Musar for Bava Batra 17:13

Rabbi Yochanan, who said that such a person's afterbirth should be used to suffocate him, refers to the duty of a person not only to learn Torah but also to teach it to others and to encourage them to perform the commandments even though he himself might find himself unable to perform the commandment in question. He applies the Talmudic principle of גדול המעשה מן העושה, "greater is he who causes others to do, than the one who merely does himself" (Baba Batra 9). He interprets the words ועשיתם אתם transitively, i.e. "you shall make (others) perform them." He may well have punctuated the word לעשות in his statement by placing the vowel צירי under the letter ל, and the vowel קמץ under the ע. This would mean that "it is up to that person to see to it that G–d's commandments are performed." [I have not quoted the Hebrew version of his statement in the Midrash. Ed.] The remarkable thing is that Rabbi Yochanan speaks about a person who is perfectly willing to perform every commandment he is able to, but, because he is too lazy to step outside the doors of his house to encourage others to perform מצות, Rabbi Yochanan passes the harsh judgment that he feels such a person deserves to be choked to death [even retroactively if that were possible Ed.].