The Eighth Day

One more day

For seven days we sat in the sukkah. We shook the lulav. On Hoshana Rabbah we circled seven times and beat the willows. Sukkot is over.

And yet Hashem says: “On the eighth day shall be an holy convocation unto you… it is a solemn assembly [atzeret]” (Leviticus 23:36). Why one more day? Rashi explains with a parable:

It is like a king who invited his sons to a feast for a certain number of days. When the time came for them to leave, he said: “My sons, please, stay with me one more day. Your parting is hard for me.” (Rashi on Leviticus 23:36)

Your parting is hard for me. Hold on to those words. They are the key to this whole shiur.

Like in the Land of Israel, we celebrate Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah together. On Simchat Torah we finish the Torah, and in the same breath we begin it again. And with this shiur we finish our journey through the end of days. All through Sukkot we have talked about hard things: the son of Yosef who suffers, the enemy, the birth pangs, the mark of the beast. On the eighth day we ask the happiest question of all: how does the story end?

To answer it, we have to begin with the saddest book in the Bible.

Eicha: the cry of parting

“How [Eicha] doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow!” (Lamentations 1:1).

The book of Eicha, Lamentations, is the cry over Jerusalem after the Babylonians destroyed it. We read it on Tisha B’Av, the darkest day of the year. Why talk about it on the happiest day of the year?

Because Eicha is the story of a parting. And listen to what Jeremiah says was destroyed:

“And he hath violently taken away his tabernacle [sukko], as if it were of a garden: he hath destroyed his places of the assembly [mo’ado]: Hashem hath caused the solemn feasts [mo’ed] and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion” (Lamentations 2:6).

Hashem’s sukkah, torn down. The festivals, forgotten. The Sabbaths, forgotten. In 5787 Shemini Atzeret was a sukkah day, a festival, and a Shabbat, all at once. Everything Eicha mourns, we are holding in our hands.

Who is crying in Eicha? Jerusalem is: “She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her” (Lamentations 1:2). But the sages teach that Hashem is crying too:

Each night has three watches, and in each watch the Holy One, blessed be He, sits and roars like a lion and says: “Woe to the children, because of whose sins I destroyed My house, burned My Temple, and exiled them among the nations.” (Berakhot 3a)

Hashem says through Jeremiah, “My soul shall weep in secret places” (Jeremiah 13:17), and the Talmud teaches that Hashem has a hidden place where He weeps over Israel’s exile (Chagigah 5b).

Now we understand Rashi’s parable. On Shemini Atzeret the King says, “Your parting is hard for me.” On Tisha B’Av we hear what that parting sounds like. Eicha is the cry of a Father whose children have gone away. Shemini Atzeret is the Father saying, “Stay.”

The comforter who is far away

There is one more verse in Eicha we need:

“For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water, because the comforter [menachem] that should relieve my soul is far from me” (Lamentations 1:16).

The sages heard a name in this verse:

What is the name of the Messiah?… Some say: Menachem the son of Chizkiyah is his name, as it is said: “Because the comforter [menachem] that should relieve my soul is far from me.” (Sanhedrin 98b)

The Midrash even tells that on the very day the Temple was destroyed, the Messiah was born, and his name was Menachem, “the comforter” (Eichah Rabbah 1:51). In the darkest hour, the comfort was already on its way.

We believe that comfort has a name. Yeshua came the first time as the son of Yosef, and he will come again as the son of David. And then, after his reign, comes the final answer to Eicha.

Seven days and the eighth

The calendar of Sukkot holds the whole story of the world.

During the seven days of Sukkot, the Temple offered seventy bulls, one for each of the seventy nations (Sukkah 55b). Seven days for the whole world. They point to the history of this world, all the way through the days of the Messiah, when the nations will come up to Jerusalem “to keep the feast of tabernacles” (Zechariah 14:16). The sages call the Messiah’s reign the great Shabbat of the world, the seventh thousand years (Sanhedrin 97a).

But on the eighth day, the offering changes. Only “one bullock, one ram” (Numbers 29:36). The Talmud explains:

To whom does the single bull correspond? To the one unique nation. It is like a king of flesh and blood who said to his servants: “Prepare a great feast for me.” On the last day, he said to his beloved friend: “Prepare a small meal for me, so that I may enjoy you.” (Sukkah 55b)

The eighth day is not about the nations or the Messiah’s kingdom. It is about closeness. The guests have gone home. The King and His beloved are alone together.

In the Torah, the number eight always points beyond this world. The world was made in seven days. A baby boy enters the covenant on the eighth day (Genesis 17:12). The priests began their service in the Mishkan on the eighth day (Leviticus 9:1). Shlomo’s people went home from the dedication of the Temple “on the eighth day… joyful and glad of heart” (1 Kings 8:66). The Maharal of Prague taught that seven is the number of the natural world, and eight is the number of what is above nature: the place where Hashem and His people meet with nothing in between.

That is why we say the Last Great Day is a picture of the Olam Haba, the World to Come. Not the Messiah’s reign, which is still the seventh day, but what comes after it.

What many Christians believe

Many Christians picture the end like this: when we die, our souls fly up to heaven, where we live forever on clouds, singing with the angels. The earth is left behind or destroyed.

The Bible gives a very different picture. The final home of the righteous is not a cloud. It is a renewed creation, with heaven and earth joined together:

“For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind… and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying” (Isaiah 65:17, 19).

And the righteous do not stay as floating souls. They rise: “many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life” (Daniel 12:2). The Mishnah begins its teaching on the World to Come with these words: “All Israel have a share in the World to Come” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1).

Even our sages describe the World to Come in two ways. The Rambam teaches that it is a world of souls without bodies:

In the World to Come there is no body… there is no eating and no drinking… but the righteous sit with their crowns on their heads and delight in the radiance of the Shechinah. (Rambam, Hilchot Teshuvah 8:2, quoting Berakhot 17a)

The Ramban disagrees. In his Sha’ar HaGemul, he teaches that the World to Come comes after the resurrection, and the righteous enjoy it in body and soul together, in a world made new.

Perhaps both are right, in stages. The souls of the righteous rest with Hashem now, and in the end they rise to live in the new creation. And both agree on the most important thing: the reward of the World to Come is to be close to Hashem, to “delight in the radiance of the Shechinah.”

And both agree on one more thing: we cannot really picture it. The Talmud says:

All the prophets prophesied only about the days of the Messiah. But as for the World to Come: “eye hath not seen, O Elohim, beside thee” (Isaiah 64:4). (Berakhot 34b)

Paul quotes the same verse: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). The prophets could describe the seventh day. The eighth day is beyond words.

The answer to Eicha

But there is one thing we are told about the eighth day. Listen closely, and you will hear every line of Eicha answered.

First, the Messiah’s work is complete. Paul says:

“Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father… that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:24, 28).

The Messiah does not keep the kingdom for himself. When his reign is finished, the Son hands it back to the Father. The seventh day ends, and the eighth day begins.

And then John sees it:

“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth… And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people… And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying” (Revelation 21:1–4).

Now put it next to Eicha:

• Eicha cries, “How doth the city sit solitary… how is she become as a widow!” Revelation answers: the city comes down “as a bride adorned for her husband.” The widow becomes a bride.
• Eicha cries, “he hath violently taken away his tabernacle [sukko].” Revelation answers: “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men.” The Greek word is skene, a tent. The sukkah of Hashem is standing again, and this time it is forever.
• Eicha cries, “her tears are on her cheeks… mine eye runneth down with water.” Revelation answers: “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” Isaiah promised it long before: “He will swallow up death in victory; and Hashem Elohim will wipe away tears from off all faces” (Isaiah 25:8).
• Eicha cries, “the comforter is far from me.” On the eighth day, the Comforter is not far. “He will dwell with them.”

The book of tears is answered, line by line, on the eighth day.

The last great day of the feast

On “the last day, that great day of the feast,” Yeshua stood in the Temple and cried out:

“If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:37–38).

On Shemini Atzeret, in the Musaf prayer, we begin to pray for rain: “Mashiv haruach u’morid hageshem,” “He makes the wind blow and the rain fall” (Mishnah Taanit 1:1–2). Eicha’s eyes ran with tears. On the last great day, the water that flows is living water: the Spirit of Hashem, poured into the hearts of His people. And at the end of Revelation, in the new Jerusalem, John sees “a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne” (Revelation 22:1).

Simchat Torah: the prophet of tears

Who wrote Eicha? The Talmud says it was Jeremiah (Bava Batra 15a). He is called the weeping prophet. But the same Jeremiah also wrote this:

“Thus saith Hashem; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children… Thus saith Hashem; Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears… And there is hope in thine end, saith Hashem, that thy children shall come again to their own border” (Jeremiah 31:15–17).

And just a few verses later:

“But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith Hashem, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33).

The prophet of tears is also the prophet of the new heart.

On Simchat Torah we read the last words of the Torah: Moshe dies, and the Torah ends with the great deeds he did “in the sight of all Israel” (Deuteronomy 34:12). The last word is Yisrael (ישראל), and its last letter is lamed (ל). Then, without stopping, we roll back to the beginning: “Bereshit” (בראשית). Its first letter is bet (ב).

Put the last letter of the Torah next to the first, and you get לב, lev: heart. The whole Torah, from end to beginning, is wrapped around a heart. That is exactly what Jeremiah promised: “I will write it in their hearts.”

We never end in tears

Here is one more secret. When we read Eicha on Tisha B’Av, we do not end with its last verse, because the last verse is too sad: “But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us” (Lamentations 5:22). Instead, we go back and repeat the verse before it:

“Turn thou us unto thee, O Hashem, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old” (Lamentations 5:21).

In Hebrew: Hashiveinu Hashem elecha v’nashuvah, chadesh yameinu k’kedem.

Where else do we sing those words? Every time we return the Torah to the ark, including on Simchat Torah. The last cry of Eicha has become the song we sing as we carry the Torah home.

And notice: we do the same thing with the Torah that we do with Eicha. We do not end Eicha with rejection; we go back and sing “Hashiveinu.” We do not end the Torah with Moshe’s death; we go back and read “Bereshit.” In Hashem’s story, sorrow never gets the last word.

“Renew our days as of old.” The word for “of old” is kedem, the same word the Torah uses for the garden of Eden, planted “eastward [mikedem]” (Genesis 2:8). The Midrash reads it as a prayer to return to the days of Adam in the garden (Eichah Rabbah on 5:21). And that is where the Torah takes us next: back to Bereshit, back to the garden, where it all began.

Stay with me

So here is the end of our Sukkot journey.

The son of Yosef suffers, and the son of David reigns. The enemy rises, and the birth pangs come, but Hashem shelters His people in His sukkah in the middle of the storm. We are not snatched away; we are gathered home. We are sealed with His Name.

Then comes the great Shabbat of the world, the reign of the Messiah. And then the eighth day: the Son hands the kingdom back to the Father, the sukkah of Hashem stands among men forever, every tear of Eicha is wiped away, and the Torah is written on every heart.

The King who wept “Woe to the children” in the night will say on the eighth day what He says to us every Shemini Atzeret: “Stay with me. Your parting is hard for me.”

And this time, no one will ever have to leave.

“Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Psalm 16:11).

Chag sameach, and Shabbat shalom.

Quiz: test yourself

Twelve questions on this shiur. Every answer is in the text above, and a few of the choices are jokes. Tap a choice to check your answer.