Chapter 22 of Mishlei gathers within it many moral teachings: the virtue of a good name, fear of Hashem, youth education, caution against robbing the poor, and also - and this is our primary focus in this shiur - a sharp depiction of the sluggard. King Solomon does not merely condemn laziness itself; he exposes the internal mechanism by which the sluggard justifies himself: he invents dangers, builds fabrications of the imagination, and concocts seemingly logical arguments for himself - all with a single purpose: not to budge from his place. From there we will move to the next verse, which deals with a "deep pit" - a fall from which it is difficult to rise.
אָמַר עָצֵל אֲרִי בַחוּץ, בְּתוֹךְ רְחֹבוֹת אֵרָצֵחַ׃ (יג) - The sluggard says, "There is a lion outside; I will be slain in the midst of the streets!" (13)
Rashi explains: The sluggard says, "There is a lion outside" - if so, how can I go out to study Torah? Ibn Ezra explains differently: "There is a lion outside" - how can I go to my work and labor? After all, a person must go out and bring sustenance to his household and provide for his livelihood; to this he says: How can I go seek my livelihood, when I will be killed by the lion?
Rabbeinu Yonah adds a major principle here: The verse comes to teach that bad character traits distort the intellect, and a person seeks rationalizations to pursue his desires. And how grave this is! A person who possesses a bad trait develops a vested interest, and then he straightens - though in truth he bends - all considerations according to his flaw. He will find reasons to purify the unclean and justify whatever he wants, and even completely illogical notions will serve as arguments to vindicate his corrupt behavior. As someone once remarked: "I have many reasons to stop smoking, but the taste of the cigarette overpowers them all." That is, the valid reasons exist, but there are other desires at play, and they entice the person even when they lack any true substance.
And so the sluggard seeks reasons to indulge his laziness. He tells you, "There is a lion outside" - what lion? What are you talking about? He is afraid of something that nobody else fears. People do not fear a lion walking down the street, but he does, because his heart is faint.
Rabbeinu Yonah further cites in the name of commentators that Scripture comes to inform us that laziness stems from faint-heartedness, while alacrity stems from fortitude. A person who does not worry, who is not afraid of his own shadow, someone who charges forward - he is also alacritous: he rises, acts, and gets things done. He says: Do not succumb to fears; let us act, and with Hashem's help we will succeed. In contrast, the faint-hearted person rolls doubts over and over: Who knows if it will succeed? I am afraid; it might collapse; where do we start? Afterwards we will have no way to continue, we will invest, we will open a place of study - and how will we fund it... Since he lacks a steadfast heart, he lacks alacrity. But one who has inner fortitude, or in our terms, self-confidence, and says: We will act and succeed with Heavenly assistance, and just as others succeeded I will succeed too - for him, alacrity is the offspring of courage. True is what they said, concludes Rabbeinu Yonah: Laziness stems from faint-heartedness, and alacrity from self-confidence and fortitude.
The Gra explains that "outside" refers to a place far from the city, and that is indeed where a lion roams, for a lion is found only in its natural habitat and does not wander through cities. "Streets," on the other hand, refers to a place near the city, where there are no lions - yet robbers, bandits, and assailants roam there. Therefore: "There is a lion outside" - and within the streets, "I will be slain." (The Gra offers another, deeper explanation here based on the esoteric dimension, which we will bypass.)
The Malbim explains "outside" and "streets" differently. "Outside" refers to the area behind the houses, just as one sees with those who live in private homes - in front there is a small garden, and in back there is a plot or a large yard where people plant or sow, and someone who collects odds and ends piles up whatever he gathers. This backyard is called "outside." And "street" is the public thoroughfare, the marketplace, where people gather.
From here, says the Malbim: In the natural way of the world, wild beasts are found in forests far from human habitation, and bandits are found on the highways - but inside the city, in courtyards, and certainly in the streets, neither bandits nor lions roam. Through this, Scripture emphasizes how far the sluggard will go in fabricating delusions and inventing excuses to justify his indolence: He claims that outside, behind the house, in a place where people are seldom found, there are wild beasts and it is dangerous to venture out. (Granted, someone might raise a Rottweiler or an Amstaff there, and in that case it might be true - but under normal circumstances, do lions roam there? Only in the sluggard's imagination.) And when he is countered that in the streets, where many people congregate, there are certainly no lions - he retorts: True, but in the streets there are murderers; haven't you heard that thirty years ago someone went out and was murdered? It is dangerous! And even though bandits are actually found on open roads and not in city streets - any pretext suffices for him, says the Malbim, so long as he does not have to budge or do a thing. Why? It is dangerous.
The Malbim adds that all of this is also an allegory for one who is too lazy to engage in words of Torah and wisdom. Notice how he applies the verse to secular disciplines: They tell the sluggard to pursue wisdom, and he replies, "There is a lion outside" - meaning, disciplines outside the Torah are dangerous and can lead to heresy (similar to the concept of "A deep pit is the mouth of strange women," which will be explained later). They say to him: If so, go into the street; study subjects that many have traversed, practical fields that carry no risk of heresy. To this he replies, "I will be slain in the midst of the broadways" - even there I will not understand or grasp what I am studying; I will exhaust myself and fail to comprehend what is being taught.
The application is straightforward. A person is told: Go study, work at something, make something of yourself. If one can learn Torah, let him learn Torah all day, which is truly wonderful. But not every person is capable of that, and then it is said, "And [Hashem] will bless you in all that you do" - and Chazal emphasized: "that you do." A person must secure a livelihood, for idleness is the root of all sin. There is no legitimate option of sitting idle: either words of Torah, or derech eretz, or derech eretz alongside Torah - and derech eretz means work and a trade. But there is no room for sitting idly, for someone who sits idle is vulnerable to every scheme of the evil inclination.
They tell a person: Go learn a trade, find a job. He responds: I went to study, but they started teaching me Darwin - what do I need Darwin and this nonsense for? That is "There is a lion outside": secular disciplines will teach me heresy. Fine, they tell him, leave that aside; study mathematics, become an accountant, learn practical fields through which you can earn a living without any such concerns - this corresponds to "in the midst of the broadways," well-trodden paths that pose no danger of heresy. And what does he answer? "I will be slain in the midst of the broadways" - you have no idea how complicated it is, how difficult it is... So what do you do? I am going to sleep; wake me up when something new comes along. That is the sluggard.
Whatever advice you give the sluggard and whatever solution you suggest to him will never be relevant in his eyes, and he will always find every reason why he cannot do anything with himself. We can see this to this day. There are people whose disposition is fundamentally that of an idler: a fellow in his twenties or thirties wanders around all day. "I went there, I looked for a job here, they told me to come by, they set up an interview..." - yet he never manages to find a job. Why? Because from the outset he never intended to find work; he went only because of pressure from home and from all sides. In reality, it suits him just fine to wake up at noon, hang around, drop in on friends, and sit around with this person and that - idleness suits him. Then, when he predictably fails to find work, he complains: Do you know what kind of salary they offered me? It is disgraceful, a starvation wage; am I going to work for that? Better not to work at all. He had already decided in advance not to work, so naturally, nothing offered to him is ever acceptable.
A story is told of someone who went to apply for a job. They told him: In the first month you will earn 4,000; after four months you will rise to 4,500; after another five months to 5,000; and by the end of the year you will start receiving 6,000. He answered them: Fine, I will come back at the end of the year, God willing. Such a person wants to start out as the boss. Start at the bottom? "What am I, someone who starts at the bottom?" Instead: Is there a managerial position opening up? Do you have any management experience? "Listen, my friend, back in the army I ran the whole show." A person arrives with no experience, no seniority, no training, and no formal education - neither business management nor economics, nothing at all - yet he expects to be hired as an executive, and otherwise claims he cannot find work. And indeed he finds nothing, for who would be foolish enough to hire someone with no experience whatsoever, whose only qualification is that he imagines he knows it all?
And what does Shlomo say about all this? Pure laziness, period. All the arguments and excuses - this work does not suit me, here my back hurts, there it is something else - a thousand and one reasons not to go out and work. Later on, he does not marry either, for if he marries he will have to build a home and support a family; so he is content just drifting along, collecting a small allowance here or there, and it suffices for him, feeling no drive to accomplish anything with his life. Regarding this, King Shlomo says: "The sluggard says, 'There is a lion outside; I will be slain in the midst of the broadways'" - all the rationalizations and justifications are nothing but sheer laziness.
Rav Dessler addresses this point: there are people who speak grandly of bitachon (trust in God) - as the Chazon Ish put it, "the high praises of bitachon are in their throats" - but in truth, it is not bitachon at all, but simple laziness, and they are deceiving themselves. A person tells you: My friend, one must trust in Hashem; livelihood comes from Heaven, the Holy One, blessed be He, will help and arrange whatever is needed. He appears to be a man of great faith. People offer him: Come work, there is a job here - and he replies: Hashem will provide.
Yet the proof that this is not real bitachon is simple: offer that same person a different salary. How much did they offer you, four thousand? I offer you ten thousand shekels for the very same hours. "Yes! Where? When do I start?" - Wait, why did you jump at it? Aren't you a person of bitachon, won't Hashem take care of you? This demonstrates that the whole posture was nothing but laziness: I simply do not want to go to work, it is beneath my dignity, I do not want to exert myself - so I hide behind bitachon. Had it been genuine bitachon, even if offered a hundred thousand shekels he would have answered: Do I earn my livelihood from you? I receive my livelihood from the Master of the Universe. Clearly, this has nothing to do with bitachon in the slightest; it is plain laziness. How careful a person must be not to deceive himself!
At times, such a person goes to learn for half an hour a day, and when asked why he does not work, he answers, "I am learning" - using this learning as a mere facade. What kind of learning is it? A half hour, which he uses to say: If I go to work, will I stop learning? Yet most of his day is spent doing nothing! On the contrary, when a person is idle, work is far preferable, for when he works he is occupied, whereas when he is idle he is occupied with his evil inclination: the yetzer hara takes hold of him and seeks ways to make him sin. Idleness is the mother of all sin; idleness leads to boredom, and boredom leads to sin. Therefore, Shlomo teaches that the worst fault of all is laziness, and a person must always possess the ambition to make something of himself.
שׁוּחָה עֲמֻקָּה פִּי זָרוֹת, זְעוּם יְהוָה יִפָּל שָׁם׃ (יד) - A deep pit is the mouth of strange women; he who is abhorred by Hashem shall fall therein. (14)
Rashi explains "the mouth of strange women" (pi zarot) as referring to idolaters, where zarot signifies foreign worship (avodah zarah). And who stumbles into this? "He who is abhorred by Hashem" (ze'um Hashem) - one whom the Holy One, Blessed is He, hates, and who is rebuked and reviled before Him; he is the one who falls and stumbles into idolatry.
Rabbeinu Yonah explains "the mouth of strange women" as referring to the speech of a woman, which brings a man down and causes him to stumble into sin. What happened with Shimshon and Delilah? Where did it all begin? With the talk of a woman. And what happened with Shimshon and his first wife? "You revealed the riddle to everyone, but to me you did not reveal it" - and as a result, what happened happened, his wife was taken, and everything that befell him occurred in the wake of that episode. "A deep pit is the mouth of strange women" - the mouth is the cause of the fall; the alienness is the cause of the state in which a person later stumbles, as she draws him in with her speech and entices him, thereby causing him to fall.
A "pit" (shuchah) is a ditch used for hunting: to trap animals or ambush people, they would dig a pit and conceal it with leaves and the like, and whoever passed by would fall in. If the pit is deep - "she shall rise no more," there is no way to climb out; but if it is shallower, the fall is temporary. Therefore, a person must guard himself and be rescued from her speech. And Rabbeinu Yonah adds: "He who is abhorred by Hashem shall fall therein" - know that far more bitter and evil than the mouth of strange women is one who falls into the deep pit of being abhorred by Hashem. When the Holy One, Blessed is He, is enraged with someone, his downfall is one from which there is no recovery. "The mouth of strange women" is indeed a deep pit, but for one abhorred by Hashem - there, the fall is vastly more severe.
The Vilna Gaon explains that "the mouth of strange women" refers to a person who speaks alien, forbidden words, who will end up in a deep pit; while "he who is abhorred by Hashem shall fall therein" refers to the listeners. That is, a person who speaks lashon hara, gossip, flattery, falsehood, and all manner of speech that causes others to sin - that person himself is a deep pit; his mouth, which speaks strange things, is the deep pit and the downfall. And whoever listens to those words - "he who is abhorred by Hashem shall fall therein"; the listener is the one abhorred by Hashem, and he will fall into that deep pit. According to the Gra, "abhorred by Hashem" actually refers to Gehinom, which is distinct from the deep pit; "shall fall therein" means he falls into Gehinom, not merely into the deep pit. Thus it turns out that the listener's plight is even worse.
Another explanation: "A deep pit is the mouth of strange women" - the speaker is actively cast into a deep pit, whereas the listener "shall fall therein" on his own. The Gra does not explicitly elaborate on the distinction between being cast down and falling therein, but simply put: being cast down is akin to compulsion, where an outside force overpowers you and throws you down; whereas "shall fall therein" occurs as if on his own, something still within your control, which you could have mastered and overcome.
The Gra further explains this based on what Bil'am said: "How shall I curse whom God has not cursed? And how shall I defy whom Hashem has not defied (lo za'am Hashem)?" The punishment for cursing and defiance occurs in heaven and on earth. How so? Scripture states: "The heavens shall reveal his iniquity, and the earth shall rise up against him" - for some, punishment comes from heaven, and for others, the earth rises up and administers the punishment. Therefore: "a deep pit" is where "the mouth of strange women" - the speaker - is judged, and this takes place on earth, for a deep pit is a ditch down here below. By contrast, the listener is "abhorred by Hashem," meaning his punishment is directly at the hand of Hashem, which is in heaven. This corresponds to "How shall I curse (akov)" and "how shall I defy (ez'om)": one who speaks improper words corresponds to "akov," and his retribution rises from the earth, "a deep pit is the mouth of strange women"; while the listener is "ze'um Hashem," and his retribution is directly in the hand of Hashem, "shall fall therein" - not here on earth, but up there, in the punishment of Gehinom.
The Malbim explains that this verse speaks of the ways of secular wisdom and Gentile philosophy. As the Malbim has noted several times, whenever Mishlei mentions a "mouth," it refers to wisdom and the articulation of wisdom. The wisdom of the nations has the character of a deep pit: a pit is an excavation meant to trap people, and when it is deep, it is nearly impossible to escape. One who becomes ensnared in accursed philosophy, one who gets caught up in various secular disciplines - it will be extremely difficult for him afterward to behold the light of life.
Consider what the Vilna Gaon wrote in Yoreh De'ah, siman 179, regarding the Rambam - for the Rambam, as is well known, did not believe in demons, spirits, amulets, necromancy, or any such phenomena, to the point that some even accused him of not believing in the resurrection of the dead, necessitating his composition of Iggeret Teiman to clarify these matters unequivocally so that no suspicion would attach to him, God forbid. In any event, the Rambam engaged in philosophy, and the Gra wrote sharp words concerning him (as cited in Mishnat HaChalomot): "and accursed philosophy misled him with the abundance of its fair speech." It is frightening even to utter, and who are we to speak against Rabbeinu the Rambam; yet the Gra had the stature to recognize that what the Rambam wrote denying demons, spirits, celestial forces, and necromancy came to him through philosophy, as philosophy rejected all these things. Yet anyone who opens the Talmuds finds them full of such accounts: dealings our Sages had with demons, errands dispatched through demons, necromancy, bone-divining, sorcery - all real phenomena that the Torah explicitly forbade; whereas the Rambam maintained that the Torah spoke in accordance with the delusions of mankind, addressing foolish beliefs that hold no substance whatsoever.
And when one sees the Gra stating that cursed philosophy was capable of swaying even the Rambam - certainly the Malbim is right: "The mouth of strange women is a deep pit", a pit from which whoever falls in finds it exceedingly difficult to break free of those foreign disciplines. What is more, he has not even the hope that Hashem will help him climb out of that pit, for "he who is abhorred of Hashem will fall therein" - the one who falls there is someone who incurs, as it were, wrath from the Holy One, Blessed be He, the curse of Hashem and His fury, having been ensnared in heresy and disbelief. And we are not speaking, Heaven forbid, of the Rambam, but rather of those who are drawn after alien philosophies, becoming trapped in heresy and ruin.
The Gemara states that one who separates from heresy dies immediately. The meaning of this is: heresy takes such a powerful hold that if a person wishes to repent from it completely, he cannot continue to live afterward; rather, complete repentance brings him to death - for otherwise, the fear always remains that he will revert to it. This is the meaning of "he who is abhorred of Hashem will fall therein": the divine wrath makes his escape exceptionally difficult, for from whom could he receive a staff or a rope to climb out? From the Holy One, Blessed be He - yet he is abhorred of Hashem. Therefore, the only way to genuinely leave heresy behind is through death, for only then does he break entirely free from the disbelief he acquired through those corrupt studies.
The two verses before us describe two traps. The first is the trap of the sluggard: "The sluggard says: There is a lion outside." It is not actual dangers that hold him back, but his laziness, and this negative trait skews his intellect to fabricate fantasies and excuses - lions in the courtyard, murderers in the street, low wages, unsuitable work - and even an illusion of "bitachon" that is nothing more than indolence, as Rav Dessler pointed out. The answer to this is clear: idleness cannot be tolerated, for idleness is the mother of all sin; either Torah, or productive labor, or both together, accompanied always by the ambition to achieve something with one's life. The second trap is "The mouth of strange women is a deep pit": a mouth that speaks foreign ideas, which according to Rabbeinu Yonah refers to the enticing speech of the seductress, according to the Gra refers to the speaker who causes others to stumble and the listener who falls after him, and according to the Malbim refers to foreign wisdoms and alien philosophies. This is a deep pit from which it is exceedingly hard to escape, and "he who is abhorred of Hashem will fall therein" - meaning that even assistance from Above is withheld from one ensnared in it. Hence the dual demand: not to deceive ourselves with the rationalizations of laziness, and to guard ourselves against the speech of alien doctrines that casts a person into a pit with no way out.