Introduction: Continuing the Psalm - The Tranquility of the Wicked as a Dream
We continue with the psalm of Asaf, which addresses the great question of the tranquility of the wicked and the suffering of the righteous. Up to this point, we have seen the description of the wicked's success and the turmoil it stirs in the heart. Now the psalm turns toward the resolution: this entire reality you see here is not an enduring existence, but a dream destined to dissipate. From here onward, Asaf proceeds to clarify what man's true "self" really is, concluding with closeness to God.
"Like a Dream upon Awakening" - A Dream with No Awakening
כַּחֲלוֹם מֵהָקִיץ אֲדֹנָי בָּעִיר צַלְמָם תִּבְזֶה׃ - Like a dream upon awakening, my Lord, in awakening You will despise their image.
Rashi explains: "Like a dream *meihakitz*" - like a sleep that has no end, an eternal sleep. A continuous dream from which there is no awakening. And about whom is this speaking? About the wicked we have discussed, about Sancheriv and his soldiers. Do not be impressed by the fact that things appear good for him; in a single moment the angel of the Lord of Hosts arrives and takes them all - "And an angel of the Lord went out and struck the Assyrian camp." "My Lord, *ba'ir* [in the city] You will despise their image" - in the city of Jerusalem, the very city over which they cheered and boasted, there the form of their image was disgraced, there they were all incinerated.
Radak cites another explanation in the name of his father: "*Ba'ir*" is related to awakening (*hit'orerut*), as if written *beha'ir* ("upon awakening"). That is to say: just as a dream fades upon awakening, so when they are awakened You will despise their image. When is this? At the resurrection of the dead. When the dead awaken from their slumber, their image will be disgraced, as Daniel states: "These to eternal life, and these to shame and everlasting contempt." You can apply this either to the body or to the spirit. Do not look at what is happening right now; let us wait and see who will rise and who will not, who possesses eternal existence and who does not. Their entire existence is "like a dream upon awakening," and when they awaken from the dream, it will become clear that their image is despised, and they will rise to disgrace and everlasting contempt.
The Malbim: The Dream Feels Real - Until You Wake Up
The Malbim explains: "Like a dream upon awakening" - when the dream comes to an end, and when does it end? Through awakening. So too, You, Lord, "*ba'ir*" - when they are awakened and arise from their slumber, then "You will despise their image." For the life of this world is not true life, but like a fleeting dream, a temporary and corporeal existence. Just as a person dreams that he is beaten and tormented, or conversely, that he is a successful king of nations - it is all imagination. During the dream, he is completely unaware that it is a dream; if something frightens him in the dream, he experiences genuine, terrifying fear. Deep relief comes only the moment he awakens: "Ah, what a relief." Until then, he perceived this reality as real before his very eyes. During sleep, it seems to have substantial reality: he feels pain, he feels pleasure. The moment he awakens, it turns out that everything was imaginary - you were a king in your imagination, or you experienced suffering in your imagination. In this same light, one must understand both the success seen by the wicked and the suffering seen by the righteous: these are not permanent actualities, but the fleeting phenomena of a temporary, passing world, something that has no enduring existence.
"They Toil and Do Not Receive Reward"
The Chafetz Chaim once asked: How can we say at the conclusion of learning (in the Hadran), "We toil and receive reward, and they toil and do not receive reward"? After all, a high-tech professional earns quite well, so what does it mean that they do not receive reward? The Chafetz Chaim explained: they do not receive reward for the toil itself, but only according to the end result. If you bring fabric to a tailor to sew you a suit, and in the end he returns rags, not only does he not get paid, he may even be sued to reimburse the fabric. In contrast, an *avrech* who toils an entire day trying to comprehend a Tosafos, and at the end of the day leaves the kollel saying, "I did not merit to understand it," will receive an immense reward for the sheer exertion itself. We toil and receive reward even without a tangible result, whereas they receive payment strictly based on results.
This very same question was once posed to Rav Shteinman, and he answered in a far simpler manner: "Can you call this a reward at all?" A person worked an entire day and received a thousand shekels, while his fellow worked an entire day and received six agorot. The two meet: "How much did you receive?" "A thousand shekels." "Well, I also received a paycheck - six agorot." The first one bursts out laughing: "You call that a paycheck?" And if one received a million dollars while the other received five cents, it is all the more laughable. And if one received an infinite reward while the other is still waving around his five cents, it becomes utterly absurd. That is the point: what does a person actually have here? Life here is limited. Even if the entire world is registered in your name in the land registry - for how many years? Do you call that a reward? This is precisely what the Malbim is saying here: everything in this world is an illusion, like a fleeting dream. The success or suffering a person perceives here takes place in a realm that is entirely temporary and passing, and this entire reality has no enduring substance.
The Deceased Are No Longer Interested in This World
Proof of this: people who have departed from this world make very little contact with the world below. If they made frequent contact, not a night would pass without dreams from all one's departed relatives. Rather, the moment they leave this world, it becomes clear to them that this world is nothing, zero, and they have no interest in it. And the greater a person is, the less interested they are in this world after their passing, and the less they care about what happens here; whereas the more earthly someone was, the more connected they still are to what happens here - but even then, the interest is negligible. For the moment a person passes away, they suddenly discover that the entire reality here is nothingness, and that spiritual reality is the true reality.
And the Ben Ish Chai already pointed out: take the word Olam (world), and combine the inner letters of each spelled-out letter (Ayin - Yod-Nun, and so forth) - and it spells dimyonot (illusions). The entire world is an illusion. It seems to you to be real, it seems that someone has profited, it seems that someone is great - yet it is all fleeting and temporary. It is like someone entering a gaming simulator: war, shooting, tension - and in that moment it feels completely real, I shoot him and he shoots me. Then the gong sounds, everyone takes off their gear, and it is over. It was just a game, it was nothing. In this way, this world misleads us profoundly: a person walks around feeling, "I bought, I achieved, I acquired, I built" - and the next day the tower collapses and you have nothing left. You were certain you were a millionaire, begrudging the nine million dollars needed to renovate a building worth one hundred and fifty million - and suddenly it turns out you have nothing; not only that, but now you must pay damages to everyone, and you have another equally dilapidated building right next to it. See how much of this world is illusion: in one moment you are on top, and a moment later you are deep down below.
Therefore, the Malbim explains: the soul feels success or suffering only as long as it is asleep within this material reality. This is the meaning of "as a dream upon awakening" - we are still inside the reality of the dream, and the soul dreams that the body it inhabits is suffering or reigning. But "in the city" (ba'ir) - according to the explanation of the Radak's father, meaning when it awakens and arouses from its dream - it will see that nothing remains of it, and that its entire existence was an illusion.
And as Yeshayahu says: "As when a hungry man dreams that he is eating, but he awakens and his soul is empty." How harrowing - in the dream there were fattened fowl, but in the morning the stomach is rumbling and the refrigerator is empty. It was all a dream. So it will become clear to the wicked, says the Radak: right now you see them at ease, but in another moment they will be gone. As Bildad the Shuhite says in Iyov: "If he is swallowed from his place, it will deny him: 'I never saw you'" - he was there just a moment ago, and the place itself says: "Who was here? I never saw him." In a single second, he is gone. And if a person's existence in this world is so temporary, why do you treat the good and bad fortune within it as enduring reality, as something about which you have a difficult question?
And when the soul awakens from its sleep and realizes that it is now in the World of Truth, and that this entire world here was a falsehood, then "You will despise their image." The "image" (tzelem) is the spiritual soul, and the soul is called glory; yet for the wicked, in the realm above their soul will be despised, because they defiled, corrupted, and ruined themselves during their life in this world. The image, which is the aspect of the eternal soul, will be despised there forever. If so, should you be agitated by their temporary success? By the fact that he makes noise and appears to be doing and succeeding? There is no substance to it; it is not a lasting reality.
"For my heart was fermented" - Refining the Heart and Seeking Counsel
כִּי יִתְחַמֵּץ לְבָבִי וְכִלְיוֹתַי אֶשְׁתּוֹנָן׃ - For when my heart was fermented, and my reins were pierced.
The Malbim explains: "My heart was fermented" - my heart was refined and my thoughts were purified; "and my reins were sharpened [eshtonan]" - I sought proper thought and right counsel. And what do I discover in the end? "And I was boorish and ignorant; I was like a beast before You."
The Radak raises a difficulty: We have already received the answer, so what place is there now for "when my heart was fermented"? He resolves this: "For when my heart was fermented" refers to the time before I understood the matter, when my heart grew sour over it; I found nothing sweet to my palate, but only the taste of vinegar rather than wine - a profound perplexity that had no resolution. "And my reins were pierced [eshtonan]" - meaning within my reins, which contemplate and weigh matters; eshtonan is related to a sharpened arrow (chetz shanun), like an arrow piercing my kidneys, because the issue was so difficult for me.
And in the sefer Emet Keneh by Rav Mazuz, it is noted that Targum Yonatan translates "and my reins eshtonan" as: my kidneys burned like fire. How does this connect to eshtonan? It seems the Targum interprets the word as a compound of two words: esh (fire) and tonan, from the Aramaic atun nura yekideta (a blazing fiery furnace). One might add along these lines: in the Yemenite dialect, tenaneh means a cloud, and if so, eshtonan signifies fire and cloud - fire and smoke.
"And I was boorish and ignorant" - Material Life Is the Life of a Beast
וַאֲנִי בַעַר וְלֹא אֵדָע בְּהֵמוֹת הָיִיתִי עִמָּךְ׃ - And I was boorish and ignorant; I was like a beast before You.
According to the Malbim: A person tries to purify and refine his heart in order to seek the correct perspective and understand Hashem's governance, and then he discovers that he was brutish and ignorant. And what did he not know? "I was a beast before You." Man awakens to reality inside a physical, material body, and physical life inside the body is the life of a beast. Man's body, says the Malbim, is no different from the body of a beast: blood, bones, and flesh - the very same components. And as unpleasant as it sounds, the animal closest to man biologically is the pig; if there is a prospect for heart xenotransplantation, it is from a pig. (One would hardly recommend taking a pig's heart, lest it affect the character of his heart!) In any case, we understand that man resembles a beast in his physical body, which is why many have mistakenly concluded that man is merely another zoological species.
And once one realizes that "I was a beast before You" - that the mundane reality in which one wakes up in this world is a coarse, animalistic reality, and not one's true reality - there is no longer any difficulty at all. The success or suffering that a person experiences in this world - upon whom does it fall? Upon the beast within him, not upon his true self, not upon the eternal soul. If so, why focus on the transient, on the beast, on man's physical body? "I was brutish and ignorant" - I had not contemplated that "I was a beast before You," that this coarse existence is the life of a beast and not true life. Why get agitated over success or loss in a fleeting, temporary life - the life of a beast?
The Radak explains: Before I understood, I was brutish and ignorant, like a person lacking understanding, just as Hashem created the beast - and like a beast I was with You, not knowing whether there was reward and punishment or not, and the entire matter was difficult and perplexing to me. And Rashi notes a nuance: Why does the verse say "I was with You," and not simply "I was a beast"? Even though the matter was difficult for me and I had no explanation for it, nevertheless - "I was with You": I clung to fear of You and Your service, and I did not allow these questions to distance me from clinging to You.
"Yet I Am Constantly with You" - The Unchanging Soul
וַאֲנִי תָמִיד עִמָּךְ אָחַזְתָּ בְּיַד יְמִינִי׃ - "Yet I am constantly with You; You have grasped my right hand."
Rashi explains: "Yet I am constantly with You; You have grasped my right hand" - to uphold me in fear of You. When You saw that my feet had almost stumbled and were prone to falter, You did not allow me to slip; rather, You grasped me and assisted me in holding fast to my faith. The Radak explains: Whenever I was with You, clinging to Your service and engaged in wisdom, You assisted me in reaching the correct conclusions - this is "You have grasped my right hand," lifting me up and helping me arrive at true understanding.
And the Malbim explains: After stating "I was a beast before You" - meaning that whatever happens to me here in this world does not truly happen to me, but rather to the coarse, animalistic part, which is like a dream from which we will soon awaken to find that all was fleeting vanity - he now speaks of the true "I": "Yet I" - this is the soul, the eternal, enduring, constant dimension; this is man. The essence of man is the soul, and it neither changes nor is affected by the physical vicissitudes of the body. Even if this beast called the body is bruised and beaten, the soul can remain magnificent, towering, and mighty.
There have been people who, physically, were completely broken vessels. Such was the Rosh Yeshivah of Mir, Rav Finkel, who suffered from Parkinson's disease; physically and motorically, it was alarming to see what he endured - yet that same man sustained a yeshivah of five thousand students, the largest yeshivah in the world. "Sustained" means he knew the students personally, recognized them, and saw to all their needs. Who can fathom this? The brokenness of the body says nothing about the perfection of the soul. And to draw a sharp distinction, there are scientists who type on a computer using only eye movements because the rest of their body is stricken with advanced motor neuron disease, and in that way they think and solve complex problems.
This is what the Malbim is saying here: Everything we spoke of earlier refers to the "beast"; whatever the body suffers here is the beast. But the enduring reality, the essence of man, is the soul, and it is neither changed nor affected by the vicissitudes of the body. Amidst all the changes the body undergoes, the "I" remains constant and immutable; the soul is eternal. And this is the meaning of "Yet I am constantly with You": always on one steady level, "with You" - living an exalted, true, Divine life, elevated above the happenings of time and its vicissitudes; the soul constantly clings to Hashem.
The Right and Left Hands of the Soul
And this "I," the essence of man, has, as it were, two hands. The right hand is the one with which he overcomes the beast within him, the hand with which he serves Hashem and masters his desires. The left hand is the hand that degrades the "I" and brings the soul down to be like a beast, wallowing in the trough and living the life of a fool - "A fool's heart is to his left." And You, Master of the Universe, "have grasped my right hand": You strengthened the right hand of the soul so that it would not succumb to this beast called the body, nor be drawn after its desires. The right hand is the dominant hand, the aspect of kindness, and with it I have mastered the beast - riding upon it, seeking not the illusory successes of this world, but eternal life.
"You Will Guide Me with Your Counsel" - Pursuing Honor
בַּעֲצָתְךָ תַנְחֵנִי וְאַחַר כָּבוֹד תִּקָּחֵנִי׃ - You will guide me with Your counsel, and afterward receive me with glory.
The Malbim explains: This is Hashem's counsel to which I cling - that I perform all my actions for the sake of Heaven and not for a physical purpose, once again serving the animalistic side. "And afterward receive me with glory" - this is the counsel that will lead me toward glory; for the soul is called "glory" (kavod), and it is man's true honor. And I will follow honor, meaning I will lean toward the faculties of the soul and not toward the body, since leaning toward the physical body is a disgrace to the soul: a spiritual, divine soul that yearns after bodily desires and the coarse reality of an animal - this is a great disgrace for it. You will guide me and hold my right hand, so that I empower the soul's faculties over the body; this is Your counsel, Master of the Universe, and through it the soul will truly be worthy of honor.
Rashi, in accordance with his approach that the chapter refers to Sancheriv (Sennacherib) and his armies, explains: "And afterward You will take me in honor" - after You completed for Sancheriv all the glory You had decreed for him, ruling as a monarch over the known world, waging war and conquering, afterward You took him away; You worked a wondrous miracle for Israel and destroyed him. (In our text of Rashi it reads "hipalta", but Rav Mazuz has already corrected that it should read "hifleita", and indeed there are textual variants that read this way.) Thus, all of this turned out to be for Chizkiyahu's honor: Sancheriv, who spoke harshly against Hashem - one hundred and eighty-five thousand commanders of his troops fell as dead corpses, and it was a great honor for Chizkiyahu that the Holy One, blessed be He, struck down his enemies before him.
"Whom have I in heaven"
מִי לִי בַשָּׁמָיִם וְעִמְּךָ לֹא חָפַצְתִּי בָאָרֶץ׃ - Whom have I in heaven but You? And beside You, I desire nothing on earth.
The Malbim explains: I call out to the multitude of faculties within me and say - which of my faculties belongs to heaven, which is a heavenly, spiritual power? That is the one I seek, and with it I serve, meaning through its power I cling to Hashem. "And with You, I desire nothing on earth" - when I am with You, clinging to a divine spiritual reality through the spiritual soul, I have no desire for earthliness at all, but only to cling to spiritual powers. The faculties I desire are the heavenly powers with which one serves Hashem, not the coarse, earthly faculties through which a person pursues physical desires. I despise that materiality, and see happiness only in heavenly matters and in the service of Hashem.
The Radak explains: "Whom have I in heaven" - which power from heaven do I seek? Only You. Some believed in other powers, dualists and idolaters who believed in the sun or the stars - but not I. I have no one in heaven to seek except You alone, and I acknowledge no partner with You, neither in heaven nor on earth. "On earth" refers to the four elements: some worship the element of water, of wind, of fire - but I do not worship any other power, neither in heaven nor on earth, but only You.
"My flesh and my heart fail"
כָּלָה שְׁאֵרִי וּלְבָבִי צוּר לְבָבִי וְחֶלְקִי אֱלֹהִים לְעוֹלָם׃ - My flesh and my heart fail, but God is the rock of my heart and my portion forever.
Rashi explains: "She'eri" - my flesh; my flesh yearns and wastes away from intense longing, in the sense of "My soul yearns and even longs" (Tehillim 84:3), "My soul pines for Your salvation" (Tehillim 119:81) - my flesh longs only for You. The Radak explains: When the flesh, which is my physical body, wastes away, and my heart, which is the living soul, ceases - "the rock of my heart" will not perish. The intellect, which is the strength of the heart, does not perish; it is eternal, enduring, and exists forever, clinging to Hashem for all eternity. In other words, when this world comes to an end, the soul will still endure to cling to Him, blessed be He.
The Malbim explains: The faculties of the body are destined to perish - "my flesh" (she'eri), which is the bodily flesh that imagines all achievements belong to it: it acted, it succeeded, it built, it purchased. And also "my heart" (levavi), which is the faculty of desire; for the Malbim already noted that desires reside in the heart, as in "You granted him his heart's desire" (Tehillim 21:3). This too comes to an end, because when a person dies, the heart no longer desires - he already realizes that everything here is vanity, and he has nothing left to crave. What remains? "The rock of my heart" - the root of the heart, the bedrock upon which the purity of the heart rests, which is the root of the soul, the supreme spiritual dimension, the nefesh. It is man's bedrock and root, a portion of God from Above; it does not perish, it endures forever, and consequently its bliss is also eternal. Meanwhile, all matters of this world, the animalistic drives, desires, and ambitions, have ceased and vanished completely.
And this can already be seen with our own eyes: an elderly person is no longer in the race. Tell him: "Come, start a tech company, do you know how much money can be made?" And he replies: "My friend, let me rest, pass me the medicine, give me my pills." At seventy or eighty, one is no longer running that race. If that is so in this world, how much more so for a person who has already departed this world and recognizes that everything is vanity - certainly "my heart fails," none of the heart's worldly desires speak to him anymore. Then he realizes that "the rock of my heart," the true bedrock of the heart, is God: the divine element within me, "and my portion is God forever" - a divine portion that endures for all eternity.
"For behold, those far from You shall perish" - Two Reasons for the Destruction of the Wicked
כִּי הִנֵּה רְחֵקֶיךָ יֹאבֵדוּ הִצְמַתָּה כָּל זוֹנֶה מִמֶּךָּ׃ - For behold, those far from You shall perish; You destroy all who stray away from You.
Here the Malbim summarizes the core message of the psalm: the wicked perish for two reasons. The first is "those far from You" - because they are distant from Hashem. For "in the light of Your countenance You gave us a Torah of life, love and lovingkindness, righteousness and mercy, blessing and peace"; without the light of Hashem's countenance, there is nothing, and there is no life at all. Therefore, they are destined to perish on their own, and this is why the wicked are called "dead" even during their lifetimes: a wicked person has no true existence, and we do not consider him truly alive; it is merely virtual. Once you understand that his soul is cut off, he only appears to you to be acting, living, and functioning. Even a lizard's severed tail continues to twitch, yet no one thinks it possesses independent life - these are merely reflexes. Some people have reflexes that last fifty or seventy years - do not be impressed, for it is purely temporary. How could someone who has incurred karet (spiritual excision) possess genuine existence and reality? "Yet a little while and the wicked will be no more; you will gaze upon his place and he is gone." You see him here as a wicked man only because you live in a physical, material world, but a spiritual person understands that this is nothing, vanity, an illusion. He merely appears to be acting and shouting; wait a moment, look for him and he is gone, and you will see that he has no real existence at all. The entire existence of everything in the world derives from its connection to Hashem, and whoever has no connection to Hashem has no existence, vitality, or reality.
The second reason is that they perish through Divine Providence: "You destroy all who stray away from You." What is the meaning of "zoneh" (straying)? Rashi explains: one who separates, one who separates himself from You. Ibn Ezra explains: one who removes himself in his thoughts and deeds from Hashem's authority. A wayward woman (zonah) is called such because she removes herself from the common path of mankind and does not conduct herself with standard human dignity; similarly, "and that you do not follow... after which you go astray (zonim)," "lest your hearts go astray," "your strayings" - all refer to straying from Hashem and turning our hearts away from Him. Asaph says: You, Hashem, destroy anyone who distances himself from You, and this is a punishment through Divine Providence. It turns out that there is both what the wicked bring upon themselves by distancing themselves from You, and what You bring upon them as punishment by distancing them from Yourself.
"As for me, the closeness of God is my good"
וַאֲנִי קִרְבַת אֱלֹהִים לִי טוֹב שַׁתִּי בַּאדֹנָי יֱהֹוִה מַחְסִי לְסַפֵּר כָּל מַלְאֲכוֹתֶיךָ׃ - As for me, the closeness of God is my good; I have made my refuge in the Lord God, to recount all Your works.
Radak explains: The wicked are distant and therefore will perish, but as for me - the closeness of God is my good; I yearn for Your closeness and await the reward of the World to Come. "I have made my refuge in the Lord God" - I place my shelter and trust only in You, and the purpose is "to recount all Your works," all Your deeds, so that I may relate and perceive Hashem's guidance and ways throughout all of worldly existence. Through this, I will attain knowledge of the Most High and grasp Hashem's deeds, His mighty acts, and His ways in the world.
The Malbim adds: Unlike the wicked, about whom it says "those far from You shall perish" - meaning they perish on their own because they are far from Hashem, and You also destroy them through Divine Providence, "You destroy all who stray away from You" - I, in contrast, have existence both from my own side and from Yours. From my side: "The closeness of God is my good," for in the closeness of God I find true happiness. And from Your side: "I have made my refuge in the Lord God," for the Holy One, blessed be He, watches over me with special Providence. Thus there is a precise contrast: the wicked person distances himself and Hashem distances him, whereas I draw close and Hashem draws me close. All of this is "to recount all Your works (malachotecha)" - that I should recount only spiritual, angelic matters, which belong to the realm of the soul, living like an angel of Hashem on earth to perform His service. For if the soul is a part of God from above, a portion of Him, may He be blessed, then just as the Holy One, blessed be He, has angels created by the breath of His mouth who serve as His messengers, so too am I an emissary arising on earth to recount Hashem's deeds and His mighty acts. This is man's entire purpose in the world: to recount His deeds, to engage in the affairs of the soul, and to perform His service - and in this, "the closeness of God is my good; I have made my refuge in the Lord God."
Conclusion: When Is Closeness Good?
The work Tehilot Maharitz explains the conclusion of the psalm based on Ya'arot Devash. Ya'arot Devash raises a question regarding the verse: "For the conductor, a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had gone to Bathsheba": What was King David singing about? That Nathan the prophet came to him? Nathan was coming to inform him of impending punishments and that he had committed a grave sin - what cause is there to sing? Rather, explains Ya'arot Devash, the song is over the words "after he had gone to Bathsheba": the Holy One, blessed be He, could have waited two years before sending Nathan the prophet, by which time I would have become deeply entrenched in the sin. Hashem performed an act of lovingkindness with me - immediately after he went to Bathsheba, Nathan the prophet came at once to rebuke him, so that he could correct his ways. It was for this promptness that he sang.
This is what Tehilot Maharitz explains here: When there is closeness in time - close to the sin, the rebuke from Heaven arrives immediately - this is good, and one must give thanks to Hashem, blessed be He, for it, because one was granted the chance to rectify oneself. Had the rebuke arrived only after a long delay, it is far from certain that the person would have corrected himself.
In summary: The conclusion of the psalm teaches that all the bewilderment over the tranquility of the wicked stems from looking at reality through the lens of a dream. "Like a dream upon awakening" - the life of this world, both its successes and its afflictions alike, is not an enduring reality but a passing illusion, affecting only the "beast" within man, the physical body. The true "I" is the soul, which does not change and is not swayed by the vicissitudes of the body: "Yet I am constantly with You." Once Hashem grasps our right hand and elevates the soul's powers over the body, we follow "after honor," spurning earthly forces and seeking only Him - "Whom do I have in heaven?" The body and its desires waste away, yet "God is the rock of my heart and my portion forever." The wicked perish through their distance and through Divine Providence, whereas we merit enduring existence through our closeness to Him and His closeness to us - "As for me, the closeness of God is my good." May we merit the closeness of God, for it is good, Amen and Amen.