The question hung in the beit midrash: what happened to the ten tribes exiled by Assyria, and will they ever come home? The sages opened Deuteronomy 29:28 and read: And the Lord rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.
Everything hinged on the phrase as it is this day.
Rabbi Akiva gave the bleak reading. "As this day passes away and does not return," he said, "so also they have passed away, never to return." He extended the logic: rooted out of their land meant removed from this world, and cast into another land meant cast out of the world to come. For Akiva, the ten tribes had no portion in either.
Rabbi Eliezer refused to read the verse that way. "As it is this day," he insisted — but watch the day. The day darkens into night, and then it lightens again into morning. That is what the phrase is telling us. "So the ten tribes, now in darkness, shall in the future be restored to light."
Two rabbis. Same verse. One saw a sunset that never came back; the other saw a nightfall already tilting toward dawn. The tradition preserved both, because Israel has always needed both — the warning of exile's seriousness and the promise that no night is final.