Tafsiran yang Mengutip untuk Ratapan 3:36

A good eye: Sufficing with what a person has and this is from the virtues of character. And a bad eye is its opposite - meaning to say, the belittling of the things [that he has] and eagerness for increase. And his saying here, "who sees the future," the matter of which is that he studies what will be in the future from what is found now, is not from the wisdoms that it should be an intellectual virtue, and that its understanding is that he study that which is hidden from that which is revealed. Rather, what he wants with it here is the analysis about the matters of a man from his affairs through which his existence will continue, that he should investigate the end of his affairs. And he brought a metaphor corresponding to this, and that is his saying, one who borrows but does not repay, that he will not lend him another thing - and that is of the traits of vice. "But the righteous one gives graciously" (Psalms 37:21) - that is the Righteous One of the world, and He is God, may He be blessed, as it is stated (Deuteronomy 32:4), "righteous and straight is He"; and (Nehemiah 9:33), "You are righteous about all that comes upon us." The explanation is that He is generous to the man that lends to his fellow and he doesn't repay, [for] the Holy One, blessed be He, pays him in exchange for his service that he bestowed kindness to another to lend him until his hand could acquire his lacking. And when the hand [of the borrower] found it and did not pay back his lender, God, may He be blessed, paid him [instead]. And the matter of "seeing his words" is to choose and to distinguish - from the matter of "The Lord did not see" (Lamentations 3:36), the intention of which is He did not choose. And he distinguished that everything was included in his words [when] he said "a bad heart." And we have already explained in the second chapter of our introduction to the commentary on this tractate (Eight Chapters 2:2) that all of the character virtues are only found in the appetitive section of the soul. And in it are also found all of the character vices. And we have elucidated in the fourth chapter (Eight Chapters 4) that the actions that are good are the moderate actions which come from the virtues of character. And so [too] is it known among the philosophers and physicians that the appetitive soul is in the heart and [that] its chamber and its instruments are attributed to the heart. And even though all of the capabilities are diffused from the heart and it is its beginning according to the true opinion, the appetitive capability does not spread from it to another organ, in the way that the nutritive capability - I mean to say the vegetative capability that we discussed in the first chapter (Eight Chapters 1:7) - spreads from the heart to the liver. And understand that from everything we have elucidated that what he wanted with a good heart are the good action and they are the moderate actions and they are the virtues of character. And it includes contentment and the love of the good and others of the virtues besides this. And that is what he said, "For your words are included in his."

אם לא תשמע בקול ה' אלוקיך לשמור לעשות את כל מצותיו וחקותיו אשר אנכי מצוך היום, with these words Moses introduces his admonitions, the ones which parallel chapter 26 in Leviticus, but are sounding far more devastating. Israel is described as “backsliding,” having, with the help of Torah legislation, been the frontrunner in civilised countries. Whenever the Torah speaks about the Jewish people abandoning the laws of the Torah, the intention is not to make us think that they slid into anarchy, but worse, they slid into adopting the laws of the prevalent cultures and civilisations. Clearly, this is an even greater affront to G’d the Lawgiver, than merely being passive and not carrying out Torah legislation. Social legislation involving tithes was largely ignored, leading to such great scholars as Hillel, and the High Priest Yochanan decreeing legalistic means of circumventing the legislation so that the people would not be guilty of violating such basic social laws as forgiving overdue debts at the end of the Sh’mittah year. The Rabbis, in a number of instances, were forced to preserve the spirit of the law, sometimes at the expense of what may be termed “the letter of the law.” The discontinuance of the examination by the priest of a woman suspected of marital infidelity, Sotah, is one such example, the Rabbis feeling that when infidelity had become the norm rather than the exception, it would not do to demand a miracle from G’d every time such a situation arose. Moreover, the chances were that the husband’s sexual life was not so free from blemish that he could point a finger at his wife. (Compare Shviit,1,3, Maasser Sheyni 5,15, Sotah 46,48,49) Other practices, such as referring disputes to pagan judges of the nation (Greeks or Romans) occupying Israel at the time, made it almost impossible for the Jewish judiciary, even when meaning to preside over Torah law, to be an effective legal instrument. All of these conditions became a self-fulfilling prophecy in the decline of the Jewish people as a holy nation and led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of Jewish independence on a land of their own.