There were Ten generations from Addam till Noach to teach us how much erech apayim - 'patience' - Hashem has until He braught the mabul. There were Ten generations from Noach to teach us how much erech apayim - 'patience' - Hashem has until Avraham came and took the potential reward of all those before him.
Rabeinu Yonah writes - contrary to the simple understanding - that the focus is not how much patience Hashem has, Rather that there is a point when Hashem says "ENOUGH!". The message here is not to lose hope in this galus, thinking Hashem will be patient with our enemies forever, rather Hashem will fianlly say "ENOUGH!" & this galus will come to an end.
A tremendous difficulty with this Rabeinu Yonah is that the Mishnah according to him is telling us that up to 10 generations Hashem is patient & then He says "ENOUGH". - So how can we still be here wayyyy longer than the limit set in the Mishnah???!
Secondly, is there actually a limit to Hashem's patience?
Third of all, why did Hashem 'wait' so long when He knew they wouldn't repent?
Another obvious problem here is that the 'patience' chiddush seems repetitive?
Obviously the 'limit' stated regarding Hashem's Midah of Erech Apayim is not limited in time, for the mishnah itself describes the first & second periods of 10 generations as equals when the 1st was 1656 years and the 2nd only 440. This leads us to conclude that the Limit is not because it took so long it finally got used up, this is quite obvious hashkafically as well. No 'quality' of Hashem can be limited.
Truthfully any description given about Hakadosh Baruch Hu is not of Himself, rather our perception of Hashem's 'interaction' with the world. So Hashem enacts erech apayim upon the world the up to a certain point.
If so, we may ask, what is the limit of 10 generations, & why are we still waiting?
The answer is there are two seperate reasons for 'patience' stated in this Mishnah. That's why the mishah is not really repetitive at all. The first reason, Hashem set a limit of 10 generations for. However the second reason for enacting Erech Apayim may be timeless.
Both are of course for the good of creation. Each generation that continues the previos one's ways developes a stronger nature to that midah. A full 10 doros of evil would shape the actual self-identity of the people into being inseparable from evil itself. This would make the evil irreversible.
Hashem knew that the people wouldn't change their ways. Therefore, instead of being 'impatient' to punish the wicked and then they'd continue in their ways, Hashem enacted Erech Apayim in order to make a full 'reset' at the the end at the point of "nismalei sa'asm".
This is why the first reason is specific to 10 generations as opposed to years.
The mishnah then informs us of a second reason for Erech Apayim. This one spans all time. When there is Knowledge of a future tzaddik great enough to receive all the potential reward of all the people before him Hashem will be patient until that tzaddik comes! Noach was not on that level, so the 10 generation 'reset' was applied.
The second part of the mishnah discusses a different reason fo Erech Apayim. Avraham was so great he was destined to be notel s'char k'neged kulam. So, either there really wasn't a limit set for the erech apayim it 'just turned out' to be 10 or perhaps we may say that untill the kedusha of klall yisrael was established in our genes, even though the point of WAITING was for the tzaddik to get the s'char as opposed to the purpose of "pushing it to the end", however the 10 dor LIMIT to the patience still existed. So while the patience was for avraham it still could not go past 10.
This understanding offers an anser to our quoestion on R' Yonah, and a whole new insight to our lengthy galus.
R' Moshe Feinstein ztz"l in kol ram qoutes the mamar chazal that Moshiach will come in a dor that is kulo chayiv or kolu zakkai. Therefore says R' Moshe, we can be sure that Moshiach is almost here as we we are just about kulo........ZAKKAI!!! He explains that never before have we been so incorporated into the gentile society as here in America. This sways just about any merit of ours to be monumental compared to the genrations before, & our shortcomings to be considered relarively miniscule.
According to this I believe we can say that Hashem's Erech Apayim for the past thousands of years may very well be specifically for US to be notel s'char kulam of the thousands of years & millions of people throughout the world!!!!
