“They Shall Look Toward Me Concerning the One Whom They Pierced” — A Jewish Reading of Zechariah 12–13
I begin from the pasuk itself, because all of the noise around this passage comes from ignoring the simple structure of its words:
“And I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplications; and they shall look toward Me concerning the one whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only son, and they shall be bitter over him as one is bitter over a firstborn.”
(Zechariah 12:10, my translation; compare the Hebrew text)
Everything I am about to say—Peshat, Remez, Drash, Sod—rests on this Hebrew, not on someone’s theological agenda in another language.
🔵 Context: Who is speaking, and what world are we inside?
Chapters 9–14 of Zechariah form a prophetic unit about the end of history as we know it: the struggle around Yerushalayim, the downfall of hostile nations, the purification of Israel, and the revelation of HaShem’s kingship.
Chapter 12 opens with a deliberate “zoom out”:
“The burden of the word of HaShem concerning Israel—
says HaShem, Who stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him.” (12:1)
Three verbs, three strata of reality:
1. “Stretches out the heavens” – the upper worlds, the spiritual architecture.
2. “Lays the foundation of the earth” – the manifest, physical stage of history.
3. “Forms the spirit of man within him” – the inner theater of human consciousness and choice.
Already here the pasuk is speaking in the language of Sefer Yetzirah: a structured cosmos built from “thirty-two paths of wisdom”—ten sefirot and twenty-two letters—through which HaShem “engraved and created His world.”
Zechariah is not describing a random historical crisis. He is describing a pressure point where:
• The heavenly structure (“stretches out the heavens”),
• The political-historical field (“lays the foundation of the earth”), and
• The inner human spirit (“forms the spirit of man within him”)
all converge on Yerushalayim.
From verse 2 onward, HaShem describes:
• Yerushalayim as a “cup of staggering” and “a burdensome stone” to all the nations around (12:2–3).
• The nations converging to besiege her (12:3, 9).
• HaShem strengthening Yehudah and Yerushalayim, making their weakest like David and the “house of David” like an angelic presence (12:5–8).
Only then, once the scene of war and divine protection is set, do we reach 12:10: the inner reaction of Am Yisrael—broken-hearted mourning and return.
And immediately after our focal pesukim, the text continues:
“On that day a spring will be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem—for sin and for impurity.” (13:1)
So structurally:
1. Verses 1–9 – external crisis, siege, and miraculous defense.
2. Verses 10–14 – internal crisis, mourning, and spiritual awakening.
3. 13:1 – the result: purification from sin, removal of idolatry and false prophecy.
Whatever “piercing” and “mourning” mean, they serve teshuvah and purification, not an eternal indictment of Israel.
🔵 The Hebrew pivot: “They shall look toward Me concerning the one whom they pierced”
The entire missionary argument stands or falls on one line:
וְהִבִּ֥יטוּ אֵלַ֖י אֵ֣ת אֲשֶׁר־דָּקָ֑רוּ
Literally, word by word:
• והביטו – “and they shall look / gaze”
• אלי – “toward Me”
• את – direct-object marker
• אשר דקרו – “the one whom they pierced”
Hebrew allows a very natural reading, defended by Jewish commentators ancient and modern:
“They will look toward Me, concerning the one whom they pierced.”
In other words, their turning to HaShem and their mourning are about a human figure (or figures) who was pierced, not about HaShem Himself being literally pierced, and certainly not about some later human claim to divinity.
Notice how the verse immediately continues:
“And they shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only son,
and be bitter over him as one is bitter over a firstborn.” (12:10)
The object of the mourning is consistently “him”, not “Me.” If the text wanted to say “they mourn for Me,” it would simply have said so. The grammar itself resists the theology that is being imposed on it.
Targum Yonatan, our ancient Aramaic translation, reflects this: it renders that they will look to HaShem and mourn over him like an only son and a firstborn.
So already on the level of Peshat, the simple, honest reading of the Hebrew is:
• HaShem pours a spirit of grace and supplication.
• Israel turns back to HaShem.
• They mourn for a pierced, slain human—a tragic, righteous loss in the context of a cataclysmic war.
No “eternal blood-guilt” is stated. No declaration that Israel “killed God.” That entire edifice is imported from outside the text.
🔵 Classical Jewish readings: who is the “pierced one”?
Our sages, the classical commentators, are very explicit here—and none of them speak the language of later polemics.
🔹 Rashi – national mourning, and a midrash about Mashiach ben Yosef
Rashi first gives the straightforward reading: an intense national mourning “as a man mourns over his only son,” which he anchors in the comparison to the mourning for King Yoshiyahu in the valley of Megiddo (12:11; cf. II Chronicles 35:20–25).
Then he adds:
• “Our rabbis expounded this… concerning Mashiach ben Yosef who is killed,” referencing Sukkah 52a.
In Sukkah 52a the Gemara discusses our very pesukim:
• One opinion: the mourning is for Mashiach ben Yosef, slain in the wars of the End.
• Another opinion: the mourning is for the death of the evil inclination.
• The Gemara concludes that interpreting it about the death of Mashiach ben Yosef fits the intensity of the described mourning.
Already from Hazal, then:
• The “pierced one” is either a messianic leader from Yosef/Ephraim (Mashiach ben Yosef),
• or a metaphor for the slaughter of the yetzer hara, the inner drive toward evil.
Both readings are fully internal to Jewish tradition. Neither remotely resembles the later claim that “Israel killed a deity.”
🔹 Metzudat David – accountability and justice
Metzudat David (largely following Radak) explains that Israel will look toward HaShem “to seek judgment, to repay the one whom they pierced,” and he too notes the rabbinic tradition that this refers to Mashiach ben Yosef dying in battle.
This adds another axis:
• The “looking toward HaShem” is also a demand: how could this righteous one fall?
• The mourning is both grief and a cry for divine justice.
🔹 Targum Yonatan – national martyrs and consolation
Targum Yonatan, building on midrashic traditions, paraphrases that HaShem will pour out a spirit of kindness and mercy, and:
• They will beseech Him concerning those who were slain,
• “They shall mourn over him as one mourns over an only son, and they shall be bitter over him as over a firstborn.”
Here, the pierced one is effectively a Jewish martyr (or martyrs), slain in the wars around Yerushalayim. The nations are guilty of killing Jews; Israel is guilty of whatever failures made such tragedy possible; but no one is said to have murdered HaShem.
🔵 Mashiach ben Yosef – the broken first-born of history
Within the larger web of sources, Mashiach ben Yosef is a figure:
• From Yosef/Ephraim,
• Who precedes Mashiach ben David,
• Who fights the wars of HaShem and, in many traditions, is killed, evoking national mourning and contributing to Israel’s ultimate spiritual elevation.
Sukkah 52a describes Mashiach ben David seeing Mashiach ben Yosef slain and pleading only for life from HaShem.
In this light, Zechariah’s “only son” and “firstborn” imagery is not about deifying a human being. It is about:
• The collective heartbreak of Am Yisrael when its most sacrificial, self-given leader falls.
• The realization that our unity, our merit, our mutual responsibility were not yet complete—and that the cost was borne by the most righteous among us.
If someone wants to see here a “prototype” of a suffering, even atoning, Jewish figure—that is already present in our own sources, long before anyone else appropriated the motif. But he remains:
• A servant of HaShem,
• A human messianic figure,
• Folded into the larger process that leads to the full geulah of Mashiach ben David.
Not an object of worship.
🔵 The inner architecture: Ruach ḥen ve-taḥanunim and Atika Yomin
The verse does not begin with death. It begins with an outpouring:
“And I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of ḥen and supplications (רוח חן ותחנונים).”
“Pouring” (ושפכתי) in the prophets evokes an effusion from the highest levels—like “I will pour out My spirit upon all flesh” in Yoel. Here it is specifically:
• רוח חן – a “spirit of grace / charm / undeserved favor,”
• ותחנונים – and “supplications,” an inner drive to plead, to seek, to soften.
In the language of Kabbalah:
• “Chen” hints to a flow from Keter, the super-conscious delight and will of HaShem, whose inner dimension is called Atik Yomin, the “Ancient of Days,” the level described as “the most concealed of all.”
• From Atik Yomin, compassion descends through Arich Anpin in “thirteen channels of mercy,” the mystical root of the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy.
On that day, Zechariah is saying, the “valve” of Atik opens in a new way:
• The people of David and Jerusalem receive a Ruach that is not just understanding or fear, but grace—the felt, unearned closeness of HaShem.
• This Ruach itself births taḥanunim—persistent, brokenhearted prayer. They suddenly want to cry out, to confess, to ask for repair.
From the perspective of Sefer Yetzirah, the nineteen letters that form רוח חן ותחנונים והביטו אלי את אשר דקרו are not accidental phonemes. They are a specific weaving of:
• רוח – resh-vav-chet: the head (ר) connected down (ו) into the chamber of life (ח).
• חן – chet-nun: the meeting of the “life-chamber” (ח) with the “fish” of reversal and turning (נ), hinting at the “finding of favor” when one turns back.
• תחנונים – the repetition of chet-nun with a tav at the front (marking a process or form) and a plural ending—supplications as a state of being.
The people who once “pierced” now become channels: their very mouths, which spoke harshness and cruelty, are transformed into conduits of taḥanunim.
From the side of Sod, then:
• The “piercing” (דקרו) is not only a physical stabbing; it is any deep wound we inflict in the fabric of divine presence in the world—through hatred, betrayal, baseless enmity.
• “Looking toward Me” means consciously turning to the hidden Atik—the ancient mercy above all worlds—and acknowledging: we tore the fabric; You alone can re-weave it.
🔵 Who pierced whom? A Jewish answer to a theological accusation
Now we can address the unspoken accusation without naming names.
When a missionary reads:
“They shall look upon Me whom they have pierced…”
and claims that:
1. Israel pierced a divine being,
2. That this act constitutes an eternal, unique crime,
3. And that these verses predict their future remorse for that specific act,
they are doing three things to the text:
1. Ignoring the grammar – which, as we saw, naturally yields “look toward Me about the one whom they pierced,” followed by mourning for him, not “Me.”
2. Ripping the verse from its context – which speaks about the siege of Jerusalem, national defense, and purification from idolatry and false prophecy (13:1–2), not about adopting a new creed.
3. Replacing Jewish messianic categories – such as Mashiach ben Yosef, the yetzer hara, national martyrs, and the process of teshuvah— with their own categories.
Ironically, the very Midrash that the missionaries sometimes invoke (Sukkah 52a) strengthens the Jewish frame:
• It sees this mourning as part of the final redemption.
• It roots it in Mashiach ben Yosef, a thoroughly Jewish figure, fighting for Israel.
• It debates whether the deepest mourning is for a righteous individual or for the death of evil itself.
Nowhere does Hazal say:
• “They killed God,”
• Or “They will convert to another religion,”
• Or “They will finally admit to a cosmic crime against a divine human.”
On the contrary: the whole thrust of Zechariah 12–13 is that:
• HaShem fights for Israel,
• Then brings them to tears and supplication,
• Then purifies them from sin and impurity,
• Then removes from them the very sources of religious distortion in their midst—“the names of the idols” and the “false prophets” (13:2–3).
If anything, the prophecy describes HaShem healing Israel from centuries of spiritual confusion—not replacing His Torah, His covenant, or His people.
🔵 PARDES glimpses across the chapter
Very briefly, just to paint a clear thorough picture of all the layers:
🔹 Peshat
• A future siege of Yerushalayim.
• Miraculous defense by HaShem.
• National mourning over a pierced, slain figure (or figures)—understood by Hazal as Mashiach ben Yosef or as the death of the yetzer hara.
• The mourning leads directly to a “spring opened… for sin and impurity” (13:1) and to the removal of idolatry and false prophecy from the land.
🔹 Remez
• The comparison to the mourning for Yoshiyahu in the plain of Megiddo (12:11) hints that the pierced one, like Yoshiyahu, dies in battle while trying to uphold the covenant.
• The “only son / firstborn” imagery resonates with Israel as HaShem’s “firstborn son” (Shemot 4:22) and with Yosef, the “firstborn of his mother,” linking to Mashiach ben Yosef as a collective firstborn—Israel’s vulnerable front line in history.
🔹 Derash
• Hazal’s reading in Sukkah 52a sets up a tension: are we mourning a righteous person, or do we weep even over the loss of the opportunity to struggle with the yetzer hara? Both frame the mourning as part of a larger redemptive drama.
• Later Midrashim that expand the role of Mashiach ben Yosef do so entirely within the orbit of Torah and mitzvot, not as a new faith.
🔹 Sod
• “Nehumah de-Atika”—the consolation that flows from Atik Yomin—is aroused specifically through tears. The “spirit of grace and supplications” is the descent of that highest mercy into the lowest, most broken place: the grief of Am Yisrael over its own fractures.
• The “piercing” is the shattering of the vessels in miniature: every time Israel fails to hold the light of unity, the vessel cracks and the light “falls” into exile. The mourning of Zechariah 12 is the first time in history that Am Yisrael fully feels the cosmic consequences of those cracks and cries from that place.
In this light, the very fact that these verses have been so intensely misused becomes, paradoxically, part of their Sod:
• The nations take a prophecy of Israel’s tears and try to turn it into a weapon against Israel.
• At the End, HaShem reclaims the pasuk, pours out Ruach ḥen ve-taḥanunim, and the same words become a fountain of cleansing (13:1), not a cudgel.
🔵 Walking through Zechariah 12:1–9 – the outer stage before the “piercing”
12:1
“The burden of the word of HaShem concerning Israel; says HaShem, Who stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him.”
Already here, before any talk of war, HaShem identifies Himself in three intertwined dimensions:
1. “Stretches out the heavens” – the higher worlds, the unseen architecture.
2. “Lays the foundation of the earth” – the political, historical plane.
3. “Forms the spirit of man within him” – the inner consciousness.
This triad mirrors Sefer Yetzirah’s description that HaShem forms reality through “thirty-two wondrous paths of wisdom”—ten sefirot and twenty-two letters—bridging heaven, earth, and soul.
So from the first pasuk, Zechariah is not merely forecasting a military event; he is tracing how a cosmic configuration in the “heavens” presses down into the “earth” and then into the “spirit of man.”
12:2–3
“Behold, I am making Jerusalem a cup of staggering for all the peoples around… a burdensome stone for all peoples; all who burden themselves with it shall be cut to pieces…”
Yerushalayim becomes:
• A cup – they drink from it and become disoriented.
• A stone – they try to lift it and it injures them.
On the Peshat level: geopolitical obsession with Jerusalem turns toxic; nations intoxicate themselves by trying to “solve” or dominate her.
On the Sod level: Yerushalayim is Malchut, the “stone” at the bottom of the Etz Chaim. Whoever tries to grasp the kingship of HaShem without proper vessels gets “cut” by the very light they mishandle.
12:4–5
“I will strike every horse with bewilderment and its rider with madness… and the leaders of Judah shall say in their hearts: ‘The inhabitants of Jerusalem are my strength through HaShem of Hosts, their God.’”
The “horses” and “riders” are both literal military might and symbolic of forces and ideologies. HaShem confuses their “horses” (power) and deranges their “riders” (leadership).
The inner correction is that the leaders of Yehudah finally internalize: our strength is not our politics, but the people of Yerushalayim through HaShem. It is a teshuvah from egoic leadership to servant leadership.
12:6–8
“On that day I will make the clans of Judah like a pan of fire among wood… HaShem will save the tents of Judah first… The weakest of them shall be like David; and the house of David like a divine being, like the angel of HaShem before them.”
Here the text climbs in three rungs:
1. “The weakest… like David” – even the “simple Jew” will receive a Daviddic courage and emunah.
2. “House of David like an angel of HaShem” – leadership will radiate something transparent to the Divine Will.
3. “On that day I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem” (12:9) – HaShem’s direct intervention.
Notice the order: first the strengthening of Yehudah below, then the protection of Yerushalayim, then the elevation of the house of David. Only after this full outer fortification does the text speak of the inner breaking in verse 10.
The “piercing” is not the beginning of the story; it comes after HaShem has already demonstrated absolute loyalty to His people.
🔵 12:10–14 – the inner earthquake: tears, families, and loneliness
We already focused on 12:10 itself. Let’s now look at what follows it, because missionaries almost never quote these verses:
“On that day, the mourning in Jerusalem shall be great, like the mourning of Hadad-rimmon in the valley of Megiddo.” (12:11)
Chazal and many commentators connect this to the mourning over King Yoshiyahu, killed by Pharaoh Necho at Megiddo (II Chronicles 35:20–25).
So the comparison is:
• A righteous, covenant-keeping king who dies in battle.
• A shock that breaks the nation’s heart.
• A mourning that becomes liturgical; Yirmiyahu writes laments, the singers and professionals preserve it for generations.
Zechariah says: the future mourning will be like that—not like some later, foreign drama.
Then comes the remarkable list:
“The land shall mourn, every family by itself: the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Nathan by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Levi by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the Shimeite by itself, and their wives by themselves; all the families that remain, every family by itself, and their wives by themselves.” (12:12–14)
Why this almost repetitive, legal-sounding list? On the surface:
• House of David – kingship.
• House of Nathan – often understood as Nathan the prophet, representing nevuah.
• House of Levi – kohanim, avodah.
• House of Shimei – perhaps a Levitical subgroup (cf. Shimei in Levi in Divrei HaYamim) symbolizing the “less prominent” but essential support families.
Every stratum of leadership is forced into private mourning—“by itself… and their wives by themselves.”
This is the opposite of a public, triumphal “look, we were right all along” moment. Instead:
• The kingly line weeps.
• The prophetic line weeps.
• The priestly line weeps.
• The “Shimei” line, the overlooked families, weep.
• Each alone, facing HaShem without the comfort of spectacle.
Sod-wise, this separation hints to:
• Masculine/feminine aspects within each family (zachar / nukva, partzufim).
• Each must undergo its own tikkun, its own re-alignment to the Ruach ḥen ve-taḥanunim poured from Atik Yomin.
The tears are not a media event; they are a cosmic mikveh, one family at a time.
🔵 13:1–6 – the fountain that answers the tears
The missionary reading nearly always stops at the mourning. The prophecy does not.
“On that day, a spring shall be opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for impurity.” (13:1)
The tears of chapter 12 become the water of chapter 13.
Then:
“It shall be on that day, says HaShem of Hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, and they shall no longer be remembered; and I will also cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass from the land.” (13:2)
The “unclean spirit” (ruach hatum’ah) is the very opposite of the “spirit of grace and supplications” (ruach chen vetachanunim). HaShem is saying:
• I will pour a Ruach from Atik Yomin that awakens tears and prayer.
• In response to those tears, I will open a spring that cleanses sin and impurity.
• I will then uproot idolatry and false prophecy from the land.
Verses 3–6 paint a radical scene:
• If someone pretends to be a prophet of falsehood, even his own parents will rebuke him: “You shall not live, for you speak lies in the Name of HaShem.”
• The false prophet will be ashamed of his vision, deny being a prophet, and say, “I am a man tilling the soil.”
• When asked about his wounds, he says, “These are wounds I received in the house of my friends.” (13:6)
Whatever the drash on those words, the Peshat is clear: this section is explicitly about the humiliation and disappearance of false prophecy and idolatrous religion.
So if someone comes and claims:
“These verses are the only real prophecy in the Tanakh about my religion’s central figure,”
then, ironically, the straightforward sense of 13:2–6 places their claim under the category of “false prophecy and unclean spirit being removed from the land.”
The text does not invite Israel to adopt a new creed because of its mourning; it announces that the outcome of that mourning is the purification of Israel from every form of spiritual distortion.
🔵 Mashiach ben Yosef in depth – the broken first front
Now back to the “pierced one” as Mashiach ben Yosef, as discussed in Sukkah 52a.
The Gemara there explicitly cites our verse:
“And they shall look unto Me because they have thrust him through; and they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for his only son.” (Zechariah 12:10)
Then it records a dispute:
• One opinion: the mourning is for Mashiach ben Yosef, who was killed.
• Another: the mourning is for the death of the evil inclination.
The sugya concludes that it fits better to interpret this as mourning for Mashiach ben Yosef, while also preserving the idea that his death is bound up with the slaying of the yetzer hara.
From the perspective of Sod:
• Mashiach ben Yosef represents the front line where holiness enters the harshest parts of history—exile, political conflict, material struggle.
• Yosef himself is the prototype: hated by his brothers, sold, exiled, yet ultimately the provider who sustains them.
His falling in battle is:
• The exposure of how fragile our unity really is.
• The price paid by the most devoted among us when we have not yet sustained them with the full merit of collective teshuvah.
The people “look toward Me concerning the one whom they pierced” because:
• They realize that their own disunity, their own internal “piercing” of each other through sinat chinam and lashon hara, contributed to the vulnerability of this righteous leader.
• They know that only HaShem from the level of Atik Yomin can reweave what they tore.
So when a missionary waves this sugya and says, “See, even your Talmud says this is about a slain messiah,” the answer is simple:
• Yes, our sages speak of a slain Mashiach ben Yosef—a Jewish messianic figure fighting for Israel, not a figure to be worshipped as a deity.
• His death leads to more Torah, more teshuvah, and the final revelation of HaShem’s unity, not to the suspension of the covenant.
• And the very same sugya also connects the mourning to the slaying of the evil inclination, which is the opposite of what idolatry does.
🔵 Sod b’Sod – the letter-weave, Atika Kadisha, and the healing of the “piercing”
When I look at the crucial half-sentence:
“And I will pour… a spirit of grace and supplications; and they shall look toward Me concerning the one whom they pierced…” (12:10)
I see a chain of words that are not random:
• ושפכתי (I will pour)
• רוח (spirit)
• חן (grace)
• ותחנונים (and supplications)
• והביטו (and they will look / gaze)
• אלי (toward Me)
• את אשר דקרו (concerning the one whom they pierced)
In Sefer Yetzirah, the twenty-two letters are the “instruments by which the real world… was produced,” each letter being a channel between essence and form.
A few hints:
• רוח (spirit): resh–vav–chet
• Resh – head, beginning of awareness.
• Vav – connection, a line downward.
• Chet – the boundary, the inner chamber.
Spirit is “head connected into an inner chamber.”
• חן (grace): chet–nun
• Our sages describe “chen” as that inexplicable loveliness that makes one find favor. In Kabbalah it is often linked to Keter and to the inner delight of HaShem.
• Chet is the life-chamber, Nun is descent and reversal (the bent fish). Grace is HaShem’s life descending into our low points.
• תחנונים (supplications): tav–chet–nun–vav–nun–yod–mem–sofit
• Tav at the beginning signals “process” and “seal”; tefillah itself is a process of engraving new shape into the soul.
• The repetition of chet–nun inside the word means: grace (chen) becomes supplication (tachanun); HaShem’s free favor awakens our free return.
• דקרו (pierced): dalet–kuf–resh–vav
• Dalet: door, vulnerability.
• Kuf: the letter that dips below the line, reaching into places below holiness.
• Resh: head, but also poverty (“rash”).
• Vav: the connective line.
On the inner plane, “piercing” is when the door of vulnerability (dalet) is abused: instead of lifting the fallen (kuf) and enriching the poor head (resh), we drive the vav—the connecting line—through, turning relationship into a spear.
The tikkun of that is to open a higher door: Atik Yomin / Atika Kadisha—the inner dimension of Keter, called “the most concealed of all,” from which the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy flow.
From that level, HaShem “pours” (ושפכתי) a Ruach of chen and tachanunim into the very place we pierced:
• The Ruach re-wires the head (resh) and heart;
• Chen descends into our lowest “nun,” showing us we are still cherished;
• Tachanunim arise from our side, a new language where we no longer weaponize words and spears against one another.
The nations who misread this pasuk as an eternal charge-sheet against Israel are, in truth, describing their own misuse of divine words:
• They turned a prophecy of Jewish tears and purification into a propaganda tool.
• They “pierced” the text, tore it from its body, and used it against the very people who received it.
Zechariah, read through PaRDeS, gently inverts that:
• The same verse that was misused as a spear becomes, in the End, a channel for Ruach ḥen ve-taḥanunim.
• The same letters that were forced into foreign theology are reclaimed, realigned with Atik Yomin, and opened as a “spring… for sin and impurity” (13:1).
We are left not with a picture of a nation eternally condemned, but with a people:
• defended by HaShem in the most dangerous of times,
• shattered by the loss of its most devoted,
• brought to tears that invite the highest mercy,
• and then washed, family by family, from idolatry and unclean spirit.
And the text, when allowed to speak its own Lashon HaKodesh, quietly, steadily dismantles the accusation.