The First Story Always Sounds Right

“The first to plead his case seems right, until his fellow comes and examines him.” Opening King Solomon, inspired by Hashem, wrote: “The first to plead his case seems right, until his fellow comes and examines him.” At first this sounds like a simple rule: listen to both sides. But there is something much deeper here. The verse does not say that the first one is a liar. It says that the first one is right. The first story sounds just. Convincing. True. And still, “his fellow comes and examines him.” Only when the other side arrives, and a real examination begins, do we find out what that “rightness” is made of. A small but sharp question: Why does the verse need to tell us that the first one sounds right? Isn’t that obvious? Everyone tells his own story in the best possible way. The answer is that the verse is giving us a deep warning. The first one does not only sound right. Sometimes he also comes across as the victim. And that is where the great confusion begins. The Common Mistake: Whoever Shouts Loudest We have a natural, human tendency to believe the most emotional story. The one who cries, the one who gets angry, the one who arrives first with a hurt face: we tend to rule in his favor. This is not wickedness. It is being human. The heart responds to pain. But our Sages taught us otherwise. King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes: “And Hashem seeks the one who is pursued.” An ancient Jewish commentary on the Bible explains this in a wonderful way. Even when a righteous person is chasing a wicked one, Hashem stands on the side of the one being chased. Why? Because the one being pursued is the one whom reality is working against. He is not simply the one who managed to tell his story first. There is a huge difference between someone who has been hurt and someone who announces that he has been hurt. So the right question is not: Who is crying? The right question is: Who is turning the story upside down? First Point: The Signs of the One Who Hurts There is a well-known tactic used by someone who hurt another person and got caught. First comes denial: it never happened, not a word of it. Then comes attack: you are the liar, you are the problem. And finally comes the reversal: I am the real victim here. This is a calculated move. It is not an expression of pain. It is a strategy. The loudest cry of “I am the one who was hurt” is not necessarily proof of being hurt. Sometimes that cry is itself the warning sign. Anyone who has studied the story of Korah, who rebelled against Moses, will understand this well. Korah came with a prepared, well-organized claim: “The whole community, all of them, are holy!” It was a story that sounded just. It sounded popular, even emotional. And Moses, the one who was truly being pursued? “He fell on his face.” He did not run a campaign. He fell. The quiet modesty of the one who is truly hurt is not weakness. It is itself a kind of testimony. Second Point: The Signs of the One Who Is Hurt And here is perhaps the most important new insight. The person who is truly being hurt often does not know it while it is happening. He asks himself: Maybe the problem is me? He makes excuses for the one who is hurting him. He explains him to other people. He defends him. His waking up is slow, painful, and messy. He has no neat “story.” What he has is confusion. It is important to say this to the young married man who carries this question in his heart: Your confusion is not proof that you are wrong. Sometimes it is proof that you are genuine. A whole, healthy inner self has a hard time swallowing a complete lie. It searches for logic. It looks for the blame in itself, because that is easier than admitting that someone lied to it in a completely calculated way. This is the “examines” in the verse. It is not enough to listen. You must examine. Ask: Who here is confused, and who here has a story that is too well-prepared? Closing: “His Fellow Comes and Examines Him” “His fellow comes and examines him.” Who is this “fellow”? It is plain common sense. It is the clear view of the Torah. It is the person who does not get swept along by the loudest voice, but sits down and asks: “Hashem seeks the one who is pursued.” So who here is being pursued? Our task is not to become cynical. Our task is to become careful examiners. To develop an eye that sees past the noisy surface. Because the one who hurts builds a dramatic outside, while the one who is hurt hides behind his confusion. And the greatest examiner of all is Hashem Himself, who “tests the heart and the innermost thoughts.” He does not listen to whoever shouts the loudest. He seeks the one who is pursued.