Comentários de Citação sobre Provérbios 14:1

ואמר רב, and he (Korach) said: “enough, too much!” On son of Peleth was saved from sharing Korach’s fate by his wife. She told him that regardless of the outcome of the rebellion, he would not become a member of the priestly caste regardless, so that the outcome would on no account be of personal benefit to him. To this, On answered that seeing he had sat in the council with Korach and had sworn him loyalty, how could he now renege? His wife said to him: he himself has declared the whole community as being holy, so how could he punish you?” (compare verse 3) She told him to simply remain inactive, and she would devise a means to save him. She gave him wine to drink, and made him comfortable in the house. She then sat at the entrance to her tent and busied herself with straightening out her hair, a lengthy procedure, and not one to be watched by males. Before she had completed her coiffure, Korach and his supporters had already been swallowed by the earth. She thus became the model that Solomon had in mind when he wrote in Proverbs 14,1: חכמת נשים בנתה ביתה ואולת בידיה תהרסנו, “the wisest of women builds her house, whereas the foolish one destroys it with her own hands.” Solomon’s model for the foolish woman was Korach’s wife, who had urged him on to confront Moses and Aaron in their desire for more personal glory. She supported her husband in his quarrel by describing Moses as being only concerned with appointing his closest relatives to leading positions but ignoring her husband and appointing his nephews, Aaron’s sons as deputy High Priests instead. He allocated portions of every farmer’s harvest to the priests and even demanding of the Levites’ tithes that they give ten percent to the priests also. She described the manner in which the Levites had been appointed instead of the firstborn of each family’s household as the only ones that could enter sacred grounds as having been a demeaning procedure, each one of them having been bodily heaved as if they were chattel. (Compare the procedures described in Numbers 8,13) In short, Korach’s wife was a demagogue of the first order, who instead of calming his sense of having been passed over when honours were being distributed, egged him on, so that ultimately he and all his family-except his sons who recognised their father’s bias, so that they eventually became authors of the most beautiful hymns in the book of Psalms,-thus partially redeeming the honour of the family. [Different Midrashim elaborate on how Korach used even the occasion when Moses had elevated him to become a Levite as having performed acts to demean him so that no one could recognise him anymore, as all the hair of his body had first to be shaved off. [as had, of course, the hair of all the other 22300 Levites elevated thus on that occasion. Ed.] Korach answered his wife that Moses himself, being a Levite, had also shaved off all his own hair. She answered him that he had done so in order to get all the other Levites to do so, just as Samson when pulling down the pillars in the Temple of the Philistines, was aware that he would die also during the performance of this feat. (Judges 15,30) Korach’s wife ridiculed the law about fringes, and this is why it has been inserted in the Torah at this point. She did the same with the commandment to affix a mezuzah to every room in our houses except the bathrooms and the toilets. The Torah wished to emphasise that observance of these commandments, not on account of the logic behind them, but because they had been commanded by Hashem, brings us closer to Him. These reminders are with us both when we are at home and when we are away from home, when we wear the fringes at the corners of our garments. [In those days, practically all garments started out as being square sheets of cloth. Ed.]

העלו מסביב למשכן קרח, דתן ואבירם, “get yourselves up from around the dwelling of no one, and Datan and Aviram respectively!” Actually, the Torah should have included in its call for the people to remove their presence from the vicinity of Korach, On, son of Peles, seeing he had figured by name as one of the instigators of the rebellion in verse one of our chapter. Our sages view the failure of the Torah to mention On at this point as proof that he had withdrawn from the rebellion and had done תשובה, had repented his former part in it.
Tanchuma Korach 10 claims that On had been saved by his wife who had said to him: “what difference does it make to you personally if Moses is High Priest or whether Aaron is High Priest seeing that in either event you will only be the student, i.e. subordinate to either of them? Concerning the wife of On (and others like her) Solomon said in Proverbs 14,1: “the wisest of women builds her house, i.e. the wife of On, whereas “folly tears it down with its own hands,” a reference to the wife of Korach who had inflamed his ego when she first belittled the halachah about a blue woolen talit requiring tzitziyot. She became the immediate cause of the rebellion and the death of hundreds (compare Proverbs 7,26).

The wise among her ladies responded to her. The wise ones⁵³Not “the wisdoms of her ladies.” The vocalization indicates that the proper translation is “the wise ones,” rather than “the wisdoms,” as Rashi explains. among her ladies. This is why the "ח" is vocalized with a "pasach". The plural noun, lit. "wisdoms" is vocalized with the half-kametz, as in "Wisdoms are remote gems to the foolish."⁵⁴Mishlei, 24:7. Here, the vocalization is חַכְמוֹת. Similarly, "The wise among women has constructed her home."⁵⁵Mishlei, 14:1. The wise one among the women.