IYOV 3

Hey guys here is another Divar Torah on IYOV

So when we left of we had IYOV denying freewill, saying we all get a fixed path at birth and we can’t change what happens so we have no free will then along came Elifaz.

Elifaz mentions how he saw a prophecy “a spirit brushed my face” he talks about how all punishment comes into this world due to sin, and IYOV is probably having a very intense fast punishment to atone for all his sins that will be over soon, and one day he will have nothing left to fear as all his sins will be absolved, and he will walk with no fear of man or beast.

Elifaz hints to an interesting idea that again I saw in my book about how much control we have over our own lives. He says it is impossible man has no control over his life and impossible that everything is dependent on the free-will of man. We see people who tried so hard to do something and then ended up doing the opposite like Yosef’s brothers who tried to kill him and made him a king, and we see people shoved into positions like shual hamelech who was made a king with little of his own effort, and we see people who tried really hard for something and then achieved it like rabbi Akiva, all three levels of the spectrum. In truth most of our lives will be a bit of both like the man who digs and finds treasure he can never argue it was his digging that made him rich because hashem put the treasure there for him and put the idea in his head to dig there, but no one can say he did nothing to get what he has. Elifaz tells IYOV of many cases of the strong rising against the weak and rain and things like that to show hashgacha in the world.

IYOV answers this in a few ways he says:

Iif you could feel my pain you would know that no sin could cause this.

If hashem wanted to send a prophecy should he not have given it to me?

What is the point of g-d punishing me for sinning? Why is sinning bad because it means I’m not completing my purpose on this earth, but I can’t complete my purpose on this world if I’m suffering all day long and can’t get anything done. It’s like a king who throws his workers in jail for not building a bridge in time, at the end of the day the bridge won’t be finished better to just let them finish it late.

Finally IYOV argues it is too late in his life for things to get better as he is old and will die soon. Here he seems to be arguing the soul is not eternal and there is no world to come.

IYOV finishes his speech saying how can g-d really be looking at every single person to the detail that you describe? Man is but nothing, g-d doesn’t take that much interest in us.

Now Bildad answers IYOV, I must be honest with you I’m doing this with the Malbim explanation in my book and I don’t really see how it fits in the text so much, but it’s very clever and the Malbim says it so its defiantly true. To explain this to you lets first go back to one of IYOV’s argument:

-Bad things are happening to me

-G-d is good and does only justice

-Must be another system in this world which isn’t just but is random, fate.

So Bilad argues as follows IYOV you agree that g-d is good, so it would also be an injustice for him to hand over power to an unjust system. IYOV has two possible answers either g-d isn’t good which he can’t say because of a more fundamental logic, or g-d didn’t create fate but it was there already, but that would mean g-d is no longer all powerful which also can’t be true. So Bildad has disproved IYOV’s idea but now he has to answer his question why do bad things happen to good people. Bildad explains like this, imagine a gardener who sees a rose (represents a tzadik) growing among some rocks so what does he do, he pulls it out and replants it in a better area where he can look after it. This would be very painful for the rose and other flowers (represents a rosha) around it would feel lucky as they survived, but in the end of the day the other flowers don’t make real roots as it’s too rocky and they die young. The rose however is taken to a personal garden where his roots grow strong and after a long healthy life his seedlings (represents tzadik’s children) are planted in the garden and looked after as well. You see here sometimes when a tzadik is put through traumas it is not always for a punishment sometimes it’s to help him, often this can be seen in a physical sense that someone loses out somewhere but really gains in the long run, but sometimes it is in the spiritual sense, e.g someone is to connected to a physical thing so Hashem him by shaking him off it or something similar. The idea here is to trust that all g-d does is good as he is perfect and does no evil.

Hope you all have a lovely shabbous and please email me back with any questions (and even if you don’t have questions if you just want to say hi or talk about the weather or something)