When you go to war against your enemies, and Hashem your G-d will deliver him into your hand, and you will capture his captives. (Devarim 21:10)
Here in the pasuk is a metaphorical description of the war against the Yetzer Hara and his army. So the Baalei Mussar saw it.
A person wants to make serious improvements in his life, in spiritual matters. He would like to make some big changes. For instance, he wants to devote more time to Torah learning, or to daven better, or get into a better social circle. He wants more kedushah and modesty in his life! Or there could be some other serious changes he wishes to make. However, it takes a lot of effort and sometimes a prolonged battle to succeed.
The first step is to “go to war.” Don’t give up in advance, and say, “I can’t do it, I know I won’t be able to keep it up.” The Torah promises us in this pasuk that if we will just “go to war,” then “Hashem your G-d will deliver him into your hand.” You will have siyata d’Shmaya and you will win.
The Torah then goes on to say, “And you will capture his captives.” You will capture his captives, meaning that which he captured himself. Whatever he took from you, you will take it back.
The Yetzer Hara has a lot of “captives,” a lot of possessions. There is much under his control. But he stole it all from us. For instance, let’s say a man needs to support his family. How should he schedule his day? The Yetzer Hara says to him: first of all, you need to put in a good eight hours at work every day. That’s beyond the shadow of a doubt.
After we figure in the time spent commuting, and eating meals, not very many hours are left to the day. Then the Yetzer Hara lets him read the news, and relax a bit. After the man spends some time with the family, too, he is lucky to have two hours left out of the day for Torah and davening.
The Yetzer Hara took his whole day away from him. He needs to fight to get it back. This is an example of seizing back what Yetzer Hara took captive.
If we go to war on the Yetzer Hara, we are guaranteed victory. But first we must put up a fight.
Another example: good Jews are sitting in shul in the evening, learning. Perhaps they are learning as chavrusa, perhaps they attend a shiur. Here and there, you can see this one is struggling to stay awake, and that one already dozed off. They are not too perturbed about it. They are doing the best they can. They are in shul. They are trying to learn.
But at the same time, lehavdil, on the other side of town, there is a discotheque. The people over there are also after a day’s work, but they are not bored and falling asleep. They are full of energy.
So what happened? The Yetzer Hara stole the learners’ zest and energy from them. He took it captive. Zest and energy properly belong to the side of kedushah, but it was robbed from us. We need to fight to take it back. It belongs to us!
This is the Torah’s message. We can get back what is rightfully ours. All we need to do is put up a fight.
