Commentary for Psalms 1:2

But his desire is in the law of the Lord Hence you learn that the company of scorners brings one to neglect the study of Torah.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord: – He says: if he has departed from the evil way and yet has not done good, behold, he has not performed his work completely and it is not said of him, "Happy is he!" And so it says: "Depart from evil and do good" (Ps. 34:15). And although our teachers of blessed memory have said (Midrash, Shoher Tob, adloc.), "If a man sits and has not committed sin, he is rewarded as one who performs a mitzvah," they have also interpreted (ibid.) [Depart from evil and do good] applying it to the case of him to whom transgression has come and who has been delivered from it, as it is said "Depart from evil and do good," i.e. Depart from evil for the sake of doing good. And so it says (Ps. 119:3), "Yea, they do no unrighteousness; they walk in His ways." And they hold that he who has conquered his inclination in regard to an action is as one who has performed a mitzvah, when the temptation has befallen him, and so it is as is said, " Yea, they do no unrighteousness," etc.; although they have done no unrighteousness, still it is necessary that they should walk in His ways and do a good work. And so he says, Happy is the man that walketh not. But what does he do? His delight is in the law of the Lord. And included in delight is both learning and doing, as (in the text) "from doing thy delight" (Is. lviii 13); and doing apart from learning is not sufficient.

כי אם: Withholding from doing bad is not enough, the condition of אושר is that he does good. And not that he does good out of politeness alone, like philosophers who fabricate religions for themselves, but [the condition is that the reason he does good is because] he keeps the Torah of Hashem and its commandments. And he [the author of the psalm] explains that the condition [of אושר] is doing the good because it is good to do so, and because it is a commandment of Hashem, and not because of other facets that he hopes to gain for his work, [like] payment and benefit. In that [latter] case, his desire wouldn't be Hashem's Torah, rather the pleasantness and helpfulness is because he hopes for payment for his work. Therefore, [the author] conditions כי אם בתורת ה' חפצו: Hashem's Torah [must be] his desire. And perfection in this (doing good by carrying out Hashem's Torah and mitzvos) is split into two parts: perfection in study and perfection in action. Perfection in study is called תורת ה', because it teaches the wisdom of Hashem and his ways and his truth, but man won't reach the ultimate takeaway from this aspect, and it's enough to desire it and attempt to grasp it and look deeply into it, but even if he doesn't reach it (comprehend what he's studying to the point of reaching conclusive applicable commandments), he doesn't fear. Perfection in action is תורת האדם, that it teaches that which should be done or that which shouldn't be done, and this is called תורתו, and about this portion [of the Torah] it says, יהגה יומם ולילה, that he should learn it on the condition to do it, [meaning that unlike with the portions of Torah that do not come to command a person in a specific action, and therefore do not need to be learned in a way to extract an action as the application, the portions of Torah that command a person in an action must be learned with the intention to know exactly how to act in accordance with what the Torah commands].