Lions, foxes and a mysterious proof verse

Open any contemporary siddur or volume of mishnayot today and look for the teaching of Rabbi Matya ben Charash (Avot 4:20). There you will find the following text:

הֱוֵי מַקְדִּים בִּשְׁלוֹם כָּל אָדָם, וֶהֱוֵי זָנָב לָאֲרָיוֹת, וְאַל תְּהִי רֹאשׁ לַשֻּׁעָלִים

In English: “Be the first to greet all people—and be a tail for lions, not a head for foxes”.

This does not appear to be the text that the Catalan scholar Rabbi Menachem Meiri (1249-1315) contemplated when he authored his commentary on Avot. The Mishnah in his text continues with a proof verse from Proverbs:

הלוך (הוֹלֵךְ) אֶת-חֲכָמִים וחכם (יֶחְכָּם); וְרֹעֶה כְסִילִים יֵרוֹעַ

In English: “He who walks with wise men shall be wise, but the companion of fools will suffer for it” (Mishlei 13:20).

Rabbi Samuel ben Isaac de Uçeda states explicitly that this was the text before Meiri in his compendious Midrash Shmuel (1579).

The link between this mishnah and the proof verse was clearly understood to exist in earlier times, even among scholars who probably did not have it in their copies of Avot. Rabbi Simchah ben Shmuel (died 1105) quotes the first half of the verse in the commentary on Avot found in the Machzor Vitry; rather later, Midrash Shmuel cites references to it by Rabbenu Yonah (1200-1263) and Rabbi Matityahu Hayitzhari. It continues to be cited even today.

This post addresses the extent to which the proof verse supports the mishnah.

It seems to me that the plain meaning of the verse from Proverbs is directed to the company one keeps. This proposition is supported by commentators on Tanach Essentially, the company of the wise enhances one’s wisdom, while the company of fools has the opposite effect. If we learn the verse in this manner, we can make the following observations:

• The proposition that one can learn wisdom from the wise is already implicit in the axiom in Avot 4:1 that the person who is wise is one who learns from others. It is unclear why we should need a repetition of this proposition;
• Our Mishnah here appears to emphasise the significance of a person being a “tail” or a “head”, that is to say a leader or a follower. The proof verse makes no express reference this issue;
• The lion in mishnayot and midrash is associated with many positive characteristics (see e.g. commentaries on Avot 5:23, “be as strong as a lion”), but wisdom is not one of them;
• Likewise, the fox in mishnayot and midrash is associated with cunning, guile and natural craftiness (see e.g. Rashi, Sanhedrin 39a)—but not with foolishness.[1]

Rabbenu Yonah sought to read the Hebrew as indicating that, while a person trails along behind the wise and is therefore metaphorically their tail, he finds that the fools follow him and he is therefore their head. While this explanation has been accepted and amplified by the Vilna Gaon and Rabbi Ovadyah Yosef, it does not read convincingly and Ralbag implicitly rejects it in his commentary on Proverbs: there he writes of the subject of the verse pursuing either the wise or the foolish—and thus being the “tail” in each case. Malbim however expressly follows the tails-and-heads approach.

We are left to contemplate the utility of verses that do not actually prove or clearly illustrate the point of a mishnah or baraita but which remains associated with them. There are many examples of such verses and the Judeophile Christian scholar R. Travers Herford points to several in his Ethics of the Talmud. While it would be quite wrong and thoroughly inappropriate to discard these verses, we are entitled to ask why they were chosen and what function they truly serve. It is improbable that their inclusion was solely for mnemonic reasons. Perhaps they are traces of earlier, deeper or more complex teachings that have been lost to us in the process of transmission through the generations. It would be good to know.

------------------------------------------------------

[1] Even in Rabbi Akiva’s famous parable of the fox and the fish (Berachot 61b), where the fish call the fox “foolish”, they preface this jibe with a recitation that the fox is called pike’ach shebachayot (“the cleverest of creatures”).