(This thought was started by something from Rav Samson Rafael Hirsch, but over the decades has drifted quite a bit from the original.)

The request section in the middle of Shemoneh Esrei could be grouped as being in four basic areas. (And that should be unsurprising, given what we said already about four being the number of ways we experience receiving from the Divine).

I find it hard to keep a sequence of 12 straight in my head difficult. And only harder to deal with 13, including the late addition of VelaMalshinim (which as “VeleMeshumadim” before censorship, and how I choose to say it.) But a sequence of four groups of requests is a more manageable overview.

1- The first three requests are all requests for personal spirituality. By which I do not mean we are asking for ourselves — all the requests are in the plural “for us”. But we ask for (1) Intellect, (2) a return to your Torah, and (3) forgiveness, something each Jew could receive as an individual. And they are all pieces of my relationship to Hashem.

2- The next three are more about physical wellbeing: (4) Redemption from our suffering, (5) Healing, and (6) a financially successful year.

3- The next four are for a return to justice: (7) Ingathering of the exiled to Israel, (8) establishing a Torah-based justice system, (8b) judging the wicked and removing their evil, (9) the preservation and promotion of the righteous.

4- And the last three are about ultimate redemption: (10) a return to Jerusalem, (11) the messiah, (12) a close relationship with Hashem where we can tell that He listens to our prayers.

Notice this means that we first ask for individual Jews’ needs, and we do so by going from spiritual needs to physical ones. Then we ask for national needs, but that we do starting from justice and only then closing back with spirituality.