551. The Torah as a Spice

“Rabbi said, ‘One must not pray for the wicked to be taken away from the world, for had the Creator removed Terah from the world while he was idol-worshipping, Abraham Our Father would not have come to the world, and there would not have been the tribes of Israel, King David, or the Messiah King, and the Torah would not have been given and all those righteous and pious people and the prophets would not have been in the world;” (The Zohar, VaYera, 105).

In ethics, when a person has bad qualities and foreign thoughts, he should not pray that the Creator will put them to death. Rather, they must be in the world so as to have room for choice, since the time of choice is called “a time of labor.”

This is the meaning of Terah begetting Abraham, for specifically through labor are we rewarded with wholeness, called Abraham. It is likewise with all of the wholeness of the rest of the righteous, since the reward is according to the effort.

Likewise, the Torah was not given because Torah is as our sages said, “I have created the evil inclination; I have created the Torah as a spice.” It follows that precisely when there are these wicked in a man, he needs the Torah, as our sages said, “The light in it reforms him.”

In this manner, we should interpret the complaint of the angels, who said, “Give Your glory on the heaven,” and He replied to them, “Is there evil inclination in you?” We should ask, Is the Torah something limited that cannot be divided between angels and people down below on earth?

We should say that the argument of the angels that the Torah belongs specifically to the angels, since the Torah is sublime, for precisely when he is in a state of “angel,” he has connection to the Torah. The Creator replied to them: “Moreover, one who has evil inclination has connection to the Torah, since the Torah is regarded as a spice for the evil inclination. But the angels have no connection to the Torah because they have no vessels of reception.”