Kavanot: Dumb Animals

The last of the תהילים בני קרח is one that reflects the way we’ve understood בני קרח: they are the ones speaking truth to power, telling the rich and powerful that they are not so important. The psalmist starts with a call to the whole world:

This word, חלד, comes from the word for rust:

It refers to the fact that the whole world decays and dies. David used that expression in תהלים פרק לט:

So the message of this perek is: everybody dies. In fact, we say this perek in a house of shiva after davening. But the message is more specific: everybody dies, and money can’t save you.

בן אדם implies a lowly human being; בן איש implies someone important.

So this pasuk is a chiasm; בני אדם corresponds to אביון and בני איש corresponds to עשיר. Together they from a merism meaning “everyone”, emphasizing here that even the rich and important need to listen, שמעו זאת כל העמים. And this hearkens back to the original קרח's message of equity.

בני קרח are making the point that קרח wasn’t wrong about this; he just used that fact for his own aggrandizement. The people still need to hear the message.

The חכמות and משל, the meat of the perek, start with a question:

That last phrase, עון עקבי יסובני, is hard to translate; literally “the sin of my heels surrounds me”. Artscroll translates:

But first, what are ימי רע? Kohelet uses that term to describe old age, in his famous metaphor:

As we discussed in Like a Hole in the Head, Rav Hirsch makes a distinction between לָֽמָּה, with a dagesh in the מ and the stress on the first syllable (מלעיל), and לָמָֽה, with no dagesh and the stress on the second syllable (מלרע). He says the former (which is the form in our perek) refers not to the immediate purpose but to the ultimate goal. So it’s not so much “why am I afraid?” but “what is the point of my fear?”

But what is “the sin I trod upon”?

So the חידה, the riddle, is למה אירא בימי רע; it is not a rhetorical question, but a real one: what should I fear as I grow old? Missing out on the minor מצוות.

The problem with that translation is that it is inconsistent with the rest of the perek, which is about the futility of relying on wealth. So I prefer the implication of the JPS translation:

with עקבי meaning “those who follow on my heels”, as

But that doesn’t fit the rest of the perek either; the psalmist isn’t afraid of anyone. The perek later tells us כסיל ובער יאבדו; ועזבו לאחרים חילם: wealth can’t help, because we all die and leave that wealth to others. So I would translate עון עקבי יסובני as “the sin of those who will come after me, who surround me now”—my heirs. I am afraid now about what will happen to my children. Will they get the lesson I am teaching here?

The psalmist describes the problem: people are counting on their money to save them.

אח , in אח לא פדה יפדה איש, should mean “brother”:

But “brother” doesn’t fit. So again, I like the JPS translation. They connect אח to the word האח, ”Aha!“:

And similarly, JPS translates here:

It’s not “Ah” as a sigh of regret but “Aha” as an expression of demonstration: there is no בטחון in חיל, because you can’t buy salvation.

פדיון is יקר in the sense of “too valuable”; the price is too high.

And then there is the pun of חדל and חלד. Human beings end up with both: life decays (חלד) and then ends (חדל).

Then the psalmist asks a rhetorical question:

At first glance, the psalmist seems to be equating the deaths of the חכם and the כסיל, as in Kohelet:

But Malbim points out that there is a difference between ימותו and יאבדו:

There is a hint here to the concept of עולם הבא and תחיית המתים.

The rich think they will live forever:

But there is simultaneously the meaning that really they will be in the grave forever; קִרְבָּם is a pun on קִבְרָם:

And then the refrain of the perek:

However you think of your eternal rest, it will not be with your money. Human beings will not take their valuables to the grave; in death we are just like any animal. He invokes the thought in the beginning of Kohelet:

But again, בני קרח are not that nihilist. There is another path:

Their way of thinking is foolish.

In the second half of the perek, the psalmist turns to his audience, עקבי יסובני, and describes himself in contrast to those fools:

They are like sheep being herded by death, to their unthinking fate (כבהמות נדמו).

לבקר is another metaphor for עולם הבא:

And specifically, לבקר echoes, in the words of בני קרח, of the downfall of the original קרח:

וצורם לבלות שאול; מזבל לו is hard to translate; JPS says “Meaning of Heb. uncertain”. Malbim takes the subject to be the ישרים, and צורם, their rock, to be a metaphor for the soul that will overcome death.

So when I die, I will not go to שאול, even as כי יקחני.‎ שְׂאוֹל is a common word in תנ״ך and has a specific connotation:

It is not just a poetic synonym for death. It’s a bad death, a punishment.

What is “גיהנם” in this sense? It is a state of silence, of losing the connection to הקב״ה:

That is what Rambam calls the ultimate punishment:

In משלי , a synonym for שאול is אבדון, being lost.

and that connects to the כסיל ובער above whose deaths are described as יאבדו, as opposed to ימותו. Everyone dies, but there is a way to avoid שאול, but it’s not through wealth, but through serving ה׳, being one of the ישרים.

And then the psalmist summarizes:

And the conclusion echoes פסוק יג, but with a twist:

The previous pasuk has ואדם ביקר בל ילין, human beings will not rest with their wealth. But the real lesson is, “human beings may have true wealth, but they do not understand it”; riches are a tool, not an end. And that is the final lesson of this series of תהילים לבני קרח.