We are now in Perek Shira and we are up to the song of the dew. It's a pasuk in Hoshea 14,10
הטל אומר: אֶהְיֶה כַטַּל לְיִשְׂרָאֵל יִפְרַח כַּשּׁוֹשַׁנָּה וְיַךְ שָׁרָשָׁיו כַּלְּבָנוֹן: (הושע יד ו) The Dew says, God says I will be like dew for the Jewish people, they will blossom like a rose and its roots will take root like a cedar tree in Lebanon.
There's another pasuk in Hoshea ו where we tell God, "God should come down to us like rain," but the Gemara in Taanit 4A says this is one of the cases where the Jewish people asked something in the wrong way, and God answered them in the right way. They said, We want God to come down to us like rain, and God said, My daughter, you're asking for something that is sometimes wanted, and sometimes not wanted, sometimes there, sometimes not; I'm going to be for you like something that's always wanted and is always there. As it says," I will be like the dew." The Midrash adds that the dew is constant whereas rain is not a constant.
In Vayikra 26,12 the Tiferet Yonatan, by Yonatan Eibeshitz explains (and this is a fundamental in many works), that rain symbolizes something that needs an arousal from below. Rain comes from the ocean, goes up and then comes down from the heaven. So too, we, down here, need to cause God, through the rain, to come from above. We have to merit it. That's why in the Torah, whenever someone doesn't do anything right, the warning is always, I'll stop the rain, while dew is something that just comes, out of the goodness of God without us needing to merit it at all.
In Shoftim ו, the prophet Gidon asks for a sign from God that he'll be successful in his war. He says, I'm going to put some wool on the floor in the granary. If I come in the morning and there's dew only on it and not on anything around it, then I'll know that God is going to save us. When he gets up in the morning and checks, the wool is soaked. they squeezed it out it and it filled up a bucket of water. The Malbim, in Shoftim ו says that the message is this concept, that God says, I'll be like dew, which means even if you're not deserving, even if you don't merit, I'll give it to you. Gidon was trying to say, Even if we might not merit it, God should still give it to us.
The Radak explains that Bnei Yisrael is compared to a shoshana/rose because there is a beauty to a rose, but as beautiful as it is, it doesn't have strong roots. So we want the beauty of the rose, but with the strong roots of the trees of the Lebanon, that have very deep roots.
The Ahavat Yonatan adds a beautiful point. He says that this pasuk, אֶהְיֶה כַטַּל לְיִשְׂרָאֵל is brought down in connection to Teshuva in the reading of Shabbat Shuva. He says that God says that He's going to force us to do Teshuva. The question, if it's against our will, what is it worth? And he explains with the famous Rambam that says when a Jewish person doesn't want to divorce his wife, we whip him until he says, I want, because deep down, he wants. He just needs the whipping to bring out his real desire and to get rid of the Yetzer Hara that's interfering. Once we get rid of the Yetzer Hara, his true self is revealed. He says, similarly, roses are sometimes tight, but when the dew comes down on them, they open up, revealing their true beauty. We can see what was always hidden there as well.
That's what it mean when God says, I'm going to be like the dew. It means the dew will come down and reveal what is already inside of you. It just was hidden.
Finally, the Ben Ish Chai in his sefer Ben Yehoyada on Taanit 4A explains that we have two Mitzvot- Tefillin, which is not a constant, and tzitzit, which we have every day. [It says, the reason why the the one who chopped (or gathered) wood on Shabbat sinned, was because there was no tefillin on Shabbat. And right after that, we bring in tzitzit, which is every single day.]
He compares tefillin to rain, and tzitzit to dew, which is a constant. The zechut of the tzitzit, which is the constant remembering of God, brings down the Beracha of the dew.
Furthermore, we have 39 wrappings of the tefilin, corresponding to the numerical value of Dew טלwhich is 39, and symbolized with the constant mitzvah of the tzitzit which brings the constant beracha of the dew down.
So God says. I will be like dew to the jewish people. I will bring constant beracha, whether you're worthy or not.
That is the song of the dew.