The Cavalry Of Righteousness: The Tzaddikim & The Zohar’s “Horses Of Might”
Iyov / Job 39:19–25:
הֲתִתֵּן לַסּוּס גְּבוּרָה
הֲתַלְבִּישׁ צַוָּארוֹ רַעְמָה
הֲתַרְעִישֶׁנּוּ כָּאַרְבֶּה
הוֹד נַחְרֹו אֵימָה
יַחְפְּרוּ בָעֵמֶק וְיָשִׂישׂ
בְּכֹחַ יֵצֵא לִקְרַאת נָשֶׁק
יֵשַׂח בְּפַחַד וְלֹא יָחִיל
וְלֹא יָשׁוּב מִפְּנֵי חָרֶב
עָלָיו תִּרְעַשׁ קֶשֶׁת
לַפִּיד וַחֲנִית
בְּרֹעַ שׁוֹפָר יֹאמַר אָח
וּמֵרָחוֹק יָרִיחַ מִלְחָמָה
רַעַם שָׂרִים וּתְרוּעָה
“Do you give the horse its might?
Do you clothe its neck with a mane?
Do you make it quiver like a locust?
Its majestic snorting is terror.
It paws in the valley and rejoices in its strength;
it charges into the clash of arms.
It mocks fear and is not dismayed;
it does not turn back from the sword.
Upon it rattles the quiver,
the flashing spear and javelin.
At the trumpet’s blast it says, ‘Aha!’
From afar it smells the battle,
the thunder of captains and the war-cry.”
The Midrash says:
קוֹל סוּסִים שֶׁל גְּבוּרָה נִשְׁמָע מִמָּרוֹם
“The sound of horses of might is heard from on high.”
Not the clamor of armies.
Not the terror of conquest.
Not the dust of war.
This is a sound of joy,
of unleashed strength,
of souls running in their true element.
And the Sages reveal the secret hidden within that sound:
These horses are the tzaddikim.
Their souls are the legs upon which the Divine Will rides through creation.
Their momentum is the world’s ascent.
Their gevurah is the architecture of redemption.
The Zohar says:
צַדִּיקַיָּא אִנּוּן סוּסִין דְּמָרֵיהוֹן
“The tzaddikim are the horses of their Master.”
Their deeds shake worlds.
Their footsteps tear through the husks of history.
Their movement is itself a revelation.
In the world to come, they will run not against resistance,
but on ground that finally deserves their stride.
Their gallop will be psalm,
their speed peace,
their strength harmony.
The “sound of horses of might” is the sound of tzaddikim running freely
in a creation sturdy enough to hold their fire.
But to understand why they reappear in number during the birthpangs of Messiah,
we must turn to Rav Kook—
to his terrifying, beautiful theology of the “Souls of the World of Chaos.”
Rav Kook wrote that some souls originate not in this world of repair (Olam HaTikkun),
but in an older, more primordial realm:
נִשְׁמוֹת דְּתֹהוּ
“Souls of the World of Chaos.”
These souls carry too much light,
too much intensity,
too much raw spiritual voltage
for the ordinary structures of human life.
He writes:
נשמות התוהו מלאות אורות גדולים, עליונים ורבים, אבל אין הכלים של עולם זה יכולים לעמוד בהם.
“The souls of Chaos are filled with immense, lofty, abundant lights;
but the vessels of this world cannot contain them.” (Orot HaKodesh I)
These souls burn holes in existence.
Their pace is too fast.
Their visions too broad.
Their inner fire too fierce.
Rav Kook teaches:
מהן נובעת הסערה של הדורות האחרונים
“From them arises the storm of the final generations.” (Shemona Kevatzim)
Why? Because the world, after millennia of repair,
finally begins to develop vessels strong enough to receive them.
This is why the age before Messiah is so turbulent, so unbearable, so blistering:
The shattered lights of the primordial world
begin to return.
They reincarnate into bodies,
into generations,
into movements,
into upheavals.
And the world shakes under the impact.
Rav Kook says:
נשמות התוהו מוכרחות להופיע בשעת הגאולה
“The souls of Chaos must appear at the moment of redemption.”
Why? Because only they have the voltage to break the last husks.
Only they run fast enough.
Only they carry enough Divine fire
to tear through the thick crust of history.
They do not appear in calm times.
They appear in the birthpangs.
Thus, during chevlei mashiach, the world suddenly fills with:
• extreme souls
• intense souls
• radical moral visionaries
• terrifying spiritual runners
• tzaddikim who cannot be tamed
• righteous ones who move with the explosive violence of stars being born.
Rav Kook calls them:
כוחות אדירים של נשמות קודמות לעולם
“Mighty forces of souls older than the world.”
They come because the world requires them.
They come because the gates of redemption are too heavy for ordinary hands.
They come because the final contraction of history
needs a kind of strength unavailable to calmer generations.
These are the Horses of Might.
They reappear in number during the birthpangs because the end is thick.
Because the husks are dense.
Because history resists birth.
Rav Kook writes:
בדור האחרון לא די בכוחות הרגילים—העולמות צריכים את האור הפרוע, המבהיק, המתפרץ.
“In the final generation, ordinary forces are not enough—
the worlds require the wild, luminous, eruptive light.”
That wild light comes from:
נשמות דתוהו — the Souls of Chaos
and these souls are, in Rav Kook’s language:
הסוסים של הגאולה
“the horses of redemption.”
They run ahead of the world,
they run against the world,
they run through the world.
They run because the future is dragging at their reins.
They run because they hear a trumpet others cannot hear.
They run because they cannot ignore the pull of the end.
This is why, during the birthpangs of Messiah,
we suddenly see a multiplication of tzaddikim—
not always famous ones,
not always recognized ones—
but souls with the unmistakable voltage of earlier worlds.
Souls who crash into history like comets.
Souls who blister with intensity.
Souls who cannot be tamed.
Souls who are “too much” for the age,
yet precisely what the age requires.
Their arrival is not accidental.
It is necessary.
They are the cavalry of redemption.
Zechariah saw a time when the world would finally be able to contain these souls:
בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא יִהְיֶה עַל־מְצִלּוֹת הַסּוּס קֹדֶשׁ לַיהוָה
“On that day, the bells of the horses will bear the words: ‘Holy to the Lord.’” (Zechariah 14:20)
What once tore vessels
will illuminate them.
What once broke worlds
will build them.
What once set fires
will give light.
The strength of the tzaddikim in the Messianic age
will not be destructive.
It will be creative.
The bells that once jingled with fear
will ring with holiness.
Every motion of the righteous
will be sanctified in the world to come.
Habakkuk saw this vision and trembled:
כִּי תִרְכַּב עַל־סוּסֶיךָ מַרְכְּבוֹתֶיךָ יְשׁוּעָה
“You ride upon Your horses; Your chariots are salvation.” (Habakkuk 3:8)
The Sages say:
These “horses” are the tzaddikim themselves—
carriers of Divine rescue,
bearers of light through the storm of history.
Their lives pull the Divine chariot,
drawing mercy down through the hidden channels of creation.
The Rider is the Source;
the horses are the righteous who run His will into time.
Their hooves are prayer.
Their speed is faith.
Their courage is Torah inscribed in blood and breath.
When they move, the worlds tremble in recognition.
Rav Kook’s most shocking sentence about these souls is this:
נשמות התוהו אינם מוצאות את מקומן עד דור הגאולה
“The souls of Chaos do not find their place until the generation of redemption.”
In other words:
Their arrival in our time
is itself the proof
that the end is near.
The birthpangs call them forth.
The world to come draws them forward.
And they arrive—
plural, intense, incandescent—
running like the primordial horses of the Divine.
In that final world,
when the last husk breaks
and the last gate opens,
creation will tremble with the sound the Midrash promised:
קוֹל סוּסִים שֶׁל גְּבוּרָה נִשְׁמָע מִמָּרוֹם
“The sound of horses of might is heard from on high.”
The tzaddikim,
the souls of chaos purified,
the runners of redemption,
will tear through the resurrected world
in pure joy.
No breaking.
No exile.
No shattered vessels.
Only the full power of holiness
at full gallop.
A redeemed creation
keeping pace
with its own flames.
And the bells on their harnesses,
once ordinary metal,
will ring with a single word:
קֹדֶשׁ — Holy.
And the worlds will answer:
Amen.
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