[Avodah] Hayinu keCholmim

[Alan Rubin]

Micha Berger suggested

 > I encountered in the TY, Terumos 1:1 2b, a discussion of someone who
 > r"l is sometimes shoteh sometimes lucid. The term used for healthy
 > is "chalim". At the end, the gemara justifies translating the tanna
 > accordingly by citing Yeshaiahah 38:17 "vesachalimeini vehachayeini".
 > (Similar citation is in the TB, Mes Berakhos and Menachos 44b.)

 > So perhaps "hayinu kecholmim" means "we will be like people recovering"?

Amos Chacham in the Mosad Rav Kook edition has a note as follows.

The Aramaic targum translates 'kecholmim' heich mar`aya de'ittasyan - 
like ill people that were healed. It explains from the expression 
'"vesachalimeini vehachayeini". Isaiah 38' 16", the exile is compared to 
an ill person and the redemption to a cure.

I saw a more beautiful explanation on the Har Etzion website. On the 
basis that the first paragraph is in the past and we are dealing with 
stages of the redemption after the Babylonian exile.

'Return us like flashfloods in the Negev and not like the original 
return when a small number came back when we were like in a dream.'

Alan Rubin