Cytowanie Komentarza do Psalmów 145:20

A Kabbalistic approach to the words: “for man cannot see Me and remain alive.” It is noteworthy that G’d did not say כי לא יראה אותי but כי לא יראני האדם וחי. Had the Torah used the former wording we would have concluded that man’s inability to behold G’d was due to an objective reason, i.e. that G’d had categorically ruled this out. By using the wording in front of us, the Torah made it plain that our inability to behold Him is rooted in subjective causes, i.e. as long as man is subject to influences originating in his body he cannot qualify for such insights as looking upon the essence of G’d. Proof that theoretically, man can behold G’d is found in Isaiah 6,1 who said: ”I have seen the Lord.” [In fact King Menashe used this line as the excuse for condemning Isaiah to death as a false prophet citing our verse as proof that seeing G’d while in a mortal shell is impossible. Ed.] Another verse in which “seeing” G’d is reported as something a number of people were able to do is Exodus 24,10: ויראו את אלו-הי ישראל, “they saw the G’d of Israel.” In that verse the word את which does not appear in our verse of כי לא יראני האדם וחי gives food for thought. I have explained in that instance that the word את in the verse in Parshat Mishpatim refers to these people having had a vision of the Shechinah rather than of the essence of G’d. This is also why Ezekiel used the word את when describing his vision in Ezekiel 2,2 ואשמע את מדבר אלי. Clearly, the word את with the vowel tzeyreh is a reference to a noun, i.e. the Shechinah. We find the word את being used in a similar capacity in Psalms 145,20 ואת כל הרשעים ישמיד, “He will destroy all the wicked people,” where that word also refers to a certain attribute of G’d (the attribute of Justice) carrying out this retribution, seeing that the attribute of Mercy is the one which ensures that the ones who love the Lord stay alive as mentioned in the first half of that verse.
The word אדם in our verse is preceded by the letter ה meaning that the verse speaks about someone familiar to the reader. Had the verse intended to make an all-encompassing statement including all humans, the Torah should have written כי לא יראה אותי אדם וחי, “for man will not see My essence and live.” This would have proved conclusively that G’d had initiated this denial of man’s insight on a unilateral basis. The failure of the Torah to use the wording we just described makes it clear that the denial of the insight Moses requested was not rooted in the nature of the essence of G’d Himself. Ezekiel could not have had the visions he described in chapter one of his book (the famous Maaseh Merkavah 1,10), if the inability to see the essence of the Lord had been decreed by Him as something absolute. This then is the true meaning of the words: “for man (such as he is) cannot see Me and live.”