Serving Hashem with Hislahavus
It states (Matos 31:23) תַּע ֲבִירוּ ׁבָאֵש יָבֹא ֶׁראֲש דָּבָר כָּל וְטָהֵר ׁבָאֵש, "Whatever is used in fire you shall pass through fire and then it will be clean." After the war against Midyan, the Yidden brought back cooking and eating utensils, and the Torah tells us what the nation had to do to purify the utensils, so that they could use them. One purification process was to purge the utensils in fire. The miforshim add that this process will also purify a person from aveiros.
Siduro Shel Shabbos explains that fire represents the fire of hislahavus. Hislahavus purifies a person and removes all aveiros that he performed due to the fire that is within him, which draws him to aveiros. Siduro Shel Shabbos explains that the holy fire to do Hashem's will is the fire of the Shechinah (see Yoma 21b, דשכינה אש אוכלת אש ויש). This fire consumes all the other fires, the fire of Gehinnom and the fire of the yetzer hara.
We quote his holy words, "This fire [of hislahavus for avodas Hashem] consumes the fire of the yetzer hara and Gehinom. He will not desire bad taavos and aveiros, which he had desired until then. With the hislahavus to serve Hashem, all bad taavos and all kelipos that surround him melt like wax. It will be as it states (Ovadyah 1:18) יוֹסֵף וּב ֵית ׁאֵש יַע ֲקֹב בֵית וְה ָיָה ׁלְקַש עֵשָׂו וּב ֵית לֶהָבָה, "The house of Yaakov shall be fire and the house of Yosef a flame, and the house of Esav shall become stubble, and they shall ignite them and consume them..."
As we wrote, the nation had to purify the cooking and food utensils they took from Midyan. Three forms of purification are mentioned in this section in the Torah (see 31:21-24). They are (1) mikvah, (2) הגעלה, purging in boiling water, and (3) ליבון, purifying and sterilizing with fire. The Or HaChaim Hakadosh zy'a (Rishon l'Tzion on Mishlei 2:7) writes that these three forms of purifications correspond to the teshuvah we need for the three categories of aveiros. Some aveiros need mikvah, some need a concept similar to הגעלה, and some need the concept of ליבון, fire.
For example, the Or HaChaim HaKadosh writes, "Tevilah in a mikvah of forty sa'ah will help for bad thoughts, which one shouldn't have thought about. He must immerse himself in forty sa'ah, and that will remove the thought." For non-kosher foods, he says that the cure and teshuvah is הגעלה, which he explains means to fast. "Because with the fast, his entire body becomes hot, he sweats, and that pushes out the issur (the forbidden foods that he ate)..."
We will now discuss ליבון, which generally means to purify with fire. The Or HaChaim writes, "Anger, and not believing in the words of Chazal, are among the aveiros that are performed with fire... The cure is ליבון, which means to study Torah constantly, with toil, because Torah is fire. With the fire of Torah, he will remove the forbidden aveirah that became soaked up into his body, due to his aveirah."
It states in Shemonah Esrei, in the tefillah of נחם that we say on Tisha b'Av: באש 'ה אתה כי לבנותה עתיד אתה ובאש הצתה. This means the Beis HaMikdash will be rebuilt with fire. We can explain that the Beis HaMikdash will be rebuilt with the fire of yearning for Hashem that is in the hearts of all Yidden.
Zera Kodesh (Vayeitzei ויצא ה"ד) writes, "(Tehillim 147:2) 'ה ָׁל ִַםיְרוּש בּוֹנֵה "Hashem is the builder of Yerushalayim." It is written in the present tense because Hakadosh Baruch Hu is constantly building the Beis HaMikdash with the good deeds we do. As it states ובנה בימינו בקרוב אותה, that with ימינו, our days, the Beis HaMikdash is being built, every day. With the mitzvos we perform daily, the Beis HaMikdash is being built up, every day, a little more, until it is entirely built, through our noble deeds in galus."
