Rabbi Roodyn

The Ibn Ezra (who is quoted by the Radak) explains that the sucklings and babes referred to here are the young children who are developing the faculty of intelligent speech. This uniquely human trait enables them to appreciate Hashem’s wisdom and to recognise His strength. As they grow on a daily basis this ability grows with them, giving new insight into the words יסדת עוז, you have established strength.

Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch says that the word עולל refers to something that is still in formation, in this case, the child. So he therefore explains the pasuk as meaning ‘from the recognition which even the mouth of a child may voice intelligently.’ The word עוז is derived from עזז from which we get עז, the power of resistance and invincibility.

Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch translates our pasuk as follows. ‘Thus from the mouths of children and sucklings You have fashioned for Yourself an invincible might’.

He says that if the recognition of G-d were so difficult that it could only be attained through means of extensive scholarly study; if it were necessary, in the words of the scriptures (Devarim 30:11-14), to penetrate into the mysteries of the supernatural world as well as into the secrets of the far flung zones of the terrestrial spheres; if the name of G-d would not proclaim itself wherever the heavens arch over even one small spot of the earth; and if this ABC of human recognition would not be intelligible to every pure, childlike mentality – then indeed we would have to despair of the eventual establishment of the kimgdom of G-d on earth.

Indeed all those who find it inconvenient to recognise G-d’s Name and to accept the idea of a moral world order and of moral responsibility before one supreme judge of men and nations would then find it easy to expunge those thoughts and concepts from the minds of men. However every baby that is born means the advent on earth of a נשמה טהורה, of one more pure soul capable of G-d consciousness. And even if the very name of G-d were to disappear from all the books of an arrogant, erring human science, it could still never be expunged from the Divine scriptures handed down from heaven anew to every unspoiled new generation. Even if much of the present were wretchedly lost to the hopes of mankind, the faith in the eventual coming of the kingdom of G-d, in the ‘gathering of the entire community of man as one congregation around G-d’ as expressed in the previous chapter (Tehillim 7), will still rest on a firm foundation because of the עוללים ויונקים, future generations.