As the chapter continues, we consider two pesukim that both revolve around a single theme: the power of counsel, and the one thing that can shatter it - the disclosure of a secret. The first pasuk before us deals with counsel itself:
מַחֲשָׁבוֹת בְּעֵצָה תִכּוֹן וּבְתַחְבֻּלוֹת עֲשֵׂה מִלְחָמָה׃ (יח) - Plans are established through counsel, and by strategy wage war. (18)
We already saw in chapter 15 (22): "הָפֵר מַחֲשָׁבוֹת בְּאֵין סוֹד וּבְרֹב יוֹעֲצִים תָּקוּם" (Plans are thwarted where there is no counsel, but with many advisors they stand). Counsel is very important, but that is precisely where a problem lies: when you consult others, what has actually happened? More people have heard about the problem, and more people have heard about the solution. It is quite possible that walls have ears, that there is a mole, that someone here knows the whole matter. Therefore, when one wants to do something secret, the consultation is very limited: you do not admit into the decision room a person who might give the enemy the address of where to send the missiles. On the other hand, without many advisors you are in trouble: if the one plan fails, what is the alternative plan? And how would it fail? Through "plans are thwarted where there is no secret" - the plans will be thwarted if we do not keep the secret, for then the enemy will prepare. Therefore you need an additional plan to serve you if the secret is revealed. And this is also the continuation of the next pasuk.
גּוֹלֶה־סּוֹד הוֹלֵךְ רָכִיל וּלְפֹתֶה שְׂפָתָיו לֹא תִתְעָרָב׃ (יט) - He who reveals a secret goes about as a gossip, so do not associate with one whose lips are foolish. (19)
In another place we saw the reverse: "one who goes about as a gossip reveals a secret." There Rabbeinu Yonah says: one who goes about as a gossip, do not entrust him with secrets; do not reveal your secrets to him, for this person does not guard his tongue from gossip, and therefore he will not guard his mouth from exposing your secrets either. Here the pasuk says the opposite: "one who reveals a secret goes about as a gossip" - one who is a revealer of secrets, do not speak in his presence about the shortcomings of people, or about the shortcomings of the general public, or about anything that you do not want known.
And do not say: this person is indeed a revealer of secrets, but gossip? After all it is written "do not go about as a talebearer among your people," and he will surely be careful with an explicit prohibition. True, his tongue runs loose, true, it is hard for him to keep secrets - for in revealing a secret he sees no sin, and there is no explicit prohibition in the Torah of "do not reveal a secret" - but gossip is not something I suspect him of. To this the verse says: do not be mistaken. One who reveals a secret also goes about as a gossip. And the reason is one: "since he cannot control himself from disclosing the secret, he cannot control his spirit from going about as a gossip." This person is not able to control his tongue, is not able to lock a secret within himself - so why would you think that if you tell him a juicy piece of information about someone he will not pass it on? He is unable to guard his mouth, and so it has already slipped out of him. Therefore, one whom you see always revealing secrets - know that he is also capable of going about as a gossip, and so do not tell him anything.
"One whose lips are foolish" - a person who is a simpleton, and do not partner or associate with him. Who is the simpleton? There are people whose mouth is faster than their mind, and unfortunately many operate this way. The mind runs at one gigahertz, and the lips at eight gigahertz. You ask him a question, and he has already given four answers, analyzed and summarized - even before he understood what he was being asked. The mouth should function only after the mind has thought and weighed. Such a person, "foolish with his lips," is not precise in his words, does not precede them with thought to refine away their dross, and his words are not refined of their dross; his tongue is set loose to whatever comes to mind. Such a person would be capable of telling your secret and revealing things you told him in confidence - and therefore you certainly should not associate with him, that is, do not enter into a partnership with him to tell him things, for he speaks without thinking.
The Vilna Gaon and the Malbim proceed here along more or less the same line. The Malbim says: after the main point - as we saw in the previous pesukim - is counsel, that when we stand before a dilemma the main thing is to find the correct counsel by which to carry out the proper action, the pasuk comes and says: know that counsel, even the very best of the best, will be ruined by the disclosure of a secret. We have excellent counsel, a wonderful plan - and what will cause it to fail? That you pass the secret on. For example: there is a war, and we devised a plan for how to attack - it will all come to nothing if someone learns what our plan is.
The convoy of the thirty five, as is well known, was killed to the last man. And it happened because of the compassion of one tender hearted person within the convoy. When an Arab shepherd spotted them, they wanted to kill him, and that man said, why would we, he did no harm and did nothing, why kill him? That shepherd went on tending his flock, and once they passed by, he immediately went to the village and reported them. They set up an ambush and slaughtered them all. Thirty six of the young men of Israel were killed, may Hashem save us, and years passed before the bodies were brought to burial. And even when they were brought to a Jewish grave, Rav Aryeh Levin was called upon to perform the goral of the Gra in order to identify each and every one: who he was, what his name was, and where to bury him. A gripping episode: by candlelight, in a synagogue in Yerushalayim, and only through him were they able to identify the names. The whole story is brought in the book "Ish Tzaddik Hayah" by Simcha Raz.
We can learn several things from here. One: do not be overly righteous, and whoever has mercy on the cruel ends up being cruel to the merciful. But the point relevant to our subject is a different one: know that you could have the most wonderful plan, yet once it is discovered, it is worth nothing. Reveal your secret, and all the plans are canceled. Just like in a game of chess: if your moves are exposed to your opponent, it is over, you know in advance that the checkmate is against you. But if you hide cards up your sleeve and are able to surprise, you will surprise and also win. That is why the thing worth more than gold in a struggle between two nations is a mole. Nations invest millions in moles, someone on our side who will be in the general staff, in the Pentagon, in the central place of decision making, and will pass reports to us, for one such person saves expenses of billions, of wars, and of who knows what. So it turns out that one who reveals the secret spoils the entire plan we devised, and therefore one must guard against those who habitually reveal secrets.
The Malbim says there are three. The first: one who by nature reveals secrets. There is a person who cannot keep quiet; you told him something, and it is already out. There is no way you tell him something and it stays put. And each one adds on his own, "but do not pass it on," and tells one person, and he tells a second, and the second tells a third, until someone once said: you want publicity? Tell it to someone who does not keep a secret, and you have free publicity, from there onward it spreads automatically.
And in this context one should know: in a woman this nature is also a great advantage. It is hard for her to hide something from her husband, and she always needs to tell, and that is an advantage. Women complain of exactly the opposite: from men you cannot hear a thing, not that he told them so and so invited to a bar mitzvah, nor that he met that fellow and said this and that to him; "I have to hear it from the neighbor." That is, in husbands sometimes the situation is too extreme to the other side. And beyond that, Chava is called Chava because she loves to relate experiences (chavayot); notice, even when she does something she describes the whole process: now I am taking the child there, then I bring him back, and then I go there. And this is a great advantage that the Holy One, blessed be He, instilled in her. Someone once said: it is fortunate that children are raised by the woman, for if they were raised by us they would come out emotionally crippled. The woman picks up the child and speaks to him, come, my sweet, you must be hungry, now Ima will make you something, now Ima is mashing a potato for you, and the one year old child understands nothing, but this is his watering, this is his attention, and through this he grows and develops. A man is able to delve deeply into one thing and forget everything around him; a woman, by contrast, is easily distracted, and this too is a great advantage for raising children. She is on the phone and cooking, on the phone and changing a diaper, on the phone and tidying the house and answering the child. A man cannot chew gum and read a newspaper at the same time; two things at once do not work for him. In any case, this is what the verse is saying: there are people who by nature reveal secrets, beware of them. You want to keep something that no one will know? Do not tell it even at home. And therefore, when you want to devise a plan, you must first make sure there are no people around who will reveal it, for if they reveal it, everything will be spoiled.
The second: a talebearer. A person whose way is to gossip, "did you see what he did?", "did you hear they halted his construction?", "there were police there and chaos," always loves novelties and news, always what is going on with this one and that one. Such a person, you tell him something and he passes it on without noticing, without thinking twice. And afterward he is genuinely sorry: "I did not mean to." It may be that he truly did not intend to cause harm, but you, who know that this is his way and that he is innocent in it, what are you going to tell him? With all these, do not get involved.
The Gra, as mentioned, explains along the same line, except that he does not interpret "poteh sefatav" as an expression of foolishness (peti) but as an expression of enticement (pituy): do not get involved even with one who entices with his lips. One who entices with his lips will also entice you to tell him what happened here and what happened there, how you did it and how it went, he entices you with his lips to reveal your secret, and then he goes and tells it onward. Not in order to make use of the information, but out of personal curiosity: "and what happened? and what did you do? and what did he say? and how did you respond to him?", he pulls you along with his tongue, a bit more and a bit more, until he extracts all the information from you. And once he has fresh news, he goes and markets his wares. He must be "in the know," everyone must know that if something happens, he is the update center; connected to all the news flashes, and always the first to know who died, who is alive, and who is dying.
There was one such person, who when Rav Ovadia Yosef was lying on his deathbed, called his father's kollel and already announced that he had passed away, because someone had passed him an inside message that this was so. People already performed keriah, and only about two hours later did he actually pass away. It was a critical situation, someone saw commotion, drew conclusions and sent messages to everyone, and that fellow already rushed to announce it. Poor man, he had no bad intention, but you see that there are people whose whole desire is to be up to date and to pass it on, and this is not a good trait. Therefore the verse says: from such people guard your secrets carefully, for through them the secrets will be revealed, and thereby the plan you devised will be nullified.
מְקַלֵּל אָבִיו וְאִמּוֹ יִדְעַךְ נֵרוֹ בֶּאֱשׁוּן חֹשֶׁךְ׃ (כ) - One who curses his father and his mother, his lamp will be extinguished in the blackness of darkness. (20)
Rashi explains "be'eshun choshech" as when the darkness deepens and blackens, that is, when evil comes his lamp will be extinguished. The Ibn Ezra explains that "his lamp" alludes to his soul, and accordingly "his lamp will be extinguished" is the opposite of "his lamp will shine": when we want to bless a person with length of days, with blessing and success, we say "may his lamp shine," and when it is the opposite, Heaven forbid, "may his lamp be extinguished." And "will be extinguished" corresponds to "he shall surely die": one who curses his father and mother, his soul is, as it were, extinguishing, meaning he shall surely die.
Rabbeinu Yonah brings the verse "For the mitzvah is a lamp and the Torah is light." The mitzvah protects a person from troubles and from harmful blows, and this is the aspect of a lamp: a person walks in darkness and sees nothing - in the common expression, he cannot see an inch ahead - and he needs a source of light in order to be saved from the pits, the ditches, and the obstacles. This lamp is the mitzvah, which protects him from the harms destined to come upon him. However, Chazal say: a transgression extinguishes a mitzvah, but a transgression does not extinguish Torah. A person who performed mitzvos and afterward committed transgressions - the transgressions extinguish the mitzvah.
One must be careful of a mistake here: it does not say that the transgression nullifies the mitzvah or erases it. If that were so, woe to us - we did a mitzvah, then a transgression, and the mitzvah would be erased. Rather, the mitzvah remains in existence, and it has only been extinguished: the lamp is there, but it does not shine. And what is the practical difference? That tomorrow I will do teshuvah, and the transgression will be nullified, and consequently it no longer extinguishes the mitzvah - and the mitzvah returns to shine. If the mitzvah had been erased, what would the teshuvah accomplish?
According to this, a person who commits the transgression of "one who curses his father and his mother," who does not fulfill the mitzvah of honoring father and mother and on the contrary - harms his parents, know that even if he has the merit of having honored his parents in the past and behaved toward them on various occasions with derech eretz and respect, it will not help him at all. And why? "His lamp will be extinguished" - the lamp you lit back then, when you honored your parents, will now fade and be extinguished by this transgression. For if this transgression has the power to extinguish other mitzvos, it certainly has the power to extinguish the very mitzvah that is its own subject - honoring father and mother.
About this Chazal say: there is one who feeds his father pheasant and drives him from the world. What does this mean? A person honors his father greatly and brings him pheasant - a most expensive and choice fowl - and yet he drives him from the world, and inherits Gehinnom. And why? Because the whole question is how he serves it to him: "Get up, old man, eat, here, I brought you food, get up and eat something" - with contempt. Is that how one speaks to a father? He feeds him pheasant, but drives him from the World to Come. And perhaps "pheasant" (pasyoni) hints: when does he feed him? When his father is already a pensioner (pensioner) - and then he permits himself to speak to him with contempt, as to one who has already passed from the world.
Rabbeinu Yonah says: "His lamp will be extinguished in deep darkness" - he is like a person who takes a lamp and arrives at "deep darkness," that is, at pitch blackness, and this lamp is of no use. So too one who disgraces his father and behaves toward him in such a way - causes his lamp to fade, and the merit of the mitzvah will not shine for him in the upper world.
The Vilna Gaon explains: "one who curses his father" - his father is the one who teaches him Torah, as it says "and you shall teach them to your sons" and "and you shall teach them diligently to your children," and also according to halachah the obligation of teaching Torah is upon the father and not upon the mother. The mother, by contrast, is the one who guides the son in fulfilling the mitzvos and in walking in the straight path. This is the aspect of light and that is the aspect of a lamp: what the father teaches is Torah - "and the Torah is light," and what the mother teaches is "the mitzvah is a lamp," and the lamp is weaker than the light. Therefore a transgression extinguishes a mitzvah - for a lamp can be extinguished with a single breath; but the light of the sun cannot be extinguished, and therefore a transgression does not extinguish Torah, for the Torah is in the aspect of light.
The Gra continues: when a person is in a dark place, if he has even a lamp - there is great benefit in it, and it illuminates for him even in the darkness. According to this one might have said: "one who curses his father" - he has no light, but at least he honors his mother, and then he has a lamp, and with the lamp one can still manage. Therefore the verse says that this person not only curses his father but also disgraces his mother - and if he has neither Torah, which is the aspect of light, nor mitzvah, which is his mother, the aspect of a lamp - "his lamp will be extinguished," he will remain in darkness and gloom.
So too it is with the Torah itself, says the Gra, whose way is to transfer the metaphors to the Torah: "one who curses his father" - disgraces the Torah, "and his mother" - disgraces the mitzvos, and therefore "his lamp will be extinguished in deep darkness." And there in the world of truth one can see descriptions - I brought several of them in "Mishnas HaGilgulim" - of dybbuks and the like, describing the torments in the upper spiritual reality, and many of them describe a reality of darkness: they walk in the valley of the shadow of death, in a dark place, "You make darkness and it becomes night, in which all the beasts of the forest creep forth" - a hint to the forces of judgment, to the forces of the kelipos and the sitra achra to which a person attached himself during his life in the endless pursuit of the desires of this world, and there he is handed over into their hands in the reality of the upper world. That is: one who disgraces the Torah and the mitzvos, through this his lamp will be extinguished in deep darkness, and he will not have the aspect of a lamp and endurance for the life of the World to Come.
The Metzudat David explains: "his lamp is snuffed out in the depth of darkness" - his soul is extinguished in the blackness of darkness. When the day of reckoning arrives, the soul of the righteous shines, and since the soul is compared to a lamp - "the lamp of Hashem is the soul of man" - the reward too is compared to a lamp: the person shines. And how is this reward expressed? Through light.
Let me explain this a bit more deeply. In the writings of the Kabbalists one sees this constantly: when they speak of an influence flowing from one sefirah to another, of the descent of abundance, they speak in the language of light - "the beard illuminates below" and the like, as we say in Tashlich, "from the supernal light that illuminates." On the face of it, what light is there above? Light is a physical thing - and how do I know it is physical? Because it can be measured; light is measured in photons, and one can know how many units of light there are. Rather, certainly there is no light there in the literal sense, and whoever imagines light there sins, Heaven forbid, in corporealization, as Rabbi Chaim Vital writes in the warning that precedes the study of Kabbalah. So what then? Light is the most spiritual concept a person is capable of grasping; there is no more spiritual concept that we can recognize. Beyond that, nothing registers with us at all. That is why they speak to us in the concept of light. And this is why the Metzudat David took up the metaphor of light, for light comes to symbolize the reward of the righteous whose soul shines in the world of truth - and therefore, when they come to express punishment, they say "his lamp is snuffed out," the complete opposite of the shining light which is the measure of the supernal spiritual reward.
The two pesukim we have studied combine into a single progression. Counsel is the essential thing, but the best advice dissolves the moment a secret gets out - and therefore one must guard against three types: one who by his nature reveals secrets, one who goes about as a talebearer, and the foolish of lips, whether he is a simpleton whose mouth outruns his mind or whether he entices others with his tongue to extract their secrets from them. Whoever does not rule over himself to keep a secret does not rule over himself to refrain from gossip. And in the following pasuk we learned about one who curses his father and mother: "a mitzvah is a lamp and the Torah is light," and a transgression extinguishes a mitzvah - but does not erase it, and through repentance it returns to shine. Whoever harms his parents extinguishes with his own hands even the merit of the honor he showed in the past, and even one who feeds his father pheasant - if he does so with contempt, he drives him from the world. And in contrast stands the righteous person, whose soul shines in the world of truth with the light that is the loftiest spiritual concept we are able to grasp.