Ilustration Credit: Elad Lifshitz, Dov Abramson Studio
Midrash מִדְרָשׁ
Hazal have some amazing ways to interpret pesukim. Sometimes they teach us something new about a pasuk by comparing it to a pasuk from a totally different part of Tanakh.
אָז יַבְדִּיל מֹשֶׁה שָׁלֹשׁ עָרִים, בְּעֵבֶר הַיַּרְדֵּן מִזְרְחָה שָׁמֶשׁ.
Then Moshe set aside three cities on the east side of the Jordan.
אֹהֵב כֶּסֶף לֹא יִשְׂבַּע כֶּסֶף וּמִי אֹהֵב בֶּהָמוֹן לֹא תְבוּאָה גַּם זֶה הָבֶל.
A lover of silver never has their fill of silver, nor a lover of wealth their fill of income.
That too is futile.
The first pasuk is from our parashah, and it’s about Moshe setting up three עָרֵי מִקְלָט (arei miklat, cities of refuge) for accidental killers.
The pasuk on the bottom, from Kohelet, is about being greedy. It describes someone who is never able to get enough silver.
These pesukim don’t seem to have much in common, right? But a midrash connects them in a surprising way.
דָּרַשׁ רַבִּי סִימַאי מַאי דִּכְתִיב אֹהֵב כֶּסֶף לֹא יִשְׂבַּע כֶּסֶף…זֶה מֹשֶׁה רַבֵּינוּ שֶׁהָיָה יוֹדֵעַ שֶׁאֵין שָׁלֹשׁ עָרִים שֶׁבְּעֵבֶר הַיַּרְדֵּן קוֹלְטוֹת עַד שֶׁלֹּא נִבְחֲרוּ שָׁלֹשׁ בְּאֶרֶץ כְּנַעַן וְאָמַר מִצְוָה שֶׁבָּאָה לְיָדִי אֲקַיְּימֶנָּה.
R. Simai taught: What is the meaning of “A lover of silver never has their fill of silver”?... This is a reference to Moshe our teacher, who knew that the three arei miklat on the east side of the Jordan could not accept accidental killers until the three arei miklat inside the land of Canaan were also set up. But Moshe still said: When a mitzvah opportunity comes up, I’ll do it.
R. Simai flips the negative verse from Kohelet into something positive. Some people might love silver so much that they can never get enough, and some people love mitzvot so much that they can never get enough!
A great example of this is Moshe in our parashah. He wants to do a mitzvah (setting up arei miklat) really, really badly. Despite the fact that Moshe knows that he will not enter Eretz Yisrael, and that the arei miklat will only become effective when all of them are set up—including those that he’ll never reach—he still is excited to perform the mitzvah!
- What do you think we can learn from Moshe?
- If a person could never get enough of mitzvot, what would that be like?
- Have you ever been excited to be a part of something at its beginning, even if you knew that you wouldn’t be there when it was completed?
- What can we learn from this type of midrash and the way the rabbis bring together pesukim from totally different parts of Tanakh?
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