Yesterday we spoke of the trait called Noseh Avon, which means God sustains the sin. And the Tomer Devorah that told us that when a person sins, he creates a negative angel. God, instead of unleashing the negative angel on the person that sinned (who is the creator, so to say of this negative force), God Himself sustains that negative force.
He goes on to explain that that was the statement of Kayin in Bereshit 4,13, where he tells God, “Is my sin too great to hold?” The Midrash expounds, “You're able to sustain the entire world, and my sin is too heavy? You can't sustain it until I do teshuva?”
That was the claim of Kayin after he killed his brother. So the Tomer Devorah says, this is a tremendous level of tolerance and patience. He uses the term Savlanut Gedolah. Sovel means to carry a load. Here it means the load of this person's sin.
And really, God should say, “It’s not my business. It's your business.”
How does this apply to us? And he says, “From this, a person should learn how much he has to tolerate and be patient with his friend, to tolerate the iniquity and sin that the friend did to you, to the point that the evil is still there and you are actually fixing it for him.”
What does that mean? If somebody did thing wrong to you, and they're so to say suffering from it. Let's say they didn't listen to you. You gave them good advice, and they didn't listen to you, and now things are messed up. But you go and you actually continue to help them, even when they are sinning against you. There's a saying, “You made your bed now sleep in it,” which is an unsympathetic way of saying, “You created a problem, it’s your problem,
Its not my problem. Deal with it.”
That is not one of the 13 attributes of mercy. The 13 attributes mercy say “You made your bed, but we aren’t going make you sleep in it.”
Which means we'll help you out. We'll change the bed for you. We'll even change the sheets for you.
Even though you made the bed, we're not going to force you to sleep in it.
That is this Middah of Noseh as it in, as it shows up in people. And again, the more that we do that to people, the more God acts that way with us.