Your Right Hand Glorious in Power and Patience

"Your right hand, O LORD, glorious in power." You are comely and glorious in power, in that You granted respite to the generation of the Flood so that they might repent — and they did not — and You did not seal their doom until they had completed their wickedness. So too with the men of the Tower, and so with Sodom, and so with the Egyptians: ten plagues You brought upon them, and You did not seal their doom until they had completed their wickedness before You. "Your right hand, O LORD, shatters the enemy." Come and see: when Israel does the will of the Omnipresent, they turn the left hand into a right hand, as it is said, "Your right hand, O LORD, Your right hand, O LORD." And when they do not do His will, they turn the right hand into a left, as it is said, "He drew back His right hand from before the enemy" (Lamentations 2:3). When Israel does the will of the Omnipresent, there is no wrath before Him — "I have no wrath" (Isaiah 27:4); and when they do not do His will, He is filled with wrath against their foes, as it is said, "and the anger of the LORD will be kindled against you" (Deuteronomy 11:17). When Israel does the will of the Omnipresent, He fights for them — "The LORD will fight for you" (Exodus 14:14); and when they do not do His will, as it were, He fights against them, as it is said, "so He turned to become their enemy, and He Himself fought against them" (Isaiah 63:10). And not only that, but they turn the Merciful One into a cruel one, as it is said, "The LORD has become like an enemy" (Lamentations 2:5). When Israel does the will of the Omnipresent, there is no sleep before Him, as it is said, "Behold, He who keeps Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps" (Psalms 121:4); and when they do not do His will, as it were, there is sleep before Him, as it is said, "Then the LORD awoke as one from sleep" (Psalms 78:65), and it says, "and in their provocation My eye lodges" (Job 17:2) — as it were, as if there were sleep before Him while Israel is in distress and the nations of the world are at ease. "Shatters the enemy." This is Pharaoh, as it is said, "The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake" (Exodus 15:9). And some say it is Esau, as it is said, "Because the enemy said of you, Aha!" (Ezekiel 36:2). It is not written, "You shattered the enemy," but "You will shatter the enemy" — in the future to come; and so it says, "In wrath You will tread the earth, in anger You will trample the nations" (Habakkuk 3:12).