Don’t Be Afraid When a Man Grows Rich

“Do not be afraid when a man grows rich, when the honor of his home increases.” Opening King David wrote in the Book of Psalms: “Do not be afraid when a man grows rich, when the honor of his home increases.” The wording of this verse raises two questions. First, what is the fear the verse warns us about? The simple words “do not be afraid” tell us there is a real fear here, one we should turn away from. Second, and this is the main question: what is the link between “the honor of his home increases” and “a man grows rich”? If the honor of his home grows, his expenses grow, and his poverty grows along with them! Logic seems to point the other way. A bigger household should drain a man’s money, not bring it in. But before we explain the verse, we need to lay down the foundation. The Trap of Freedom Listen closely, young married man. Look at the single man. He has all the time in the world. He carries no responsibility for a wife. He carries no responsibility for children. He has no “honor of the home” to uphold. What could be better? He has free time to think, to plan, to build. But this is exactly the trap. Real building does not come from free time. It comes from pressure. A person with no burden at all just “floats” through his life. He is comfortable where he is. When a person is comfortable, he does not search. When he does not search, he does not find. He is too free to feel any need for freedom. Our Sages already ruled that marriage is a duty placed on every person. It is no accident that the Sages taught a man to marry before anything else. Marriage is not an “extra” added onto life. It is the frame that lets life take shape. The Power of the Yoke When a man marries, he steps under a “yoke of holiness.” This is the yoke of accepting Hashem as King, the yoke of the home, the yoke of responsibility. And right away, something wonderful begins to happen. The human soul cannot bear being bound. That is its nature: to reach higher, to expand, to seek open space. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, wrote that the soul is “truly a piece of Hashem above.” Because such a soul is limited, as if “locked up,” a mighty power to break free awakens inside it. As long as the man was single, he did not feel the “prison,” because he did not feel any limits. But once he enters the yoke of the home, his soul suddenly feels how narrow things are. So it searches with all its strength for a way out to freedom. The only way out left to it is the open space of earning a living, of building, of growing rich. This is the good kind of pressure our Sages hinted at when they said: “No one truly stands firm in the words of Torah unless he has first stumbled in them.” It is as if the stumbling and the pressure are the very things that bring a person to stand firm. The book Likkutei Torah, a classic Hasidic work, explains that this order is fixed in every part of serving Hashem. A descent brings an ascent. A narrow place leads to wide-open space. Out of the narrow place itself, a broad and open mind is born. Understanding the Verse Now we can understand the verse through a deeper, hinted reading. “Do not be afraid when a man grows rich.” And why should you not be afraid? Because “the honor of his home increases.” It is precisely because the burden and responsibility of the home have grown on him, because the “honor of the home” now rests on his shoulders, that he will become rich. The verse does not mean “he grows rich, and then the honor of his home increases.” It means the very opposite. “For the honor of his home increases”: since the yoke of the home has grown on him, that is why “a man grows rich.” This is the “do not be afraid” spoken to the young groom. Don’t be afraid of the yoke you are taking on. Don’t be afraid of the responsibility, of the “honor of his home” that will grow. This yoke itself is the key to blessing. It is the cause of wealth, not the obstacle on the way to it. King Solomon already wrote: “Whoever finds a wife has found goodness, and has received favor from Hashem.” The “goodness” and the “favor from Hashem” do not come separately, after a man finds a wife. They come through finding the wife, and through the yoke of the home she builds.