창세기 3:1의 Musar

Furthermore, we know and understand that the Creator did not create the world for the sake of the wicked or those who anger Him, for reason cannot lead us to such a conclusion, but He created it for the sake of the pious, who acknowledge His divinity and serve Him properly. His intent was only to create the pious, but the wicked were created by virtue of the nature of creation. Just as a piece of fruit has a peel³This metaphor seems to be Kabbalistic, especially the use of "peel" for "evil."²This is a possible allusion to a favorite theme in Jewish Mysticism. "Evil is the Kelipah, the ‘bark’ of the cosmic tree or ‘The shell of the nut’ ". Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1946), p. 239. and that which is choice is what is within the peel, so the pious are the fruit of the creation of the world and the wicked are the peel . Just as we see that the intent of the sower of the seed is to cause wheat alone to grow, but that the strength of the sprout brings forth evil weeds with the wheat⁴See Isaiah 5:2. and that with the rose come all sorts of thorns, thus it is the intent of the Creator to create the pious, but by the virtue of the nature of creation, the wicked are brought forth with the pious. There is nothing that is created that cannot be divided into three parts: the choice or the purest part, which is like the finest flour; the inferior part, which consists of offal and worthless parts, such as straw or rubbish, and there is the part in between⁵This refers to some kind of intermediary state between excellence and worthlessness.. Thus you find among human beings one part which is choice and pure, and these are the pious ones; they are like the fine flour or the choicest fruit. And then there is the less worthy and the rejected, and they are the wicked that are like the rubbish or straw. Therefore, we can say that the world was not created for the sake of the wicked, but for the sake of the pious. Just as in the case of a tree, its master did not plant it and labor for the sake of the peel, but for the sake of the choicest fruit that it will yield.⁶This paragraph sounds Kabbalistic, not only in the imagery but also in the idea that evil is a necessary part in the creation of the world. Theodore Friedman in his review of Ephraim E. Urbach’s The Sages—Their Concepts and Beliefs (Hebrew) Jerusalem, Magnes: 1969, in Judaism Vol. 21:4, p. 499 deals with the famous controversy between the Schools of Shammai and Hillel, whether or not it would have been better for man never to have been born (Eruvin 13b). Urbach said that the question that exercised the two Schools was whether or not it would have been better for [the wicked] never to have been born. Friedman feels "unconvinced" that such is the plain meaning of the text. It is interesting to observe that the text which Urbach uses (p. 226) taken from the Ethics of the Fathers VI: 11 "Whatsoever the Holy One, blessed be He, created in His world, He created it only for His glory", as it is written, Everything that is called by my name and that I have created, I have formed it, yea, I have made it (Isaiah 43:7) contains the very same verse which was cited by our author in the beginning of this chapter. See p. 10, lines 21-22.

It is quite clear that the tree of knowledge responded to G–d's original command to earth, that its trunk was as edible as its fruit. This was because this tree had been planted by G–d Himself, was not the product of the general instruction to Earth on the third day of creation (Genesis 2,8). The serpent alluded to this fact when it said that G–d had only forbidden eating "of the tree of the garden," and made no mention of the fruit of the trees (Genesis 3,1). According to the serpent, man was not allowed to partake of the wood of the trees that G–d had planted. The reason this was forbidden, explained the serpent, was that these trees were supernatural creations. There was no reason however, for Eve to worry that the fruit of the tree was forbidden, seeing that the fruit was something natural, part of the laws of nature. The serpent was astute enough to use the language G–d had used to convince Eve that only the wood had been forbidden.

Let us now explore the mystical dimension of the name יעקב. In Genesis 27,35 Isaac says to Esau: בא אחיך במרמה, "Your brother came with wisdom to take the blessings." This means that Jacob came to outwit Esau. Isaac referred to Jacob having outwitted what Esau stands for, i.e. Satan, the pollutant of the original serpent, seeing Esau is also Edom, the classic symbol of all that is polluted and cursed. This original serpent had been described in the Torah as ערום, sly (Genesis 3,1). This being so, Jacob had to resort to a wily strategy to outwit such an opponent. He had to counter with ערמה, slyness, in order to defeat the serpent or its representative at its own game. We find something similar when Rashi explains (Numbers 31,8) that the reason the Torah stresses that Bileam was killed by the sword was because the sword was his stock-in-trade. He should have stuck to his trade. Isaac had told Esau that he would live by his sword (27,40), whereas the traditional weapon of Israel is the mouth, i.e. prayer. Since Bileam perverted his function by using Israel's weapon, the mouth, Israel used his own traditional weapon against him. In order to best him absolutely, he had to be killed by the weapon that he had once considered himself a champion of. The Zohar goes as far as to say that the only way it was possible to kill Bileam was by the sword. Onkelos explains the meaning of יודע ציד in 25,27 as being "Esau was shrewd." The Tziyoni derives from that word נחשירכן (the word Onkelos uses to explain יודע ציד), that the mystical dimension of the serpent is contained in the ירך, reproductive organ, thigh, and that Esau had the likeness of a serpent tatooed on his thigh. This was the reason that Samael, or the spiritual representative of Esau, tried to injure that organ of Jacob's during the nocturnal confrontation. The reason he did not succeed was that Jacob did not contain any residual pollution of the serpent. Bileam alluded to this when he said in Numbers 23,23: כי לא נחש ביעקב, that Jacob was not infected by the serpent. Esau is rooted in the cursed serpent. Jacob and his descendants ירך יעקב, are of blessed origin. Jacob had to come with עקבה, trickery, the craft of the serpent, and he wrested the blessing from the clutches of the unworthy. We know from Proverbs 8,12 that חכמה and ערמה are used interchangeably, i.e. אני חכמה, שכנתי ערמה, "I, wisdom, am neighbor to ערמה.” Later on, when he had established a hold in the Celestial Regions, the source of all blessings, he is referred to as ישראל, since he had ascended to these "higher" regions. The level of ישראל in those regions is very high, seeing that Israel surpassed the level of the angels during his ascent. He occupies a position there that is not even accessible to the angels. He proceeds to rise higher and higher until he even surpasses the region of the ministering angels, the most highly placed angels. It is this that Onkelos referred to when he described Israel as "you are a great lion before G–d and men."