“... The Lord looseth the prisoners;” (Ibid. 7)
“... The Lord raiseth up them that are bowed down;...” (Ibid. 8)
are an appropriate expression of the feelings which would naturally be called forth at a time immediately subsequent to the return from Captivity.
This idea was handed on as a legacy from the prophets and psalmists to the men of the Great Synod, and from the latter to the Jewish philosophers and teachers of the Middle Ages. No doubt it had vastly changed in form and in content; but in essence it was the same. Political independence was lost in course of time; and the place of the political state was taken by national unity and an unshaken belief in the Restoration of the people to its old land. In substance it was a combination of consciousness of the past and hope for the future that made Jewish life in the present worth living. The sluggard was still inert, the credulous man still trusted “in man in whom there is no help,” and had need of a live coal from the altar. But now it was not an angel that brought to man the purifying agency. The sufferings of the nation had been exalted far above the coal of the altar. National martyrdom had assumed a more intense and vivid meaning. It was more insistently set over against the thoughtlessness of a materialistic life.
When we read the maxim of Hillel the elder (112 ? b.c.e.–8 ? c.e.) which Pinsker used as the motto of his pamphlet:
[¹]הוא היה אומר אם אין אני לי מי לי וכשאני לעצמי מה אני ואם לא עכשו אימתי׃ פרקי אבות א׳ יד׳
[¹] He used to say, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
And being for my own self, what am I?
And if not now, when?” (Ethics of the Fathers, chap. i. v. 14.)
We cannot help thinking that this aphorism, as well as the rule:—