ג) מִפִּי עוֹלְלִים וְיֹנְקִים יִסַּדְתָּ עֹז לְמַעַן צוֹרְרֶיךָ לְהַשְׁבִּית אוֹיֵב וּמִתְנַקֵּם
Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings You have established strength because of Your adversaries, in order to put an end to enemy and avenger.
Rav Shimshon Rephael Hirsch continues to explain the next part of the verse that says למען צוררך, which he takes to mean, ‘to confine’ or to ‘limit in space’. He says that the verse means that You Hashem have written Your Name upon the heavens above where it cannot be reached by the hands of men, but yet it is even intelligible to children.
I once heard an explanation for this idea from Dayan Ehrentreu שליט”א, chazal say that Hashem created the world with the name Sha-ddai, the same name that we write on the mezuzah. This name was used because it contains the additional meaning of the words שאמר לעולמו די, He who said to His world, enough!
As we all know, Hashem created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. He stopped creating at the exact point when Shabbos came in. The process of creation was in effect revealing Himself into the world. Had He stopped any earlier, it would have been impossible for mortal man to ever conceive let alone perceive an Infinite Creator. Had He stopped any later, the truth of His existence would have been so obvious that no one could have ever denied it. The world was therefore created with the name Sha-ddai so that it could remain in this state of tension. For those who wish to see Hashem, He is palpably present, as evidenced from this chapter of tehillim. However man also has the ability to dismiss the Divine as product of human creativity and write Him out of the script completely.
On a personal level we can also do the same, we have moments like Yom Kippur where we see things clearly, but its quite amazing how quickly we can come down from those heights and find ourselves in a world of concealment again.
This is what it means to be a Jew, crowned with the name Yisrael, one who struggles with G-d and with man …. and prevails.
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