Group None

(216) And he said: "many or few" - and this can also be explained through the aspect of knowing oneself, even if one is humble - this is "a fat tail with thorn" (Rosh Hashanah 17a) because there are two aspects of humility as explained in the first chapter of Rosh Hashanah: "'for the remnant of His inheritance,' (Micah 7:18) but not for all His inheritance, for one who regards oneself as a remainder" (Rosh Hashanah 17b). And the explanation of the Rif is that 'one who is lenient [with others] and thinks of oneself as nothing, to that person others are lenient. But regarding one who says that according to their thoughts it is not appropriate to answer, to that one others are not lenient, see there. And this is why the text says "are they small?", meaning, one who is small due to one's humility, one who is lenient and does not answer back to their denigrator, in any instance such a person should check themselves to see IF they actually think of themselves as great, similar to 'IF you lend money' (Exodus 22:24, and see Rashi there), which is an expression of THAT - in this case one's smallness comes from the fact that one actually sees oneself as great, and thinks that one should not answer [to the detractor] and this is not a good characteristic, rather, one should really think of oneself as nothing.