Kingship Outside of Time

Good morning everyone. Welcome back to Learn to Daven - Day 71.

Yesterday we learned that Yehi Chevod is a mosaic - a string of verses gathered from all over Tanach. Today I want to pull out one single verse from that string, because it might be the most quietly profound sentence in the whole section. Here it is:

Hashem melech, Hashem malach, Hashem yimloch l'olam va'ed. God is King. God was King. God will be King, forever and ever.

Now read it again and listen to the grammar. Three short clauses - and each one is in a different tense. Melech - present. God is King, right now. Malach - past. God was King, He always has been. Yimloch - future. God will be King, He always will be. Present, past, future - all in one breath.

And here's the secret that makes this verse so beautiful. It's another mosaic. Just like Yehi Chevod itself is built from scattered verses, this single line is built from three different verses in Tanach. The "Hashem melech" - God is King - is the language of Tehillim chapter 10. The "Hashem malach" - God was King - echoes Tehillim chapter 93. And "Hashem yimloch l'olam va'ed" - God will be King forever - that's straight from the Shiras Hayam, the Song at the Sea, in Shemos chapter 15. The very song Moshe and the whole Jewish people sang after they crossed the sea.

So the Sages reached into three different places - present, past, future - and fused them into one declaration. And the message is staggering. They're telling you: God's kingship is not a thing that happens in time. It's not that He became King at some point, reigns for a while, and might step down later. No. His kingship is outside of time altogether. Present, past, and future are three windows, and through every single one of them you see the same King on the same throne.

The Alter Rebbe, the first Lubavitcher Rebbe, takes this idea to its very root. He points to the line we say later in davening - Atah hu ad shelo nivra ha'olam - "You are He before the world was created." And he asks the obvious question: what does before even mean? Before there was a world, there was no time. No yesterday, no tomorrow, no "before." Time itself is part of the creation.

So God doesn't live inside time, the way we do - moving from moment to moment, the past gone, the future not yet here. God is above time. For Him, the Alter Rebbe teaches, past and present and future are all equally present, all at once. Malach, melech, yimloch - was, is, will be - they're not three different states for God. They're one single reality that we, trapped inside the river of time, can only describe with three different words.

Now here's why this matters at seven in the morning. There's a comfort in this verse, and there's a demand.

The comfort: God's kingship never lapses. There's never a gap, never a moment when the throne is empty, never a season when God isn't running the world. Whatever you're walking into today - He was King over it, He is King over it, He will be King over it.

And the demand: when we say this verse, we're accepting the yoke of His kingship across all three tenses in one breath. We're not just crowning Him for today. We're saying: You were always my King, You are my King now, and You will be my King forever. The whole of time, accepted in a single sentence.

That's Hashem melech, Hashem malach, Hashem yimloch. Three tenses, one King, no gaps.

Tomorrow: we arrive at the crown jewel of Psukei D'Zimrah - Ashrei. We'll begin our introduction to the prayer the Gemara says guarantees a person a place in the World to Come.