פרקי אבות א:ג

(3) Antigonus a man of Socho received [the oral tradition] from Shimon the Righteous. He used to say: do not be like servants who serve the master in the expectation of receiving a reward, but be like servants who serve the master without the expectation of receiving a reward, and let the fear of Heaven be upon you.

(1) A reward (pras) is what one calls a benefit that is granted to a person by someone who does not gain from him, but [rather] does it by way of kindness and grace. [It is] like when a man tells his servant or his young son or his wife, "Do such and such and I will give you a dinar or two." That is the difference between a reward and a wage (sachar), since a wage is that which is given by [way of an] obligation. And this pious one said that you should not serve God, may He be blessed, in order that He will do good to you and benefit you with kindness and that you should hope for the benefit and serve Him for its sake. Indeed, serve Him like servants that are not hoping for endowment or the giving of kindness. He meant with this that they should serve Him from love, as we said in Chapter Ten of Sanhedrin. And nonetheless, he did not exempt us from fear [of God]. And [so] he said, "Even as you serve from love, do not discard fear completely, 'and may the fear of Heaven be upon you.'" As the commandment of fear has already come in the Torah, and that is its stating (Deuteronomy 6:13), "Fear the Lord, your God." And the sages said (Yerushalmi Berakhot 9:7), "Serve from love, serve from fear," and they said that the one who loves will not forget a thing from that which he was commanded to do, and the one who fears will not do what he was warned from doing - as fear is a great pathway with the negative commandments, and all the more so, with the arational commandments. And this sage had two students - one whose name was Tsadok and one whose name was Beitos. And when they heard him say this statement, they went out from in front of him and one said to his fellow, "Behold, the teacher said explicitly that there is no benefit and punishment for a person and there is no hope at all" - as they did not understand his intention. And one strengthened the hand of his friend and they exited the group and left the Torah. One group connected itself to one and another group to his fellow. And the sages called them Sadducees and Boethusians. But when they could not gather congregations due to that which follows from this belief - as this evil belief disengages the united, all the more so will it not unite the disengaged - they leaned towards belief in the thing which they could not deny among the masses. As if they would put this out of their mouths, [the masses] would have killed them. I mean to say [that this thing is] the words of Torah. And [so] each one said to his party that he believes in the Torah, but disagrees with the transmission [of its oral explanation] - that it is not true. And this was to exempt themselves from the accepted commandments and ordinances and decrees. Since they could not push off everything - the written [Torah] and the received [explanation]. And also [this way], the way of interpretation was broadened for them. Since once the explanation was given to their choice, he was able to be lenient in what he wanted and to be strict in what he wanted. [This is] since he did not believe in the fundamentals at all, yet he sought things that would still be accepted by some people. And these evil groups came out from then. And they are called Karaites in these lands - I mean to say, Egypt. And their names among the sages are Sadducees and Boethusians. And they are the ones that began to question the transmission and to explain all of the verse according to what appears to them without listening to the sage at all, [which is] the opposite of what He, may He be blessed, stated (Deuteronomy 17:11), "You shall act in accordance with the instructions given you and the ruling handed down to you; you must not deviate from the verdict that they announce to you either to the right or to the left."

(1) Antigonos, man of Sokho, etc., "Do not be as servants who are serving the master in order to receive a reward": As this is not complete service, as he is not doing it for his master, but [rather] in order to receive a reward.

(2) "Rather be as servants who are serving the master in order not to receive a reward": (Editor's note: In my opinion, here there should be the words, "And it is difficult according to this textual variant.") Since a person should not do the commandment with the understanding that he will not receive a reward for them. But rather the [correct] textual variant is "not in order to receive a reward" - that he should not do the commandments for the sake of the reward, even though he should think that there will be recompense for his service. However, it appears to me that the variant of the books is the main one [that we should follow]: As we find such service among people, such that a purchased slave is obligated to do service without receiving reward. So too, a man must serve God in order not to receive a reward, but rather because of the kindness that He has already performed for him. And also due to the greatness of the Master, that He is fitting for this, and this is the service of God - may He be blessed and elevated - from love, as it is stated (Deuteronomy 6:5), "And you shall love the Lord." And what is complete service among people? One who wants to serve his friend because of his love for him from earlier days, and even if he knows that he will not give him a reward. And [with] this type of love should a person love the service of God. And therefore, [the Mishnah] placed it adjacent to the matter of fear and stated,

(3) "and may the fear of Heaven be upon you": To serve God from fear and from love, like a servant that serves his master because of his greatness and [also] keeps in mind that he can punish him. And it comes out that he serves him from fear - not because of his fear from the punishment, but [rather] because of the greatness of the master, whereby he has the ability to punish.

(2) BE NOT LIKE SERVANTS SERVING THE MASTER FOR PAY. Rav: rather, out of love alone. In other words, the mishna enjoins that the service be out of love alone, for this is the truest kind of service. It does not mean to say, however, that that service for pay is forbidden, as in either case he is serving G-d; for this reason our perfect Torah did not see unfit to mention rewards and punishments. One who serves in the hopes of earning reward or avoiding pain is simply not on the level of the one who serves out of love alone, whose service has no secondary intention whatsoever.
And the tanna wished to enjoin us to be among those who serve out of love alone, but not to exclude one who serves in the hopes of earning reward from the category of those who serve! This is not the case, as the Sages say in Bava Batra 10b: One who says, “I give this sela to charity that my son should live!” or “...that I should have a share in the world to come!” is perfectly righteous. Furthermore, if one takes the opposite position, one cuts the very legs out from under the nation of Israel! For “where is the weigher, where is the counter” (Isaiah 33:18) who shall say that so-and-so is one who truly serves out of love alone? And can it be good in G-d’s eyes that anyone who serves Him with the intent that the rewards promised by the Torah itself be fulfilled—that same Torah which has been communicated to us from His mouth—that such a one not receive his good lot on account of this? It pleases not their Master that people should say thus!
Rabbi Yehudah HaNassi says as much in Avot 2:1: Consider the loss incurred in doing a mitzvah against the reward for doing it, per my explanation there. Similarly, in 2:16: And you have a faithful taskmaster, who shall pay your wages. Cf. what I’ve written there on And you should know what reward awaits the righteous in the future. And we further see that there can be nothing wrong with this from the story of Azariah the brother of Simon, related in the mishna in Zevachim 1:2.
As mentioned above, the tanna of our mishna does not prohibit this, and I say that his own words prove it, which he chose with care in order that we shouldn’t misunderstand them. For why would he say “be not like servants serving the master for pay” when he could simply have said “do not serve for pay,” which would have gotten the point across to his students more succinctly? By saying “be not like servants who serve the master for pay” he taught that even those who serve for pay are servants at any rate, just that one should not be like them but greater than they, and should serve out of love alone.
I saw that our master Maharal, in his commentary on Avot, Derech Chaim, deals with the question of why the mishna continues and says “but rather be like servants who serve the master without thought of pay” and doesn’t simply stop at “be not like servants serving the master for pay”. He writes that had the tanna said only “be not like servants serving the master for pay” the implication would have been that he prohibits being like servants serving the master for pay, while in fact there is no such prohibition and one who does so is even completely righteous. He means only that there is a level and grade above that one, which is serving out of love alone. It is for this reason that he goes back and explicitly says “rather, be like servants etc.”, to explain that he means only that one should aspire to be a servant serving without thought of pay. All this is the opinion of Maharal.
Now you can see how this tanna has, in his wisdom and perfection, very cleverly worded his teaching. For with the first phrase he taught that one should not deny the value of those who serve for pay and that they are still called servants, and he then further clarified this by saying “rather be etc.”, i.e. I mean only that you should rather be thus, but not that it is forbidden to serve for pay; the main point is to show you the utmost level of perfection, in which you should be serving out of love alone, not to prohibit the other kind of service.
At this point, there is certainly no way to misunderstand the words of the tanna the way Tzadok and Baitos did, who claimed that he meant to say that there is no pay to be received at all, as Rav mentions in his commentary to mishna 11. Still, he should have made it completely clear to the point that whosever was listening would have understood this.
[*I saw that the Tosafot in Rosh HaShana, at the beginning of page 4a, write that our mishna discusses the case of gentiles, who tend to regret the good deed they have done if they are not rewarded for it. I find this quite odd—can it be that the tanna has decided to discuss idolaters? All the more so in tractate Avot, which collects the dicta the Sages constantly emphasized, at least according to one opinion mentioned by Rav above in mishna 2. And certainly Rabbi Yehudah HaNassi shouldn’t have set it down in the mishna, if these words are only concerning idolaters!
But I was put at ease when I saw their words in Pesachim, at the top of 8b, where they write that our mishna is discussing a case of one who will have anguish and regret over the charity he has given if whatever good thing he is hoping for doesn’t come to pass, but one who has no anguish and regret is completely righteous, and the Talmud in Rosh HaShana 4a and Bava Batra 10b seems to say as much. Accordingly, when the Tosafot say our mishna is discussing an idolater, they mean that simply as an example of someone who regrets having done a good deed, as the Talmud there says. But our mishna is discussing a Jew having this regret. And what they mean to say is that our mishna is discussing the case of, for example, an idolater, etc., which is to say a Jew who regrets it, just like the average idolater who regrets it.]

(3) PAY [Heb. p’ras]. Rav: this [p’ras] is what one gives someone who has served him, but whom he is not legally obligated to pay anything, and by this he means to distinguish p’ras from sachar, for sachar is what one must pay by law. So also Rambam.

(4) WITHOUT THOUGHT OF RECEIVING PAY. A different version of our mishna has the text “intending not to receive pay”. I cannot understand that version, for it is impossible that one should serve only on condition that he not receive pay, for the implication is that should he receive pay, he will not serve. Midrash Shmuel writes that the case in the first version is one who serves without declaring that he is doing so specificaly to receive pay; he is still aware that the pay will come, and does have hopes of reward. On the other hand, one who serves intending not to receive pay is one who explicitly serves not in order to receive pay but out of love alone. While this is improves matters exegetically, it doesn’t fit the language of that other version well.
As for his criticism of the first version, that even one who serves out of love alone still knows that the reward will eventually come, I would not call such a one someone who serves out of love; in fact, he is the archetypal servant who serves for reward! One who serves out of love alone is he who constantly finds his service insufficient and, because of his great love of G-d, feels that he has not served properly. As Hillel says in mishna 14, “And I for myself, what am I?”, according to Rav's commentary ad loc. Not only does he hold no anticipation of reward, he fears for his soul lest he sin by falling short in his service, which is what the tanna intends by his last words, “and the fear of heaven should be upon you”, as I will explain.
This was the way of the patriarchs. Although our father Abraham was promised seed he afterwards said, “and I remain childless” (Genesis 15:2). This is why G-d was called “the fear of Isaac” (Genesis 31: 42), and Jacob likewise feared that perhaps he had been sullied by sin. This is the portion and these are the thoughts of the servants of G-d who serve out of love alone; there is no anticipation of reward whatsoever. And so the version before us is correct—so it seems to me.

(5) AND THE FEAR OF HEAVEN SHOULD BE UPON YOU. Rav: one who serves out of fear will take care not to transgress a negative commandment. So also Rambam. But according to what I wrote above, this is a part of service out of love.
The euphemism “heaven” for “G-d” is to indicate that this fear should not be a fear of punishment, which would yield a superficial kind of service with a hint of personal interest. The “fear” referred to here is awe of His greatness, and this is conveyed by the use of “heaven” because the heavens are where His greatness can be seen, i.e. in the creations of the heavens and all their hosts and ceaseless motions—so it seems to me.

(22) Numbers 23,24. “they are a nation that rises like a ‎lion, leaps up like the king of beasts. It rests not till it has ‎feasted on prey and drunk the blood of the slain.”‎
In the matter of how to serve the Lord optimally, it is an ‎accepted rule that the first stage of becoming a true servant of ‎the Lord involves that the person concerned expects a reward as a ‎form of recognition for his effort. It is simply not to be expected ‎that every person will begin his career as a servant of the Lord by ‎eschewing every kind of reward. When the Mishnah in ‎‎Avot 1,3 teaches not to serve the Lord on condition of ‎receiving a reward, it does not address “beginners.” Proof that ‎this is the accepted norm is found in Pessachim 50 where ‎the Talmud teaches that if we perform G’d’s commandments, ‎even while also having ulterior motives, in due course we will do ‎so without having ulterior motives. [This is part of the ‎promise that the reward of performing a commandment brings in ‎its wake performance of another commandment, (Avot 4,1) i.e. ‎the same commandment, but on a higher level. Ed.] ‎When one has attained this level of serving the Lord, one will also ‎become the vehicle through which the “fallen” sparks, i.e. ‎spiritual beings or human beings who have “fallen” from their ‎erstwhile high moral/ethical level may be restored to grace ‎through contact with such servants of the Lord. This has been ‎spelled out in the writings of the Ari z’al.
As long as one serves the Lord expecting to be rewarded for ‎this, the human being doing so is considered as on the level of a ‎female, as by definition all females, i.e. their functions, are viewed ‎primarily as recipients, vessels to be filled. Once having attained ‎the level of serving the Lord without any expectation of reward, ‎one has joined the ranks of the males. Not only does such a ‎person not depend on “receiving,” but he is able to become a ‎dispenser of satisfaction and pleasure even to the Creator. This is ‎the true meaning of a statement in the Zohar III,7 that the ‎Jewish people provide G’d with His sustenance, ‎פרנסה‎.‎
This is also what Bileam had in mind when he said: ‎הן עם כלביא ‏יקום‎, “this is a nation that arises like a lioness,” but develops to ‎the stature of being ‎כארי יתנשא‎, “it elevates itself to become ‎comparable to a mature male lion.” [According to our ‎author Rashi commenting on that verse interprets it as ‎sequential, i.e. beginning to serve the Lord while expecting a ‎reward, progressing to serve Him without such expectations. I ‎have not been able to find this Rashi. Ed.]‎