In this passage from chapter 20 we examine two central points: the levels of a person's merit and purity, and weights and measures - the severe prohibition of "a stone and a stone, an ephah and an ephah." We will see how, from the dry halachah of weights in one's pocket, our Sages reach the root of a person's character traits, to inner wholeness, and to the question of whether a person has one fixed path in serving Hashem or lives by "improvisations."
מֶלֶךְ יוֹשֵׁב עַל־כִּסֵּא־דִין מְזָרֶה בְעֵינָיו כׇּל־רָע׃ - A king sitting upon the throne of judgment scatters all evil with his eyes.
מִי־יֹאמַר זִכִּיתִי לִבִּי טָהַרְתִּי מֵחַטָּאתִי׃ - Who can say, I have purified my heart, I have cleansed myself of my sin?
The Gaon of Vilna says: in these two verses three levels are hinted at, in ascending order. The first matter - "scatters all evil with his eyes": a person does not commit transgressions in practice. This is the first level. The second matter - "who can say, I have purified my heart": this speaks of the thoughts of the heart, that even in one's heart and mind he does not entertain a sinful thought. And the third matter - "I have cleansed myself of my sin": this is the highest attainment, that he fulfills all the positive commandments, and as we said, this is very far from simple.
And why is this called "my sin" (chatati)? The Gra explains that chet in the Holy Tongue means a deficiency. "I have cleansed myself of my sin" means: I have not fallen short in a single positive commandment. As it is written, "and my son Shlomo and I will be chataim" - meaning lacking. And likewise "missed (hechti) the target," meaning fell short of the target. Here is an example of a positive commandment: "and you shall meditate upon it day and night." Who can say that he has not fallen short of this positive commandment? Regarding negative commandments one can still say: I did not eat pork, I did not speak lashon hara, I did not gaze at a forbidden sight. But to say that in every single moment I fulfilled all the positive commandments, which have no end - who can say, I have cleansed myself of my sin.
It is told that a relative of the Gra once came to him. The Gra asked him: what brings you here? The man told him that there had been a break-in at his home and a large sum of money had been stolen from him - not two hundred shekels, but in terms of hundreds of thousands of shekels - and he understood that the thief was in Vilna and that it was possible to recover the stolen property there. Therefore he traveled to Vilna in order to act through the police and through every possible avenue, and he indeed succeeds in recovering the large stolen sum.
The Gra said to him in pain: I did not believe that anyone from our family would waste his time, his hours and his days, going and searching after money. This is how the Gra related to the matter: you have life, the greatest gift there is in the world, and you spend it chasing after a sum of money that was stolen from you? The matter was so removed from the Gra's logic that he could not digest it. We cannot digest what the Gra understands, this we do not understand. But in any case, for the Gra it was so clear that a person has a task in the world, that he could not comprehend how a person could chase after material matters. And this is "I have cleansed myself of my sin" - that there is in me not even a deficiency of positive commandments, and even the positive commandment of Torah study, "and you shall meditate upon it day and night," everything. Who can say that he has attained this? This is the highest attainment one can reach.
אֶבֶן וָאֶבֶן אֵיפָה וְאֵיפָה תּוֹעֲבַת יְהֹוָה גַּם־שְׁנֵיהֶם׃ - A stone and a stone, an ephah and an ephah, both of them are an abomination to Hashem.
The plain meaning is as the Torah states: "You shall not have in your pouch a stone and a stone." And what does "a stone and a stone" mean? Two stones, two measures. The older generation certainly remembers the watermelon sellers with the hexagonal block they would place on one pan of the scale, with the watermelon on the other pan, and for the sake of the marketplace this block indeed weighed a kilo. The cheat takes this stone, files it down, or bores a hole inside it and plugs it, or by some other method, and as a result, instead of weighing a kilo, it weighs eight hundred grams. And does he always use it? No. There are situations where it is not to his advantage. Therefore he has a second stone, marked as a kilo but actually weighing a kilo and two hundred grams: slightly larger, or made of a heavier material.
And why does he need a stone and a stone? Because with one he buys and with one he sells. When he buys watermelons, that is, when he goes to the field, he places the large stone on the scale and tells the seller: there is a kilo here, while in fact he bought a kilo and two hundred grams. And when he sells, he places the deficient stone and tells the buyer: here is a kilo, while in fact there are only eight hundred grams there. This is "You shall not have in your pouch a stone and a stone, a large one and a small one": you use the large one to buy and the small one to sell. And this is an abomination to Hashem, "an abomination to Hashem are both of them."
There was a case of a man who regularly bought bread from the bakery, and one day he took the owner of the bakery to court. He said: Your Honor, I have been buying from this baker for twenty years a loaf of bread a day, from the loaves on the kilo shelf. One time I decided to weigh it, and I discovered that the loaf weighs only nine hundred grams. Nine hundred grams times three hundred sixty days a year, times twenty years, how much is coming to me? In our times he would have filed a class action lawsuit over this.
The judge asked the owner of the bakery: what do you have to say about the claim? He said to him: Your Honor, this man who is suing me is a margarine manufacturer. And I have a bakery, and I bake pastries with margarine. For many years I have had no weighing stone to weigh the loaves: I simply take a block of margarine, place it on one pan, and on the other pan the loaf, and thus I know that I am selling the proper amount. And any further explanation is superfluous. That same man, who sells nine hundred grams of margarine in packages marked as a kilo, comes with complaints against the bread seller who sells kilo loaves at a quantity of nine hundred grams. In simple words: everyone cheats everyone.
This is reminiscent of the complaint of singers of all kinds, who lament the disc burners, who have all become "scholars of the house of study": each one burns their discs, downloads their songs from all sorts of networks, and nobody buys, and it is no longer worthwhile to put out discs. By the way, this is why we lowered our price to three shekels: buy Torah lessons, it is far more worthwhile. There you pay sixty shekels for twelve tracks, and here you pay three shekels and get two hundred tracks, and you get a disc that will lead you to the life of the World to Come. There, where will the disc lead you?
In any case, they complain that they are being robbed and defrauded. One journalist once did an investigation and discovered that almost everyone has burned music software on their computer, expensive software worth thousands of dollars, not amateur software but that of people engaged in creating music and compositions. They have non-original software on their computer. That same person complains that he is being robbed and that his discs are being burned, while he himself robs the software owners and uses software that is not his in order to produce his music. So that in fact, unfortunately, everyone robs everyone.
Rabbeinu Yonah asks: which is more abominable, the sin of the large stone or the sin of the small stone? That is: when you buy through deceit or when you sell through deceit? And Rabbeinu Yonah says that the punishment of the large one is more severe than the punishment of the small one, that the punishment of the buyer who deceives the seller is greater than the punishment of the seller who deceives the buyer.
And why? Because when you bought, you acquired, and when you sold, you lost your property. When a person sells, he had something and he lost it, and you additionally saw to it that he lost it cheaply. And when you buy, you are the one with the advantage, you obtained the item, the object is now yours. Whereas he, the poor fellow, in hard times was forced to sell, and as it were his situation is more lowly, and you were not satisfied with that, but you additionally deceived him in the weight and saw to it that he sold at a cheaper price. Therefore one must be more careful regarding the seller, that he sell at a proper profit, than being careful that the buyer buy at a suitable profit. And these things apparently apply less to consumer goods and more to items of value, where the seller lost something that was his, and therefore one must be more scrupulous about deceiving him.
And what does "both of them" come to teach us? That you will be punished also for the small one: not only for the large one, which is a great sin, that you bought through deceit and defrauded the seller, but also for the small one, with which you defrauded the buyer, for this too you will be punished.
Rabbeinu Yonah offers another explanation: cheating with a stone weight is worse than cheating with an efah measure. Why? Because when you sell by an efah, and part of the required measure is missing, it is easier to notice the discrepancy in the efah than in the stone. And this is true: if someone brings me a bag of flour, I can notice if they shorted it by ten or twenty percent. I will notice that the company "cut us a coupon" - reduced the quantity by twenty percent while keeping the same price. Until recently this was their way of profiting off us more, and today they are required for a certain period to state that the package has been reduced.
And here is another of the tricks they love: "the product contains 675 grams" - go figure out which is cheaper, this or the competing company's detergent. Today they made a law requiring the price to be listed by weight, how much I pay per hundred grams, so we are not deceived and can compare prices even if we did not study core subjects. By the way, usually the ones doing the calculations are always avreichim: you will see an avreich in the supermarket take out his kosher phone and start calculating, this comes out to such and such per hundred grams and this to such and such, and he takes the cheaper one. And sometimes the value pack comes out more expensive than the small packages, it is astonishing. Someone who buys without calculating falls into this many times: he thought he bought a value pack, when if he had bought the small packages he would have kept the freshness, it would have been better, and he would have paid less.
In any case, Rabbeinu Yonah says: with weight stones it is hard to ascertain the truth, because the stone is a concentrated object and it is hard to know whether it is a kilo or less than a kilo. But with the efah, which is the item itself, it is easier to see if the bag looks smaller. Therefore it says "a stone and a stone, an efah and an efah... both of them alike": even regarding the efah, about which you could say he should look carefully and pay attention, does he not see that this is less than an efah - even this is an abomination to Hashem. Not only regarding the stone and the stone that you do in concealment and is not detectable, but even regarding the efah and the efah which is more noticeable - even about this he will be held accountable.
Chazal learn from "you shall not have in your pouch a stone and a stone, a large one and a small one" - do not keep such a thing even at home, as we spoke about a dollar counterfeiting machine. This teaches you that he transgresses from the moment of making it, even though he did not measure with them and did not cheat with them.
And why? First, because it shows corruption. Why do you need to keep something counterfeit at home? If you are honest and righteous, why? Someone who keeps such a thing - what goes through his mind? Maybe one day I will need it, maybe one day I will use it. In other words, there is within you an inclination to cheat, even if not today and even if not tomorrow. Take it and throw it away. And as it is written that a person is forbidden to keep an uncorrected book, because of "let no injustice dwell in your tent": if it is a bad thing, do not leave it at home, do not leave it in a place where one could err through it. And second, through this one can come to great sins of deception, of falsehood, and of theft.
Therefore, says Rabbeinu Yonah, this verse is a continuation of the previous verse: if you keep in your home even a stone and a stone - who can say "I have purified my heart, I am cleansed of my sin"? You need to be so pure of heart, as we said even in thought, that even in your pouch there should not be a stone and a stone. And if you say: but I do not use this - no and no, even inside there should not be one. Even something you do not intend to use, do not keep such a thing. When you keep such a thing, it is a corrupt matter that can bring you to corruption even in the future, and it indicates that within you there is dross that needs to be cleansed. For if not, you would have thrown this corrupt thing away.
תּוֹעֲבַת יְהֹוָה אֶבֶן וָאָבֶן וּמֹאזְנֵי מִרְמָה לֹא־טוֹב׃ - An abomination to Hashem are a stone and a stone, and deceitful scales are not good.
Rabbeinu Yonah says: the verses taught us this matter in three passages in this book, to tell you how loathsome and abominable the thing is in Hashem's eyes - that a person should be so distant from matters of deceit that he should not even have the tools to cheat with. Scripture repeats this three times to tell you how essential purity of heart is, and how much a person must distance himself from every matter of sin and transgression.
The Gaon of Vilna says: one who has two weights, one for himself - an accurate weight - and one to sell to his fellow, or one who has two measures, an efah and an efah (an efah is a type of measure, like a liter), one for himself and one for his fellow - both of them alike are an abomination to Hashem. And to what does this refer? "The matter is that a person must walk the path slowly, slowly, level by level. And if he leaps and takes a path higher than what is fitting for him, and falls from it, and turns to take another path - this is an abomination before Hashem."
A powerful principle. People have no patience. We are an impatient generation, a generation that wants everything instant, fast, here, now, immediately, and we think that in the service of Hashem it works the same way. A person wants to quickly become the Baba Sali, to quickly become Rav Ovadia, everything fast. But there are no such things. He did teshuva yesterday, and already today he wants to be the tzaddik of the generation. To aspire is truly wonderful, but one must know that things take time, and that the steps must be measured. Because if not, a person jumps too high, and when you jump too high you fall. And when you fall from a great height, the crash is hard. Then he says: this path did not work, and he starts on a different path, and again falls and again starts over.
About this the Gra says: this is an abomination to Hashem. Hashem does not want people who have no fixed course, who have no consistency in the service of Hashem, who have no straight path, but rather live by whims: sometimes this way and sometimes that way, sometimes careful about this and sometimes dismissive of it, sometimes stringent here and sometimes there. This is not the way of Hashem. The way of Hashem is to go slowly, slowly, level by level.
And the same applies between a person and other people: sometimes he is good and sometimes bad, and he has no clear line. Sometimes harsh and sometimes soft, sometimes answering with brazenness and sometimes speaking with humility, sometimes hurting his fellow and sometimes very careful about his honor, he has no consistent way. About this too the Gra says it is an abomination to Hashem. This is the "weight and a weight" of character traits: that you should conduct yourself with people in a good and decent measure, and not according to whims. There are people who are usually normal with you, but if something happened that angered them, suddenly they erupt, hurt, insult, sometimes even hurt physically. This is an abomination in the eyes of Hashem. A person needs to have one fixed course, and to climb in the levels of character traits. You do not immediately become Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, but again you acquire a good trait and again a good trait. Certainly the way in which a person straddles both opinions, has not chosen a path for himself and lives each time by whim, this is an abomination to Hashem.
And I will add: this is also an abomination to people. One of the things most repugnant to people, people whom others do not like to connect with, are those who live by whim, let us define them: unpredictable people. It is easy for me to live with a predictable person, even if I know he is hot tempered, but that is predictable. It is very hard for me to live with a person who gives me the impression of sweet words and everything is wonderful, and suddenly he has an outburst, a kind of bomb you do not expect. People do not like to be near unpredictable people, because I do not know what I will do when suddenly his "fit" breaks out. If I know he is a sensitive person, that a light remark hurts him, I take that into account in advance and do not joke with him, I am careful around him. But if he is an unpredictable person, I never know what I am doing: what he said, was it a joke or serious? You live with him in constant tension. This is an abomination not only to Hashem, it is an abomination to people too.
The Ralbag says: "a stone and a stone" - one stone is the weight smaller than proper, and the other larger than proper, and likewise "a measure and a measure." And both of these are abominable to Hashem, in traits and in opinions. The Ralbag, in his way, takes all that is written in Sefer Mishlei about a person's conduct. The chosen and proper way in character traits is balance and uprightness. A person needs to beware of the extremes, not to flee to the extremes. And the chosen way in opinions is not to be shorter than is proper and not to be longer than is proper: where they said to lengthen, one is not permitted to shorten, and where they said to shorten, one is not permitted to lengthen, and always the middle way.
You were invited to speak. There is a person who reacts like that incident with someone who was an informer, and he wanted to receive the shofar blowing and be the baal tokeia on Rosh Hashana. They told him: over our dead body. He went and reported the matter to the authorities, and the government issued an order that they let him blow. They gave him the last tekia of Yom Kippur. He came and complained: what did they give me, this is only one tekia, and on Rosh Hashana it is a hundred blasts. They told him: we do not understand what the problem is, the shofar is in your hand, blow as much as you want, why are you calculating? We gave you the shofar.
So there are those who were given the microphone, so they "blast" the people for two hours, because they were given the microphone. And the question is whether that is what is needed right now: did these people come to hear a sermon? Is there benefit in the words? Even if you consider yourself the most expert speaker, whose lips one would love to kiss, someone once said as a curse: I wish upon you that they invite you to sing after Dudu Fisher and to speak after Rav Lau. Understand, this too is a kind of curse. Even if you are an expert, and even if you think that when you speak everyone faints, there is still a proper dosage. The Ralbag says: an abomination is a person who errs in dosages, a person who does things not according to balance and uprightness, who goes to extremes.
One person gets up to speak for three minutes, and he has not even had time to mention the names of the people to honor them, and he has already finished. It does not fit, we waited to hear something more. And another gets up to speak, and who will hint to him, dear one, there are more speakers after you? And this is also not a general shiur in a yeshiva, say something suitable for the audience, this is a lay audience, tell them a story, say a word of encouragement. You went too far. And who will hint to him? Sometimes this is not a simple problem, it is hard to hint, it is uncomfortable.
I once told you what is written, "the wisdom of scribes will spread out." What does "will spread out" mean? The Chomat Baarim in Ein Yaakov explains that it is like "and the curtain spreads out" behind the Mishkan, "tisrach" means it will lengthen. How do we translate this? The wise man begins to speak and forgets himself, forgets that there are more people here, and speaks for three quarters of an hour. "The wisdom of scribes will spread out," it lengthens beyond measure. Someone once spoke endlessly, and they asked him afterward: why did you go on so long? He told them: there was no clock here. They told him: fine, there was no clock, but there is a calendar behind you.
A person needs to know what the fitting and proper dosage is, and in every matter. Sometimes one needs to rebuke: how to rebuke, in what language, how much to elaborate. Sometimes you see this also with parents in relation to their children, who make this mistake. A child made a mistake, one needs to point it out to him, and suddenly you see the person "come down on him." Fine, make a remark, he erred in something, make a remark and he got the point. But no, now he grinds him down for twenty minutes: I really cannot grasp how you did such a thing, I really do not understand, where is your head, are you stupid? He calms down for five minutes, and again starts: and what, did you not see that it was such and such? Another two minutes, and more. Leave him alone, you overdid it. You should have made one remark.
This requires much understanding and knowledge: sometimes it is not needed at all. Sometimes you want to and think you must comment, and in that case it is better to stay silent. And sometimes you really must speak - so say the words in a way that they will be accepted. Are you waiting for him to lash out against you? For him to say what a foolish father I have, what a nag he is? A person must know in every matter how to apply the right measure. Much judgment is needed to give the appropriate response, the right words, in the proper manner. "The choicest in views" - not to be briefer than fitting and not to elaborate more than fitting, but to do everything in the fitting and correct way.
And in learning too, says the Ralbag: one should not investigate that which there is no way to grasp, and one should not fall short of investigating that which he is able to grasp. That is: there is a deep matter - do not investigate it and elaborate and delve into it until you lose your hands and feet. And on the other hand, there is a matter that is not deep - do not just learn it and race onward; if you can contemplate it more, examine it and understand it more fully, then examine and understand it more. In short, in every single matter a person must weigh his actions - this and that, stone and stone, large and small - not to elaborate where it is fitting to be brief, and not to be brief where it is fitting to elaborate.
The Malbim says: it is quite possible that there is something that appears bad on the surface, yet in truth, inwardly, it is good. One who looks from the outside sees it as a negative thing, while one who contemplates inwardly will see that there is no wrong in it at all, but rather it is proper and fitting.
And the Malbim gives an example. If I see a man holding a stone and a stone - for instance a weight labeled a kilo that is actually nine hundred grams - and he trades with this weight, I would say: this man is a swindler, this man is a liar, you are selling people supposedly a kilo when it is nine hundred grams. Says the Malbim: but it is quite possible that what he does is done justly. How so? Because the one who sold to him also had a false measure: he sold him wheat with a deficient ephah, so that instead of getting the volume of a full ephah he received a volume amounting to only nine hundred grams. If so, I traded with him using a lesser stone, which is a defective and invalid thing, but only because I too received a lesser se'ah. According to this it would seem one could say the matter is done justly, and this connects to the previous verse - "Who can say I have cleansed my heart, I am pure from my sin" - and he would say: yes, I have cleansed my heart! How do you sell with a defective weight? Because I also receive a defective ephah. It is one against one, as we said about the bakery owner who sells loaves of nine hundred grams, because he measured them according to the blocks of that margarine seller which was called a kilo and was nine hundred grams. You complain about me? I weighed according to your situation.
We understand, then, that in such a situation we might have defined his deed as proper. Comes Shlomo HaMelech and says: "A stone and a stone, an ephah and an ephah, both of them alike are an abomination to Hashem." And "gam" (also) always, according to the Malbim, means together - and that is why he explained here what he explained: even when the two come together, and it seems there is something good here. What is "together"? That there is a stone and a stone and also an ephah and an ephah, and when the measure of both is not according to law, supposedly it cancels out. Says the verse: no and no, both of them alike are an abomination to Hashem. Even when it ostensibly is a swindle in a place where it is needed - it is an abomination to Hashem, for the Torah said "you shall not have in your pouch a stone and a stone, an ephah and an ephah," and that is all. "You shall not have" - period, end of verse. And if you ask what the reason is, and whether it applies only in the pouch - no, "you shall not have" at all. From here understand that to do such a thing is defective in every situation, and do not think that perhaps in such situations the thing would be permitted.
Our chapter leads us from three levels of merit - deed, thought, and the fulfillment of all positive commandments - to "a stone and a stone, an ephah and an ephah." We saw its plain meaning: two stones, one for buying and one for selling, and we saw that in practice "everyone swindles everyone." Rabbeinu Yonah taught that the sin of the buyer is severe, that even for the small stone he will be punished, that even for the noticeable ephah there is a claim, and that it is forbidden even to keep the vessel in the house - for keeping it indicates an inner impurity and may lead to corruption, and the verse repeated this three times to teach how necessary wholeness of heart is. The Gra expanded the matter to the service of Hashem: one who lacks a single measure, who leaps beyond his strength and falls and switches paths and "lives by grabbing at things" - is an abomination to Hashem, and also to people. The Ralbag added the correct measure in character traits and views: not to go to extremes, not to elaborate where it is fitting to be brief and not to be brief where it is fitting to elaborate, in speech, in rebuke, and in learning. And the Malbim concluded: even when both sides are defective and it seems everything cancels out and the conduct is proper - "both of them alike are an abomination to Hashem," for the Torah forbade the defective vessel itself in every situation.