Rasag splits these verses, which he sees as a group, into two subgroups, so we will deal with them in that way as well. The first group, verses 10-15, read as follows:

My son, if sinners entice you, do not be lured; If they say to you, come with us, we will wait in ambush for someone’s blood, we will hide [to hurt] an innocent one for no reason; We will swallow them like the grave, [yet] alive, and whole as those who descend into a pit; All precious treasure we will find, we will fill our houses with spoils; Cast your lot in our midst, we will all have one purse; My son, do not tread a path with them, withhold your legs from their ways.

The simplest reading of these verses is that they are a warning against being lured to join other people who engage in highway robbery, and this is, indeed, the way Rashi reads the verses. Rasag, however, casts the entire discussion in terms of the internal struggle that would be involved for a person in deciding on a life of crime. He notes that the verses are pointing out to us the characteristics that lead people to such crimes as robbery—a focus on the pleasures of the physical world, which lead people to crave money and all that money can bring.

To follow those instincts, which all humans possess (as Rasag has pointed out in his introduction), we must quash other instinctive qualities as well, such as mercy and compassion. To the extent that we do so, we are pushing ourselves towards our animalistic side—remember that Rasag, in the introduction, had seen human beings as containing a sekhel and a teva, with teva referring to the qualities that produce purely immediate survival and pleasure. In cultivating their teva qualities, robbers and other criminals neglect those elements that make them most human. It is for that reason, Rasag says, that Scripture uses animal metaphors (a lion who tears at his prey, for example) for kings and others evildoers.

In Rasag’s reading, we should note, the resha`im whom the addressee is being warned against are his own worst instincts, those that seek money and the pleasures of the world. Following those urges is not primarily being seen as a problem because of the actions that will ensue, but because of the negative character traits that will be cultivated. To use one example, Rasag interprets the metaphor of a grave used in verse 12 as meaning that the person will become grave-like in losing all compassion for others. The entire battle—lure and resistance—is happening internally rather than externally.

POINTS TO PONDER: Rasag assumes that developing into an evil person is a process of following certain natural instincts and repressing others. Do you see it that way? Are some people just born with the lust for money at all costs, while others are born merciful? Or, perhaps, are we all born selfish and some of us (with the help of parents and teachers) learn to be more humane in our conduct?

VERSES 16-19

The next four verses read:

For their legs run to do evil, and hurry to spill blood; For the net is spread for naught in the eyes of every wing-bearer; And they are lying in ambush for their blood, wait in hiding for their own souls; So are the paths of every taker of lucre, it takes the soul of its owners.

Rashi’s reading of these verses shows some problems in trying to read them in order. The first two read as written, but then the pronoun in the third of these verses becomes problematic—who is lying in ambush for whose blood? Since the previous verse had referred to a net that was spread "for naught," Rashi assumed the one lying in ambush were the hunters who had spread that net.

That means, though, that the evildoers who were the subject of verses 16 and 17 have now become the objects, not realizing that the nets (presumably the sins they intend to commit) that are out there are actually lures by hunters (the Yetser haRa? Rashi does not elaborate) are traps that will destroy them. So, too, when the last of these four verses refers to the money taking the souls of its owners, Rashi needs to point out that the money that has been stolen is what takes their souls. Trying to read the verses in order, then, creates ambiguities that Rashi needed to solve.

Rasag’s reading of this part of the chapter, which solves Rashi’s ambiguities in a more smooth fashion, is interesting more for its assumptions about Hebrew grammar than for any novel insights it has into the process of character development. Rasag says that in Hebrew poetry, couplets like this one mean to link the first and third verses and then the second and fourth. Conceptually, that means that the verses are listing two propositions first, and then listing their results.

In this instance, the assumption leads to the following reading of the verses: Evildoers are running to evil, hurrying to spill others' blood, not realizing that they are actually ambushing themselves (by allowing their animalistic traits to rule them), and are destroying their own souls. Just as birds think that the food set in the trap is free for the taking, thinking that the net underneath has no purpose, those who acquire money improperly don’t realize that their actions takes their souls.

GRA 10-14

Gra’s presentation is, as usual, too rich and complex to cover all of these verses this week. When verse 10 warns against the lure of sinners, Gra interprets the word hata’im as referring to those who do not observe the positive commandments. Since they do not, we can be sure that these people are not calling us to join them in any sort of positive activity. You may recall from last week that Gra separated the positive and negative commandments as religious categories; here, he is expanding that distinction to differentiate among types of sinners.

A person who violates prohibitions but also observes commandments differs meaningfully from someone who does not. Here, it seems as if Gra is also bothered by someone who is careful not to violate prohibitions but does not also take positive actions. Such a person is not worth entering into joint endeavors with, since we can be sure they will not be positive. Of course, Gra might have thought that it was impossible to avoid all positive actions without also violating certain prohibitions; his category of hata’im might not mean that the person is able to avoid all prohibitions, just that he does not do anything positive.

FOR FURTHER CONSIDERATION: What is the balance between avoiding negative action and taking positive action within Judaism? Is it meaningful to separate people by the extent to which they take positive actions to fulfill the Torah’s dictates? Does such a categorization suggest ways to view our ordinary Jewish lives differently from currently? Our jobs, family life, observance of Shabbat, shul activity?

For the next verses, Gra first notes that there are two kinds of yetser hara, evil inclination, which he names the ka`asani and the ta’avani, literally the angry one and the lustful one. Angry yetser hara means the one that leads to outer-directed sins, such as murder and robbery. Ta’avani involves sins that are feeding certain internal desires, most notably sexual and appetitive (sins of eating). Since the Torah put a ka`asani crime ahead of a ta’avani one in the Ten Commandments (the prohibition of murder precedes that of lo tin’af, of sexual immorality), Mishlei does as well, and brings up robbery and murder.

Gra envisions four kinds of robbers, using the factors of whether the robber kills, and whether it occurs at home or on the road. His fitting those categories into the verses is not exegetically or conceptually particularly interesting, but it is worth noting in getting a sense of his tendency to posit categories and split groups of people along the lines of a few central issues. In addition, those categories help him explain the groups in the last verses. For example, when verse 16 refers to their running to evil, and hurrying to kill, Gra sees that as separate groups of robbers.

One interesting piece in Gra’s presentation is his noting that verse 15 refers to not going be-derekh with such people, as well as avoiding netivatam (their paths). Gra sees this as warning both against joining them in their central endeavors, which is somewhat obvious since it is evil. The verse therefore also warns against even taking any of the activities that may lead one onto those roads eventually (the on-ramps to the path of sin). The synonyms for road that will crop up in Mishlei will frequently provide Gra with ways to distinguish types of path in life.

The upshot of the verses for Gra, then, is that we should not join robbers, whether those that kill or not, for any period of time, since their obvious evil means that they will never allow us to escape with any profit. Even assuming that we can get in and out before they turn on us is a mistake, and should be avoided.

As on other occasions, Rashi and Gra end up being fairly similar to each other, seeing the verses as a warning about theft, murder, and the like. Rasag focuses less on the external sins as on the internal consequences and character traits created by those sins. We will have to continue to watch and see whether this distinction affects their reading of Mishlei throughout.

Shabbat Shalom.