Avot219

14:
Who is honourable? Here too Rabbi Shim'on ben-Zoma turns popular thinking on its head. To most people the honourable person is the one whom everybody else honours: indeed, it is the fact that everyone honours someone in particular that defines that person as honourable in popular thought. Ben-Zoma says that the opposite is true: the truly honourable person is he or she who honours others. When we treat every human being with the respect they deserve then we are acting in an honourable manner and are, ipso facto, honourable.

15:
The interesting aspect of this last clause of our mishnah is the proof text that ben-Zoma quotes. It comes from I Samuel 2:30. The young Samuel is witness to how a 'man of God' comes to berate the High Priest Eli; he tells him that his sons will not hold on to the High Priesthood at Shiloh because they have spurned God by making the sacrificial cult odious in the eyes of the populace by their greedy behaviour. And Eli is just as guilty because he did not berate them and take them to task. Indignantly, God fulminates through this 'man of God' that "I honor those who honor Me, but those who despise Me are of little value." Thus, in our present mishnah, ben-Zoma uses a quotation in which the speaker is God but refers the quotation to a human situation. Rabbi Ovadya of Bertinoro, in his commentary on our mishnah, gives what is to my mind a neat explanation:

But he has a most ethical comment to make also on the other half of the verse:

16:
The curse on the house of Eli also included the prediction that none of his descendents would reach old age. The Hebrew word used is zaken which can mean not only someone elderly but it can also indicate a sage, an 'elder'. This prompts a rather curious passage in the Gemara [Sanhedrin 14a]:

Be that as it may: the two scholars were ordained!

17:
Let us conclude our study of this mishnah with an apposite quotation from the prophet [Jeremiah 9:22-23]:

In Avot 215 I wrote: Even when he was still a student, ben-Zoma had been 'ticked off' by his teacher for involving himself too deeply in this kind of material.

Jim Feldman writes:

This may be only a difference between American and English, but on this side of the Atlantic, to "tick someone off" is to offend them, to make them angry. Were one to relate the tale below in American, one would say: "… Ben-Zoma ticked off his teacher by involving himself too deeply in this kind of material." Thus, in the American usage, your phrase would mean that ben-Zoma was offended by his teacher.

I respond:

My apologies. Of course, what I meant to say was that ben-Zoma was reprimanded by his teacher. Again and again we discover the wisdom of that witticism of George Bernard Shaw: "England and America are two countries separated by the same language."