3. Limuday Moshe, Ekev
The Paradox of "Bris" and "Chesed"
This week's parsha begins with the pasukim: והיה עקב תשמעון את המשפטים האלה ושמרתם ועשיתם אותם ושמר השם אלוקיך לך את הברית ואת החסד אשר נשבע לאבותיך. "If you hearken to these ordinances and keep and perform them. Hashem your G-d will safeguard for you the bris and the chesed that He swore to your forefathers."
There is an obvious question which stands out: A bris by definition is a binding, if Hashem promised us something, He is, so to speak, obligated to fulfill it. So how can the Torah in the same breath call it a chesed – an act of gracious kindness beyond obligation? The two concepts seem to contradict each other.
Insight from the Ruzhiner Rebbe
The Ba'al L'Horos Nosson once suggested an unbelievable answer to the above. He starts off by bringing a similar paradox from sefer Tehillim. In Tehillim (62:13) we have the pasuk: לך השם חסד, כי אתה תשלם לאיש כמעשהו. "To You, Hashem, is chesed" - "for You repay each man according to his deeds." Here again we have a very similar question: If Hashem repays strictly according to a person's deeds, that is din, not chesed. Where is the kindness?
The L'Horos Nosson then brings an answer to this from the first Ruzhiner Rebbe: Every time a person sins it causes an objective spiritual damage that is catastrophically greater than any human being can comprehend. If Hashem punished a sinner to the true extent of that damage, no one could survive the judgment. But Hashem doesn't do that. He calibrates the punishment to the sinner's own limited awareness – to how seriously the person himself understood his transgression. Since a person grasps so little of a sin's true gravity, the resulting punishment is proportionally reduced. That is the chesed: "You repay each man according to his deeds" – meaning according to his own perception of what he did, not according to the true spiritual consequence.
Middah Tovah Merubah
The L'Horos Nosson suggests that when it comes to mitzvos, since middah tovah merubah [when it comes to mitzvos Hashem acts with even greater kindness] the same logic applies in the reverse.
When a person performs a mitzvah, he does so with a particular appreciation of its value – inevitably a limited, human appreciation. Strictly speaking, the reward one receives for his mitzvah performance should be in accordance with whatever reward he imagined it was worth. Like a worker who agrees to a small wage without realizing how valuable his labor truly is – that low wage is halachically what he's owed.
But Hashem doesn't pay according to the person's limited understanding of the mitzvah's worth. He pays according to His own appreciation – and Hashem's perception of a mitzvah is boundless. The reward is therefore incomparably beyond anything the person imagined. This is the great chesed that Hashem performs for one who carries out a mitzvah.
This resolves the opening pasuk: ושמר השם אלוקיך לך את הברית ואת החסד. The bris — the commitment Hashem made — He fulfills as chesed: according to His own infinite appreciation of every mitzvah, not according to ours.
We see from here an unbelievable yesod: A person performs a mitzvah and imagines a certain reward. In truth, however, when the time comes to receive it, he discovers that the reward is immeasurably vaster than anything he had conceived. Why? Because Hashem pays according to His appreciation, and His appreciation is without limit.