Halakhah sobre Exodo 33:22

And now that I have explained the topic of the world of souls, which is called “Garden of Eden” among our rabbis z”l, and I have revealed to you the reason why the Torah did not mention it explicitly except to the “engaged intellectual” (la–maskil ha-nilvav), I will now expand upon for you my explanation of the matter of the pleasure that will be experienced in the measure it was originally experienced by Adam in the Garden of Eden before the sin, in that you already knew that the nature of the pleasure there was very great and deep, and that the greater part of it was the soul’s pleasure, the lesser the pleasure of the body, which had quiet, ease, and peace of mind unlike any you can imagine, and because he was all intellectual -body and soul in complete agreement to conceive of his Creator, and even the power of the Tree of Life to cause eternal life was at first not kept from him, but after the sin, when he ate from the Tree of Knowledge – it was only after this eating that he was made to follow his desires and strive for the needs of the body more than the needs of the soul, acting “all as we act now here today.”¹³¹Dt 12:8 And therefore he had to have his days limited and for death to hold sway over him. But before the sin, he could take pleasure in the Garden of Eden and delight himself as he wished, and this it what meant by, “And He placed him in the Garden of Eden to till it and tend it,”¹³²Gen 2:15. that He placed him in the Garden of Eden so that he would work the soil of the Garden, and sow in it every kind of produce, and plant all kinds of fruit trees, and his sustenance came from the trees of the Garden, and his drink from the rivers of Eden. And his clothes were “the clouds of glory,” until the ministering angels got jealous of his status, and things changed for the reasons you know.¹³³According to the story in Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer 13, it was the angel’s jealousy of Adam that led them to tempt Adam and Eve through the serpent. It is to this status and to this measure of joy that the dead who are resurrected will in time to come return, to take delight in together in both body and soul, and the greater part of the pleasure will be the soul’s, the lesser part the body’s, as it was with Adam before the sin. Therefore, it will be necessary for any one among those raised from the dead to live a long or eternal life, for thus the world will return to its perfection as its Creator (may He be exalted) originally intended.

And now I shall make known to you the subject of the upper light, which I mentioned above, and that’s how I will end this Gate. Know that the upper light I mentioned above is called “day” [yom] in the story of creation, and about it the prophet said, “there shall be one day – only the Lord knows when – of neither day nor night, and there will be light at evening time.”¹⁶⁷Zech 14:7 (JSB). The explanation of this verse: “There will be [ve-hayah] one day”. The word Ve-HaYa”H consists of the same letters of God’s proper name, and so it is written “YHVH is my light and my help, whom shall I fear? YHVH, etc.”¹⁶⁸Ps 27:1. This is YHVH is “light.” “One day of light – only the Lord knows” – He alone knows where it is. As they taught in a midrash, “He hid it for Himself, He made it separate for Himself.”¹⁶⁹Ber. R. 3:7. “Neither day nor night” – that is to say, a time will come when this day shall serve for the righteous, and time won’t consist of day and night like it works now with light and darkness, but rather, “there will be light at evening time” – a great light. And “evening” [‘erev] is the secret of “the sixth aleph,” which is the evening of Shabbat, as in “yom ha-shishi” – “the sixth day.” And this is the light that Moses our Rabbi (peace upon him) earned in “the cleft of the rock,”¹⁷⁰Ex 33:22.”the reflecting mirror”¹⁷¹B. Yebamot 49b. out of which he was able to prophesy, and thus earned the “radiation from the skin of his face”¹⁷²Ex 34:29. that was as bright as “the face of the sun.”¹⁷³B. Baba Batra 75a. And in an interpretation they said, “a variety of the upper light is the globe of the sun,”¹⁷⁴Ber. R. 17:7 (as translated by Jastrow). because the light of this level is the level of Moses’ prophecy, and the globe of the sun, which is a variety of this, is the “radiation from the skin of his face.” And this is what is written, “rays [karnayyim] given off from every side, and therein His glory is enveloped,”¹⁷⁵Hab 3:4. that is, the “radiation from the skin of his face.” This came directly from the hand of the Holy One Blessed be He to Moses, and this radiation is the fruit of what was his in this world, distinct from the eternal radiance that would be his in the world to come, and that is the level of the upper light. If so, then the word “karnayyim” – “rays” -includes both the fruit and the eternal radiance.¹⁷⁶Karnayyim is the dual form of keren, which can mean either “ray”, or more ordinarily, “horn.” From this ambiguity comes the misinterpretation of Ex 34:29 that led artists such as Michelangelo to represent Moses with horns coming out of his forehead. R. Bahya is playing upon the dual form of keren, karnayyim, which is the normal plural form for body parts, like horns, which come in pairs. And all this was because of the tablets – luhot – that he was holding. And so this is hinted at in the word “LU’a”H,” which is an acronym of the words in Habakkuk 3:4: karnayyim mi-yado Lo Ve-sham Hevyon ‘uzo. And they said in a midrash, ¹⁷⁷M. Tanhuma Ki Tisa 37. “‘[They saw] the rays of the skin of his face,’¹⁷⁸Ex 34:30. all the majesty that Moses got was but temporary fruit, a gift he earned, but the eternal radiance would be his in the world to come, as it is said, ‘rays [karnayyim] from His hand to him.'”¹⁷⁹Hab 3:4, reading mi-yado midrashically as “from His [God’s] hand,” i.e., two kinds of “rays” one in this world, one in the world to come, from God’s hand to Moses. And they went on in another midrash,¹⁸⁰M. Tanhuma Ki Tisa 37. “‘I will put you in a cleft of a rock’ – from ‘the cleft of the rock’ Moses earned the radiation from the skin of his face, and thus it says, ‘rays from His hand to him, there from a secret place [hevyon] His glory.'”¹⁸¹Hab 3:4.