Reuven's Teshuvah for a Sin of Thought

1aOr one may explain the Midrash by the Gemara (Shabbos 55b)¹: “Whoever says Reuven sinned is simply mistaken. Rather, because he disturbed his father's bed, Scripture regards it as if he had sinned.” In truth, disturbing the bed was not an actual sin in deed; the act itself was no sin. Only the thought behind it was: that the additional son should be born to his own mother². Measured against the great worth of Reuven's holiness, this thought counted as a sin, and so Scripture treats it as if it had been an actual sin in deed. Now, the teshuvah of Adam HaRishon and Kayin was for an actual sinful deed. Their teshuvah therefore also had to be through deeds, with sackcloth and fasts, to repair the damage done by the deed. But Reuven's sin was only in thought. (Perhaps the sin touched only the thought of Yaakov Avinu as well, whose holy thought was left incomplete because his bed was disturbed.) So his teshuvah did not need to be through deeds. Even by Reuven's own view that he had sinned, he had not sinned, Heaven forbid, in deed, but only in thought, and one thought can undo another. At most, it would have been enough for his teshuvah to be abandoning the sin, regret and resolve for the future, to cancel the earlier thought.

1bBut Reuven did not do this. He occupied himself with sackcloth and fasting, because of his great holiness, and because he contemplated “the light of the living King's face” [cf. Mishlei 16:15] and saw how much damage his sin had done. In his eyes this sin counted as an actual sin in deed, so he took up sackcloth and fasting to wipe out and cut off all the kelipos, the forces of impurity, as the law of teshuvah prescribes. That is why Hashem said to him, “Never has a person sinned before Me [and done teshuvah].” There had never been a sin that was only “before Me,” in mere thought, which even the angels cannot perceive, only I, and for which the person did teshuvah through the deeds of teshuvah, with sackcloth and fasts. “And you opened with teshuvah first (techilah).” Techilah, “beginning,” means thought, which is the beginning of action, as in “last in deed, first in thought” [Lecha Dodi]. So “you opened with teshuvah” means teshuvah for the sin of thought, which is called techilah. “By your life, your descendant will stand and open with teshuvah …: ‘Return, O Israel, to (ad) Hashem your God’” (Hoshea 14:2). That is, return even for the sin that is revealed only before Hashem your God.

1c“For you have stumbled in your iniquity”: if you do not do teshuvah for a sinful thought, it will lead you to sin unintentionally, without awareness, because your understanding and your mind have been damaged by the earlier tainted thought. That is “for you have stumbled”: an unintentional sin. Afterward, Heaven forbid, you will come to deliberate sin. Therefore Hoshea warned to return at once for the bad thought, for then it is easy to repent of it. As the Pri Megadim explains (Pesichah Kolleles), for a bad thought or musing, a good thought is enough as teshuvah. Not so once a person has been brought, Heaven forbid, to an actual sin in deed; then the teshuvah is hard too. This is the meaning of the verse “Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as with wagon ropes” (Yeshayahu 5:18). One sin drags another after it [Avos 4:2]: from thought one comes to speech, and from speech to deed. The thought is called “cords of vanity,” thin threads. But as they keep dragging on, they bring a person to the deed, which is called “wagon ropes.” How urgent it is, then, to do teshuvah for the thought at once!