest problem in the world is hurting people's feelings by you know not respecting their pronouns or calling them the right gender or some kind of of microaggression or something that you know doesn't feel good those are the people that are Marching in favor of the Hamas for actual violence the same people who said hasht me too believe women that claim that they've been sexually harassed are the same people who when women say that they've been raped as the Hamas records them with body cams to post live on the internet those same people like I haven't seen any real proof so there's this Line in the Sand between people who see things with a moral compass versus both the evil doers but also their sympathizers who dress it up in words that sound like oh human rights and humanitarianism but they know that it's actually the side of evil and right here it appears in the words of the verse and of the words of our sages from centuries ago guiding us for precisely this time because the psalm says save me from an evil man and save me from a from a man of Hamas you shall guard me the MIM says and what is an evil man an evil man is a person who's just self-interested who wants to do things for themselves they don't care about others and if other people get hurt that's fine meaning they don't mind doing evil but evil is not the end their own self-interest is their end but there's something called ish Hamas the malim says he says the ish Hamas listen to says the man of Hamas is not stirred by greed Or Glory but enjoys perpetration of violence for its own sake they enjoy causing pain and damage and derive greater pleasure from openly and brazenly committing violence you know the Nazis wanted to get rid of Jews that was their their end point and the cleaner and faster they could do it the better and when they finished they tried to cover up their tracks because they knew it was wrong never in history the history of the world has there been a massacre so brutal as this where the perpetrators put on go GoPro cameras on their body so they could Revel in displaying their evil and this was written by the malium hundreds of years ago before the organization that would call itself Hamas was ever a twinkle in any Islamic eye so as we read this Psalm we need to understand that David is talking about a time in that we will face these double evils the first half of each verse is about the indirect enemies the sympathizers the subtle enemies that seem so sweet and nice and the second half is about the Hamas actual evil and it goes on in verse three says who plotted evil things in their heart every day they gather to wage work there's a type of evil that's in the heart it's underlying anti-Semitism that we see come out somehow now and it manages to unite lgbtqs who if they would go to Palestine they would literally have their skin flate and environmentalists like Greta thumberg and islamist sympathizers managed to pull all these people together because in their heart they have this hatred of Jews but they talk this nice game and they pretend to be big lovers of humanity until something happens that draws out their hearts but then there's the actual Kamas it calls them yuru Rashi says these are people who will make war in homes and places of settlement how true is that we're actually dealing with people who don't wage war on the battlefield but actually go into people's homes and commit atrocities they keep weapons in their own homes to weaponize their own children their own hospitals and schools and kindergartens to use their children as human Shields it literally says what we are seeing before our eyes and then verse four says they wet their tongues like serpents the Venom of a spider is under their lips forever in verse four the sages explain that there's a difference between a snake and a spider a snake keeps its fangs inside its mouth a venomous spider keeps its fangs outside of its mouth I say there's going to be two types of Venom the type that's well hidden and dressed up and those who like to proudly wear their venom like the Kamas on the the outside and then verse five says guard me oh Lord from the hands of a wicked man from a man ofas it says in the Hebrew you shall watch me who plotted to cause my steps to slip so now in verse five we ask hem to protect us both from the wicked and from theas person but on both of them the verse reveals their internal motivation it says in English they want to make my feet slip but that's not exactly how the stages understood the Hebrew here the verse the sporno says that this is how about how sha chased David to the point that he had nowhere to stay in the land of Israel and he had to go to foreign Exile that's an interesting meaning here about the underlying motivation because here we know that the spiritual strength of the Jewish people is to live in the land the underlying motivation is to take us away from our land it's not about Palestinian rights or humanitarian motivation what unites the evil doers here evildoers here is the desire to remove us from ER Israel from the land of Israel then verse six says hoty man men have concealed a snare for me with ropes they spread a net beneath my path and lay traps for me constantly in verse six we learn of two different types of traps that we'll be facing by evil first of all it says hoty man have concealed a snare there are certain types of concealed traps you know they interviewed yab Galant the Minister of Defense yesterday and they said why are you agreeing to let in trucks of humanitarian Aid to Gaza without our hostages receiving humanitarian care why not say yes we'll give you humanitarian Aid if you let the Red Cross see our Jewish hostages the Jewish hostages if you release the babies and the children that you took if babies get supplies too your babies will get supplies and his answer was stuning he said the American government insisted on it they conditioned supplying us with weapons and defense systems that we need on us to agreeing to send in those trucks to Gaza this is a great example of a hidden champ thank you America for your kind aid but when it comes with the hidden condition and trap that is not obvious unless you look closely that is one kind of evil that the that the psalm is talking about but then there's a second kind of trap which is so much more clear it says the Hamas type of evildoers that style of evil sets traps that are clear in site mshim the Trap is visible well how do this trap that's visible work the midra and eser Raba says this is like a trap for a thirsty wolf that the hunter lays the Trap by The Watering Hole the wolf sees it but he says if I go down I'm going to be trapped if I go to the water but if I don't I'm going to die of thirst and he's put in an impossible position when I read this mud it struck me so strong you know someone from one of the kibuts that was overtaken by terrorists on the day of the massacre shared screenshots of the horrible WhatsApp messages going between the neighbors as they were being slaughtered and people are writing I'm hiding with my children in the safe room and what did these monsters do while they're outside they lit the houses on fire so the safe room would fill with smoke and then they waited outside and people are writing I'm holding my little boy he's suffocating from smoke but I hear Arabic outside the door and the window if I go out they're going to kill me if I stay inside I will will die of smoke inhalation and the midash is saying this this is the kind of trap that Hamas is going to send for you where you're between a rock and a hard place you have no choice that is the Trap that it is talking about those are the kind of evildoers who are going to be dealing with and then verse seven says I said to the Lord you are my god hearken oh Lord to the voice of my supplication and then God of Lord might of my salvation you shall protect my head on the day of battle so it's at this point that we say Hashem you are our God our only hope is that will protect our heads on the day of battle and it's an amazing thing because it's not a secret that there's always been a lot of tension in Israel between the secular and religious and you know the more traditional and the more liberal and you know those who say let's be a nation like all other nations we don't have to be so Jewish and those saying we need to make this place a fulfillment of the Prophecies of hashem's vision for the Jewish people as a nation of priests and a light coming from Zion and now in this horrendous War there are the most insane stories coming out a professor that I studied within University who is about his farle Progressive secular as they come yal Bashan wrote about a case where a family a totally secular family in kibuts were hiding locked in their safe room and the final the soldiers finally killed the terrorists and came to save them they were too scared to open the door because the terrorists had been speaking to them in Hebrew and trying to convince them that they were IDF soldiers to open the door to kill them and so this completely secular Soldier is coming to rescue this completely secular Jewish Family hiding in their safe room and he says to them how do I know you're not Hamas and the secular Soldier screams to him sh is here o Israel Hashem is our God Hashem is one and the professor writes when he heard that story for the first time he understood the unbreakable link between being Israeli and being a Jew between his military ID number and the numbers that were tattooed on our arms in owitz it's like David is teaching us that we're going to face this situation when the Hamas is at our door we're going to say Hashem hero Israel Hashem is our God Hashem is one and then he was able to open the door and it's worth mentioning that in all of Jewish history there's never been such a demand for Kipas yamakas tiit from soldiers to the point that there was not even enough supply for the people all over the country to the point that now people all over the country are volunteering to make C SE for the soldiers they can't keep up with the demand they're having to make weight lists for tiit to give preference to firsttime se wearers who have never worn SE that's how great the demand is they've never seen so many soldiers soldiers asking to go out to battle with aipa and CIT and that's what David is saying you shall protect my head on the day of battle it's going to be on that day that we're going to remember that we're Jews and that Hashem is the only one we could put our faith in and then verse 9 says Lord do not Grant the desires of the wicked not let his thoughts succeed for they are constantly huy 10 says the numbers of those who surround me May the lies of their lips cover them here it seems that we're asking Hashem not to let our enemies plans come to fruition that they should be smothered with their own lies and it's interesting the word used here to describe the thoughts of our enemies it says zamo which is the same root word used to describe false Witnesses items and me that do what false Witnesses do they claim they saw someone doing a terrible crime like say like oh I saw Simon commit a murder and they're doing that so that Simon would get the death penalty falsely so they're actually the real killers right like those false Witnesses meaning it's not just that the evil that we're going to face are going to lie but they're going to attribute to someone to us the actual evil that characterizes them like Israel is so cautious to avoid civilian casualties even when dealing with the most cruel people and then our enemy claims like a perverse perverse accusation that Israel bombed a hospital when we the hospital was not only not bombed but it turns out that the bomb that blew up next to it was actually shot by the Arabs themselves and that's just like you know a case where their lies are actually turning around to smother them and then 11 says let fiery colds descend upon them he will cast them into fire into war so that they will not rise now this is amazing I like this verse because it says that they're going to be destroyed inside the Hebrew word here is their own Maham in the translation it says they'll be destroyed in war but Malo is not War I don't know why it's translated like that all of the sages explain that this word is something about a cave underground like some sort of underground dwelling and that's so strange because what we're dealing with right now is the Hamas that have actually been known to dig underground tunnels the vision here is that those tunnels what we're praying for is for those tunnels to turn into the terrorist's own Graves a and then 12 says a slander will not be established on a man of violence uh the evil of him will be thrust upon the other it says sorry now this is actually my favorite verse in the entire Psalm because what it's telling us here is about the ultimate Justice there is this first kind of bad the English says it's a slanderer that will not be established but the Hebrew does not say slanderer it says Ison the man of words will not be established those are clearly the first type of evildoers the ones who speak lofly about human rights and tolerance but actually have evil in their hearts the isas is the man of violence is the man of Kamas in this verse it says that the evil will trap him who is him the simple meaning of the verse is that the man of Kamas will actually trap and destroy that man of word that subtle evildoer that we saw in the earlier verses the sympathizers of evils you know in the in the end evil cannibalizes itself I saw this video from yesterday from England 100,000 people came out to march in England in support of the Hamas and then some guy came out to join them with a rainbow lgbtq flag and immediately got violently assaulted these people simply do not understand that they are next if Hamas God forbid would ever have their way with us they would come after those same liberal progressives that are supporting them first it's so obvious and this verse is saying the evildoer will actually fight against one another and Destroy one another and then 13 says I know the Lord will perform the Judgment of a poor man and the cause of the needy now the resolution comes in this verse where we're actually strengthened because we know that in in end Hashem will do justice that is the antidote to our Despair and our grief it's to strengthen ourselves in that knowledge and this is really interesting because if you look at the Hebrew it's fascinating it's one of the places where we have a tradition to pronounce the word differently than it is written in the actual text and in the actual test text it says you know that Hashem will do justice but in the pronunciation we say I know that Hashem will do justice it's like David is telling us maybe sometimes I'll falter but you'll know you'll know the truth and you'll Raise Me Up and sometimes maybe you'll forget but I'll raise you up there's like a play on words here where we keep each other strong you know a few days ago I had this terrible breaking point and I just felt like I couldn't go on I said to Jeremy Hashem forgive me but the trth truth is this is what I said to Jeremy I I said if all of this turns out to be for nothing and all of this horror ends with no real change in the equation Without Really destroying evil I'm out I can't do this anymore I don't want to be on this ride anymore it's too perverse it's too horrendous I'm going to move to Montana and I'm going to make a rant I want off of this Israel train and Jeremy looked at me he took me and he said no he goes if we're going to go down we're going to go on down on this ship this is our ship where Israel goes down we go down and if that is what's going to happen that is where we will go cuz we are not getting on we are not on this ride because of a promise that it'll turn out okay we're on the side of good because we are on the side of good for the sake of good and we can't live any other way you will not be able to live any other way and we have to just have faith that what Hashem wants from us is to be good and he will do what he knows is right and it was this moment where you know I lost my strength and Jeremy lifted me up and we have sometimes the opposite where I'm able to lift him up and that's what David is hinting to us I think here that sometimes s we're just going to need to lift each other and then 14 concludes the righteous will thank your name and the upright will sit before you of course the righteous will thank you hem but the righteous are not going to be alone being righteous is a tall order very few of us are perfectly righteous but the fight is going to be the Line in the Sand between two sides of the world you don't have to be a Jew to know where to stand anymore you don't have to be particularly righteous to know where to stand anymore it's enough to be upright the says Yar someone with a straightforward common sense and morality who know will know where to stand and please with the help of Hashem we can you know now pray for a speedy defeat of evil and fresh hims Mercy on the captives and the soldiers and for the wounded and for all of Israel