As we mentioned earlier, Judaism (in general) and the Amidah (in particular) empower us to stand before God and enjoy a loving relationship with Him. With every request we experience an increased sense of inner strength and Divine significance; we become more and more confident and assertive. Not only do we express more confidence in our request, but even the tone of our request becomes more and more assertive. We had reached our peak with the previous blessing when we prayed for God’s return. We asked that He take pleasure in us and return to Zion from His exile. And we asserted that we wanted to see Him with our very own eyes! At this point we hit the danger zone, and the time has come for a nice dose of humility. Therefore, we now bow and humbly give thanks. We thank You because You are He, YHVH, our God, and the God of our forefathers. Rock of our lives, Shield of our salvation, You are He, from generation to generation. We thank You and we speak Your praises, for our lives are in Your hands and our souls are in Your charge, and for all Your miracles that are with us daily, and for Your wonders and Your goodness in every time—morning, evening and afternoon. [You are] the Good, because Your compassion has never ended, and the Compassionate, because Your kindness has never ended. We have always put our hope in You. And above all, may Your name be blessed and exalted, our King, forever and ever. And may all life thank You forever and genuinely praise Your name, Almighty, who is our salvation and our help. Blessed are You, YHVH—the Good is Your name and it is a pleasure to thank You. After seventeen blessings, growing in stature in God’s presence and standing more and more erect, we finally bow again in this thanksgiving blessing, referred to by its first word, Modim. There is a cryptic statement in the Talmud that claims that if we do not bow down at this point in our prayer, our spine turns into a snake. The snake in the Garden of Eden seduced Adam and Eve with delusions that they could become independent gods. The snake appealed to the Divine potential we all sense within. As we learned earlier, Rav Kook explains that we bow in order to stand humbly in God’s presence. However, we bow only a limited amount of times so as not to damage our healthy sense of self. The goal is to stand humbly yet also confidently before God. But now, in this next blessing, we balance out the possible dangerous side-effect of the previous blessings and humbly bow. In fact, if we do not bow at this point in our evolving sense of inner godliness, then our stature (symbolized by our spine) will over-evolve into raw ego (symbolized by the snake).