Musar untuk Kejadian 3:24

I am surprised that when it comes to smallpox outbreaks, which spreads from child to child, why do people not take their children out of the city? In the future, the fathers will be responsible for the deaths of their children who are nursing, and have committed no sin, and those who are weaned and have committed no sins, and died from the sickness whose fathers did not take them away [from the city]. Every man who fears god should fear every eventuality. These things that are included in protecting the body are included in the warnings of (Devarim 4:9) 'take utmost care and watch yourselves scrupulously' and this is also the way of the world to take care of one's body since it is the container that the soul is wrapped up in so it will be a throne for the soul.

Regarding involuntary manslaughter, discussed in 21,13, the penalty of exile to a city of refuge parallels Adam's expulsion from Eden. Adam's sin had been due to the serpent's power to seduce. This had resulted in death being introduced in the universe (Genesis 2,17). When the Torah writes here מכה איש, when a man kills, it means Adam who was the first איש, individual, to cause death. Anyone who causes death is subject to "you are dust and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3,19). The repetition of the expression מות תמות, in Genesis 2,17, is our clue to transmigration of souls, to the concept that several re-incarnations may be necessary for man to achieve his תכלית, his allotted task on earth. However, the principal meaning of the line was never that death would occur immediately after the sin had been committed. After all, Adam was 930 years old before he died (Genesis 5,5). His sin was comparable to an inadvertently committed act since it had been due to the outright seduction by the serpent. This is the reason a person guilty of involuntary manslaughter only has to be exiled to a city of refuge.

Civility [Derekh Eretz]: The branches and details of civility are many, the teaching of civility being broader than the heavens and the earth. Is it not written about in the words of our Rabbis, may their memory be blessed, in Tractate Derekh Eretz; and further explained in the books of the masters of ethics [mussar], such as the holy book, Reishit Chochmah at the end, the book Shnei Luchot HaBrit, and the book, Shevet Mussar (Chapter 16) in the [ethical] will attributed to R. Eliezer the Great? Whoever is someone who desires life (alluding to Psalms 34:13) should study the refined search to guard the path to the tree of life (alluding to Genesis 3:24). For they truly said (Vayikra Rabbah 9:3), "Civility preceded the Torah." And especially someone who is in the category of a Torah scholar — if he does not have civility, behold, he desecrates God and the Torah. And we have learned (Avot 3:10), "Anyone from whom the spirit of creations find pleasure, from him the spirit of God finds pleasure." And this is the great principle about civility: One should do what is good and straight in the eyes of God and man, negate his will before the will of others, and have an awareness of other people. And one has not fulfilled his obligation with all that a person learns about the laws of civility until he becomes wise and understands [what to do] on his own. For these are things that have no measure. Rather, everything is according to the place and the time, and according to who he is as a person, to interact with each person according to their traits and to get to what the other is really thinking and to do his will if it is not against the will of the Creator.