Echah! How Is This Mercy?
What Eichah teaches about shared pain, wounded relationships, and finding the way back to connection.
In couples counseling, it is very common for each partner to sincerely believe that they are the one being hurt more. One asks, “Why are you treating me this way?” The other responds, “Because you hurt me first.”
Before long, each person sees only the other’s anger and loses sight of the pain beneath it. Both feel attacked. Both feel misunderstood. The relationship slowly becomes another casualty of the conflict.
Healing begins when the question changes. Instead of asking, “Who hurt whom?” couples begin asking, “How did we get here, and how do we find our way back?”
The book of Eichah records a remarkably similar conversation between Knesset Yisrael and Boreh Olam.
Yirmiyahu cries out:
רְאֵה ה' וְהַבִּיטָה לְמִי עוֹלַלְתָּ כֹּה. אִם תֹּאכַלְנָה נָשִׁים פִּרְיָם עֹלֲלֵי טִפֻּחִים“See, Hashem, and behold—to whom have You done this? Should women eat their own fruit, the children they lovingly nurtured?” (Eichah 2:20)
The Alshich explains Knesset Yisrael’s plea:
שהבנים בלי חטא היו למאכל, וגם צרת האמהות שהגיעו לכך.“The children, though without sin, became food, and the mothers also suffered, having been brought to such a state.”
Knesset Yisrael’s question is powerful. Chazal teach that Boreh Olam poured out His wrath upon the Beit HaMikdash rather than upon His people. If so, how can the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash be called an act of mercy? The innocent children still suffered, and so did their mothers.
The suffering did not remain with the Beit HaMikdash.
Chazal teach that Boreh Olam told both Moshe Rabbeinu and David HaMelech that had the Beit HaMikdash been built through them, it could never have been destroyed. Instead, when the people sinned, Hashem’s wrath would have rested upon them. The destruction of the Temple was therefore an act of mercy.
Yet Knesset Yisrael asks: If the Temple suffered instead of us, why did we still suffer so deeply? The children who had not sinned, and the mothers who had no choice.
The Alshich records Hashem’s response:
אִם יֵהָרֵג בְּמִקְדַּשׁ ה' כֹּהֵן וְנָבִיא.
Knesset Yisrael argues that a mother cannot watch her child suffer without suffering herself. Their lives are bound together.
On a simple level, Hashem’s response points to an even greater tragedy. Not only did the mothers and children suffer, but the Kohanim, the Nevi’im, and the Beit HaMikdash itself were also affected.
The Alshich’s comparison points us toward a deeper insight.
If a mother cannot watch her child suffer without suffering herself, how could Boreh Olam’s House suffer without Him? How could a relationship be wounded and only one side experience the pain?
The Beit HaMikdash was never separate from Bnei Yisrael. Just as a mother cannot be separated from the suffering of her child, perhaps the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash, the suffering of the people, and the exile of the Shechinah were all part of the same broken relationship.
Perhaps that is the lesson of this dialogue in Eichah.
When relationships struggle, couples often become trapped trying to prove who was hurt first. Each sees the other’s anger while overlooking the pain that produced it. Both parties involved feel justified and may continue to hurt the other.
Healing begins when both sides recognize that the relationship itself has been wounded, and together work to restore the bond that has been damaged.
Boreh Olam reminds His people that His relationship with them was never any different. When a relationship is wounded, the pain does not remain on only one side.
Eichah therefore closes with the hope that the relationship can return to what it once was.
הֲשִׁיבֵנוּ ה' אֵלֶיךָ וְנָשׁוּבָה, חַדֵּשׁ יָמֵינוּ כְּקֶדֶם.“Return us to You, Hashem, and we shall return; renew our days as of old.”
Psychology recognizes that couples who remember that there was once love, trust, and closeness between them often find hope that those things can be rebuilt. Healing becomes possible because there is something there to return to.
Every relationship is ultimately restored in the same way—not by deciding who was right, but by choosing to return to the foundations upon which the relationship was built.