Chapter 94 addresses the claim of the wicked, "Yah does not see, nor does the God of Jacob understand" - as if the Holy One, blessed be He, does not exercise Divine Providence and does not know human deeds or thoughts. From here onward, the Psalmist presents proofs of Divine Providence and reward and punishment, and then turns to the profound question of why the righteous suffer while the wicked prosper (tzaddik ve-ra lo, rasha ve-tov lo), explaining the true nature of suffering. In this lesson, we will follow the verses in sequence from "He who chastises nations" onward.
הֲיֹסֵר גּוֹיִם הֲלֹא יוֹכִיחַ, הַמְלַמֵּד אָדָם דָּעַת׃ - He who chastises nations, shall He not rebuke? He who teaches man knowledge!
The Radak explains: Do you think Hashem will not rebuke you for the evil deeds you have committed? After all, it has been known from generation to generation that Hashem chastises nations for their wickedness. Upon the wicked of the generation of the Flood, He brought the waters of the Deluge, destroying all flesh because of their evil deeds. Upon the people of Sodom, He rained down fire and brimstone. If so, in His "resume," so to speak, there are already many instances of chastising nations - and do you imagine that He will not rebuke you? Likewise, "He who teaches man knowledge": Hashem is the One Who imparts understanding to man - and will the One Who taught you knowledge not know what you are thinking? How, then, can you persist in your corrupt ways and claim that Hashem neither sees nor hears? History proves that Hashem chastises nations, and He will certainly chastise you as well; and Hashem teaches man knowledge, so He certainly knows your thoughts as well.
The Malbim explains that yochiah ("shall He not rebuke") is related to debate and proof (viku'ach). When one says, "I will prove it to you" - when does one need to prove something? When there is an argument and one presents evidence. Here, the Holy One, blessed be He, contends with the evildoers and proves the truth to them in two ways: through "He who chastises nations" - see with your own eyes that He brings retribution upon entire nations; and through "He who teaches man knowledge" - extending even to the individual. You claim that Hashem does not oversee the particulars? Yet the Holy One, blessed be He, imparts knowledge to prophets and sages, and all their wisdom stems from what Hashem teaches them. If there were no individual providence (hashgachah pratit), where did they acquire this knowledge? From whom did the prophet receive his prophecy, if not from Hashem Who teaches man knowledge? From this you must recognize that Hashem governs His world, knows everything that transpires here, and repays each person according to his deeds. Hashem placed His signs in Egypt, and He exacted retribution from the various nations that oppressed us - and through this you can recognize His providence, reward, and punishment.
יְהֹוָה יֹדֵעַ מַחְשְׁבוֹת אָדָם כִּי הֵמָּה הָבֶל׃ - Hashem knows the thoughts of man, that they are futility.
The Radak explains: Hashem knows the thoughts that people think about Him, "that they are futility" - they think Hashem has no awareness of our thoughts, as if He possesses no thought and does not know what we are doing. This is total folly. Can anything be fashioned without thought? Rather, "My thoughts are not your thoughts." There certainly is thought, but it is entirely unlike human thought. To draw an analogy from a computer: when a person calculates two plus two, the computer can also calculate it - does that mean its processing is like human thought? Both arrive at the result, both process data, but they are not the same kind of thought at all. So too regarding the thought of the Holy One, blessed be He: He certainly possesses thought, but knowing how human thought works does not teach us how Divine thought operates. To claim there is no thought at all is absurd, for nothing was created without thought. Thought means contemplating something, planning it, and bringing it into reality.
In human beings, thought precedes action and is subject to regret: one thinks something and then changes one's mind. With the Holy One, blessed be He, thought is already the deed, and as the Rambam states, He, His thought, and His knowledge are one. A person can say, "I thought this way, but now I think differently," because the person did not change, only the thought changed. But with the Creator, blessed be He, since He and His thought are one, just as He does not change, His thought does not change. There is no concept of "I thought one thing and then discovered another," or "I knew one thing and then learned something else." Truly grasping this is beyond us; we can only express what Hashem has granted us to comprehend of Godliness. As the Ramchal writes, all our knowledge of the Divine comes solely from what Hashem revealed to us, and one should never imagine that we truly grasp His essence, for whatever He has not revealed to us lies completely beyond our comprehension.
The Radak offers another explanation: "Hashem knows the thoughts of man, that they are futility" - Hashem knows what man plans, and ultimately all human schemes are futile, because He knows them and foils them. A terrorist prepares a large explosive device - and goes up with it in a whirlwind to heaven. He had thoughts, he had plans, but "they are futility." A person cannot carry out his intentions when the Holy One, blessed be He, knows the thought and decrees to thwart it.
אַשְׁרֵי הַגֶּבֶר אֲשֶׁר תְּיַסְּרֶנּוּ יָּהּ, וּמִתּוֹרָתְךָ תְלַמְּדֶנּוּ׃ - "Fortunate is the man whom You chasten, Yah, and teach him from Your Torah."
Rashi explains: Fortunate are the righteous who are afflicted at your hands, provided that they are engaged in Torah and mitzvos. This world is a world of toil and labor, and fortunate are the afflicted righteous, for through this they atone for the generation and rectify it - but all this on condition that they are engaged in Torah: "whom You chasten, Yah, and teach him from Your Torah," meaning that he is still engaged in Torah. And this accords with the Gemara's statement regarding afflictions of love - afflictions that do not cause bittul Torah (neglect of Torah study). But if the afflictions distress him so severely that he cannot engage in Torah, these are not afflictions of love.
The Radak explains the verse as a response to the claim of the wicked: If you are so righteous and upright, how is it that for hundreds and thousands of years you have been in exile? If you are the people of Hashem who walk in His ways, and we, the nations - who "are considered like a drop from a bucket and like dust on the scales" - rebel against Hashem's word, how is it that we dwell at ease while you suffer? To this we reply: "Fortunate is the man whom You chasten, Yah" - Hashem chastens us out of His love for us. And if you ask, from where do we know this secret, how do we know that afflictions stem from love? To this the verse says, "and teach him from Your Torah" - Hashem taught us this in the Torah itself: "For as a man chastens his son, Hashem your God chastens you," and "in order to afflict you and in order to test you, to do good for you in your end." From the Torah we learned that when Hashem chastens someone, this proves that Hashem desires him and loves him, and that these afflictions are for his good.
"As a man chastens his son" is the classic parable for understanding this matter. If people come and tell you that your son and the neighbor's son are making a complete mess downstairs, and you go down and specifically take your son and punish him, he might say to you: "Dad, why only me? The neighbor's son was doing it too!" And the answer is: Why only you? Because I love you, because you are my son. Beyond the fact that I do not want to get entangled with the neighbor and do not know how that would end - you matter to me. And when someone matters to me, it matters to me that he behaves like a mensch, it matters to me to educate him, it matters to me to see him develop good character traits. That is why he specifically receives the punishment - because he matters to me.
The worst thing is when a teacher loses interest in one of his students. Whatever the student does, the teacher shrugs it off; he has already given up on him. He no longer punishes him, no longer demands anything of him. That is the most terrible situation, for it is a sign that he has lost all hope in him. But if he still punishes him, still tells him, "Bring your notebook," "I want to see that you did your homework," "Bring me a note from the principal" - that is a sign that there is still hope for him, that there are still expectations. But the student of whom people say, "Leave it, it's over, there is no one to talk to, no parents, no willingness" - he didn't do his homework, didn't show up for the test, and nobody cares. A terrible state. And when the Holy One, blessed be He, still shows care toward us - how is that apparent? In that He chastens us. This is the proof that He truly cares about us, for if not, why would He continue to pursue us?
This itself was the claim of the Christians, which we have mentioned several times: that Hashem rejected the Jewish people, and therefore, since they executed that man whose initials are yemach shemo vezichro (may his name and memory be blotted out), they were decreed to be afflicted and persecuted. But this claim portrays Hashem, as it were, as terribly cruel - how could such a thing be said? If you have rejected someone, why do you pursue him? If you rejected him, cast him away and be done with it. If a man divorced a very bad wife, would he continue to pursue her his entire life, seeking her misfortune and tormenting her? (True, during the coronavirus period, it was reported that someone caused his ex-wife to be placed in quarantine six times via phone tracking, until it turned out that it was her ex-husband who was operating the system - she was locked in her home, without any contact with a sick person, and he just kept putting her into quarantine again and again. But those people are deranged, may Hashem have mercy.) In the normal course of things, if you have no interest in someone, why would you chase after him all the way to Media and Cush? What do I have to do with him? Therefore, the very fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, still chastens us and awakens us means that He is saying: I have interest in you, I am still invested in you, I still expect things from you, I have hopes for you. This proves that the Holy One, blessed be He, wants us and desires us.
The Radak cites in the name of his father another explanation of "and teach him from Your Torah": through the afflictions themselves, Hashem teaches us wisdom and Torah to return to Him with a complete heart. Afflictions are an entire Torah that requires study - how to draw closer to the Holy One, blessed be He, through these afflictions.
לְהַשְׁקִיט לוֹ מִימֵי רָע, עַד יִכָּרֶה לָרָשָׁע שָׁחַת׃ - "To give him rest from the days of evil, until a pit is dug for the wicked."
The Malbim explains that here the verse turns to address the question of why the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper (tzaddik vera lo, rasha vetov lo). Look and see: the success of the wicked is like grass - "when the wicked flourish like grass" - they sprout and blossom, but this only hastens their end, and their ultimate fate is eternal ruin, "and He repays His enemies to their face, to destroy them." The righteous person, by contrast, through the afflictions he receives here in this world, is saved from eternal perdition. Sixty years, seventy years - how long is life here anyway? A person endures afflictions here, and that saves him from eternal ruin. And that is "Fortunate is the man whom You chasten, Yah." And what is the purpose of the afflictions? "To give him rest from the days of evil" - so that when the days of evil arrive, the days of death and doom, he will have peace and will not experience Gehinnom. And what are those days of evil? "Until a pit is dug for the wicked" - for the wicked, a pit is dug when he dies, whereas for the righteous, "You chasten him, Yah," here in this world so that he will have tranquility after death.
And "and teach him from Your Torah" is, in the Malbim's view, a parenthetical phrase, and here he follows the approach of the Radak: this concept we learned from the Torah. And where? "And He repays His enemies to their face, to destroy them" - here you see that Hashem repays His enemies to their face, here in this world, in order to destroy them from the World to Come, as the Targum explains there. If so, why do you raise questions about why the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper? The answers already exist in the Torah. We have already learned from the Torah that "Fortunate is the man whom You chasten, Yah," and the objective is "to give him rest from the days of evil" - therefore, he is repaid here for the few misdeeds he committed.
The Malbim offers another possibility, based on parallel hemistichs - the first verse is divided in two, as is the second, with the first half here corresponding to the first half of the next verse, and the second half corresponding to the second. According to this: "Ashrei ha-gever asher teyaserennu" ("Happy is the man whom You afflict") - what is their purpose? "Lehashkit lo mi-yemei ra" ("To give him tranquility from days of evil"). And "u-mi-toratcha telammedennu" ("and teach him from Your Torah") - its continuation is: "Ki lo yitosh Hashem ammo" ("For the Lord will not abandon His people"). From the Torah we have learned that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not abandon us, that He made a covenant with us, and that this covenant is eternal.
In the sefer Tehillot Maharit, a beautiful allusion is brought, which also connects to the weekly parashah. Rashi notes that when Yehoshua was sent, Moshe prayed for him: "And Moshe called Hoshea the son of Nun, Yehoshua" - Yah yoshi'acha mei'atzat meraglim (may Yah save you from the counsel of the spies). He quotes from the Maharam of Premishlan, Rabbi Meir of Premishlan, on our verse, "Hashem knows (yode'a) the thoughts of man, that they are futile": yode'a is an expression of breaking and striking, as in "and with them he thrashed (vayoda) the men of Sukkot" - he struck the men of Sukkot with thorns. That is to say: when a person envisions the Name Yah in his mind, he shatters all evil thoughts. "Yah knows [breaks] the thoughts of man, for they are futile" - the futile thoughts, which are evil and extraneous thoughts, the Name Yah strikes and nullifies them.
And the Rav adds there: the Name Yah indicates the attribute of Strict Justice (Middat HaDin). We have already explained several times that the Tetragrammaton, Havayah, represents loving-kindness (Chasadim) and the Name Elokim represents strict judgments (Dinin), whereas in the shortened forms of the Name, the reverse is true: if Havayah is kindness - Yah is judgment; and if Elokim is judgment - Kel is mercy, as in "Hashem, Hashem, Kel rachum ve-chanun" in the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy (and based on this we once explained, "How shall I curse whom God [Kel] has not cursed? Or how shall I defy whom the Lord [Hashem] has not defied?", but this is not the place to delve into it). Now, the righteous have the power to transform the attribute of Strict Justice into the attribute of Mercy, and therefore they do not need the full Name of Havayah - the Name Yah is enough for them to be saved from sin. Therefore, Moshe Rabbeinu gave Yehoshua specifically the Name Yah: "Yah shall save you from the counsel of the spies." If an evil thought comes to you to join the spies and take part in their counsel, meditate upon the Name Yah. And if you say, is not Yah judgment? The righteous transform the attribute of Judgment into Mercy, and that alone is enough to nullify the evil thought.
According to this, the continuation of the verse is explained: "Happy is the man whom You discipline, Yah, and teach him from Your Torah." Who is "the man" (ha-gever)? The one who overcomes (mitgaber) his inclination, the sages and the righteous who possess the strength of Torah. "Whom You discipline, Yah" - the Name Yah alone is enough to discipline him, to grant him moral reproof and protect him, nullifying within him evil thoughts and ill counsel; he does not need "Hashem knows the thoughts of man," the Name Yah suffices for him. And from where do we learn this? "And teach him from Your Torah" - from what Moshe said to Yehoshua: "May Yah save you from the counsel of the spies." Here, from the Torah, we have learned that the Name Yah is sufficient to save one from evil counsel.
These words of the wise are full of grace, and there is further explanation here by way of allusion. The Gemara says that an evil thought is not joined to action: if a person planned to do evil, planned to steal and did not steal, the Holy One, blessed be He, does not reckon the evil thought as an action. But that applies only to someone for whom this is not his profession; if he is someone who habitually steals, and this time only environmental circumstances stopped him - he saw police officers nearby and decided to go to sleep - he is judged in Heaven as if he stole. Many are unaware of this, but it is an explicit Gemara: a person who sets himself upon an evil path, even if he planned to desecrate Shabbat and was prevented by circumstances beyond his control - a curfew was imposed, Covid struck, no one could leave home - he is judged as though he drove on Shabbat, lit a barbecue, and did everything, because "this is their way, their folly."
And why, in the case of an ordinary Jew, does the Holy One, blessed be He, not join an evil thought to action? Because Jews set themselves upon a good path, and an ordinary Jew is a decent person, so presumably when it came to the deed, he would have withdrawn. But with that person whom we see setting himself upon an evil path, there he is judged even for the thought. This is also the distinction between Israel and the gentiles: regarding gentiles, Hashem does join thought to action, because their habitual path is set upon evil, and one cannot say that their standard disposition is toward the good and that a moment beforehand they would have withdrawn. However, regarding a good thought, no distinction is made; Hashem always joins it to action. If a person wanted to do good and was prevented by circumstances beyond his control and did not do it - since the good thought was already awakened within him, he presumably would have carried it out. With a gentile one cannot assume "he would have carried it out," but with a Jew we say: the Jewish spark was awakened in him and he wanted to give, but he was prevented by circumstance.
There are, however, two things regarding which the Holy One, blessed be He, judges a person for the thought itself. One is idolatry: "In order to hold the House of Israel in their own hearts," even for a thought in the heart. The reason is simple: if a person says in his heart, "There is no God," must he take an idol and worship it to become a heretic? The thought in the heart is itself the deed. The second is thoughts of immorality: "And do not follow after your heart and after your eyes," as a person is commanded not to stray after the thoughts of his heart and not to entertain impure thoughts by day so that he does not come to nocturnal impurity. In these two areas, the thought itself is considered an evil deed for which one is judged.
On the other hand, Chazal teach regarding the verse "and around Him it storms (nis'arah) exceedingly" - this teaches that the Holy One, blessed be He, is exacting with those around Him even to a hairsbreadth (k'chut ha-se'arah). That is, from the righteous He demands accountability even for an improper thought. With this, the Ben Ish Chai explains the verse "Passing through the valley of Bacha": it is written that the righteous pass through Gehinnom in order to rescue the souls of the wicked that belong to their soul-root and rectify them. The Ben Ish Chai asks: why should the righteous person deserve to pass through there? Surely it would be far better for him to go straight to Gan Eden! He answers: it is impossible that the righteous person did not sin in thought - did he not have even a single improper thought, even a desire for sin that he had to overcome? Surely he did. And for that thought, the Holy One, blessed be He, holds him accountable, for from the righteous an accounting is demanded to a hairsbreadth. What is the appropriate penalty for a thought of doing evil that never materialized? Actual Gehinnom he does not deserve, for he committed no evil. Rather, what? You thought about doing evil - now you will think you are being taken to Gehinnom. A thought corresponding to a thought. In the end, you will not be in Gehinnom, but for the thought itself, the Holy One, blessed be He, brings him to think that he is going to Gehinnom; his heart sinks and he experiences fear - and through this he is atoned for without actually suffering Gehinnom itself.
And parenthetically, regarding the righteous extracting souls from Gehinnom - such as the incident of Rabbi Meir with Elisha ben Avuyah, showing that it is indeed possible to extract someone (see Michtav Mei-Eliyahu, and we have given shiurim on this, explaining how this is accomplished and how one can extract another from Gehinnom). Similarly with David HaMelech: "Avshalom my son, my son Avshalom" seven times - he lifted him out of Gehinnom and brought him into Gan Eden. And we explained there that this was achieved through judging him favorably: David said that the Holy One, blessed be He, had already decreed against him, "and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun," and if so, Avshalom is not entirely to blame, for Hashem brought about the circumstance through him on account of David's sin. Therefore David prayed for him and brought him out of Gehinnom - even though, in truth, fathers do not have the power to extract their sons, for it is written that even Avraham cannot extract Yishmael from Gehinnom, nor can Yitzchak extract Eisav. Rather, here it was by virtue of this defense in his favor, that he himself was not solely to blame. And this is the principle: a father does not confer merit upon a son, but a son confers merit upon a father - for the son is a continuation of the father, and therefore he brings merit to him as though the father himself acted, whereas the father is not a continuation of the son.
And this is what is alluded to here in the verses. "Hashem knows the thoughts of man, that they are vanity" - the Holy One, Blessed is He, does not reckon a person's bad thought as an action, for a bad thought is vanity, devoid of substance, since he has not yet implemented it or brought it to fruition. But "Fortunate is the man whom You chasten, O Lord [Yah]" - fortunate is the person whom You discipline even for a bad thought, which indicates that he is of high spiritual stature, that he is a tzaddik, with whom You are exacting even over mere thought. From this it becomes evident that this person is truly upright, and by virtue of this he will merit "to grant him tranquility from days of evil, until the pit is dug for the wicked" - the Holy One, Blessed is He, will grant him great purification, ushering him into the world that is entirely good, the world that is eternal.
The verses respond to those who claim there is no Divine Providence: the history of the suffering of the nations proves that "He Who chastises nations, shall He not rebuke?" and the knowledge that Hashem imparts to prophets and sages proves that He oversees even individual details and knows even thoughts. "Hashem knows the thoughts of man, that they are vanity" - the claim that He lacks knowledge is vanity, and the schemes of the wicked are themselves vanity, for He knows them and foils them. From here, Scripture proceeds to answer the question of the suffering of the righteous: "Fortunate is the man whom You chasten, O Lord" - afflictions are a mark of love and care, like a father disciplining his son or a teacher who still holds out hope for his student, and their ultimate purpose is "to grant him tranquility from days of evil" and save him from eternal ruin, whereas the worldly success of the wicked only hastens his demise. And by way of allusion: it suffices for the tzaddik to invoke the Name Yah to shatter bad thoughts, as we learned from the Torah: "May Yah save you from the counsel of the spies."