Mishlei: An Introduction to the Book of Proverbs

Now, the book of Mishlei, which we customarily read during the Shabbatot that separate Pesach from Shavuot. But I will begin by dedicating this lecture to my late brother Shalom, to whom I was very closely bound, and who has just left us suddenly. I believe that all the lectures I give this year will be le’ilui nishmato — for the elevation of his soul. This does not prevent me from also joining to them, on occasion — though I do not wish that you should need it — a yahrzeit (anniversary of a death) of yours, or an occasion you would like to crown with this crown of Torah, or to dedicate through this teaching of Torah. Why, then, was this book studied between Pesach and Shavuot? Quite simply because, in preparing for the revealed Torah, one had to become imbued with derekh eretz (proper conduct, a cultivated way of being). For if there is no derekh eretz, there is no Torah.

And if there is no Torah, there is no derekh eretz. This is a teaching of Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria in Pirkei Avot, which we also read between Pesach and Shavuot — Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria, in the third chapter of Pirkei Avot. And Pirkei Avot, as we have already seen, is the teaching of the fathers; without this teaching of the fathers we have no access to the Torah, to the depth of the Torah’s teaching. And further on, as we said: if there is no wisdom there is no fear, and if there is no fear there is no wisdom; if there is no knowledge there is no understanding, and if there is no understanding there is no knowledge; and finally, im ein kemach ein Torah — if there is no flour, there is no Torah; im ein Torah ein kemach — if there is no Torah, there is no flour.

Of course, one does not expect Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria’s teaching to end with flour, as though that were the culmination — and yet it is the culmination. Why is it the culmination? Because the goal is the sanctification of the profane. To succeed — through wisdom, through fear, through knowledge — in raising the profane to the level of the sacred: then we have truly reached the goal. In sum, we can make out these two steps, and we find them in the three works of Shlomo that we read or study. For each time we read — do not forget that the verb kara, to read, also means to cry out — the text cries out; the text calls to you; you must answer; you must engage it in discussion. We have said that seyag la-chokhmah shetikah — “a fence for wisdom is silence”: the limit of wisdom is silence, when we have truly reached the point where our limited intellect can no longer fathom the depth of the text. And of course, this silence is itself another way of expressing oneself, another way of marveling, another way of taking in the holiness of the text.

So: the text we read on Pesach is Shir haShirim (the Song of Songs); on Shavuot, Mishlei; on Sukkot, Kohelet (Ecclesiastes). These are the three works of King Shlomo. The first, Shir haShirim, is — so it is said — the expression of his youthful love; it celebrates the Exodus from Egypt. It is the future intonation of Az yashir Moshe (“Then Moshe will sing”), the projection of that song of the assembly of Israel with Moshe — the song that will be taken up again in the form of the Song of Songs, the very essence of song, in the time to come. In the time to come: when we will truly have gone beyond our speaking through sayings, through the mashal. You know, the mashal is translated as proverb, as popular saying, and also as prophetic discourse, as reflection of great weight.

All this is found, of course, in various verses, but I will not take much of your time quoting them. The mashal — for that is how the book begins: Mishlei Shlomo ben David melekh Yisrael, “The proverbs of Shlomo son of David, king of Israel.” We are dealing with Mishlei; but what is a mashal? A popular wisdom, a popular saying: there are such sayings in every language and in every culture, it is true. This popular wisdom can indeed be found among the other nations as well. By way of anecdote, I will tell you that from a very young age — I remember it from the age of nine — I was awakened by my father, zikhrono livrakhah (of blessed memory), with this verse: me’at shenot, me’at tenumot, me’at chibbuk yadayim — “a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands.”

I bring it up because it is interesting: six years later, at the teachers’ college, it was no longer this verse that woke me, but Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. In the end, I went from one extreme to the other. But I must find this verse for you. What a pity — out of emotion I cannot find it; it will come back to me. You know, I had noted it down, it has not escaped me, and yet I cannot find it. Never mind. I will summarize it for you: a little sleep, a little napping, a little folding of the hands — that is what we were told. The way of […] — of those who practice “Zen”, so to speak — is to take their ease in the shade. That was the gist; but of course the text itself puts it far better.

I will give it to you later, be’ezrat Hashem (with G-d’s help), for I will not let it escape me; I am not working from my usual Bible today. So there is indeed a popular wisdom. It is the one we share with the other nations. But we have gone beyond it. There is a wisdom into which the knowledge of G-d seeps, the will to know G-d. It is prophetic. Bilaam knew it — that is a fact. There is a mashal that is a form of poetry, of reflection, one that demands reflection, that demands depth of thought. And finally there is the mashal that engages us ourselves. For the word mashal shares its root with moshel: to govern, to manage.

We believe that we truly are a reality just as it appears; but in our essence we are not that reality. That reality was first a primary conception — and a primary conception is a founding idea, a founding feeling, a way of being, as was Adam haRishon, the first man. He was without body, without covering, was he not? And above all, it was that primary thought which HaKadosh Barukh Hu (the Holy One, blessed be He) shared with him that was meant to guide him, so that his knowledge would not be limited to that of good and evil alone. It had to embrace life beyond good and evil, beyond the knowledge of good and evil. To limit oneself to being a mere intellectual, a philosopher, a bookworm devoted to pure knowledge, has no place in Judaism.

And when man sinned and wished to limit himself to that form of knowledge, HaKadosh Barukh Hu gave him a body, provided him with a body, with a garment: kotnot ‘or, garments of skin. He placed a skin upon him, whereas he had worn a garment of or, of light. But it became kotnot ‘or, garments of skin. And that is why, when we are engaged on a reductive path of knowledge — one that leaves us no longer open either to G-d or to our fellow, nor to G-d through our fellow — we are stricken with tzara’at (the biblical skin affliction). Our skin becomes a witness to a closing of thought and to the need for confinement, until a person reflects a little on his way of being, on his relationship to others, on his relationship to G-d.

For there are indeed three stages. To think of oneself, of one’s own liberation — that is Pesach. To think of one’s relationship with G-d — that is Shavuot. To think of one’s relationship with the whole world, with humanity — that is Sukkot: to leave one’s house, to leave one’s mashal, to leave one’s riddle, to leave the four cubits in which one shuts oneself up, thinking that we are truly the core of the universe. If we are truly destined for an eternal life that defies the other nations, the other cultures, the other civilizations, and outlives them, it is because we are bound to serve all of humanity. And that is why the book with which we consecrate the festival of Sukkot is not the book of the maturity Shlomo attained through Mishlei at Shavuot, but the one that is completed by yir’at Hashem, the fear of G-d. But take care: it is a fear that lies beyond knowledge — not fear in the sense of dread, take care. It is the thirst to know, but with veneration, with respect, with the will to feel G-d’s nearness without being burned, as were Nadav and Avihu — that is, going all the way without wishing to return to human beings, without wishing to acknowledge the reality of this world and succeed in consecrating it. That is im ein kemach ein Torah: then we do not get there. At that moment, it is death.

[…] There is a beautiful midrash I would like to read to you. I prepared it for you; I hope I will find it, and that it will not go as it did a moment ago. Where are we? Darash Rabbi Simlai: Rabbi Simlai expounded that six hundred and thirteen mitzvot were given to Moshe — three hundred and sixty-five prohibitions, as the number of days in the solar year, and two hundred and forty-eight positive commandments, corresponding to the two hundred and forty-eight limbs of man. There is thus a way of mapping the reality of man — the mashal of man, let us say the riddle of man — onto the two hundred and forty-eight mitzvot, while the prohibitions are spread over the solar year, over the days of the solar year.

So there are six hundred and thirteen. But ba David ve-he’emidan al achat esreh — David came and established them upon eleven. It is a psalm, Tehillim 15: “Hashem, who shall sojourn in Your tent?” I will read this one to you — it is easy to find: “A psalm of David. Hashem, who shall sojourn in Your tent? Who shall dwell on Your holy mountain? One who walks with integrity, does what is just and speaks the truth with all his heart; who has no slander on his tongue, does no harm to his fellow and heaps no insult upon his neighbor; who holds in contempt whoever deserves contempt, but honors those who fear Hashem; who swears to his own hurt and does not retract; who does not put out his money at interest and takes no bribe against the innocent. One who does these things shall never be shaken.” That is the psalm, and these are the eleven principles that sum up the whole of the Torah. But it does not stop there.

Yeshayahu, the prophet Yeshayahu, ve-he’emidan al shesh — he summed everything up in six basic principles: one who walks in the ways of charity and justice; who speaks uprightly; who despises the gain of oppression; who will not lend his hand to corruption; who stops his ear so as not to hear slander; who shuts his eyes so as not to witness evil. Such a person, in the end — hu meromim yishkon, “he shall dwell on the heights” — takes his place on the heights of the Torah. It does not stop there. The prophet Michah reduced them to three. He says: “You have been told, O man, what is good, and what Hashem requires of you: only to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk discreetly with your G-d.”

These are the three principles: asot mishpat — to practice justice, judgment, to render justice; the love of kindness, of the practice of kindness; and to walk discreetly with G-d. There is a kind of contest: then Yeshayahu says — no, we do not need all that; two will do. Koh amar Hashem: shimru mishpat va-asu tzedakah — “Thus says Hashem: Keep justice and practice charity” — practice kindness. Ba Amos: along comes the prophet Amos, ve-he’emidan al achat, and he set them all upon a single pillar, a single principle: Koh amar Hashem le-veit Yisrael: dirshuni vichyu — “Thus says Hashem to the house of Israel: Seek Me and live” — seek Me, and you shall have life, you shall enjoy life. So we set out from six hundred and thirteen mitzvot, and we have arrived at one.

Dirshuni vichyu. When one truly seeks HaKadosh Barukh Hu, that seeking of HaKadosh Barukh Hu suffices to cover the whole of the Torah. So all the rest is mashal; it is, let us say, man’s protective covering. But that protective covering has another purpose: to go out of one’s house to communicate with the outside world, the world of the nations, which would also like a sukkah (festival booth) like ours. Only, for the moment, it is not yet able to remain under that sukkah through all the discomforts it brings. So it abandons the sukkah, because it seeks comfort in its practice of the law; it seeks its conveniences; it seeks a utilitarian law. So we pass first through Mishlei at Shavuot — or rather, from Pesach to Shavuot we have passed through Mishlei. Now, we said that of these three books written by Shlomo, one is the expression of youth, of that love, and the other is the culmination of a deep reflection through the mashal — through the recognition that what we are is a model, an example, a reality that has a teaching to give. And the teaching it gives, it does not take from the world of nature, from the behavior of animals, which, one might say, were almost made for that purpose. Had the Torah not been given, that is certainly where we would have looked for such teachings. No — there is one more dimension in the one who has been endowed with Tzelem Elokim, the image of G-d within him. There is a higher dimension, and that is the Torah. That is why, over the Shabbatot between Pesach and Shavuot, we conclude Pirkei Avot with a sixth chapter that is not part of Pirkei Avot but was added to it, and that is devoted entirely to kinyan Torah, the acquisition of Torah.

It is said that Shlomo haMelekh (King Shlomo) wrote this book at the age of his maturity. Not the whole of Mishlei was written by him — I open a parenthesis. In the first chapters we do find the theme of the father speaking to his son, sayings drawn from everyday life that exalt the teaching of the Torah, the teaching of wisdom, and that warn man against the ishah zarah, the foreign woman — the foreign culture. Here too I open a second parenthesis, to say that Scripture tells us that Shlomo’s wisdom was such that he spoke three thousand meshalim — three thousand sayings, three thousand teachings — and a thousand and five songs.

When we add up all the verses he wrote, we are far from that figure; we do not even reach a thousand. If we add them up, we come to some nine hundred and fifteen verses […]. But the mashal — the teachings of Shlomo haMelekh — are not solely on the level of pshat, the literal translation. The literal translation matters little — not that it is invalid — but just as there is pshat, there is remez, derash and sod: there is always the allusion, always the allegorical meaning, always the mystical meaning. So when we multiply Shlomo’s teachings, even if only by three, we indeed arrive at that […]. It is the title of a wisdom which, in song, in love, has no “son of David” — of King David — neither “Shlomo son of King David” nor “Shlomo king of Israel”: Shir haShirim asher li-Shlomo, “The Song of Songs, which is Shlomo’s.”

That is the word: in this love we are all cut from the same cloth; we all know how to render it; we lack only the expression — but in reality it is a single word: we feel it, we live it intensely within us. Mishlei, by contrast — Mishlei Shlomo ben David — he needs to cite his lineage, his father; he needs to say: take note, this is no ordinary person; this is melekh Yisrael, the one who governs Israel. And I told you that the word mashal shares its meaning with the word moshel, which means to govern, to manage. It is through this wisdom that we manage our life in reality, in practice, because in its essence it is impenetrable. There comes a moment when silence is imposed. […] Whereas in the book of Kohelet that he writes, Shlomo’s name does not appear; he bears a borrowed name. When we are confronting these ideas with other cultures, other civilizations, with philosophy in general, then […] we are Kohelet: we belong to a kahal, an assembly; we belong to the general population. We must try to persuade one another, and in order to arrive where everything ends, at the purpose of all things, we must listen: sof davar ha-kol nishma, et ha-Elokim yera ve-et mitzvotav shemor — “The end of the matter, when all has been heard: fear G-d and keep His commandments.” One must fear G-d — but through what?

Through your attachment to the practice of these commandments that are binding upon oneself; and by taking Adam as one’s model — and in the word Adam there is the verb damah: resemblance, likeness. For I am not only what I am; if I am only for myself, then I am nothing. In the end, mah ani — I am a mah, a “what”, not a mi, a “who”. There is a difference between mah and mi; I will explain it in depth another time. But I must turn toward my fellow, the one who resembles me. And this “fellow” is at once G-d, my neighbor and my wife. Consider these figures that stand before me: they are not of the same nature, but they have an inner essence that allows me to communicate with them, to take the other into myself, and him in turn to take me in. That, then, is the meaning of Kohelet. That is why, there, Shlomo’s name does not appear: divrei Kohelet ben David — Kohelet is the son of David. The one who gathered within himself all the knowledge of the other cultures, from among all men — he is no longer called Shlomo; he is ha-shalom shelo, “the one to whom peace belongs.”

Ha-shalom shelo — that is how Shir haShirim asher li-Shlomo has been rendered: the one who, through this love, spreads peace around him, understanding, human intelligence — for in Mishlei, chokhmah (wisdom) goes hand in hand with tevunah (understanding). When we have reached Sukkot, having set out from zeman cheruteinu, the time of our freedom — we freed ourselves from our constraints, from our servitude; we attained the liberation of zeman matan Torateinu, the time of the giving of our Torah, a liberation through the Torah, a spiritual liberation — and when we share it with others, it becomes zeman simchateinu, the time of our rejoicing. It is our joy. You know very well — we have said it before — that there are three forms of joy. Simchah is when we have worked, labored for something, awaited the result and obtained it: then we are semechim (joyful); we have reached our goal; we are fulfilled.

So much for the nature of Mishlei. I told you that in Mishlei not all the texts are by King Shlomo. The first two parts are Shlomo’s; then there is a portion of divrei chakhamim — the text says divrei chakhamim, the words of the wise, of the Sages — and then there are the words compiled by the men of Chizkiyahu, some generations later. But they belong to Shlomo’s thought. And where does that thought culminate? In Eshet chayil mi yimtza — the magnificence of the woman of valor. Yet Shlomo haMelekh began by warning against the foreign woman, the ishah zarah. It deserves to be read.

This text on the ishah zarah: he denounces her from his very first words, as he sets man on the path of knowledge, and he says: “Why, my son, should you be infatuated with a stranger and lavish caresses on another’s companion? For the eyes of Hashem are fixed on the ways of man; He observes the track of all his steps. The wicked man is caught in his own sins as in a snare; he is entangled in the cords of his transgression. He dies for lack of discipline, led astray by the greatness of his folly.” But at the end, it is with a hymn to the feminine that he closes his book, and that says a great deal. We do not have time to go into it now. I will first let you ask your questions; it will be the subject of the next lecture, be’ezrat Hashem: we will study Eshet Chayil, the last text of Mishlei.

— Rav Benizri, a small question, which I think poses no great difficulty. You said earlier that Mishlei was a work of maturity. But then which is the more mature, Kohelet or Mishlei? — Kohelet comes to show the futility of all the other paths of knowledge, which lead nowhere, which end in dead ends, which no longer allow a person to advance, and which set him at odds even with what he thinks, with what he would have wished to be. And this I said — I hinted at it — because the other nations made a claim. They lodged a complaint before G-d, saying to Him: You were, after all, very favorable to the Jewish people, and You gave them the Torah; but we too — had You given us the Torah, had You imposed the Torah on us as You did on them, holding the mountain over them and threatening them with death if they did not accept it — we too would have accepted, and we would then have stood in Your favor. He said to them: very well, I will submit you to a single test. If you pass it, very well — your claim will be justified, and perhaps I will revise my course of conduct. But if you do not… And so He said to them: listen, I ask you simply to make a sukkah and to sit in that sukkah for five days.

If you manage it — it’s simple: go outside and eat in the open air; it’s a picnic. And behold, the next day HaKadosh Barukh Hu brings out a scorching sun. The text says: hotzi chammah mi-nartikah — He drew the sun out of its sheath — and they could not bear it. Now there is a law, mitzta’er patur min ha-sukkah: one who is distressed in the sukkah — if, say, there is heavy rain and he cannot stay — may of course go back into the house; the weather is not favorable. But they did not only leave the sukkah; they gave it a kick. It was that kick that was one too many.

He would then have said: you see — from this law I gave you, from this test to which I submitted you, it is proven that you do not yet have that maturity. And why this maturity? […] A person, as he goes along, acquires a certain maturity. If he deepens his study, he will widen his angle of vision; but if he remains with his first bearings, with what he understood at eighteen, at twenty, and does not continue, does not go deeper, then at eighty he will keep his first data, the basic data of twenty — but those basic data of twenty are out of date. They are no longer current; who would say otherwise? Physically already we cannot adapt ourselves to them — all the more so when it is the spirit which, as the body gradually masters its passions and desires, opens ever further onto the sphere of thought. But he must have cultivated this sufficiently through the other years, so that he comes forward with a knowledge able to dispel all preconceived ideas, all prejudices, and so arrive at sof davar, the conclusion of Kohelet, the purpose of all things: et ha-Elokim yera ve-et mitzvotav shemor. There is a fear of elevation, of romemut (exaltation) — the fear that leads us to the practice of these laws, because the practice of these laws is, quite simply, an art of being.

Now this art of being, no one can possess entirely. I have already told you: in that last teaching of Yaakov — to brothers who were quarreling and would not recognize Yosef — he said: very well, you do not recognize Yosef; but know that in life, if you want the truth, you must cross your hands, and it is at the meeting point of that crossing that truth lies. For there is a heavenly truth and an earthly truth, moving toward each other; and it is at the meeting point of these two truths — the heavenly and the earthly, the divine and the human — that truth lies.

For the truth of heaven is not human, and that of the earth, the human truth, is somewhat affected by the ego, by this convenience of the self; so one must try to stand at the point where these two beams of light intersect. — Any other question? — Thank you very much, Rav Benizri. Thank you very much. — Obviously, Mishlei is not studied in an hour, nor in three quarters of an hour; but I invite you to read it, even if only in French, to get an idea of all the teachings it contains, which truly carry profound reflection. Sometimes they fall under the rule of pure logic, but sometimes they lead us beyond certain pettiness of thought, or certain limits of thought.

— Mr. Benizri, by any chance, have you found the proverb you were looking for? — The one that was replaced by Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Which are heavenly too — whereas Vivaldi, early in his life, was a real little rascal. You know, in Belgium the government is currently called the “Vivaldi government”, but that does not help us much. But Vivaldi truly was a rascal. Ah, here it is! […] There — that was the alarm clock of my childhood: “I passed by the field of a sluggard, by the vineyard of a man void of sense. And behold, it was all overgrown with thistles; nettles covered its surface; its stone wall lay in ruins. I beheld it and set my heart to it; I looked and drew a lesson: a little more sleep, a little more slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest —

“— and your poverty comes upon you like a prowler, and your want like an armed warrior.” My father, zikhrono livrakhah, would recite these verses to wake me, chanting them, because there are three books of the Bible that have a different intonation, different notes. These three books are the books of EMeT: the aleph is Iyov, the mem is Mishlei, the tav is Tehillim. They have a different music. Today, unfortunately, it has been lost. We learned it in the cheder (children’s Torah school); I still know it today, but I no longer have anyone to pass it on to — so it ought to be recorded. What I have just read you is in chapter twenty-four, from verse thirty on.

— And could you sing it for us? — I was not going to raise that question. — I can: me’at shenot, me’at tenumot, me’at chibbuk yadayim lishkav, u-va mit’halekh reishekha, u-machsorekha ke-ish magen. There. — That is magnificent. Thank you very much. — […] Forgive me… Thank you. — Another voice would have been… a bearer of the old… […]