רבינו בחיי — זאת חקת התורה — פרה אדומה

Q — Shlomo HaMelech says "אמרתי אחכמה והיא רחוקה ממני" — he reached for wisdom and it eluded him. Eluded him *where*?

A — Rabbeinu Bachya delivers one of the most quoted gematriot in his Torah: the phrase והיא רחוקה ("and it is far from me") and the phrase פרה אדומה are numerically identical. Shlomo, who had been given חכמה מרובה מחכמת כל בני קדם, who decoded the languages of beasts and the secrets of plants and the rules of physiognomy, who answered every chacham who stood before him — when he reached parah adumah, the wisdom went "רחוקה". The very letters by which he confessed his limit *spell* the thing he could not grasp. RBB reads this gematria as itself the chukkah: even the description of one's inability to understand the chok is *itself written in the chok*. The wisest man who ever lived found himself sealed in the limits of the parah adumah, and the seal is not a barrier outside him but the words of his own admission. This is why the parsha calls it זאת חקת התורה: not a mitzvah of the Torah, but the chukkah-status of the Torah itself.