וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם׃
Y la tierra estaba desordenada y vacía, y las tinieblas estaban sobre la haz del abismo, y el Espíritu de Dios se movía sobre la haz de las aguas.
Sefer Yetzirah
Ten SEFIROT BELIMAH10 The meaning of סְפִירוֹת בְּלִי[]מָה Sefirot Beli(-)mah is very difficult. The SY is the first place in all of Jewish literature where to word sefirot appears, and though this term is now familiar to readers through the works of the medieval Kabbalists and later, the use of the term in the SY differs significantly from later texts̄. It never appears on its own in the SY, being found only in the fixed expression Sefirot Belimah. The word sefirot by itself is the plural action noun of סָפַר safar 'to count', thus meaning literally 'countings'. It should probably be understood on one level as a reference to the ten digits of the decimal numeral system, though as we shall see, these Sefirot Belimah are imbued with metaphysical significance beyond mere numerals. The expression בְּלִי[]מָה beli[-]mah can be understood as either one word or two, with both readings being plausible and perhaps intended, and manuscripts commonly varying between the one- and two-word renditions. If it is read as one word, it must be the action noun of בָּלַם balam 'to restrain, withhold, keep (from)'; see SY 1:8. The ‘Ten Sefirot Belimah’ would then be the ‘Ten Numbers of Restraint’. In this interpretation, they are ten elemental entities or properties which bind or restrain primordial תֹּהוּ tohu, 'chaos, void, waste(land)' [Genesis 1:2], allowing structure and order to exist in creation. On the other hand, if בְּלִי מָה is to be read as two words, it represents the expression beli mah, literally 'without what'. This enigmatic expression appears only once in the Tanakh, in [Job 26:7], where in a harkening back to [Genesis 1:2] it serves as a parallelism of primarial tohu. It might best be calqued as 'whatlessness', meaning 'having no essence', and thus the ‘Ten Sefirot Belimah’ would be the ‘Ten Essenceless/Whatless Numbers'. The SY is fond of this sort of grammatical playfulness, as already seen above in the peculiar use of the three roots of spr in SY 1:1 and as will be seen later in playful expressions like וְעָשָׂה אֵינוֹ יֶשְׁנוֹ ve'asa eino yeshno 'and He made isn't-ness into is-ness' (SY 2:6). Later interpretors have, of course, explicitly linked the Ten Sefirot Belimah with the now-familiar Ten Sefirot found in later texts like the Bahir and Zohar, but I have generally refrained from alluding to them, as it is not at all clear that the SY ascribes the same symbolic significance to the Ten Sefirot Belimah as latter Kabbalistic texts do. and Twenty-Two Letters of Foundation11Gershom Scholem noted the similarity of the expression אוֹתְיוֹת יְסוֹד otyot yesod 'letters of foundation' to the Greek term στοιχεῖα stoikheîa 'elemental letters' found in Plato's Timaeus (Scholem 1995, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, trans. Robert Alter, p. 77 n. 129). Certain translators have preferred to render otyot yesod as 'elemental letters' by analogy with the Greek term. Still, I much prefer 'Letters of Foundation', because the term יְסוֹד yesod can imply both 'foundation' in the sense of an origin site and 'foundation' in the sense of an ongoing support or sustainer, which harmonizes well with the SY's description of the letters as involved in both the creation and sustaining of the world.: Three Mothers, Seven Pairs, and Twelve Simple Letters.12This phrase refers to the subdivision of the 22-letter Hebrew alphabet into three units, consisting of groups of 3, 7, and 12 letters respectively. The precise meanings of these subdivisions will be subsequently explored in chapters 3, 4, and 5. It must be noted that the term אמות is vocalized and translated here as אִמּוֹת immot 'Mothers', based on the parallel אָבוֹת avot 'fathers' of SY 3:2 and 6:1. However, this is grammatically peculiar, as immot is usually only the construct plural of אֵם em 'mother', whose absolute plural is rather אִמָּהוֹת immahot. There are other problems with the interpretation ‘mothers’. In usual Hebrew grammatical terminology, the term ‘mothers’ is reserved for the אִמּוֹת קְרִיאָה immot qeriʼah, ‘mothers of reading’ (whence Latin matres lectionis), the letters אהו״י Alef-Heh-Waw-Yod which can serve to represent either consonants or vowels. Additionally, in SY 5:3 we appear to have a case where immot acts as antecedent to the pronoun הֵם hem, which is specifically used for masculine plurals, although the form of the numeral shalosh 'three' in shalosh immot is specific to feminine nouns. There exist alternative traditions where this term in the SY is vocalized instead as אַמּוֹת ammot 'cubits' or אֻמּוֹת ummot 'nations'. What the word actually means is thus far from clear, and Peter Hayman has avoided these ambiguities entirely by translating immot as “primary letters.” (See Peter Hayman (2004), Sefer Yeṣira.)
Sefer Yetzirah
Three—He carved Water from Wind and with them He hewed tohu and bohu,21[Genesis 1:2] mud and clay. He carved them like a garden bed, erected them like a wall, screened them like ceiling plaster.
Ohr Ne'erav
It were better for him had he never been created in the world, and had he never taught the written Torah and oral Torah, for it is considered as if he had returned the world to formlessness and void (Gen. 1:2) and bequeathed poverty and length of exile to the world.