Don't defile yourselves in any of these things; for in all these the nations which I am casting out before you were defiled: The land was defiled; therefore I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out her inhabitants: You therefore shall keep my statutes and my ordinances, and shall not do any of these abominations; neither the native-born, nor the stranger who lives as a foreigner among you: For all these abominations the men of the land that were before you have done, and the land became defiled.
The Toras Cohanim writes that not only is a person forbidden to defile themselves in all of these things, he is forbidden to defile himself with even some of them. The truth is, the possuk seems to be forbidding only all of them, not some of them, as it says אֵּלֶה בְכׇלאַּל תִטַּמְאוּ - Don't defile yourselves in all of these things. Why did the Torah use misleading language?
The Ohr Hachaim asks another question. The Torah gives us a reason why we are not to defile ourselves with these sins - כִיָבְכׇלָאֵלֶהָנִטְמְאוָּהַגוֹיִם - for in all these the nations which I am casting out before you were defiled. There is no doubt that the nations who lived in Canaan defiled themselves with all of these sins; they did not pick out their favorites. Why does the Torah say that they defiled themselves with all of these sins?
Another question the Ohr Hachaim poses is why we should think that Klal Yisroel should be forbidden with even one of them? The Canaanites were punished for all of them, not merely for some of them.
The Ohr Hachaim explains the answer to these questions based on the answer to an important question. Why does the Torah not tell us the difference between the Mitzvos, each one’s level and the benefits they bring us? Shlomo Hamelech wrote in Mishlei, פַלֵסָנָעוָּמַעְגְלֹתֶיהָָלֹאְָָתָןֶפָםי יַחָחַרֹא תֵדָע - Lest you weigh the path of life, her paths have wandered off and you shall not know. We are enjoined not to measure up the paths of our lives, attempting to squeeze the maximum benefit out of our Mitzvos. The Mishna says that a person should not say that this Mitzvah is great, whereas another Mitzvah is small because nobody knows the true reward a person receives for doing a Mitzvah. The Yerushalmi proves from the fact that the reward is equal for the greatest of Mitzvos and the smallest that there is no real difference. The Ohr Hachaim cannot accept this; he claims that there must be a difference between Mitzvos. Why are we not told their precise levels?
The Ohr Hachaim explains that there is a need for the smaller Mitzvos to be fulfilled. Each Mitzvah has its place, and the lack of one Mitzvah means a world that is missing something. Even if its reward is minor, it is still necessary for the repair of a person’s soul. For this reason, the Torah does not tell us the value of each Mitzvah.
The Ohr Hachaim offers another explanation to the lack of mention of the value of the Mitzvos in the Torah. Some Mitzvos have the ability to lengthen a person’s days in this world, others can cause a person to have children, to get rich, and many other benefits. Hashem did not wish that people choose Mitzvos according to their wishes and needs, he wanted them to keep all of the Mitzvos. If he does so, he will eventually reach the Mitzvos that provide the segula that he needs for his life, and he will get what he needs.
This explains that which we sometimes find. A person can be quite the evil one, someone who doesn’t keep Mitzvos very well, and does not follow the Torah, but still is successful somewhere in his life. We may not understand what merit this person has to achieve such success. It is possible that these people have happened to chance upon a Mitzvah whose segula includes success in this world. Even though he may have done many aveiros, he is still eligible for the benefits those Mitzvos cause.
The same is true with aveiros; some aveiros cause a person to be punished in the world to come, others cause a person to be punished in a long time, and others have strict punishments, yet others have easier punishments. This is why we see some people punished immediately for their aveiros, and others live long, happy lives until they are punished. Aveiros were not created equally.
Hashem did not wish that people only keep away from those aveiros with the scarier punishments, he did not wish that people care only about those aveiros that have people punished in this world, because people are more afraid of the pain that they know than the pain in the unknown future world.
Based on this, the Ohr Hachaim answers his questions. The punishment the Torah gives us for these aveiros of this parsha is that Eretz Yisroel will vomit them out and not allow them to live there. This punishment is for one of the list in the Parsha, not for all of them. Only one of them has this punishment, but the Torah does not wish to reveal to us precisely which one. We need to be careful about what we do, because our ownership of Eretz Yisroel depends on us making sure not to transgress this one aveira hidden in the list.
The Torah is now saying וָּבְכׇלָאֵלֶהאַלָתִטַמְא – do not defile yourself with one of these aveiros, כִיָבְכׇלָ אֵלֶהָנִטְמְאוָּהַגוֹיִם – because one of these aveiros was that which caused the nations that lived there previously to be punished and vomited out of the land. וֹנָהָּעָלֶיהָָוַתָקִאָהָאָרֶץָאֶתָיֹשְבֶיהָָוָאֶפְקֹדָעֲָ - and I punished it for its aveira and I vomited its inhabitants from the land. One of those aveiros caused this great and terrible punishment. For this reason, they must be careful not to transgress any of the aveiros on the list.
The Torah continues with כִיָאֶתָכׇלָהַתוֹעֵבֹתָהָאֵלָעָשׂוָּ אַנְשֵיָהָאָרֶץ - the people of this land performed all of these abominations. There was not one of these aveiros that the Canaanim did not do, and we have to suspect that any of them caused them to receive this enormous punishment.
This is akin to a cup of water in which a snake has inserted its venom. All of the water cups in the vicinity are included in the suspicion of being tainted, and nobody would drink any of them. Any aveira that they did not do in Canaan is not in the list, and there is no reason to believe that they would cause the punishment of being banished and exiled from Eretz Yisroel.
This is not the entire story. Even those aveiros that don’t have the punishment of exile attached, have the punishment of being cut away from Klal Yisroel, known as karess. Klal Yisroel needed to be careful and stay far from any of these aveiros.
