These four verbs of redemption become the “source” for the practice of drinking four cups of wine at the seder. They can also be understood as four stages of freedom. The first stage is when there is awareness of the situation. Often people don’t grasp the extent of their oppression. They have become used to it or they have lowered their expectations of what is possible. God is saying: I will free you from the notion that this is the way it has been and always will be.

        The second stage is to be delivered from their enslavement. Their actual situation changes. It may unfold in stages, but it leads to a fundamental difference in people’s daily lives. This is the most dramatic moment. Too often, it is mistakenly seen as the end to the process. The third stage is geulah/redemption. This involves dealing with the lasting impact of the experience of oppression. People can carry the wounds of experiences of discrimination or worse for a long time. The Israelites seem unable to recover from their experience of slavery. Over and over again they express a desire to return to Egypt--romanticizing their experience by remembering their food as leeks and cucumbers rather than bland matzah.

        The fourth stage is to be healed of the past. It is to feel equal to others, to be fully accepted for who you are and to most of all to be connected to a sense of meaning, hence: “I will take you to be My people and I will be your God.”

        The commentators ask about a fifth verb of redemption—“I will bring you (ve-haiveiti) into the land that I swore to give to Abraham.” (Ex. 6:8)? Some suggest the cup for Elijah at the seder represents this fifth stage of redemption. We don’t drink it because that complete redemption hasn’t happened yet. Elijah’s cup is then an expression of the work that still needs to be done. 

        Another commentator (quoted by the Imrei Fee) suggests the incompleteness has to do with the fact that the Levites and priests did not inherit a piece of land. Until everyone attains the promised land, all redemption remains incomplete. 

        This suggests that the Zionist vision of Israel will remain incomplete until we find a way that all the current inhabitants of the land, Jews and Palestinians will feel free and able to sit under their olive tree and no one shall make them afraid.