The seventh chapter of Kohelet offers a series of practical counsels for personal conduct in this world, and toward its conclusion, King Solomon turns inward to reflect upon the limits of his own wisdom. In this section, we examine three verses: the invaluable advice not to take to heart everything spoken about you, which yields a profound principle for the home and education, followed by the confession of the wisest of all men: "I said, 'I will become wise,' but it was far from me."
גַּם לְכׇל־הַדְּבָרִים אֲשֶׁר יְדַבֵּרוּ אַל־תִּתֵּן לִבֶּךָ, אֲשֶׁר לֹא־תִשְׁמַע אֶת־עַבְדְּךָ מְקַלְלֶךָ׃ - Also, do not pay attention to all the words that people speak, lest you hear your servant cursing you.
כִּי גַּם־פְּעָמִים רַבּוֹת יָדַע לִבֶּךָ, אֲשֶׁר גַּם־אַתָּה קִלַּלְתָּ אֲחֵרִים׃ - For your own heart knows that many times you too have cursed others.
Solomon tells you: Your heart knows very well that many times you yourself have spoken ill of others. As was done to them, so it is done to you. If so, why are you so resentful toward your servant for cursing you? After all, you have behaved the very same way many times.
The Rashbam explains that this is a warning regarding whatever people report to you: "They spoke about you, they said this about you," bringing you gossip and hearsay. The verse advises keeping far away from this. Even if people tell you that your own servant cursed you - which causes immense pain - pretend not to hear. And even if you know the report is true, do not despise your fellow for it. Why? Because you should consider that you too have spoken ill of others many times, yet you did not loathe yourself for it. If so, why should you despise others for doing the same?
There is profound and practical counsel here: a person must know how to overlook things. This is a wonderful approach, and if one lives by it, life becomes peaceful and pleasant. This applies between husband and wife, between parents and children, between neighbors, between employee and employer, and between teacher and student. The Torah uses the phrasing ve'hitalamta meihem ("and you turn a blind eye to them"), and Chazal derive from this: "There are times when you should turn a blind eye." Chazal teach an essential principle that the mitzvah of returning a lost item does not apply in every circumstance; sometimes one must look away. A person needs to adopt this principle in everyday life.
Often, a person could avoid entire arguments simply by letting things go. Someone lets slip an inappropriate remark - not referring here to a chronic, systemic problem, but an isolated occurrence. If one ignores it, it passes as if nothing happened. But if one blows the matter out of proportion and causes a scene, he often brings far greater harm upon himself. Suppose someone spoke to you disrespectfully: you make a fuss, and now everyone knows what was said to you. It would have been far better to remain silent; then no one would have known, and the matter would have blown over. The other person would have seen no reaction and understood there was no point in continuing. But once you start shouting and put him on the defensive, he will only shout louder, making sure everyone hears, and even justify why he said it. What was gained from all that?
The same holds true at home. Sometimes a wife says something or a husband says something - again, not referring to a systemic issue, but a slip of the tongue or a misplaced comment - and the same occurs between children and parents. One must know how to overlook things. A person does not always have to voice whatever is on his mind, because doing so often sparks major battles and causes a complete uproar, and how will he extinguish the fire afterward?
This is especially true regarding children. Often parents know what is going on with their children, and a father wants to show his son that he knows everything: "What, do you think I don't know you smoked? Do you think I don't know you did such-and-such?" What good comes of this? If he was still embarrassed in front of you until now, he is no longer embarrassed, since you already know anyway. Until now he smoked outside; from now on he will smoke at home, because what does he have left to hide? Next time, he might even ask you for cigarette money. Consider the consequences. Had you looked away - since you already know, and he is no longer at an age where you can dictate his every move anyway. Can a parent tail a child day in and day out, hour after hour, keeping him under constant surveillance? What would that achieve?
A person who acts with prudence and discretion can salvage a great deal. But when one acts out of raw emotion, excessive sensitivity, momentary impulsiveness, and uncontrollable anger, that is where all troubles begin. "Also, do not pay heed to all words that are spoken" - here too, one must sometimes know how to keep silent, "for often your own heart knows that you too have cursed others."
From here emerges a great lesson. Frequently, parents make their children's lives miserable over the observance of mitzvot. We have already noted more than once that the fulfillment of mitzvot does not succeed through hounding. You do not chase down a child to perform mitzvot; if you pursue him aggressively, you will see that he quickly runs away. The observance of mitzvot must come in the spirit of "let us strive to know Hashem" (Hoshea 6:3), "Draw me after you, let us run" (Shir HaShirim 1:4): by giving him a treat, promising him good things, approaching him with warmth and affection, and creating a positive association with Torah and mitzvot.
But when you instill in him the feeling that a mitzvah is something oppressive, something dreadful, an endless demand where one is coerced and forced, and where failure means doom and gloom - accompanied by constant belittling, stinging remarks, and negative criticisms directed at him because he did not fulfill this or that mitzvah, saying "what are you worth?" and "who do you think you are?" - such people destroy their children very quickly. Very swiftly, they drive their children not only out of the home, but out of Judaism altogether. This is not the way. Coercion is not the method by which one achieves the desired results.
Moreover, as we have mentioned: when you look away, the child still feels that he maintains a positive image in your eyes, and he will continue to try. But when you make it clear that you already know everything, revealing that all his actions are exposed before you, you lead him toward far greater corruption.
There is another point, which is the core literal meaning of the verse: "For often your own heart knows that you too have cursed others." One of the greatest pitfalls is when parents demand of their children things that they themselves do not practice to the slightest degree. The child senses this dissonance, this distance. Perhaps he is not brazen enough to voice it, but in his heart he thinks: Father, you lecture me about learning and learning, yet I see you only reading the newspaper and occupying yourself with nonsense. He cannot understand why you demand things of him that you yourself do not hold by in the least.
Or you say to him: "Pray! Why aren't you praying? Look at how you're praying - you're just playing around!" And he thinks to himself: "And what is father doing the entire tefillah? Looking at me to see if I am praying. Instead of davening, he spends the whole tefillah watching me. You have a siddur, daven from the text!" A contradiction forms in the child's mind. Similarly, when a child says something untruthful, and immediately there is an uproar: "Woe to you, what a lie! How could you let a lie leave your mouth?!" followed by tons of lectures about honesty. And the child thinks: "Yesterday you lied right in front of me, yesterday you told me to lie to the neighbor." He cannot understand how you can have a double standard - how you yourself have cursed others and yet scold me, saying "how dare you curse?"
From here we learn a tremendous lesson: chinuch begins with demanding from yourself. Education starts with setting a personal example. But when you yourself do improper things and then ask the child to do the opposite, to the child this is incomprehensible, baffling, and makes no sense. The Steipler already observed: "Serving Torah scholars is greater than studying from them" (Berachot 7b). The mussar you preached to him is called study, while how you conducted yourself is called service - and the child has served an apprenticeship under you and witnessed your conduct firsthand. He will do what you do, not what you say. Therefore, a person must realize how far he must distance himself from preaching values he does not embody himself - "for you too have cursed others."
כׇּל־זֹה נִסִּיתִי בַחׇכְמָה, אָמַרְתִּי אֶחְכָּמָה וְהִיא רְחוֹקָה מִמֶּנִּי׃ - All this I tested with wisdom; I said, "I will become wise," but it remained far from me.
Pesikta Zutarta interprets "All this I tested (nissiti) with wisdom" as related to nes, a banner or standard, as in "I will raise My banner" (Yeshayahu 49:22) - like a flagpole and a flag: wisdom was displayed prominently upon him like an exalted banner. As it is written, "And Hashem gave Solomon wisdom" (Melachim I, 5:9), and it is said, "Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand on the seashore" (Melachim I, 4:20), and likewise Solomon's wisdom was "like the sand on the seashore" (Melachim I, 5:9). "All this I raised as a banner" (nissiti) means: I was elevated above all others. And just as the sand serves as a barrier for the sea, so did Solomon's wisdom serve as a protective fence for Israel. "And Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt... and he was wiser than all men" (Melachim I, 5:10-11) - he erected a protective fence for Israel, and therefore in his era Israel reached the highest level of spirituality, their peak and perfection; his wisdom safeguarded Israel.
Rashi explains: "I tested through wisdom" - through the Torah. "I said, I will become wise" - meaning to know the wisdom, to know the Torah - "yet it remained far from me." And what is far from me? That is already the subject of the next verse.
רָחוֹק מַה־שֶּׁהָיָה, וְעָמֹק עָמֹק מִי יִמְצָאֶנּוּ׃ - That which was is far off, and exceedingly deep; who can find it?
Rashi says: "Who can find it" - for I have no permission to contemplate these things: what is above and what is below, what came before and what will come after. There is always a boundary, a point in the perception of the Divine where one is told to halt, as it lies far beyond our human capacity to comprehend. "That which was" refers to the time of the Creation of the world. This is what Chazal meant when they taught that a person should not delve into what came before and what comes after: what transpired at the Creation of the world and before it is the inquiry into "what came before"; and what will happen after the world's existence, after "the heavens vanish like smoke" at the end of the seventh millennium and the like. All of these inquiries are exceedingly far off, and "exceedingly deep; who can find it?" "I said, I will become wise," and I saw that it was far from me - that there are still depths in wisdom, matters of before and after and of Divine perception, that are far beyond me. As it is said, "Had I known Him, I would be Him," and as the Sages said, "No thought can grasp Him at all." In comprehending the Divine, Shlomo says: I saw that this is exceedingly distant from me, and I do not possess even the slightest glimpse of it.
The Gemara in Yoma cites regarding "I said, I will become wise" that Shlomo struggled with the laws of the Parah Adumah (the Red Heifer) - wherein the one who sprinkles it and the one upon whom it is sprinkled become tahor (pure), yet the one who touches it becomes tamei (impure). Regarding this he said, "I said, I will become wise, yet it remained far from me." King Shlomo knew all matters of the Torah and comprehended everything; only regarding the Heifer did he say, "I will become wise," yet it was far from me. And what does "yet it remained far from me" mean? It is explained that Shlomo thought he had comprehended the entire Torah, and that only the Red Heifer still eluded him. He said: I will become wise in the matter of the Red Heifer as well - and then he realized that "it," the entire Torah, was far from him. For if in everything I thought I understood, there remains one single thing where I suddenly see that I do not understand, it is a sign that I understand nothing. It is a sign that everything I thought I understood was not measured with the true tools required to decipher the Torah; there is a level far higher than our grasp. And as is known, the Torah of this world is an entirely different dimension from the Torah of the World to Come, where the perceptions are different, the levels are different, the grasp is different, and reality itself is entirely different. "I said, I will become wise, yet it remained far from me" - it turned out that the Torah as a whole remained far from me.
The Imrei Shefer explains that "All this I tested through wisdom" serves as a kind of summary of everything said thus far. Many things in the world, says Shlomo, I learned from the ways of the world through experience, and therefore I said: "I will become wise" - through this I will be able to solve all the world's problems, comprehend every difficulty, and find a path and a solution for them all. But I saw that it still remained far from me; to grasp and resolve all problems and to understand every mystery remains far beyond me. That is to say, even the wisest of all men admits that his wisdom is limited: no matter how wise I become, I have no ability to comprehend all the workings of the world.
The Panim Yafot brings an allusion: "והיא רחוקה" (yet it remained far) has the numerical value (gematria) of 341, which is also the gematria of "פרה אדומה" (Red Heifer), corresponding to the idea that Shlomo sought to understand the Red Heifer. It is brought there that Shlomo sought to comprehend the secret of the Red Heifer, whereupon a heavenly voice (Bat Kol) emerged and said to him: "And uprightness was written, words of truth." What is the connection? Shlomo wanted to understand the secret of the Heifer, for only one person ever understood it: Moshe Rabbeinu. And how do we know that its secret was transmitted to Moshe alone? For it is said, "וְלָקְחוּ לַטָּמֵא מֵעֲפַר שְׂרֵפַת הַחַטָּאת" (And for the impure they shall take of the ashes of the burning of the sin-offering), whose initial letters spell "למשה" (to Moshe). Shlomo also sought to know its secret, as those same letters of "למשה" also spell "שלמה" (Shlomo), and so he said: I, too, will become wise. They told him: "And uprightness was written, words of truth" - "Shlomo" is an anagram, whereas reading the letters straightforwardly yields "למשה" (to Moshe): "Letamei Mei'afar Sereifat HaChatat." It is written in truth and uprightness, and that is how it must be read, rather than scrambling the letters to extract "Shlomo." That is not the way.
Rabbeinu Bachya offers a wondrous explanation here, linking "I said, I will become wise, yet it remained far from me" both to the Red Heifer and to Shlomo's own conduct. "I said, I will become wise" - Shlomo wished to act with wisdom modeled after the Red Heifer. What do we see regarding the Heifer? Whoever touches it becomes impure, yet it purifies. Similarly, Shlomo engaged with matters whose contact brings impurity, thinking that in the end they would bring purification. Shlomo went and married foreign women with the objective of elevating the sparks of holiness from them.
As discussed at length in the study of Sefer Melachim, Shlomo's plan was to marry the daughters of all foreign kings, raise the princes in his palace, and then have each one return to his homeland to serve as a kind of "miniature Kuzari" - a king who would bring his entire nation to repentance, thereby perfecting the world under the sovereignty of the Almighty. A magnificent strategy, a concept conceivable only to the wisest of all men: to marry a thousand women and father princes who would return to rule their native lands. And why did it fail? Because of one small letter. The Torah states, "He shall not multiply wives for himself," yet Shlomo thought: I can handle the small issue of "he shall not multiply," and in exchange, the entire world will be repaired. And Chazal taught: Better that Shlomo and a thousand like him be obliterated than a single letter of the Torah be erased.
This is what took place here, says Rabbeinu Bachya. Shlomo thought: The Heifer is intrinsically defiling, yet it possesses the power to purify; so too, I am taking women whom the Torah forbade - something that defiles - yet it holds the power of purification just like the Red Heifer. Perhaps in the women's place one might take offense at being likened to a cow, but in any event, this was no ordinary cow but the Red Heifer, and comparing a non-Jewish woman to the Red Heifer is already an elevation in status. And what did he come to realize? "Yet it remained far from me" - and his wives turned his heart away. Regarding the Heifer, the Torah states, "This is the statute (chukat) of the Torah" - and what is a chukah? Do not apply its logic anywhere else; this is an absolute decree stated uniquely regarding the Red Heifer. Do not extrapolate from it that this principle can be replicated in other realms, taking foreign wives with the assumption that, like the Red Heifer, it will purify what is impure. One cannot derive from this that entangling oneself with impurity can yield holiness; no such thing exists, as this is a singular exception exclusive to the Red Heifer alone. Therefore, "it remained far from me": I realized that this endeavor distanced me even further from the service of Hashem, and in the end, I could not bring my plans to fruition.
Back in the day, when the religious pirate radio stations first appeared - the predecessor to today's chareidi radio stations - people asked Rav Shteinman whether this was permitted and proper. He told them: It is like the Parah Adumah; it defiles the pure and purifies the defiled. For weaker individuals, if they do not listen to this, what will they listen to? Galei Tzahal, vanities, nonsense, and heresy. It is certainly better for them to hear words of Torah and chizzuk. But for observant Jews, you have introduced a radio into the home where none was before, and as a result, they may end up listening to other things as well. Furthermore, during that time one could have learned or attended a shiur, and instead he listens to a bit of chizzuk on the radio instead of a structured lesson; for him, it drags him down and causes spiritual harm.
And in general, listening to the radio is the sort of thing best avoided. In that time, you could listen to a Torah shiur; why listen to the radio? You could put on a CD and listen to a structured shiur, listen to Kol Halashon, listen to Daf Yomi - there is no shortage of Torah study. Especially since so much of what is broadcast there is nonsense and fluff, as they have to produce shows to attract advertisers. Not to mention that many hours are devoted to fundraising appeals - rather than high-level radio, it turns into "fundraising" radio, but setting that aside. The core issue is that during this time a person could be listening to a Torah shiur and words of inspiration, so why bring a radio into the home? And once a radio is in the house, people start switching stations: listening to this, then to that, "just the news now, it's very important to hear," and before long one slips into all sorts of negative influences. It is just like the Parah Adumah: it purifies the defiled and defiles the pure; even chareidi radio is best avoided. As it is said, "for no living being can be justified before You" - leave all that aside, sit and learn; that is far better.
The Imrei Shefer explains "Far off is that which has been" with a parable. A person sees a truly extraordinary machine that performs intricate operations and produces wonderful work, and he wants to understand its design and inner workings. Let us speak of the machines of old, not today's world where everything is chips, printed circuit boards, and electronics. An old-fashioned machine was made of gears and cogs, and to know exactly how it works and produces, you had to be present when the master craftsman who built it dismantled it and put it back together. Then you could see each individual part: what it does, where it is mounted, and what purpose it serves.
Says the Imrei Shefer: "Far off is that which has been." When we wish to understand the colossal machine created by the Master of the Universe - who created worlds and celestial spheres (and the ancients viewed the celestial bodies as embedded in spheres, as it seemed implausible to them that the moon could orbit on its own in empty space, and so they believed it sat upon a sphere that rotated in contact with other transparent spheres) - the Holy One, blessed be He, fashioned nearly six thousand years ago a wondrous machine of tremendous complexity. Yet it is impossible ever to truly comprehend how it functions, because since the Creation of the world, the Holy One, blessed be He, has never dismantled this machine, not even for oiling or repairs. The machine has been running continuously ever since the Holy One, blessed be He, created His world, "and the wheels have not grown dull in their turning over these many years," and you will never be able to know the manner in which Hashem created His world.
And he adds: Even if it is far off, perhaps through human deduction, through drawing analogies from one thing to another, and through great wisdom, one might still attempt to understand how things work. Therefore, the verse states that it is not merely far off, but also "deep, deep; who can find it?" - the sheer depth of complexity in every single detail. These are not merely cogs that someone assembled; within every single element lies profound, boundless wisdom. And these words were written over a century ago, when so much was still completely unknown - the atom was not yet understood, nor DNA, along with countless other discoveries of later eras. When one begins to study these matters, one sees the truth of "deep, deep; who can find it?" Even if it were dismantled before your eyes and reassembled, the depth of the immense wisdom within it all, as Shlomo says, remains beyond reach: "and it was far from me."
The verses before us teach two great fundamentals. The first concerns character traits: "Also do not take to heart all words that people speak" - learn to overlook things, do not blow offhand comments out of proportion, and do not despise your fellow for faults you yourself succumb to, "for your heart knows that many times you too have cursed others." From here also stems a core principle of chinuch: not through coercion or persecution, but with warmth, and above all through personal example, for serving Torah scholars is greater than studying from them. The second fundamental concerns humility: the wisest of all men, whose wisdom waved aloft like a banner and fortified the Jewish people, conceded: "I thought to become wise, yet it was far from me." He sought to understand the Parah Adumah and realized that the entire Torah remained far beyond him; he attempted to deduce from the decree of the cow a pathway for rectification within impurity, only to discover that one cannot extrapolate from a divine decree to any other realm. And when a person contemplates the colossal machine created by the Creator, which has never been taken apart and reassembled, he understands: "Far off is that which has been, and deep, deep; who can find it?"