"It is good to thank Hashem ... to relate your kindness in the dawn and your faith in the night. Upon the ten-string instrument and the lyre, with expressive song accompanied by the harp."

The Midrash adds, "Says Hashem: I desire of Israel not the song of the harp, but rather the expressive song of their mouths, as it is written, 'Upon expressive song accompanied by the harp.'"

The Jew is in this world not to live a life of drudgery, but to find happiness. Indeed, in the Torah in parshas Ki Sovo we find that Hashem strongly rebukes the Jew who serves Him without joy and goodness of heart. (Deut. 28:47)

But the joy that we search for, says the Midrash, is not the shallow one which one gets from outside stimuli. Rather it is the true joy that wells up from within the heart of one who has found his lot in the world to be a source of happiness and wonder.

"And Boaz ate and drank, and his heart was glad." (Rus 3:7) The Midrash explains--"and he learned Torah." Boaz, upon the completion of the first successful harvest after ten years of famine, considered it of paramount importance that he take those feelings of satisfaction that he now felt and transform them into an eternal, inner happiness. Upon the completion of the harvest, he ate and drank. But he also sat and studied the inner workings of the world as they are taught in the Torah of Hashem. He gladdened his heart with the ancient lore of the Torah, as so many generations of his ancestors had done before him.

Boaz understood that happiness is but fleeting and transient, if it remains external. He "gladdened his heart" with the inner joy of Torah study.

Copyright (c) 1998 by Rabbi Levi Langer

Courtesy of www.JewishAmerica.com
Have a good Shabbos!