For the source text click/tap here: Menachot 87
To download, click/tap here: PDF
Our Perek concludes by quoting an additional prophecy of Isaiah concerning the rebuilding of Eretz Yisrael: It is written: “I have set watchmen upon your walls, Jerusalem; they shall never be silent day nor night; those who remind the Lord, take no rest” (Isaiah 62:6). This is referring to the angels appointed by God to bring the redemption. The Gemara asks: What do these watchmen say to remind the Lord? This is what Rava bar Rav Sheila said: They recite the verse: “You will arise and have compassion upon Zion; for it is time to be gracious to her, for the appointed time has come” (Psalms 102:14).
We examine the dialectical tension between catastrophe and hope in two foundational rabbinic texts: Eicha Rabbah (Lamentations Rabbah) and the concluding section of our perek which concerns the angelic watchmen appointed to remind God of the unredeemed condition of Zion.
The watchmen figure in our daf serves as the paradigmatic rabbinic response to catastrophe: an active, liturgically embodied refusal to permit silence in the face of unredeemed suffering, grounded in a theology of divine fidelity that is tested but never abandoned. Eicha Rabbah contributes a theology of divine mourning in which God Himself participates in the grief of Israel, thereby transforming catastrophe from a verdict of abandonment into a site of unexpected intimacy.