If there's no Torah, there's no Derech Eretz (proper behavior). If there's no proper behavior, there's no Torah as well. Somebody who does not learn Torah doesn't really know the right way to act. He doesn't know, bottom line, how to behave. The Torah tells us exactly what we're supposed to do. We don't know what the objectively true right way is or how we're supposed to treat other people. The Torah tells us to give people the benefit of the doubt. The Torah says that we're not allowed to talk Lashon Hara (evil speech) about other people. Those are things that are not automatically logical to everybody, and not everyone is going to pick up on them unless they are taught from the Torah. On the other hand, somebody who learns Torah but doesn't know how to treat people—for example, if they're not honest or don't have moral, ethical business practices—will be laughed at. People are going to look at them and think that this type of person learned that behavior from the Torah. That is going to be a Chillul Hashem, a desecration of the name of Hashem. Therefore, that person would be punished by losing the knowledge of Torah, because Hashem doesn't want people to look at this individual with bad behavior and pin that bad behavior on the Torah.
If a person has no wisdom of the Torah, then there's no fear of heaven. If he also has no fear of heaven, then he would not have any wisdom of the Torah. These things go hand in hand. If a person has a Yirat Shamayim, he has a fear of Hashem, but no wisdom and no Torah knowledge to go with it, then the fear of sin that he has is useless because he can't put it into practice. He can't practice the Torah, and he's going to do things that are Averot (transgressions) without really knowing about them. So the fear of sin that he has isn't going to practically help him. But if a person has knowledge of Torah and no Yirat Shamayim or fear of sin, eventually he's going to look at his Torah learning as useless. He's going to say, “The Torah is stopping me from doing what I want to do. I want to enjoy my life. I want the freedom to do what I want, and the Torah is not letting me do it.” Therefore, the person is eventually going to neglect his studies as well.
If there's no intelligence, there's no understanding. But if there's no understanding, there's no intelligence. Bina, over here, is understood to be the logical understanding of something else from the fact that you have in front of you. From one fact that you have in front of you, you can understand something else. Da'at, which is a deep understanding, is the understanding of a reason behind something. So if a person has no bina, he has no intelligence; automatically, there's no understanding. That tells us that if someone can't infer anything from a particular point, it's a sign that he doesn't understand the reason for it. If I can't understand enough of it to infer something, then I don't understand what I'm talking about at all. So that's how we explain im ein bina, ein da'at (if there's no intelligence, there's no understanding). On the other hand, im ein da'at, ein bina (if there's no understanding, there's no intelligence). If a person doesn't know the reason for something, he can't learn anything from it either. So we play both off each other. A person needs a broad range. He needs deep understanding, localized to what he's talking about, and he also needs the ability, once he has that, to understand something else from the fact that he knows what he just understood.
Im ein kemach (flour), ein Torah; im ein Torah, ein kemach. If there's no flour, if there's no food, there's no Torah. If there's no Torah, there's no food. If someone doesn't have basic needs—if he doesn't have what he needs to satiate himself and take care of himself—then he's not going to have the ability to learn Torah. But if a person neglects the study of Torah, he doesn't even deserve to have food, because the purpose of food and other basic needs for a person is to give him the ability to study Torah.
We said earlier in the Perek (chapter) that anybody whose actions are more than his wisdom of Torah will have wisdom that lasts. Anybody whose wisdom is more than his actions will have wisdom that does not last. Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah is going to give us a metaphor for that idea. Basically, what we understood there was that a person who studies Torah has more knowledge than practice. By practice, it means he's not fully bought in to the Torah because he's not practicing everything he learns. Who is this person? All his knowledge is more than his actions. What does he look like? Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah says, “Anybody whose wisdom is more than their actions, what could they be compared to?” This type of person, whose wisdom is not going to prevail, is not going to last. What does he look like? What does he compare to? To a tree that has many branches but not too many roots. The wind comes, and it uproots it and turns it over on its face. A wind will come and uproot the tree. It will knock it down on its side. The roots aren't strong enough to keep the tree in the ground, and therefore it's going to get knocked out. That mashal (metaphor) is for a person who has Torah. He has a lot of branches, but he doesn't have strong roots, which are his actions. Eventually, the whole tree dies. The person in the nimshal (application of the parable) will lose all of his Torah.
We prove this from a passage in Yirmiyahu. He will be like a person who is cursed, like the person who turns away from Hashem. That's the previous Pasuk (verse). That person is going to be like a lone tree in an Arava, in the plains, that is not going to see when the good comes. The tree is going to dwell in a dry land in the wilderness, a salty land where nothing lives. The Pasuk is telling us that a person who doesn't have Ma'asav (actions), who doesn't have Ma'asim, is like a lone tree that grows in a poor land and has no support system around him. And that tree, without strong roots, is going to be knocked down by the wind.
But someone whose actions are more than his wisdom—what do we compare him to, where his wisdom is going to last? To a tree that has a few branches but many roots. Even if all the winds of the world come and blow at it, the tree is not going to budge whatsoever from its place. The person here is an individual who has Ma'asim, who has good actions; he is like a tree that has a tremendous amount of roots. The tree's roots are strong enough to hold back all of the wind. Nothing is going to bother it. The Pasuk says that this person who trusts in Hashem, this type of individual, is like a tree planted near water, with its roots spread out along the brook. It doesn't see when hot weather comes, and its leaves stay fresh forever because they're constantly drinking from the water by which the tree is planted. In the year of batzoret (drought), it isn't bothered. It's not going to worry in the year of drought, when there's no water—rain—falling from the sky. It's not going to stop producing fruit because of the brook that it's near. The roots will constantly be sucking up that type of water. It doesn't need rain. The focus here is to show that action is what matters. A man whose mitzvot, whose actions, are more than his wisdom is like a strong tree. A strong tree with roots in the ground is going to prevail. A person who doesn't have Ma'asim but has a lot of Torah, who has all the branches in the world, it doesn't matter because he's not strong at his foundation and can get knocked over very quickly.