Introduction: Between Illusory Profit and True Reward
In the passage before us from Chapter 11, King Solomon contrasts two paths: the path of the wicked, who imagines he is gaining and profiting, and the path of the one who gives charity, who appears to merely scatter and lose. The verses come to teach what true profit is and what illusory profit is, what is an abomination and what is desirable before the Holy One, blessed be He, and how His retribution reaches a person through direct Divine providence.
Verse 18: Illusory Wages Versus True Reward
רָשָׁע עֹשֶׂה פְעֻלַּת שָׁקֶר וְזֹרֵעַ צְדָקָה שֶׂכֶר אֱמֶת׃ - The wicked person earns deceitful wages, but one who sows righteousness receives a true reward.
One who sows charity - this is a true reward. One who sows wheat, this is not a true reward. Rabbeinu Yonah observes on this: blight and mildew may come and consume everything you have there. But one who sows charity, his reward is a true reward, for He is faithful and will not disappoint. If one sows for charity, he will reap in accordance with kindness. These are things whose fruits a person consumes in this world while the principal remains for him in the World to Come - true reward, eternal reward.
The Story of the Declaration of Wealth
It is told of the Abarbanel (and some tell this of another person) that detractors arose against him and told the king: "Your Majesty, your finance minister is embezzling your funds. He has vast wealth - from where? From what he stole." The king approached the minister; the minister tried to dissuade him and evade the issue, to no avail. The king demanded a declaration of wealth. The minister went and submitted a declaration listing an amount that was about ten percent of his actual assets. When the king saw this, he was enraged and ordered him thrown into prison. He said: "It is now proven that he is indeed stealing from me - what I already know about him is far greater than this, and what I do not know, who can imagine!" On that same occasion, the king also confiscated all his property.
Since the king knew he was dealing with an exceptionally wise man, he summoned him to clarify. He said to him: "How could you think to deceive me like this?" The minister replied: "Heaven forbid, I did not intend to deceive the king. You asked me how much wealth I have - and how much do I truly possess? It is the ten percent I listed for you, which represents the charity and tithes I have given to this day. That is all I truly have. And the proof is that your majesty has just demonstrated it yourself: I thought I possessed many other assets, and what did you do? You confiscated them and took them away. If so, do I possess them or not? I do not possess them. And what do I truly have? What I gave to charity. That, you can never take from me; even if you put me to death, you cannot strip these merits from me. That is truly mine."
This is what King Solomon says here: one who sows charity receives "a true reward" - genuine reward. But as for the wicked, all his labor and everything he receives here is "deceitful wages." A deceitful wage means futility, which brings no real benefit and adds nothing enduring to him.
The Vilna Gaon's Explanation: The Merchant and the Sower
The Vilna Gaon explains: A pe'ulah (labor or commerce) applies to something where there is no loss at the time we perform it. For example, a person buys merchandise in one place and sells it in another. Did he lose anything? No. Until now he had two hundred thousand shekels in his pocket, and now he has twenty thousand shirts. He traded one for the other, and later he will sell the shirts, receiving money and even a profit in return.
However, commerce involves two vulnerabilities. The first is that you can be misled. Someone can sell you shirts and you are convinced that you made the deal of a lifetime, but in truth, it really is a "deal of a lifetime" in that he emerges deeply indebted from it. How? People come to put on the shirts and discover the sleeves are half the normal width; they are unwearable. Nor can one tear off the sleeves to use them as undershirts. One would have to invent an entirely new fashion trend for these shirts! It turns out you were cheated. In business, you can take a heavy fall. And the second problem is that even if you profit, how much can you make? Can you buy a shirt for ten shekels and sell it for a hundred? Very few succeed at that, only if it is a major designer brand. Normally, why would someone buy from you for a hundred when your neighbor sells the same shirt for fifteen, content with a modest profit? The profit margin is simply not that large.
On the other hand, consider someone who had a career change: he is no longer a merchant but a farmer, growing grain. He is not like the merchant. The merchant bought shirts - he had two hundred thousand shekels, and now he has shirts. But the farmer took two hundred thousand shekels, bought seeds, and planted them in the field. What does he have right now? Nothing. The seed rots in the ground; in the initial stage, he has nothing at all. But what happens in three or four months? For every single grain planted, he receives twenty grains in return. That is a massive profit. With shirts, you do not put down ten shekels and get two thousand; you do not multiply your investment tenfold. With grain, it can multiply twofold, threefold, and exponentially more.
To summarize: in commerce, I did not risk much, but I also did not make a huge profit. In sowing, I took a great risk, since initially I seemingly threw my money away, the grain rotted, and I was left with nothing - but later on, I have a fortune, having gained far, far more.
The Vilna Gaon explains: this is what is written here. "A wicked person earns illusory wages" - the wicked person commits sins, and can anyone dispute that he profited? One cannot. You did not indulge, while he did. You held yourself back, while he did not. You said, "Sir, this is forbidden, this is theft, I will not take it." And he said, "You are not taking it? Wonderful, I will take yours as well." In the immediate term, the wicked person gained: you do not have the thousand shekels because you refrained, while he has them because he took them. So it is with the pleasure of sin, and so it is with everything. It appears on the surface that he gained, but it is a lie; it is an illusory wage. A pe'ulah is something where you suffer no apparent loss at the moment you perform it, like buying merchandise, and it seems he has profited - yet the verse tells you: it is a falsehood.
"And one who sows righteousness has a true reward" - tzedakah is like sowing seeds. When I give tzedakah to a poor person, what happens to my pocket? It empties out, just as when I planted grain. At that very moment, it looks like a loss, but the reward comes later, and it is a true reward, one that never rots: "and your righteousness stands forever." It is not something temporary. The wicked person enjoys a momentary pleasure - a gain for this transient moment - but for eternity he incurs an everlasting loss. His action is only temporary; it is an illusory wage.
The Malbim's Explanation: Pe'ulah and Ma'aseh
The Malbim distinguishes between a ma'aseh (an accomplished deed) and a pe'ulah (an ongoing activity). A pe'ulah is when I am still engaged in the process; a ma'aseh is when I have finished and completed it. A ma'aseh is designated by its completion. When we say, "We are working (po'alim) to secure restitution of property from European countries" - have we obtained it? No, we are still in the active stage (pe'ulah). But if one says, "We performed a deed (asinu ma'aseh) and achieved it," it is already accomplished. A pe'ulah is the process, while a ma'aseh is the end result.
The Malbim explains: the wicked person imagines that he is performing a ma'aseh, that he has completed his work. A wicked person who accumulated wealth and fortune, built houses, and planted vineyards imagines that he has brought the deed to completion: "Look, I succeeded; I have a house, a vineyard, fields, properties, and buildings." In truth, however, all of this is merely a pe'ulah. A ma'aseh represents the ultimate purpose, the culmination of the matter, whereas a pe'ulah means you are still in the process - it is only a means to an end. You built a house, you bought a house - what did you actually achieve through it? What is the purpose? If you say the purpose is this world, that is certainly not the ultimate purpose. What is the purpose of life? Why am I here? I am here to take from this world and transfer it to the next, to the World to Come. Even if the Azrieli Towers are registered in your name in the land registry, it is not a ma'aseh, but merely a pe'ulah. And if you say, "Now I have money" - money is not the goal. Today people ask, "What's the tachlis (bottom line)?" meaning money, how much do I make; but in truth, man was not created in this world to amass money, but rather for his standing in the World to Come, as the Mesillat Yesharim explains. What you have here is merely a pe'ulah, not a ma'aseh, for the temporary life of this world cannot be called an ultimate purpose.
In contrast, the one who gives charity, who does what is good before God, appears to us as one who sows - and sowing is a pe'ulah, not a ma'aseh, since the goal is not the sowing itself, but the harvest and the bread that follow. The wicked person seems to be accomplishing a ma'aseh, yet in truth he is merely engaging in an illusory pe'ulah; whereas the one who sows charity seems to be merely performing a pe'ulah, but in truth he will reap a reward of truth - a true, eternal, and enduring reward that never perishes or fades. What initially appeared to be merely an intermediate action is in truth a genuine, eternal, and lasting deed.
Verse 19: Genuine Righteousness Leads to Life
כֵּן צְדָקָה לְחַיִּים וּמְרַדֵּף רָעָה לְמוֹתוֹ׃ - As righteousness tends to life, so he who pursues evil pursues it to his death.
The Malbim continues: when you see someone sowing charity, know that this yields a true reward; this deed reaches genuine completion and a truthful purpose. The one who sows charity only seems to you as a sower, as someone doing the initial step of the process, but "righteousness tends to life": charity leads him to life - both to life in this world, as it is written, "and charity saves from death," and to true life in the World to Come, where he will receive a real, eternal reward for it.
By contrast, the deed of the wicked is a deed of falsehood. One who pursues evil, says the Malbim, is pursuing death. Someone who wants to attain something quickly runs toward it. Evil by nature is still distant, but by pursuing it, you attain it quickly, before its time. This is "so he who pursues evil pursues it to his death": the wicked person rushes to grasp worldly pleasures, desires, and forbidden things, imagining that he has enjoyed them and reached the ultimate goal - yet in truth this is no ultimate goal, but merely an activity, and an illusory activity at that. Furthermore, by doing so, he has only hastened his own death.
On two planes, the wicked person hastens his own death. On the first plane: he pursued every desire, did not safeguard his physical health, denied himself nothing, and ate and indulged in things that shortened his days. As the Gemara states, excessive indulgence in marital intimacy brings premature aging upon a person, and as we know that someone who smokes - and certainly one who indulges in other harmful vices - destroys his body. It seems to him that he has attained the ultimate purpose, but he fails to realize that by pursuing desires, he was pursuing death.
And on the second, spiritual plane: had he fulfilled Hashem's commandments, it is written, "so that your days may be prolonged," "for by me your days will be multiplied, and years of life will be added to you," and "you who cling to Hashem your God are all alive today." Statistically, the highest life expectancy is found in Bnei Brak, even though sports are not practiced there. One who pursues righteousness finds life - "as righteousness leads to life." But one who pursues evil shortens his days spiritually as well: if karet (spiritual excision) is decreed upon him, he may die before the age of sixty or fifty, and committing sins curtails one's lifespan. Both on the physical and spiritual planes, one who pursued wealth, cravings, and pleasures was in truth pursuing death. Death would have arrived eventually, and he ran toward it to arrive sooner. Therefore, he "performs a deceitful labor": he imagines he has achieved the final deed, yet it is merely an ongoing action - a process that is neither a true purpose nor a lasting culmination.
The Vilna Gaon's Explanation: To Whom Does the Pursuer of Evil Cause Harm?
The Vilna Gaon explains: "As righteousness leads to life" - one who is accustomed to constantly giving charity, and who also assists those who support and perform charity, will merit life. "And he who pursues evil" - one who runs after wicked people and assists them in doing evil, does so "to his death," meaning his own death.
A person might think: if I pursue evil, accompany wicked people, hunt down others, strike them, or kill them - I am bringing evil upon my victim. The Gaon says: do not be mistaken. The harm that befell that person was destined to reach him, and if not through you, then through someone else. To whom, then, did you cause harm? To yourself. We have an established rule: a person does not strike his finger below unless it is proclaimed from Above, and no one can harm his fellow unless it was decreed from Heaven that his fellow should suffer that harm; and if it was not decreed upon him, no person in the world can harm him.
And if the murderer were to claim: "What do you want from me? After all, he was destined to die anyway!" We tell him: guilt is brought about through the guilty. And why did the Holy One, Blessed be He, channel this tragedy specifically through your hands? Because you were already guilty, and therefore you will bear the judgment. It turns out that in the entire scenario where Reuven murders Shimon, the only truly harmed party is Reuven. Shimon was going to die anyway; if not through you, then through Yehudah, Levi, or Aharon. But the murderer is the one who lost - he brought about his own death, for Heaven will demand an accounting from him and he will have to pay the price. One who practices righteousness brings additional life into the world, whereas one who pursues evil harms no one so much as he harms himself.
Verse 20: The Perverse in Heart and the Upright in Way
תּוֹעֲבַת ה' עִקְּשֵׁי לֵב וּרְצוֹנוֹ תְּמִימֵי דָרֶךְ׃ - An abomination to Hashem are the perverse of heart, and His desire is those who are upright in their way.
The Vilna Gaon explains: "He who confesses and forsakes [his sins] will obtain mercy" - a person who is willing to retract, mend his ways, say "I was wrong," and change his path, of him it is said that he will find mercy. But one who does not confess and forsake is called ikkesh lev (crooked or perverse of heart): he stubbornly persists in his corrupt path and refuses to change. This is also called being "stiff-necked," stemming from the same idea. A stiff-necked person is someone behind whom you walk, shouting: "There is an abyss ahead of you! You are about to walk into a wall!" - yet he does not turn his head back to see who spoke to him. Why? His neck is stiff, rigid as iron; he does not turn it left or right. It is what people today call "banging one's head against a wall." So too is the ikkesh lev: a person who twists his heart, whose heart remains obstinate and refuses to repent - and this is an abomination to Hashem.
"And His desire is those who are upright in their way" - with whom is the Holy One, Blessed be He, pleased? With one who is tamim derech (wholesome and upright in way). And what is a tamim derech according to the Gaon? One who from the very outset walked with pure devotion with the Holy One, Blessed be He, never sinned, but always walked in wholehearted integrity with Hashem. This is the highest level.
The Malbim explains: "abomination" (to'evah) and "desire/favor" (ratzon) are two extremes, and there is a middle ground that is neither favored nor abominable. When one says that he strongly desires something and intensely abhors something else, he is speaking of two extremes; in between lies something that is neither particularly desired nor particularly loathed.
The heart, according to the Malbim - a principle he reiterates numerous times in Sefer Mishlei - represents the governing faculty within man. The heart directs all the faculties of the body. One who constantly conducts himself according to the ways of wisdom, in uprightness, justice, and integrity, is called chacham lev (wise of heart), and he is "upright in his way": his path is complete and wholesome, because he possesses a governing power - the heart - that directs him along the path of wisdom. What does it mean that his path is whole? That he does not zigzag: neither swaying right one moment and left the next, nor driven by fleeting whims of "I feel like it" or "I don't feel like it," nor waking up on the right side of the bed one day and on the wrong side the next, one day full of enthusiasm and the next saying "leave me alone." This is an individual whose heart reigns supreme, and consequently he is tamim derech, consistently treading the same straight path and always fulfilling the will of Hashem.
The one crooked of heart is the opposite of the wise of heart. Crookedness is the opposite of wholeness: the whole man is complete and upright, while the crooked one is bent. Like "the fox whose teeth are crooked," meaning bent, and like "one who perverts his way," one who bends his way. This person always disputes the laws of wisdom and always walks a crooked path, and he is an abomination to Hashem. The Holy One, blessed be He, desires the one whose way is whole, who is always complete in doing His will, and He abhors the one who always walks in crookedness.
And who is found in the middle, between the two extremes? The Malbim says: the person who sometimes does good and sometimes has the yetzer overcome him. This person is not desired before Hashem, but he is also not an abomination in His eyes, because he is always in an intermediate state - sometimes he manages to subdue his yetzer and sometimes the yetzer subdues him. Shlomo here speaks of the two extremes: Hashem abhors the crooked of heart who are always on the evil path, and He desires the whole of way in whom the heart rules and who are always complete; while the one who is constantly struggling is in the middle.
Verse 21: Hand to hand, the evil one will not go unpunished
יָד לְיָד לֹא יִנָּקֶה רָּע וְזֶרַע צַדִּיקִים נִמְלָט׃ - Hand to hand, the evil one will not go unpunished, but the offspring of the righteous will escape.
Everyone is familiar with the teaching of Chazal on this verse: one who counts out coins from his hand into her hand in order to gaze upon her - of him it is said "hand to hand, the evil one will not go unpunished." Even in a matter where no immorality is spoken of, the very act of counting out coins from his hand into her hand in order to gaze upon her hand - already "will not go unpunished."
And the Malbim explains: The Holy One, blessed be He, in His punishments reaches the doer of evil through personal providence, not through an intermediary and not through messengers, but as it were by Himself and with His own hand, so that the punishment is "hand to hand" - from His hand to your hand, without intermediaries, without go-betweens, without forces and angels to transfer it from Him to you.
By contrast, there is a situation in which a person gives something to his fellow by way of a messenger, and then it is possible that the true recipient will not receive it, and it is possible that one to whom it is not due will receive it - when the messenger did not fulfill his mission.
The story brought by the Ben Ish Chai
The Ben Ish Chai brings a story of one who told a king that the Holy One, blessed be He, arranges matches. The king asked him: What does the Holy One, blessed be He, do since He created His world? He said to him: He arranges matches. The king said to him: What is difficult about arranging matches? That wise man said to him: Do not think it is so simple. For there was a story of a certain noblewoman in the time of the Gemara, who had a thousand male servants and a thousand female servants, and she thought it would be easy to match them. She married them off, and by morning this one was without a hand, that one without a leg, and one without a head - they had injured one another. It is not simple to arrange matches; it is not merely taking two names and joining them together.
The king said: What she did was foolishness, to take a thousand people at once; but I believe that I too can arrange matches. What did he do? He knew a fine, beautiful, and capable young woman, and he had an unmarried minister. He went to her and said: Deliver this letter to my minister, and you will receive from him ten gold coins. And in the letter he wrote: I command you by the king's decree to marry the bearer of this letter as a wife, and to give her ten gold coins. He gave her the letter and waited to see what would happen.
Two weeks later the king held a feast for his servants, and behold he sees the minister taking a soft candy, wrapping it in paper, and placing it in his pocket. He asked him: What is this? He said to him: I am taking it for my wife. He said to him: And why specifically a soft candy, take her better things. He said to him: My wife has no teeth. He asked: And who is your wife? He said: The one whom the king commanded me to marry. He said: And how does she have no teeth? He said: What can I do, my lord the king commanded me to marry - some woman of eighty. I fulfilled the king's decree, but she has no teeth, so I take her a little soft candy that she may be able to eat.
The king immediately summoned that young woman and asked: Did you do what I told you? She said to him: Regarding the letter? Yes. I simply walked in the street, and an old woman stopped me and begged me to give her charity and have mercy on her. I said to her: I have nothing to give you. And then I remembered that I had in hand a letter that the king had asked to be delivered to the minister, for which one receives ten gold coins. I said to her: Here, take the letter, give it to the minister and he will give you ten gold coins, and at least you will have something to live on. I gave her the letter, and she did not know what was written in it. The minister received the letter and was compelled to marry the bearer of the letter, that old woman. And the king came to see that it is not easy and not simple to arrange matches.
The Difference Between an Emissary and Direct Divine Providence
This is what the Malbim explains: when something is carried out through an emissary or intermediary, it is possible that one who ought to receive good does not receive it, while one who is not meant to receive it does; and conversely, one who deserves adversity might not receive it, while one who does not deserve it does. There are times when someone deserves adversity, yet the hour favors him - "Do not contend with a wicked person when fortune favors him" - and so he possesses, as it were, a shield, rendering him untouchable. On the other hand, a person might be righteous, but once the destroying angel has gone forth to destroy, he does not distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, and one who does not deserve harm ends up suffering it. In simple terms: when it does not come directly from the hand of the Creator, blessed be He, it is possible that one who deserves adversity will not receive it and one who does not will, because the matter is executed through an emissary. This is a state of hester panim (the concealment of the Divine face): Achan sinned with the consecrated property - and who was punished? The entire people of Israel. When there is concealment of the Divine face, people do not necessarily receive precisely what they deserve.
However, when retribution comes directly from Hashem's hand - "Hand to hand, the evil will not go unpunished": through direct Divine Providence from Hashem, whoever deserves adversity will not go unpunished, and will receive precisely what is due to him. "And the seed of the righteous shall escape" - through an emissary, they might suffer harm that they do not deserve, but when it is hand to hand, directly from Hashem, such a thing cannot happen: the wicked receives the consequence of his wickedness, and the offspring of the righteous is not harmed. When it is not hand to hand but through an emissary, it is possible that the wicked will go unpunished because fortune smiles upon him, and it is also possible that the seed of the righteous will not escape, since the destroying angel does not distinguish between righteous and wicked. Not so when the matter is governed by direct Providence, as it is written: "And God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow" - if you are connected to a tzaddik, you escape, because it is hand to hand, directly from Hashem.
In summary:
The verses before us teach us to distinguish between appearance and reality. The wicked person imagines that he has achieved an enduring accomplishment - he accumulated wealth, built houses, and planted vineyards - but in truth it is merely an ongoing endeavor, a process without an enduring end, a deceptive undertaking; indeed, with his own hands, he pursues his own physical and spiritual demise. And one who sows righteousness appears to us as merely dispersing and emptying his pockets, yet in truth he reaps a true reward, an eternal reward that no one can ever take from him - just as the royal treasurer told the king: only that which I gave away is truly mine. From here, the text continues to present the two extremes: the perverse in heart, who consistently walk along crooked paths and refuse to repent, are an abomination to Hashem; whereas the upright in the way, ruled by a wise heart and consistently walking with integrity, are His delight. Finally, Scripture teaches us that the Creator's providence is "hand to hand," without intermediaries and without emissaries - and then everyone receives precisely what is due to them: the wicked will not go unpunished, and the seed of the righteous escapes.