The Hitchhiker’s Guide (21)
To know wisdom and reproof, to understand discerning maxims. To accept the reproof of insight, righteousness, justice, and uprightness. To give shrewdness to the simple, to a lad, knowledge and cunning, Let the wise man hear and gain learning, and the discerning acquire designs. Proverbs 1:2-5 Robert Alter
Reproof – Reconsider the context of that famous verse, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom . . .” It’s not the opening verse of Proverbs. The opening verses of Proverbs read like an executive summary of the book’s intention, transmitted in a series of infinitives. “To know wisdom,” “to reproof,” “to understand,” “to discern,” “to accept,” “to give shrewdness.” Once you realize what the book is about, then you’re ready for the connection to the fear of the LORD.
One of the opening verbs is mûsār, the foundation of Luzzatto’s entire educational campaign. Literally, the verse reads, “To know ḥokmâ and mûsār.” Not one without the other. How are they so closely related? ḥokmâ, typically translated “wisdom,” is not the collection of facts and figures. In Hebrew, the word “represents a manner of thinking and attitude concerning life’s experiences; including matters of general interest and basic morality. These concerns relate to prudence in secular affairs, skills in the arts, moral sensitivity, and experience in the ways of the Lord.”[1] It is eminently practical! You might say that ḥokmâ is life-style. It’s the way you approach the world. As such, it is necessarily tied to mûsār because mûsār is the essential quality of correcting behavior. “From the usage and parallels in the ot, one must conclude that yāsar and mûsār denote correction which results in education.”[2] It’s the way life-style gets changed, and that doesn’t always happen because of new cognitive information. Mûsār is yetzer ha’tov muscle training. It’s changing how we do something because someone else has pointed out our error. It’s regrouping, rethinking, reorganizing, and most of all, replacing what we have done with what we must now do. In fact, Proverbs is an entire book about warnings and changes in direction. One of those warnings is about staying away from bad influencers.
Luzzatto’s mûsār discipline includes the recognition of maintaining distance from things and people that lead us astray. The Hebrew word is prishut. “Prishut is the distance from self-interest necessary to allow fear of the other to be transformed into joy in serving the other. . . It is wrong to associate prishut with asceticism. It is, rather, the ability to be radically mindful of the other amid the inevitability of our material life. Abstinence, then, is redefined; what is really meant by not taking pleasure in something, is not using it to aggrandize the self.”[3]
Once more we see the ethical commitment to service to others. Remember Luzzatto’s real measure: “ . . . the question we ask ourselves in this meditative process is: ‘How did our success or failure to realize this middah affect the other person?’ not ‘How did this make me feel?’”[4]
What does this mean? “All Israel are responsible for one another. As a result each individual is bound to everyone else and no man is counted separately.”[5] In the biblical world, we are created socially ethical beings. Responsible for others. That comes first.
Step 21: Measure your actions by the impact on others.
Topical Index: mûsār, prishut, distance, ḥokmâ, wisdom, Proverbs 1:2-5
[1] Goldberg, L. (1999). 647 חָכַם. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 282). Chicago: Moody Press.
[2] Gilchrist, P. R. (1999). 877 יָסַר. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 386). Chicago: Moody Press.
[3] Ira F. Stone, in Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, Mesillat Yesharim: The Path of the Upright, p. 169.
[4] Ira F. Stone, “Introduction,” in Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, Mesillat Yesharim: The Path of the Upright, p. xix.
[5] Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, Derekh ha-Shem II 3:8.
