In the final verse of the first chapter, King Solomon concludes his third inquiry - the investigation of wisdom. Having examined wisdom alongside madness and folly, he arrives at a surprising conclusion: wisdom itself is not always pure gain. Sometimes it actually brings additional pain. Let us explore the various interpretations offered on this verse, and learn from them how to use wisdom correctly.
כִּי בְּרֹב חׇכְמָה רׇב כָּעַס וְיוֹסִיף דַּעַת יוֹסִיף מַכְאוֹב׃ (יח) - "For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow." (18)
Many interpretations have been offered on this verse. The Pesikta Zutarta states: whoever is wise sees something improper and becomes vexed. When a person is foolish, even if he sees improper things, it all washes over him. He lacks critical discernment, for he does not truly know what is good and what is not; therefore, whatever one presents to him is completely fine.
However, an important distinction must be made: this does not mean that one who finds fault in everything deserves praise. The very ability to distinguish between what is good and what is flawed is a virtue. But actively seeking out flaws, always seeing the negative, and returning a sofa over a minor blemish because it did not look right - that is already a harmful trait. There are people who are not overly meticulous: they are discerning and notice the defect, yet they say - I possess the trait of forbearance; I let it pass, and I will not be exacting.
A craftsman who was installing a closet once shared that he loves working with the Torah-observant community. Why? He explained: they do not nitpick over minor details or argue - "This is slightly crooked," "Why isn't it straight," "Take it back, I want another one," "There is a scratch here," "The color is slightly off." He recounted that one day, after assembling a closet, he reached the stage of drilling holes for the handles. He drilled, only to realize he had drilled on the hinge side instead of the opposite side, leaving an exposed hole. What could be done? There is filler putty, but it never looks like the original. Yet the homeowner told him: "No, no, it's fine, don't worry about it." The family even felt bad that he was distressed over his mistake! This is the point: it is not that one fails to see flaws, but that one knows how to overlook them, keeping in perspective what is important and what is not.
Nonetheless, in matters of sanctity, the Pesikta Zutarta explains: whoever is wise sees something improper and becomes distressed. As David says in Tehillim: "Streams of water shed my eyes, because they did not keep Your Torah." The improper matter here refers to the neglect of mitzvot. If a person acts improperly, it distresses and pains him. Yet simple folk, as the Pesikta Zutarta notes, encounter prohibitions and transgressions and say, "What does it matter?"
Thus, "in much wisdom is much vexation" means that when a person possesses abundant wisdom, he directs his frustration inward: How could I have stumbled? He holds himself to a high standard so as not to sin. The fool, by contrast, dismisses it: What happened? I stumbled, it is no big deal, it was unintentional, it is not so severe. The world appears to him like a smooth plain without obstacles. The verse does not refer to destructive anger, but to constructive frustration - where a person is upset with himself in the sense of doing teshuvah and genuinely regretting the sin he committed.
The Pesikta Zutarta offers another explanation: "For in much wisdom is much vexation" - when a talmid chacham commits a sin, great wrath is directed against him from Heaven. One must not think that a talmid chacham is judged like an ordinary person. An ordinary person's intentional sins are often treated as unintentional errors, for he did not know, study, or review. But when a talmid chacham sins, since his wisdom is profound, actions he takes against Hashem's will are judged strictly, and even his unintentional mistakes can be considered intentional. This is seen with Doeg, Achitophel, and the sons of Eli the Kohen. Each person is held accountable according to his spiritual level. The sons of Eli were the kohanim serving in the Mishkan, and when they acted improperly, it was judged far more severely than when a simple person behaves improperly.
On the verse "He who increases knowledge increases pain," the Pesikta Zoutreta comments: If a physician falls ill - since he is expert and understands medicine, and knows that his illness is severe and that he will not recover, he grieves for his soul. So too, one who knows that he has sinned and that his judgment is severe grieves for his soul, but an ignorant person is unconcerned.
A doctor who understands test results well knows precisely the severity of his condition. By contrast, someone who has no medical knowledge is told he has some illness, and if he does not probe further, often nothing more is said to him. But had he asked questions and understood, they would tell him: Sir, such and such percentage die from this; the chances of recovery are slim. Thus, "He who increases knowledge increases pain" - the very knowledge brings him to perceive every trouble and every illness in its full gravity.
And so it is regarding the Torah. A person who is "religiously lax" tramples upon severe transgressions, sometimes outright biblical prohibitions, unwittingly - because he lacks knowledge. But one who increases knowledge knows: this transgression violates such and such a prohibition, that one carries such a punishment, and for that one a person loses his portion in the World to Come. The more he increases knowledge and Torah, the more he increases anguish over every single transgression he commits - "therefore he grieves for his soul, but an ignorant person is unconcerned."
The Pesikta Zoutreta offers another explanation, which runs completely in the opposite direction: Whence does wisdom come to a person? "In much anger" - when his rebbi is angry with him. And who increases knowledge? One who increases pain, whose rebbi rebuked and chastised him frequently.
This means: there is one who comes to learn, says something inaccurate, and the rebbi tells him: "What are you talking about? How can you say that? That makes no sense!" He gets offended and stops coming to the yeshivah - "The rebbi yelled at me; the rebbi said I was talking nonsense." He turns tail and leaves. Nothing will come of such a person; he will never grow. But one whose rebbi gets angry with him, straightens him out again and again, and corrects him - he is the one who will grow. As Rabbi Akiva said: "Many times was I struck by Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri, yet I loved him all the more." When a person knows that this is for his benefit, he accepts all the reprimands and sharp words as meant to straighten him out, not to humiliate him. Then, through the anger his rebbi directs at him, he increases wisdom. In earlier times, a teacher would also discipline and physically chastise, like the traditional mori with his rod. Therefore: Who will increase knowledge? One who increases pain, whose rebbi rebuked and chastised him much.
Rav Shalom Schwadron would recount that when he arrived at the Chevron Yeshivah, Rav Leib Chasman was the mashgiach, and he considered him his primary Rebbi. Once, at Minchah, the chazzan was supposed to say Tachanun, but the sun had already set, so a bochur approached the chazzan and told him: "Kaddish." Afterward, he received a dressing-down from Rav Leib Chasman that he never forgot his entire life. He summoned him and said: "We can fire all the Roshei Yeshivah here; we can send them home - there is a young bochur here who decides halachah! There is no great Torah sage sitting at the mizrach wall, no one is here! A bochur walks up and decides it is sunset and we no longer say Tachanun. What, do the Gedolim here not know the halachah?" Rav Shalom said that this reprimand set him completely straight. Rav Leib Chasman, as is well known, was an uncompromising figure, and Rav Shalom Schwadron would say all his days: "It was in his merit, because he continually rebuked me, spoke harsh words to me, and put me in my place - in his merit I became what I became."
The main thing, however, is that you presented your back to be disciplined, that you did not run away. "It does not suit me to be corrected" - who are you that it doesn't suit you? You are being straightened out. Is someone trying to harm you? They want what is good for you! Do you want to remain with all your faults, with all your shortcomings? A person who thinks this way is certainly the one who will increase knowledge.
The Gemara in Sukkah applies this verse to something very fascinating. It was taught: If a young child is capable of eating an olive's bulk of grain within the time it takes to eat half a loaf (kedei achilat peras), one must distance oneself four cubits from his excrement and urine for the recitation of the Shema and prayer. And regarding an adult, even if he cannot eat it within kedei achilat peras. What is the reason? "He who increases knowledge increases pain."
Anyone who has ever cared for an infant is familiar with this reality. A nursing baby's soiled diaper produces almost no foul odor. When does it become unbearable, prompting everyone to look for someone else to change the diaper? When the baby begins eating baby cereal and grain. "Increases knowledge" - for through grain a person acquires knowledge, and furthermore, there is an opinion that the Tree of Knowledge was wheat. And then, "increases pain" - it becomes such a foul unpleasantness that one must distance oneself and look for someone to take care of it.
Targum Yonatan explains: "For in much wisdom" - one who is great in wisdom yet acted wickedly and did not repent provokes much anger before Hashem, as we saw in the Midrash that the greater a person is, the more exacting the judgment upon him. "And he who increases knowledge increases sorrow" - one who increased knowledge and died young adds sorrow to his relatives.
We must understand where the Targum saw in the plain meaning of the verse that it refers to someone who died in his youth. Evidently, this stems from the underlying difficulty: Does someone who increases knowledge truly increase sorrow? Surely he increases good! Rather, the pain arises when a person of knowledge passes away in his youth, for then he brings great sorrow to his relatives. Still, a clearer allusion to this in the verse remains to be found.
Midrash Rabbah states: Consider how many wise figures existed throughout history about whom we would have been certain their wisdom would benefit them, yet ultimately their wisdom worked to their detriment, only adding to their provocation of the Holy One, blessed be He. Because the serpent was shrewder than all, it became more cursed than all. Who was the wisest of all the beasts of the field? The serpent. And who was the most cursed? The serpent. "For in much wisdom is much anger" - the wiser one becomes, the more he provokes his Master.
The Midrash enumerates this wonderfully: Some increased wisdom to their benefit - such as Moshe and Shlomo; and some increased wisdom to their detriment - such as Doeg and Achitophel, and see what became of them. Some increased strength to their benefit - Yehudah and David; and some increased strength to their detriment - Shimshon and Goliath. Some increased wealth to their benefit - David and Shlomo; and some increased wealth to their detriment - Korach and Haman. Some increased children to their benefit - the sons of Yaakov; and some increased children to their detriment - the sons of Achav. Incidentally, one might also have cited the sons of Haman, for if Haman was mentioned regarding wealth to his detriment, children to one's detriment certainly applies to the sons of Haman, who were ultimately hanged on the gallows.
Another interpretation in the Midrash: Have you ever seen a donkey afflicted with convulsions? A camel afflicted with spasms? Where, then, is suffering found? Among human beings. Among animals, illnesses are rare - you do not see donkeys suffering from heart conditions, nor camels or dogs. Yet among human beings, there is an endless variety of illnesses. Why? To teach you that man has a purpose, and suffering has a purpose: suffering comes to align him, to rectify him, to refine him - and none of this applies to animals, which is why we do not find all this among them. "He who increases knowledge increases sorrow" - one who possesses knowledge, which is man, is the one who experiences suffering, not beasts and animals.
The Gemara in Nedarim states: Had Israel not sinned, they would have been given only the Five Books of the Torah and the Book of Yehoshua. This is the meaning of "for in much wisdom is much anger" - how did we receive such a vast Torah, an entire Tanach beyond the Five Books of the Torah and the Book of Yehoshua? Precisely because we provoked the Holy One, blessed be He, to anger, for so many books of the Tanach deal with rebukes and harsh words to the nation.
And why was the Book of Yehoshua necessary? Rav Tzadok explains: because it contains the division and worth of the Land of Israel. The meaning is that through it, everyone would see and perceive the reality of the future to come, for regarding the future it is written: "No longer will one teach his neighbor... for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest." But after the ruin, the Oral Torah became necessary - to rectify the "much anger," "much wisdom" is needed. Were it not for that, we would have had no need for all of this.
Rav Saadia Gaon explains: diligence in study is impossible without pain and toil, and one cannot rise above them except through physical discomfort. Whoever wishes to acquire a portion in the Torah must toil in it, exert himself, and dedicate his very soul to it. As Chazal said: "The Torah that I learned in anger (distress)," and "the churning of wrath brings forth strife" - in whom do you find the abundance of Torah? In one who churned his wrath, extracting every ounce of his strength. The Torah endures only in one who kills himself over it. Yet even with all of this - "his heart yearned for them and strived in them": he invests all his energies and still yearns for the Torah, rather than exhausting himself and seeking to cast off the yoke, Heaven forbid. Regarding this it is said, "For in much wisdom is much grief" - when will you merit an abundance of wisdom? When you devote yourself through painful and distressing matters. "He who increases knowledge increases sorrow" - when you devote yourself through things that pain you, relinquishing pleasures and physical comfort and accepting hardship, through this you will merit an abundance of knowledge.
In another explanation, Rav Saadia Gaon says: wisdom curbs desires and paralyzes the inclination toward pleasures, because the soul seeks to unite with spiritual reality, with the realm of souls. And who is angered by this? The body. The body is angered because pleasures and desires have been stripped away from it. The more wisdom one adds, the more sorrow and pain the body experiences. "He who increases knowledge increases sorrow" - for the body, this is painful: you took away my pleasures, you took away my desires, you took away my physical gratification.
Ibn Ezra interprets this along the lines of the well-known popular saying: the discerning person who understands the ways of the world in his great wisdom will always experience anger and sorrow. The sharper and more educated a person is, the more things cause him pain. As the saying goes: no intellect - no worries. The more intellect a person possesses, the more worries he has; he is more aware of problems and more alert to dangers.
Even regarding things that naturally bring satisfaction to any person, he will still worry. He will not rejoice in his children, for their ultimate end is death; he is conscious of what lies ahead, not living merely in the moment, but planning decades in advance. Nor will he rejoice in wealth, which flies away like a bird, knowing that fortune is a revolving wheel in this world, and that it will neither benefit nor save on the day of calamity - and the day of death is set before his eyes. He knows that everything here will eventually end. Thus, "in much wisdom is much grief," and one who increases knowledge increases sorrow over all that occurs in the world, because he knows that any pleasure he experiences is temporary and fleeting - on the contrary, this only adds to his pain.
The Imrei Shefer explains this according to the distinction between external pleasures and internal pleasures. Regarding external pleasures, King Solomon says: I came to see that "in much wisdom is much grief." When a person builds a house and the builders leave some flaw, not doing it exactly as he wanted - it causes great anger. He understands construction, so it infuriates him, and he even threatens to withhold payment from the craftsman. And over what? How important is it really? Rather, this stems from "much wisdom": bring a person who lacks expertise, and he looks at it and says, "It is very nice." Bring an expert, and he will say: How could they do such poor work for you? What is the difference between them? For the expert, due to his extensive knowledge, every little thing bothers him; nothing satisfies him completely - here it is crooked, here a tile protrudes, there something is uneven. But for someone who lacks this expertise, everything goes smoothly: it looks very nice, he pays, and it is done.
The same applies to the second part, regarding internal pleasures: "He who increases knowledge increases sorrow." An ordinary person eats his fill from whatever he finds, and it does not harm him whether the food is fresh or old, as he is accustomed to everything. The problem begins with people who are refined and pampered.
There is a well-known reminiscence of a neighborhood kiosk named Matteos in Shikun Vav, whose owner was already in his seventies or eighties at the time. He would recount what he had lived through: "Today people are pampered - someone wants a specific drink, and if it is not available, he refuses to buy it. In our day, we drank from the horses' water troughs in the stables. When one was thirsty, one took whatever was available." A person like that has a hardened, resilient body. By contrast, one who always consumes only refined drinks and delicate foods will fall ill and experience pain from the slightest deviation. "He who increases knowledge increases sorrow": in internal pleasures, in what one takes into his body, a slight variation is immediately felt, producing aches, discomfort, and upset stomachs. There are those who can eat anything without issue, whereas the refined and pampered person suffers illness and discomfort from the slightest change.
The Kol Ephraim explains: when an individual sins, everything depends on who that person is. If he is a wise person, a great and elevated figure, then "round about Him it storms exceedingly" - the Holy One, blessed be He, is exacting with the righteous to a hairsbreadth. But if one is dealing with an ordinary, coarse, and unlearned person, even his intentional sins are sometimes regarded as unintentional errors, for what does he truly understand or know? With the wise, on the contrary, God is exacting to a hairsbreadth: regarding Moshe Rabbeinu, it was said, "Because you did not believe in Me," over an episode where all the commentators strive to understand what the sin was and where Moshe fell short. Thus, "in much wisdom is much grief" - the wiser a person is in Torah, the more every sin and misstep arouses wrath against him in Heaven, whereas toward the simple man, Heaven's judgment is far more lenient.
And "he who increases knowledge increases sorrow," according to his explanation, means: one who contemplates the troubles of the public, the afflictions of the community, and the suffering of the wise in particular, is pained by their tribulations. The more he comes to know and comprehend the magnitude of the distress, the greater his pain. The same is true within the individual himself: one who increases knowledge increases sorrow in his own suffering. As recorded concerning Rabban Gamliel, who was an istenis (extremely fastidious), unable to tolerate the slightest repulsion, even though ordinary people would not consider it repulsive at all. And regarding an istenis, the Gemara states that his life is no life.
There was once an individual who, before entering to eat in anyone's house, had to open all the cupboards and inspect everything; otherwise, he simply would not eat. Consequently, most of the time he never ate in other people's homes. While such fastidiousness may have its merits, consider the misery involved: he had to inspect whether the cup was clean, how it was washed, and in what manner it was rinsed. Such an individual is truly pitiable. Thus, when one increases knowledge, he increases sorrow.
Here is an example to illustrate. Today, there are people who walk around wearing surgical masks and gloves. Why? Such a person says to you: Sir, do you know what you are breathing in the air here? Do you know how many germs are on a doorknob? Heaven forbid! One might prefer not to know - no knowledge, no pain. But he "increases knowledge": he knows how many germs are here and how many are there, everything alarms him, he is anxious about everything, and he will no longer touch this or that; here is fear, and there are germs.
And in the end, do you think this prolongs your life? Did Rav Shteinman know about all this? Were his years any shorter? He did not walk around with gloves or face coverings, nor did any of the Gedolei Yisrael, nor anyone in Bnei Brak. And yet, the highest life expectancy in the country is in Bnei Brak and Jerusalem. You see that this is not what grants a person life - rather, the added knowledge only adds pain. "He who increases knowledge increases pain": by constantly adding knowledge about all sorts of matters - this is dangerous, that is catastrophic, and what if this happens - he lives in perpetual fear. And who says that these things are truly good for him?
It emerges, therefore, that wisdom and knowledge in and of themselves are not necessarily beneficial to a person. Sometimes they bring about, on the contrary, more pain, more heartache, and more grief, because he knows and contains within himself all the troubles and all the bad and broken things, and then everything hurts him and everything agitates him.
It is often said: whoever listens to less news - it is healthier for him. A person hears something and immediately gets worked up: Did you see that? Did you see him? Did you see this? They are all thieves! If one did not see it - he does not get worked up. Why do you need to watch all the time and get agitated? Do not watch - and you will not get upset. "He who increases knowledge increases pain." To think that every addition of knowledge is necessarily good for a person is simply not true. In knowledge of the Torah it is always good and always wonderful, but in worldly information, very often he who increases knowledge increases pain. Therefore, a person must use wisdom solely for positive things.
With the verse "For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases pain," King Solomon concludes the third investigation - the investigation of wisdom. We have seen many facets: the wise man is vexed by what is improper and does teshuvah, whereas the simple person says, "What of it?"; a Torah scholar who sins is judged with greater severity, like Doeg, Achitophel, and the sons of Eli, whereas for the simple person, his willful sins are treated as unintentional; wisdom is acquired specifically through the teacher's rebuke and through toil and hardship, in the manner of Rabbi Akiva and the Torah scholars who were straightened through admonition; and knowledge itself, when it pertains to worldly matters, adds worry, fear, and pain. The conclusion: wisdom is a positive thing - provided that a person uses it for positive purposes. And that is the proper path. With this, the first chapter of Sefer Kohelet is concluded.