The Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael presents yet another exchange in the ongoing dialogue between Israel and the Holy Spirit. When Israel declares (Psalms 89:18), "For You are the glory of their strength"—praising God as the source of all their power and splendor—the Holy Spirit responds with the words of (Isaiah 49:3): "Israel, in whom I glory!"
The symmetry is breathtaking. Israel says to God: You are our glory. And God says to Israel: You are My glory. The Creator of heaven and earth, who needs nothing and lacks nothing, claims to find glory in a small, often-persecuted people. This is not metaphor or flattery. The Mekhilta treats it as a statement of cosmic truth, embedded in the very fabric of Scripture.
This teaching belongs to a series in Tractate Shirah chapter 3, where the Mekhilta catalogs multiple instances of this divine call-and-response pattern. Each time Israel offers praise, the Holy Spirit answers in kind. The cumulative effect is overwhelming: the relationship between God and Israel is not that of a distant king and trembling subjects, but of two parties bound together in mutual admiration and mutual dependence.
The phrase "Israel, in whom I glory" is especially remarkable because it appears in Isaiah in a context of suffering and exile. Even when Israel is scattered and diminished, God still points to this people and says: here is where My glory resides. The Mekhilta's placement of this teaching within the Song at the Sea—that moment of supreme triumph—suggests that the pattern established at the Red Sea endures even through the darkest periods of Jewish history. The glory is reciprocal, and it is permanent.