Chasidut su I Samuele 9:9

If we see in the words of our masters that the words of the prophet were ‘to teach repentance and instruction,’ one could erroneously think that the prophet was merely one who rebuked. Even in yesteryear, during the times of the prophets themselves, when people beheld the(se) ‘pillars of fire’¹⁷⁷That is, the prophets. before them and the flames of God flowing from the mouths of these holy ones—we see that the people nonetheless called the prophets by terms reflective of their utility. As the verse puts it, “for the prophet today used to be called the seer” (I Samuel 9:9). Why would one call him a seer when the Torah preceded him to call him a prophet, as in “I will establish a prophet?” The answer is, simply, that the names and terms we use cannot convey anything beyond the boundaries of human utility or sensory perception. After all, an angel [malakh] is referred to as such due to its function as a messenger, not according to its essential nature. The soul [neshamah] is referred to as such after the breath (see Rashi to Genesis 7:22).¹⁷⁸Genesis 7:22 reads: “All in whose nostrils was nishmat ruakh hayim beapaiv (the merest breath of life-JPS), all that was on dry land, died.” In some versions of Rashi’s commentary here, the term ‘nishmat’ is rendered ‘neshimah shel’, ‘the breath of,’ rather than ‘the soul of.’ R. Shapiro cites this as evidence that the soul is called the neshamah because of its association with the breath rather than as a true descriptor of its metaphysical essence. For we have no name for the essence of the angel nor the essence of the soul. So too, the term ‘prophet’ does not describe the essence of the prophet but merely that God has spoken with him (despite the biblical reference to a prophet as “man of God,” [see Berakha 1¹⁷⁹The reference is to Deuteronomy 33:1, the beginning of Parshat Vzot haBerakhah. and several times in Kings¹⁸⁰E.g. I Kings 13:1.], the Targum always translates “man of God” functionally, as “prophet of God”). Therefore the people named them (the prophets) in correlation to their needs, alternating their titles according to the functions which the prophets performed more frequently: when the prophets were primarily teaching Israel repentance and issuing instruction, they called them neviim, from the language of “niv sefatayim”¹⁸¹“Expressions of the mouth.” (Rashi to Exodus 7:10), and when they more often told the future and provided for other needs, they were called seers. “For the prophet today used to be called the seer”-i.e. the people called them as such.¹⁸²That is, these were colloquial nomenclature, not proper names.

Numbers 2,49 ‎, “but do not count the tribe of Levi as ‎an integral part of the Children of Israel.” The Torah consists ‎of 248 positive commandments and 365 negative commandments ‎which between them represent a variety of lights, whereas the ‎Tabernacle represents spiritual lights condensed within it so that ‎they do not harm human beings by blinding them. The Israelites ‎are also each considered as a light seeing that each represents one ‎of the letters in the Torah. We have a rule that whenever 613 ‎physical lights are present they must be matched by an equal ‎number of spiritual lights so that they can combine in the service ‎of the Lord. These latter “lights” are called ‎אברים הרוחניים‎, “the ‎‎248 spiritualized limbs and 365 spiritualized tendons.” When the ‎Creator dispenses of His largesse, He does so via these ‎spiritualized limbs and tendons.‎
Some human beings can become only passive recipients of ‎spiritualized light, whereas others are able to “see” how the ‎largesse from G’d progresses from the spiritual domain to the ‎physical domain. These latter people are called prophets. The ‎prophet Samuel I 9,9, describes this process when he wrote: ‎לפנים ‏בישראל כה אמר האיש בלכתו לדרוש אלוקים לכו ונלכה עד הרואה כי לנביא ‏היום יקרא לפנים הרואה‎, “formerly, in Israel, when a man wanted to ‎seek out the word of G’d, he would say: ‘come let us go to the ‎Seer, for the prophet of today was formerly known as “Seer.’”‎
We also find an allusion to this in Numbers 8,4 where the ‎Torah writes: ‎וזה מעשה המנורה.....כמראה אשר הראה ה' את משה כן עשה ‏את המנורה‎, “and this is how the menorah was ‎made:…….according to the pattern that the Lord had shown ‎Moses so he constructed the menorah.” When the Torah ‎wrote in detail about the construction of the menorah in Exodus ‎chapter 25 and chapter 37, no mention was made of G’d having ‎shown Moses a pattern of this lampstand although the Torah ‎provided extensive descriptions of this lampstand in both of these ‎chapters. In both those chapters the menorah was treated ‎as an integral part of the Tabernacle, and the Tabernacle dealt ‎with abstract spiritual concepts. The menorah per se ‎symbolizes a visual impact of the largesse transferred by G’d from ‎His celestial treasure house to the terrestrial part of the universe. ‎This largesse is in constant motion between the celestial and the ‎terrestrial domains of the universe. The Torah bears witness to ‎the fact that G’d showed this to Moses while he had been on ‎Mount Sinai.‎
Moses was not to count the Levites together with the other ‎Israelites, as the 12 tribes (Israelites) symbolize the abstract ‎spiritual dimension of celestial light, whereas the Levites ‎symbolize transfer of G’d’s largesse from the most high celestial ‎regions to what we have described as the “abstract spiritual” ‎dimension represented by the 12 tribes of Israel.‎
This is also why, when speaking of the process of purifying ‎the Levites the Torah (Numbers 8,7) the Torah speaks of ‎והעבירו ‏תער על כל בשרם‎, “they have to shave off all the hair on their flesh ‎with a razor,” the reason being that “hair” symbolizes clothing, ‎and clothing is something that separates between one’s essence ‎and contact with something from the outside. The Levites were ‎to be as receptive to the emanations from the highest celestial ‎regions as possible [as had been Adam and Eve before they ‎had been provided with clothing, as a result of the barrier their ‎sin had created between them and G’d. Ed.]‎