The Covenant of Blessing | Rabbi Shlomo Farhi

I have a fascinating idea I want to share with you today. Let me read you a pasuk from Sefer Iyov. I made a pact, a covenant, with my eyes. I didn't even look at a woman, even if she was unmarried. So Iyov says: If that's the case, why am I getting this portion from Hashem on high? What Iyov is saying is, I don't know why I had to lose everything. Iyov loses his house, his Parnassah, his family, his health. And after losing everything, Iyov says, Why did I deserve this? Didn't I make a covenant with my eyes not to look at what I wasn't supposed to? Well, what are we seeing from what Iyov is saying? He's communicating that if he hadn't done this, he could understand why all this was happening to him. The חיד”א writes that the words is ראשי תיבות of the word בכל. בכל means ‘in everything’. This idea, he says, tells me that I could lose everything, בכל, if I'm not careful. Conversely, by Avraham it says, And Hashem blessed Avraham בכל. Avraham is blessed that way, because he has עין טובה, his eyes only look at the right things. And when someone looks at the right things, then what happens? Then he's blessed בכל. So there’s two Bakols. The losing of everything and the getting of everything. What do you want? The loss of Iyov or the blessing of Avraham? The חיד”א takes it one step further. He says that there are three different covenants that we make with God. The Brit of eyes, עיניים, the Brit of מעור, the Brit of eight days on our skin and the Brit of לשון. Says the חיד”א, These covenants, which are all led by the eye, because your eye is what gives you the מחשבות, the desire for the skin, is what gives you the perspective on people to say Lashon Hara about them. All of that, he says, is the purpose of life itself. The pasuk says, You were brought here to this world for these ברית עיניים, מעור, לשון. But he says if a person is not careful with it, then instead of עמל, instead of בכל of Avraham, then they were מועל. The pasuk says, when a person uses something which is very holy, like the Aron or the Menorah, when you use it for your personal use, that's called מעילה, profaning something which is holy and using it for something which is not. God gave us these things that are so holy, and to use them incorrectly is the great sin of מעילה. Look at the next pasuk. The חיד”א doesn't say this, but I'm sure it's what he means. Why did I get this? ממעל, not from on high, but from profaning all the good and the Kadosh that I have in my life. We were given great opportunities in this world with potential for amazing blessings, but also at risk of losing it all just from looking at something that won't even get you anything. Being judicious is being blessed.