Psalmów 118:23 Kabała: Sefer Yetzirah

YAH, ADONAI of Hosts, God of Israel, Living God and King of the World, EL SHADDAI, Merciful and Gracious, High and Exalted, Dwelling Ever Above, Holy Is His Name¹[Isaiah 57:15]—He carved²Throughout the SY, the most common way of describing the מַעֲשֵׂה בְּרֵאשִׁית Maʽaseh Bereshit 'Work of Creation' is not the abstract verb בָּרָא bara 'to create' used in [Genesis 1:1]. Instead, the SY prefers verbs relating to the processes of craftsman and artisans, in particular stonemasons: חָקַק chaqaq 'to carve, chisel', חָצַב chatzav 'to hew', שקל shaqal 'to weigh', יָסַד yasad 'to found',יָצַר yatzar 'to form, shape, fashion'—the latter providing the name of the book, סֵפֶר יְצִירָה Sefer Yetzirah, literally the 'Book of Forming' but conventionally rendered the 'Book of Creation'. and created His World³Most manuscripts do not include the expression וּבָרָא אֶת עוֹלָמוֹ uvara et ʽolamo 'and created His World' in this verse. In these versions, God simply חָקַק chaqaq 'carved', with no object expressed overtly. See also SY 5:4, where God simply יָסַד yasad 'founded', with no overt object. in Thirty-Two⁴The number 32 represents the sum of the 10 Sefirot Belimah and 22 Letters of Foundation. Together these represent the mathematical-linguistic foundations of Creation; see notes on 1:2 below. Although the number 32 is not ruminated upon any further after SY 1:1, subsequent commentaries have associated it with the 32 occurrences of the name אֱלֹהִים Elohim in [Genesis 1]. In the Bahir, the Thirty-Two Ways are associated with the gematria value of לֵב lev ‘heart’ ([Bahir 63], [Bahir 95] inter alia cf. SY 6:1-3) and with the 32 tzitzit (fringes) of the tallit (prayer shawl) [Bahir 92]. Wondrous⁵In the Tanakh, the root פל״א PLʼ generally implies that which approaches or exceeds the limits of one's abilities, comprehension, or willingness, e.g. [II Samuel 13:2], [Deuteronomy 17:8], [Leviticus 27:2]. It tends to be used of things that are marvelous, miraculous, or otherwise supernatural and extraordinary, i.e. that which defies the human ability to do or understand and must therefore be divine, e.g. [Deuteronomy 28:59], [Psalm 118:23], [Psalm 139:6]. The appearance of this root in the SY’s introductory paragraph serves as a reminder that although we embark upon a text rich in vivid, grounded symbolism—even anthropomorphism—we should not hasten to take such symbolic language overly literally. See also SY 1:8 on the limits of knowledge. Ways⁶The term נְתִיבָה netivah 'path, way, pathway, (raised) road' appears mostly in the poetic sections of the Tanakh, very often as a synonym or parallelism of דֶּרֶךְ derekh 'road, way'. This particular phraseology is one of several hints that the SY may share a particular literary affiliation with the Sifre Emet, the poems of Psalms, Proverbs, and Job. For details see Ronit Meroz (2007), "Between Sefer Yezirah and Wisdom Literature: Three Binitarian Approaches in Sefer Yezirah", in the Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies 6(18), pp. 101-142. of Wisdom⁷‘Wisdom’ here is likely a reference to the poetically personified חָכְמָה Chochmah of Proverbs 1, 8, and 9, especially [Proverbs 8:22], a favorite verse of Jewish mystics. Meroz has argued that the SY envisions Wisdom [חָכְמָה Chochmah] as a co-participant with God in the Work of Creation. A similar view is reflected in the midrashicic and Kabbalistic literature, where Torah or Wisdom acts as a participant or instrument in the Work of Creation; see e.g. Midrash Tanchuma 1:5 on [Genesis 1:1], Zohar 1:3a inter alia. ⁸Though the phrase is usually translated the ‘Thirty-Two Paths’, I find that the alliteration of ‘Wondrous Ways of Wisdom’ neatly approximates the SY’s choice of poetic vocabulary. Throughout, I have made an effort to select alliterative or parallelistic translations wherever the happy coincidences of Hebrew and English reasonably permit, so as to replicate the SY’s seamless transitions between prose and poetry, an effect all too easily lost in translation., with three linguistic tools: with Counting, with Writing, and with Speech.⁹The expression בשלשה ספרים בספר וספר וספור is perhaps the most difficult and obscure line in the entire SY. Some manuscripts have a different reading, בשלשה ספרים בספר וספר וספר ‘with three books: a book, and a book, and a book’—certainly easier linguistically but no more clear in its meaning. Meroz has associated these ‘three books’ with what she regards to be the three original textual layers of the SY, woven together after their composition into a single work by an editor. However, the manuscript variant found in the present edition is certainly old, appearing already in the oldest extant versions of the SY in the commentary of Saadia Gaon. The translation adopted here follows a popular logic. I base it off an interpretation of the SY’s internal structure, the semantic properties of the root ספ״ר SPR, and the SY’s general grammatical inventiveness. The text is intimately concerned with the role of language in the Work of Creation. It appears to conceive of language in three parts: counting or mathematics, i.e. the 10 Sefirot Belimah of SY 1 and the formulaic counting of the letters and the elements of creation throughout the text); writing, i.e. the 22 Letters of Foundation discussed in SY 2-5; and speech or pronunciation, i.e. SY 1:9, 2:3, 4:1. Hebrew has of course several verb roots relating to one or more of each of these three facets of language. However, only one, ספ״ר SPR, is capable of describing all three: counting (סָפַר safar 'he counted', מִסְפָּר mispar 'number, count'), writing (סֵפֶר sefer 'book, scroll'), and speaking (סִפֵּר sipper 'he told, accounted', סִפּוּר sippur 'telling, account'). The root ספ״ר is also utilized to coin the novel metaphysical term סְפִירוֹת Sefirot, on which see SY 1:2 below. For these reasons, I believe the first use of the root ספר SPR in SY 1:1, the plural ספרים SPR-im, does not refer to any specific noun at all, but rather the set of words derived from the abstract, idealized root ספ״ר SPR. This way of thinking about language imbues the Hebrew root itself with a certain metaphysical reality, an entity from which more concrete instantions of individual words may ontologically descend and ultimately crystallize into concrete speech or material reality. The root SPR thus holds unique metaphysical significance for the SY, alone representing the totality of language by which the world was created and is sustained. As each of the following three words derived from the root SPR are invoked as implements in the Work of Creation, I have translated the SPR-im as “linguistic tools”—an inelegant approximation of an elegant metalinguistic idea whose meaning is trapped within the particulars of Hebrew grammar. The three occurrences of the root SPR that follow, “with ספר SPR and ספר SPR and ספור SPWR”, are here interpreted respectively as סָפַר safar ‘to count’, representing counting/mahetmatics; סֵפר sefer ‘scroll, book’, representing writing; and סִפּוּר sippur, representing speech. The word סָפַר safar is technically a finite verb, and not a noun as the syntax requires. It may be vocalized also as the inifitive construct סְפֹר sefor, but given the grammatical playfulness of the SY in general, I see no reason why the text should not have delighted in the oblique transformation of a verb like safar into an abstract noun.