The Gift of Letting Someone Else Finish the Job

I am a little neurotic about mowing my lawn. I have fully capable sons, but they tend to literally cut corners – leaving the edges sloppy. This bothers me, so I have taken the job on myself, even though I know I would probably be a better father if I required a son to mow. Because, let’s face it, it feels great to complete our work, and have the satisfaction of a job well done.

The first time G-d finishes something, it seems He shares in that satisfaction:

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their host. And on the seventh day God finished His work which He had done; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.

He made the world, and then set a trend for all time: when you finish a job right, take a moment (even if you don’t really “need” the moment) to take pleasure in the glow of accomplishment.

One of the things we do with children, when we teach them to do new things, is to ensure they get the key role in the final step, in the finishing of the task. Thus, we reserve for them the opportunity to plug in and operate the new train set, or to put the delicious baked goods into the oven, or to fit the final piece of Lego or puzzle. In Judaism we do a similar thing when a new Torah scroll is written – whoever commissioned the work often writes the final letters. Whatever the task, the act of finishing gives us joy.

A reader of my piece on gathering, leket, challenged me to explain another part of the same verse: the commandment that we must leave the corner of the field for the poor.

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not finish all the way to the edges of your field … you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I the LORD am your God. (Lev. 19:9 and 23:22)

Which opens up an entirely new understanding! It is one thing to give to the poor, and even to reserve for them a piece of field that they can harvest themselves. We have long understood this to be an act of charity, of material generosity to those who are poor.

But what if there is a spiritual or emotional component to this as well? After all, the Torah does not say “you shall not harvest” – the word used is the very same one used in Genesis: yachel, or “finish.”

Is this commandment to reserve the final step of harvesting the last corner of the field for the poor – not (only) for the food value, but for the tremendous psychological value of finishing a job, of gaining that inner glow that comes from completing something? After all, the word directly connects the finishing of the field to G-d’s finishing of the work of completing the earth. Is this commandment designed to help the poor empathize with, and continue to seek to emulate, G-d’s own sense of satisfaction?

Is leaving the corner for the poor to finish giving them the chance to feel what G-d felt when He finished creation?

And if so, doesn’t it suggest that the owner of the field — who probably hates to see an unfinished corner of the field he has labored in for months at least as much as I hate seeing my lawn cut poorly — wants the field to be harvested by the poor so at least the job is 100% done?

Might this also apply to G-d as well? Perhaps the Torah is hinting that G-d gets a certain satisfaction when he sees us emulating Him by valuing the completion of the work we undertake?