The verse from Proverbs (5:6) sets the stage: “Lest you delineate a path of life: Her tracks wander; you will not know.” What does it mean to "delineate," or in Hebrew, tefales, a path of life? Rabbi Abba bar Kahana offers a powerful insight: God is essentially telling us, don't sit there trying to evaluate the mitzvot, the commandments, of the Torah.
Think about it. Don't try to weigh them on a scale, as Isaiah (40:12) says God does with mountains – peles being the Hebrew word for scale. Don't say, "Okay, this mitzvah is a big one, the reward must be huge, so I'll do it. But that one? Seems minor, not worth the effort."
According to Ginzberg's retelling in Legends of the Jews, this approach misses the whole point. So, what did God do? He didn't reveal the reward for each and every mitzvah. Why? So we'd perform them all with pure intentions, without trying to game the system! As the verse says, "Her tracks wander; you will not know." You can't predict the path of reward.
Devarim Rabbah illustrates this with a parable. Imagine a king who hires laborers for his orchard, filled with all kinds of trees. He doesn't tell them how much each type of tree is worth to work on. He keeps the wages a secret. Why? So they wouldn't just flock to the high-paying trees and ignore the rest.
In the evening, he asks each worker, "Which tree did you work under?" One says, "That pepper tree." The king replies, "That's worth one gold piece." Another says, "The one with the white blossoms." "Ah," says the king, "half a gold piece." Still another, "The olive tree." "Two hundred zuz (an ancient coin)," declares the king.
The workers complain, "Why didn't you tell us which tree paid the most? We would have worked there!" The king responds, "If I had, how would the whole orchard get cultivated?"
The parallel is clear. God didn't reveal the reward for each mitzvah for the same reason. Except, Devarim Rabbah points out, there are two exceptions: the mitzvah of honoring your parents, and the mitzvah of sending away the mother bird before taking her eggs.
Honoring parents is considered one of the most challenging mitzvot, and its reward is long life, as stated in Exodus (20:12): "Honor your father and your mother, so that your days will be prolonged." On the other hand, sending away the mother bird, found in Deuteronomy (22:7) – "You shall surely send away the mother…and prolong your days" – is considered relatively easy. And yet, the reward is the same: long life!
As we find in Midrash Rabbah, this teaches us something profound: the size of the reward isn't necessarily tied to the difficulty of the mitzvah. It’s not a straightforward equation.
So, the next time you're tempted to weigh the pros and cons of doing a good deed, remember the king's orchard. Remember the hidden rewards, and the fact that sometimes, the "small" acts have unexpectedly large consequences. Maybe, just maybe, the real reward isn't about the outcome at all, but about the kind of person we become in the process.