610. Buying a Woman

“Send forth. Rabbi Yehosha says, ‘What were they like? Like a king who brought to his son a fair-looking woman of good upbringing and wealthy, etc. He saw her, etc., I give her only to your son,’” etc. (Midrash Rabbah, 16:7).

When a person begins the work, the Creator promises him that He will give him a fair woman, etc., meaning a soul, called a “woman.” But the person says, “I want to see her.” That is, since the Kli [vessel] of the soul is called “faith above reason,” and the person wants her to be within reason, it means he does not want to believe that she is worth taking.

In other words, a person cannot believe that the purpose of creation, to do good to His creations, is found in Torah and Mitzvot [commandments], and in order to receive it we must pay, meaning give her something, where through the reception of the matrimony money, she agrees to be his wife and serve him. But if he does not give her something for which she agrees to take him, she is not dedicated [wedded] to him.

In the literal, we should ask how it is possible that because he gives a penny to a woman, she agrees to be his wife, and without a penny she does not agree. Is it worth taking him as a husband for a penny? How does the penny help in this matter, which makes it the deciding factor?

To buy a wife, one must pay with his life, as our sages said, “The Torah exists only in one who puts himself to death over it.”