Duties of the Heart, Fifth Treatise on Devotion 4/חובות הלבבות·שער חמישי - שער ייחוד המעשה ד׳

1Three things damage one's devoting his act of service to G-d alone:

2(1) Ignorance of G-d and His good.

3(2) Ignorance of G-d's mitzvot and His torah.

4(3) Thoughts and suggestions the yetzer presents a man to endear to him this world and distance him from the path that leads to [his good in] the next world.

5Explanation of the above three: Ignorance of G-d causes lacking in the service because one who does not know his master will not serve him devotedly. Rather, he will only serve someone who he is familiar with and which he expects benefit or harm from.

6Hence, if one who does not know G-d does an act of service, his intent will be to people that he is afraid of or that he hopes to get some benefit from. Therefore, he is serving people not He who created them, because he is ignorant of G-d's matter. Similarly we can say for the idol worshipper, that ignorance of G-d is what brings him to this.

7However, the idol worshipper is to be preferred over the flatterer (hypocrite) in the following four ways:

8(1) In our times, there are no prophets which can perform miracles to clarify to the idol worshipper his faulty outlook. But the flatterer in G-d's torah, there are grounds for a claim against him. For he undertook the commandments to serve G-d alone and undertook the prohibitions not to serve someone else (than G-d).

9(2) The idolater worships something which does not rebel against G-d . But the flatterer in G-d's torah worships a human being who rebels against G-d as well as one who does not rebel against Him.

10(3) The idolater worships one thing alone, whereas for the flatterer, there is no limit to those he worships.

11(4) The idolater's status is visible for all to see, and people guard themselves from him due to public knowledge of his denial of G-d's existence. But the flatterer's denial is not visible, and people trust in him. Therefore, he is more likely to damage them than the idol worshipper.

12It comes out that the flatterer is the greatest disease in the world. He is called in our writings, the flatterer, the haughty, the enticer.

13One who does not understand the commandments of G-d and His torah is not capable of devoting his acts wholly to G-d. For as he does not know the ways of service prescribed and their roots in the torah, much less will he understand how to perform them properly, namely, with wholehearted devotion to G-d. Because he is not sure whether he is in truth under duty to perform them. Nor does he know what is detrimental to wholehearted devotion in his service of G-d, even if he is knowledgeable of G-d and of His goodness, as our Sages said "an ignorant man cannot be pious" (Avot 2:5).

14TEMPTATION OF THE YETZER HARAThe temptations of the yetzer (evil inclination) divide into two categories:

15(1) Thoughts which cast doubt on truths and confuse his emuna (faith), so that he cannot do any religious act properly to G-d.

16(2) He comes in the way of arguments and proofs that his zeal and exertion in the service of G-d is neither a duty nor meritorious, and advises him to instead work for this world and its inhabitants.