Ekev | From Where in the Torah do we Derive the Prohibition of Arrogance?

 

 

 

At the end of the fifth millennium, R. Moshe ben Yaakov of Coucy (France) wandered among the cities of Spain and Provence and preached to the Jewish communities there. R. Moshe, one of the most important Tosafists of his generation, rebuked his audiences for their lax observance of certain mitzvot and guided them toward adopting good traits and distancing themselves from their wayward ones. His preaching made a deep impression on those who heard him and saved many of them from sin.[1]

 

Another result of R. Moshe of Coucy's extended journey was that upon his return to France he began to compile his Sefer Mitzvot Gadol (the Semag), considered one of the most important halakhic texts written in the Middle Ages.[2] This is what he writes in the introduction to his work concerning the circumstances that brought him to write it:[3]

 

And it came to pass, when I was brought by Heaven to wander among the lands to reprove the exiles of Israel, that I set my mind on orally arranging the mitzvot, each mitzva on its own… so that I make no mistakes in my rebuke. In several places, I was asked to write the foundations of the mitzva based on proofs and to make of this a book. I feared doing so, to publicize a work of Torah, for "surely I am brutish, unlike a man, and have not the understanding of a man" (Mishlei 30:2).

At the beginning of the sixth millennium,[4] the matter came to me in a vision in a dream: "Arise, compile a work of Torah in two parts!" I contemplated the vision, and there were two parts – to write a book of the positive commandments in the first part and a book of the negative commandments in the second part.[5]

Therefore, I Moshe ben Yaakov, set my mind to write the two books…

 

R. Moshe concludes the introduction to his book with an account of another dream:

 

Also with regard to the negative commandments, a vision in a dream came to me, saying: "You forgot the principle: ‘Beware lest you forget the Lord your God’ (Devarim 8:11).” For it had not been my intention to include this in the count of the prohibitions. Rabbeinu Moshe [ben Maimon, the Rambam] similarly did not mention it in his count.

I contemplated the matter in the morning, and, lo, it is a great foundation in the fear of God, and I included it among the great principles in its place.[6]

 

This second vision is a mystery that requires a resolution, and the author alludes to this resolution when he writes: "I included it among the great principles in its place." Let us proceed in the wake of R. Moshe's allusion, and see how the author resolved the mystery of his dream. 

 

 

In the first orations concerning the mitzvot in the book of Devarim, we encounter two similar verses. In Parashat Va'etchanan it is stated:

 

6:10-11: And it shall be, when the Lord your God shall bring you into the land which He swore to your fathers…

great and goodly cities, which you did not build, and houses full of all good things, which you did not fill, and cisterns hewn out, which you did not hew, vineyards and olive-trees, which you did not plant, and you shall eat and be satisfied,

12: then beware lest you forget the Lord, who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

13: You shall fear the Lord your God; and Him shall you serve, and by His name shall you swear.

14: You shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the peoples that are round about you;

15: for a jealous God, even the Lord your God, is in the midst of you; lest the anger of the Lord your God be kindled against you, and He destroy you from off the face of the earth.

 

And in Parashat Ekev it is stated:
 

8:7: For the Lord your God brings you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths, springing forth in valleys and hills;

8: a land of wheat and barley, and vines and fig-trees and pomegranates; a land of olive-trees and honey; 

9: a land wherein you shall eat bread without scarceness, you shall not lack anything in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you may dig brass.

10: And you shall eat and be satisfied, and bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you. 

11: Beware lest you forget the Lord your God, in not keeping His commandments, and His ordinances, and His statutes, which I command you this day;

12: lest when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; 

13: and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied;

14: then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; 

15: who led you through the great and dreadful wilderness…

16: who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers knew not…

17: and you say in your heart: My power and the might of my hand has gotten me this wealth.

18: But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He that gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day.[7]

 

The two similar verses that we marked in bold in the citations above – "beware lest you forget the Lord" – are formulated as clear commands, as negative precepts. As R. Avin taught in the name of R. Ila'i (Eiruvin 96 and parallel passages):  "Wherever it says 'beware,' 'lest,' or 'do not,' this indicates a negative commandment."

 

Did the enumerators of the mitzvot include this prohibition in their count of the mitzvot?

 

 

Two main systems for counting the mitzvot are found among the Geonim and Rishonim who occupied themselves with this area of Torah study. The first is the system of the author of the Halakhot Gedolot, whose enumeration of the mitzvot in his book was widespread throughout the Diaspora over the course of many generations. Many enumerators of the mitzvot followed the Halakhot Gedolot's system, both in France and in Spain, as well as in Islamic countries.[8]

 

About two generations before R. Moshe of Coucy began to compile his book, the Rambam published his Sefer Ha-Mitzvot, which presented a new system for counting the mitzvot. This system is based on clear principles, which are formulated in the introduction to his book – the fourteen "roots."[9]

 

R. Moshe of Coucy was the first enumerator of the mitzvot who used the Rambam's system as the basis for his book of mitzvot, and there are only a few differences between their two counts.[10] In the body of his book, R. Moshe often mentions the Rambam and his rulings in the Mishneh Torah, to the point that it may be argued that the Sefer Mitzvot Gadol is the wide gate through which the Rambam's teachings entered the world of the French Tosafists.[11]

 

The Halakhot Gedolot, in his enumeration of the negative commandments (#150), counts as a mitzva the verse, "Lest you forget the Lord,"[12] but he does not explain the meaning of the prohibition.

 

R. Eliezer of Metz in his book, the Yere'im, in which he enumerates the mitzvot following the system of the Halakhot Gedolot, also counts this prohibition (no. 360 in the Sefer Yere'im Ha-Shalem edition), but he tries also to explain its content:

 

"Beware lest you forget the Lord" – It is written in Parashat Va'etchanan: "Beware lest you forget the Lord," which means that a person must not forget to accept upon himself the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven and that he must recite the Shema every day.[13] And according to the authority who says in Berakhot (21a) that the recitation of Shema is by Rabbinic decree, it means that a person must always remember his Creator and His commandments.[14] And "lest he forget" is a negative commandment, as R. Ila said: "Wherever it says 'beware,' 'lest,' or 'do not,' this indicates a negative commandment."

 

The Ramban, at the end of his strictures on the Rambam's Sefer Ha-Mitzvot, in the first of "the negative commandments that the Rambam forgot,"[15] counts this negative commandment in the wake of the Halakhot Gedolot:

 

That not one of us forget belief in God… for we were commanded in the first mitzva [positive commandments] about accepting the kingdom of Heaven… This is what the Blessed One said: "I am the Lord your God who has brought you forth from the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage" (Shemot 20:2), which is the mitzva of believing [in God]… And He repeated a prohibition to deny this… This is what is stated: "Beware lest you forget the Lord (your God)[16] who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage" (Devarim 6:12). He means by this that we must not forget the principle of God and deny or doubt it… And He offered proof for the aforementioned [positive] commandment and [negative] prohibition – the exodus from Egypt with signs and wonders…

And He repeated this prohibition again, saying: "Beware lest you forget the Lord your God, in not keeping His commandments, and His ordinances, and His statutes, which I command you this day" (Devarim 8:10). This is also a prohibition to forget belief in God, and to deny because of that the Torah and the commandments…

This mitzva from the verse: "Beware lest you forget the Lord your God" was mentioned by the author of the Halakhot [Gedolot].

 

According to the Ramban, this mitzva partners with the first of the Ten Commandments, the mitzva of "I am the Lord your God." In other words, it is a prohibition that complements that positive commandment. The content of the mitzva according to the Ramban is similar to the content of the mitzva according to the Yere'im.

 

The Rambam, however, does not include the verse in Parashat Va'etchanan or the similar verse in Parashat Ekev in his enumeration of the mitzvot. Why does he refrain from doing so, when these verses are clearly formulated as prohibitions?

 

The answer to this question seems to hang on the fourth principle in the Rambam's introduction to his Sefer Ha-Mitzvot:[17]

 

The fourth rule: that it is inappropriate to enumerate commands that include all of the commandments.

Some commandments and prohibitions in the Torah do not relate to a specific matter, but rather encompass all of the mitzvot, as if to say: Do all that I have commanded you, and take heed of all that I have prohibited to you, or: Do not disobey anything that I have commanded you. There is no room to enumerate such a command as a separate mitzva, because it does not command the performance of any specific action, that it be a positive commandment, nor does it prohibit any specific action, that it be a negative commandment.

 

In Parashat Va'etchanan, the verse does not explain what is included in the prohibition to forget God, but from what is written in the following verse in a positive formulation: "You shall fear the Lord your God, and Him you shall serve," we learn that forgetting God involves not fearing Him and not serving Him. If so, this is a general command that relates to many other commandments, and perhaps even to all of them.[18]

 

In Parashat Ekev, the verse itself, "Beware lest you forget the Lord your God," explains what is included in this forgetting: "in not keeping His commandments, and His ordinances, and His statutes, which I command you this day."

 

It is clear, therefore, why the Rambam did not count these verses as negative commandments, and it is also clear why it had not been R. Moshe of Coucy's intention "to include this in the count of the prohibitions," and in that way to follow in the footsteps of the Rambam.

 

 

But here comes the vision in the dream and informs R. Moshe: "You forgot the principle: 'Beware lest you forget the Lord your God.'" It is clear that in this dream R. Moshe is told that the verse in Parashat Ekev ­– the verse that is cited in the dream – has a new and unique meaning that is not found in other mitzvot. What is that meaning?

 

R. Moshe informs us that when he contemplated the dream in the morning, he understood that "it is a great foundation in the fear of God." He further informs us that he included this prohibition "in its place." All that we have to do, then, is look for where R. Moshe included the prohibition that is based on this verse in his enumeration of the mitzvot.

 

In negative commandment no. 64, R. Moshe writes:

 

"Beware lest you forget the Lord your God" – This is a warning against Israel becoming arrogant when the Holy One, blessed be He, bestows good upon them, and saying that they acquired all of this through their own effort and toil, and not showing gratitude to the Holy One, blessed be He, because of their arrogance. To this the verse in Parashat Va'etchanan answers: "And houses full of good things, which you did not fill… and you shall eat and be satisfied, then beware lest you forget" (Devarim 6:11-12).[19]

This explanation which we gave [at the beginning of this mitzva to the verse in Parashat Ekev] is explicit in the verses that [immediately] follow: "Lest when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold is multiplied… then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt… and you say in your heart: My power and the might of my hand has gotten me this wealth. But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He that gives you power to get wealth."

From here we derive the prohibition that a person not be arrogant about what he received from the Creator, whether wealth, or beauty, or wisdom. Rather, he must be humble and low-spirited before God and man, and thank his Creator for having graced him with that virtue.

 

R. Moshe proceeds to expand upon the matter by citing verses from the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings, and from the words of Chazal in praise of humility and in condemnation of arrogance. We learn from what he says that his remarks here summarize the sermons that he delivered during the days of his wanderings in the cities of Spain. He concludes by saying:

 

I preached in public about humility, but it was not my intention to connect it to this prohibition and to count it.[20] So too, R. Moshe [the Rambam] does not include this or mention it in his enumeration of the negative commandments.

When I reached the point of finishing the negative commandments, I saw in a dream in a night vision: "You forgot the principle: 'Beware lest you forget the Lord your God.'" And I contemplated the matter in the morning, and, lo, it is a great foundation in the fear of God, and I included it with the help of He who gives wisdom to the wise.[21]

 

What new understanding did R. Moshe reach in the wake of his dream? It seems that his new insight was that we must learn the meaning of our verse from the broader context in which it is found, and not from the verse itself. For in the verse itself, immediately following the prohibition to forget God, it says: "in not keeping His commandments, and His ordinances, and His statutes," from which it may be inferred that forgetting God means not keeping His commandments. This is apparently how the Rambam and how initially also R. Moshe of Coucy understood the verse, and therefore they did not count it as one of the 613 commandments. In the dream, however, R. Moshe was informed that this verse contains a great principle in the Torah, a new principle that was not stated previously in the Torah.

 

R. Moshe read the verse in its broader context and discovered that the explanation of the verse appears in the continuation of the Torah's words:

 

 

 

 If so, forgetting God here means that your heart will be lifted up because of your success in the land, and you will say in your heart: "My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth."

 

The non-observance of the mitzvot, discussed in the latter part of the verse, is not an explanation of the first part ("you shall forget the Lord… in not keeping His commandments"). Rather, it notes the result of forgetting God,[22] of man's arrogance regarding his successes and his forgetting God's kindnesses toward him. The expected result of this mindset will be the cessation of observance of the commandments, for our commitment to them is strongly connected to our recognition of God's kindness toward us when He brought us out of Egypt and acquired us as His lot, bringing us to this goodly land.[23]

 

 

            Is the parallel verse in Parashat Va'etchanan – "Beware lest you forget the Lord" – to be understood in similar fashion, as prohibiting a person to be arrogant about his achievements and to forget the acts of kindness that God performed for him?

 

            This is, indeed, the view of R. Moshe of Coucy, as he explains in his words in negative commandment 64 (cited in the previous section and discussed in note 19).

 

            The fact is, however, that there is no need to assume that the two similar verses are identical in meaning. The verse in Parashat Va'etchanan warns about forgetting God in a context that is entirely different from that in Parashat Ekev. We are not dealing there with achievements that a person reaches by way of his power and the might of his hand, which are liable to cause him to lift up his heart and forget God's kindnesses toward him. On the contrary, all the achievements there are those that God gave him as a gift, without his bothering with them at all:

 

6:10-11:

goodly cities, which you did not build, 

and houses full of all good things, which you did not fill,

and cisterns hewn out, which you did not hew,

vineyards and olive-trees, which you did not plant

 

We dealt with the meaning of that prohibition to forget God in our study for Parashat Va'etchanan, first series, and briefly noted it in our study of that parasha last week.

 

In any case, the explanation of the verse in Parashat Va'etchanan is irrelevant to the novel insight of R. Moshe of Coucy regarding the verse in Parashat Ekev, to which he was directed in his dream.

 

 

Other Rishonim learned the evil nature of arrogance from other places in the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings, and from the words of Chazal.[24] The author of the Halakhot Gedolot, and in his wake the author of the Yere'im, counted in their list of the positive commandments the commandment to be "humble in spirit" (Halakhot Gedolot, positive commandment 165; Yere'im, no. 362). But the author of the Yere'im concedes: "But I did not find a source [in the Torah for this mitzva], other that the Torah's praise for the humble, as it is written: 'Now the man Moshe was very modest' (Bemidbar 12:3), from which we learn that there is a mitzva for a person to be modest and humble in spirit." Obviously, the Yere'im's source cannot serve as the basis for counting the mitzva among the 613 biblically ordained mitzvot, at least not according to the counting system of the Rambam and of R. Moshe of Coucy.

 

The Rambam deals at length with humility and its opposite – arrogance – in Hilkhot De'ot, chapters 1-2.[25] However, the mitzva in the Torah that he notes in Hilkhot De'ot is not specific to this attribute, but rather relates to all the traits discussed in these halakhot. At the beginning of Hilkhot De'ot, the Rambam sets the positive commandment, "And you shall walk in His ways" (Devarim 28:9) – "to emulate His ways," and in chapter 1, halakhot 5-6, he writes: "We are commanded to walk in these intermediate paths, and they are good and straight paths – as it is stated: 'And you shall walk in His ways.' … A person is obligated to accustom himself to these paths and [to try to] resemble Him to the extent of his ability."

 

The Ramban cites a specific source in the Torah for the prohibition of arrogance. In Parashat Shofetim, in the section dealing with the laws pertaining to a king, it is stated:

 

…And he shall write him a copy of this law in a book… And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life; that he may learn to fear the Lord… that his heart be not lifted up above his brothers, and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand, or to the left… (Devarim 17:18-20).

 

The Ramban comments about this (s.v. levilti rum levavo me-echav):

 

An allusion is made here in the Torah to the prohibition of arrogance, for the verse prohibits arrogance and an uplifted heart to the king, and all the more so to others, who are not fit for that… For arrogance is to God a contemptible and abhorrent trait, even for a king, for greatness and exaltation are God's…

 

The Ramban sees in this verse only an allusion, for there is no explicit prohibition here that can be enumerated among the 613 biblically ordained mitzvot. The words, "that his heart be not lifted up above his brothers," serves as the reason for the mitzva cast upon the king to write a book of the law and read it all the days of his life.[26] The Rambam already writes in his introduction to his Sefer Ha-Mitzvot in the fifth principle that "the reason for a mitzva is not to be counted as a separate mitzva."

 

Even the kal va-chomer argument advanced by the Ramban – "for the verse prohibits arrogance and an uplifted heart to the king, and all the more so to others" – is not certain. Perhaps the Torah prohibits arrogance specifically for the king, because of the damage that this quality could cause his functioning in Israel. But the arrogance of an ordinary person hurts nobody else but himself, and so perhaps we cannot learn from the prohibition applying to the king that it applies also to an ordinary person.

 

It turns out that finding an explicit verse that forbids arrogance to the entire people of Israel and to each of its individual members – a verse that can be included in the enumeration of the mitzvot – is the novel contribution of R. Moshe of Coucy in his Sefer Mitzvot Gadol, an insight that he merited from Heaven because of his humility.[27]

 

 

Is the arrogance that is forbidden based on the explicit source in our parasha the same arrogance that is discussed by the other Rishonim mentioned in this study (Halakhot Gedolot, Yere'im, Rambam, Ramban)? The answer to this question seems to be no.

 

The other Rishonim discuss the negation of arrogance as a personal trait of an individual, which corrupts his personality and harms the wholeness of his soul. The arrogance that the Torah negates in our parasha, in contrast, is discussed in a national-historical context: The Torah consistently addresses the people of Israel as a whole ("for the Lord your God brings you into a good land… then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt…"; and similarly in the continuation, though it is clear that the people of Israel is comprised of individuals to whom the Torah's warning relates. The cause of the negative arrogance of the Torah's addressee – the people of Israel – is its economic success in the goodly land, to which God brought it, success which it achieved through its toil; the content of its arrogance is forgetting "the Lord who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage"; and the cure for this is remembering the great historic kindnesses that God performed for His nation when He took them as His people and led them through the wilderness. The danger of this arrogance is also a general national danger – the cessation of the observance of the commandments and going after other gods.

 

In fact, even R. Moshe, author of the Semag, when he comes to define the prohibition at the beginning of his words in negative prohibition 64, formulates it in such a way that it corresponds to the meaning of the parasha:

 

This is a warning against Israel becoming arrogant when the Holy One, blessed be He, bestows good upon them, and saying that they acquired all of this through their own effort and toil, and not showing gratitude to the Holy One, blessed be He, because of their arrogance.

 

R. Moshe does, however, expand this prohibition of arrogance to each and every individual in all times and in all places:

 

From here we derive the prohibition that a person not be arrogant about what he received from the Creator, whether wealth, or beauty, or wisdom. Rather he must be humble and low-spirited before God and man, and thank his Creator for having graced him with that virtue.

 

In the continuation, he brings sources for the need for humility in the spirit of his last words, e.g., the verse concerning Moshe, "Now the man Moshe was very modest."

 

Despite the educational and religious truth of his words, it is doubtful whether they necessarily follow from what is stated in Parashat Ekev. It is difficult to see in the negation of the personal arrogance described in his words (arrogance regarding the wealth, beauty, or wisdom enjoyed by the individual) a biblical prohibition that is rooted in our parasha.

 

It is possible that even R. Moshe did not intend to equate the two types of arrogance, and therefore he writes: "From here we derive the prohibition that a person not be arrogant." That is to say, personal pride is not the arrogance banned by the Torah, but nevertheless the meaning of the biblical prohibition can be expanded to include it, even if it is not exactly what the Torah forbids.

 

To summarize, the Torah forbids the people of Israel with an explicit prohibition to act with arrogance with regard to their achievements in the land that God gave them, and to forget that these achievements were made possible by way of the kindnesses that God performed for them.

 

Personal arrogance is also a perverse trait, in all places and at all times and in every context, as we learn from various sources in the Torah. Some enumerators of the mitzvot count the opposite of arrogance – the trait of humility – as a positive commandment.

 

R. Moshe of Coucy's novel insight in his Sefer Mitzvot Gadol corresponds to the plain meaning of the verse, but only by combining his words regarding the special prohibition falling upon Israel as a nation – "You shall not forget the Lord your God" – with the words of the Rambam concerning the obligation falling upon the individual to perfect his character traits – especially in the matter of arrogance – will we come to a full appreciation of the Torah's attitude toward arrogance in all its contexts: "But the humble shall inherit the land, and delight themselves in the abundance of peace" (Tehillim 37:11).

 

(Translated by David Strauss)