Close To Torah

King David never merited building the Beis HaMikdash. Instead he set the foundations of it in a spiritual and physical sense and his son King Shlomo completed the project after David’s death. David aspired to be the one to build the ultimate place of Hashem’s dwelling in this world but he was denied. David expressed his longing to build Hashem a dwelling place (verse 8). He asked Hashem to test him and to find him worthy. In this psalm David talks about why he asked Hashem for a test and he expresses his remorse for the incident of Basheva.

Company

In listing off his merits David states that “I did not sit with men of falsehood (verse 4).” This phrase requires understanding. In the very first psalm David states (Tehillim 1:1), “Praiseworthy is the man who does not walk with the wicked, stand with the sinners and sit with the scoffers.” Rashi there explains that the Yetzer Harah gets one to sin gradually. First one comes to walk with sinners; then one begins to stand. Next, he gets comfortable and sits with them to join them. The verse outlined the man’s downfall. It began with a walk, then standing; then sitting. Here in our verse King David states that he did not sit with sinners, does this mean to imply that he did walk and stand with them?

Mountain and Hair

The Talmud in Sukkah (52a) tells us that in the future when Hashem destroys the Yetzer Harah, different people will perceive the Evil Inclination in varied ways. The righteous people will see him as a great mountain. The evil people will see him as a tiny strand of hair. They will both cry. The righteous people will cry joyfully, “look at this great mountain that I surpassed.” The evil people will cry woefully, “look at this small hair that I could not overcome.” The question is: What is the Yetzer Harah in reality, a mountain or a hair?

Perspective

I believe that the Yetzer Harah is really a hair. The evil people are correct. He begins to seduce a person with small sins. These sins escalate and become greater and more evil schemes with the coming of days. Many times we watch people make foolish mistakes and begin to slide into even deeper trouble. Eventually, the Yetzer Harah becomes a great and large mountain of sin. The sinners have a myopic view and thus when they are faced with the option of evil they say that it is only a small hair and they give in and commit the crime. This leads to their eventual downfall. The righteous people however have foresight. They acknowledge that the sin before them is really only a small hair, however, they see the result that they will fall and end up committing mountains of sins. Thus they stop themselves. This is what it means that the righteous people view the Yetzer Harah as a mountain. They learn to control themselves by using foresight and seeing the grave danger that giving into the hair will lead too. It is truly a mountain of destruction.

David’s Perspective

This now explains David’s words in our psalm. David saw the end result of walking and stopping to stand with evil people. He saw that it would lead to his being influenced to sit with them and to become like them. Thus he states that he “did not sit with them”, which means that he worked hard to stay away from the evil doers knowing that even coming in contact with them could result in his own service of God being diminished. This psalm is dedicated to David’s repentance for his own sins and thus includes this vital message. David expressed that if one wants to steer away from sin he must learn to see the long-term effects of his actions.

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