Mishlei 21:12 - When to Help a Rasha Succeed

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Artwork: Kambal, Consul of Allocation - by Vincent Proce

Mishlei 21:12 - When to Help a Rasha Succeed

משלי כא:יב

מַשְׂכִּיל צַדִּיק לְבֵית רָשָׁע מְסַלֵּף רְשָׁעִים לָרָע:

Mishlei 21:12

A tzadik brings success to the house of a rasha, corrupting resha’im towards evil.

For an expanded definition of "tzadik" and "rasha," see my post The Mishleic Spectrum: A Glossary of Mishleic Personalities.

The root of the word "maskil" (ש.כ.ל.) can be translated as either "comprehend" or "success." Consequently, the meforshim (commentators) are divided as to how this word should be translated here, in the phrase "maskil tzadik l'beis rasha." Most meforshim maintain that the proper translation is: "a tzadik comprehends the house of a rasha" (see Meiri, Rabbeinu Yonah, Rid, Ri Nachmias, and others), but a minority of meforshim translate it as "a tzadik brings success to the house of a rasha" (Ralbag and Metzudas Tzion). 

My Mishlei rebbi always taught me that when faced with the choice between two translations, go for the more difficult one. Why? Because it's more fun that way! 

Based on the translation of "maskil tzadik l'beis rasha" as "a tzadik brings success to the house of a rasha," there are three questions:

(1) Why would a tzadik bring success to the house of a rasha? Isn't it a bad thing if the rasha succeeds? Why would a tzadik facilitate that? 

(2) Under what circumstances does a tzadik do this? Even if we can find a reason why a tzadik would bring success to the house of a rasha, it doesn't seem likely that the tzadik would always do this, but would only do so in specific situations. What are those situations?

(3) What is meant by "corrupting resha'im towards evil"? The phrase is ambiguous. (Whenever I teach this in my Mishlei class, there's always a student who asks, "Does it mean corrupting a rasha towards what he considers to be evil, which is actually good? Maybe it means that the tzadik helps the rasha to do teshuvah?" I don't think this is a plausible reading of the pasuk, but the fact that this question comes up shows the extent of the pasuk's ambiguity.) 

[Time to think! Read on when ready.]

Here's my four-sentence summary of the main idea of this pasuk:

According to Mishlei, a rasha is someone who one who seeks to impose his own “system” onto reality in order to achieve power and greatness, often at the expense of the other members of the system, whom he will use, abuse, and trample underfoot without any compunction. The tzadik recognizes that "the path of the wicked [leads to] destruction" (Tehilim 1:6) and knows that rasha is destined to fail, since his ambitions will continue to grow more and more fantastical and unrealistic either his artificial system self-destructs because reality itself can’t sustain it, or the people he oppresses rise up and put an end to his reign. For this reason, the tzadik will sometimes facilitate the rasha’s success by corrupting him further towards evil in order to hasten his inevitable downfall. Of course, the tzadik will only do this after weighing the consequences of playing the role of enabler and determining whether this route is the lesser of two evils. 

My favorite example of this in Tanach involves Esther the tzadekes and Haman the rasha. Chazal (Megilah 15b) ask why Esther invited Haman to a series of parties with herself and Achashveirosh instead of immediately informing her husband of Haman's plot and asking for his assistance. One of the Amoraim answers that she intended to make the king and the other nobles jealous of Haman by showering him with attention. Another Amora answers by citing the pasuk: "Pride goes before the fall, and haughtiness comes before stumbling" (Mishlei 16:18). Both answers exemplify the strategy in our pasuk. Haman sought power and greatness. Esther knew that Haman's pursuit of this goal would eventually result in his destruction, but because her people were in danger, she couldn't afford to wait. Instead, she acted as a catalyst by inviting him to her parties, thereby feeding his ego fueling his success. Her plan worked. After the first party, Haman went home and bragged to his wife, sons, and friends about his recent ascendancy. In Haman's eyes, Esther was helping him to succeed, but in actuality, she was "corrupting him towards evil," in order to bring about his destruction. 

My favorite historical example - or pair of examples - involves two power-hungry men whose haughty ambition directly led to their downfall in similar ways: Napoleon and Hitler. [Note: obviously, history is very complicated, but I'm going to oversimplify these events in order to use them as examples for our pasuk.] Both men amassed powerful military forces, the likes of which the world had never seen. Both men strove for absolute power and world domination. Both men foolishly attempted to invade Russia in the winter, and failed horrendously. These failures marked turning points in their respective wars, and ultimately led to their defeat. I don't know whether Napoleon or Hitler had advisors who cautioned them against these ill-fated military campaigns, but if a tzadik were to find himself in just such an advisory position, this would be a case in which he would implement the strategy in our pasuk. Such advisors would convince their rasha-leaders to go ahead with these invasions and lead them to believe they would succeed, concealing their knowledge that these plans would most certainly lead to failure and destruction.

On a more mundane level, this strategy can be implemented in situations involving non-full-fledged reshaim, but merely a person who wishes to impose a doomed-to-fail system in an otherwise stable environment. Say, for instance, a CEO has a plan to radically change how his company is run, and one of his lower-ranking employees knows that this plan will be terrible for the company's efficiency. First this employee will see if there is any way at all to persuade his boss that the plan will be ineffective. If he sees that his boss is unlikely to change his mind, then our pasuk would suggest that the employee take the opposite approach by facilitating the success of his boss's plan as much as possible. If the plan truly is doomed to fail, then it is in his best interest enable his boss's plan to "succeed" with maximum efficiency, so that its failure is quicker and more pronounced. Even though his boss refused to listen to reason, perhaps he'll recognize his error when he sees with his own eyes that his plans resulted in failure. Additionally, by actively striving to maximize the success of his boss's plan, the employee prevents his boss from being able to point at various factors in hindsight, saying, "My plan is great! The only reason it didn't work because of XYZ." If the employee had attempted to sabotage the plan or even if he dragged his feet and was lax in carrying it out, then his boss could still maintain that his plan was a good idea, and blame its failure on its implementation.

This pasuk is a great example of how a tzadik's mind works. Because he thinks systemically, he will see strategies that strike the non-tzadik as counter-intuitive, or even detrimental. Perhaps this is what the majority of meforshiim are getting at when they translate the pasuk as: "a tzadik comprehends the house of a rasha."