Musar su Ezechiele 9:4

The seventh section: One who sees the people of his place [being] a stiff-necked people, and says in his heart, “Perhaps they will not listen if I speak [words of] integrity with them and fill my mouth with reprimands.” Hence he saves his mouth [from speaking]. Yet he surely bears his sin, for he did not try to reprimand and warn [them] - (indeed) [maybe] if the city is pitied, they will awake from the slumber of their stupidity and their error will not [continue to] lay with them. And our Rabbis, may their memory be blessed, said (Shabbat 55a) about that which is written (Ezekiel 9:4), “and set a mark (tav) upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry, etc.”: The attribute of justice said, “[Even though these are full-fledged righteous people and keep the Torah,] it was in their hands to protest, and they did not protest. [The Holy One, blessed be He,] said, “It is revealed and known before Me that had they protested, they would not have accepted [it] from them.” [The attribute of justice] said, “Master of the Universe, if it is revealed before You, [they did not know if the people would listen to their voice or ignore them].” So afterwards God, may He be blessed, commanded (Ezekiel 9:4), “and begin from My Temple (Mikdash)” - and that is the dedicated (mekudash) righteous ones. And it is stated (Leviticus 19:17), “you shall surely reprimand your countryman and not bear sin because of him.” But if the matter is revealed to all, known, tested and analyzed that the sinner hates rebuke and will not listen to the voice of his teachers and will not bend his ear to his instructors - about this is it stated (Proverbs 9:8), “Do not rebuke a scoffer, for he will hate you.” And they said (Yevamot 55b), “Just as it is a commandment to say something that will be heard, so is it a commandment to not say something that will not be heard.” And they said (Beitzah 30a), “It is better that they be inadvertent, and not be intentional.”

The letter ת possesses another peculiarity, namely that it signifies death, written in blood, as we know from the statement of Rabbi Acha bar Chanina in Shabbat 55a. He tells us that G–d had never issued a favorable decree and reversed Himself except in a single instance, viz. the situation referred to in Ezekiel 9,4 when G–d told the angel Gabriel: "Pass in the midst of the city, in the midst of Jerusalem, and mark a sign on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan for all the abominations that are done within it." G–d had instructed Gabriel to place on the foreheads of the righteous the letter ת in ink so that the Divinely appointed forces of destruction should not touch those people. The foreheads of the wicked people, however, were to be marked with the same letter written in blood, so that they would fall victim to the forces of destruction. The ministering angels challenged G–d on this decision, wanting to know in what way the former were better than the latter, seeing that they had failed to perform the commandment of admonishing their fellow-Jews. G–d answered these angels that He was well aware that even if the righteous people had admonished their compatriots it would have been to no avail. To this the angels replied that the fact that G–d was aware that such admonitions would have proved futile did not absolve the righteous from at least having tried, seeing that they had no way of knowing whether their attempts to admonish the people would prove successful. As a result of this, we read in verse 5 of the same chapter: "Then He said to these in my hearing (the prophet's) 'Follow him through the city and strike. Let your eyes neither spare nor show mercy. Old man, young man and maiden, children and women, massacre to utter destruction. But any man on whom is the sign do not approach. And begin from My Sanctuary' i.e, Mikdashay so they began with the old men who were in front of the House." Rabbi Yosef reads the word Mikdashay as Me-kudashay, i.e. "My holy ones," the people who observed all the commandments of the Torah from the letter Aleph, to the letter Tav. So far the quotation from the Talmud in Shabbat 55. A few lines further on the Talmud questions why the sign chosen for these markings had been the letter ת, and answers that this letter is the first letter of the word Tichyeh, i.e. "you will live," as well as the first letter of the word Tamut, i.e. "you will die." Shmuel said that the reason is that at that point the merit of the patriarchs had been exhausted and it no longer could be called upon to protect their descendants from G–ds anger. Rabbi Yochanan, however, feels that the letter ת symbolised that these people could be granted grace only through the merit of the patriarchs. Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish, also on that folio, says that that letter is the final letter in G–d's "seal," seeing that Rabbi Chanina taught that the "seal" of G–d is אמת, "Truth." At any rate, we know that the combination of the letters מ-ת spelled death, since there was a מגפה, a deadly plague, which killed twenty-four thousand Israelites at that time. The letter ת discussed in the Talmud is also known to have been written in blood on the foreheads of the wicked.