Sotah 5a (ה.) — the Talmud in English

The Gemara answers:

Rather, Rabbi Yohanan said:

The verse means to say

that even one who performs charity in secret,

that is, charity given directly from the wealthy person’s hand to the poor person’s hand, and

as it is written concerning it,

concerning charity given in secret,

“A gift in secret subdues anger,” and so on,

for charity given in secret removes wrath; nevertheless,

he will not be acquitted of the judgment of Gehenna.

The Gemara asks:

A prohibition against arrogance –

from where [is it derived]?

Rava said in the name of Zeiri:

It is written in the Book of Jeremiah:

“Hear and give ear; do not be haughty.”

The verse warns people not to be arrogant of heart.

Rav Naḥman bar Yitzḥak said: From here:

“And your heart becomes haughty, and you forget.”

It is explained that through arrogance of heart a person comes to forget God.

And it is written: “Beware lest you forget the Lord your God.”

It is explained that there is a warning against forgetting God, which is caused by arrogance.

And this is like what Rabbi Avin said in the name of Rabbi Ila’a:

For Rabbi Avin said in the name of Rabbi Ila’a:

Wherever it is stated

in the Torah

“beware,” “lest,” or “do not,”

it is only

to teach us that one who transgresses the command stated there transgresses

a prohibition,

and here too, where “beware lest” is written, it constitutes a warning of a prohibition:

Rav Avira expounded:

Sometimes

he would

say it

—this teaching—

in the name of Rav Asi, and sometimes

he would

say it

—this teaching—

in the name of Rav Ami:

Anyone who possesses arrogance will ultimately be diminished

in importance.

As it is stated:

Once he is

“exalted,”

and possesses arrogance, he becomes

“little,”

diminished.

And it is written later in the verse: “They are exalted for a little while, and then are gone; they are brought low and wither like all others, and like the head of a stalk they fade.”

The Gemara continues to explain the entire verse.

And perhaps you will say: He still exists in the world,

for the arrogant person still has a place in the world.

The verse teaches:

“And he is gone.”

And we derive from the word “and he is gone” that he has no lasting existence in the world.

But if he retracts

from his arrogance and becomes humble,

he will be gathered at his appointed time, like Abraham our father.

As it is stated:

“And they are brought low.”

If he returns and lowers himself,

“like all,”

his end will be like those concerning whom it is stated that the blessing of their death will be of the character of

“they will leap,”

meaning that they die from the world an upright death; this is

like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, concerning whom it is written:

With regard to Abraham it is written, “And the Lord blessed Abraham

with everything,”

with regard to Isaac it is written, “I have eaten

from everything,”

and with regard to Jacob it is written, “I have

everything.”

But if not,

if he again returns to arrogance,

“like the head of a stalk they will wither.”

What is the meaning of “like the head of a stalk”?

Rav Huna and

Rav Ḥisda disagreed about this:

One said: Like the tuft of a stalk.

His punishment is like that of the head of a stalk, which breaks and falls on its own.

And one said: Like the stalk itself.

His punishment is like that of the stalk itself, which breaks and falls.

The Gemara asks:

Granted, according to the one who says: Like the tuft of a stalk,

the head of the stalk,

this is what is meant by “like the head of a stalk.”

But according to the one who says: Like the stalk itself,

like the stalk itself—

what

is the meaning of the verse

“like the head of a stalk”?

The Gemara answers:

Rav Asi said, and likewise the tanna of the school of Rabbi Yishmael taught:

This is analogous to a person who enters his field

in order to gather the stalks that have grown there:

he gathers the tallest ones first!

He begins by gathering the tallest stalks. This is likewise the punishment of an arrogant person, whose spirit is lofty: the Holy One, blessed be He, punishes him in the manner in which the tallest stalks are gathered.

It is written in Isaiah:

“And with the contrite and lowly of spirit.”

Rav Huna and

Rav Ḥisda also disagreed about this:

One said: He comes to the contrite!

The Holy One, blessed be He, says that He, as it were, raises the lowly in spirit until He dwells with him.

And one said: I am with the contrite!

The Holy One, blessed be He, as it were, lowers His Shekhina beside the lowly in spirit.

And it is more reasonable to understand the verse according to the one who says, “I am with the contrite,”

that the Holy One, blessed be He, as it were, causes Himself to dwell with him.

And from where do we know this?

For the Holy One, blessed be He,

at the giving of the Torah,

left aside all the mountains and hills and caused His Shekhina to rest upon Mount Sinai,

which was the lowest of them all,

and we did not

find that

Mount Sinai rose upward.

It must therefore be that the Holy One, blessed be He, descended to the mountain. This proves that the Holy One, blessed be He, lowers His Shekhina beside the lowly in spirit.

Rabbi Yosef said: A person should always learn from the disposition of his Creator,

and lower himself.

For the Holy One, blessed be He, left aside all the mountains and hills and caused His Shekhina to rest upon Mount Sinai [

and left aside all the fine trees and caused His Shekhina to rest in the thornbush].

Rabbi Elazar said:

Anyone who possesses arrogance deserves to be cut down like an ashera.

He should be cut down and uprooted like an ashera used for idolatry, which is a mitzva to cut down and destroy completely.

And from where do we know this?

It is written here,

with regard to the arrogant,

“and the lofty of stature,”

that is, the arrogant,

“will be cut down.”

And it is written there: “And you shall cut down their asherim.”

Thus, the concept of cutting down applies both to the arrogant and to an ashera.

And Rabbi Elazar said:

Anyone who possesses arrogance will have no dust shaken from him,

his dust will not be shaken at the resurrection of the dead, for he will not rise at the resurrection of the dead .

As it is stated:

“Awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust.”

It was not stated, “Lie in the dust,”

which would imply that all who lie in the dust will rise at the resurrection of the dead,

but

only those who are

“dwellers in the dust”

will rise at the resurrection of the dead.

And who are the dwellers in the dust?

One who made himself a neighbor of the dust during his lifetime,

who humbled himself during his lifetime like dust.

And Rabbi Elazar said:

For anyone who possesses arrogance, the Shekhina weeps over him,

the Shekhina cries over him, as it were.

As it is stated:

“And the haughty

person,” one who possesses arrogance,

“from afar,”

a long time before the calamity comes upon him,

“He knows,”

from an expression of weeping, that the Shekhina weeps over him.

Rav Avira expounded, and some say Rabbi Elazar:

Come and see how unlike the attribute of the Holy One, blessed be He, is the attribute of flesh and blood:

With flesh and blood, the exalted sees the exalted, but the exalted does not see the lowly.

The great honors the great, but does not honor the small.

But the attribute of the Holy One, blessed be He, is not so: He is exalted, yet He sees

and draws near to Himself

the lowly,

and concerns Himself with him in all his affairs.

As it is stated:

“For the Lord is high,”

the Holy One, blessed be He, is exalted,

“yet He sees the lowly,”

He draws the lowly near.

Rav Ḥisda said, and some say Mar Ukva:

Anyone who possesses arrogance—the Holy One, blessed be He, says: I and he cannot dwell in the world together!

As it is stated:

“Whoever slanders his fellow in secret,”

one who informs against his fellow in secret,

“him I will destroy,”

I will eradicate him.

“One with haughty eyes and a broad heart,”

the arrogant and presumptuous person—

“him I cannot tolerate.”

I cannot tolerate him in the world.

Thus, concerning the arrogant and presumptuous person it is written, “Him I cannot tolerate.”

And this is how the verse is to be expounded:

Do not read

the word as

“him,” but rather, “with him I cannot tolerate,”

for I and he cannot dwell together in the world.

Some teach this statement

with reference

to one who speaks slander.

As it is stated:

“Whoever slanders his fellow in secret, him I will destroy.”

This speaks of one who speaks slander and malicious gossip, and concerning him the end of the verse states, “Him I cannot tolerate.”

Rabbi Alexandri said:

Anyone who possesses arrogance—even a slight wind,

a minor calamity,

overturns him,

sweeps him away and destroys him from the world.

As it is stated:

“And the wicked,”

these are the arrogant,

“like the sea driven back,”

just as the sea casts out and throws refuse onto the seashore, so too the arrogant, who are compared to the sea, are overturned by a wind.

And if the sea, which contains

far more than

several revi'it

of water, nevertheless

is overturned by a slight wind,

and a minor calamity can sweep it away—

a person, who contains only one revi'it

of blood, by which he can remain alive,

all the more so

can a minor calamity sweep him from the world.

Rabbi Ḥiyya bar Ashi said in the name of Rav:

A Torah scholar must possess one-eighth of an eighth,

he must possess a small measure of pride, so that frivolous people will not mock him; for if he does not possess this measure of pride, the people of his city will not heed him.

Rabbi Huna, son of Rav Yehoshua, said:

And it adorns him,

this pride is becoming in a Torah scholar,

like the tuft of a stalk,

like the head of a stalk; without this pride, the people of his city would not heed him.

Rava said: Let one who

has

be under a ban,

under excommunication and a curse,

who possesses it,

a person who possesses arrogance.

And let him be under a ban

as well—

who does not possess

the one-eighth of an eighth of pride; otherwise, the people of his city will not fear him, and he will not have the power to rebuke them.

Rav Naḥman bar Yitzḥak said:

A person should desire

neither any of it,

not all of the pride,

nor

even

a portion of it,

a part of the pride.

Is it a small matter

—is it really insignificant—

that it is written concerning it,

what is written about pride:

“Everyone of haughty heart is an abomination to the Lord”?

Hezekiah said:

A person’s prayer is heard only if he makes his heart

soft

like flesh,

and not hard like a stone.

As it is stated:

“And it shall be from month to month [

and so on],

that all flesh shall come to bow before Me,” and so on.

It is explained that only those whose hearts are soft like flesh will come before God.

Rabbi Zeira said:

In the section concerning afflictions, when the Torah speaks of an affliction on

flesh,

when the affliction passes,

it is written concerning it, “and he is healed”;

but when the Torah speaks of an affliction on

a person, it does not write concerning him

when the affliction passes

“and he is healed.”

From this we learn that one who is soft like flesh can be subject to “and he is healed,” but one who is called “a person”—that is, one who is hard like earth—has no healing from suffering.

Rabbi Yohanan said:

Adam—

why was he called Adam? Because it is an acronym for

afer, dam, mera—“dust, blood, and gall.”

That is, a person must remember that he is entirely insignificant, for he resembles dust, something that will ultimately be burned and has no value.

He is also filled with blood, which brings many illnesses upon a person.

And he contains gall, a fluid that emerges from the liver and intensifies in a person according to the changing seasons or according to the foods he eats; through it, illness comes upon a person.

The name of a person hints that he should not become arrogant, for he is entirely insignificant.

Likewise, what we learned above, that a person is called

basar,

is an acronym for

busha, seruha, rima—“shame, putrefaction, and maggots.”

This hints that a person must conduct himself with shame rather than brazenness, and must remember that he came from a putrid drop and that his end is to become maggots and worms. 6

Some say: “She’ol,” which is written with a shin,

that the shin of basar is not expounded with the left-sided shin, in the sense of putrefaction, but with the right-sided shin, in the sense of She’ol; that is, She’ol—his grave—is his home.

Thus, a person should remember that his end is to descend to She’ol forever, and he has nothing over which to become arrogant.

Rabbi Ashi said:

Anyone who possesses arrogance will ultimately

be

inflated.

His end is that he conducts himself in a manner unbecoming his importance and becomes one of the lowliest among the people.

As it is stated: