The Sefat Emet in Devarim, Parashat Ekev (in the year תרנב), explains the pasuk we are studying:
ברוך הגבר אשר יבטח
בה׳
Blessed is the man the relies on Hashem
והיה ה׳ מבטחו
And Hashem will be his reliance.
We have been discussing the seeming redundancy of this wording: If someone relies on Hashem, of course Hashem is his reliance.
The Sefat Emet explains that
בטחו בו בכל עת
Rely on God at all times
means that there is a bitachon that a person has in times of challenge, but, in his words, “The main bitachon is when everything is serene.”
We should not think that we did it on our own.
Just as we shouldn’t think, as the pasuk says, כחי ועצם ידי עשה לי את החיל הזה
My strength and my power caused me to amass this wealth..
Rather, “We should remember that God is the One that gives us the strength to amass wealth. As the Targum says, God gives us the good ideas...”
When everything is fine and everything is good, we have to know that is also from Hashem.
That’s the main bitachon.
So he explains that,
ברוך הגבר אשר יבטח בה׳
Fortunate is the one that relies on Hashem
And when does he rely on Hashem?
When he has no problems or difficulties.
And then in the future
והיה ה׳ מבטחו
Hashem will be his reliance, when he has a problem Has V’Shalom.
This explains why the pasuk describes reliance in the current tense initially (who relies) אשר יבטח
and then in the future tense at the end והיה ה׳ מבטחו
Hashem will be his reliance.
It starts with relying on Hashem when things are good, and then, in the merit of training yourself to rely on Hashem when things are good, and realizing that you didn’t make it good on your own,
והיה ה׳ מבטחו
Then Hashem will be your reliance when the difficult things happen.
The key is remember Hashem when things are good.
That’s the Ikar, in his words. That’s a big Hiddush- The main reliance on Hashem is when everything is serene.
With that, the commentaries explain why the term ברוך הגבר Baruch HaGever is used. We have discussed that Gever comes from the root Gibbor, strong one.
But there’s another explanation: Gever means he’s strong, and that he is not relying on Hashem because he cannot do it (for example if he can’t pay his mortgage, he has to rely on Hashem to pay it).
That’s certain level of bitachon, but the higher level is Baruch HaGever- he is a Gibbor! He’s a He-man! He’s someone that can do something.
The Gemara says, “In a place that there is no man, be a G’var/ a man.”
It means to be someone strong.
This guy is a Gever, he can do it on his own, and yet he’s still Yivtach B’Hashem.
That brings him to the level that
והיה ה׳ מבטחו
Hashem will be his reliance
when he can’t do it in his own.
This concept shows up in the Zohar, where it says that a person is supposed to pray every day, before he eats, for his parnasa.
But if the food is there already, why are you now praying for your parnasa? The answer is that this is the higher level. Even when you have the bowl of Cheerios in front of you, you can sit down and say that you are relying on Hashem in order to be able to eat the bowl of cereal. Because the truth is, it has to be digested, it has to be processed, it can’t be poisoned….
Even for the simplest of things, we need Hashem to bring the Hatzlacha in.
As we have said in the past, Rabbenu Yona says that there are people who have bitachon on the big things, because those things are out of their control. But for the little things, which they think they can control, they think they can handle those things.
But the Sefat Emet says that the Ikar HaBitachon is having bitachon in Hashem when you think you can handle it. Not on the long trips, and not on the challenging situation, and not on the first day of school… But on the 50th day of school, the 10th time on the job, on the 1,000th flight. When it seems like everything is under control, that’s when you need to have bitachon, to realize you need Hashem for that too.
Have a wonderful day.