Mishlei 22:22-23 - Stealing from the Poor

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I didn't take this particular picture, but it wouldn't be difficult to do so with all of the opportunities.

Mishlei 22:22-23 - Stealing from the Poor

משלי כב:כב-כג

אַל תִּגְזָל דָּל כִּי דַל הוּא וְאַל תְּדַכֵּא עָנִי בַשָּׁעַר: כִּי ה' יָרִיב רִיבָם וְקָבַע אֶת קֹבְעֵיהֶם נָפֶשׁ:

Mishlei 22:22-23

Do not rob a destitute person because he is destitute, and do not oppress a poor person in the public square, for Hashem will take up their grievance and He will steal the soul of those who steal from them.

The major questions on these pesukim are:

(1) How do we read the "because" in the first clause? There are two ways to read this phrase: "Don't rob a poor person. Why not? Because he is poor." Alternatively: "Are you considering robbing a poor person because he is poor? Don't." In other words, is the "because" introducing an explanation, or is it part of the definition of the case?

(2) Why not? According to our first reading we must translate this into two questions: "How is 'because he is poor' a reason for not stealing from the poor?" and "How does the explanation 'because he is poor' relate to the subsequent explanation 'for Hashem will take up etc.'?" According to our second reading we can ask: "Why would a person think he can/should steal from the poor, and how does 'for Hashem will take up etc.' address this person's mistaken line of reasoning?" 

(3) How will Hashem "take up their grievance" and "steal their souls"? As I've written about before, acts of Hashem in Mishlei are either references to principles of hashgachah pratis (individual divine providence) or to descriptions of hashgachah klalis (natural consequences). In this case, which is it, and how does it work? 

[Time to think! You'll get way more out of this blog post if you work on the pasuk yourself before reading what I have to say. Read on when ready.]

Ordinarily this would be where I present to you my four-sentence summary of the main idea. In this case, I pretty much got my idea straight out of Rabbeinu Yonah, [1] so I'm going to start by presenting a translation of most of his commentary on our pesukim:

Do not rob a destitute person because he is poor - [this means, do not rob a destitute person] on account of his poverty, because you aren't afraid that he'll save the stolen item from your hand.  

and do not oppress a poor person in the shaar - "shaar" is a place where the public gathers ... The explanation of the matter is as follows: even though you have the ability to oppress him in the public square, in plain sight, and he won't [attempt] to save [the stolen item] from your hand, do not oppress him.  

for Hashem will take up their grievance - since they lack the ability to save themselves from their exploiters and oppressors, Hashem will take up their grievance, as it is stated: "He saves the poor person from the one who is stronger than him" (Tehilim 35:10).  

and He will steal the soul of those who steal from them - He will take the soul from the taker who robbed the money, for He will decree the penalty of misah bi'ydei shamayim (death at the hands of heaven) for stealing from a poor person, in contrast to stealing money from other people, because one who steals from the poor - it is as if he stole his life. 

Secondly, because this man [who steals from the poor] has breached [his] fear [of Hashem]: "the scoundrel says in his heart 'there is no god'" (ibid. 14:1; 53:2), and since there are no people to help the poor person, [the thief] has no fear of God before his eyes, imagining in his soul that there is no law and no Judge. Chazal similarly say about the ganav (thief) that he is punished more than the galzan (robber) because he fears people but doesn't fear God. 

My understanding of our pesukim focuses more on Rabbeinu Yonah's second point than his first. Here is my four-sentence summary of the main idea:

There are several reasons why one might be tempted to target a poor person for theft or oppression, even though one wouldn’t target other victims: (1) it is unlikely that the perpetrator will get caught, since people tend not to care or take notice of criminal acts against the poor; (2) it is unlikely that the poor person will retaliate, due to the limitations of his circumstances; (3) it is much easier to bypass the guilt of the crime, due to the relative lack of identification with the victim and the feeling that “he’s not a real person, like I am.” 

However, once a person starts rationalizing acts of theft against the poor, he will be increasingly prone to rationalizing all theft against any victim – beginning with those who share the aforementioned criteria in any measure, and ultimately neglecting these criteria altogether. 

The more one gives in to such rationalizations, the more ambitious and less cautious he will be in his crimes, and eventually, he will target the wrong person – a person who will retaliate, and who will bring him down. 

It is possible that the pasuk uses the broad term “dal” to extend this principle to acts of injustice against any disadvantaged second-class citizen within a given system, such as employers against employees, teachers against students, those who are high up on the social hierarchy against those who are low, adults against non-adults, etc. 

According to this interpretation, there is no need to explain the acts of Hashem in our pesukim as a reference to any sort of miraculous divine intervention on behalf of the poor. Rather, our pesukim are to be understood as Mishleic middah kneged middah (measure for measure), similar to the teaching of Hillel in Avos 2:6: “He also saw a skull floating upon the water and said to it: Because you drowned others, you were drowned; and those who drowned you, will themselves be drowned.”

My decision to write about this pasuk today was occasioned by a real-life crime I witnessed a few days ago. I am currently in Hawaii. Whenever we're here for Shabbos we usually stay in our condo until an hour or two before Shabbos ends, and then we trek down the many flights of stairs to the street level and take a long walk until Shabbos is over. This past Shabbos we finished our walk with some time to spare and decided to sit on a public bench on the Waikiki strip and people-watch until Shabbos was over. This was a very crowded area crawling with tourists, mind you, and most definitely fit Rabbeinu Yonah's description of "shaar" in our pesukim.

Background info: Honolulu has a major homelessness problem. The streets in the city are covered with tents, and even in the more touristy areas of Waikiki - like the place where we are currently situated - there are tons of homeless people walking around, digging through the trash, and lying down on the street. I say "lying down" because sometimes they're asleep and sometimes they're drunk or stoned. (You can tell it's the latter when the police have to come and evict them from these public locations.)

Anyway, we were sitting on this bench near the public walkway and noticed a homeless person lying down (i.e. sleeping/drunk/stoned) on the grass around 30 feet away. We almost missed him because  the green sleeping bag he was covered with blended in with the grass. Right next to his head he had a plastic shopping bag filled with his belongings. Usually the poor people in Honolulu use bags filled with their belongings as a pillow, which is a more effective strategy for protecting valuables, but this guy just had it next to his head.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw what appeared to be a local Hawaiian guy, walking at a fast pace along the public path from West to East, in the direction of all the other pedestrians. He didn't look poor or anything. He had on a pair of board shorts and his bare arms and chest were covered with fancy tattoos. He wasn't carrying any belongings with him (as he would if he were poor). His hair wasn't matted, and his face wasn't dirty. Judging by appearances, he was just a regular local Hawaiian surfer-dude.

Suddenly, surfer-dude veered off the path, walked right up to the poor person, and snatched the bag from behind his head! Without breaking his pace, he rejoined the pedestrian flow, and quickly vanished into the crowd.

Here's a crude map I drew to help you visualize the events.

It took us a few seconds to process what we had seen. I looked at my brother and said, "Did we just witness a theft?" If the poor person had been awake and aware of what was going on, I would have just assumed it was a drug deal - but he clearly wasn't in on this deal. Around ten seconds after the theft, the poor person - either hearing or sensing the disturbance - woke up and started looking around for his bag.

Shortly after witnessing this theft, I had a glimmer of Mishleic intuition, but I didn't remember these pesukim until the next morning. Let's apply our pesukim to this case.

Like I said, surfer-dude appeared to be local, and appeared not to be homeless. If we, as annual visitors to Honolulu, are familiar with certain dynamics of the homeless population, then he, as a local, would be even more so, and it's pretty clear that his act was premeditated. Who knows whether this was his first such theft or his tenth? Either way, his theft was likely motivated and rationalized by the aforementioned criteria: (1) it is unlikely that he'd get caught, since nobody - neither the police, the locals, nor the tourists - would going to stop him from stealing a plastic bag from a homeless guy; (2) it's unlikely that the victim would retaliate, since, in this case, he was sleeping, and wouldn't be aware of the theft until long after the thief fled the scene; (3) and it is easy to bypass the guilt of the crime, since "he's just a bum."

Will the thief feel that "he got away with it"? Yes, especially because he committed this crime in plain view of the public. Will this strengthen his feeling that "there is no law and no Judge"? Yes, regardless of what his conscious morals and ethics are. Will his greed and ambition for "free loot" grow? Yes, regardless of whether this guy's bag was filled with valuables or not. Will all of these feelings embolden him to commit similar acts of theft in the future? Yes, because why should he stop? Will he become less vigilant and more daring with each subsequent act of theft? Yes - it's just human nature. Will he become increasingly willing to rationalize acts of theft beyond the limited parameters of the crime we witnessed? Yes, as Chazal (Shabbos 105b) so aptly said:

For thus is the craft of the yetzer ha'ra (evil inclination): today it tells you, "do this," and tomorrow it tells you, "do that," until [eventually] it tells you "worship avodah zarah (idolatry)." 

It is not too difficult to imagine this guy in the not-so-distant future attempting to steal another bag from a homeless person, or the belongings stored under a beach towel by a beach-going tourist, or an item from a local shop while the owner momentarily looks away. And on that unlucky day, surfer-dude is caught red-handed, and the homeless person stabs him with a knife, or the tourist calls the local police, or the shop-owner's clandestine shop-guard out front grabs him, puts him into a headlock, and then gets him thrown in jail.

This is Mishleic midah kneged midah in action. We live in a world of lawful cause-and-effect, and our own psyche operates by lawful cause-and-effect. Attempt to ignore, neglect, or bypass these divinely authored laws, and it'll only be a matter of time before the consequences catch up to you.