Chasidut do Wyjścia 22:24
אִם־כֶּ֣סֶף ׀ תַּלְוֶ֣ה אֶת־עַמִּ֗י אֶת־הֶֽעָנִי֙ עִמָּ֔ךְ לֹא־תִהְיֶ֥ה ל֖וֹ כְּנֹשֶׁ֑ה לֹֽא־תְשִׂימ֥וּן עָלָ֖יו נֶֽשֶׁךְ׃
Jeżeli pieniędzy pożyczysz któremukolwiek z ludu Mojego, biednemu przy tobie; nie postępuj z nim jako lichwiarz; nie nakładajcie nań lichwy.
Kedushat Levi
“Orientation” at the source, is of course a two-way street, i.e. the creatures recharging their batteries do so in order to return “down” to “earth,” i.e. their respective habitats in the various parts of the universe, in order to put their newly charged “batteries” to good use there. When the Torah describes the elders in our verse above as “seeing” something resembling a brick made of sapphire under the feet of G’d’s throne, this is merely an illustration of the process we have just described, spiritual batteries having been recharged by these elders in preparation for the revelation to occur on the following day.
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Toldot Yaakov Yosef
(216) And he said: "many or few" - and this can also be explained through the aspect of knowing oneself, even if one is humble - this is "a fat tail with thorn" (Rosh Hashanah 17a) because there are two aspects of humility as explained in the first chapter of Rosh Hashanah: "'for the remnant of His inheritance,' (Micah 7:18) but not for all His inheritance, for one who regards oneself as a remainder" (Rosh Hashanah 17b). And the explanation of the Rif is that 'one who is lenient [with others] and thinks of oneself as nothing, to that person others are lenient. But regarding one who says that according to their thoughts it is not appropriate to answer, to that one others are not lenient, see there. And this is why the text says "are they small?", meaning, one who is small due to one's humility, one who is lenient and does not answer back to their denigrator, in any instance such a person should check themselves to see IF they actually think of themselves as great, similar to 'IF you lend money' (Exodus 22:24, and see Rashi there), which is an expression of THAT - in this case one's smallness comes from the fact that one actually sees oneself as great, and thinks that one should not answer [to the detractor] and this is not a good characteristic, rather, one should really think of oneself as nothing.
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