The Lazy Farmer & the Bread Tree

In chapter six we are introduced to a new spiritual level. Typically translated as “Alacrity,” Zerizus is about becoming pro-active and excited about Mitzvos. Despite the chapter’s title – “Defining the Trait of Zerizus” – Luzzatto spends the chapter describing not Zerizus, but the lack thereof, i.e., the ill effects of laziness. Our author did the same for the previous level of Zehirus, “Vigilance.” Chapter two was titled “Defining the Trait of Zehirus” and instead of describing Zehirus itself, Luzzatto painted a stark picture of what people look like when they lack vigilance. Apparently, some things are best appreciated by their absence.

Learning from Everyman

Chapter six is built upon a short story told by King Solomon:

I passed through the field of a lazy man and the vineyard of a man who lacks a heart. And behold! It was entirely overgrown with thorns; nettles covered its surface; its stone fence was in ruins. I looked, my heart took notice. I saw, I took a lesson. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to lie down, and your poverty will arrive steadily, your loss like an armored man. (Proverbs 24:30-34)

After affirming the literal meaning of the text – a description of what happens to the field of a lazy farmer – Luzzatto cites a Midrash which sees these verses as an allegory about a lazy Torah scholar:

“And behold! It was entirely overgrown with thorns” – He searches for the explanation of a Parasha and can’t find it. “Nettles covered its surface” – Because he didn’t labor in [Torah], he will sit and [mistakenly] judge the pure to be impure and the impure to be pure, and he will breach the fences of the sages. What is his punishment? Solomon stated it explicitly, “One who breaches a fence will be bitten by a snake” (Koheles 10:8). (Yalkut Mishlei 961)   

Elaborating on this Midrash, Luzzatto describes the doom of the lazy sage, step-by-step. The problem began in his youth, innocently enough: he lacked diligence in his studies. But due to this lack of diligence, his training was flawed. A flawed training leads to misinterpretations of Torah, which leads to faulty rulings, which leads to violations of the law. And the consequence for breaching the fence of law, King Solomon informs us, is a “snake bite.” Luzzatto explains that just as the poison of venom spreads slowly, so too the effects of laziness spread slowly and invisibly, ultimately leading to death by sins the man doesn’t even realize he is committing.

Luzzatto loves this Midrash and he calls it “beautiful.” The Midrash certainly raises awareness about the dangers of laziness for scholars, but King Solomon wrote about an overgrown field. What made the sages think King Solomon was referring to Torah study?

I would suggest they were tipped off by the words, “I took a lesson...”

King Solomon was not a lazy man. According to a Midrash cited by Luzzatto (in chapter seven), King Solomon prided himself for his swift construction of the First Temple. But yet King Solomon states here that he learned a lesson from a lazy farmer?! What lesson could that possibly be?

The Midrash supplies the answer. There is one area where even King Solomon can be self-critical. There is one thing that no one, no matter how great, can ever be fully confident about, and that is Torah study. When King Solomon passed through the overgrown field, he asked himself, “Maybe in my youth I wasn’t sufficiently diligent… and maybe my skills currently suffer as a result!”

The Mishnah states, “Who is a wise man? He who learns from every man” (Avos 4:1). It takes a great deal of sensitivity, humility and wisdom to learn a personally relevant lesson from every person you meet. The wisest of men demonstrated precisely this kind of wisdom when he learned a lesson from the laziest of men.   

As Luzzatto said, it is a beautiful Midrash.

The Field of Halacha

This is not the only time King Solomon uses a field as a symbol for Torah learning. According to the Talmud, King Solomon used the exact same symbol just three verses earlier.

“Prepare your work outside and set up what you need in the field. After that, build your house” (Proverbs 24:27).

“Prepare your work outside” – this refers to Scripture and Mishnah. “Set up what you need in the field” – this refers to Gemora. “After that, build your house” – this refers to good deeds. (Sotah 24a)

Here the symbol of the field is refined. It refers not to Torah study in general, but specifically to the study of “Gemora.” What is Gemora? Rashi explains:

[To learn] Gemora is to explain the rationale behind the Mishnah and the determination of which opinion the Halacha should follow.

This Rashi helps us appreciate the flow of this allegorical verse. It begins with “preparing your work outside,” i.e., the learning of Mishnah. With its cryptic wording and multiplicity of opinions, the bare Mishnah text is deemed to be “outside” and unusable. From working on Mishnah we progress to “setting up what we need in the field,” i.e., the learning of Gemora. As Rashi explains, this refers to the determination of the Halacha. After that, we are ready “build” a “house,” i.e., perform good deeds. King Solomon is comparing the application of Halacha and the performance of good deeds to the construction of a house from the profits earned out in the field. 

This Talmudic understanding of the field in 24:27 fits perfectly with the Midrashic understanding of the lazy man’s field three verses later in 24:30. If a scholar lacks diligence when it comes to Gemora, if he is lazy in the study of the Halacha and fails to work his “field,” then he will get the Halacha wrong. And just as a house built on errors cannot last, so too a Judaism of errors cannot last, no matter how well intentioned. 

Apparently referring back to his analogy in Proverbs, King Solomon wrote the following in his Megillah:

“Due to laziness the ceiling sags and due to the lowering of hands the house leaks” (Koheles 10:18).

It is no coincidence that in our chapter Luzzatto connects this verse about a leaky house in Koheles to the overgrown field in Proverbs. For the produce of the “field” is meant to be used in the construction of a “house,” but if we are lazy in the field, then our homes are in danger of collapse.

There is a fascinating tie-in here to the Yomim Tovim. Shavuos, the day we received the Torah, is called "Chag HaKatzir," the holiday of the harvest (Shemos 23:16). And Sukkos is called "Chag HaAsif," the holiday of gathering in the produce and bringing it all home. On Sukkos we build a temporary home, a Sukkah, and we are instructed to use the leftover straw and branches from the harvest for the Schach (Sukkah 12a). This is precisely what King Solomon said. From the harvest of Torah we construct a home.

There is another well-known instance where the sages draw a parallel between Torah and a field:

One who studies Torah but does not review is akin to a man who plants and does not harvest. (Sanhedrin 99a)  

Here too, it is the harvest of the field – the Halacha – that is of interest. And here too, it is laziness - the failure to review - that leads to the loss of the precious harvest.

In light of all the above, we gain a new appreciation for a Talmudic teaching cited by Rashi at the beginning of Parshas Mishpatim:

"And these are the laws that you shall place before them" (Shemos 21:1).

God said to Moshe, "Don't think, I'll teach them the chapter and the law two or three times until they are fluent in it like its Mishnah, and I won't trouble myself to make them understand the rationale or the explanation." This is why the verse states, "...that you shall place before them" - like a table set and prepared for people to eat.

Hashem is saying that the memorization of Mishnaic texts is insufficient. Moshe must serve the people something "edible" - the complete Talmudic understanding of the law. 

The sources all line up neatly, but we have never explained why the Halacha is compared to food. For the answer to that question we will need to delve a little deeper.

Feeding the Universe

There is another layer of meaning to our Midrash, a mystical dimension, but in order to appreciate it we must first learn some spiritual cosmology.

The Talmud draws a surprising comparison between God and the human soul. “Just as the Holy One, blessed be He, fills the entire universe, so too the Neshama fills the entire body” (Berachos 10a). After warning us not to take the comparison literally (the Creator is unique and incomparable to any created thing), Rabbi Chaim Volozhiner elaborates on the God/universe and soul/body analogy in his sefer Nefesh HaChaim, supporting his thesis with a plethora of Talmudic, Midrashic and Zoharic sources. In the process, we gain a new perspective on food.

Keeping our soul in our bodies obviously requires the consumption of food. In other words, if we don’t eat, we die and the soul departs. For our souls to dwell securely inside our bodies so we can function properly, our bodies need to be physically healthy, and for that people need to have a robust diet of healthy, nutritious food. A malnourished man has a weak hold on his soul and cannot live life to the fullest.

The same can be said for the universe. If we want to maintain a fully functioning universe, we need Hashem to maintain a strong presence, and to achieve that, the universe needs to “eat.” The prescribed diet for the universe consists of Torah, Tefillah and Mitzvos. This is what keeps the universe spiritually healthy and makes it a place where Hashem is comfortable and His blessings flow. When Mitzvos are lacking, the universe is malnourished and weakened, and we receive correspondingly limited divine blessings.

Of course, not everything is nutritious. Food gives life; poison saps it. Just as a person who consumes poison damages his body, so it is with the universe. If we feed sins into the universe, we damage the system and Hashem can’t connect. With the flow of blessings restricted, things will not function as they should. The results can be disastrous. 

The food/mitzvah analogy is no mere illustrative analogy. The fate of humanity is intimately linked the fate of the universe and, as a result, an actual symbiotic relationship exists between the mitzvos we do and the food we eat. 

We declare this truth daily in the Shema. If we listen to the Mitzvos, to love Hashem and serve Him, then the rain will fall, food will grow, we will eat and be satisfied. But if we turn away from Hashem and worship other gods, then Hashem will seal the sky and there there will be drought and famine (cf. Devarim 11:13-17). This idea is not new; the Shema is a reiteration of the opening verses of Parshas Bechukosai:

If you follow my laws and observe my Mitzvos and do them, then I will deliver your rains at the right time and the earth will give its produce and the trees will give their fruit... But if you do not listen to Me and do not do all these Mitzvos... your land will not give its produce and the tree of the land will not give its fruit.  (Vayikra 26:3-4,14,20).

Two Loaves of Bread

Earlier we pointed to the agricultural dimension of the Yomim Tovim, but now we can better appreciate the significance of Shavuos as the Holiday of the Harvest. On Shavuos two loaves of bread are brought as offerings (Vayikra 23:17) and they serve to direct divine blessings to the fruit harvest of the coming year (Rosh Hashana 16a). As we have learned, the earth needs our mitzvos in order to produce food, and so the harvest of the coming year truly does depend on our Kabolas HaTorah on Shavuos.

But the reality runs deeper. Human behavior determines not only whether or not there will be food, it also determines the quality of that food. 

In the Garden of Eden before the first sin, the universe was pristine, and consequently, the earth produced perfected food which required zero human input. In the garden, bread literally grew on trees (Bereishis Rabba 15:7). Roasted meat and filtered wine was served to Adam and Eve by angels (cf. Sanhedrin 59b). Similarly, after the Exodus the world was in a perfected state and the Jews received Manna from heaven which produced no waste.

However, when Adam fed sin into the system (by eating forbidden fruit) the universe’s ability to produce healthy food was damaged. “The ground is cursed because of you… thorns and thistles it shall sprout for you” (Bereishis 3:17-18). Similarly, after the sin of the Golden Calf, the Manna lost its cleansing power (cf. Yoma 75b).  (See at length, Rabbi Chaim Volozhiner, Nefesh HaChaim 2:5-7; Derashos Beis Dovid, drush 3.)

Understanding the relationship between Torah and food gives us a new insight into the two loaves of Shavuos. Earlier we cited the Talmudic teaching that these loaves directed divine blessings to the fruits of the trees. But the loaves were made of wheat, not fruit! Why should they have an effect on trees? Rashi (ad loc.) finds a precedent for calling wheat "fruit." There is an opinion that Tree of Knowledge was actually wheat (Berachos 40a). But this appears to be a dodge, not an answer. How could the tree of knowledge be wheat?! Wheat does not grow on trees. What is Rashi saying?

The answer is that in the garden, bread really did grow on trees! The tree of knowledge was a "wheat tree" which grew the forbidden fruit, loaves of fresh bread. Adam sinned and he was cursed together with the land: "By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread." No longer would the earth produce bread; man will have to work for it. But one day in the future, the world will be fixed and once again bread will grow on trees. "In the future, the land of Israel will give forth loaves of bread... wheat will grow up like a palm tree" (Kesubos 111b; cf. Toras Chaim to Sanhedrin 70b). 

This then is the symbolism of the two loaves of bread offered in the Mikdash on Shavuos. One for the lost past, the bread of the garden, and one for the utopian future, the bread of Israel rebuilt. How do we bridge the gap? How do we fix the earth? By receiving the Torah on Shavuos.

Returning now to the Midrash cited by Luzzatto, we arrive at a new and astounding realization: A field is a symbol for Gemora because the determination of Halacha is synonymous with the production of food!  If we are diligent in the study of Gemora and get the Halacha right, then we will eat right. Otherwise, we are producing thorns, thistles and poison. This is the snake venom referred to by King Solomon.

The health of the universe and the health of man depend on sound Halachic rulings, and in the end, Halachic rulings come down to our Zerizus in the field.

A beautiful Midrash, indeed!