Today we continue with the concept that if someone doesn’t rely on G-d, he’s left in hands of the one he relies on.
Hovot HaLevavot uses a pasuk from Yirmiyah to illustrate this point. Yirmiyah is lamenting, in the name of Hashem, that the Jewish people are worshipping idols.
)ירמיה ב יג): כי שתים רעות עשה עמי
My nation, the Jewish people, made 2 mistakes,
אותי עזבו מקור מים חיים
Firstly, they left Me- the Source of living water,
לחצוב להם בארות בארות נשברים אשר לא כילו המים
And secondly- they dug for themselves broken pits, that can’t hold water!
This is Hashem’s mashal- their idol worship was nothing but them relying on something other than G-d. They believed in G-d, but felt they needed a middleman- that Hashem was too big for their issues. They thought they’d deal with the sun, the moon, the ministering angel of rain... and not G-d.
Says Hashem, this is a mistake. I’m The Source of everything. The ones you’re choosing have no powers.
It’s like a father offering his son two different properties. One option is an oil well in Texas- it’s the source of all the oil. The other option is a gas station somewhere with a leaky tank of oil. Who would choose the faulty gas station over the oil well?
Hashem says that is what we’re doing when we rely on others. Their powers are limited, incomplete. Hashem wants us to come to the source. Would you rather rely on Poland Springs in its entirety, or a bottle of water?
We are making a mistake when we think G-d is too big to deal with our little problems.
In our day to day lives we know that sometimes you need a middleman. Shoprite doesn’t buy Cheerios directly from General Mills- they need a distributor. And some businesses are even too small for a middleman. The little corner grocery store is too small to get an account with Norman’s yogurt!
Not so with Hashem.
We might think we can’t ask G-d directly, that we have to go to the distributor. But that’s a mistake. Hashem wants us to talk to him directly. Hovot HaLevavot is telling us: You don’t need the middleman. You can rely directly on Hashem.