אבן עזרא — לא תחמד בית רעך

Q — How can the Torah command "לא תחמד" — don't covet — when desire seems involuntary? Many ask: it's impossible to legislate the heart; if a person sees something beautiful, won't he naturally desire it?

A — Ibn Ezra answers with one of the most famous moshalim in his peirush. A peasant of sound mind, seeing the king's beautiful daughter, does NOT covet sleeping with her — because he knows it's impossible. Just as no one with sense desires wings to fly. Just as no one desires his own mother, however beautiful — because from childhood he was trained that she is forbidden. The Torah's strategy is the same: it asks a person to train himself so that another's wife or property becomes as inherently OUT OF REACH as the king's daughter to the peasant. The mechanism is theological: internalize that everything you have is God's gift, that what you don't have is what God didn't will to give you, and that "לא יוכל לקחתו בכחו ובמחשבותיו ותחבלותיו." The maskil who lives by this will not covet — "ישמח בחלקו." A mitzvah that seems impossible is in fact a tikun of the heart through a tikun of the worldview.