When they heard the praise of YY from the mouth of the Assembly of Israel, the prophets posed a question, and this is what they said, “For what sin was the Presence of YY withdrawn from you, whose conduct was more beautiful than that of all nations; and where has your Beloved turned when He left your sanctuary?” The Assembly of Israel said, “For the sins of rebellion and insurrection which were found in me.” The prophets said, “Now return in repentance, and let us rise, both you and us, and let us pray before Him and let us beg mercy together.”

And the Lord of the World received their prayer favorably and went down to Babylon to the Sanhedrin of sages and gave relief to His people and brought them up from their exile by means of Cyrus, Ezra, Nehemiah, Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, and the Elders of the Jews. And they built the Temple, and appointed the priests over the sacrifices, and the Levites over the guardianship of the Holy Word. And He sent fire from heaven and favorably received the sacrifices and the spice incense. And as a man feeds his beloved son with delicacies, that is how He indulged them. And as a man gathers roses from the plain, so He gathered them from Babylon.

And in that day I worshiped the Lord of the World, my Beloved. And my Beloved made His holy Presence dwell within me and He fed me with delicacies.

YY said by His Word, “How beautiful you are, My Dear, when your desire is to do My Will. Beautiful is the Temple which you built for Me, like the first Temple Solomon built for me. All the nations are in awe of you, as in the day your four bannered legions marched in the wilderness.

“Your rabbis, the sages of the Great Assembly, surrounded Me completely to receive me, for they acknowledged My reign during the Exile and they established a House of Study for the instruction of My Law. And the rest of your students and the people of the land acknowledged My justice by the word of their mouth, like the sons of Jacob who gathered stones and made a monument on Mount Gilead. 18

“And the priests and Levites ate of your sacrifices and of the holy tithe and the heave-offering, and were untainted by any theft or robbery, just as the flocks of Jacob’s sheep were clean at the time they came up from the Jabbok river. For none of them was obtained by theft or robbery. All of them resembled one another, they bore twins every time, and none of them was barren or miscarried.

“As for the reign of the Hasmonean dynasty, they were all filled with [performance of] the commandments as the pomegranate [is filled with seeds]–not to mention Mattathias the High Priest and his sons, who were more righteous than all of them 19, and who fulfilled the commandments and words of the Law with thirsty eagerness.”

At the same time the Greeks arose and gathered sixty kings from the sons of Esau, dressed in ring mail and riding on horses, and horsemen, and eighty commanders 20 from the sons of Ishmael, riding on elephants–not to mention the rest of the nations with their innumerable languages, and they appointed Alexander 21 as chief over them, and they came to wage war against Jerusalem.

And at that time the Assembly of Israel (which resembled a perfect dove) was worshipping the Lord of the World wholeheartedly and was devoted to the Law, occupied with the words of the Law with an undivided heart, and her merit was as pure as on the day she came out of Egypt. Look then, the Hasmoneans and Mattathias and all the people of Israel came out and joined battle with them, and the Lord delivered them into their hand. And when the inhabitants of the provinces saw this, they exalted them and the kings of the land and the rulers praised them.

The nations said, “The deeds of this people are like daybreak. Her youths are as beautiful as moonlight, and her merits are as bright as the sun. And all the inhabitants of earth are in awe of her, as when her four bannered legions marched in the wilderness.”

The Lord of the World said, “I have caused my Presence to dwell in the second Temple which was built by the hands of Cyrus, in order to see the good deeds of my people and to see whether perhaps the sages (who are comparable to a vine) were increasing and multiplying their blossoms full of good deeds (like pomegranates).”

And when it became clear before YY that they were 22 occupied with the Law, YY said by His Word, “I will not humiliate them again and I will not exterminate them, but I will consider how to do good to them and to lift them on high in the company of kings, because of the merits of the righteous of the generation, which resemble Abraham their father in their actions.”