Contribution of Maturity

From the Ohr HaChaim commentary by Rabbi Chaim (ben Moshe) Ibn Atar

"Every man over 20 years old …and give this offering to G-d." (Ex. 30:14)

The Torah stipulates that the minimum age at which a person had to make his half-shekel contribution was from twenty years and up. The Torah revealed a secret here when it did not demand that males from the age of 13 and up had to make this contribution. Seeing the males are considered as adults from the age of 13, why would teenagers not have been liable for this ransom? They also participated in the Golden Calf episode!

Maturity is essential to…appreciate G-d's message to man…

The Torah told us here that a person's personality [Nefesh] has not matured until age 20, as he had not had time to absorb and comprehend the various spiritual components that make up a true Israelite until he has reached that age. This is the mystical dimension of the verse "You are My son, I have fathered you this day" (Psalms 2:7). Compare what the Zohar, parashat Mishpatim p.98 has to say on that verse.

(The Zohar, commenting on Ex. 21:9, writes that a man is called "ben" [literally "son"] from the age of 13, and "ben leHakodosh Baruch Hu" [literally "son of the Holy One blessed be He"] from the age of 20. Ed.)

There is a sound reason why man should not be liable to punishment at the hands of heaven until he has reached that age. He is not yet mature emotionally and intellectually. Such maturity is essential to enable us to successfully battle the evil urge and to appreciate G-d's message to man. By the time man has reached the age of 20, he is considered fully equipped to cope with all kinds of temptations.

[Selected with permission from the five-volume English edition of Ohr HaChaim: the Torah Commentary of Rabbi Chaim Ben Attar by Eliyahu Munk.]

Comment

From the Ohr HaChaim commentary by Rabbi Chaim (ben Moshe) Ibn Atar More articles... |

Rabbi Chaim (ben Moshe) Ibn Atar (Sale, Western Morocco, 1696-Jerusalem, 1743) is best known as the author of one of the most important and popular commentaries on the Torah: the Ohr HaChaim, printed in Venice in 1741, while the author was on his way to the Holy Land. He established a major yeshiva in Israel, after moving there from Morocco. Chassidic tradition is that the main reason the Baal Shem Tov twice tried so hard (and failed) to get to the Holy Land was that he said if he could join the Ohr HaChaim there, together they could bring Mashiach. Rabbi Chaim acquired a reputation as a miracle worker, hence his title "the holy", although some apply this title only to his Torah commentary. He is buried outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Eliyahu Munk, the translator, was born in Frankfurt, emigrated to England as a young man and then to Toronto. After retiring from education and moving to Israel in 1978, he began an extraordinary second career as a translator, publishing English versions of the Torah commentaries of Rebbeinu Bachya, Akeidat Yitzchak, the Shelah, the Alshich and the Ohr Hachayim.

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