Psalm 119 - The Letter Reish: Torah Amid Distress
We continue in Psalm 119 with the letter Reish. The recurring theme in the verses before us is singular: what it looks like for a person to cling to the Torah precisely when pursued, afflicted, and surrounded by adversaries. King David does not ask for life for the sake of worldly pleasures, but for life that will enable him to keep the word of Hashem. We will examine the verses in their order, with the commentaries of the Radak, Ibn Ezra, the Metzudot, and primarily the Malbim, who characteristically points out the "central theme" of each verse - Torah, sayings (amarot), statutes (chukim), judgments (mishpatim), and testimonies (edot).
"Look Upon My Affliction and Rescue Me" - Fulfilling the Torah Amid Poverty
רְאֵה עׇנְיִי וְחַלְּצֵנִי כִּי תוֹרָתְךָ לֹא שָׁכָחְתִּי׃ (קנ"ג) - "Look upon my affliction and rescue me, for I have not forgotten Your Torah." (153)
The Radak explains: See that despite all my affliction, I have not forgotten Your Torah. Naturally, when a person is in distress and suffering persecution, he lacks the time to engage in Torah and his mind is not free to learn. Therefore, this is the plea itself: Look upon my affliction, and nevertheless I have not forgotten Your Torah - and for this reason, rescue me.
The Malbim notes that the central focus here is Torah. Chazal taught: "Whoever fulfills the Torah amid poverty will ultimately fulfill it amid wealth." David says: See, Master of the Universe, that I have fulfilled Your Torah amid poverty - on the contrary, rescue me, so that from now on I may fulfill it amid wealth.
The Yosef Tehilot by the Chida explains this based on the teachings of the holy Arizal, a concept also cited in Mishnat HaGilgulim. We find an apparent leniency toward David's sins compared to great strictness toward Shaul: Shaul stumbled in one sin and it cost him the monarchy, whereas David sinned in two and yet the monarchy remained in his hand. Could there be favoritism here? Several explanations are offered in Tanach study, and here we mention what pertains to our discussion: according to the Arizal, David was at the very beginning of his soul's emergence from the kelipot (forces of impurity), and therefore required immense refinement and a tremendous struggle against the evil inclination - which is why his misdeeds were judged as unwitting errors. Shaul, by contrast, had a soul of the utmost purity, and it is said of him, "Shaul was a year old when he began to reign" - pure as a one-year-old child free of sin; it is even said of him, "there is none better than he in all Israel," an expression rarely matched anywhere in Tanach. And when a soul is so refined, it is held strictly accountable even for the slightest misstep.
Accordingly, David pleads: "Look upon my affliction" - see, Master of the Universe, that I was deep within the kelipah, for this was the beginning of my soul's emergence from the impurity and the beginning of my arrival into the world, which is why there is such fierce pursuit against me from the forces of impurity. "And rescue me" - deliver me from this state. And through what merit? "For I have not forgotten Your Torah" - for Chazal taught that Torah protects and saves, and through its power one can be delivered from everything. I am not sitting idly by: I immerse myself in Your Torah in order to break free from those kelipot, so please help me extricate myself through the study of Torah.
"Champion My Cause" - Life for the Sake of Fulfilling the Spoken Word
רִיבָה רִיבִי וּגְאָלֵנִי לְאִמְרָתְךָ חַיֵּנִי׃ (קנ"ד) - "Champion my cause and redeem me; preserve my life for Your word." (154)
The Radak explains: Champion my cause and redeem me for the sake of Your word. As we have seen time and again, King David asks for life not for worldly pleasures, but in order to observe the Torah: Grant me life so that I may fulfill Your commandments and Your word.
The Malbim notes that the central focus here is "sayings" (amarot). Against the malice of men - the harm they seek to inflict upon me - I plead, "Champion my cause and redeem me": redeem me from the hands of those who seek to kill me. And "preserve my life for Your word" - do so for the sake of the promise You made to me through the prophet that I would reign; so that this spoken word may be fulfilled, preserve my life.
"Salvation is far from the wicked" - One Who Does Not Seek at All
רָחוֹק מֵרְשָׁעִים יְשׁוּעָה כִּי חֻקֶּיךָ לֹא דָרָשׁוּ׃ (קנ"ה) - Salvation is far from the wicked, for they have not sought Your statutes.
Salvation is far from the wicked because they do not seek Hashem's statutes and do not desire to do His will. Therefore, salvation, both general and individual, remains distant from them. But I yearn, and salvation is close to me, because "I have sought Your statutes." Those who stray and find themselves in distress have no merit by which to be delivered from it; whereas I am close to You, seeking Your statutes and longing for Your word, and that itself is a reason for You to save me.
The Malbim explains that the key word here is chukim (statutes). The wicked may indeed accept rational mitzvos, the mishpatim (civil/logical laws), but chukim are certainly far from them - for a chok has no apparent human rationale: the Red Heifer (Parah Adumah), shatnez, mixed species (kilayim). They observe only rational conventions, things that make logical sense. Tell such a person, "Honor your father and your mother" - he connects with that; not that he necessarily observes it scrupulously, but he understands and accepts it intellectually. But the chukim, whose reasoning is concealed from him, he does not seek out at all. And incidentally, as we have already seen throughout this chapter, one who seeks out the statutes of Hashem merits to understand their depth and grasp their inner secret; but they "have not sought Your statutes" - they do not even attempt to delve into them, but rather say, "This makes no sense," scoff, and walk away. Therefore, salvation is far from them.
One can add and explain further: when there is communication and engagement with a person, there is a possibility of drawing him near and bringing him back in teshuvah - if not by you personally, then through some affliction that befalls him, leading him ultimately to return. But "they have not sought Your statutes" represents the worst state of all. The people who are most difficult to bring back in teshuvah are the indifferent. It is far easier to reach the combatants, those who come to fight against the Torah - because such a person wants to voice an opinion, and one can talk to him; there is a reaction, a dialogue. But one who tells you, "Sure, right, maybe, okay, nice," and the words pass right by him without making any impression at all - you have no way of reaching him. He does not even bother to challenge, "No way! Why does it say that?" Had he sought and inquired, even if to express an opposing view, at least a dialogue could have developed. But when it lies completely outside his realm of interest, the salvation of returning in teshuvah is far indeed from him.
"Your mercies are abundant" - From the Side of Chesed and from the Side of Din
רַחֲמֶיךָ רַבִּים יְהֹוָה כְּמִשְׁפָּטֶיךָ חַיֵּנִי׃ (קנ"ו) - Your mercies are abundant, Hashem; grant me life according to Your ordinances.
The Ibn Ezra explains: If I am alone and my pursuers are many, the only thing that can help me is Your mercy - mercy is what will surround me. "Grant me life according to Your ordinances" - according to Your way, for the ordinances (mishpatim) of Hashem are His way and guidance in dealing with those who keep His word.
The Radak develops the words of the Ibn Ezra: Parallel to "Many are my pursuers and my adversaries" in the following verse comes "Your mercies are abundant" - if I have many pursuers, You have abundant mercies, and through them You will protect me and deliver me from them. And "according to Your ordinances" means according to Your custom and Your good way - with that, grant me life.
The Malbim notes that the central point here is mishpatim (ordinances / justice). Aside from the plea, "grant me life according to Your word," David adds: since Your mercies are abundant, it is fitting that You also grant me life "according to Your ordinances," from the aspect of justice and law. This is King David's consistent approach - to lay hold of both sides: on the one hand, he asks for chesed (lovingkindness), and on the other hand, he also asks for mishpat (justice). If I am not worthy from the standpoint of strict justice, act with me out of lovingkindness; and if I am not worthy of lovingkindness - since lovingkindness is guaranteed to no one, as it says, "and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy," and there are Heavenly reckonings as to whom to favor and upon whom to have mercy - then grant me life from the standpoint of justice and law, in accordance with my merit.
"Many are my pursuers and my adversaries" - Yet I Did Not Swerve
רַבִּים רֹדְפַי וְצָרָי מֵעֵדְוֺתֶיךָ לֹא נָטִיתִי׃ (קנ"ז) - Many are my pursuers and my adversaries; from Your testimonies I have not swerved.
One must ask: where was there any possibility of swerving from the testimonies here? One might suggest that persecution could drive a person away from Torah and mitzvos, but that is difficult, for sometimes when a person is pursued, he actually clings more closely to Hashem, blessed be He, and seeks Him all the more. Rather, the Radak explains: naturally, when someone pursues you, you seek his harm - he wants bad for me, and I ask that Hashem bring bad upon him. And that itself is a deviation from His testimonies, for the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded: "You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge," and commanded: "If you see the donkey of your enemy... you shall surely release it with him," and "you shall surely raise it with him" - the Torah does not ask you to treat them as they treat you. And this is the meaning of "I did not swerve from Your testimonies": even though naturally, one who is pursued wants to afflict his pursuer in return for his deeds, David says: no. "Yet as for me, when they were ill, my clothing was sackcloth": they would come in to visit me to see when I would die, to check if it was already final, to find out when David would pass on to a better world; yet as for me, when they fell ill, I went to visit them, wore sackcloth, and prayed for their recovery.
The Metzudas David explains according to the simple meaning: since I have many distractions and troubles, this prevents me from concentrating on Hashem's mitzvos. For certainly, a person who sits in peace and tranquility finds it easier to learn, easier to pray, easier to find a minyan, and easier to fulfill the mitzvos; but when he is pursued, everything is far more difficult. And that is what he says: many are my pursuers and my adversaries, yet despite all this, my devotion to You, to fulfilling Your mitzvos, and to studying Your Torah has not weakened. It is told of the Brisker Rav (the Gri"z) that there were novel Torah insights he wrote down during shellings, while lying under a bed for safety - and there he did not sit trembling, but sat developing novellae in Torah and writing them down. This is: "Many are my pursuers and my adversaries - yet I did not swerve from Your testimonies."
The Malbim explains that the point here concerns "testimonies" in a different sense: even though those who pursued and harassed me were many, the very reason for their pursuit was that I did not swerve from Your testimonies - that was the pretext for which they pursued me. And as the following verse continues:
רָאִיתִי בֹגְדִים וָאֶתְקוֹטָטָה אֲשֶׁר אִמְרָתְךָ לֹא שָׁמָרוּ׃ (קנ"ח) - I saw treacherous people and contended with them, because they did not keep Your word. (158)
Meaning: I would contend with the treacherous, and that caused them to become my adversaries and pursuers. They do not pursue me because they need something from me, but because they want to sway me from Your testimonies.
"The reason for their pursuit - because I did not swerve from Your testimonies"
These words ring true in every generation. They say: "Join the army, there is a melting pot, we will re-educate you." And if you reply: if it is so important to you that I join, give us an army run according to Halachah, where the commanders embody pure holiness - the response is: no, I will educate them. Even for those who sacrifice their lives - and in the recent war, the highest number of casualties were from Religious Zionism - they are not willing to give them a commander of their own, they are not willing for Halachah there to be determined by their rabbis, and there is no major general wearing a knitted kippah. You gave your life - come; but to want to determine anything - no, and they will even force you to sit when women sing. Their rosh yeshivah, Rabbi Lichtenstein - a yeshivah that shed its blood, I believe seventeen students, may Hashem save us - said in the clearest manner: the Chareidim are right in their opposition to going to the army; our students serve, and they fear that they will become spiritually compromised, and they are right. This is a rosh yeshivah whose students are all there and sacrificed their lives there, and we appreciate that greatly; but to present things naively as if "we only want you in the army" - that is not the truth. You want us to become secular, and toward that end you try methods, schemes, and careers to "develop" us. Do not develop us: it has been three thousand years since the Giving of the Torah, the Eternal One of Israel does not lie, and the Jewish people have not changed. You make new "developments" - look where you have brought the Jewish people.
The Rav of Brisk said: ever since Zionism took responsibility for the Jewish people, there has not been a single day without bloodshed - ever since those who violate the covenant took responsibility over us, people for whom there is no Torah at all, who were not even willing to mention Hashem's name in the Declaration of Independence. Among the Americans, it is written even on the dollar bill: "In God We Trust"; and with us - not even in the Declaration of Independence. The Mafdal had to fight over it, and in the middle of a war those people insisted that Hashem's name not be mentioned, until they finally agreed on a neutral formulation that would satisfy all sides: "with the help of the Rock of Israel and its Redeemer" - you can think of the Holy One, blessed be He, and I will think of the IDF; each to his own rock.
And if you wish, there is also a way to judge favorably here. Among the nations, praising the Holy One, blessed be He, costs nothing: the President of the United States offered a special prayer of thanksgiving to God at the conclusion of the war in Iraq, and it obligates him in nothing - on the contrary, it is even politically advantageous. But a Jew knows that mentioning Hashem's name makes demands of him: if you mention Hashem, where is Shabbos? Where is purity? And out of the measure of truth within him, he refrains from mentioning it. Menachem Begin was a man of truth and a believer; it is told that when they asked him where to bury his wife, he said that she observed family purity, and he even brought a letter from the mikveh attendant. And Begin himself was known to put on tefillin - something you will not find any picture of among other leaders. Incidentally, it is no wonder that two weeks after the Supreme Court revoked the yeshivah students' draft status, one hundred and thirty missiles were aimed here - showing what the true protective umbrella is, even after investing five times as much here. Rabbi Dov Lando, may Hashem lengthen his days, said: I am less worried about the yeshivos; the yeshivos have a promise that they will endure. I worry about the merits of the state - until now it had merits, as it supported Torah. And one can see that there is reason to worry.
This is what the Malbim is saying: the reason they pursue me is because I did not swerve from Your testimonies. They cannot bear to see a Torah-observant Jew, because that does not fit the agenda. In his time, Ben-Gurion already planned to preserve Meah Shearim so anthropologists and researchers could come and observe a vanishing breed - "there were once Chareidim, come see what they looked like," like Indian reservations in the United States, l'havdil. He certainly did not plan for reality to change; soon there will be reservations for secularists, for anyone wanting to see what a secularist once looked like. And this is the demand: until you alter your testimonies, until you change your path of education and your path of Torah, they will continue to pursue you; the Supreme Court, the State Attorney's Office, the police, and all the pillars of government will not leave you alone. "I did not swerve from Your testimonies" - and that is the sole reason.
Maror - An Acronym for Devotion
In the sefer Bnei Yissaschar it is taught that the maror points to Torah from Heaven. Moshe Rabbeinu asked the Holy One, blessed be He, by what merit Israel would go out of Egypt, and was answered: "When you take the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God upon this mountain" - in the merit of the Torah; through the merit that we will receive the Torah, we are redeemed. And the Torah is acquired by a person only through afflictions, for three things are acquired through afflictions; to merit the Torah, one requires maror.
This is one of the reasons fewer truly great figures arise in our generation - in our generation there is no maror, no real hardship. Anyone who reads about the Gedolim, about Rav Shteinman, about Rav Ovadia Yosef, and about the other great Torah luminaries, will see how much bitterness they tasted before growing into who they became. In our generation there is no maror, and therefore it is difficult for great leaders to emerge. In Torah, one grows through trials and affliction, through bitterness.
And this is hinted at in our verse: "רַבִּים רֹדְפַי וְצָרָי מֵעֵדְוֺתֶיךָ" - the initial letters spell out maror (מ-ר-ו-ר, though not in order). Scripture comes to teach you: it is through this maror that "I have not turned aside" - through the bitterness, one clings to the Torah. By virtue of bitterness and suffering, one reaches Torah and attains deep understanding within it, for "one measure attained in distress is worth a hundred without distress." When a person struggles and faces difficulty, it is precisely then that he merits Torah.
In summary: The letter Resh in chapter 119 is the prayer of the persecuted. "Look upon my affliction and rescue me" - one who upholds the Torah in poverty is worthy of upholding it in wealth, and one who emerges from the depths of the kelipah is extricated through the power of the Torah that he has not forgotten. "Champion my cause" - redemption for the sake of the Divine promise, and a life whose entire purpose is fulfilling the word of Hashem. "Salvation is far from the wicked" - one who does not seek out the statutes at all opens no doorway even for dialogue, and therefore his salvation remains distant. "Your mercies are abundant" - David holds both ends of the rope, both chesed and mishpat. And finally, "Many are my persecutors and adversaries; yet I have not turned aside from Your testimonies" - the persecution itself comes on account of one's devotion, and that devotion is itself reinforced through the persecution, for maror, formed by the acronym of this verse, is the very way Torah is acquired.