Chasidut sobre Deuteronômio 4:15

According to this it is clear that all that was mentioned in the above quote in the Zohar, Parshat Pinhas – that all of the names, appellations, and attributes, were all created for the purpose of directing the creation – falls within the realm of [God’s] desire to emanate the creation and everything that that includes,²⁴¹Note that the author now applies the concept of a contingent creation not merely to some past occurrence – the Genesis story of the Bible – but to an ongoing, constantly recurring state; meaning to say, just as God originally created the world and everything in it – including human cognition – so He continually creates and renews the world, so that their continued existence is also, at every moment, contingent and mutable. but not above this. For above this, there is no garment or attribute at all. This is as it is written in the Zohar (Parshat Bo, 42a): “To whom shall you liken me, that I shall be his equal, said the Holy One.” (Yeshayahu, 40:25) All of the holy Hayot (angels) are called in the letters of the holy name. This is as it is written (Yeshayahu, 43:6), “All that is called in My name, I have created for My glory.” Everything in the creation was created with the letters of God’s name, and there is no creation that does not have God’s name inscribed in it, in order that one may know who created it. For this reason it is written, “To whom shall you liken Me, that I shall be his equal, said the Holy One.” No creature shall be My equal. Even though I created it in the form of My letters, still, I can erase its form and re-create it as many times as I want, and there is no god above Me that can erase My “form.” Here it is clear that all created beings, even the holy Hayot (angels) and all the supernal powers, even the root of their spiritual forms are only arranged and ordered in holy likenesses, and renewed according to God’s desire. It is in the power of God’s desire to change these likenesses into different forms; for according to the changing of the supernal forms, so will the order of God’s governance change, from the loftiest of heights to the lowliest of levels. This is true even for the nature order of the physical world. There the Zohar concluded (Bo, 42b): If one were to propose a difficulty by quoting the verse (Devarim, 32), “for you saw no image,”²⁴²The verse says, “you saw no image,” not the letter yud, nor the letter vav, or any other letter. How, then, could one say, “Everything in the creation was created with the letters of God’s name, and there is not creation that does not have God’s name inscribed in it”? he will give the answer, “This image I did see, for it is written (Bamidbar, 12:8), “He shall see the vision of God.” “The vision of God,” but not any other vision that He created and formed out of letters.²⁴³That is, you see only the vision of the letters of creation, but no other vision. For this reason it is written (Yeshayahu, 40:25), “To whom shall you liken me, that I shall be his equal.” To whom can God be compared? What form could you possibly ascribe to Him? Even this “form” of God that is accessed by created beings through the letters of creation does not exist in God’s own place, but comes into being when He descends to reign over his creation. Then the vision spreads over the creation, and each one sees it according to his specific ability to perceive. This is as it is written (Hoshea, 12:11), “I have used images through the prophets.” For this reason, God will say to them that even though He appears to them in a vision that they can comprehend, still, “to whom can I be compared,” because before God created any image or formed any form in the world, God was alone without any form or semblance. We have mentioned how all names and appellations of God are created entities, and that before the creation, there was no name or form from the holy forms. This is as it is written Zohar (Bo, 42b): One who receives information about the state of existence before the creation²⁴⁴Despite the limited nature of human cognition, it can receive information about states of existence prior to creation; that is, beyond cognition. However, since that information pertains to unconstricted aspects of Divinity, it is forbidden to make an formal, limited likeness, even in terms of letters, Divine names or other abstract forms. – before there was any form of God’s being that was at all discernable to mankind – is forbidden to make any formal representation of that information, not with the letter Hei nor with the letter Yud. One cannot use a holy name, or even so much as a letter or point to describe this knowledge. This is as the Torah says (Devarim, 4:15), “You did not see any form.” You did not see anything which engenders a likeness or form. However, after God made the form of the holy merkava (chariot) of the supernal man, then God descended there, and He is called in the name of the Tetragrammaton (Yud Hei Vav Hei). This is in order that God may be comprehended through His attributes,²⁴⁵Seven lower Sefirot from Chesed to Malkhut, the supernal source of emotions such as love, fear, pride, and so forth. and perceived through each of His attributes.

The Written Torah utilizes human idiom to articulate the divine word, in that it speaks of, for examples, God’s of the eyes, hands, and feet. The prophet Ezekiel went further and described a human form sitting on the form of the Throne.³⁵⁷See Ezekiel 1. Our holy commentators explained that, God forbid, this does not mean to impute corporeality and human limbs to God; after all, the Torah says “For you have seen no image.”³⁵⁸Deuteronomy 4:15. Rather, the Torah and the prophets merely utilized such images as figures of speech to ease comprehension, though these things surely do not exist above [as described in material terms]. Indeed, Kabbalah is full of depictions of limbs and human forms: of the Primordial Man [Adam Kadmon], skulls, hairs, the ‘three heads,’ (that is, the three aspects of the head), throat, neck, heart, body, left and right arms, thighs, etc...The kabbalists clarified that these we are all spoken of metaphorically.