Musar su Salmi 82:7

What has happened instead is best described by Assaph in Psalms 82,6: "I had taken you for divine beings, sons of the Most High, all of you; but you shall die as men do, fall like any prince." When Moses is described as אלוהים over Pharaoh, this means that he is superior to the spiritual representative of Egypt, its שר, in the Celestial Spheres. The שר של מצרים is the highest of all the שרים; this shows that Moses did indeed occupy a lofty position. When Assaph, in the Psalm quoted, refers to Israel as אלוקים אחת, "you are divine (plural)," it is a reference to Moses being perceived as equal to the 600,000, i.e. all of Israel. The expression ובני עליון כולכם in the Psalm refers to the people of Israel who were on a spiritual level qualifying them to be the "army" in the Celestial Regions with Moses as their leader compared to a divine force in charge of that "army." Israel's failure during the episode of the golden calf reduced them to a human level, made them mortal. Just as G–d had overthrown divine forces (such as the protective angel of Egypt) before Moses, now it would be the Jewish people's turn to be overthrown.

The fourth period, the one we have termed עשיה, commenced with the exile of Edom (Roman exile), when the only communications from Celestial Regions were what the Talmud refers to as בת קול, heavenly echoes. Such communications emanate from the domain עשיה. This period lasted until the conclusion of the Talmud. Henceforth the only source of our illumination would be the Torah itself, i.e. what we attain by studying it. We can now understand the comments of the Talmud in Avodah Zarah 5a concerning the role of the red heifer in purification rites required after incurring impurity through contact with a dead body. Rabbi Yossi says there that the only reason the Jewish people received the Torah was to overcome the sovereignty of the angel of death, of other nations or tongues. We know this from Psalms 82,6/7: אמרתי אלוקים אתם ובני עליון כולכם, אכן כאדם תמותו וכאחד השרים תפולו, "I had considered you divine beings, sons of the Most High, all of you; but you shall die as men do, fall like any prince."

At the time the Jewish people accepted the Torah they were freed from the need to die, i.e. from the influence of Satan. They had become totally free from the influence of other nations as alluded to in Psalms 82,6: "I had taken you for divine beings, sons of the Most High, all of you; but you shall die as men do, fall like any prince." This is an allusion to death and exile. This sin of the golden calf is the reason that even when we experienced redemptions at a later stage, such redemption is always characterised as being feminine, incomplete. When we give thanks for such a redemption we sing שירה חדשה, a new song (feminine gender) as distinct from when we received the Torah where the Torah was referred to as masculine. An example for the dual function of the פרה is found in Samuel 16,12 where the cows are described as וישרנה, "they walked straight (masculine form). Kimchi points out that the grammar here is a combination of the masculine and the feminine gender, i.e. the ending is feminine, whereas the first half of the word is masculine. This is an allusion to the שיר, song, which is sometimes masculine and sometimes feminine as the situation requires. We have written more about this both in our treatise on פרשת פרה, on פרשת ויקהל-פקודי, as well as on פרשת חוקת.