Isaia 57:1 Kabbalah: Zohar, Pardes Rimmonim & Sha'arei Orah

AND JACOB DWELT IN THE LAND OF HIS FATHER’S SOJOURNINGS, IN THE LAND OF CANAAN. R. Jose discoursed here on the verse: The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart, and godly men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come (Is. 57, 1). ‘When God’, he said, ‘surveys the world and finds it misbehaving and meet for chastisement, He first removes from it any righteous man that is present in it, so that chastisement should be visited on all the others and there should be none to shield them.

And see, its half [of twenty], which is Yud/ten, in its plain meaning it is the stone to weigh [with]. And when it is [spelled out in] full it is the complete shekel which is twenty gerah, ten from above downwards and ten from below upwards, as we have explained. ‘“And the wealthy one shall not increase”, this is the Central Pillar, it will not increase on ten etc.’. Explanation: needless to say [that this holds for] the rest of the Sefirot but even the “wealthy one” [Tif’eret], which is more wealthy in emanation and in totality than the rest of the Sefirot, nevertheless it must not increase [this] totality above ten Sefirot because they are ten and not eleven. And therefore it must not increase totality above ten because of its wealth, but its wealth will be in the increase of emanation/influx and light, or that it being totalized out of ten [by] many totalizations, but it never increases on the sum of the ten. ‘“And the poor one shall not decrease”, this is the Righteous One, he will not decrease from ten, etc.’ Explanation: Yesod, even if it so that it is being called ‘needy one’ because of its poverty (in the time of exile indicating that it is not its nature]) as its saying (Isaiah 57:1) “The righteous one perishes etc.”. And it is needy and poor. And he says that even if it is poor, its poverty cannot decrease from ten Sefirot, the general rule [being] that one is not to decrease from them, according to the subject ‘ten and not nine’, but its poverty is in the diminution of its emanation/influx, or [in] the diminution of its totalization out of the ten, yet not that it decreases from them [= the ten Sefirot], but that it does not add many totalizations out of ten [out of ten. Truly one is not to decrease from the aforementioned ten, in order that it will not be less than ten. As it is impossible to say that there is a place being removed [from the ten] because of one of them [lacking], but they [the Sefirot] are always ten. ‘And a half-shekel, it is ten’. Explanation: now, according to when we have explained that the wealthy one, which is the Central Pillar which is actually a half-shekel in the middle between the two Yuds, which are ‘a shekel [it is] twenty gerah’, if this is so, ‘a half-shekel’ is ten, and ten is ‘a half-shekel’. And if this is so, since Scripture has come to teach us that ‘the wealthy one’, which is Tif’eret, is not worthy to increase on ten, if this is so, how does he say ‘the wealthy one shall not increase … from a half-shekel’, and it [= the wealthy one] is itself a half-shekel, and how has he given proportion to the wealthy one who is Tif’eret with the half-shekel which is Tif’eret in reality, to this [=to clarify this] he says: ‘and a half-shekel, it is ten’. Explanation: Despite of what we have explained above, that Tif’eret is the one that is called ‘a half-shekel’ because of it being medium/in the middle, nevertheless “Scripture does not depart from its literal meaning” [Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 63a], that it [= Tif’eret] is called thus in its aspect [of being] between the shekel, and cutting it in two, and a half-shekel is ten. And now he says; ‘the wealthy one shall not increase’ never in its essence which is ‘a half-shekel’ which is that it is cutting the shekel in two and making each one out of ten. Thus far the explanation of the saying. And learning from it we have found the explanation of the mishna ‘ten and not nine, ten and not eleven, which has come to teach us on the subject of the general rules of what is totalized, that one is not to ‘increase… from the ten’, as we have explained.

After having explained these primary principles, we now must inform you that the name Eheye”h-אהי״ה is concealed in His hiding place, and that the Name HaShem-יהו״ה, blessed is He, judges His creatures in the manner explained in the Sixth Gate, in which case the judgment is rendered for both good and bad. If, Heaven forbid, the Jewish people cause a verdict of judgment-Din in the Court of Law of HaShem-יהו״ה, blessed is He, and judgment arises that it is fitting for the Sefirah of Foundation-Yesod to withdraw from the quality of Kingship-Malchut, it then is a time of destruction and exile and is called a time of evil (Eit Ra’ah-עת רעה). About this the verse states,²⁷⁷Isaiah 57:1 “Because of the evil-Ra’ah-רעה, the Righteous-Tzaddik-צדיק is gathered up.” Then, the Sefirah of Kingship-Malchut, called Lord-Adona”y-אדנ״י, is left dry of all supernal goodness, and becomes filled with all manner of judgment, punishment, and various kinds of destruction. Woe to the creatures that She encounters at such a time, as there are none who will be saved from Her hand, and she completes the execution of the judgment with anger, wrath, and great rage.