Soro’s lifetime was one hundred years, and twenty years, and seven years – the years of Soro’s life[2]
We are all familiar with Rashi’s comment about why the pasuk breaks up the number 127 into three groups, repeating the word “years” in each group. At age 100, she was as if 20. At 20, as if she were seven. All of her years were consistent; all were for the good.
Small problem, however. Ramban flags the fact that Yishmael – not exactly on our list of spiritual X-Men – is treated the same way. “These were the years of Yishmael’s life: a hundred years, and thirty years, and seven years.”[3] Where was the holy consistency and constancy in his life?
Man, I believe, is meant to always be on a journey. He needs to constantly better and perfect himself. This is fairly obvious when contrasting his youth with his adult life. His juvenile version lacks the mature sechel he develops later. But it can’t end there. There are always higher levels to aspire to. Even in his old age, his quest for further elevation must continue. Every day, he can examine where he was the previous day, and find some part of his avodah whose value was diminished by some subconscious element that was not entirely lishmah. He then endeavors to correct this flaw.
This may be part of what Chazal[4] meant when they taught, “A person should always involve himself in Torah not lishmah,” i.e. he should keep growing ever day, so that when he looks back, it will always seem to him that his previous behavior was lo lishmah! So writes the Hafla’ah.
So it was with Soro. She never stopped growing. Even when she reached her hundredth birthday, she still possessed a yetzer hora, just like she did when she was twenty. She gave no pause, however, to conquering it, and improving herself day by day.
It could be argued that there is a simpler way to arrive at the same point. Chazal teach that a person who does teshuvah out of love for Hashem sees all his previous aveiros transposed into merits. That should mean that a person who repents late in life enjoys a huge balance of merit in his heavenly bank account. Indeed, that was true of Yishmael, who repented later in life.[5] Thus, at least in retrospect, all the years of his life were also consistent with the position that he reached at the end.
Yet, the two could not be more different. Soro was consistent in real time. She lived her consistency, from her youth through her old age. Yishmael’s consistency was de jure, rather than de facto. It came about only because of Hashem’s chesed in dealing with the past indiscretions of the baal teshuvah, treating all of them as positive elements, rather than what they were at the time they were committed.
It is not surprising then, that Soro’s years are treated differently than Yishmael’s. Only in her case does the Torah add an additional comment, a summary after enumerating the stages of her life: “the years of Soro’s life.” Only Soro truly lived her accomplishments as they were happening. Yishmael’s came to him as a bonus check, through the beneficence of his Master.
- Adapted from Maharam Schick al haTorah ↑
- Bereishis 23:1 ↑
- Bereishis 25:17 ↑
- Pesachim 50b ↑
- Rashi Bereishis 25:9 ↑