Aligned sentence by sentence
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— has abandoned and rejected us. Rather, as it says: "For the Lord your God is a merciful God; He will not abandon you or destroy you…"
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So may God show us mercy — He whom we believe has set for our exile two timeframes: one, the time of repentance; the other, the appointed term. Whichever of the two arrives first, the Redemption becomes due.
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If our repentance is completed, the appointed term is irrelevant, and it will happen as the Torah says: "And it shall come to pass, when all these things come upon you… and you return to the Lord your God… then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes…"
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And if we fall short of repentance, we will remain until the appointed time — some of us being punished and others being tried.
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This is as we know from the occurrence of every general calamity — at the turns of time, such as famine, sword, and plague — that some people are punished by them while others are tried.
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Even the Flood cannot have been without youths and children among them being tried and compensated. And just as we have no doubt that among our ancestors in Egypt there were many righteous ones who endured the ordeal until the appointed time was completed —
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— let no one say: if there were righteous ones among you, the Redemption would have come. For our masters and leaders, Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, endured the enslavement for more than eighty years until the appointed time was completed — and many righteous ones were like them.
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Chapter 3. I must now address the duration of the appointed time. Our Lord, mighty and exalted, revealed to His prophet Daniel three angels — one standing above the Tigris and two standing on the bank, asking the one above the water when the Redemption would come.
This is what it says: "And I, Daniel, looked — and behold, two"