This one-post blog is an essay on the Sefer
Yetzirah, a proto-Kabbalist Jewish work compiled sometime before 900 c.e. It
relies primarily on the earliest known commentary and publication of that work,
by Saadia in the tenth century, to examine the relationship of the first four
sefirot named in the first chapter to the six that follow, and of the
"mother letters" to the "doubles" and "simples"
as characterized in that text. In particular, it questions whether the mother
letters correspond to the three dimensions of space.
The essay is
divided into seven sections, followed by their footnotes and then four
appendixes, A to D, giving more extensive selections from Saadia, my translation from Meyer Lambert's French translation of Saadia, of which his French is given in the Appendices' footnotes :
1. Case and Saadia on the Cube of Space
2. Saadia in the context of his time.
3. The distinction between Sefirot and directions.
4. What sefirot are associated with the mother letters?
5. Picturing sefirot in relation to the mother letters and the six directions.
6. Integrating two dimensions with three dimensions.
7. From the Sefer Yetzirah diagram to the Jewish Tree of Life.
Footnotes for sections 1-7
Appendix A: The final four paragraphs of Saadia's introduction to his commentary.
Appendix B: Saadia's comments on the "closed numbers" (sefirot bulimia).
Appendix C: Saadia's comments on his section 4:5, in full.
Appendix D: Saadia's comments on his section 4:6, in full.
Footnotes for Appendices
In uploading this essay onto the current version of Google's blogger platform. a few anomalies in format appeared that I do not know how to get rid of, chiefly in the spacing of lines. Please ignore these oddities.
1. Case and Saadia on the Cube of Space
As is well known, Paul Foster Case used the image of the “cube
of space” to expound his esoteric theories in relation to the Tarot. There is
certainly nothing wrong with using a geometric figure to explain one’s ideas;
diagrams are used all the time. With the Tarot, a wheel is also popular (e.g., Jodorowsky,
The Way of Tarot). But where did Case get the idea of a cube? Popular lore suggests the Sefer YetzIrah, but it would be nice to get some confirmation from Case himself.
Looking in his work, I found only this, which at least suggests a reference to Hebrew:
This underlying Reality is what is designated in Hebrew by the name IHVH (Jehovah), and to this word the figures required to define the proportions of a cube have special reference. Every cube has 6 sides, 8 points or corners, and 12 edges or boundary lines. The numbers required to express a cube's peculiar limitations being 6, 8 and 12, their sum is 26, and this is the sum of the values of the Hebrew letters Yod Heh-Vav-Heh, or IHVH. [1]
I am not here to defend this line of argument, just to identify where he thinks the cube as "this underlying Reality" comes from: something related to esoteric Judaism. In the work just cited, Case also refers to the Sefer Yetzirah:
In addition to the clues afforded by the numbers and titles of the major trumps, or Keys, and by the associations The Tarot of ideas suggested by the letter-names, we find others derived from certain traditional occult interpretations of the Hebrew letters. These are given in an ancient volume of Qabalistic wisdom. The name of this book is the Sepher Yetzirah, or Book of Formation.[2]
I do not know if Case anywhere attributes the cube to the Sefer Yetzirah specifically. But others using his system do. Also, his assignments of Tarot cards to Hebrew letters and corresponding elements, planets, and signs of the zodiac come from the Golden Dawn, which saw them in relation to a cube of space and credited the SY as its source. For example, a recent work on the Tarot of the Golden Dawn cites its explanation for the shape of the altar in their Neophyte ritual:It is a double cube because the Emerald Tablet has said the things which are below are a reflection of the things which are above. It is described in the 'SEPHER YETSIRAH,' or the Book of Formation, as "An Abyss of Height" and as "An Abyss of Depth," and "An Abyss of the East" and "An Abyss of the West," "An Abyss of the North" and An Abyss of the South."[3]
These "Abysses" are from the Sefer Yetzirah, in most versions the fifth paragraph of the first chapter, the names of six out of ten sefirot, usually called "depths." Here is Aryeh Kaplan's translation, on p. 44 of his book The Sefer Yetzirah, the Book of Creation (instead of his line breaks, I have put diagonal slashes, /).
Gra 1:5. Ten Sefirot of Nothingness: / Their measure is ten which have no end./ A depth of beginning / A depth of end / A depth of good / A depth of evil /A depth of above / A depth of below / A depth of east / A depth of west / A depth of north / A depth of south / The singular Master God faithful King dominates over them all from His holy dwelling until eternity of eternities.
The six faces of a cube could indeed be labeled by the six directions listed. But no such figure is mentioned by name. These "depths" could also be represented by the six vertices of an octahedron (see my fig. 4 below). Or they could simply be six lines emanating from a central point, perhaps that of "His holy dwelling," the "depths" being their extension into infinity. The passage names no geometrical configuration in particular.
Kaplan suggests that since what is described are five pairs of opposites, the figure is a 5-dimensional hypercube, which he says has 32 vertices, each joining five of the sefirot, apparently conceived as lines.[4] The number 32, he observes, corresponds to the number of "paths" (22 letters, 10 sefirot) indicated in SY 1:1. which begins, "With 32 mystical paths of wisdom . . . ," in 1:2 broken down into "ten sefirot of nothingness and 22 foundation letters." How such a hypercube depicts five pairs of opposites he does not say. Five lines meeting at one point is not five pairs of opposites. Nor, for that matter, does the SY ever talk about combinations of five sefirot.
Later Kaplan does speak of a cube. In discussing the twelve
“diagonal” boundaries in Gra SY 5:2, he says they correspond to the edges of a
cube. He even has a picture where the edges are labeled with the twelve
letters (p. 205). But this is just a “correspondence,” not something he finds in the SY
itself. In none of the four translations of the SY that he gives is there any
mention of a cube.
However, I have found one translation of the SY that does mention a cube in this context, a French translation of the Saadia version by Mayer Lambert in 1891. For its SY 1:4, p. 2 of the French part of his book (it is preceded by the Hebrew and Arabic original), in the translation of Saadia’s Hebrew version of the SY (there are two, the other in Arabic) we find:
Saadia 1:4. By which Yah, Eternal Sebaot, God of Israel, living God, Almighty God, exalted, sublime, dwelling in Eternity and whose name is holy, has traced three fathers and their posterities (1), seven conquerors and their legions (2), twelve edges of the cube (3) . . .[5]
________________
The notes are the translator’s. Below is the sentence in the above passage where the five-letter word in Hebrew (alakson) appears.
 |
Fig. 1. Selection from Lambert showing the Hebrew word usually translated as “diagonal.” |
More recent
translators, however, do render this word in Saadia 1:4 as
“diagonal.” Here is Kaplan:
Saadia 1:4. Through them [the 22 letters] YH, YHVH of Hosts, God of Israel, the Living God, El Shadai, High and Exalted, dwelling on high and Holy is His name, engraved three Fathers and their progeny, seven directors and their host, and twelve diagonal boundaries.
Why does Lambert suggest the word “edges of a cube”?
First I need to explain something about the version of the Sefer Yetzirah (SY) that Saadia presents, which is in the context of a commentary. He first presents a paragraph of the SY in Hebrew, then his understanding of it in Arabic, and then his comments on it, also in Arabic. It is the Hebrew text that Kaplan has in his book. Saadia’s “translation” of that text into Arabic is also an interpretation of the meaning of the Hebrew words, which he justifies by citing texts where the Hebrew appears, and it is often not as the Hebrew is normally translated.
Saadia himself in his translation (or paraphrase) of this Hebrew passage into Arabic does not speak of a cube and uses different words which Lambert (p. 52) renders as “limites d’angles,” or “des angles,” instead of “diagonals.” I do not know if this is a French mathematical term or not. I imagine it refers to the lines on both side of an angle, which meet at the angle's vertex. In a cube they would be the edges. Here is Saadia, as Lambert translates him (and I literally into English):
Translation [into Arabic of 1:4]: With which the Eternal, Lord of hosts, God of Israel, living God, mighty, independent, noble, sublime, subsisting unto eternity, whose name is holy, traced three mothers and what they gave birth to, seven chiefs and their armies and twelve limits of angles [limites des angles].[6]
Besides "limits of angles," you might have noticed the word “mothers” here, as opposed to Kaplan’s “fathers.” Saadia says that the Hebrew is abot, and what is referred to could be either mothers or fathers, as well as “princes, first matter, elements, primary substances.” To be sure, abot is simply the plural of abba, father. In a footnote Lambert’s comments that perhaps the author of the SY wanted to allude to the three patriarchs. Anyway, it is rather clear that he means what he will later call primordial air, water, and fire.
But to get back to the main issue: in his commentary on this passage, Saadia says:
I have translated gebulê alakson limits of angles, because this word is found frequently in the Talmud; it is said: “Every cubit (forms) a cubit and two-fifths diagonally (alakson)” [Lambert: Baba Batra 101b], which means that in any square where the single (side) is one cubit, the diagonal [Lambert: the Arabic word is not found in the dictionaries] is one cubit and two-fifths, which is not quite correct; the exact measurement of the diagonal is the square root of two.[7]
 |
| Fig. 2: Side of a square as "diagonal" |
Even if the Arabic word Saadia uses for “diagonal” is not in the dictionaries, the meaning is clear enough. Saadia is saying that the SY uses the word alakson, which in the Talmud means “diagonal,” in the sense of the line from one vertex to another in a square or rectangle, which is the same as the hypotenuse of a right-angled isosceles triangle made up of those sides. If both sides are one cubit in length, by the Pythagorean theorem leg A squared plus leg B squared equals two, so that the hypotenuse C, has a length in cubits of the square root of two. The same theorem, conversely, applies to the side of a square: if the distance from one vertex to another is one unit, the length of a side will be the square root of two (see Fig. 2, which I take from a paper by Christopher Benton that I will cite later).
A cube is still not mentioned as such. But a cube does have twelve edges, all of which can be seen as hypotenuses of the right-angled triangles formed by lines from one vertex of each end to the center, as illustrated at left.[8]
I have looked to see what modern commentators say about this word alakson. Apparently, the lines did not have to be straight: the point is that they are angled somehow. The word is applied to the “branches” of a menorah, for example, which curve out and up from a central base.[9] In that sense, it is rather strange to describe the edges of a cube with the same word, as it is the lines between opposite vertices that would normally get that word; but it is certainly possible – if, for example, we see the cube as balanced on one vertex. Then three “diagonals” will be emanating from it.
Looking further in Saadia’s Arabic, as translated into French by Lambert, I did find one instance of the word “cube,” in Saadia’s 2:4. First, here is Kaplan’s translation of the Hebrew:
Saadia 2:4. Twelve Elementals: Twelve and not eleven, twelve and not thirteen. The twelve diagonals peel off to six orders, separating between one direction and another: an east north boundary, an east upper boundary, and east lower boundary; a north west boundary, a north upper boundary, a north lower boundary; a west south boundary, a west upper boundary, a west lower boundary; a south east boundary, a south upper boundary, a south lower boundary.
Next, Lambert’s translation of the Hebrew:
Saadia 2:4. Twelve simples, twelve and not eleven, twelve and not thirteen: twelve edges of the angles, being divided in the directions, separating the different sides: east-north edge, east-high edge, . . . [10]
You will have noticed that it is somewhat different from Kaplan’s. Now the Arabic “translation,” or perhaps paraphrase, my emphasis:
Fourth paragraph. — Translation: The twelve simples are twelve and not eleven, nor thirteen; they correspond to the twelve lines which belong to every cube, and their count is established by the meeting of east with north, top and bottom, then by the meeting of north with west, top and the bottom, then by the meeting of west with south, top and bottom, then by the meeting of south with east, top and bottom.[11]
And the commentary, again from Saadia’s Arabic, my emphasis:
Commentary. – Every cubic body has twelve edges, and if you take for comparison a room or a shop, you will understand it, because the ceiling meets with the four sides, and the floor with the four sides, then the four sides one with another, making a total of twelve (lines). . . . [12]
The Hebrew, as translated either by Kaplan or Lambert, certainly suggests a geometric figure, although not necessarily a cube, as the same description could apply to an octahedron; the word “arête” is the standard French term for the edge of a three-dimensional figure, as opposed to the “côté,” or side, of a plane figure. However, Saadia leaves no doubt that he sees a cube.
Saadia’s analogy to a room is reminiscent of another passage in the SY, present in all versions, with more or less elaboration. The shortest is in the Short Version:
1:11. Three. Water from Breath. With it engrave and carve chaos and void, mire and clay. Engrave them like a garden plot, carve them like a wall, cover them like a ceiling.
[13]All the versions have similar language, albeit with various additions (for Saadia’s explanation of the passage, occuring in his 4:6, see Appendix D to this essay). He does not explicitly relate this account to a cube or the creation of space.) The image seems to be of a cubic structure, with “Water from Breath” at the bottom. “Fire from Water” would then be the ceiling, associated with heaven in Gra 1:12, leaving Air as the walls. Kaplan says that the reference is to how Hebrew letters were written, first cutting the bottom deeply, then the vertical line much thinner, and then the top.[14]When I look at Saadia’s treatment of this passage, it seems that this is what he does have in mind. Kaplan also says that “some authorities” consider it the creation of space, citing Moses Cordovero’s Pardes Rimonim 3:5 (p. 76). I cannot myself find any statement by Cordovero to that effect, except that the six “extremities” were emanated by "Understanding," i.e., the sefira Binah, which he seems to identify with Shin. Needless to say, the Sefer Yetzirah does not use the later Kabbalists' names for the sefirot.[15]
Saadia’s commentary to a slightly earlier section, his 4:2, also suggests a cube. The SY speaks of the “four winds of heaven.” Saadia says that these indicate “the four sides of heaven.” In fact, “on each side there are three winds which come from the extremities and from the middle, making twelve in all.”[16] While it is not totally clear what the “extremities” of “the four sides” would be, all I can think of is someone in the middle of a cube, facing each of the four points of the compass and getting a wind from the upper, lower, and middle parts of each face.
So there is some foundation, at least in Saadia's commentary, the earliest known (tenth centuiry), for the Golden Dawn's and Case's assumption that the SY had in mind a "cube of space" as its model of the universe.
2. Saadia in the context of his time
I have
not found in the literature any criticism of Lambert as a translator, and we
also have Kaplan to compare his language with. But to what extent does Saadia’s
Hebrew version and his translation and commentary in Arabic reflect the
understanding of the SY at his time? A. E. Waite, in a work published in 1902
or 1913 (my source is Holy Kabbalah, 1927, which combines the two
previous works; see here n. 17), found it ridiculous and without successors.
Kaplan says something similar to the latter, although referring to his the SY itself
rather than his commentary: “This variant, usually called the Saadia Version,
has been virtually ignored by the Kabbalists” (Kaplan, pp. xxiv). As an example of Saadia's ridiculousness, Waite observes
that Saadia analyzes ten names of God in terms of the ten Aristotelian
categories, and then the ten commandments in the same way [17]. All of it is
strained, Waite says. A particularly egregious example is the prohibition against adultery, which Saadia says is based on the
category of position, because that is the nature of the act. It is indeed a rather large jump from Aristotle's category to Moses' prohibition.
Saadia does state his bias, implicitly toward Aristotle (for the passages, see again n. 17). Despite what some philosophers say (he has just enumerated and refuted six theories about the creation of the world, and this is in the context of the seventh), the author of the SY, Saadia says, does not suppose that numbers and letters had a separate, abstract existence prior to the material world. Rather:
In fact, he ascribes the origin of the Creator’s creation to thirty-two things: the ten numbers and twenty-two letters. He does not say, however, that they are abstract and isolated. He only says that God has created the air and has established the thirty-two things in it. The numbers, according to him, traverse the air, which is composed of distinct particles. When the air current follows these direct and inflected lines, it produces figures.[18]
Against his predecessors Plato and the Pythagoreans, Aristotle contended that forms have no independent existence, much less causing those things to have those forms. This is the SY’s view, Saadia says, “This theory” – the eighth, the Aristotelian – “belongs to the author of this book.”[19]
There is also a ninth view of creation, which to Saadia seems the best.[20] It combines the seventh with the eighth. That is what Neoplatonism did, but Saadia’s way of combining them is not that of Plotinus, etc., but more Aristotelian. So there is no emanationism in the SY, no descending from level to level, world to world, just God and his speech. He says that neither matter (Democritus, etc.) nor form (Plato) was first, but the Divine Word, creating both by means of the “numbers” (as he calls the sefirot) and letters by divine Law in an instant. Just as the embryo of an animal doesn’t have the bones first, then the muscles, etc., but the beginnings of all of them at once, so is the universe.[21] It is clear that he means creation as such. When the French a créé occurs (as it does over and over), describing the activity of God, it is to translate the Arabic corresponding to the Hebrew bārā of Genesis: “Elohim created . . . “ There is also the word formé (after all, this is the “book of formation”), but less frequent.
Saadia states that the original text, perhaps oral at first, at least reflected the view that the numbers and letters were at the origin of things. The text was developed and arranged by the “doctors of the nation” in more recent times, that of the Mishna (i.e. post-dispersion). Whether the arrangement of the Hebrew text he presents is his own or not he seems to leave open. The interpretation, including the Arabic “translation,” is certainly his. (In Appendix A I have reproduced the French and my translation of the rest of Saadia’s introduction, after the “eighth theory” presented in Thompson and Marson’s excerpts.)
Such an Aristotelian-based view of the SY is particularly evident when it comes to the concept of the infinite. Aristotle did not deny the infinite, but, unlike the Pythagoreans and Plato, did deny actual infinites, as opposed to potential ones (see Wikipedia, “Actual Infinity”). That is, the infinite was not a completed series bearing an infinite number of items, but rather a series without end. What actually exists is finite; the infinite is only in potentiality. It is the same with numbers, a point Saadia had made in the paragraph about the seventh view of creation, which I recognize as about Plato and the Pythagoreans (Thompson and Marson say just the Pythagoreans, following a footnote in Lambert). Saadia says:
We maintain that number, in potentiality, has prefigured the numbered object; that the form has preceded the formed thing; the figure, the figured thing; geometry, the geometrical body; and composition, the thing composed—all in potentiality and not in actuality. But if this theory [the seventh, misguided one – MH] posits the actual anteriority of pure numbers, isolated compositions, and abstract theorems, the supposition is inadmissible . . .[22]
In other words, the sefirot (the numbers) did not precede the universe, in Saadia’s view and, he quickly adds, that of the author of the SY. Would other devotees of the book have agreed with Saadia? As Waite and Kaplan said, few later Kabbalists cite Saadia. However, I am willing to be persuaded that there is more to be gleaned from Saadia. It may be possible to suspend judgment about the actual infinite.
Saadia’s commentary is the earliest known, and since it was in Arabic, protected from later interpreters’ revisioning of his ideas (although it had several translations into Hebrew). With him we come as close as we can to the original understanding, even if his Aristotelian reading, fashionable in his time but less so earlier, perhaps puts him at a certain distance from the time it was written. But most commentaries on the SY, including modern ones such as Kaplan, almost exclusively fuse the vision of the Zohar with that of the SY, and that text is even later, 13th century. The SY itself has no mention of such Kabbalistic mainstays as the “Tree of Life” and its names for the Sefirot (Kether, Chochmah, etc.), of its “three pillars,” of right, left, and center, of “vessels,” four “worlds,” and so on. Nor does Saadia.
3. The distinction between Sefirot and directions.
Almost at the beginning, the SY in all versions says:
Gra 1:2. Ten sefirot of nothingness [belimah] and 22 foundation letters . . .
Thus the Sefirot are not the letters themselves, nor any subset of ten of them, such as the 3 mothers and the 7 doubles. But what is the difference?
Unlike the directions themselves, the corresponding sefirot are the depths of beginning, end, good, evil, above, below, east, west, north, and south. Here is Gra 1:5 again; the language is found in every version.
The sefirot are not Above, Below, etc. themselves, but "depths" of directions. Kaplan discusses what “depth” means in relation to this section:
The Sefer Yetzirah does not speak of directions, but of depths. In general, the concept of depth indicates something at a great distance, as when one looks down a deep well, gazing at its “depth.”[24]
Yet the SY does speak of directions in relation to sefirot:
The latter case may be a kind of shorthand. It is awkward to keep repeating “depth of.” But perhaps not. Saadia has the corresponding:
Saadia 1.4. Through them [the letters] YH, HYV of Hosts . . . engraved three Fathers and their progeny, seven directions and their host, and twelve diagonal boundaries.
So with the double letters God created seven directions, six of them extending into infinity (the seventh is in the center, we learn later). But are these the sefirot? After giving various scriptural examples where the word occurs, Kaplan concludes
These ten depths therefore represent the ten directions extended into infinity.[25]
This seems to me to be nearly right: they are the directions’ infinite extent, the “infinite” part of them. The sefirot are called “the ten sefirot of nothingness.” The Hebrew word corresponding to “nothingness” is belimah, about which Kaplan says that besides “nothingness”
This word [belimah] can also be translated as meaning closed, abstract, absolute or ineffable.[26]
Saadia sometimes in fact favors “closed,” as Lambert translates him. The French is fermé. Here is the passage:
We translate the word “b’limah” as “closed.” The proper sense is: ‘provided with a brake,’ as it is said: “whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle” [Psalms XXXII, 9].[27]
But what does this mean? In particular, is it consistent with the Bible’s only use of the word, in Job 26:7: “He suspends the earth on nothing”? The word is made up of “beli,” nothing, and ma, “what [is]” (https://biblehub.com/text/job/26-7.htm). The concordances say it uses the same root bel or bal as words meaning “worthless,” “not,” “without,” “worn out,” and so on. Perhaps “what is” is equivalent to our “being”: so, non-being.
Saadia’s context is the explication of SY 1:1, which says, as conventionally understood, “Ten Sefirot out of nothing, twenty-two foundation letters, three mothers, seven doubles and twelve simples.” Saadia is saying that “out of b’limah” in that context should be translated as “closed”: ”And (these thirty-two ways) are the ten closed numbers and the twenty-two letters.” He also offers “provided with a brake,” and a line of scripture that says, don’t be like a horse with no understanding, needing the bit and bridle.
Later he refers again to that line of scripture, his comment on his SY 3:1. The Hebrew reads, as Lambert translates it (comments in square brackets are mine):
Saadia 3.1 Ten Sefirot out of nothing [belima]. Stop [“bridle,” Kaplan, p. 289, Hebrew balam, p. 66] your mouth from speaking, stop [bridle] your heart from thinking, and if your heart runs (to think) return to a place of which it is said “they ran and returned”; and concerning this thing the covenant was made; and they are ten in extent beyond limit. Their end is infused with their beginning, and their beginning with their end, like a flame attached to a glowing ember. . . .[28]
When Saadia interprets “out of nothing” as “closed,” he means that even if the numbers go on forever, it is really just the first ten repeated over and over, with the end returning to the beginning. And as for the end, don’t think too much about it. So when he puts the Hebrew into Arabic, it comes out:
Translation. The meaning of our expression, ten closed [belima] numbers, is: Close [balam] your mouth, so as not to talk too much about it, and close your heart [i.e., mind – MH] so as not to think about it, and if your mind soars, bring it back to its place, as it is said of the angels: run and return. If we say that (the numbers) correspond to ten (objects) infinite for us, it means that their end is fixed in their beginning and their beginning is fixed in their end, like the flame of fire which is attached to the coal. Consequently, it is appropriate that you know, that you discern and that you believe that the Creator is one, and that there is no other, since before One you can count nothing. [29]
In part, the point is that the mind cannot grasp the idea of there being an actual infinity of numbers. "Actual" implies "completed," and the numbers can never be completed. Likewise how can there be a point in space at infinity, because any particular point will always have something beyond it. Saadia’s solution is that the infinity is potential only. As the translator explains for the word belima in this occurrence (and in the previous one), “after ten one begins again the same series and thus the rest.”[30] There is nothing mystical here, in other words. The infinite is defined by the practice that generates the series – that is what “restrains” it.
Here we must bear in mind that Hebrew used the alphabet as numerals, and there is no zero. Since he was writing in Arabic, however, perhaps he had that numeral system in mind; the Arabs' use of zero is documented to around that time (see Wikipedia, entry on "zero"). We could therefore ask, does Saadia’s point also work in Hebrew? In that language, the tenth letter (yod) moves to the tens place, with aleph again in the place it was at first; so eleven will be “yod alef,” ten plus one. It could also be called “alef yod” since “alef” never stands for any number other than One. But since after yod the series begins again, with alef, etc., Saadia’s point applies as much to Hebrew as to Arabic numerals, and to Roman as well. It also applies to Hebrew speech, unlike English, for example, where it is difficult to see “ten plus one” in the term “eleven.”
(It would have been nice if Saadia had discussed the Arabic zero, recorded as sifr or safira, represented in his time by a circle and derived from an Arabic word meaning “empty” [Wikipedia, entry “zero”]. Our word “cipher,” with its implication of secrecy, comes from the Arabic, too. There may also be a connection to “sphere,” but that would be by way of a common ancestry in Greek or Latin.)
Saadia’s point is that a sefira is like a rule God lays down to govern the universe, thereby restraining it into certain definite patterns, in this case directions. In speaking in such terms, Saadia is also referring back to a previous passage (Lambert, p. 57) in which he used the same language to explain the point of saying that the sefirot are ten and not eleven. It is as if to say, God has spoken: there are ten, and man cannot change that; case closed. And more generally:
. . . no one can go beyond the limit that (God) has assigned to him, from the rule that he has assigned for him, from the conditions that he has imposed on him, and from the circle in which he has enclosed him. But Him – be he blessed and sanctified - he is neither constrained nor compelled, has no need, and does not change.[31]
Also, Saadia recognizes that the word belima takes
on different meanings in different contexts. For example, Saadia 4:5 uses the
word belima in saying “He formed substance from chaos, and from that
which is not [belima] into that which is.” In his Arabic translation
(p. 106), instead of “from nothing” he says “from the void (de la vide),” where
“void” is not a thing, but a lack: he gave form to the chaos, made it something
in particular, gave it "whatness" as opposed to indeterminacy (belima as "no-whatness"). Again, this denial of real existence to the void is a reflection of his Aristotelianism: Aristotle, for complex reasons, denied that absolutely empty space could exist.
So
for Saadia, the difference is this: North is a direction. Depth of North would
be that in God that determines that direction. For us it is a convenient
navigation tool, going by the point around which the heavens rotate in the
night sky, or the path of a shadow formed by vertical structures on the summer solstice. But God set the universe up that way. “North” is then that rule God established, by which
one can look in a line that goes on forever. To say “forever” is to make the
end-point “in nothingness.” It is just a way of saying “no end”; but it is a
very particular line without end. Kaplan
(p. 58) therefore sees “nothingness” as equivalent to “infiniteness,” but meant
as an actuality, for example, where the two halves of the north-south line
meet, at infinity. In advanced mathematics today this is a useful construct, “effable”
or not. It may be that the SY is doing the same sort of thing.
A modern scholar of the SY who comes surprisingly close to Saadia’s tenth-century understanding is Leonard Glotzer, in his The Fundamentals of Jewish Mysticism, even though he approaches the book from the direction of the later commentaries. He observes that the sefirot constitute “limited infinities,” and that is why the Mishnah [section] speaks of ‘their measure.’ Measure implies limit.” They are very specific infinities: time, morality, and space. “Time stretches forever in both directions. . . . There is no limit to how good or bad one can be. . . . Space stretches out in all directions.” Moreover, “It seems to me that the ‘dimensions mentioned in Sefer Yetzirah must be understood in terms of potentials.” So “While the world as we find it has a beginning and end, has a particular amount of good and evil, and a particular spatial extent, . . . there is no theoretical limit on the extent these dimensions may assume.”[32]
Understanding “depths” as potentialities rather than actualities also contributes to understanding what it means for “depth of evil” to be an expression of divine power. How can a perfectly good God be responsible for evil? If it is not actual evil, but only evil as potentiality, the paradox is resolved. For there to be free choice, there has to be the choice to choose to act against divine decrees. When someone acts against these decrees, God’s own choice to do evil, in the sense of the infliction of pain or other unwanted consequences on the one who disobeys, is then justified punishment and a model for judges on earth. How strictly to apply such judgment is then the question, one which later Kabbalists incorporated into their “Tree of Life” to come.
4. What sefirot are associated with the mother letters?
There is a clear correspondence between six of the sefirot
and the six directions of space, which in Saadia's interpretation form a cube whose edges correspond to the twelve "simple" letters of the Hebrew alphabet, that is, letters which are used to represent just one sound in Nebrew. The six faces of a cube on this model (although not stated as such) correspond to six of the seven "double" letters in Hebrew, i.e. those that can represent either of two sounds in Hebrew. The center of the cube is then represneted as the
seventh "double" letter, Tau.[33] In later paragraphs of the SY, the seven are associated with the seven planets as well as seven parts of the human body and seven pairs of opposites. The twelve are associated with the twelve signs of the zodiac. There are three letters left, called the "mother" letters. In the SY they somehow create three of the traditinal four elements, namely air, water, and fire. However, since neither planets nor zodiacal constellations are sefirot, the same will be true for these three elements. What sefirot do they correspond to? There is also the question: do these letters also have correspondences to something on or in the cube? According to Case, they correspond to the three axes
of space, one for air, one for water, and one for fire. But what is the basis in the SY for such assignments?
In Gra SY 1:5, the first two sefirot listed are called “depth of beginning” and “depth of end.” Then come “depth of good” and “depth of evil”? What do these descriptions have to do with mother letters or elements? First we need to understand what is meant by them. Kaplan says says that “beginning” and “end” refer to the time dimension.
The time continuum consists of two directions, past and future, or beginning and end.[34]
This seems to me not quite right. The past is not the beginning of time, and the future is not the end of time. “Beginning” is the endpoint of the past, if the past is conceived as half of a line with the present in the middle, and “end” at the endpoint of the other half, the future. In the biblical worldview, time has a definite beginning, called creation, and a definite end, called the Last Judgment.
Yet how can time just start and stop like that? If God created the universe, didn’t he at least already exist beforehand, and won’t he continue to exist after he destroys it? These questions are beyond our understanding, ineffable, paradoxical mysteries. The end point is at no-end, en sof, nothingness. It is like the six directions of space, except that time, in the biblical view, really is closed, in the sense of “finite”, “limited”. But there is still a certain mystery. While it may be that the beginning and end of time are limits put on it by God, there is more than that, namely, the mystery of how it is possible. If God causes the world to exist, he does so in time. So how long did he exist before then? On the one hand, past and future seem unbounded, regardless of when the universe was created. On the other hand, they apparently are not. If an infinity of days has to elapse before we come to the present, we will never get there.
There are similar paradoxes about the six spatial directions. A line in any direction can go on forever. What would restrain it? Is it curved, like North on the surface of the earth, which ends at the North Pole? Their geometry was Euclidean, in which parallel lines never met. Or rather, they met at infinity. But even non-Euclidean geometry where parallel lines meet has this problem: if space is curved, how big is that higher-dimensional space in which it is curved?
That is why Aristotle denied the existence of actual infinites, precisely because they disobey the canons of logic as he formulated them. Saadia is similar, thinking that if a result leads to absurdity or contradiction it is therefore false, or only true in a qualified way, subsumed under a higher-order theory (an example is his refutation of the “seventh theory," superseded by the eighth and ninth [35]). Many medieval theologians, but by no means all, thought the same. Modern mathematics, thanks to set theory, departs from Aristotle and, except a few diehards called “intuitionists,” has readmitted the actual infinite (on which see Wikipedia).
The second pair on the list is the Depths of Good and Evil. This sounds like a continuum of value, one end of which will be absolute evil, and the other absolute good. For any evil, we can imagine something worse, and likewise for any good; could there really be an absolute good and evil? These are limiting nonexistents, objectified criteria that put limits even while not limiting limits on their degree of fulfillment. For example, it is not possible to produce a perfectly straight line, even though we know what makes one line straighter than another. Again, God is the only limit.
In that way, it is both true that the ten sefirot are ten
directions and false that they are ten directions. It is true that they are in
the ten directions, as their conceptual endpoints, their imaginary limits,
their restraining factor, but false that they are the ten directions
themselves. The sefirot of space are the limitlessness of the directions.
But the question remains, what are the first four sefirot,
the depths of good, evil, beginning, and end, and how do they relate to those
of the six directions? Kaplan says there are five dimensions, which leads to his
five-dimensional hypercube. Five dimensions make sense: five lines at right
angles to one another with the extremes of each at the two ends. But how can we represent that pictorially, on
a two-dimensional piece of paper or computer screen? I can barely imagine a
hypercube, much less a hyper-hypercube. Also, I am not aware that ancient or
medieval mathematics dealt with such constructions; nor do I see any
indications of the special characteristics of such a figure, such as the five
lines attached to each vertex. There is also the problem of how such a figure would represent the five pairs of opposites.
 |
| Fig. 3. All 10 sefirot (the dots) of Gra 1:4. |
At left is one attempt (out of several that I will make), based on Gra 1:5. The faces exhibit the 6 directions and the 12 edges the "diagonal boundaries."These will each be assigned letters, one group of six and one of twelve, accounting for all but four of the 22 Hebrew letters.
For the other
two pairs, time and value. I have made two lines on the side and bottom, to
convey that the sefirot are on a continuum between opposites. It is to say that
at any given time (horizontal axis) the universe (the cube) has such and such
goodness in it. In this diagram, four of the sefirot are not part of the array with the cube. This is my innovation,
as a first approximation. Most interpreters of the SY do not even try to fit
the first four sefirot as described in Gra 1:5 into their diagrams, if they
acknowledge them at all. It is a three-dimensional figure plus two
one-dimensional ones. If so, the total number of dimensions is five, all represented as pairs of opposites.
About the cube, one question might be, is it a cube at infinity, where the sefirot are? If so, where are the planets and constellations, which are surely not infinitely far away? If not, where are the sefirot? This does not seem like a meaningless question.
 |
| Fig. 4: the cube inside an octahedron beyond space. |
My diagrams of Fig. 3 and 4, which seem to me to correspond well to Gra 1:5, are different from what Case says. He does not speak about sefirot at all, and says that the three mother letters are assigned to the three axes of up-down, north-south, and east-west, which pass through the midpoints of the six faces of the cube and intersect at its midpoint, and which are assigned to air, water, and fire.
What could be the basis of such an assertion? There is no mention anywhere in the SY of the three axes of space. Christopher Benton’s paper already mentioned suggests that the foundation is a passage in the SY that allegedly says how the mother letters mystically “seal” (or “complete”) the six directions. If so, he decides, they must be the three axes in space. [36] This is certainly not in Kaplan or Glotzer, but only Case. But it is worth seeing the textual foundation.
He
cites Gra 1:13. Aleph, mem, and shin are said to somehow communicate (be in
“mysterious counsel”) with the three letters yod, heh, and vau of SY 1:13,
whose permutations define Up, Down, East, West, and South, and North. Here is
Benton’s translation:
Gra 1:13. He selected three letters from the plain ones, in mysterious counsel with the three mothers aleph-mem-shin, and He placed them in His Great Name, and sealed/completed with them six extremes. Five: He sealed/completed height and turned His attention to ascent and sealed/completed it with yud-hey-vav. . . . [37]
Then He looks down, and seals that direction with yod-hey-vau. Next come the two combinations straight ahead, sealing East, and then behind him, sealing west. It is God in his tabernacle, the entrance to which always faced east. And likewise for south and north, ninth and ten of the ten sefirot. The creator has thereby fixed the three axes of space by means of these six seals, or so the thinking goes.
Actually, however, Gra 1:13 says nothing at all about mother letters, nor does its equivalent in the othe versions. It is an editor’s interpolation. Kaplan’s translation reads:
Gra 1:13. He chose three letters from among the Elementals, [in the mystery of the three Mothers Alef Mem Shin] And he set them in his great Name and with them sealed six extremities. Five: He sealed “above” and faced upward and sealed it with Yod Heh Vav. . . .[38]
And so on with the other permutations. The part about three mothers is in brackets, meaning it is an editor’s explanatory addition, not part of the text itself. (Semanticaly, “Elemental” = “plain” = “single” = “simple”.) Nor is there anything about mother letters in any of the other versions.
However, the connection is traditional among the 13th-18th century commentators. The Gra addition gets its justification from Gra 3:2:
Gra 3:2. Three Mothers: Alef Mem Shin / A great, mystical secret/ covered and sealed with six rings /And from them emanated air, water and fire/ And from them are born Fathers, / and from the Fathers, descendents. . . .[39]
Here instead of six seals we see six rings: they produce air, water, and fire. Kaplan (p. 143) says that the “Fathers” are the three letters Yod Heh and Vau. Since they seal the six directions, these directions are somehow the progeny of the three mother letters, or perhaps of the three elements (depending on the antecedents of “them”).
But Kaplan’s assertion that the “fathers” generated by the “mothers” are the letters YHV is directly contradicted by Gra 6:1, which says
Gra 6:1. These are the Three Mothers AMSh. And from them emanated Three Fathers, and they are air, water, and fire, and from the Fathers, descendants.[40]
There is something similar in the other versions. This supports what Saadia said about “fathers” in his exposition of 1:4 (see above), that the Fathers were really just the Mothers. On this reading, when Gra 3:2 says “from them” the second time (the passage is on this page above), it does not mean “from air, water, and fire” but rather the same “them” as in the preceding “from them,” i.e., the mother letters. So the relationship between the permutations of AMSh and YHV remains problematic.
According to Glotzer, some commentators held that the rings were the permutations of the mother letters AMSh, and the seals were the permutations of YHV made by those six AMSh rings:
The three mothers referred to by the Mishnah [1:13] are the letters Aleph, Mem, and Shin. These are the letters from the Hebrew words, Avir Mahim, and Aish (air, water, and fire.). These letters are also known as Rings. In contrast, the letters of the Tetragrammaton – Yud, Hey, and Vav – are called the seals. In a signet ring, the seal is part and parcel of the ring. It is created from the body of the ring. So are the Seals in this Mishnah (Yod, Hey, Vav) created from the very essence of the Rings.[41]
So
it appears that the rings defined by the permutations of AMSh have on them the
letters YHV in their permutations.
But it is still not completely clear. Another commentator cited by Glotzer says, “These three letters of Emesh and the three of God’s name are called six rings, and all is sealed with them, as a person who seals (letters) with a signet ring.” Glotzer concludes (same page as previously):
There appears to be a real difference among the commentators in their understanding of this Mishnah. Sefer Yetzirah does not make clear exactly what the relationship is between Emesh and Yud Hey Vav. It seems to me that they represent similar ideas on different levels. Emesh represents these concepts in the highest three sefirot, Hud Hey Vav in the Six Extremes.
\But what are the “similar ideas”? What is “similar” between three elements (air, water, fire) and six spatial directions? Perhaps it is in the permutations: permuting three letters gives six possible words. In that way three letters are the source of six directions. Here is where the “three axes of space” might fit in, with a solution that eluded the 13th – 18th century Jewish commentators: Case and Benton seem to be arguing that by some mystery, the three elements become or produce the three axes of space, forming the six directions and the six faces of a cube.
 |
| Fig. 5. The 3 axes as 3 colors |
One problem with this solution is that Shin comes after Mem in the alphabet, so we would expect Shin to be related to Vav and not Hey. But perhaps there is some reason we don’t know about for these assignments.
Another
problem is that while three of the directions are opposite to the other three,
the same is not true of the “rings”: in the diagram, both east and west are
red, for example, the same as opposed to being opposite. This problem is rather
easily dealt with, however. The opposition is contained in the second and third
letters of the permutations: YHV vs. YVH. Moreover, the permutations are
expressed as male and female:
Saadia 3:2. . . . AMSh is sealed with six rings and enveloped [K, cocooned] in male and female.
Saadia in his commentary says that “male” and “female” have to do with the Hebrew words that the permutations make: three of them are “strong” or “harsh” in meaning (i.e. male), and three others are weak or gentle (female), e.g. ShAM, “because if” (strong) vs. ShMA, “perhaps” (weak).[42] Each permutation is “enveloped” (Lambert’s translation) in one gender or the other. The other versions do the same. So we find in Gra 3:7 (short form 3:6): “the male with AMSh, and the female with AShM,” and likewise for the others, in 3:8 and 3:9.
But there is a more serious problem, namely, fire and water are themselves opposites, according to the SY: fire is hot, water is cold. Thus Gra 3:5:
Gra 3:5. Three Mothers AmSh / in the year are / the hot / the cold / and the temperate. The hot is created from fire / The cold is created from water/ and the temperate, from Breath/ decides between them. [43]
There is something similar in all the other versions. Likewise fire creates heaven and water earth. Heaven and earth are opposites.
The three axes of space, however, are not opposites: they are simply at ninety degrees to one another, in different planes. Opposites have to be on the same line, a continuum from hot to cold or good to bad, past to future, with the non-spatial sefirot on each end.
If Breath (one or the other)
decides between fire and water, the suggestion is that one is better than the
other. A stronger such suggestion is in Gra 2:1:
 |
| Fig. 6: the pans of merit and demerit |
2:1. The mothers: Alef Mem Shin. Their foundation is a pan of merit / a pan of liability / and the tongue of decree deciding between them.[44]
The image is of a scales, with the “tongue” as the pointer indicating which of the two is predominant at any given time and by how much. Kaplan (p. 96) has a drawing of this image (Fig. 6, at right). The labels have letters instead of sefirot. The sefirot “Depth of Good” and “Depth of Evil” can go there as well, as the weight at infinity of the two pans.
>It is not said whether fire is better than water or vice
versa. But there is Saadia 8:1 (emphasis added):
8.1 With Alef have been formed: the air [K breath], the atmosphere [K air], the between seasons [K the temperate], the chest, and the rule of equilibrium (the lash) [K the tongue of decree]. With Mem have been formed: water, earth, winter [K cold], belly, and the pan of demerit [K liability]. With Shin have been formed: fire, heaven, summer [K. hot], the head, and the pan of merit.
[45]Shin is related to heaven, hot, and merit, i.e. good. Mem is related to water, earth, and demerit, i.e., bad. If so, “depth of good” is the same sefira as “fire from water” and “depth of evil” is the same sefira as “depth of evil,” as the extremes of merit and demerit respectively.
And superior to both fire and water is air, the temperate, which makes the decision and restores equilibrium (eye-for-an-eye justice) by administering the lash. Even physically, air “decides”: that which is lighter than it goes up, and that which is heavier goes down. Notice that none of the spatial directions are on this list, which is meant, at the end of the work, as a kind of summary of what came before.
The Long Version (3:10) makes the same correlations but reverses the pans:
Long 3:10. Three Mothers AMSh. With Alef He formed breath, air, the temperate, the chest, the tongue of decree between them. With Mem: water, earth, the cold, the belly, the pan of merit. With Shin: fire, heaven, the hot, the head, the pan of liability. This is AMSh.[46]
Shin gets the pan of merit and Mem the pan of
liability or demerit. I would guess that in the Middle East cold water was more
precious than fire and heat. Kaplan favors that choice, based on the hissing
sound of shin, which one gives to people judged bad, whereas the hum of mem is
pleasant and approving. Heaven as "evil" in that case wold be associated with God's punishing force. But other translations and versions of the SY do not
talk of hissing and humming, but rather of being “grave” for water (as in
“gravity), and “shrill” or “sibilant” for fire. It is the image of low vs.
high. Just so, all versions associate heaven with fire, including the Throne of
Glory. Here is Gra 1:12:
Gra 1:12 Four: Fire from Water, with it He engraved and carved the Throne of Glory, Seraphim, Ophanim [wheels - MH], and holy Chayoth [creatures – MH] and Ministering angels. From these three He founded His dwelling as it is written: “He makes His angels of breaths, His ministers of flaming fire” (Psalm 104:4).[47]
Such a place is presumably superior in goodness as well as majesty. However, a case could be made that “ministers of flaming fire” are precisely those who bring evil upon evil-doers, and so sources of evil rather than good.
The conclusion so far is that Fire and Water are associated with hot and cold, and, at least on the level of sefirot, good and evil. If so, then they are opposites, and as such cannot simply be two axes of the three spatial dimensions, such as East-West and North-South. East-West is not opposite to North-South. Only two entities on the same line can be opposites.
5. Picturing sefirot in relation to the mother letters and the six directions
When the SY discusses air, fire, and water, it is typically in relation to one another, not to the six directions. If so, to represent their relationships, a separate diagram is needed, disconnected, at least at first, from the cube of space. It can be put into the cube later if that is where it goes.
I suggest that the image of the two pans of a scales, with the tongue between them, is a good starting point for a diagram of the corresponding sefirot. “Breath of the Living God” can take the place of the top of the “tongue” that Kaplan marked with an Aleph. Below them on either side are “Fire from Water” in the “merit” pan and “Water from Breath” in the “demerit” pan. Since it is indicated that this Fire is from Water, there can be a line connecting the two, Fire from Water and Water from Breath (Fig. 7, below).
 |
| Fig. 7. Combining the two lines of time and value |
If one side of the horizontal is good, Depth of Good should be the sefira there, identical with “Fire from Water” (since there are only ten sefirot, not fourteen, four have two characterizations each). That puts Depth of Evil on the other end, identical with “Water from Breath.” The line is a line of value as well as of a transition from water to fire. And since there are only two more sefirot, the top of the vertical line is Depth of Beginning as well as Breath of the Living God. The other end will then be End as well as Breath from Breath, and the line itself is Time. Since this Water comes from Breath, there should be some connection between some part of the Air line and the Water side of the horizontal line. But we don’t know yet where it goes. In Fig. 7, I have made the two lines bisecting each other; but so far, it is not clear where they touch: it might even be that the black dot should be on the line between the blue dot and the red dot.
It is also unclear where to put the mother letters: with the lines or with the sefirot? At this point there are only two lines but four sefirot. What makes the most sense to me is to associate Shin with the sefirot of fire, Mem with that of water, Aleph with that of the first Breath, and Tau with the second Breath. But I won’t put that on the diagram yet, because it is too speculative. Normally we associate letters with lines. If so, Fire would be half of the water-fire line, and Water the other half, unless two more lines can be justified. Another issue is that somehow earth is associated with water and heaven with fire. Where do heaven and earth go on this diagram? And since neither is a sefira, do they belong in the diagram at all?
At this point, to get more clarification, I will turn to
Saadia’s commentary on his version, bearing in mind the others as I go. The
Saadia version’s account of the process by which
water comes from breath, earth from water, fire from water, and heaven from
fire, is in his 4:6 and 4:7. However, I will start with 4:5 (it is transcribed
and translated in full in Appendix D to this essay).
Saadia 4:5. He formed reality [Kaplan: substance] from nothingness [Kaplan: chaos] and made to exist [K, that which is from] that which was not [K, nothingness], and He carved great columns from the intangible air [K, pillars from air that cannot be grasped].[48]
The same wording is in Gra and Short Version 2:6. He created things out of tohu, chaos according to some but to Saadia in his Arabic formulation of the sentence, He “created something not of something” (quelque chose non de quelque chose), and made exist what was not. So Saadia interprets the famous line of Job 26:7:
We translate: tolè 'ères 'al belima: he hangs the earth not onto something, and we do not translate: he hangs the earth onto nothing. We have there [in the latter – MH] in view that nothing is a thing, whereas here [in the former – MH] it is a question of believing that the Creator produced the air not from something, and this is what the author says: He formed from the void a reality.[49]
This might be thought to mean that it is wrong to think of the earth as hanging from anything: it is just there. But at the end he has "from the void." By belima he seems to understand a void, a space empty of something. His example is of a person marking off or tracing one acre for a house, an acre and a half for a hostel, two acres for a fortress, he says. Likewise, the creator “formed from the void a reality.”[50] Specifically, he "traced" an empty spherical space, in which he then put the earth. Saadia even says how big the space was: 20,000 miles in circumference, ancient scientists tell us.[51] (as a unit of distance “miles” was invented by the Romans. Since the earth in fact is 25,000 miles around, this is not too bad.) And similarly for each of the celestial bodies. The letters themselves, engraved in straight lines, are what the SY means by “columns,” but somehow they are also the supports of the universe, like the beams of a house that will be filled out into walls, floor, and ceiling. It is significant that they are made out of intangible, i.e. primordial, air, because air is the substance that will be in the middle between fire and water.
The third step, in 4:6, is water from breath, in which part of the air, tohu and bohu, chaos and void, cools into mud and clay. after which solid earth, then pure physical water, separate (step 3, water), a mysterious physical process done by God in an instant. Here is Lambert's rendition of Saadia:
6. Third: He created [those two words omitted from Kaplan] water from breath. With it He traced [K, engraved] and carved tohu [K, chaos] and bohu [K void], silt and clay [K: clay and mire]. He made of them a sort of [K like] a garden plot, He carved of them a sort of (K: them like] a wall, and He covered [K decked] of them a sort of [K like] a ceiling. He made the water pour below [K poured water on them], and it became earth [K dust], as it is written, For to the snow He said, become earth [Job 37:6]. . . .[52]
The corresponding passage in other versions is Short Version and Gra 1:11 and Long Version 1:12. There is also Saadia’s Arabic:
Thirdly he created water from air; he therefore traced and separated from there a sphere which had a periphery and a center; in it there was a murky mixture of water and mud; he made it like a garden, then like a wall, then like a roof so that the water flowed out; (the sphere) dried up and became earth. The index of this (formation) is the word [i.e., saying – MH]: For to the snow, he said: Be of the earth [Job 37:6]. . . .[53]
For Saadia, the process in 4:6 is what constitutes the “mystery of the mothers.”
As to making the mind grasp how he created water from the air, we will say that these are the mysteries to which the author of the book alluded in the second chapter, saying: A mystery, great and hidden, marvelous and illustrious, from which come fire, air, water.[54]
The commentary is rather long, so I refer you to Appendix D. Here is his summary:
Such are the mysteries of the creation of these elements by letters and numbers, namely, that they formed in the air a figure which pressed (the air) by the will of the Creator; the humidity was taken from a part of the air, whence came the water; they formed a dividing figure and line, the thick part of the water separated and became the earth. And the air from which the moist part had been detached became fire, because its hot parts had remained and its humidity had been taken away. As for the rest of the air which had not been pressed, it retains its nature, warm and humid.[55]
It appears that coldness is part of the essence of water; otherwise, the water remains in the air. When the coldness is taken out, in the form of water, the heat remains, from which fire emerges.
Then, the SY continues (4:7), from fire God made heaven, with its high angels, heavenly creatures,
and throne. I will try to put the process in a diagram.
 |
| Fig. 8. Adding water and fire, earth and heaven. |
Why does the SY call the sefira corresponding to fire “fire from water” rather than “fire from breath”? It would seem that fire is extracted from breath, i.e. moist air, rather than from water. Glotzer quotes a passage that he says is from Saadia's commentary on this point. I cannot find it in Lambert, but I will quote it anyway: "After he hung the water in the air, He shined radiance from His benevolent and awe-inspring radiance, and shined in the water, and from the strength of that radiance fire emerged" (Glotzer, Fundamentals, p. 55). That is a rather different process than I find in Saadia, but it is possible.
More consistent with what I see in Lambert is this: the production of fire is after cold, liquid water has formed. Fire comes about when water transforms to earth, extracting still more heat. What this issue affects is whether there should be a line from Breath of the LG to “Fire from Water,” or just from “Water from Breath.” I have included both possibilities: the horizontal line and the diagonal on the right, the one from Water and the other from Breath of the LG.
There is also the question of where the three mother letters fit in:
perhaps Shin is only the part of the line from “Fire from Water” to Heaven, and Mem only
the part from “Water from Breath” to Earth. But since it is the utterance of these letters that start the process, first to water and then to fire, it would seem that Mem would be the whole diagonal from Breath of the LG to Water, and Shin either the horizontal line or the right-hand diagonal, or both. It is not clear.
 |
| Fig. 9. 19th century engraving of the hyperouranion, the space beyond space. |
Then comes the “sealing” of the six directions, not from their “depths,” but from a point in the center. It is by means of the six permutations of the Great Name:
 |
| Fig. 6 repeated |
Saadia does not mention rings here, only the action of sealing. Since sealing is done by rings, they are probably implied. Here see again my Fig. 5 (right), where the rings are placed on the directions as indicated, color-coded to correspond to the three axes of three dimensional space.
The figure could also be an octahedron, as in my Fig. 4.
6. Integrating two dimensions with three dimensions.
 |
| Fig. 10, connecting 2 dimensions with 3, 1st approximation |
The left-hand diagram does have six dots. The obvious step is to connect the rest of the dots in that one with those in the other, using sensible correlations connecting the traits assigned by Gra 3:5 and Saadia 8:1
 |
| Fig. 11. The same, but with 6 connections |
 |
| Fig. 12. The same, but with matching colors. |
The “seals” might then be on the two sides of each line in the cube, precisely as shown. Whether there are “seals” on the left-hand side is not clear. Saadia’s language suggests that there are, or at least the appropriate rings. If so, they (rings, perhaps also seals) can be imagined as dots of the requisite colors anywhere on the two diagonal lines and the vertical line, one dot on each side of the blue and red dots and each side of the halfway point on the vertical line. The rings then reach over to the cube, to put the corresponding seals there. Then the lines between the two figures are like communications between the two diagrams, corresponding to the information contained in sealed, secret letters sent from one organization to another.
In fact, if we think of the left-hand figure as a representation of the primordial state of the world, by the end of that process, when “Breath from Breath”/Depth of End becomes the center of the universe, one of the other colored dots can be put with the one of corresponding color in the cube - but only one, because only three placements define a particular plane. Since there is no reason to prefer one point of coincidence rather than another, among the six possibilities, the placement has to oscillate among the alternatives. This is one example of how the sefirot “pursue his decree like a whirlwind” (Saadia Excerpts, p. 15; Gra 1:6), in which in fact all the letters participate, according to Saadia 4:4, with 231 possible combinations taking two at a time (Saadia 4:4, Gra 2:4, Kaplan p. 113).
By this means the primordial air, fire, and water are communicated to the world of the six directions. Each element is communicated to two directions. In the case of air, it is to east-center and west-center, thus the entire east-west line. For fire and water, the situation is different. Fire goes from above to center and from center to south. Water goes from below to center and from center to north. In that way fire and water remain opposites, even when the spatial axes they are on, above-below and south-north, are not. And while Air indeed is, in the diagram, transmitted to one axis of space, it is because it is the combination of two directions on the same line; it is the directions that generate the axis, not the other way around, as Case and Benton would have it. Even then, it is not to say that air doesn’t extend north or south, up or down. East-West is merely the equilibrium line for air. Later it will become the “central column” on the Tree of Life.
7. From the Sefer Yetzirah diagram to the Jewish Tree of Life.
My diagram (Fig. 12) may be an accurate representation (more or less) of the SY's relationships, but it doesn't look much like the later Tree of Life. There are no sefirot as points where lines intersect, and double letters are represented by squares. However, I think it really is the Tree of Life in embryo.
In the first place, the “cube of space” can also be represented as an octahedron. We have only Lambert’s translation of Saadia’s commentary to say otherwise. It is simply a matter of representing the edges of the cube as lines between the ends of the directions, with the sefirot as the vertices, as we know them from the “tree of life.” The resulting edges are still diagonals in Saadia’s sense, as the hypotenuses of right-angled triangles, in this case those formed by the directions whose intersections they represent. The other six lines, inside the figure, are not diagonals in that sense, and rather straightforwardly represent the six directions.
Below are three diagrams illustrating this point: first the cube and the octahedron presented in our usual way of drawing things in perspective. In the Middle Ages this form of perspective was at best just one way of representing a three-dimensional object, and even then I know of nothing written about it, until Leon Batista Alberti’s De Pictura of 1435 Florence. The third image is drawn in such a way that makes the four compass directions a square in the middle, with the upper and lower parts extending in a way that inevitably distorts the sides, adding also the sefira in the center, Tau. With this figure there are both a five-pointed and six-pointed star imbedded in the lines. The latter is hard to see, so I have outlined its six points in green.
 |
| Fig. 13: cube compared to octahedron, first in perspective and then showing central square. Six-sided star highlighted in green. |
 |
| Fig. 14. Tree of Life, first approximations. |
If “evil” is redefined as “lack of mercy” and good as “abundance of mercy” the uppermost sefirot of the octahedron fit the later characterizations of Gevurah and Chesed, or perhaps as the energies sent to the lower sefirot from the two above them. The only problem is that later Kabbalists associated fire and red with the left side, and water and white with the right.[57] Again, my guess is that because in Muslim lands, if not in heaven, water was considered better than fire, the Long Version’s assignment of fire with evil was preferred over Saadia’s. But since South is still on the right side, that tells me that the Saadia version was probably earlier than the Long. In any event, evil still goes with North and West, and Good with East and South.
>If it seems strange to have West at the bottom rather than Below, there is what Saadia says about West:
And the author puts the east in front and the west behind, according to the principle that the (divine) residence is in the west [Baba Batra 25a]. For the gate of the Temple was toward the east, as it is said: And those who camped before the tabernacle on the east, before the tent of meeting on the east, and the holy ark was on the west [Numbers 3:8; actually Numbers 3:38 - MH]. And that is why the stars move from the east to the west, which is called bowing down before God, as it is said: The legion of the heavens bows down before you [Nehemiah 4:6 – actually 9:6 - MH].[58]
The west is where God has his residence on earth (the ark).
 |
| Fig. 15. The "tree" further simplified, and the "natural array." |
But
from another perspective, since there are only three horizontal lines, it makes
sense to reassign the letters so that the three horizontals get the three
mother letters, the seven verticals the double letters, and the twelve
diagonals the single letters. It is particularly appropriate that the middle horizontal can be
called air, with fire the one above it and water the one below, as the SY in
fact characterizes them (likening fire to the head, water to the belly, and air
to the chest).
Then, too, different names can be given to the sefirot, yet
keeping some of their old characteristics. Kether qualifies as Beginning, and
water and fire remain important images, even if differently applied. “Depth of east”
is just below this “Beginning,” so a kind of second Alef, the son, the King, a
re-imagining of East as the dawning of the light. “Breath from Breath” remains in the center of what was an octahedron, and still the uniting point between East and West, reimagined as the daughter.t. The sefira between
them then symbolizes their union. Now it is easy to make the design more symmetrical, removing the long lines to east and west and replacing them with the four diagonals of the top square. The three squares, top, middle and bottom, still have twelve diagonals. The result is what Kaplan (p. 28) calls "the natural array."
It
is possible to get the same result just with the cube instead of an octahedron,
seen from the perspective of one of its vertices. Then it looks like the figure
at left. If dots are placed at the vertices to represent the sefirot, it yields
the figure in the lower center. We have seven spheres for sefirot, four verticals,
and eight diagonals. The dots on the periphery can each be given the names of
one of the cube-faces that adjoin them, which have now disappeared. However, it
is not straightforward which dot gets which direction, unlike in the case of
the octahedron.
 |
| Fig. 16. Building the "stnatural array" from a cube rather than an octahedron. |
Attaching the upper cross-triangle by means of the “mystery” lines adds three verticals, one horizontal, and two diagonals. Its horizontal is then the model for two more horizontals below, and the lower figure’s diagonals are the model for the diagonals that complete the upper diamond shape. To me, this method has a certain arbitrariness to it compared to the octahedron, at least the first step (from left to middle above). Its second step (middle to right) is more logical and natural. Perhaps they knew both visualizations. What is essential to both is that there have been a separate upper triangle. If so, it is that of the mother letters, which therefore would not have been below, emanating from the center of the lower figure.
This is not yet the “Jewish Tree” that we know. That is for me one stage further. How that one comes from the previous is through the allegory of the exile of the daughter, now the Shekinah and Malkhut rather than simply the lowest sefira. In the diagram of the Sefer Yetzirah, there is no place for this exile; every sefira is attached to at least three others. But indeed, when people sin, the Shekinah goes after them, resulting in her descending one step lower. To emphasize that it was only through righteousness (Yesod) that one attains any connection to the divine, Malkhut had only one line to the rest of the tree, taking her vertical line but not the diagonals.
So the principle of Union, now Yesod, descends one step lower, too, taking her place and her diagonals. And the King, now Tiferet instead of East, follows as well, in his case pulling his diagonals from Hochmah and Binah with him. To make up for Malkhut’s lost diagonals, two new diagonals fill the hole left by the King’s descent, stretching from Hochmah and Binah to Chesed and Gevurah. Here are the two trees side by side.
 |
| Fig. 17: "Standard array" compared with standard Jewish "Tree" |
Of the versions on the internet, the one on the right is the least bad I could find. The translation for Gevurah should be “Severity,” Hod should be “Splendor,” and Malkhut “Kingdom.” These labels are a later development, following the principles guiding the new configuration. Yet aspects of the SY sefirot remain. Characteristics of the spatial directions transferred from the mothers are now assigned to the corresponding verticals. Planetary spheres (including one for the angels and one for the fixed stars) are assigned to verticals and zodiacal signs to diagonals in the same order as in the SY, now top to bottom and right to left. Earlier, however, the planets would probably have all been in the lower seven – the cube or octahedron of space. Even Kircher, who probably used Jewish sources, assigned Malkhut to the Moon rather than the earth.[59]
The assignments, on the left above but with the center line’s sefirot dropped down one space as just described, also remove the “breath,” “water,” and “fire” designations from the sefirot, since they now describe the horizontals. The result, for the sefirot, is almost the same as later practice, at least in the form presented by Moses Cordovero, the great 16th-century synthesizer. The single exception is "Depth of West.” Although it had been assigned to Malkhut earlier, according to Corovero, he interpreted the Tikuney Zohar as assigning “Depth of End” to Malkhut, at the bototm. That would make it complement "Depth of Beginning" at Kether, at the top. “Depth of West” went to Yesod instead.[60] Otherwise, his assignments of “depths” to sefirot are precisely the same as those predicted by my model of development, with “South” assigned to Chesed and “Above” to Netzach. Cordovero does retain one alternative name for the first sefira (Getz. p. 117), calling it “Breath of the Living God” as well as “Depth of Beginning” and Kether. He also identified the top three sefirot with Aleph, Mem, and Shin (p. 119) in that order, in addition saying that these letters “refer” to Yod, Heh, and Vav, something that he will explain later (in his “treatise on the reflection of light,” a portion of the Pardes I have not been able to obtain in translation).
My account of the SY’s picture (actually a combination of two) of the sefirot and its evolution into the Tree of Life is quite a bit different from Benton’s and Case’s. As far as the usefulness of the “cube of space” as defined by Case for the Tarot, I have no problems, although for other purposes the octahedron may be more useful. And whatever the usefulness for the Tarot of identifying the three elements with the three axes of space, such an identification is not likely to have been part of the SY’s conception of their relationship. While associations between faces of a “cube of space” and the SY’s three elements still remain, they are not those of Case.
[1] Paul Foster Case, The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages, p. 53 (first revised ed., 1990, originally 1947.)
[2] Case, pp. 17-18.
[3] Par and Chris Zalewsky, The Magical Tarot of the Golden Dawn: Divination, Meditation and High Magical Teachings, Vol. 1 (Flaxmere, Hastings, New Zealand: Open Mind Publications, 1997), p. 9.
[4] Aryeh Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah The Book of Creation: in theory and practice (York Beach, Main: Weiser, 1990), pp. 10, 46-47. He footnotes a Jewish commentary, but neither it nor its author is in his bibliography or on the internet.
[5] « Par lesquelles Yah, Éternel Sebaot, Dieu d'Israël, Dieu vivant, Dieu tout-puissant, élevé, sublime, habitant l'Éternité et dont le nom est saint, a tracé trois pères et leurs postérités 1, sept conquérants et leurs légions 2, douze arêtes du cube; 3. [1. L'air, l'eau, le feu et ce qui en dérive. 2. Les planètes et les étoiles. 3. Le mot [in Hebrew characters] ne parait pas signifier ici diagonale. » Le Gaon Saadya de Fayyoum, Commentaire sur le Séfer Yesira ou Livre de la Création, M. Lambert, trans., Emile Bouillon, éd., Paris, 1891, p. 52. Online in HathiTrust and Google Books. Originally Tafsir Kitab al-Mabadi, in Arabic, tenth century Near East. The HathiTrust site, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100331999, has a helpful OCR function and an easy way to download images of the pages.
[6] Lambert, p. 51: Traduction : Avec lesquelles l'Éternel, le Maître des armées, Dieu d'Israël, Dieu vivant, puissant, indépendant, noble, sublime, subsistant jusque dans l'éternité, dont le nom est saint, a tracé trois mères et ce qu'elles ont enfanté, sept chefs et leurs armées et douze limites d'angles.“
[7]Lambert, pp. 51-52: “J'ai traduit gebulê alakson limites des angles, car ce mot se trouve fréquemment dans le Talmud; on dit: Toute coudée (forme) une coudée et deux cinquièmes en diagonale (alakson) [Lambert: Baba Batra 101b]; ce qui veut dire que dans tout carré où le (côté) simple est d'une coudée, la diagonale [Lambert: Le mot {arabic characters} ne se trouve pas dans les dictionnaires] est d'une coudée et deux cinquièmes, ce qui n'est pas tout à fait exact; la mesure exacte de la diagonale est la racine carrée de deux.
[8] I borrow this illustration from Christopher Benton, “Sefer Yetzirah, the Cube of Space, and the Emergence of the Tree of Life”; I do not know if this paper is published anywhere. A presumably earlier one with most of the points I am referring to is given in n. 33.
[9] Steven Fine, “Some Thoughts on the Petersberg »Menorah« and the History of Seven-Branched Lampstands in Medieval Europe,” in Erfuter Schriften zur Judische Geschichte, Vol. 6, Ritual objects in Ritual Contexts (Jena · Quedlinburg, Verlag Bussert & Stadeler, 2020), pp. 56-57.
[10] Lambert, p. 3: « Douze simples, douze et non onze, douze et non treize : douze arêtes des angles, se divi- sant dans les directions, séparant les différents côtés: arête est-nord, arête est-haut, . . . »
[11] Lambert p. 51 « Quatrième paragraphe. — Traduction: Les douze simples sont douze et non onze, ni treize; elles correspondent aux douze lignes qui appartiennent à tout cube, et leur compte s'établit par la rencontre de l'est avec le nord, le haut et le bas, puis par la rencontre du nord avec l'ouest, le haut et le bas, puis par la rencontre de l'ouest avec le sud, le haut et le bas, puis par la rencontre du sud avec l'est, le haut et le bas. »
[12] Commentaire. – Tout corps cubique a douze arêtes, et si tu prends pour comparaison une chambre ou une boutique, tu le comprendras, car le plafond se rencontre avec les quatre côtés, et le sol avec les quatre côtés, puis les quatre côtés l'un avec l'autre, ce qui fait en tout douze (lignes). . . .
[13] Kaplan, p. 262.
[14] Ibid., p. 78 and n. 210, p. 360.
[15] Elyakim Getz, trans., Moshe Cordovero, Pardes Rimonim, Orchard of Pomegranates, Parts 1-4 (Providence University Inc., 2007), pp. 119, 122.
[16] Lambert, p. 96.
[17] For Waite’s comments on Saadia, the relevant pages are in Google Books’ upload of the Dover edition of The Holy Kabbalah (New York: 2003), pp 103-106. The corresponding passages in Saadia's commentary have been translated by Scott Thompson and Dominique Marson, "Sefer Yetzirah [Book of Creation] and Saadia’s Commentary (Excerpts)" (San Francisco, 2005), online at https://www.themathesontrust.org/papers/judaism/saadia.pdf. Saadia does not mention Aristotle by name, but when he interprets the Ten Commandments in terms of the "ten categories," listing those categories by name (Excerpts, p. 12), the ten are precisely those of Aristotle's Categories (see Wikipedia entry). Waite’s appraisal of Saadia's applications of Aristotle to Jewish scripture seems justified.
[18] Thompson and Marson Excerpts, p. 9.
[19] Ibid., corresponding to Lambert, p. 25: c’est la théorie de l’auteur de ce livre.“
[20] Lambert, p. 27, omitted from Thompson and Marson’s excerpts. For the French and an English translation (by Google Translate and me), see Appendix A at the end of this essay.
[21] Ibid., p. 28.
[22] Thompson and Marson, Excerpts, p. 9; Lambert, p. 25.
[23] Kaplan, p. 44. A good reference site for the Gra version as a whole (in Kaplan, it is broken up by commentary) is at https://www.hermetics.net/media-library/kabbalah/sepher-yetzirah-book-of-formation-gra-version/.
[24] Ibid., p. 48.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid., p. 44.
[27] Thompson and Marson, Excerpts, p. 12.
[28] Ibid., p. 5.
[29] Lambert, pp. 78-79: "Le sens de notre mot: dix nombres fermés est: Ferme ta bouche, pour ne pas parler trop là-dessus, et ferme ton coeur pour ne pas y réfléchir, et si ton esprit s'élance, ramène-le à sa place, comme il est dit des anges : Courant et revenant. Si nous disons que (les nombres) correspondent à dix (objets) infinis pour nous, cela signifie que leur fin est fixée dans leur commencement et que leur commencement est fixé dans leur fin, comme la flamme du feu qui est attachée au charbon. Par suite, il convient que tu saches, que tu discernes et que tu croies que le Créateur est un, et qu'il n'y en a pas d'autre, puisque devant l'Un tu ne peux rien compter."
[30] Lambert, p. 29.
[31] Lambert, p. 57 : « . . . personne ne peut sortir de la limite que (Dieu) lui a assignée, de la règle qu'il lui a tracée, des conditions qu'il lui a imposées, et du cercle dans lequel il l'a enfermé. Mais Lui, - qu’il soit beni et sanctifie.- n'est pas fermé, n'est pas contraint, ni astreint, n'a aucun besoin et ne change pas. »
[32] Lambert, pp. 25-26.
[33] Gra 4:4: “Seven Doubles BGD KRPT: Up and down / East and west / North and south / And the Holy Palace precisely in the center / and it supports them all.” Kaplan, p. 163.
[34] Kaplan, p. 44.
[35]Thompson and Marson, Excerpts, p. 9.
[36] Benton, “Sefer Yetzirah,” (see here n. 7), pp. 18, 20. (He says the same in an online paper, “An Introduction to the Sefer Yetzirah,” in The Maqom Journal for Studies in Rabbinic Literature, Vol. 7, Winter 2004, at http://www.maqom.com/journal/paper14.pdf, p. 21.)
[37] Ibid., p. 16 (in the online paper, p. 21, he uses Kaplan’s wording: “elementals” instead of “plain ones,” “in the mystery of” instead of “in mysterious counsel with,” “set” instead of “placed,” and “sealed” instead of “sealed/completed.)”
[38] Kaplan, p. 80. I do not know whose interpolation it is, Kaplan’s or the Gra’s. The Gra version at https://www.hermetics.net/media-library/kabbalah/sepher-yetzirah-book-of-formation-gra-version/ is without it.
[39] Ibid., p. 140.
[40] Ibid, p. 236.
[41] Glozer, Fundamentals, p. 60.
[42] Lambert, p. 82.
[43] Ibid., p. 145.
[44] Kaplan, p. 96.
[45] Lambert, p. 10; Kaplan, pp 293-4. The Excerpts uses idiosyncratic language not found in either Lambert or Kaplan.
[46] Kaplan, p. 274.
[47] Kaplan, p. 77.
[48] Lambert, p. 6 : « Il a formé du néant le réel et il a fait exister ce qui n'était pas; il a taillé de grandes colonnes d'un air insaisissable. » Kaplan, p. 289.
[49] Lambert, p. 106. For the French, see Appendix C.
[50] Lambert, pp. 106-7. For the French, see Appendix C.
[51] Lambert, p. 107. For the French, see Appendix C.
[52] Lambert, p. 7; Kaplan, p. 289.
[53] Lambert, pp. 107-8. For the French, see Appendix D.
[54] Lambert, p. 108. For the French, see Appendix D.
[55] Lambert, p. 110. For the French see Appendix D.
[56] Lambert, p. 6 : “Cinquièmement. Il a choisi trois lettres simples et les a fixées avec son grand nom et a scellé avec elles les six côtés. Il a scellé le haut, il s'est tourné en haut et l'a scellé avec yod, hé, vav. » Kaplan, p. 289.
[57] Daniel G. Matt, The Essential Kabbalah (Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 1997), p. 45 and 47, from Moses Cordovero (16th cent.), Or Ne’erav.
[58] "Et l'auteur met l'orient devant et l'occident derrière, d'après le principe que la résidence (divine) est à l'occident. En effet la porte du Temple était vers l'orient, comme il est dit : Et ceux qui campaient devant le tabernacle à l'est, devant la tente d'assignation à l'orients, et l'arche sainte était à l'occident. Et c'est pour cela que les astres se dirigent de l'orient à l'occident, ce qui s'appelle se prosterner devant Dieu, comme il est dit : La légion des cieux se prosterne devant toi [Nombres]."
[60] Kaplan, p. 46, referring to Cordovero’s Pardes Rimonim 3:5, for which see Getz (see here n. 15), pp. 116-123. Cordovero mentions the Tiqunim (Sefer ha-Tiqunim, a later addendum to the Zohar) in relation to these assignments, but whether they are actually stated there, as Kaplan suggests, or his deductions from what is stated is not clear. Cordovero’s report of “Depth of West” being Malkhut is at Getz, p. 114.
APPENDIX A: End of Saadia’s introduction, pp. 27-29 of Lambert’s French translation of Saadia’s Arabic, translated into French at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044012602587&view=1up&seq=166&skin=2021 (Saadia reviews nine theories of creation, from Greek philosophy; for an English translation of the seventh and eighth of these theories, from Lambert's French, see pp. 9-10 at https://www.themathesontrust.org/papers/judaism/saadia.pdf).
What ends this subject is the ninth system. The ninth system is the best system, and it includes the seventh and the eighth [in the sense that numbers and letters were created at the same time – note by Lambert]. It is the word with which the Law begins in the beginning of creation, namely that fire, air, water, earth with all the compositions, combinations and formations, which are found in these last two, were created all at once by the Sage, thus it is said: In the beginning God created heaven and earth [Gen. 1:1 – Lambert]; from our explanation that the elements of air and water are included with the earth. The prophets explained (saying) that heaven and earth together were - created in an instant, as the Wise one said in his book: Yes, my hand founded the earth, my right hand developed the sky, I call them and they appear together [Isaiah, 58:13]. And the doctors [Hagiga 12a] gave the same explanation in the discussion of the school of Sammay and the school of Hillel; some said: The sky was created first and then the earth; and the others said: The earth was created first and then the sky; and the congregation said: Both were created at once. This is what we explained in the Genesis commentary, and we drew comparisons from animal, plant, and other substances. For the animal, it is thus that the embryo is born and that its flesh, its bones, its vessels, its skin, and all that is (formed) of it, grow, without anything being prior to another, but all is of a single production and by a single nutrition. For the plant, this is how the fruit is produced with its pulp, its stone, its bark and its tail, and all that is in it, all of this from a single production and a single growth, without that one thing preceded another. For (other) substances, this is how fire burns, and its substance, its redness, its brilliance and its burning appear together at once, without anything having preceded anything else. Likewise we say that fire and air, water and earth, every figure, every form and every mathematical property was created by the Creator – exalted be He! - together in an instant in the smallest and shortest possible time. [61]
And now that we have enumerated these nine systems, and set forth what induced the partisan of each system to support it [The words {Arabic characters} are neither very clear nor very sure. The translations appear to have read {Arabic characters}, H. {Hebrew characters}, which could be understood as the dissolution of the world, contrary to creation, C. {Hebrew, 5 letters} – note by Lambert], then added what is to be said against them to refute them, and finally have chosen among them the last system, which is the theory of instantaneous (creation), we will begin to complete the introduction to this book, and we will say that the ancients transmitted that this book was composed by Abraham our father, as explained at the end: And when Abraham our father understood him, God revealed himself to him. But they do not say that he used the very terms of this book as they are presently: they only say that he succeeded in extracting these ideas by his intelligence, and it occurred to him that the numbers and letters were the origins of things, as we will explain; he therefore knew (these ideas) for himself and taught them to the monotheists who were with him. They have always been transmitted among our people without being written down, just as the Mishna was transmitted without being written, and even a part of the Bible remained for many years in the state of an unwritten tradition, such as the proverbs of Solomon related by the people of Hezekiah, king of Judah (Prov. 25:1]). And when the time came for the doctors of the nation to come together, to deal with the questions of the Mishna, they expressed [lit: covered] them in their own words and [29] fixed them, [and] acted in the same way for this book or for what approached the ideas of this book, resulting in these divisions of paragraphs and this order of exposition.
As for the place where this book was composed, it is a city of Palestine, because we find there the names of the letters conforming to the language of Palestine, that is to say dal, tav, etc.; and likewise (the distinction) between resch daguesch and resch rafé, is in accordance with their rules.
And since we have come to begin the text of the book, we believe it is good to transcribe each paragraph in full and then explain it, because this book is not a widespread book and moreover many people do not understand; (we will do so) in order that there will be no alteration or error; and we will say at the outset that it consists of eight chapters or sections, each on a special subject. We will therefore explain the: FIRST CHAPTER. . . . . [62]
APPENDIX B, Saadia’s comments translation and commentary to 3:1, relating to the "closed numbers" (sefirot belima), Lambert pp. 78-81 (starting at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044012602587&view=1up&seq=217&skin=2021).
Translation. The meaning of our expression, ten closed [belima] numbers, is: Close [balam] your mouth, so as not to talk too much about it, and close your heart [i.e., mind – MH] so as not to think about it, and if your mind soars, bring it back to its place, as it is said of the angels: run and return. If we say that (the numbers) correspond to ten (objects) infinite for us, it means that their end is fixed in their beginning and their beginning is fixed in their end, like the flame of fire which is attached to the coal. Consequently, it is appropriate that you know, that you discern and that you believe that the Creator is one, and that there is no other, since before One you can count nothing.[63]
Commentary. (The author) says something more to (explain) the meaning of belima (closed), which comes from: 'edyo libloin (his adornment serves to close his mouth) [Psalms 32:9]; (this word) means: Close your mouth and your mind so as not to talk too much, nor too little about (the numbers [to say that there are more or less than ten – Lambert]). If someone objects that the mathematical calculation has only nine numbers, because we put the ten in place of the unit, thus 20, instead of 2, and 30 for 3, in the same way up to 90 for 9; then we put the hundred in the place of the unit, 200 instead of 2, and so up to 1000 and beyond, we will answer that it is possible to do so only for the signs of the numbers written on the book, and as to what the mathematicians) believe in numbers themselves, there is no doubt for them that the ten have a rank which unity cannot fill; only one says a ten [a tenfold – MH], as one says a “quintet,” a trio, etc. . . . (The author) therefore says, to glorify the number, that in every existing being, the beginning is wherever it is placed, except in number, because its beginning is unquestionably unity and it is not possible to start with something else. He takes existing objects as an example: this is how we see fire in coal, and we take its beginning in any place we want, since its shape is circular, likewise water and likewise sphere and all spherical objects. If we begin the sphere with the Goat [Capricorn], it is because the plants grow at the time when the sun arrives there. Likewise sometimes the beginning of water and fire is placed where the sight reaches it, but the spherical thing in itself has, by nature, no initial place. This is why (the author) says: Their end is fixed in their beginning and their beginning in their end. The translation of na'us is fixed, as it says: Now a ladder was fixed to the ground [Genesis 28:12], and the Targum says ne'is for fixed. But for number it is not so, because we cannot make it begin where we want, neither at three, nor at five, nor elsewhere, we can only make it begin at unity. This is a noble proposition, which glorifies unity, and it is what compels the Creator to be called one, since there is nothing that can exist or be conceived before unity. Likewise God — may he be exalted! — has nothing before him, and it is he who precedes things, but nothing comes into his nature, as it is said: Thou hast come to know that the LORD [Lambert has: the Eternal] is God, and that there is no other except him [Deut. 4:35], and elsewhere: That you may know, and believe and understand that I am he, and before me, no god was created, and after me there will be none. [Isaiah 43:10] . . .[64]
APPENDIX C. Saadia’s comments on his 4:5, pp. 106-107 of Lambert, in full (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044012602587&view=1up&seq=245&skin=2021).
Translation: He created something not from something and brought into existence what was not, he carved mighty columns in an intangible air.
Commentary. — We say: He created something not from
something, and we do not say: He created something from nothing, just as we
translate: tolè 'ères 'al belima: He attaches the earth not to
something, and we do not translate: He attaches the earth to nothing.
APPENDIX D. Saadia’s comments on his 4:6, pp. 107-110 of Lambert, in full (starting at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044012602587&view=1up&seq=246&skin=2021).
Translation: Thirdly he created water from the air; he therefore traced [formed? – MH] and thereby separated a sphere which had a periphery and a center; in it there was a murky [or cloudy - MH] mixture of water and mud; he made it like a garden, then like a wall, then like a roof so that the water flowed out; (the sphere) dried up and became earth. The index of this (formation) is the word: For to the snow, he said: Be of the earth [Job 37:6 - n. by Lambert]. By the word tohu is meant the green [Kaplan: azure] line which surrounds it, and by bohu the split stone which is in the bosom of the earth and from which the water issues. Proof of this is the word (applied) to the land of Edom: (God) will lay upon it the line [“measuring line” in some translations – MH] of devastation (qav tohu) [confusion, in some translations- MH] and the stones [“plumb line” or “level” in some translations – MH] of desolation (abne bohu [“emptiness” in some translations - MH]) [Isaiah 34:11 – n. by Lambert].
[66]Explanation of terms: The translation of the word caruga is garden [parterre, in French made up of “par” and “terre”: on the ground or floor] in the language of Palestine, and it is meschara: in the language of Babylonia; of this it is said: (The vine) shall wither in the beds of its vegetation [Ezekiel 17:11]. My lover went down to the aromatic garden [Song of Songs 6:2]. Maʻaziba is a roof, the primitive meaning is support; (this word) is found in the language of the Mishna. It says The inhabitant below provides the framework; and the dweller above the roof [Baba Mesia 10:2]. I translated qav line, as: And a line of thirty cubits encircled it [I Kings 7:28]. I translated yaroq, green, as is said about a certain animal: it seeks after every greenery [Job 39:8]. I translated mefullamot split, because it's like mefuliahot. This (word) is in the language of the Bible and the other is in the language of the Mishna. [67]
Explanation of ideas: (The author) says that the Creator created from the air the water, and from the water the periphery of the earth which is tohu; it appears to the eye to be a green line surrounding Earth; then the center of the earth which is bohu and it is the hard stone which is in the middle. As to making the mind grasp how he created water from the air, we will say that these are the mysteries to which the author of the book alluded in the second chapter, saying: A mystery, great and hidden, marvelous and illustrious, from which come fire, air, water. He seems to imagine that without materializing anything, the Creator wanted to introduce the power of forms into the air, and (this power) pressed the air; it gathered moisture from one part (of the air) to one side, and all that became water, and this is what he says: Water (taken) from the air; then he gave an order for this water, he refined part (of this water), he gathered the scum of it in one place; and there resulted the earth; and for it to separate from the mud it contained and from the humidity, he produced a form and erected it like a wall and that is the phrase: he carved them like a wall, after it had been a swamp, as he says: Like a sort of garden. Then he spread (this wall) like a roof, as it is said: He covered them like a kind of roof, so that, the water which had remained flowed out and sank, (the rest) dried up and resulted in the earth: and the author quoted a verse, as an allusion: For he said unto the snow: Be of the earth, though the meaning of the verse; or that (God) commands the snow to go to the earth and fall there. And he will tell in the sequel the story of the air from which the liquid was expressed and he (will tell) how it became fire, as it is in the seventh paragraph. Such are the mysteries of the creation of these elements by letters and numbers, namely, that they formed in the air a pressing figure (air) by the will of the Creator; the humidity was taken from a part of the air, whence came the water; they formed a dividing figure and line, the thick part of the water separated and became the earth. And the air from which the moist part had been detached became fire, because its hot parts had remained and its humidity had been taken away. As for the rest of the air which had not been pressed, it retains its warm nature, and humid. When we say that (God) pressed, clarified, erected, extended and the other details, we do not mean by that (God) did things in pieces, one before, the other after; we only want to prepare our intelligence and give it the means to represent for us (this teaching); we will bring everything back to instantaneous creation, as we said earlier in the ninth system (expounded in) the introduction to the book and which we said was the right one. It is also possible that by the words covered mystery (the author) is referring to the earth because it is said: You have covered (the earth) with the Ocean as with a mantle [Ps. 104:6]; by marvelous mystery to the water, because it is said: His marvels are in the depth (of the water) [Ps. 107:24]; by magnificent mystery he alluded to fire, because it is said of heaven: From the court of your holiness and your magnificence [Is. 62:15 – actually 63:15 {MH}]. [68]
Ce qui termine ce sujet, c'est le neuvième système. Le neuvième système est le meilleur système, et il comprend le septième et le huitièmes (3), c'est la parole par laquelle la Loi débute au commencement de la création, à savoir que le feu, l'air, l'eau, la terre avec toutes les compositions, combinaisons et formations, qui se trouvent dans ces deux derniers, ont été créés d'un seul coup par le Sage, ainsi qu'il est dit : Au commencement, Dieu créa le ciel et la terre (4) ; d'après notre explication que les éléments de l'air et de l'eau sont compris avec la terre. Les prophètes l'ont expliqué (en disant) que le ciel et la terre ensemble ont été - créés en un instant, ainsi que le Sage l'a dit dans son livre : Oui, ma main a fondé la terre, ma droite a développé le ciel, je les appelle et ils apparaissent ensembles (5). Et les docteurs (6) ont donné la même explication dans la discussion de l'école de Sammay et de l'école de Hillel; les uns disaient: Le ciel a été créé d'abord et ensuite la terre; et les autres disaient : La terre a été créée d'abord et ensuite le ciel et l'assemblée a dit: Tous deux ont été créés đ'un coup. C'est ce que nous avons expliqué dans le commentaire de la Genèse, et nous avons tiré des comparaisons de l'animal, de la plante et des autres substances. Pour l'animal, c'est ainsi que l'embryon naît et que sa chair, ses os, ses vaisseaux, sa peau, et tout ce qui en est (formé), s'accroissent, sans qu'une chose soit antérieure à l'autre, mais tout est d'une seule production et par une seule nutrition. Pour la plante, c'est ainsi que se produit le fruit avec sa pulpe, son noyau, son écorce et sa queue, et tout ce qui s'y trouve, tout cela d'une seule production et d'une seule croissance, sans qu'une chose ait précédé une autre. Pour les (autres) substances, c'est ainsi que le feu brûle, et que sa substance, sa rougeur, son éclat et sa brûlure apparaissent ensemble d'un coup, sans que rien ait précédé rien d'autre. De même nous disons que le feu et l'air, l'eau et la terre, toute figure, toute forme et toute propriété mathématique ont été créés par le Créateur – qu'il soit exalté! ensemble en un instant dans le plus petit et le plus court temps que soit.
3. En ce sens que les nombres et les lettres ont été créés en même temps. 4. Genèse, 1, 1. 5. Isaïe, LVIII, 13. 6. Hagiga, 12 a. Lambert, pp. 27-28.
[62] Et maintenant que nous avons énuméré ces neuf systèmes, et exposé ce qui a poussé le partisan de chaque système à le soutenir [Les mots de {Arabic letters} si ne sont ni très clairs, ni très sûrs. Les traductions paraissent avoir lu {Arabic characters}; H. {Hebrew, 6 letters}; ce qui pourrait s'entendre de la dissolution du monde, contraire de la création; C. {Hebrew, 5 letters} - Lambert] que nous avons ajouté ensuite ce qu'il y a à dire contre eux pour les réfuter, et qu'enfin nous avons choisi parmi eux le dernier système qui est la théorie de la (création) instantanée, nous nous mettrons à achever l'introduction de ce livre et nous dirons que les anciens ont transmis que ce livre a été composé par Abraham notre père, comme cela est expliqué à la fin : Et lorsque Abraham notre père l'eut compris, Dieu se révéla à lui. Mais ils ne disent pas qu'il ait employé les termes mêmes de ce livre tels qu'ils sont présentement : ils disent seulement qu'il a réussi à tirer ces idées de son intelligence, et il lui est venu à l'esprit que les nombres et les lettres étaient les origines des choses, comme nous l'expliquerons; il a donc connu (ces idées) pour lui-même et les a enseignées aux monothéistes qui étaient avec lui. Elles se sont toujours transmises dans notre peuple sans être écrites, comme la Mischna a été transmise sans être écrite, et même une partie de la Bible est restée de longues années à l'état de tradition non écrite, comme les proverbes de Salomon qu'ont relatés les gens d'Ezéchias, roi de Juda [Proverbes xxv, 1]. Et lorsque est arrivé le temps où les docteurs de la nation se sont réunis, qu'ils se sont occupés des questions de la Mischna, les ont exprimées [Litt. : Les ont couvertes - Lambert] par des mots qui leur étaient propres et les [29] ont fixées, ils ont agi de la même façon pour ce livre ou pour ce qui se rapprochait des idées de ce livre, et il en est résulté ces divisions de paragraphes et cet ordre dans l'exposé.
Quant à l'endroit où ce livre a été composé, c'est une ville de la Palestine, car nous y trouvons les noms des lettres conformes à la langue des Palestiniens, c'est-à-dire dal, tav, etc., et de même (la distinction) du resch daguesch, et du resch rafé, est conforme à leurs règles. Et puisque nous en sommes arrivés à commencer le texte du livre, nous croyons bon de transcrire chaque paragraphe intégralement (2) et ensuite nous l'expliquerons, car ce livre n'est pas un livre répandu et en outre grand nombre de gens ne le comprennent pas; (nous ferons ainsi) afin qu'il n'y entre pas d'altération ou d’erreur, et nous dirons pour commencer qu'il se compose de huit chapitres ou sections, chacun sur un sujet spécial. Nous allons donc expliquer le : PREMIER CHAPITRE. . . .
Traduction. Le sens de notre mot: dix nombres fermés est: Ferme ta bouche, pour ne pas parler trop là-dessus, et ferme ton coeur pour ne pas y réfléchir, et si ton esprit s'élance, ramène-le à sa place, comme il est dit des anges : Courant et revenant. Si nous disons que (les nombres [) correspondent à dix (objets) infinis pour nous, cela signifie que leur fin est fixée dans leur commencement et que leur commencement est fixé dans leur fin, comme la flamme du feu qui est attachée au charbon. Par suite, il convient, que tu saches, que tu discernes et que tu croies que le Créateur est un, et qu'il n'y en a pas d'autre, puisque devant l'Un tu ne peux rien compter. Lambert, pp. 78-79.
Commentaire. (L'auteur) dit quelque chose de plus pour (expliquer) le sens de belima (fermé), qui vient de:'edyo libloin (sa parure sert à lui fermer la bouche) [Psaumes 32 :1]; (ce mot) veut dire: Clos ta bouche et ton esprit pour ne pas parler trop, ni trop peu sur les (nombres [Pour dire qu'il y en a plus de dix ou moins de dix]). Si quelqu'un objecte que le calcul mathématique n'a que neuf nombres parce qu'on met la dizaine à la place de l'unité de façon que 20; soit; à la place de 2, que 30 soit mis pour 3, de même jusqu'à 90 pour 9; ensuite on met la centaine à la place de l'unité, 200 à la place de 2, et ainsi jusqu'à 1000 et au-delà, nous répondrons qu'il n'est possible de faire ainsi que pour les signes des nombres numérés par écrit sur le livre, et quant à ce que les mathématiciens) croient des nombres eux-mêmes, il n'y a pas de doute pour eux que les dix ont un rang que l'unité ne peut remplir; seulement on dit une dizaine, comme on dit une « cinquaine », un trio, etc. . . .
(L'auteur) dit donc, pour glorifier le nombre, que dans tout être existant, le commencement est partout où on le place, hormis dans le nombre, car son commencement est incontestablement l'unité et il n'est pas possible qu'il commence par autre chose. Il prend les objets existants pour exemple : c'est ainsi que nous voyons le feu dans le charbon, et que nous en prenons le commencement en quelque endroit que nous voulons, puisque sa forme est circulaire, de même l'eau et de même la sphère et tous les objets sphériques. Si on commence la sphère par le Chevreau, c'est parce que les végétaux poussent au temps où le soleil y arrive. De même parfois on place le commencement de l'eau et du feu là où la vue l'atteint, mais la chose sphérique en elle-même, n'a pas, par nature, d'endroit initial. C'est pourquoi (l'auteur) dit : Leur fin est fixée dans leur commencement et leur commencement dans leur fin. La traduction de na'us est fixe, comme il est dit : Or une échelle était fixée à terre [Gen. 38 :12], et le Targum dit : ne'is pour fixée. Mais pour le nombre il n'en est pas ainsi, parce qu'on ne peut pas le faire commencer où on veut, ni à trois, ni à cinq, ni ailleurs, on ne peut le faire commencer qu'à l'unité. Ceci est une proposition noble, qui glorifie l'unité, et c'est ce qui oblige de nommer le Créateur un, puisqu'il n'y a rien qui puisse exister ni être conçu avant l'unité. Ceci est une proposition noble, qui glorifie l'unité, et c'est ce qui oblige de nommer le Créateur un, puisqu'il n'y a rien qui puisse exister ni être conçu avant l'unité. De même Dieu — qu'il soit exalté! — n'a rien avant lui, et c'est lui qui précède les choses, mais aucune chose ne rentre dans sa nature, comme il est dit : Tu as appris à savoir que l'Éternel est Dieu, et qu'il n'y en a pas d'autre hormis lui ; et ailleurs : Afin que vous sachiez, que vous croyiez et que vous compreniez que c'est moi; avant moi, aucun dieu n'a été créé, et après moi il n'y en aura pas [Is. 43 :10. Lambert pp. 79-80.
Traduction : Il a créé quelque chose non de quelque chose et a fait exister ce qui n'était pas, il a taillé de puissantes colonnes; dans un air insaisissable.
Commentaire. — Nous disons : Il a créé quelque chose non de quelque chose, et nous ne disons pas : Il a créé quelque chose de rien, de même que nous traduisons : tolè 'ères 'al belima : Il attache la terre non à quelque chose, et nous ne le traduisons pas : Il attache la terre a rien. Nous avons là en vue que rien est une chose, alors qu'ici il s'agit de croire que le Créateur a produit l'air non de quelque chose, et c'est ce que dit l'auteur : Il a formé du vide une réalité.
Puis (Dieu) a produit dans l'(air) par sa volonté, un mouvement qui n'avait pas été et qui alors a été. C'est le mot : Il a fait exister ce qui n'était pas. Enfin il a tracé des lignes droites puissantes, comme les lettres et les nombres, et c'est le mot : Il a taillé de grandes colonnes.
(L'auteur) a pris, par figure, pour terme de comparaison, celui qui se tient dans un emplacement lui appartenant, y trace un arpent sur un arpent pour telle habitation, un arpent sur deux arpents; pour telle hôtellerie, deux arpents; sur deux arpents; pour telle forteresse. Puis il pose la construction et il bâtit comme il a tracé et comme il a fait le plan. De même, sans (prendre nos termes) au sens matériel et précis, nous dirons : le Créateur a tracé dans l'air la circonférence de la terre d'environ 20,000 milles, et il a tracé pour chacun des astres de moindre grandeur un 122° de la terre, et il a tracé pour la lune un 39e de la terre; il a tracé pour Vénus un 36°; il a tracé pour Mars une fois et demie comme la terre; il a tracé pour les étoiles de sixième grandeur 18 fois comme la terre, pour celles qui sont de cinquième grandeur 54 fois comme la terre, pour celles qui sont de troisième grandeur 72 fois comme la terre, pour Saturne 91 fois comme la terre, pour Mercure 95 fois comme la terre, pour les astres de première grandeur 108 fois comme la terre et pour le soleil 166 fois comme la terre. Ces mesures ont été calculées par les savants anciens au moyen des instruments et des mathématiques, et ils nous les ont transmises. Louange donc au Créateur puissant et noble (comme il est dit) : Les oeuvres de l'Éternel sont grandes [Psaumes 111:2]. Que tes oeuvres sont nombreuses, Éternels [Psaumes 104:24]. (Dieu) a donc tracé ces lignes, il les a bâties et les a recouvertes et ornées en un clin d'oeil; car, si nous détaillons ces actes, c'est pour nous en faciliter l'intelligence. Telle est l'explication de : colonnes puissantes, et d'une manière analogue il est dit : Les colonnes du ciel sont ébranlées et sont stupéfaites devant sa colère [Job 26:11].
Traduction : En troisième lieu il a créé l'eau de l'air; il a donc tracé et a séparé par là une sphère qui avait une périphérie et un centre; en elle il y avait un mélange trouble d'eau et de boue, il en a fait comme un parterre, puis comme un mur, puis comme un toit de façon que l'eau s'est écoulée; (la sphère) a séché et est devenue de la terre. L'indice de cette (formation) est le mot : Car à la neige, il a dit : Sois de la terre [Job 37:6]. On entend par le mot tohu la ligne verte qui entoure et par bohu la pierre fendue qui est dans le sein de la terre et d'où sort l'eau. La preuve en est le mot (appliqué) au pays d'Edom : (Dieu) étendra sur lui le cordeau de la dévastation (qav tohu) et le niveau de la désolation ('abné bohu'. . . . [Isaiah 34:11]). Lambert pp. 107-8.
Explication des termes : La traduction du mot caruga est parterre dans la langue de la Palestine, et c'est meschara: dans la langue de la Babylonie, c'est de cela qu'il est dit : (La vigne) se desséchera dans les parterres de sa végétation [Ézéchiel 17:11]. Mon amant est descendu vers le parterre aromatiques.[Cantique 6 :2]. Maʻaziba c'est un toit, le sens primitif est soutien; (ce mot) se trouve dans la langue de la Mischna. On dit : L'habitant d'en bas donne la charpente, et l'habitant d'en haut la toiture [Baba Mesia 10:2]. J'ai traduit qav ligne, comme: Et une ligne de trente coudées l'entourait [I Rois 7 :28]. J'ai traduit yaroq, vert, comme il est dit à propos d'un certain animal : Il cherche après toute verdure [Job 39 :8]. J'ai traduit mefullamot fendues, parce que c'est comme mefuliahot. Ce (mot)-ci est dans la langue de la Bible et l'autre est dans la langue de la Mischna. Lambert p. 108.
Explication des idées : (L'auteur) dit que le Créateur a créé de l'air l'eau, et de l'eau la périphérie de la terre qui est tohu, elle paraît à l’œil être une ligne) verte entourant la terre; puis le centre de la terre qui est bohu et c'est la pierre dure qui est au milieu. Quant à faire saisir à l'esprit comment il a créé de l'air l'eau, nous dirons que ce sont là les mystères auxquels l'auteur du livre a fait allusion dans le second chapitre en disant : Un mystère, grand et caché, merveilleux et illustre, d'où sortent le feu, l'air, l'eau. Il semble se représenter dans son imagination, sans rien matérialiser, que le Créateur a voulu introduire la puissance des formes dans l'air, et (cette puissance) a pressé l'air; elle a réuni l'humidité d'une partie (de l'air) d'un côté, et tout cela est devenu l'eau, et c'est ce qu'il dit : L'eau (tirée) de l'air; puis il a donné un ordre pour cette eau, il a affiné une partie (de cette eau), il en a rassemblé l'écume dans un endroit; et il en est résulté la terre; et pour qu'elle se séparât de la boue qu'elle contenait et de l'humidité, il a produit une forme et l'a dressée comme un mur et c'est le mot : Il les a taillés comme un mur, après que cela avait été un marais, comme il dit : Comme une sorte de parterre. Ensuite il a étendu (ce mur) comme un toit, comme il est dit : Il les a recouverts comme une sorte de toit, de sorte que, l'eau qui était restée s'est écoulée et s'est enfoncée, (le reste) a séché et il en est résulté la terre : et l'auteur a cité un verset, comme allusion : Car il dit à la neige : Sois de la terre, bien que le sens du verset; soit que (Dieu) ordonne à la neige d'aller vers la terre et d'y tomber. Et il racontera dans la suite l'histoire de l'air dont le liquide s'est exprimé et il (dira) comment il est devenu du feu, ainsi que cela se trouve dans le septième paragraphe. Tels sont les mystères de la création de ces éléments par les lettres et les nombres, à savoir qu'ils ont formé dans l'air une figure qui pressait (l'air) par la volonté du Créateur; l'humidité a été ressemblée d'une partie de l'air, d'où est venue l'eau; ils ont formé une figure et une ligne séparatives, la partie épaisse de l'eau s'est séparée et est devenue la terre. Et l'air dont la partie humide s'était détachée est devenu du feu, parce que ses parties chaudes étaient restées et que son humidité avait été enlevée. Quant au reste de l'air qui n'avait pas été pressé, il garde sa nature chaude, et humide. Quand nous disons que (Dieu) a pressé, qu'il a clarifié, qu'il a dressé, qu'il a étendu ainsi que les autres détails, nous n'entendons pas par là (que Dieu) ait fait les choses par morceaux, l'un avant, l'autre après; nous voulons seulement préparer notre intelligence et lui donner les moyens de nous représenter (cette formation); nous ramènerons le tout à la création instantanée, comme nous avons dit précédemment dans le neuvième système (exposé dans) l'introduction du livre et que nous avons dit être le bon.
Il est possible aussi que par le mot mystère couvert (l'auteur) fasse allusion à la terre parce qu'il est dit : Tu as recouvert (la terre) avec l'Océan comme d'un manteau [Ps. 104 :6] ; par mystère merveilleux, à l'eau, parce qu'il est dit : Ses merveilles sont dans la profondeur (de l'eau) [Ps. 107 : 24]; par mystère magnifique il ferait allusion au feu, parce qu'il est dit du ciel : Du parvis de ta sainteté et de ta magnificence. [Is. 62:15 – actually 63:15 (MH)]. Lambert pp. 108-10.
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