The two verses before us in chapter 12 of Mishlei appear, on the surface, to deal with matters of livestock and soil: "A righteous man knows the soul of his beast," and "He who tills his land will be sated with bread." Yet, as is typical of Sefer Mishlei, these are not feeding instructions for animals nor agricultural advice, but an allegory for the traits of the soul: how the righteous person acts toward the animalistic aspect within himself and toward the creatures dependent on him, and the difference between a person who works his own land and one who expends his strength on other fields. We will follow in the footsteps of Rashi, Rabbeinu Yonah, the Vilna Gaon, and the Malbim.
יוֹדֵעַ צַדִּיק נֶפֶשׁ בְּהֶמְתּוֹ וְרַחֲמֵי רְשָׁעִים אַכְזָרִי׃ (י) - A righteous man knows the soul of his beast, but the compassion of the wicked is cruel.
Rabbeinu Yonah connects this verse to what was stated earlier: "Better is one who is despised and has a servant than one who acts honored and lacks bread" - that it is unfitting for a person to adopt airs of nobility that keep him from honest labor. Here he adds: although a person ought to carry himself with dignity, this dignity never prevents the righteous person from personally performing any mitzvah with his own body, even when it might appear lowly. We find this in King David, who said: while all the kings of the world are sleeping in their beds, already in the early hours my hands are soiled with blood, a fetus-sac, and an afterbirth, in order to declare a woman pure to her husband - for they would bring blood-stains before him so that he might inspect them and rule. A person might say: why should you, the king of Israel, handle such matters and dirty yourself? Yet the righteous person, with all his nobility, does not hold back from any mitzvah or from anything he is responsible to oversee properly. Even if people say to him, "You stoop to such lowly tasks?" - his response is: this is my duty, and I must perform it properly. He never abandons a mitzvah for the sake of his personal honor.
From here, says Rabbeinu Yonah, this applies to the poor as well: such a person watches over the pauper, considers the destitute, attends to all their needs, sets a table before them, and makes sure they eat properly. Indeed, the Gemara relates the story of that sage who used to say, "An arrow in the eye of Satan!" So Satan came to him disguised as a guest and sat at his table, afflicted with boils all over, and began - pardon the description - scratching his sores and oozing pus. An ordinary person would have recoiled and said: I want nothing to do with this. But the righteous man does not make calculations of honor and prestige when it comes to fulfilling mitzvot, helping the poor, and providing for the needy. Similarly, when he sits down to eat, he first cares for those who have nothing, and even for his animal, as Chazal derived from the order of the verse: "And I will give grass in your field for your cattle," and only afterward, "and you shall eat and be satisfied" - feeding his beast before feeding himself.
The Malbim adds, completing the words of Rabbeinu Yonah: the righteous person learns this trait from the ways of Hashem, blessed is He - from the true Tzaddik, the Holy One, Blessed is He. For we see that the Holy One, Blessed is He, provided the dog with its sustenance, and because its food is scarce, He caused the food to remain in its stomach for three days. The Holy One, Blessed is He, knows that wherever this dog goes, people chase it away with sticks, and who knows when it will find its next meal - therefore, He keeps its food in its digestive tract. If the Holy One, Blessed is He, attends to the digestive juices of a dog and ensures it will not starve, how much more so should the righteous person learn to know the soul of his animal, to care for his beast, and to look after the downtrodden and the oppressed.
The other side of the spectrum is the wicked person, who even when performing an act of mercy, acts with cruelty. He gives charity to a poor person, but why did he give? He had no choice, it felt awkward, people were watching, his conscience nagged at him. And even when he gives, he gives in a cruel manner: an act that appears merciful, but the manner in which it is done is cruel. He feeds the pauper in his home, but keeps his distance as if the man were afflicted with tzara'at, does not speak to him, and tells others to serve him. You gave him food - but what humiliation you inflicted upon him! "I am an important man, a nobleman, should I converse with him like an ordinary person?" - and so he seats him in a degraded corner and treats him with disdain.
This is just as Chazal say: there is one who feeds his father fattened fowl and drives him from the world - he gives his father rich poultry to eat, but speaks to him contemptuously until he drives him out of this world. And conversely, there is one who sets his father to grind at the millstones and brings him to the life of the World to Come - for he went to perform the harsh royal service in his father's stead, asking his father only to substitute for him in his light labor at the mill, thereby sparing him. You see that much of the true worth of an action lies in the manner in which you give, and with what warmth and pleasantness of countenance.
Even when he gives charity to the poor - "the compassion of the wicked is cruel": he pulls out a bill in front of everyone and hands it to him, so that all can see that this person is in need and that he is the philanthropist supporting him. Have compassion on the person, but do not humiliate him! Other times, he gives someone a gift, and then torments him relentlessly: "After all, you took from me!" - and now he imposes demands, requests, and instructions on him, as though he purchased a slave for the hundred shekels he gave. He does not care that he shames him, lords over him, and embarrasses him publicly. Or he gives and later boasts: "Do you know how much I gave? Do you know so-and-so? I supported them." In the end, he has no genuine compassion for that destitute, needy soul. This is what the Gemara meant by "the kindness of the nations is sin" - the charity practiced by the nations of the world is reckoned as sin because they perform it only for self-aggrandizement, giving charity merely to boast and show everyone how generous they are.
The Vilna Gaon and the Malbim both explain along the same lines: "A righteous man knows the soul of his beast" - the tzaddik knows how much his animal needs, and he does not give it more; on the other hand, he does not burden it with work beyond its strength. He knows the needs of his animal. The wicked man, by contrast, acts as though he is merciful: "You gave your animal five kilos of alfalfa? I gave mine ten." Yet this is outright cruelty. Why? Because the righteous man, after his animal worked for four hours, gave it rest; while the wicked man gorged it with ten kilos so that he could then work it for ten hours instead of five. The mercy that looks like compassion - "Have pity, give it more to eat" - is nothing other than cruelty, meant only to exploit it later and extract more from it. Therefore, do not regard this as mercy.
And what does the verse come to allegorize? After all, Shlomo HaMelech is not coming here to give us instructions on feeding livestock. Rather, allegorically, it comes to teach that man is composed of two parts: he has an animal - which is the body, and he has the spiritual part - the soul. The righteous man, who conducts himself with justice, gives each its proper due. When desire incites him toward sin - who desires the sin? The animal within him. And he knows the soul of his animal, and says: True, my animal desires this very much, but does the soul of my animal desire this? Certainly not. "I feel like it" - who is speaking here? My animal is speaking, the donkey within me is speaking, the horse within me is speaking; it is not the spiritual part within me, nor is it the soul within me.
The soul of the animal stands in direct opposition to the animal's own demands: the animal wants material things and worldly desires, while the soul yearns for spiritual matters. But the wicked - "the mercies of the wicked": "Did you see how much this animal wants? Have pity, give it to it." And so every time, he takes pity on the animal: he feels like it, so he takes; he feels like it, so he looks; he feels like it, so he eats; he feels like it, so he goes. Upon whom is he having mercy? Upon his animal. But you forgot that this animal also has a soul. One who pities the animalistic part within him is cruel to the spiritual part within him. "The mercies of the wicked are cruel": you are acting cruelly toward your soul, for when your animal receives what it wants, your soul suffers, withers, and is miserable, beginning to experience Gehinom right here in this world. Do not be merciful to the animal - mercy on the animal means cruelty to the soul. Rather, "A righteous man knows the soul of his beast": the righteous man knows the soul of the animal, and provides for it according to what suits its soul, and not according to its own animalistic urges.
עֹבֵד אַדְמָתוֹ יִשְׂבַּע לָחֶם וּמְרַדֵּף רֵיקִים חֲסַר לֵב׃ (יא) - One who tills his soil will have plenty of bread, but one who pursues empty things lacks understanding. (11)
Rashi explains the verse according to its plain meaning, and adds the allegorical meaning as well: one who constantly reviews his studies will not forget his learning. "One who tills his soil" - this is one who constantly reviews and drills his learning, and he "will have plenty of bread": he will always possess abundance, meaning knowledge, breadth, and Torah learning, and he remembers it all.
Rabbeinu Yonah continues here the theme of "Better is he who is lightly esteemed and has a servant than one who acts honored and lacks bread": it is better for a person to be lowly and be his own servant, to go out and work, rather than play the honored man and say, "This is beneath me." One who puts on airs of honor and refrains from labor because of his status and prestige, having neither money nor merchandise to occupy himself with - what does he do? He roams around. And a person roaming around, whom does he meet? Other roamers like himself. And who are these roamers - holy people or empty people? Empty of everything. For if there were something to you, you would find something productive to do with yourself. One who finds nothing to do with himself is empty. Go out and see who wanders the streets idly: the empty ones. A fulfilled person does something with himself: he goes to work, thinks of an idea, opens a business, seeks employment; and if he does not need to work and, Baruch Hashem, lives off a stipend and has enough - he comes to the beit midrash and studies. But one who wanders the streets burns through his days and years.
"But one who pursues empty things lacks understanding" - one who idles and associates with empty people will not only lack bread, but will also become "lacking in heart": he diminishes his own mind. For idleness leads to boredom (shiamum), and Rashi explains that shiamum means madness. Ultimately, this affects a person's psyche. And this is clearly visible: unemployed people, who cannot find work for various reasons - if they do nothing with themselves, you see that gradually the person begins to unravel; he no longer speaks logically or thinks rationally. What happened to him? He is bored. Therefore, every person must have an occupation. If not work - let him sit and learn; and if he cannot learn - let him go and volunteer, let him go to Ezer Mizion and say he wants to volunteer. Let him do something. Otherwise, he is "one who pursues empty things," and not only will he not have plenty of bread, but he will also lose his heart, his inner understanding.
The Vilna Gaon explains this through a parable of two people, each of whom owned a plot of land. They began to work their land and saw that it did not yield enough to earn a livelihood, leaving them no choice but to hire themselves out and work on other people's lands. From that point on, each behaved differently. The first said: "I will go work for others" - and abandoned his land completely, leaving it fallow, neither cultivating nor tending to it at all. Then, at a certain point, he was no longer needed: foreign workers came to cultivate the land, or there was a drought year, and they let him go - and this man was left entirely empty-handed. His friend, by contrast, worked three or four days on other people's land to earn his sustenance, but he did not neglect or abandon his own land: two days a week he would cultivate it, water it, care for it, sow, and harvest. This man, even if he were fired, even if there were difficulties in the industry - has his own land, has a place to return to and continue, and is not left empty-handed.
This is the meaning of "He who works his land shall be satisfied with bread" - his own land, which he does not abandon, but rather cultivates it as well. But "he who pursues worthless things" - one who constantly chases after the land of others - is "lacking understanding" (chaser lev), devoid of heart-insight. For had you reflected even a little, you would realize that it may have no lasting endurance and nothing will remain of it; if so, why invest your entire being in the fields of others while abandoning your own?
These verses impart deep insight: "A righteous man knows the soul of his animal" - the righteous person does not refrain from a mitzvah on account of his dignity; he cares for the poor and for his beast, and learns the attribute of compassion from the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself, Who cares even for a dog. Above all - he knows how to distinguish between the desires of the animal within him and its true soul, and does not show pity to the body where such pity is cruelty to the soul. "And the mercies of the wicked are cruel" - even when the wicked person gives, he gives with humiliation, domineering behavior, and arrogance; therefore, "the kindness of the nations is sin," and thus there is one who feeds his father pheasants and drives him from the world. And "He who works his land shall be satisfied with bread" - a person must cultivate his own land: review his Torah study, maintain an occupation, and not abandon what is his for the sake of other fields; for one who pursues worthless things will ultimately end up in idleness, boredom, and a lack of heart-insight.