God save us – Vayyechi
A verse from today’s parashah has been borrowed and brought into the liturgy.
It says Liy’shu’at’cha kivviti HaShem – “For Your salvation I wait, O Lord” (Gen. 49:18).
It is part of the night prayers, and at some point the three Hebrew words have been arranged so as to come in three different sequences.
Before asking what the verse adds to our prayers, let us look at how the sages explained it.
Since it comes at the end of Jacob’s blessing of his son Dan, Rashi says it alludes to Dan’s descendant Samson. When Samson was captured and his eyes were put out, he needed God’s protection and salvation.
What the verse is doing in the night prayers is that anything can happen whilst one is asleep and we pray that God will watch over us and keep us safe.
It suggests our hope that problems we take to bed at night will feel better in the morning. It also applies to the black times in history when we yearn for God to deliver us from evil.