Today we will study Tehilim chapter 86, pasuk 2
שָׁמְרָה נַפְשִׁי כִּי־חָסִיד אָנִי הוֹשַׁע עַבְדְּךָ אַתָּה אֱלֹהַי הַבּוֹטֵחַ אֵלֶיךָ
Guard my soul because I’m pious
Save your servant, You are my God
And I rely on You
What does “Hasid Ani- I am pious” mean?
There are many explanations, but Rashi says that it means, “I hear myself being cursed, and my disgrace and I’m able to seek vengeance but I remain quiet.”
That is Rashi’s explanation of what it means to be a Hasid. This is a powerful technique, that you may have heard before- If someone is insulted and doesn’t respond, great things happen.
I saw a beautiful Chatam Sofer that bears repeating many times.
Eliyahu HaNavi who is Pinhas, lives forever.
What zechut/merit did Pinhas/Eliyahu have to get to live forever? What did he do?
We know that he killed Zimri, which was an act of zealousness, but not every zealot lives forever.
Rashi says, at the beginning of Parashat Pinhas, that everyone made fun of Pinhas- His grandfather Yitro was a convert… and he went and killed a Nasi of Yisrael. Who did he think he was? So they taunted him.
But it says that Pinhas did nothing in response. He was exactly on this level of piousness and he didn’t respond.
The Gemarah tells us, in Masechet Hagiga, that if someone passes away before their time, for whatever reason, there are extra years that were allotted to their lives. What happens to those years?
If a person was supposed to die at 80, but sinned, so he lived only until 60, the Gemarah says that Hashem gives those 20 extra years to a Talmid Chacham who lets things go, someone who gets insulted and doesn’t respond.
As such, the Chatam Sofer says that when Pinhas killed Zimri, if the 24,000 people who died at that time (before Pinhas killed Zimri) each lived one year less, that would give Pinhas an additional 24,000 years to live. That’s a long time.
Pinhas merited all of the years of the people that died, and that is why he lived forever. Because he was insulted.
Hashem worked it out.
If no one had insulted Pinhas, and 24,000 people died when he killed Zimri, he never would have gotten those years.
Hashem gave him the opportunity to be insulted.
The Pele Yoetz actually says that if we knew of the benefits of being insulted, we would chase people to insult us. (But we don’t want to give people the punishment of insulting others. That would not be a good thing.)
David HaMelech understands and appreciates what it is to be insulted. When Shimi be Gera insulted him, David HaMelech said, “God told him to curse.”
The Chafetz Chaim quotes from the Zohar that David HaMelech became the fourth pillar of God’s throne (the other three are Avraham, Yitzhak and Yaakov) when he was cursed by Shimi ben Gera and did not respond. Therefore, David HaMelech says,
שָׁמְרָה נַפְשִׁי כִּי־חָסִיד אָנִי
I am asking that in the merit of that, I should be saved and protected from released from my problems.
He ends off with
הַבּוֹטֵחַ אֵלֶיךָ
I rely on You,
because what gives a person the strength to be insulted and not respond? That comes from Bitachon.
Bitachon is relying on Hashem,
And that is what gave David HaMelech the inner strength to not respond, and to realize that, “Hashem told him to curse.”
He was able to take it on the chin and appreciate that it was coming from Hashem.
It’s interesting that, as we have mentioned before, we have a custom brought down from the Geonim, to bang the Aravot on the ground on Hoshana Raba.
Aravot correspond to the lips. A pasuk in Eicha says, “Put dirt in your mouth, maybe there’s hope.”
What does this mean?
It could be that a person got a bad judgement on the high holidays. But if someone insulted them and they didn’t respond, by “putting the dirt in their mouth,” that will give them hope. To symbolize this, we take the aravot and bang them on the ground. It’s like putting our lips on the ground, like putting dirt in our mouths..putting a cork in it, to not respond.
We do this on Hoshana Raba because as the 7 days of Succot correspond to the 7 Sadikim, Hoshana Raba corresponds to David HaMelech. This was David HaMelech’s trait- not responding.
שָׁמְרָה נַפְשִׁי כִּי־חָסִיד אָנִ
That is why we go through this ceremony on Hoshana Raba- to recall that message, which we must take with us throughout the year.
Put dirt in your mouth, like David HaMelech, and maybe there is hope.
Have a wonderful day.