This is the fifth of four special parshiot preceding Pesach. No, wait – that can’t be right. There are four special readings to prepare us for redemption and the fifth is the greatest Shabbat of them all, Shabbat HaGadol. There is no special Torah reading on this Shabbat; we take out only one Torah. But there is a very special haftara.
To properly understand the significance of this Shabbat and this haftara it will be helpful to consider the significance of fours and fives in Judaism. This is a very timely discussion as the Pesach Seder is replete with multiples of four. The number four is the numerical equivalent of the Hebrew letter dalet and it generally corresponds to complete sets. There are four walls bounding a closed space, four cardinal directions, four amot of halacha which are all that remains to the Creator in His world since the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash (Berachot 8a).
The shift to five implies either a focal point or transcendence, the static and stable form becoming in some way active and intentional. The letter hey, appearing twice in the four-letter name of Hashem, is most commonly written as a dalet with a yud inside. That fusion represents godliness entering the physical world – the immanence of Hashem in His creation, and in the five books of His Torah.
At the Seder, among our many groups of four we drink four cups of wine, corresponding to “four languages of redemption.” But there is a fifth cup, the cup of Eliyahu. This is the cup of Shabbat HaGadol, of our haftara which prefigures the return of Eliyahu before the “great and awesome day of Hashem” (Malachi 3:23).
Why is this Shabbos different from all other Shabboses? On this Shabbos, Israel became a nation unified in our service of Hashem, as was anticipated two weeks ago on Shabbat HaChodesh. The lamb that was to be slaughtered for the first Pesach sacrifice was taken in open view of the Egyptians and tied to a bedpost on the 10th of Nissan which, according to R’ Saadya Gaon and others, fell on Shabbat. Shabbat HaGadol is the anniversary of the great Shabbos when B’nai Yisrael obeyed the command of Hashem in defiance of the prevailing mores and standards of the nation among whom they had been exiled. On Shabbat HaGadol the redemption begins, because Israel is willing to risk everything to follow Hashem.
The haftara we read on Shabbat HaGadol is the last nevua (prophecy) of the nevi’im recorded in the Tanach. In it, the prophet Malachi, at the end of the line of prophets, anticipates the day when prophecy will be restored to Israel. This event will be presaged by the return of Eliyahu HaNavi, whereupon he will return the hearts of parents by way of their children and the children by way of their parents.
It is at this point (ibid. 3:24) that the navi seems to take a final, rather cynical turn – “lest I come and strike the land into utter nothingness.” It is customary at this point to go back and repeat the preceding verse about Eliyahu coming back. But Malachi wants to make sure that we don’t miss what is at stake. There is a tradition among our Sages that the redemption will ultimately come whether through natural or supernatural means because it is the ultimate purpose for which the world was created. It is also implied that the supernatural option is preferable from our perspective because there is considerably less pain and suffering associated with miraculous redemption than with allowing nature to run its course.
The navi is assuring us that whether we are deserving, or precisely because we are not, Eliyahu HaNavi will return and a day will come when all of the evil will be burned away and the righteous will be healed by the sunlight of Hashem’s munificence (Ibid. 3:19-20).
