The Lord will reign (YHVH yimlokh) forever. This is not said by way of prayer, for if it were, it should have said
yimlokh YHVH, “Let the Lord reign” (e.g.,
Ps. 146:10). Nor is this said by way of prophecy; rather, this is a poetic expression: “When God brings His people to His sanctuary, then God will be king forever,” i.e., His people must serve Him forever.
will reign. He will be king over Israel, so that they will serve Him and follow His Torah, and He will be at their head in place of a [human] king, for their appointment of a king over themselves would not be in keeping with the Torah’s primary intention. Here there is also an allusion to a future event, that God will become King over all the earth, and God will be One and His name One.
forever (le-olam va-ed). The basic meaning of the word
olam refers to a time that is unknown (
ne’lam) and indefinite, whether past or future. Thus, for example, “Remember the remote times [
yemot olam]”
(Deut. 32:7) refers to the ancient past that is distant and unknown to us, while the expressions
eved olam, “a slave forever,”
aḥuzzat olam, “an eternal possession,” and
simḥat olam, “eternal joy,” refer to the future. The expression
me-olam ve-ad olam, “from everlasting and to everlasting,” refers to both past and future.
The word
ad, “until,” is transferred to mean (like
olam) any distant time, whether past or future (and similarly, in Latin, poets sometimes say
usque [lit., “up to,” “until”] to refer to eternity). Thus, for example, “Do you not know this of old time [
ad]”
(Job 20:4) refers to the past, while “Trust in the Lord forever [
adei ad]”
(Isa. 26:4) refers to the future.
La-ad is the equivalent of
le-olam (“forever”), and by way of hyperbole the expression is doubled to
la-ad le-olam (Ps. 148:6) or
le-olam va-ed (which expression is not defective, as in the opinion of Ibn Ezra, who thought that it was properly
le-olam ve-ad olam). The word
va-ed (וָעֶד) would properly have been vocalized
ve-ad, or at the end of a phrase (for it is found in no other location)
va-ad. The
segol vowel under the
ayin [in
va-ed] is very strange. Ibn Ezra sought to resolve it but could not, for he ascribed it to its position at the end of the verse, analogous to
va-okhel (Gen. 3:12), a variant of
va-okhal. This, however, proves nothing: first, because the vowel in
va-ed (ועֶד) is a
segol, while the vowel in
va-okhel (ואכל) is a
tseireh; and second, even in positions other than the end of a verse,
naḥ peh alef verbs [those whose first root letter
alef disappears in some conjugations] in the future tense [such as
va-okhel/va-okhal] are vocalized sometimes with a
tseireh and sometimes with a
pataḥ, e.g.,
va-oḥez be-filagshi (Judg. 20:6) – and except for
naḥ peh alef verbs in the future tense, we never find a
pataḥ changing to a
tseireh at the end of a verse.
Rashi wrote that the
vav in
va-ed is part of the root (
yesod) of the word and that “it” is
petuḥah [i.e., vocalized with a
pataḥ]. The author of [the supercommentary]
Siftei Ḥakhamim [Shabbetai Bass] correctly explains that Rashi meant to refer to [the vocalization of] the
ayin [and not the
vav], for in [the contrasting phrase cited by Rashi],
ki anokhi ha-yode’a va-ed (ועֵד)
(Jer. 29:23), where the word means “and witness,” the
ayin is
kemutsah, that is, marked with a “
kamats katan,” which is [an archaic name for]
tseireh, while in the case of ועֶד, meaning “forever,” the
ayin is marked with a “
pataḥ katan,” which is [an archaic name for]
segol.
On the other hand, Ibn Ezra was referring to the vocalization of the
vav when he said, “It is the way of the Hebrew language that when the
tenu’ah (this word [meaning “vowel”] seems to be a scribal error, and should be
neginah, “musical accent”) is on the letter following a
vav, it is marked with a
pataḥ, as in
shor ve-khesev va-ez (Lev. 7:23), and for this reason there is a
pataḥ in
va-ed.” He used the terminology of
petiḥah to refer to the
kamats [in
va-ed], not that the
kamats is actually called [
pataḥ], but because it is a
petuḥah [i.e., an “open” vowel] relative to the
sheva, which is not a vowel at all. In Ibn Ezra’s short commentary [to Exodus], he further expressed the idea: “Because the accent [
ta’am] is on the first letter, as in
leḥem va-yayin (Gen. 14:18), the
vav is marked with a
pataḥ.”
1
However, Rashi’s statement that the vav in va-ed is “yesod” [usually understood as meaning “part of the root”] cannot be taken literally. Rashi was aware that the expressions la-ad, minmi ad, and olmei ad appear without a vav, so how could he have said here that the vav was yesod? Furthermore, his comment elsewhere (at Num. 21:14) [on the words et vahev, usually understood as referring to a place named Waheb], “Et vahev is the equivalent of et yahev, just as the root ya’ad yields ועד,” does not at all prove that he derives va-ed from the root ya’ad, for there he was [merely] referring to the appearance of a vav in place of a [root letter] yod in words such as no’ad and mo’ed, as well as va’ad (וַעַד, “council”) in Rabbinic Hebrew, but he was not referring (as the Me’ammer thought) to the word va-ed, which as everyone knows is not derived from the root ya’ad, but from the word ad, as in la-ad and le-olmei ad.
It seems clear to me that this is what Rashi intended to say: in the word ועֵד (“and witness”), with a tseireh marking the ayin, [the presence of the initial vav does not determine the vocalization of the ayin, for] the word עֵד appears without a vav; but the word וָעֶד, with a segol marking the ayin, cannot exist without the vav, for without it the word would be ad with a pataḥ, not ed with a segol. Thus, the vav is an inseparable element of the word וָעֶד, as if it were a root letter (yesod).
Similarly, in a comment below (v. 23) on the word maratah, Rashi wrote, “The tav appears in place of the root letter he of the word marah,” and so also, on the word va-ḥamato [in the same comment], he wrote, “The he of the root changes to a tav.” Thus, he characterizes as a “root letter” any letter that is inseparable from a word, and whose removal would alter the word’s meaning, even if it is not truly part of the root – for the root of marah is marar [with a resh, not a he], and the root of ḥemah is [not ḥamah, with a he, but] yaḥam.
1. {Translator's note: For an opposing view, see Rosenbaum and Silbermann, p. 242: “There appears to be but little doubt that Rashi and Ibn Ezra had the reading וַעֶד or perhaps even וַעֵד in place of our וָעֶד, and that the nomenclature of the vowels which Rashi employs here is the same as ours.” In other words, Rashi did in fact mean to say that the vav (not the ayin) is marked with what we call a pataḥ.}