Photo credit: Bigevil600
Here’s an interesting story from this week’s Torah headlines: “He (Moses) went out on the second day, and behold, two Hebrew men were quarreling, and he said to the wicked one, "Why are you going to strike your friend?"
Do you notice something incongruous here? Go on, read it again. That’s right! The Torah refers to one of them as “wicked” only for so much as threatening to strike the other.
There’s an important message there – the intention to hit alone already warrants his being labeled “wicked.” But why would this be the case? He hasn’t actually done anything wrong yet?!
Here’s the point – we have been created with hands to do good, to use them for positive and constructive uses. Raising ones hand with the intention to hit is already a deviation from the hand’s intended purpose. Therefore the perpetrator, although not legally liable, is described in the Torah as “wicked.”
But there’s a positive side to this too.
When we do good, pushing ourselves to do more than we’re accustomed to do, we would be described as “righteous.” It’s not some unattainable level of goodness and giving that’s expected from us; rather, we are expected to do more than we did yesterday.
And that’s truly righteous.