Proverbs 27:19 - Part I - Water as a mirror

Today in beit midrash we studied the following passage from Proverbs 27:19. We focused on verse 19, but the first two are included for context.

יז בַּרְזֶל בְּבַרְזֶל יָחַד וְאִישׁ יַחַד פְּנֵי רֵעֵהוּ.
17 As Iron sharpens iron; so a man sharpens the wit of his friend.

יח נֹצֵר תְּאֵנָה יֹאכַל פִּרְיָהּ וְשֹׁמֵר אֲדֹנָיו יְכֻבָּד.
18 He who tends a fig-tree will enjoy it's fruit; and he who cares for his master shall be honored.

יט כַּמַּיִם הַפָּנִים לַפָּנִים כֵּן לֵב הָאָדָם לָאָדָם.
19 As face answers to face in water, so does one man's heart to another. (JPS Translation)
19. As the water of the face is to the face, thus the heart of man is to a man. (My translation)

It was a very interesting discussion and I was left with three very different ideas.

The first comes from Rashi. He interpreted the verse in two sections:

כמים - הללו הפנים שאתה מראה לתוכן הן מראות לך
Like water - That face that you see within it, it reflects/will show you.

כן לב האדם לאדם - חברו לפי מה שאדם יודע שחבירו אוהבו כן הוא מראה לו פנים
Thus the heart of man is to a man - Friendship is according to how much a man knows that his friend loves him, and he will show his (true) face accordingly (my interpretation). Literally: a friend according to what a man knows that his friend loves him, thus he will show him his face.

The other commentators build on this theme. They take the water to mean a mirror that reflects a person back at himself, and the heart to mean that our friends reflect ourselves back at ourselves. If we feel hate or love for another person, they will probably feel the same way as we do.

I read, in a management book many years ago, that when one is frustrated with an employee, then that employee is probably frustrated with you. And it's a good time to sit and talk with that person and work things out. Here was the very same idea expressed over the past thousand years of Jewish commentary. One of those wow moments for me.

Another way to look at this was to know that we can use our relationships with others to reflect back on ourselves. If everyone is angry at you, then chances are you have some anger issues within yourself and it's a good time to reflect. There is a Hawaiian form of Shamanism called Ho'o-Pono-Pono, of which I've heard that one of the main principles is to find the patient's disharmony inside of yourself, correct it there, and then it will be healed in the patient.

In this sense, if a person wants to do a tsuvah between himself and another person, a good way to do that would be to that would be to find the issue inside of yourself, heal that, and then see how the relationship changes. An example would be if two people are angry at one another, but one of those people is able to work through their anger, and transform it, then probably the relationship can be healed. We can only fix the things over which we have power, and mostly that means the things within ourselves. We can't wait for another person to change, we need to change ourselves.

The next post will be about where the Ba'al Shem Tov takes this idea.