The Sixth Millennium and the Awaiting of Redemption

The last mark on the paper timeline is 6000, in red. It stands there not as a prediction but because that is how tradition counts.

The Talmud (Sanhedrin 97a) records the school of Elijah: 'Six thousand years the world exists — two thousand of void, two thousand of Torah, two thousand the days of Mashiach.' Two thousand years of tohu from Adam until Abraham taught of one God; two thousand of Torah until the Mishnah; and from the year 4000 the days of Mashiach. The passage adds bitterly: 'because of our many sins, what has gone out of them has gone out' — the time came, and the redemption was delayed.

Beside it stands a second image: the six days of creation and the seventh of rest as six millennia and a seventh, 'a day that is entirely Shabbat' (Rosh Hashanah 31a). As the land rests in the shmita year (Leviticus 25:2–4), so does history.

Tradition still forbids fixing a date. The same passage (97b) says sharply, 'May the spirit of those who calculate the end expire' — when a predicted date passes, people stop waiting. Maimonides repeats the warning in his Letter to Yemen. The timeline's end is therefore left open: his twelfth principle says that though Mashiach tarries, I wait for him every day.