“Bo-er,” meaning to burn, is well known to us from the story of Moshe and the burning bush (Exodus 3:2). “Kova” is a head-covering, or in Jeremiah’s case a helmet (Jeremiah 46:3-4). The phrase is meant to say that a thief has a guilty conscience and becomes very sensitive to anything that will lead to his discovery.

The story goes, that once a man was asked by a ruler to choose which one of a group of people was the thief. The man looked at all of them and called out in a loud voice “Simple - the thief’s hat is on fire.” Naturally according to the story, the real thief quickly pulled his hat off his head.

Back to this week's lesson