The next perek of משלי starts with some practical advice:
If you owe money to another and (presumably) can’t pay, humble yourself before them.
And don’t stop working until you can pay them back.
That sounds like good advice, but this is ספר משלי, the book of metaphors. The מפרשים assume that something deeper is meant:
You are part of a ברית with הקב״ה, and you cannot possibly completely fulfill your side of the bargain. Therefore התרפס ורהב רעיך: humble yourself and glorify ה׳.
But that is a בין אדם למקום interpretation. It’s not wrong, but it’s not the subject that משלי deals with. The Gra has what I think is a more relevant understanding of the metaphor.
If I am acting as an instructor, I have to be careful to give you good advice, but you are still responsible for your own actions. I have a level of responsibility, but it isn’t that strong. That is the Gra’s ערב סתם. If I am acting as a judge or פוסק, then I am telling you what to do. If I am wrong and you end up doing the wrong thing, then the onus rests on me alone. That is the Gra’s ערב קבלן.
And therefore, if I make a mistake I will be either נוקשת, in a net, or נלכדת, in a trap, which is even harder to get out of.
And in those cases, when you have mis-judged or mis-taught, you need to be humble and admit your mistakes.
The only way to become a better teacher is to respect your students.
And this isn’t just about judges and rabbis. We are all judges. Every time we interact with another, we are judging.
And we need to be very careful about this because נוקשת באמרי פיך; נלכדת באמרי פיך: your own words will trap you.
So therefore, Shomo concludes, you need to be single minded in your pursuit of דן את כל האדם לכף זכות :אל תתן שנה לעיניך; ותנומה לעפעפיך.
That image, of not sleeping until you accomplish your goal, comes from David:
Mishlei’s mussar message number eight is: assume the best of others; דן את כל האדם לכף זכות. And of all of Mishlei’s messages, this is the one that needs to be as intense as David’s need to build the בית המקדש.
And then Shlomo turns to a well-known symbol:
The idea that ants work hard and are a lesson about not being lazy, is an old trope in many cultures.
Are we really supposed to learn מדות from the animals?
The problem with anthropomorphizing animal behavior is that there’s too much: what do we learn? Do we learn modesty from the cat, or aggressive cruelty?
The answer, I think, is that they are metaphors. They have the meaning we assign to them, and the vivid images stick with us.
The contrast with the שור and חמור makes Yeshaya’s message to the Jewish people much more potent.
I hate to disagree with Rav Lichtenstein, but he argues that the gemara in עירובין is saying that we could learn from animals.
There are good arguments for the idea of natural law, of דרך ארץ that precedes תורה. However, we cannot literally learn דרך ארץ from the behavior of animals. אלמלי לא נתנה תורה means “If not for the giving of the Torah, we would have learned from the animal world”. That’s not a good thing. Animals don’t act morally.
The image of the ant in משלי emphasizes value of metaphor. We observe animal behavior, anthropomorphize them, and our brains take their behavior as normal and therefore morally good. The things we see in dreams predict the future, not because of some mystical power of our unconscious brains, but because the meaning we assign to the things we observe determines our behavior.
Animal behavior is the same way.
So, then,
what lesson are we supposed to take from the ant? What, exactly, are we not to be lazy about? Most מפרשים take this paragaph as independent of the previous ones, and as a metaphor for using your youth wisely.
Shlomo explicits states that lesson in קוהלת.
But here the parallel between מעט שנות מעט תנומות and the previous paragraph: אַל תִּתֵּן שֵׁנָה לְעֵינֶיךָ וּתְנוּמָה לְעַפְעַפֶּיךָ seems to emphasize the connection. We read the previous paragraph as about the moral debt we owe others in judging them. The image of the ant is of a social insect, constantly moving and interacting with the other members of the colony, is a bird-eye view of our constant interaction with others. Don’t be the עצל who doesn’t work at those interactions.