Before us is the continuation of the seventh chapter of Kohelet, in which Shlomo HaMelech continues to outline for us upright practices in refining one's character traits. Here we will focus on two verses: the warning against haste and anger, and the warning against blind longing for the "former days." These two verses, as we will see, are deeply connected.
אַל־תְּבַהֵל בְּרוּחֲךָ לִכְעוֹס כִּי כַעַס בְּחֵיק כְּסִילִים יָנוּחַ׃ (ט) - "Do not be hasty in your spirit to anger, for anger rests in the bosom of fools." (9)
There is an upright path taught here: a person must know not to be hasty in his actions. Deliberation is a wonderful, virtuous trait, whereas sometimes a person who rushes in his actions - even when seeking to champion justice - may end up causing grief to an innocent person. He is convinced that someone did something improper, so he yells at him, degrades him, and shames him. And afterward: "I am so sorry, please forgive me" - but now go ask his forgiveness, go try to appease him.
A parable illustrates this: a person sees a fellow Jew lighting a fire on Shabbat, or performing some other prohibited labor. Zeal for Hashem undoubtedly flares up in his heart to insult and berate the perpetrator - he has desecrated the name of Hashem, he has desecrated Shabbat! - or to expose his disgrace in front of everyone. But if he had paused to observe, he would have discovered that this person was currently heating water for someone who is dangerously ill, a matter of pikuach nefesh, acting under the direct instruction of a Torah sage. He was certain the man was making himself a coffee - yet the reality was entirely different.
From where did this all stem? From "one who rushes with his feet sins" (Mishlei 19:2). One who rushes comes to sin. Do not rush, do not be impetuous; do things slowly, after reflection and thought, and then you will not stumble into sin. This is the meaning of: "Do not be hasty in your spirit to anger, for anger rests in the bosom of fools." Only a fool is quick to anger, failing to think and reflect that perhaps he does not fully understand the situation, and that it may even be something positive and good. He does not wait to see the end of the matter, and so he agitates himself into anger.
אַל־תֹּאמַר מֶה הָיָה שֶׁהַיָּמִים הָרִאשֹׁנִים הָיוּ טוֹבִים מֵאֵלֶּה כִּי לֹא מֵחָכְמָה שָׁאַלְתָּ עַל־זֶה׃ (י) - "Do not say: 'How was it that the former days were better than these?' for it is not out of wisdom that you asked about this." (10)
The Targum explains: Do not say "what happened?" - do not say: "I remember what eras those were, what times, what abundance!" Even regarding ancient times - the era of the Prophets, the Giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, the Exodus from Egypt - do not say, "How was it?" And why were those eras so good? "Because the former days were better than these." According to the Targum, this middle clause is not part of the question, but the answer itself. Thus, the question - "How was it, what happened, and why are things today not as good as they were back then?" - in itself proves that "it is not out of wisdom that you asked about this." For had you gained wisdom, you would have understood that the former days were indeed better than these: the people then were on a higher spiritual plane, more righteous, and therefore had it better.
And who among us can even grasp who the members of the generation of the wilderness were? The Gemara relates how a certain Amora traveled with an Arab merchant, and they rode on a camel beneath the bent knee of one of the people of the generation of the wilderness. This certainly hints at inner matters as well, teaching that their spiritual stature was exceedingly great - Chazal call them the "generation of knowledge" (dor de'ah). Therefore, do not say "how was it," because the people back then truly were better than those of today.
The author of the Eretz Chemdah cites from the Chavot Yair that there are two ways to merit longevity. The first is through the study of Torah, as it is written: "For through me your days shall be multiplied" (Mishlei 9:11) - through me, says the Torah, you will have long life. The second is when a person overlooks perceived slights and foregoes his grievances, as the Gemara relates in Chagigah (4b) regarding the story of Maryam Megadla Se'ar Nesheya. There was a woman named Maryam, and she was a hairdresser - she would plait women's hair. Some say she was the mother of that man, the Christians' "Mary Magdalene" (may their name and memory be blotted out), while others say she was simply Maryam, the plaiter of women's hair. In any case, the Gemara there relates an entire account involving the Satan, which we will not delve into here. The conclusion of that passage is that there are people who die before their time - "swept away without justice" - and the Holy One, Blessed be He, adds those years to the lives of people who forego their grievances. And as we already explained when we studied that passage, this does not mean without justice at all, but rather without a justice that can be comprehended here on earth.
The question is asked: What is the difference between someone who merits length of days by virtue of "For through me your days will be multiplied" (Mishlei 9:11), and someone whose days are multiplied from those years taken from people who died prematurely because he overlooks slights? The difference is this: One who engages in Torah is promised that his years will also be good - "For through me your days will be multiplied, and they will add to you" - and what kind of years? "Years of life." Years full of life, good years, not years about which a person would say, "Death is better for me." In contrast, one who overlooks slights has no such guarantee. It does not say regarding him, "they will add to you years of life," but rather that years are added to him - and it could be, Heaven forbid, that these will be years in which a person is confined to a chair.
At the time, Mr. Sharon was told that he had received a curse from Rav Ovadia Yosef, a blow to his head. He replied that his family comes from long-lived stock - he had an aunt who lived to nearly a hundred, and in short, he claimed that he was naturally long-lived. Afterward, realizing there might be something to it after all, he sent an emissary to Rav Ovadia Yosef, and the Rav blessed him with long life. Both things were fulfilled in him: both a blow to the head, and long life - he lay as a vegetable on a respirator for eight years. There you have it: you were promised length of days, but what kind of days will they be? Not necessarily good days. There are people who live this way for decades, Heaven protect us. Length of days in itself does not yet mean that they are good days. But one who receives it through Torah - "For through me your days will be multiplied, and they will add to you years of life" - these are days of good life.
And this is what King David says: "One thing I have asked of Hashem, that I will seek" - what am I asking for? Years of life. Not years taken from others. And how will I merit this? "That I may dwell in the house of Hashem" - by sitting in the tent of Torah, I will have good years, "all the days of my life," years of true life.
According to this, our verse is explained in direct continuation to the one before it. "Do not be hasty in your spirit to become angry" - a person must conquer his anger and overlook slights, and through this, as the Gemara says, the years of those whose lives were cut short are transferred to him. However, these are not necessarily good years. And if so, a person might say: "The former days were better than these" - You added years to my life, but they are not pleasant years. To this comes the answer: "For it was not out of wisdom that you asked about this" - meaning, it was not through wisdom that you obtained this addition. Had you obtained it through wisdom, which is Torah, these would have been good days, years of life. But since you merited them by virtue of overlooking slights, one receives years that are not necessarily good - years in which one has no pleasure, and which do not fall into the category of "years of life." Through Torah, he would have merited not only length of days, but length of days filled with a pleasant life.
The Pesikta Zoutreta explains: "'Do not say, What happened that the former days were better than these?' - From here Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish said: You have only what is in your generation. And so it says: 'And you shall come to the Levitical priests and to the judge who will be in those days' (Devarim 17:9), 'for it was not out of wisdom that you asked about this.' A person always loves to reminisce about what once was, about times when there were spiritual giants, and says to himself: If only there were a sage today like the sages of earlier generations, I would certainly learn Torah from him! In response to this, the Gemara in Rosh Hashanah 25b states: This teaches that a person should not say, 'How can I be judged before so-and-so the judge? Is he like Moshe and Aharon, like Eldad and Meidad?' Rather, Yeruba'al in his generation is like Moshe in his generation; Bedan in his generation - that is Shimshon - is like Aharon in his generation; Yiftach in his generation is like Shmuel in his generation. Therefore, you must go only to the judge who is in your days.
A person can always search through history, find great giants, and say: If only such people were alive today, I would... But this is complete foolishness. If we think that had the Rambam lived today, the generation would be better - that is a mistake. If the Rambam were in our generation, he would never stop fainting, simply from the reality he would see. The Rambam is not suited to our generation, his reality is not suited to our generation; the Rambam was suited to the Rambam's generation. Every sage is suited to the generation in which the Holy One, blessed be He, planted him. And if people claim that the Torah leaders of today are not like the giants of back then, one must first realize that today's shoemakers and simple folk are also not like the simple folk of back then.
It is told of one of the great rabbis who came home and found his wife upset. He asked her what happened. She said to him: "Earlier, the water carrier arrived, and he mentioned that he needed to recite Birkot Hashachar, asking if I could answer Amen to him. Then he shouted at the top of his lungs, '[Blessed are You...] who has not made me a woman' - and on top of that, I had to answer Amen! A water carrier, the lowliest occupation of their time, and I am the rabbi's wife!" The rabbi jokingly told her: "Do not worry; every man's 'who has not made me a woman' is relative to his own wife. For him, it is relative to the water carrier's wife, not to you." The meaning behind this is: Every leader in a generation is tailored to his generation. If you claim that the great leaders have diminished, the generations have diminished as well.
Someone once asked one of the great Torah figures: What was Adam HaRishon shown about our generation, given the dictum, "Every generation and its sages, every generation and its expositors"? He answered him: "What are you talking about? We are not even considered a generation at all. What constitutes a generation? Men of stature, people of virtue. In terms of our decline, we do not even count as a generation." If so, before you demand of a Torah giant that he be as great as the giants of those earlier generations, are you yourself suited to those generations? We have already explained the words of the Vilna Gaon, that he could imagine what a Tanna looked like, but he could not even imagine what a simple shoemaker looked like in the era of the prophets. That was an entirely different reality, one which even the Vilna Gaon could not conceive. And what a prophet was - who can fathom or comprehend at all?
It is related that Rav Pinchas of Koritz said: The Holy One, blessed be He, showed Adam HaRishon every generation and its sages, every generation and its prophets, every generation and its expositors. Why did He need to show him the generation as a whole? Why would he be interested in the marketplace folk? Just show him the sages of the generation! The reason is that if they had shown him only the sages of our generation, he would have asked: "Whom am I seeing? Rav Naftali? Is Naftali also among the sages?!" Therefore, they showed him the generation itself as well, and then he said: "Well, with such a generation, even Naftali can be called a sage." They showed him the generation so that he would understand that the sages are relative to their generation.
The Alshich explains this verse as a challenge raised against the previous verse. After all, you just told me, "Better is the end of a matter than its beginning" - that as something progresses, it improves, and often the outcome is better than the start; at first things were difficult, and later in life one was blessed with children in old age, and the like. Now King Solomon comes and says: If you ask, "How was it that the former days were better than these?" - this seems to contradict the principle you just stated! You claim that reality continuously improves, yet in the world we observe the exact opposite: the world is deteriorating, people are becoming less wise, and spiritually they are on a decline.
And what is the answer? "For it is not out of wisdom that you asked this" - had you known the wisdom, referring to the esoteric wisdom of Torah, you would not have asked. For you would understand that the world is indeed continually being rectified. True, on the surface, the souls descending into the world are on the level of the feet, the heels - souls belonging to the very end of the cycle. But in terms of the process of refinement, we are already nearing its culmination: souls that return through reincarnation (*gilgul*) accumulate further refinement with each cycle, as discussed at length in *Mishnat HaGilgulim*. Therefore, when looking at our generation, most souls are already in the final stages of their refinement. There remain less than two hundred years until the end of the world's six millennia, which means that before then Mashiach must arrive, bringing the Redemption and all the promised blessings.
It turns out that souls have cycled through repeated reincarnations and endured repeated cleansing; therefore, we are in a better spiritual state than one, two, or three thousand years ago, when souls had not yet undergone this full process of scouring, refinement, and purification. Part of this process also includes the tribulations and persecutions of exile - what was endured during the Spanish Expulsion, and what was suffered in the horrific Holocaust - all of which add further refinement to what existed previously. If so, "it is not out of wisdom that you asked this": had you known the inner wisdom, you would understand that we are continually advancing, and that what lies ahead is steadily becoming better. Not only is there no true regression, but on the contrary - there is profound refinement. Even though on an external, practical level we are certainly spiritually lower than earlier generations, as noted, this is because the souls descending now stem from the lower levels, the aspect of the "heels."
These two verses teach patience and moderation on two fronts. "Do not be hasty in your spirit to become angry" - do not rush to judge and become incensed, for one who rushes into action stumbles into sin, and you may cause anguish to an innocent person while being utterly convinced you are enacting justice. Furthermore, restraining one's anger and overlooking offenses even merits length of days, though such longevity is not necessarily "years of life" - and only the Torah promises, "For by me your days will be multiplied, and years of life will be added to you." And "Do not say, 'How was it...'" - do not gaze longingly at the past with grievances, for every sage is suited to his own generation, and "you have only the judge of your own days." Moreover, one who has merited the inner wisdom knows that beneath the outward decline, the refinement of souls is steadily approaching its completion, and the end of the matter is indeed better than its beginning.