Tafsiran yang Mengutip untuk Mazmur 38:5

“Also loving the peoples; all His holy ones are in Your hand, etc.” This means that even when the Holy One, blessed be He, shows affection toward the nations, nevertheless, the love for Israel is not comparable to the love for the nations. For all His holy ones, namely Israel — Israel is holy unto the Lord (Jeremiah 2:3) — they are in Your hand, supervised by Your blessed hand, for You did not entrust them to the governance of the celestial system. And they, meaning the nations, followed at Your feet. For they are entrusted to the celestial system which is under His blessed feet. Logic dictates this because the nations consider the word of God a burden and trouble. This is what is meant by they bear Your utterances — all Your words they bear as a heavy burden too heavy for them (Psalms 38:5). But Israel is not so; rather, Moses commanded us the Torah as an inheritance for the congregation of Jacob. Even though Moses commanded it to that generation, nevertheless it remains an inheritance for all congregations of Jacob in every generation. All of them upheld and accepted upon themselves to bequeath and pass down the Torah to their children after them. And all this indicates the opposite [of the nations’ attitude] — that the word of God is not a burden to them, but rather they upheld and accepted it upon themselves and their descendants with joy to fulfill it.

He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. Most commentators have said that the evil inclination draws its power from the primordial serpent. The evil inclination is at first like a spider’s thread, but later becomes like the thick ropes of a wagon. This is why it says he [man] will crush your [the serpent’s] head — for if one is quick to go out and fight against his evil inclination at the beginning [that is to say, at its first approach], then he will crush you, because it is easy for a person to overcome it and tear it away like breaking a spider’s thread. However, if at the start one gives place to his inclination and follows its advice day after day until it becomes as strong as wagon ropes, then it becomes difficult to overcome, and on the contrary, it will overcome you. This is why it says to the serpent and you will strike his heel, as the heel represents the end, meaning that if at the end one tries to fight against you, then you will strike him and overcome him, because it will be difficult for the person to break the wagon ropes from himself, as the evil inclination is already bound to him with bonds of love because of the pleasures, and it is difficult to separate from this uncircumcised and impure thing. This is also an allegory about repentance that a person does in his youth, meaning at the beginning of his days, when it is easy to leave his path. However, at the heel — at the end — when he is already accustomed to his ways, even when he grows old, he will not turn from it, and then you will strike him, This can also be said about severe transgressions — idolatry, forbidden relationships, murder, and their like — your inclination cannot make you transgress these so easily, for who would be foolish enough to turn here and who would listen to such a thing, to transgress these primary sins. But with the heel, meaning the light commandments that people trample with their heels, you will strike him because it will be easy for you to make him transgress these, as this is the way of the evil inclination — it begins with the heel and rises and seeps up to the head, like the venom of the snake that begins in the heel and continues to seep until it reaches the head. Similarly, the evil inclination begins by making a person transgress the light commandments that people trample with their heels, and after this, one transgression leads to another, and it will rise from the light to the severe ones until one’s sins go over his head, as it says For my iniquities have gone over my head (Psalms 38:5). This is an allusion about the transgressions that are the head of all transgressions, which is why it says Her impurity is in her skirts, she did not consider her end (Lamentations 1:9). For the wise person will take to heart that when the evil inclination comes to defile him in his skirts, meaning in the lower place like the heel, so it will rise from there and seep up, and his end will be bitter, for it will bring him up from light transgressions to severe ones. The wicked will not understand this, but the wise will understand.

בא מבא באר לחי רואי, “he had returned from visiting b’eerlachay roi;” he did not literally return from that well but from the region’s outer boundary. The formulation in our verse is similar to Kings I 8,65: מלבא חמת, or from Genesis 25,18: בואכה אשורה, “all the way to Ashur.” It is as if the Torah had written: מן בא. The word בא is used here in the same sense as in Judges 1,24: הראנו נא את מבא כניסת העיר, “please show us the way to the entrance of the city.” The letter מ in the word: מבא is to be understood like the letter מ in Psalms 38,5: מתום which means תום, from תמים, pure, unadulterated, (in the spiritual sense. Ed.]