Today we will study tehilim chapter 39, pasuk ח
וְעַתָּ֣ה מַה־קִּוִּ֣יתִי אֲדֹנָ֑י תּ֝וֹחַלְתִּ֗י לְךָ֣ הִֽיא
And now, for what do I hope, Hashem?My longing is to You
Many of the commentaries explain that David HaMelech is saying, “What do I hope for? Do I hope for money? Do I hope for health? Do I hope for marriage? Do I hope for all of the possible physical successes? Yes
But ,לך היא תּ֝וֹחַלְתִּ֗י
What I really want, out of all of those things that I am hoping for, is to get close to You, Hashem.
I need my money to serve You, I need my marriage to serve You, I need my health to serve You.
But there is a difference between Kivoy/Hope, and Tochelet/longing
Tochelet is a long, drawn out waiting. That is why it is translated as my longing. So while I have a lot of hopes throughout life, there is one constant. There is one longing- My longing is to You. That is all I really want.
And that is the underlying current to all of my requests. It’s one real request. Like David HaMelech said, “I only asked for one thing. I should dwell in God’s house forever.” That is all I want.
How can this be all he wants? David HaMelech has a whole Tehilim of requests! But those are hundreds of individual requests.
The underlying request, and the longing, which has been there forever, is for You, Hashem.
There is a lot of hoping, but what is a longing? What is the long-term goal? What do I want to get to? I want to get to Hashem.
The commentaries add that getting to Hashem is not just in this world.
We need food for Shabbat here, in this world, we need money to serve Hashem, in this world. But the long-term goal is Olam Habah- to be with Hashem forever and ever. That is what I am really longing for. That is the long, long term goal.
Mesilat Yesharim starts off his sefer with this- That a person’s end goal is to realize that he is here in this world in order to get to the next world. That is very, very important.
That makes life much much easier. תּ֝וֹחַלְתִּ֗י My long-term goal is לך היא To You.
People often invest their money. There are day traders, and long-term investors. Some people know that they’re in it for the long-haul, for 20, 30, 40 years. They know that their money is there, and they don’t get concerned by the day-to-day fluctuations. They are in it for their retirement, not for the day to day.
Therefore, if their portfolio of a few million dollars is down by $30,000, it doesn’t bother them, because they aren’t taking out the money or using it now.
Imagine going through life like that. Take any ticket, or any challenge that comes along, and imagine it in the larger Olam Habah picture, when we are dealing with תּ֝וֹחַלְתִּ֗י לך היא
My longing is to You,
If you can do that, the problem becomes a joke. If you can think about forever, and ever and ever, if you understand what eternity is, what does this little challenge look like in that context?
I saw a recently a sefer, Agan HaSa’ar, about the life of Rabbi Genehovsky, a great Gadol who used to give shiurim in Yeshivat Tchebin in Yerushalayim. He included in it, advice that he had received from his mother, which many great rabbis have done. He said that his mother told him that any time he goes through a (non-major) crisis, he should imagine that it is now ten years later, and that he is looking back at the crisis. How would he feel looking back at the situation in ten years?
Imagine being at the airport for a trip to Israel, and with your flight scheduled to leave in an hour and a half, and then realizing that that you forgot the bar mitzvah boy’s passport at home!
Now fast forward ten years, when you are at this boy’s wedding.
Will that crisis really make a difference?
That is how we go with a larger picture.
That is what David HaMelech is telling us here, in this pasuk:
וְעַתָּ֣ה מַה־קִּוִּ֣יתִי אֲדֹנָ֑י
And now, for what do I hope, Hashem?
Of course I want all the little hopes to be fulfilled
but,
תּ֝וֹחַלְתִּ֗י לְךָ֣ הִֽיא
My longing is for You
I am here for the long-haul.
I am here for the long term investment.
Therefore, the day-to-day ups and downs don’t bring me down.
Have a wonderful day.
(These comments, like many of our lessons, are from a commentary called Mikdash Me’at, which is a beautiful collection of commentaries on Tehilim from about 150 years ago. I read through them and present the basic themes. The goal here is not to present a Tehilim class but rather to come away with a bitachon take away.)