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The Third Gate. Introduction. On the Obligation of Binding Oneself to the Obedience of God (mighty and exalted)
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He said: When, in what has come before, we have set out the obligation of the purification of affirming the unity of God (exalted be He), and the aspects of reflection on His blessings upon the human being, it is incumbent upon us to follow this with what binds the human being to compliance with it once he has verified the reality of both — namely, binding oneself to obedience to God, according to what intellect makes obligatory for the one who has received a blessing toward the One who bestowed it.
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So it is fitting that we put at the head of this gate an explication of the aspects of blessings and the obligations of thanksgiving for them among the servants — some of them upon others — and ascend from there to what is incumbent upon us toward the Creator (exalted be He) of thanksgiving and praise for the magnitude of His bounty and the abundance of His beneficence toward us.
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So I say: it is known among us that every benefactor toward us deserves our thanksgiving according to his intent in the beneficence toward us — and even if he has fallen short in his action on account of some reason that befell him and prevented him from it, his thanksgiving is binding and incumbent upon us, since the goodness of his disposition toward us and his intent to benefit us have been verified before us. Whenever a blessing comes upon us at the hand of one who did not intend us by it, the obligations of thanksgiving toward him fall away from us and are not binding on us.
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When we examine the blessings of people upon one another, they do not exceed five causes: - the blessing of the parent upon his child; - the blessing of the master upon his slave; - the blessing of the wealthy upon the poor — seeking the reward of God; - the blessing of people upon one another — seeking praise, honor, and recompense in this world; - the blessing of the strong upon the weak — out of distress and grief over his condition.
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the blessing of the strong upon the weak — out of distress and grief over his condition.
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Let us now consider whether the intent in all that we have described is sincerely directed toward benefiting the recipients, or not.
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**The first**, the blessing of the parent upon his child: it is plain that he is intending only to benefit himself in him, since the child is a piece of the parent — together with the great hope reposed in him. Do you not see that the parent prefers the child over himself in food, drink, clothing, and warding off injuries from him? — and finds it easy to bear the weariness and labor in the cause of his ease, along with the pity and compassion with which parents are stamped-by-nature toward their children.
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And in spite of this, the Law and the intellect have made obedience, honor, and fear of the child for them obligatory, as it is said: "Honor your father and your mother" (Exodus 20:12), and: "Every man shall fear his mother and his father" (Leviticus 19:3), and: "Hear, my son, the discipline of your father" (Proverbs 1:8), and: "A son honors his father, and a servant his master" (Malachi 1:6)
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even though the parent is *compelled* to this by the way of nature, and even though the blessing belongs to God (exalted be He), the parent being only a means within it.
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**As for the blessing of the master upon his slave:** it is known that he intends to set in order his wealth by means of his wealth, along with his need of his servant's service — so his intention in this is only to benefit himself.
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And in spite of this, God has made it obligatory upon the slave to thank his master and obey him, as He said: "A son honors his father, and a slave his master" (Malachi 1:6).
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**As for the blessing of the wealthy upon the poor — seeking the reward of God:** he is like the merchant who buys an abundant, enduring, eternal pleasure with a slight, fleeting, transient blessing. He has intended only to adorn himself in his next world by a blessing that is in fact God's deposit with him, to deliver it to its rightful recipient.
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It is known that even for this he deserves great thanksgiving and praise — even though he intended thereby only the adornment of himself in the next world; thanksgiving has nevertheless become incumbent for him, as Job said: "The blessing of one perishing came upon me" (Job 29:13)
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and again his saying: "If his loins did not bless me, and he was not warmed with the fleece of my sheep…" (Job 31:20).
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**As for the blessing of people upon one another seeking praise, honor, and recompense in this world:** his intent is the adornment of himself in this world by the praise upon him and the honor extended to him on account of it — or his recompense in this world. He is like the one who deposits a thing with his companion, or entrusts him with his wealth, for fear of need in time to come.
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And though his aim is to benefit himself by his blessing upon another, as we have said, he is deserving of thanksgiving and praise for it, as the Wise One said: "Many entreat the favor of the noble" (Proverbs 19:6); and he said: "A man's gift makes room for him, and brings him before great men" (Proverbs 18:16).
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**As for the blessing of the compassionate one upon the suffering and the weak:** he intends by it only to ward off pain from himself, on account of the trouble and grief that have come over him from compassion for the one upon whom he has had pity. He is like the one who treats a pain that he finds in his own soul by means of a blessing of God done previously [to himself, now extended to the sufferer] — and yet he is not free from the obligation of thanksgiving, as Job said: "If I have seen the perishing for lack of clothing, and there was no covering for the needy; if his loins did not bless me, and he was not warmed with the fleece of my sheep…" (Job 31:19–20).
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From what has been set out, it has become clear that the intent of every benefactor over another among people is in the first place his own benefit and the bestowing upon himself of a beautiful adornment in this world and the next, or the warding-off of pain from himself, or the setting-in-order of his wealth. This does not prevent the thanksgiving, praise, fear, love, and recompense due to them — even though the blessing is borrowed with them, and they have been compelled to the bestowing of it (as we have said), and their blessing is not continuous, and their generosity is not unbroken, and their bounty is shared with them by the intention of benefit for themselves and the warding-off of harm from themselves. How much, then, is the human being bound to obedience and praise and thanksgiving toward the Creator of the blessing, and the One who has bestowed it — whose blessing does not come to an end, but is continuous and unbroken; without intent of benefiting Himself or warding off pain from Himself, but only out of generosity, beneficence, and bounty from Him upon the rational beings.
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without intent of benefiting Himself or warding off pain from Himself, but only out of generosity, beneficence, and bounty from Him upon the rational beings.
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And among what is fitting we should stand upon is this: that every benefactor among people upon another — of whatever kind among the kinds we have mentioned — has not gone beyond the recipient of his blessing except by some one of the accidents. But in their humanity and their substance, the two are alike and approximate to each other — in their essences, their forms, their compositions, their shapes, their natures, and in many of their accidents — and despite this, the recipient is bound by the obedience to the benefactor that we have described. If we should imagine the recipient at an extreme of deficiency and baseness in his composition and form, the obligation of obedience over him would be more emphatic, more binding, and more required.
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And if we imagine the benefactor of the blessing more excellent and more complete than every existent thing, and the recipient more deficient than every existent and weaker than every created thing — intellect makes obligatory of emphatic obedience to the benefactor a measure that has no end.
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When we apply this analogy to the matter of the Creator (exalted be He) in relation to the human being, we find Him (exalted be He), through our intellects, higher and more splendid and more exalted than every existent, and every apprehensible thing by sense and by intellect, as has been made clear in the First Gate of this book. And likewise we find the human being, when compared with the other species of the non-rational animal, more deficient and weaker than them.
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This is manifest in three states: **The first**, in the state of his upbringing and his growing-up. For we find the rest of the species of the animal stronger and more able to bear adversity, more independent in itself, and slighter in expense to its parents in its upbringing than the human being.
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**The second state** — when we look at what the belly of the human body contains of filth and impurities, and what appears on the outside of his body that approximates the same when bathing, cleaning, and grooming have been neglected for a long time. So too: when he dies, his smell is heavier than the smell of any other carcass among the carcasses of animals; his dung is the most stinking of dungs, the most fetid in odor, and so for the rest of his impurities.
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when bathing, cleaning, and grooming have been neglected for a long time. So too: when he dies, his smell is heavier than the smell of any other carcass among the carcasses of animals; his dung is the most stinking of dungs, the most fetid in odor, and so for the rest of his impurities.
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**The third state** — what appears of the weakness of his contrivance when he is deprived of the rational power by which God has preferred him over the rest of the species of the non-rational animal, on account of some defect that occurs in his brain. He is then more miserable, more wearied, and more debased than the rest of the animals; he may cast himself into the places of perishing and ruin.
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We find many of the animals possessed of such guidance toward their welfares, contrivance, and gentle skillfulness in apprehending their nourishment as falls short of being matched even by many of the people of intellect — let alone those of them devoid of intellect.
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When we stand with our thoughts before the majesty of the Creator (exalted be He), the greatness of His power and wisdom and self-sufficiency, and reflect on the weakness of the human being, his deficiency, his falling-short of completeness, and his great need and poverty for one who provides the means to fill his lacks; and when we consider the abundance of God's blessings (exalted be He) upon him and His beneficence toward him; and that He created him just so — with the deficiency in his essence and the requiring and need for what would set him right — that he might reach this only by labor of his own self; and that this is from God's compassion upon him: that he may discriminate from his own soul, and reflect in all of his matters, so that he binds himself to obedience to God of necessity, and attains thereby the reward of the next world for which he was created — as has gone before in our discourse in the Second Gate of this book —
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how much is incumbent upon the human being toward God (exalted be He) of obedience, thanksgiving, fear, praise, and lengthy adulation, together with the valid obligation of all we have set out of obedience and thanksgiving and praise among people, one toward another! Is there any rational being who would withhold the obligation of this toward God (exalted be He) over the human being, if he has acquired and reflected on this concept and dealt fairly with himself? Will the slumbering not awaken, and the heedless not become wakeful, and the ignorant not reflect, and the rational not call to mind the obligation of binding oneself to obedience to God (exalted be He), with the clarification of the proofs, the manifestness of the witnesses, and the certainty of the demonstrations to this — as the Messenger (peace be upon him) said to those who were heedless of considering the binding force of obedience to God (exalted be He): "Do you so requite the Lord, O foolish people and not wise?" (Deuteronomy 32:6).
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among people, one toward another! Is there any rational being who would withhold the obligation of this toward God (exalted be He) over the human being, if he has acquired and reflected on this concept and dealt fairly with himself? Will the slumbering not awaken, and the heedless not become wakeful, and the ignorant not reflect, and the rational not call to mind the obligation of binding oneself to obedience to God (exalted be He), with the clarification of the proofs, the manifestness of the witnesses, and the certainty of the demonstrations to this — as the Messenger (peace be upon him) said to those who were heedless of considering the binding force of obedience to God (exalted be He): "Do you so requite the Lord, O foolish people and not wise?" (Deuteronomy 32:6).
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Since the obligation of binding oneself to obedience to God (exalted be He) has now been established as incumbent upon the human being on account of the continuity of His blessings upon him, it is incumbent that we set forth concerning the matter of this gate ten things: 1. The first: on the awakening to obedience and its divisions. 2. The second: on the necessity calling for each of the divisions of awakening. 3. The third: on the definition of obedience, its divisions, and its excellences. 4. The fourth: on the form of scriptural awakening, its divisions, the ranks of its people in the knowledge of the Book and the firm conviction in its meaning. 5. The fifth: on the form of rational awakening and the guidance toward it, by the way of question and answer. 6. The sixth: on the kinds of the requirements of obedience according to the kinds of varying blessings. 7. The seventh: on the explication of the minimum that the recipient of a blessing is bound to of the rights of the One who bestowed it. 8. The eighth: on the disagreement of the learned regarding compulsion and justice, and the most well-purified of the schools concerning it. 9. The ninth: on a brief description of the secret of His having created the species of the human in this house. 10. The tenth: on the description of the proper deployment of each of our traits.
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**Chapter One.**
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As for the necessity of the awakening to obedience to God and its divisions — This is because, since obedience to God (mighty and exalted) binds the human being by the way of intellect and discernment
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the rational not call to mind the obligation of binding oneself to obedience to God (exalted be He), with the clarification of the proofs, the manifestness of the witnesses, and the certainty of the demonstrations to this — as the Messenger (peace be upon him) said to those who were heedless of considering the binding force of obedience to God (exalted be He): "Do you so requite the Lord, O foolish people and not wise?" (Deuteronomy 32:6).
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Since the obligation of binding oneself to obedience to God (exalted be He) has now been established as incumbent upon the human being on account of the continuity of His blessings upon him, it is incumbent that we set forth concerning the matter of this gate ten things:
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1. The first: on the awakening to obedience and its divisions. 2. The second: on the necessity calling for each of the divisions of awakening.
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**Chapter Two.**
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As for the necessity of the awakening to obedience to God and its divisions —
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3. The third: on the definition of obedience, its divisions, and its excellences. 4. The fourth: on the form of scriptural awakening, its divisions, the ranks of its people in the knowledge of the Book and the firm conviction in its meaning.
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5. The fifth: on the form of rational awakening and the guidance toward it, by the way of question and answer.
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9. The ninth: on a brief description of the secret of His having created the species of the human in this house.
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10. The tenth: on the description of the proper deployment of each of our traits.
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6. The sixth: on the kinds of the requirements of obedience according to the kinds of varying blessings. 7. The seventh: on the explication of the minimum that the recipient of a blessing is bound to of the rights of the One who bestowed it.
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8. The eighth: on the disagreement of the learned regarding compulsion and justice, and the most well-purified of the schools concerning it.
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Awakening is of two kinds.
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since between the time the blessings appear upon him and the time at which he reasons and discriminates what is incumbent upon him for them of obedience there is a long stretch of time, it became necessary to awaken the human being to the obligations of action and the firm convictions of the heart by which obedience to God (exalted be He) might be valid in him — so that he should not remain without religion until his intellect is complete.
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**One of them** is firmly fixed in the intellect, planted in the discernment of the human being, stamped-by-nature upon him at the root of his creation and his constitution.
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**The second kind** is acquired by the way of hearing — and this is the heard-revealed law which the Messenger delivers to people for their guidance to the road of the obedience obligatory upon them toward God (exalted be He).
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This is because, since obedience to God (mighty and exalted) binds the human being by the way of intellect and discernment,
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between the time the blessings appear upon him and the time at which he reasons and discriminates
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it became necessary to awaken the human being to the obligations of action and the firm convictions of the heart by which obedience to God (exalted be He) might be valid in him — so that he should not remain without religion until his intellect is complete.
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stamped-by-nature upon him at the root of his creation and his constitution.
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As for the necessity calling for each kind of awakening —
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the firm convictions of the heart by which obedience to God (exalted be He) might be valid in him
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This is because, since the awakening firmly fixed in the intellect weakens for three reasons, it became necessary to reinforce it by the scriptural awakening.
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As for the three reasons:
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the Creator (exalted be He) planted in his soul traits and powers by which he longs for things that, when he employs them, his body grows up by them, and he becomes strong for the populating of this world;
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This trait is appetite for corporeal pleasures, which is common to all the species of the growing animal.
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And the Creator (exalted be He) likewise mounted in the soul of the human traits and powers by which he longs for things that, when he employs them, he renounces this world, and prefers withdrawal from the abiding in it — and this is sound discernment.
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But since corporeal pleasures arrive first in the human's soul from his infancy, and his familiarity with them from the beginning of his matter is stronger, and his upbringing upon them more emphatic — the trait of appetite overcomes the rest of his traits, so that it overcomes the intellect stamped-by-nature upon the human; its eyes are blacked-out and the traces of its beauties depart.
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So the human needs external things by which he may oppose his blameworthy trait — namely, appetite for brutish pleasures — and by which he may quicken the traces of his praiseworthy trait, namely the intellect.
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These things are the messengers of the Law, by which God has guided His creatures to His obedience by the hand of His messengers and His prophets (peace be upon them).
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**Chapter Three.**
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From all we have set out, the awakening of the human by the way of the Law — which gathers together both the rational obligations and the scriptural obligations — has become necessary;
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the Law became the medicine for the like of this disease — among the sicknesses of souls and the diseases of traits.
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**The second reason** — the intellect is a subtle, spiritual substance, severed from the upper spiritual world, a foreigner in the world of dense bodies.
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This is why you find the Law forbidding many foods, clothings, marriages, gains, and activities that support appetite — and likewise commanding what stands opposed to appetite from the contraries: prayer, fasting, charity, and beautiful acts
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This is the Law: by the use of the intellect in it, the intellect grows strong, becomes pure, and is illumined
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It must, then, become weak; it needs that by which the overcoming of appetite over it may be repelled and its strengthening against appetite secured.
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that he may ascend from there to the obedience that binds the human by the way of rational inference, which is the utmost end intended in the creating of the human species in this house.
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the ignorance that had overcome the soul of the human — which had prevented him from seeing things in their true realities and placing them in their proper ranks — is removed, as the Friend (peace be upon him) said: "The Law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul; the testimony of the Lord is faithful, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are upright, gladdening the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes" (Psalms 19:8–9).
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**The third reason** — appetite is employed in the nourishment of bodies perpetually, never pausing in its service night or day; intellect is employed only in what accords with appetite.
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**one of them** is submission out of fear and longing, compulsion and constraint; **the second**, submission out of obligation and being-worthy — out of awe and reverence for the One submitted to.
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As for the definition of obedience, the explication of its divisions, and the excellences of each of its divisions —
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The definition of obedience is the submission of the recipient of the blessing to the One who bestowed it, and the requital of it according to his capacity.
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Submission is divided into two divisions: **one of them** is submission out of fear and longing, compulsion and constraint; **the second**, submission out of obligation and being-worthy — out of awe and reverence for the One submitted to.
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**one of them** is submission out of fear and longing, compulsion and constraint;
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**the second**, submission out of obligation and being-worthy — out of awe and reverence for the One submitted to.
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**As for the first division** — it is the submission to God that comes about by the acquired awakening we have mentioned, since its binding force is by the way of reward and punishment in this world and the next.
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**As for the second division** — it is the submission that comes about by the awakening firmly fixed in the intellect, stamped-by-nature in the constitution of the human at the binding of his soul to his body.
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Both submissions are praiseworthy, leading to the road of triumph in the house of stability — except that one of them is a cause of the second, and a ladder by which he may ascend from one to the other; that is, the awakening of the Law.
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**As for the first division** — it is the submission to God that comes about by the acquired awakening we have mentioned, since its binding force is by the way of reward and punishment in this world and the next.
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**As for the second division** — it is the submission that comes about by the awakening firmly fixed in the intellect, stamped-by-nature in the constitution of the human at the binding of his soul to his body.
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Both submissions are praiseworthy, leading to the road of triumph in the house of stability — except that one of them is a cause of the second, and a ladder by which he may ascend from one to the other; that is, the awakening of the Law.
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The submission that comes about through the awakening of the intellect, and by the way of inference, is the nearer to God, and the more satisfying, and the most distinguished — for seven reasons:
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the soul is not led toward it except after the mortifying of the corporeal appetites and the overcoming of the intellect over it and its deployment of the soul according to its wisdom and its will. That is why this obedience has come to be safe from missteps, and its bearer is preserved from error, as the Book says: "No iniquity will befall the righteous" (Proverbs 12:21).
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As for the excellences of the Law, it is fitting that I explicate what is at hand to me. I say that the aspects of necessities calling for the scriptural awakening are also seven.
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The first — the human is composed of soul and body; in his traits is a trait that drives him to indulgence in pleasures, immersion in the various brutish appetites, and the throwing off of the bridle of intellect from himself.
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There is in him also a trait that summons him to renunciation of the world, and the abandoning of populating it, on account of the turning of conditions therein, the continuity of injuries and griefs over it, and his yearning toward the upper rational world.
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Both views are unpraiseworthy: one of them leads to the corruption of the order of this world; the second leads to the corruption of the state of the human in this world and the next.
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So it was from the subtlety of the Creator (exalted be He) and the magnitude of His blessing upon the human that He favored him with what would set his matter aright, and order his states in both houses, by a middle canon between intellect and appetite — namely the truthful Law, the guardian of the outward and inward justice, which gives the human his portion of his appetites in this world and preserves for him his reward in the next, as the Book says: "Incline your ear, and hear the words of the wise" (Proverbs 22:17–21).
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The second reason — the rational awakening does not delimit the obligatory acts of obedience to God — prayer, fasting, charity, alms-giving, and beautiful acts — nor does the human reach by it knowledge of the limits of the punishments incumbent on the one who falls short in obedience. So one had need of an instituted, delimited authority in all of this, by way of the Law and the guidance of prophecy, so that the goal intended of us would be ordered by their being combined — namely, obedience to God (mighty and exalted), as the Book said: "And God has so made it that men should fear before Him" (Ecclesiastes 3:14).
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The third reason — rational awakening is not general to all who are charged with obligation, on account of the shortness of the energies of some of them and the differential measure of the discernment of some over others. The scriptural awakening is general to all in whom the conditions of moral charge have come about, on a basis of equality, even though their reception of it differs (as we have set out at the end of the First Gate of this book).
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The human may fall short in some of his states and excel in others, so that the awakening of the intellect varies in him according to the variation of his discernment.
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The scriptural awakening does not vary in itself; rather, its form is one and the same for the child, the youth, the man in his prime, the old man, the man of intellect, and the ignorant — though the effect of it differs according to what we have described in the whole of what has been mentioned, as the Book said concerning the general sweep of scriptural awakening for the whole community: "Assemble the people — the men and the women, and the children, and your stranger that is within your gates" (Deuteronomy 31:12).
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The fourth reason — among the necessities calling
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for the Law: it is known that obediences bind people according to the differential measure of blessings upon them. In every age, occasions arise for one people that occur for no other, leading to the singling-out of them in a blessing from God (exalted be He). The singling-out of an increase of obedience to God (mighty and exalted) on their part — beyond the rest of the nations — follows from this. There is no road to the knowledge of this by the way of intellect alone.
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owing to our nation's being singled out in the exodus from Egypt, the splitting of the sea, and what follows of the blessings whose mention we need not undertake, on account of their fame and clarity. God (exalted be He) singled us out beyond the rest of the nations by an obedience for which He bound us as a thanksgiving to Him; then He promised us, for binding ourselves to it, of the near and far reward what cannot be numbered, of bounty toward us and beneficence to us; and the whole of this is not valid except by the Law, as the Book said: "You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and I bore you on eagles' wings, and brought you to Myself. So now, if you will indeed hear My voice, and keep My covenant, then you shall be My treasured possession from among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Exodus 19:4–6).
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The fifth reason — the scriptural awakening is the prologue and the gateway to the awakening of the intellect, and an evidence for it — in view of the human's need in his infancy for governance and management to suppress his appetites until his intellect grows strong and sound, and so too the women and those weak of intellect among the men, who are not led by the management of the intellect, on account of the weakness of its bridle and reining-in over them. Necessity called for a middle management which they could endure and to which their understanding would not be impossible. That is why the Law was laid down upon the two poles of awe and longing.
Whoever has not fallen short in
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the requirements of the Law is in the rank of the good ones and the pious, and has earned the near and far reward. Whoever ascends from these to the obedience that comes about through the rational awakening attains the rank of the prophets and the pure ones of God, the friends — and his reward in this world is the joy of taking delight in obedience to God, as the Prophet (peace be upon him) said: "Your words were found, and I ate them, and Your word was to me the joy and gladness of my heart, for Your name is called upon me, O Lord, God of hosts" (Jeremiah 15:16).
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And he said: "The righteous shall rejoice in the Lord and take refuge in Him, and all the upright in heart shall glory" (Psalms 64:11), and he said: "Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart" (Psalms 97:11).
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And his reward in the next world is communion with the highest light, of which it is not valid for us to give description nor permitted us to give likeness, as the Book said: "If you walk in My ways, and if you keep My charge, then you shall judge My house and shall also keep My courts, and I will give you free access among these who stand" (Zechariah 3:7), and he said: "How great is Your goodness which You have stored up for those who fear You" (Psalms 31:20), and he said: "Eye has not seen a God beside You who works for him that waits for Him" (Isaiah 64:3).
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The sixth reason — the Law has urged upon concepts whose obligation is not validated for the intellect — these being the scripturals; and upon a totality of the roots of the rationals. This was necessary because the peoples upon whom the Law arrived were in the state of being overcome by brutish appetites, and on this account their intellects and their discernment of much of the rationals had weakened. So the Law took them upon one path, and the rationals and the scripturals became equal among them in the awakening to them.
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Whoever has strengthened his intellect and his discernment has awakened to them and bound himself to both, on the two grounds; whoever's intellect is too weak to know their obligation upon him binds himself to them by the way of the Law alone, taking them in the path of the scripturals —
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and that is welfare for all, as He said: "Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace" (Proverbs 3:17).
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The seventh reason — the Law is granted us by the mediation of a man at whose hands signs and demonstrations are manifest, in which all people are equal from the side of their senses, unable to repel them. So that which he brings from God (exalted be He) becomes valid for them by sensory and rational demonstrations — this being an addition to what they have been stamped-by-nature with in the root of creation and constitution from the rational awakening.
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Whoever reflects on God's blessings (exalted be He) upon him in which he is equal with all creatures becomes certain of the obligation of binding himself to obedience to God by all the kinds of rational obligations. And when he reflects on God's blessings upon him with which God has singled out his people and his tribe from the totality of tribes, he becomes certain of the obligation of the scriptural laws upon him beyond the rest of the nations.
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And likewise, when he reflects on God's blessings (exalted be He) upon him with which God has singled out his clan beyond the rest of the clans — such as the Levites and the priests — he becomes certain of the obligation of the laws with which God has singled out his clan. That is why you find the priestly laws are twenty-four, in parallel to the twenty-four excellences with which God (exalted be He) bestowed blessing upon the priests — namely the twenty-four priestly gifts.
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By this analogy, every man whom God (exalted be He) has singled out by a blessing beyond the rest of the people is bound to bind himself to God (exalted be He) in an obedience by which he is singled out beyond the rest of the people — together with his striving in the obedience that includes him with them according to his capacity and his apprehension — as thanksgiving to God (exalted be He) for what He has singled him out by of His blessing. This will be a cause of its enduring for him and of his receiving an increase upon it, and of reward for his obedience in the long term, so that he is not like the one of whom it was said: "And I increased silver for her, and gold they made for Baal" (Hosea 2:10).
Whoever falls short in what is singled out for him of blessing — in obedience for it —
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that falling short carries him to falling short in what is singled out for his clan, then in what is singled out for his tribe, and the abandoning of the Law. And when he does not bind himself to the Law, he does not bind himself to the obligatory rationals; and when he does not bind himself to what the intellect has led him to — despite its having been within his power and his being awakened to it — he falls from the rank of the rational animal, and the brutes are more guided than he, as it is said: "The ox knows its owner, and the ass its master's crib; Israel does not know, My people does not consider" (Isaiah 1:3); and his path is the path of the one of whom it is said: "For the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the Lord shall be as the prizing of the lambs — in smoke shall they consume away" (Psalms 37:20).
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Chapter Four.
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It is fitting for us to explain the form of the scriptural awakening, the divisions of the Law, the stations of the people of knowledge in it, and their ranks in their conviction of it and their binding themselves to it.
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We say: the scriptural awakening is a revelation that descends from God (mighty and exalted) upon one person from among the people, with what God deems good of obedience to Him, to reward him for binding himself to it with a near and far reward in both houses, out of bounty, generosity, and beneficence.
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The Law divides the acts of people into three categories: command, prohibition, and permitted.
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The command divides into two kinds: among them the duties of the heart — these being the things that are valid through conviction, such as affirming the unity of God, purification-of-action toward God (exalted be He), reliance upon Him, submission to Him, contentment with His decrees, faith in His prophet, verifying-the-reality of the Law, fear of God, and the guarding of His laws — and the contemplation of
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marvels, and contemplation of blessings, and many like it whose description would take long.
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Among them are the duties of the heart and the limbs together — such as affirming-unity by the tongue together with the heart, reading the Book of God and learning it, prayer, fasting, charity, the rest from work on Sabbaths and festivals, the making of sukkah, lulav, and tzitzit, and the like.
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The prohibition likewise divides into two divisions: one of them is the duties of the heart, the second the duties of the limbs.
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As for the duties of the heart that are prohibited: such as associationism with God secretly, ostentation, love of doing what God has prohibited, vainglory, arrogance, swagger, contempt for people, slighting the prophets and the speech that comes from God upon their tongues, hatred toward the good and its people, intimacy with the wicked, envy, oppression, love of evil and harm in people, indignation at God's decree (exalted be He), and many like these.
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As for the duties of the limbs that are prohibited: such as associationism with God openly, false oaths, the spreading of lies and slander among people, eating what God has forbidden us to eat, going-into the women whom God has forbidden us to approach, shedding of blood, and many like these.
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The permitted divides into three divisions: moderation, excess, and deficiency.
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As for moderation — it is the moderation indispensable to the human for the maintenance of his body and the management of his states: such as nourishment in food and drink, clothing and dwelling, and speech
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needed for the ordering of his matters, marriage, trade, and his deployment in all of his movements —
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taking from these by measure and balance, by which the order of his state is set,
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as the Book says: "Good is the man who is gracious and lends; he shall manage his affairs by justice" (Psalms 112:5).
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The second division is excess. This is going beyond the boundary of moderation into superfluities of which the human has no need —
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such as abundance in food and drink,
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against which the Wise One (peace be upon him) warned in his saying: "Do not be among the drinkers of wine, among gluttonous eaters of meat" (Proverbs 23:20).
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And similarly excessive adornment in clothing, expansiveness in dwelling beyond necessity,
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and superfluities of speech in which one is not safe from missteps, as the Wise One said: "In the multitude of words, transgression is not lacking" (Proverbs 10:19).
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And on excess of marriage he said: "And he who herds harlots wastes his substance" (Proverbs 29:3), and "Do not give your strength to women" (Proverbs 31:3), and concerning the king, "And he shall not multiply wives for himself" (Deuteronomy 17:17).
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And concerning grasping after abundance of gain and amassing of wealth, he said: "Do not weary yourself to be rich; cease from your own wisdom" (Proverbs 23:4), and concerning the king, "And silver and gold he shall not multiply for himself exceedingly" (Deuteronomy 17:17).
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All we have mentioned of welfares of the body and of its pleasures are blameworthy in outcome, since they lead the human to what God has prohibited and warned away from.
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The third division of the permitted is deficiency: that in which the human has not gone to the boundary of moderation in food, drink, clothing, marriage, speech, sleep, and the deployment in the causes of sustenance and the like.
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This divides into two divisions: either intent of religion, or intent of this-world.
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What is by intent of religion — to come near by it to God on the road of renunciation of the world — is praiseworthy and rewardable, as the Wise One said: "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, and the heart of fools in the house of mirth" (Ecclesiastes 7:4).
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What is by intent of this-world — either by sparing his property or so that people may praise him
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as one who renounces the permitted, content from this world with less than sustenance —
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that is blameworthy, since it goes outside the path of balance and is a tyranny upon his body, for it is on account of his excessive love for this world.
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Some of the wise have said: "He who renounces the world for the sake of the world is like one who quenches a fire with straw."
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As for speech and sleep, deficiency in them is praiseworthy.
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As for speech: silence is safer in outcome, as the Wise One said: "Be not rash with your mouth, and let not your heart hasten to bring forth a word before God; for God is in the heavens and you are on the earth, therefore let your words be few" (Ecclesiastes 5:1).
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As for sleep, as he said: "A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to lie down" (Proverbs 6:10).
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From what we have set out, the truth is established that all the activities of the human are not free from command, prohibition, or moderation.
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For whatever goes outside the boundary of moderation toward excess or deficiency cannot but be joined to the command (if it is for God's sake) or to the prohibition (if it is for other than God's sake).
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When we investigate the matter of being moderate in taking from this-world to sustenance, we find it commanded —
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as the Book says at the beginning of creation: "And God blessed them, and God said to them: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it" (Genesis 1:28); and then He said: "Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth — to you it shall be for food" (Genesis 1:29).
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Moderation in sustenance enters into the gate of the command.
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Since this is so, it is valid that the activities of people do not go outside the boundary of the command and the prohibition.
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The explication of this is: whoever performs an act, if it is among the commands, his act is a good one; if he abandons the act though he was able to fulfill its obligation, he is one who has fallen short.
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Likewise, whoever performs something among the prohibitions is a sinner; but if he abandons doing it, he is good — when he abandons it out of fear of God, as the Friend (peace be upon him) said:
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the Friend (peace be upon him): "Also they do no iniquity; they walk in His ways" (Psalms 119:3).
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If he performs something among the permitted and his intent was balanced, he is good, as the Friend said: "Good is the man who is gracious and lends; he shall manage his affairs by justice" (Psalms 112:5).
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But if he is excessive, going beyond moderation, he is one who has fallen short — for that leads to what God has prohibited.
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And if he is falling short of moderation, with the capacity to maintain it, but his intent was the disciplining of his soul to the obedience of God, or the suppressing of his appetites in coming near to God, or renunciation of the world and inclination toward the next world, he is good and his act is beautiful.
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If it is for other than God, he has fallen short and his act is ugly.
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So the activities of people have been divided into the beautiful and the ugly.
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The intelligent one weighs his activities, before performing them, by the like of this weighing, and considers them by the goodness of his thought and the strength of his discernment, so that he chooses the beautiful of them and leaves the rest,
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like the saying of the Friend (peace be upon him): "I considered my ways, and turned my feet to Your testimonies. I made haste and did not delay to observe Your commandments" (Psalms 119:59–60).
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The evidence for the soundness of what we have set out of the beauty and ugliness of activities is the Wise One's saying (peace be upon him): "For God shall bring every work into judgment over every hidden thing, whether it be good or whether evil" (Ecclesiastes 12:14).
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He has confined activities all under "good and evil" — which is what we have mentioned of the concept of the beautiful and the ugly.
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So it has been made plain that the activities of the people divide into the two divisions of the Law — namely command and prohibition only.
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Since the Law is words and meanings, people in the knowledge of the Book differ in ten levels.
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The first: a folk to whom the reading of the texts and the narratives — I mean the Pentateuch and Scripture — has been possible; they have contented themselves from these with the rote-retention of the consonantal text apart from understanding the meanings; they are ignorant of the interpretation of the words and the conjugation of the language. They are at the rank of the donkey carrying books.
The level
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The second level: a folk who sought to make their reading correct and to control the vocalizations, so they put most of their effort into the knowledge of the places of pointing — the masters of vocalization and Masorah.
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The third level: a folk who saw a deficiency in those previously mentioned, and exerted themselves in the rationale of the pointing and the cantillations, adding to these the knowledge of the conjugation and the grammar of the language, the knowledge of nouns and verbs, the particles of meaning, conjoinings and disjoinings, the description of the past in the form of the future, the imperative in the verbal-noun form, the sound and the weak and the soft and the geminate and the manifest and the hidden, and the like.
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The fourth level: a folk who added to those previously mentioned the interpretation of the difficult letters in the Book of God, and the apparent meaning of the texts,
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and they sought alongside this the knowledge of the figurative and the literal in the Hebrew language — from the similar and the differing and the derived and the shared and the irregular names, and likewise in the attributes and the verbs, and the like.
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The fifth level: a folk who added to those previously mentioned the knowledge of the meanings of the Book of God and the achievement of its principles, the inquiry into the figurative and the unambiguous in its meanings — such as the anthropomorphism mentioned in it — the exegetes of the Book of God from its apparent meaning without transmitted tradition.
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The sixth level: a folk who attached themselves to the ancient transmitted tradition — I mean the Mishnah — so that some of the obligations of the laws, the duties, and the statutes became clear to them, without inquiry into the Talmud.
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The seventh level: a folk who added to all we have mentioned inquiry into the Talmud, and exerted themselves in its memorization and the reading of its consonantal text, without resolving its difficulties
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and opening its locked passages.
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The eighth level: a folk who were not satisfied with what satisfied those previously mentioned of the knowledge of the Law, until they exerted themselves in achieving the discourse of the people of the Talmud, resolving its difficulties and opening its locked passages — seeking praise thereby and pride in it,
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yet they are heedless of the duties of the heart, and asleep to the corrupting factors of deeds,
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spending the whole span of their lives in the knowledge of the anomalies of the branches of the statutes, and every strange item from the obscurities of judicial cases, and memorizing the disagreements of the transmitters of opinions on the rare events that occur in disputes,
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while neglecting inquiry into what they cannot afford to be ignorant of concerning the affairs of their own souls — that which is incumbent on them to investigate: the soundness of the signs of the prophet and the transmitted tradition and its conditions by which its validity is binding,
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and what God (mighty and exalted) has made obligatory upon us of rational demonstration for it and sincere devotion to Him — and many like this that I shall explain in what is attained by the path of reason in this gate, if God wills.
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The ninth level: a folk who exerted themselves in the knowledge of what especially concerns them of the duties of the heart and the limbs and the corrupting factors of deeds, and grasped the apparent and the inward of the Book of God,
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verified the transmitted knowledge from the written and the rational, ordered the ruling in the statutes, and distinguished the duties of actions according to the requirements of the circumstances of each age and the diversity of the norms of the people of each place,
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after having achieved the foundations of the Book of God, observing and emphasizing them in accord with the agreement of the reason — apparent and inward — and inclining with the truth wherever it inclines,
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These are the masters of completion and the Geonim and those who follow their path.
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The tenth level: a folk who inherited the knowledge of the Book of God from the prophets (peace be upon them) in all its explanations and the branches of its foundations — these are the men of the Great Assembly and those before
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of the Tanna'im, who are the masters of the Mishnah and the Beraitot, as is mentioned in tractate Avot:
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"Moses received Torah from Sinai, and transmitted it to Joshua, and Joshua to the Elders, and the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets transmitted it to the Men of the Great Assembly; and the Men of the Great Assembly to Simeon the Just, and Simeon the Just to Antigonus, and Antigonus to Yose ben Yoezer and Yose ben Yoḥanan of Jerusalem; they transmitted it to Yehoshua ben Peraḥyah and Nittai the Arbelite; they transmitted it to Yehudah ben Tabbai and Shimʿon ben Shataḥ; they transmitted it to Shemaiah and Avtalion; from them to Shammai and Hillel; from them to Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai, and Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai to Rabbi Eliʿezer and Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Elʿazar ben ʿArakh and Rabbi Yose the Priest and Rabbi Shimʿon ben Netan'el; from them to Rabbi ʿAkiva and Rabbi Elʿazar ben ʿAzaryah and Rabbi Tarfon and Rabban Shimʿon ben Gamliel; from them to Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehudah and Rabbi Yose and Rabbi Shimʿon and our Rabbi Yehudah the Prince
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— and he is our Holy Rabbi who collected the meanings of the Mishnah, established them, parsed them, and bound them; and that is the root of the tradition relied on in our Law.
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As for the schools of the people of the Law in their firm conviction of it and their binding themselves to obedience to God by it — they are on ten degrees.
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The first: a folk whom ignorance — from the establishment of appetites in them — has carried to the rejection of the Law; they take it as a polity of the sort by which the nations are governed, and laws by which the ignorant are managed, on account of the overcoming of passion upon their intellects and the coarseness of their natures. They have not lifted themselves to the bridle of the Law, nor been led by the reining-in of the intellect — seeking unrestraint.
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Concerning them the Wise One said: "The fool has no delight in understanding, but only in disclosing his heart" (Proverbs 18:2).
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The second degree: a folk to whom it was not possible to refute the signs and deny the demonstrations that appeared at the hand of the Messenger (peace be upon him), on account of their fame; yet they doubted the validity of the Law and uttered sayings close to the school of the first,
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namely that God wished to guide His creatures to what their states would be ordered by in this world, so He awakened the Prophet to their governance with what would suit them of customs, and gave him the signs, demonstrations, and proofs that his command might be obeyed and his way binding upon them — without truthful verification on their part of reward and punishment.
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It is fitting that we set out, in compressed form, what is upon them of refutation — both in their refusal and in their following.
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As for the refusal: God (exalted be He) is more splendid and more high than to break the ordinary for one who would deceive in His name and ascribe to Him what He did not say, even if [that one] were a guide despite his lying about God (mighty and exalted) — since the descent of revelation upon the prophet is not more wondrous or more difficult than the breaking of the ordinary for him.
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As for the following: if it were validly established by clear evidence that it is so, compliance with his word would be obligatory — for God (exalted be He) does not break an ordinary and does not manifest a miracle at the hand of an ignorant one in the way of guidance and direction.
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The one whom God has chosen for our guidance and management — after the manifesting of the signs at his hand — is worthy that we follow him in our governance and management,
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since this is binding on us for any chief or sultan even apart from knowledge, as he said: "Fear God, my son, and the king; do not associate with those who change" (Proverbs 24:21) — how much more for one at whose hand a miracle is manifest.
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On both grounds, then, the binding force of the Law is incumbent upon them — and concerning
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their like the Wise One said: "Understand prudence, O simple ones, and you fools, understand the heart" (Proverbs 8:5).
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The third degree: a folk for whom the true reality of the Law has been validly established, but who claim that it is a bounty from God (exalted be He) for the guidance of His creatures by it in this house only, and for their governance in this world only — not for reward in the next world, nor for punishment.
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Their mistake in this is from what is repeated in the books of the prophets of reward and punishment in this world without the next.
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Our Rabbi Saadia (may God be pleased with him) attended carefully in his commentary on If you walk in My statutes (Leviticus 26:3) to the mention of what makes manifest the corruption of the school of this folk.
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In the books of the prophets are strong traces of the matter of reward and punishment in the next world — among them the saying of the Friend (peace be upon him): "For God shall bring every work into judgment over every hidden thing, whether it be good or evil" (Ecclesiastes 12:14), and: "And you shall tread down the wicked, for they shall be ash under the soles of your feet" (Malachi 3:21), and: "Then you shall return and see between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serves God and him that does not serve Him" (Malachi 3:18), and: "And they shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of the men who have transgressed against Me; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be a horror to all flesh" (Isaiah 66:24), and: "How great is Your goodness which You have stored up for those who fear You; You have wrought for those who take refuge in You, in the presence of the sons of men" (Psalms 31:20), and: "And I will give you free access among these who stand" (Zechariah 3:7), and: "Eye has not seen a God beside You who works for him that waits for Him" (Isaiah 64:3), and: "And many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to reproaches and everlasting horror" (Daniel 12:2), and among them: "And your righteousness shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall gather you in" (Isaiah 58:8), and many like this whose description would take long.
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The fourth degree: a folk in whose souls the validity of the Law and the true reality of reward and punishment in the next world are firmly fixed — yet their souls have inclined them toward love of this world and its appetites, so they have taken the acts of
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obedience as snares with which they hunt for this world; they bind themselves to the Law in their outward but not in their inward, in their tongues but not in their hearts. Concerning their like it is said: "He speaks peace with his neighbor with his mouth, but in his interior he sets his ambush" (Jeremiah 9:7).
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The fifth degree: a folk for whom the whole of what has gone before of the matter of the Law and the true reality of reward and punishment in the next world has been validly established, except that their souls have inclined them toward love of this world; they have bound themselves to the Law, and intended in binding themselves to it to attain the reward from God and people's praise and honor in this world by it — and that is one of the gates of ostentation, namely the hidden associationism.
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The sixth degree: a folk who have intended by their acts only the reward of God in this world, out of love for it and preference for its pleasures, along with their ignorance of the validity of the reward and bliss of the next world.
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The seventh degree: a folk for whom the whole of what has gone before has been validly established, except that they intended in their obedience to God the hope of God's reward in this world and the next, and were ignorant of the aspect of obedience to God for His own sake — I mean by that, only awe and reverence for God and magnification of the One who is its rightful object. About them our early ones (peace be upon them) said: "Do not be like the servants who serve the master on condition of receiving a gift, but be like the servants who serve the master on condition of not receiving a gift; and let the fear of Heaven be upon you" (m. Avot 1:3).
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The eighth degree: a folk in whose souls the whole of what has gone before has been validly established — except that they bound themselves to obedience to God out of fear of His punishment in this world and the next. We have already made clear the ugliness of these two schools in what we have set out.
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The ninth degree: a folk who verified the Law and were certain of the reward and punishment for them in both houses;
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they intended obedience to God for His own sake and for the One who is its rightful object — yet they did not guard themselves from the corrupters of obediences, so corruption entered them from where they did not perceive,
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like the Wise One's saying: "Dead flies cause the perfumer's ointment to stink and ferment" (Ecclesiastes 10:1), and his saying: "But one sinner destroys much good" (Ecclesiastes 9:18),
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Some of the men of excellence said to his disciples: "Why are you without sins, that I might fear for you what is harsher than sins?" It was said to him: "And what is harsher than sins?" He said: "Pride and self-satisfaction" — as the Book said: "Every one proud of heart is an abomination to the Lord" (Proverbs 16:5).
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The tenth degree: a folk who verified the Law and the whole of what is incumbent on them of reward and punishment in both houses; they awakened from their heedlessness, and their hearts saw what is obligatory for God upon them by reason of the magnitude of His blessing upon them and His beneficence to them. They paid no regard to reward or punishment,
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but hastened to the obedience to God their Lord out of awe, reverence, longing, and the purification toward Him of their knowledge of Him and their discrimination from Him,
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This is the highest of the degrees of the people of the Law — the rank of the prophets and of the friends of God, those who pledged themselves to God, made covenant with Him, did business with Him, contracted with Him, gave Him their souls, their children, their property, and their pleasures,
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and were found truthful at the time of accomplishing of what they had warranted of themselves to Him. Concerning them the Book says: "Gather to Me My pious ones, those who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice" (Psalms 50:5).
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we have mentioned what is found in most of the people of the community. There is benefit for us in our mentioning it, and a sermon to whoever seeks guidance;
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when one finds among them a station near to his own portion, he comes to know what is adjacent to it of the levels, and aspires to ascend to it; and what is between him and the highest of the levels becomes clear to him, and he aspires to climb to it by gradation, so that this becomes easier for him.
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Faṣl 5.
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It is fitting that we set out the manner of the rational awakening, by the way of question and answer, to the end of the gate — for the sake of explanation and clarity in what we seek.
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We say: the rational awakening is the inspiration of God to the human being, by means of his intellect, toward the knowledge of Him and discrimination from the traces of His wisdom,
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and this comes from God (exalted be He) to the one who has been guided by this Law when he reaches the utmost limit of the strength of his intellect and the validity of his discrimination, such that he longs in attaining to the pleasure of God and ascending in the degrees of the virtues toward Him, and has emptied his heart of the cares of this world and its distractions.
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As for the things by which the human being attains to the goal of the rational awakening, they are the realization of what God has planted in the intellects of the speaking beings — such as the appreciation of truthfulness and the abhorring of falsehood, the preference for justice, the repulsion from injustice, the requiting of the beneficent with beneficence and thankfulness to them, the requiting of the maleficent with harm and blame toward them, making peace with people and the bestowal of good upon them, the balancing of blessings with praise, of good deeds with reward, of evil deeds with punishment, of one reward over another, of one punishment over another, and the pardoning of sinners upon the truthfulness of their repentance.
When these forms of knowledge become valid in the soul of
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his intellect is sound and his discernment strong.
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Whoever God has inspired with the road of his rightness, he stirs up the thoughts of his soul and his cogitation to acquiring the blessings of God upon him, and strengthens his discernment of them.
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When he aspires to seize them and acquire them by his intellect, but this is not possible for him on account of their generality, multiplicity, perpetuity, and continuity,
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he demands of his soul that which has been verified in his intellect as the requirement — the requiting of those who do good with good, and the preference for justice —
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and so he chooses the fear of God (exalted be He) over the magnitude of His favors upon him.
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When he sees, with the sight of his heart, his weakness for this, alongside the Creator's freedom-from-need-of-him (exalted be He), submission, abasement, and self-contempt become incumbent on him.
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Then he demands of his intellect: by what acts may nearness and proximity to God be valid for him, in compensation for the requital of Him? — and his intellect awakens him to the road of rightness in this.
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The intellect says to the soul: Have you been validly established in your certainty that you are pledged to the blessings of your Creator, owned by Him on account of the abundance of His beneficence and the magnitude of His favors?
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**The soul says:** Yes.
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The intellect says to her: And is your way to render up something of what is incumbent upon you for God?
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**The soul says:** Yes.
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The intellect says to her: And how is that to be validly established for you, given the slackness of your longing for it? — for none endures the bitterness of medicine except one who longs for health; whoever does not long for health does not endure the labor of treatment.
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**The soul says:** Indeed my longing is firm and my disquiet is sharp to render up what I am able of the right of my Lord upon me. Now add to my reinforcement.
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The intellect says to her: If you are truthful in what you have described, the treatment may well succeed in you.
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But if the matter is otherwise than what you have said, you have deceived nothing but your own soul;
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for when the sick man lies to the physician, it is only his soul he cheats — he wearies the physician without profit, and his disease redoubles upon him.
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**The soul says:** And how shall my longing for this be validated, or my slackness in it [be diagnosed]?
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The intellect says to her: If your longing for this is by knowledge and certainty of the magnitude of what is incumbent on you toward God of requital, and of the smallness of what is within your capacity from it, and of the fact that in slackness in it is your destruction and ruin, and in your striving in it is your success and life — then your longing is truthful and your eagerness is firm. Otherwise, it is a lie.
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**The soul says:** My eagerness has been slack and my longing false from the time that the prior traces of past days awakened me — until the validity of what you have mentioned became plain to me by the way of knowledge. So I verified it first by the way of scriptural awakening, then by the way of rational evidence; and so my longing has come back as truthful and my eagerness as established.
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The intellect says to her: If what you have said is true, endure the labor of treatment, and bear the bitterness of the medicine and its ugliness, after the cutting off of the bad nourishment to which you have become accustomed.
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**The soul says:** And what is the bad nourishment that I have become accustomed to and grown familiar with?
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The intellect says: It is the blameworthy trait that has overcome you from the beginning of your matter, and the substances that strengthen it from the beginning of your growing-up.
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**The soul says:** And which of the traits is this trait, and what are the substances that strengthen it?
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The intellect says: As for the blameworthy traits in you, they are many — but their root and origin are two traits.
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**One of them** is the love of the corporeal pleasures of food, drink, intercourse, and the rest of the demands of your body;
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this trait you have acquired from your evil neighbor with whom you became familiar — namely, your body.
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**The second trait** is the love of authority, of distinction, vainglory, arrogance, swagger, and disdain —
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which carries you to a paucity of fairness toward the Lord of the blessing with you;
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this trait is acquired in you from your neighbors among whom you grew up — I mean your brothers and your kin.
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**The soul says:** And what are the substances that need to be cut off from me?
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The intellect says: As for the substances of the first trait — they are the superfluities of food, drink, clothing, sleep, rest, recreation, and the like.
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As for the substances of the second trait — they are the superfluities of speech, an abundance of mixing with people and adorning oneself for them, love of praise and honor from them, competition with them in worldly gains and overcoming them in what is in their hands, contempt for them, retaining their faults, and the like.
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If what you have described of your longing and your eagerness to render up the right of God's blessings upon you is truthful, repel from yourself what I have mentioned of the substances and traits by all your effort; then I shall raise you to another gate of the treatment.
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**The soul says:** Separating from this is difficult for me, on account of the length of my familiarity with it — but guide me to the way of easing this for me.
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The intellect says: Do you not know that the intelligent one finds it easy to cut off a limb of his limbs, or to lose one of his organs, when there has befallen him in it an injury whose spreading to the rest of his limbs he fears — when he has set between the two states and parsed out between the two injuries? Likewise, if you wish to ease the parting from what is difficult to part from for you, gather your heart
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and employ your mind in weighing what lies between the excellence that will accrue to you upon parting from it and the baseness that is yours upon the persisting of the familiarity —
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and at that, the parting from what is difficult of your blameworthy traits will be made easy for you.
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**The soul says:** And what is the excellence that I attain on parting from it, and what is the baseness that is mine on its persisting?
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The intellect says: As for the excellence — it is the quiet of your soul, her rest from the darkness of the turbidity of this house, the spoiler of its pleasures, the cutter-off of its appetites — and following on that, the strengthening of your discernment of the house of your stability, the striving for it, the busying of yourself with it. And this is one of the gates of the excellences by which your deliverance and your life come.
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As for the baseness — it is the continuity of your care, the redoubling of your sorrow, the perpetuity of your grief at the going-by of what you sought in this house, [a sought that] — even if you reached it — would have produced for you only a vapor that has no abiding and no stability with it, since it is passing to another inevitably. So you have no this-world that abides in your hand and no next-world that accrues to you. How shall it be then if you do not even reach what you sought from it, in spite of the length of your striving for it?
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**The soul says:** I have understood what you have mentioned; and I hope that, by it, the parting from what was difficult before this will be eased upon me, God willing — yet add for me a second gate among the aspects of the treatment, which will guide me to what I have hoped for from obedience to my Lord.
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The intellect says: The kingpin of the matter, and the sum of the intent, is that you bind yourself to the One above you in all that you would have one below you bind himself to you, when there has been a disparity
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in the ranks. Whatever you approve from him, and disapprove from his action — bind yourself to the like of it toward your Creator.
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**The soul says:** Add for me explication and clarity.
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The intellect says: Acquire the blessings of God (exalted be He) upon you in what He has included you with others by, and in what He has singled you out by. Then imagine that you yourself have bestowed the like of these upon a slave of yours. The aspects you approve from him toward you, bind yourself to them toward your Creator; what you would find ugly from him toward you, find ugly within yourself toward your Creator.
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**The soul says:** I have understood what you have mentioned to me in summary; bestow upon me its detailed explication.
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The intellect says: The matters that are approved from one of the slaves of the people of this world, that he should walk by them in the presence of his master when he has accorded him some of the beauty that your Lord has accorded you — among them: marking off his servitude to his master by his speech and his act, sincere counsel and exertion for him in his outward and inward, fear and dread of him for the length of his standing in his presence, as one of the righteous said: "Do not disobey your master, for He is seeing you."
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And among them: humility and submission to his master in the outward of his actions and the inward of his secret-self, abasement before him in his bearing and his traits, magnification and reverence for him by his tongue and his firm conviction, praise and thanksgiving to him in his night and his day, the spreading abroad of his blessing in his secret and his open, mention of his beauties and praise of him by what he is worthy of, hastening to his obedience by openhandedness of soul and love for what makes him pleasing in his sight as a coming-near to his satisfaction, perpetual supplication to him for his satisfaction with him and the forgiving of his offense, love of him, fear of falling-short in what he has been charged with, halting at his command, ceasing from what he has prohibited, repeated turning to the offenses that have passed for him, magnifying
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his blessing and holding it great, holding his own deed in contempt next to what is obligatory for him, holding his own efforts slight in proportion to what he owes, confessing his own small worth in his eyes before the majesty of his master in his soul. Let him multiply prostration and bowing before him, leaning before him in self-effacement and submission. Let him rely on him in all his needs, and find satisfaction in every state to which he transfers him — if he sates him, with praise and thanksgiving; if he starves him, with satisfaction and patience. Let him not impugn him in his judgment, nor charge him with oppression in his decree; let him content himself, from his master, with what he confers upon him; let him be true to him at the time of his trial.
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And among what is beautiful from him is to manifest the traces of slaveholding and servitude upon him in all the motions of his limbs and his traits —
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he speaks only in remembrance of his master, turns only to his traces, hears only his reports, tastes only what he provides, thinks only on his majesty, rejoices only in his good pleasure, is glad only at his obedience, summons only his satisfaction, runs only in his message, halts only from his disobedience, sits only in his house, rises only in his counsel, reads only in his book, dons only the garment of his awe, sleeps only on the bed of his love, imagines only his form, awakens only by the sweetness of his remembrance, finds company only with him, flees only from his disobedience, sorrows only at his anger, fears only his reproof, hopes only for his bounty, is angry only at what makes him pleased, is pleased only with one who has pleased him, takes only by his view, gives only to one whom he has marked out —
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and likewise in all his motions: he does not move a foot, does not blink with a glance, except after the conformity of his master's satisfaction with him in it.
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As for the matters that are ugly from the slave, they are the contrary of all that his master approves from him; by their opposites things are discriminated.
I have gathered for you
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I have gathered for you of them a sum sufficient to indicate to you the rest of them and their opposites.
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If, then, the slaves of the people of this world should have approved from them, toward their masters, the like of what we have described — and you know the small worth of their blessing before them — how much, then, are you bound toward God (exalted be He) of the like of what we have described, when you have dealt fairly with Him from yourself for the magnitude of His blessing before you?
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Section Six.
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The soul says: I have understood what you have mentioned, and what you have set forth is sufficient. But explain to me upon how many aspects the differential excellence of obedience to God (exalted be He) is incumbent upon me.
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The intellect says: The differential excellence of obedience over its bearers varies by the way of generality and particularity of blessing toward them. The blessing upon rational beings is of four kinds.
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**The first kind** of them is God's blessing upon all people in general — namely, their being brought into existence after they were not an existing thing; their being made alive; the bestowing of the bounty upon them of the totality whose mention has gone before in the Second Gate of this book. That is why an obedience is incumbent upon them toward God, a general one — namely the totality of the rational laws by which Adam, Enoch, Noah and his sons, Job and his companions ran, until the era of Moses (peace be upon him). Whoever has bound himself to them in their completeness, in obedience to God, God has bestowed upon him a great blessing beyond the rest of the people, and has singled him out by an additional obedience in this world and an abundant reward for it in the next world — like Abraham, to whom God said: "Fear not, Abram, I am a shield to you,
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your reward shall be exceedingly great" (Genesis 15:1).
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Whoever has disobeyed God in His blessing has fallen from the rank of the rational beings and their excellences to the bottom of the rank of the non-rational animal, and his judgment in this world was the judgment of brutes, as he said: "The enemies of the Lord shall be as the prizing of the lambs" (Psalms 37:20); and his judgment in the next world is the greatest of affliction, as He said: "Your breath is a fire that will consume you" (Isaiah 33:11).
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**The second kind**: God's blessing upon a tribe among the tribes and a nation among the nations — such as what He bestowed upon the Children of Israel in their being brought out of Egypt and their being brought into the lands of Syria. The Maker (exalted be He) bound them, for this, to an obedience added upon the first obedience — namely, the heard-revealed laws — after His emphatic confirmation of the rational laws and His awakening upon them. Whoever bound himself to them for the sake of God (exalted be He), God singled him out by a blessing for which He bound him to an obedience besides the obedience of his nation and the rest of his tribe — such as we find with the tribe of Levi, when Moses (peace be upon him) said: "Whoever is for the Lord, to me!" and all the sons of Levi gathered to him (Exodus 32:26). God preferred them by an abundant blessing, and singled out from them, for the service of the place of His light, Aaron and his sons, and commanded them with laws added upon the rest of the community — and with the abundant reward of the next world. Whoever of them disobeyed God fell from the two ranks and was punished in both houses, as the Wise One said: "And it shall not be well with the wicked, nor shall he prolong his days, like a shadow which is no shadow, because he does not fear before God" (Ecclesiastes 8:13).
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**The third kind**: God's blessing upon a clan from among the clans of the nation — such as the priests and the Levites and the seed of kingship — I mean the House of David (peace be upon him) — and His having bound them, accordingly, to obediences. As for the laws of the priesthood and the Levitical service, they are known and clear in the Book of God. As for the laws of the House of David: the Book's saying — "O House of David, thus said the Lord: judge justly in the morning, and deliver the despoiled from the hand of the oppressor"
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deliver the despoiled from the hand of the oppressor"
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Whoever has perfected them, seeking the satisfaction of God, God has singled him out by a blessing in this world and an abundant reward in the next world. He becomes a chosen prophet, or a guided friend [of God], as the Book said concerning Pinhas: "Then Pinhas stood up and executed judgment, and the plague was stayed; and it was counted to him for righteousness, from generation to generation, forever" (Psalms 106:30–31), and He said: "The priests, the Levites, the sons of Zadok, who kept the charge of My sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from Me — they shall draw near to Me to serve Me" (Ezekiel 44:15). Whoever of them disobeyed God by it fell from the totality of the high ranks in this world and obtained painful torment in the next world, as you have come to know from the case of Korah and his followers.
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**The fourth kind**: God's blessing upon a person among the persons of the people, special to him beyond the rest of his clan and his tribe and the rest of the rational beings — such as a chosen prophet, or a friend [of God] appointed as successor for the management of the nation, or a wise man inspired with knowledge, understanding, and counsel, and the like. For every blessing among these, an additional obedience to God (mighty and exalted) is incumbent upon him.
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Whoever has rendered them up — for him is the perpetuity of the totality of the general and particular blessings in this world, and God adds to him strength for it and insight into it — as He said: "The Lord has sworn to David in truth, He will not turn back from it: 'Of the fruit of your body I will set upon your throne; if your sons keep My covenant and My testimony that I will teach them, their sons also forever shall sit upon your throne'" (Psalms 132:11–12). And the abundant reward in the next world, as the Friend said: "If I had not believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!" (Psalms 27:13).
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Whoever has disobeyed God in the blessing with which He singled him out has fallen from the totality of the excellences; the reckoning upon him is the more severe in this world, as He said: "This is what the Lord has spoken, saying: 'I will be sanctified through those near to Me, and before all the people I will be honored'; and Aaron held his peace" (Leviticus 10:3), and He said: "Only you have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities" (Amos 3:2). The punishment upon him in the next world is the more emphatic, as He said: "For Tophet is ordained of old, indeed for the king it is prepared" (Isaiah 30:33).
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By these four kinds, obedience to God is incumbent upon the people. For every blessing God adds upon the human, an obedience for it is incumbent. The evidence for this is that the tithes attach to grain-products, as it is said: "You shall tithe diligently all the produce of your seed" (Deuteronomy 14:22). Whoever God has blessed with a hundred *mudd* of food owes from it ten *mudd* to God; whoever God has blessed with ten *mudd* owes to God a single *mudd*. If the first surrenders to God nine-and-a-half *mudd* and the second surrenders to God a single complete *mudd*, the first deserves the punishment and the second the reward.
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Likewise the speech concerning one who has not been granted a child: the obligations of his circumcision and teaching him the Book of God fall from him. So too whoever is lame — the obligations of pilgrimage fall from him; whoever is sick — there fall from him among the commands of the Law what he has no capacity for. By this analogy, whoever God has singled out by an added blessing is bound by an added obedience and worship in thanksgiving for it.
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That is why the most excellent of the early ones used to fear when a blessing among God's blessings in this world came upon them, and would dread it on two grounds: **first**, fear of falling short in rendering up the obedience for it and thanksgiving for it, so that it might become a burden upon them in the next world, as the Friend said: "I have become small by reason of all the kindnesses and all the truth You have done to Your servant" (Genesis 32:11). **And the second ground:** wariness lest [their blessing] be God's recompense (exalted be He) for their obedience to Him, so that thereby the reward of their works would be diminished at the return, as the early ones explained "[He] requites those who hate Him to His face, to destroy them" — and in this is sufficiency for you.
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**The soul says:** I have understood what you have mentioned. I do not find myself able to render up the rights of God for the general blessing toward the rational beings, much less for what He has singled me out from it. Even if there is in me eagerness and zeal for
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the performance of an obligation for it, what occurs to my imagination first at the time of its execution is the hope of new blessings from Him; likewise in my thanksgiving to God when I thank Him: I thank Him with my expression for the great blessing He has bestowed upon me, but my care and intent in thanksgiving is the calling-forth of the continuity of the blessing and the increase from it — not the renunciation of increase or perpetuity. If I am at the like of this in my obedience and my thanksgiving to God (exalted be He), out of paucity of purification toward the right of His blessing, what road have I to rendering up the rest of my obedience for the particularities of His blessing upon me? Guide me, then, to the minimum that is binding upon me of obedience to God for it, by which I may earn the perpetuity of it.
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The intellect says: As for what you have complained of, of the paucity of your purification in your obedience and your thanksgiving to your Lord, and that your expression is the expression of one who gives thanks but your intent in it the intent of one craving, and that within your inward is the increase from the blessing and the desire for its perpetuity — this is for three failings.
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**The first** is the intensity of your love for yourself and your eagerness to draw the blessings to her; you do not move a foot toward obedience to God or to obedience of anyone other than Him except that your intent is the enjoyment by pleasures. I have set down for you at the beginning of my treatment of you that you should strive with all your effort in the rejection of this blameworthy trait from yourself; by that I hope for the setting-right of you.
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**The second failing** — your ignorance of the bounty of the Creator (exalted be He) upon you, so that it falls to your imagination that you will not reach His blessing except by craving it from Him. He has already bestowed bounty upon you of what is in your knowledge and of what is not in your knowledge — and you do not consider the desire of the one who first did this for you. Would you not — had you repelled this imagination from yourself — have purified your obedience and your thanksgiving to Him in your inward, and would not what you hope for have become more emphatic and more obligatory for you on account of this?
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**The third failing** — your ignorance of yourself and the state of her management. You see her as worthy of the highest of blessings, and never cease being eager for them; whenever something of them reaches you, your ambition aspires to what is beyond, and you do not see the Creator (exalted be He) as worthy of the most emphatic of obediences. So that, if there be obedience from you, you reckon it as a favor from you toward Him — what is your knowledge of your poverty for Him and His freedom-from-need-of-you? If you removed this ignorance from yourself, and looked with the clear eye, and knew that the Creator (exalted be He) who created you is more solicitous for you than yourself, and more knowing of what is right for you of blessings and what is not right, you would be satisfied and content with what comes to you of them; and your thanksgiving to Him for them would grow great in purification, and you would not attach your hope to what would distract you from discriminating what came to you of them and rendering up the right of God for them. What you have not been worthy of, you must inevitably attain to when you have earned it by your obedience — not when you have hoped for it by attaching your ambition.
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Section Seven.
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As for what you have asked concerning the minimum that is incumbent toward God (exalted be He) of obedience by which the perpetuity of His blessing upon the human is earned — there are ten concepts.
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**Among them**: that he should not make [the blessing] a cause of disobedience to Him.
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**Among them**: that he should mention the blessing of God upon him with his tongue, and multiply for it praise and thanksgiving in his heart and the outward of his expression.
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**Among them**: that he should not deny it nor reckon it too little.
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**Among them**: that he should not attribute it to other than God if it was at the hand of an intermediary — thanking the intermediaries and being heedless of thanksgiving to God for it.
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**Among them**: that he should not boast in it and let it fall to his imagination that he has taken it by his strength and his subtlety, or by his desert of it.
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**Among them**: that it should not fall to his imagination that he perpetuates it by his prudence, and that it perishes from him
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Whoever has rendered them up — for him is the perpetuity of the totality of the general and particular blessings in this world, and God adds to him strength for it and insight into it — as He said: "The Lord has sworn to David in truth, He will not turn back from it: 'Of the fruit of your body I will set upon your throne; if your sons keep My covenant and My testimony that I will teach them, their sons also forever shall sit upon your throne'" (Psalms 132:11–12). And the abundant reward in the next world, as the Friend said: "If I had not believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!" (Psalms 27:13).
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Whoever has disobeyed God in the blessing with which He singled him out has fallen from the totality of the excellences; the reckoning upon him is the more severe in this world, as He said: "This is what the Lord has spoken, saying: 'I will be sanctified through those near to Me, and before all the people I will be honored'; and Aaron held his peace" (Leviticus 10:3), and He said: "Only you have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities" (Amos 3:2). The punishment upon him in the next world is the more emphatic, as He said: "For Tophet is ordained of old, indeed for the king it is prepared" (Isaiah 30:33).
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By these four kinds, obedience to God is incumbent upon the people. For every blessing God adds upon the human, an obedience for it is incumbent. The evidence for this is that the tithes attach to grain-products, as it is said: "You shall tithe diligently all the produce of your seed" (Deuteronomy 14:22). Whoever God has blessed with a hundred *mudd* of food owes from it ten *mudd* to God; whoever God has blessed with ten *mudd* owes to God a single *mudd*. If the first surrenders to God nine-and-a-half *mudd* and the second surrenders to God a single complete *mudd*, the first deserves the punishment and the second the reward.
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Likewise the speech concerning one who has not been granted a child: the obligations of his circumcision and teaching him the Book of God fall from him. So too whoever is lame — the obligations of pilgrimage fall from him; whoever is sick — there fall from him among the commands of the Law what he has no capacity for. By this analogy, whoever God has singled out by an added blessing is bound by an added obedience and worship in thanksgiving for it.
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**Chapter Eight.**
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That is why the most excellent of the early ones used to fear when a blessing among God's blessings in this world came upon them, and would dread it on two grounds: **first**, fear of falling short in rendering up the obedience for it and thanksgiving for it, so that it might become a burden upon them in the next world, as the Friend said: "I have become small by reason of all the kindnesses and all the truth You have done to Your servant" (Genesis 32:11). **And the second ground:** wariness lest [their blessing] be God's recompense (exalted be He) for their obedience to Him, so that thereby the reward of their works would be diminished at the return, as the early ones explained "[He] requites those who hate Him to His face, to destroy them" — and in this is sufficiency for you.
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**The soul says:** I have understood what you have mentioned. I do not find myself able to render up the rights of God for the general blessing toward the rational beings, much less for what He has singled me out from it. Even if there is in me eagerness and zeal for the performance of an obligation for it, what occurs to my imagination first at the time of its execution is the hope of new blessings from Him; likewise in my thanksgiving to God when I thank Him: I thank Him with my expression for the great blessing He has bestowed upon me, but my care and intent in thanksgiving is the calling-forth of the continuity of the blessing and the increase from it — not the renunciation of increase or perpetuity. If I am at the like of this in my obedience and my thanksgiving to God (exalted be He), out of paucity of purification toward the right of His blessing, what road have I to rendering up the rest of my obedience for the particularities of His blessing upon me? Guide me, then, to the minimum that is binding upon me of obedience to God for it, by which I may earn the perpetuity of it.
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The intellect says: As for what you have complained of, of the paucity of your purification in your obedience and your thanksgiving to your Lord, and that your expression is the expression of one who gives thanks but your intent in it the intent of one craving, and that within your inward is the increase from the blessing and the desire for its perpetuity — this is for three failings. **The first** is the intensity of your love for yourself and your eagerness to draw the blessings to her; you do not move a foot toward obedience to God or to obedience of anyone other than Him except that your intent is the enjoyment by pleasures. I have set down for you at the beginning of my treatment of you that you should strive with all your effort in the rejection of this blameworthy trait from yourself; by that I hope for the setting-right of you. **The second failing** — your ignorance of the bounty of the Creator (exalted be He) upon you, so that it falls to your imagination that you will not reach His blessing except by craving it from Him. He has already bestowed bounty upon you of what is in your knowledge and of what is not in your knowledge — and you do not consider the desire of the one who first did this for you. Would you not — had you repelled this imagination from yourself — have purified your obedience and your thanksgiving to Him in your inward, and would not what you hope for have become more emphatic and more obligatory for you on account of this?
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**The third failing** — your ignorance of yourself and the state of her management. You see her as worthy of the highest of blessings, and never cease being eager for them; whenever something of them reaches you, your ambition aspires to what is beyond, and you do not see the Creator (exalted be He) as worthy of the most emphatic of obediences. So that, if there be obedience from you, you reckon it as a favor from you toward Him — what is your knowledge of your poverty for Him and His freedom-from-need-of-you? If you removed this ignorance from yourself, and looked with the clear eye, and knew that the Creator (exalted be He) who created you is more solicitous for you than yourself, and more knowing of what is right for you of blessings and what is not right, you would be satisfied and content with what comes to you of them; and your thanksgiving to Him for them would grow great in purification, and you would not attach your hope to what would distract you from discriminating what came to you of them and rendering up the right of God for them. What you have not been worthy of, you must inevitably attain to when you have earned it by your obedience — not when you have hoped for it by attaching your ambition.
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As for what you have asked concerning the minimum that is incumbent toward God (exalted be He) of obedience by which the perpetuity of His blessing upon the human is earned — there are ten concepts.
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**Among them**: that he should not make [the blessing] a cause of disobedience to Him.
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**Among them**: that he should mention the blessing of God upon him with his tongue, and multiply for it praise and thanksgiving in his heart and the outward of his expression.
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**Among them**: that he should not deny it nor reckon it too little.
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**Among them**: that he should not attribute it to other than God if it was at the hand of an intermediary — thanking the intermediaries and being heedless of thanksgiving to God for it.
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**Among them**: that he should not boast in it and let it fall to his imagination that he has taken it by his strength and his subtlety, or by his desert of it.
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**Among them**: that it should not fall to his imagination that he perpetuates it by his prudence, and that it perishes from him when he is heedless and squanders it.
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**Among them**: that he should not despise the one deprived of these blessings, seeing himself as more excellent than him before God — for perhaps it is a trial from God for him, that there may appear what is hidden in him of evil inwardness, by which he may be deceived. So whoever is deprived [of it] may be more excellent before God than he.
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**Among them**: that he should purify his inward, his purification toward God, and his humility toward Him; though he has not added to his action upon what was earlier, and has not added to his thanksgiving and praise — let him be, in the state of [the blessing's] perpetuity, as he was. Let him strive in the purification of his inward at the time of his action for God, and let the blessing not be a cause of falling-short in his earlier action or distracting his mind from the increase in purification toward God.
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**Among them**: that his eye be always toward one who is below him in the multitude of blessings, not to one who is above him in them. So too it is fitting for him that his eye be always toward one who has more obedience to God (exalted be He) than himself, that he might aspire to climb to his rank — and not turn to one who has less obedience to God than himself, so as to be self-satisfied with his act and grow heedless concerning it.
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**Among them**: that he should not be deceived by the length of God's covering over him and His being patient with him, so that he is safe from His displeasure and disobeys Him. For everyone whose report has reached us from the past, and whom we have witnessed in the present, of those upon whom God bestowed blessings of various kinds and who turned from obedience to God to His disobedience — nothing entered upon them but what I have described to you. This is well-known from the books of the prophets of every era. These are the totality of the corrupters of this Third Gate, whose intent we have set out in the explication of the aspects of binding oneself to obedience to God (exalted be He).
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Whoever has not been able to increase in obedience to God when His blessing increases, and has been able to bind himself to what I have described to you for the sake of God (exalted be He) — he deserves the perpetuity of the blessing special to him. If [the blessing] is stripped from him, it is for one of two causes: either as a purging of a prior offense in him, or as a compensation in the house of permanence with what is loftier and more sublime and more ample by far.
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**Chapter Nine.**
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**The soul says:** You have treated and you have healed; you have admonished, and you have fulfilled; you have come forth with your light, and you have lifted the darkness of ignorance from me. Yet there remains upon me, from the corrupters of obedience to God, one aspect — and if you heal me from its sickness and lift its concern from me, I shall be saved from the worst of diseases, and shall be on the brink of recovery from all my sicknesses.
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he was prevented from everything he had built and acquired, anciently or recently. At his going out he found nothing of what had been his in the city or outside; he remained regretful and grieving over his striving and his exertion at what he had built, gathered, and lost to another.
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Then the people of that city happened to approve of a foreigner who was possessed of inwardness and understanding. When he held rule over them, he singled out a man among them, treated him well, and dealt subtly with him;
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then he asked him about the secret of the folk and their custom with whoever had held rule over them before him. He uncovered for him their matter, their secret, and their school.
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When he knew this from them, he occupied himself with nothing of what the first occupied himself with, but rather strove and exerted himself in bringing out every precious item from that city to another city.
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He made his treasures and important commodities in some other city, and did not find comfort in their honor and reverence for him.
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He was, the whole length of his sojourn in the city, between sorrow and joy: as for his sorrow, it was on account of the swiftness of his going out from it and his reckoning small what he was able to bring out from it of useful things — had his standing in it been long, he might have increased in this.
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As for his joy, it was at the swiftness of his going out from the city, that he might settle in the place where he had placed his treasures, and employ them in the aspects of his benefits and the kinds of his pleasures, with prosperity of mind, quiet of soul, and continuity of state.
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So when his year ran out, his going out from them did not grieve him; rather, he hastened to it with openhandedness of soul and a clear face, thankful for his striving, praising himself for his action —
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and he reached the most ample blessing, the most complete dignity, and the most perfect honor in continual joy. He was envied in both states, and attained his hope in both houses.
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And I fear that my state may be the state of the ignorant one, who was miserable in both houses and lost the two stations.
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Since God has now bestowed bounty upon me through you, guide me and give me insight into my state, and what I have stood upon of the secret of my matter and the aspects of my welfare.
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The intellect says: You have described, in what you have likened,
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the form of your station in this world; your state in it is the state of the ones I have described among the kings. Your foreignness and the swiftness of your reversal have now been validated for you — so do as the man of inwardness and understanding did, that your state may be like his.
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If you turn aside from this, there is no benefit for you in my discourse and no profit in my speech to you.
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The soul says: Were it not for my eagerness for this, I would not have investigated what is hidden from me of my matter.
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The intellect says: As for the secret of your matter: the Creator (exalted be He) created you not from a thing — out of the totality of what He created of the spiritual substances. He wished to ennoble you and raise your rank to the ranks of His chosen ones and the pure of His drawn-near to His light — as bounty upon you and beneficence to you.
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You were not worthy of this except after three things:
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the first, the uncovering of the veil of ignorance from you and your being illumined by knowing Him;
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the second, your trial and testing by your own choice — for His obedience or for His disobedience;
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the third, your disciplining in this house and your patience over the burden of His servitude in it, that He might raise you to the rank of the lofty ones and the patient, of whom the Friend said: "Bless the Lord, His angels, mighty in strength, doers of His word, hearkening to the voice of His word" (Psalms 103:20).
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This was not possible in you while you were in your first state.
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So it was from the wisdom of the Creator (exalted be He) that He created for you this world, with everything it contains of mineral, plant, and animal, by the most firmly-knit order and the soundest management — made ready for your welfares.
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Then He extracted for you, from the pure of its elements, a firmly-built temple, resembling the world in its roots, its branches, and its form.
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Then He opened in it for you five gates to the [outer] world, and arranged in them five gatekeepers of His trusted ones —
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as for the gates, they are the instruments of the senses, which are the two eyes, the two ears, the nose,
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the tongue, and the two hands.
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as for the gatekeepers, they are the five senses employed in them, namely the sense of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch — by which you reach all your welfares in this world.
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Then He prepared for you, inside that temple, four quarters for the four officers that manage it: the brain, the heart, the liver, and the testes.
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Then He arranged inside it also four storehouses for four stewards — I mean the attractive power, the retentive power, the digestive power, and the expulsive power; their storehouses and dwellings are the two biles, the black bile and the yellow bile, the phlegm and the blood, for the welfares of the temple.
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Then He distributed the household inside it and outside it for its preservation and protection:
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as for those inside, such as the entrails, the vessels, the muscles, the nerves, and the arteries;
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as for those outside, the two hands, the two feet, the tongue, the genitals, the nails, the teeth, and the like.
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Then He prepared for you in it bindings and intermediaries between the spiritual and the corporeal — namely the blood, the innate heat, and the animal spirit.
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Then He bound you to this temple by a firmly-knit binding and an arranged tether by His power (exalted be He) and His wisdom, that the three things that I have mentioned to you might be perfected for you in it.
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Then He arranged for you, in your inner court, two viziers, and set over you two scribes, and gave you of the retainers and the agents in your presence according to your need in this house.
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As for the two viziers, one of them is the intellect, who guides you to what is the satisfaction of God with you;
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as for the second vizier, it is your passion, which leads you astray and carries you to what displeases God your Creator.
As for the two scribes, one of them is the scribe of your good deeds — what comes from you in secret and openly, inward and outward, by the hands of the agents employed in them, from all the previously mentioned gatekeepers, officers, agents, retainers
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the viziers, slaves, and acting-men; the second scribe is the scribe of the bad deeds, on the model of what was mentioned with the good deeds.
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As for the slaves and the acting-men, they are the traits of the soul — such as joy, care, gladness, sorrow, remembrance, forgetting, knowledge, ignorance, courage, cowardice, oppression, justice, shame, audacity, hope, despair, love, hatred, pleasure, pain, vainglory, humility, sovereignty, abasement — and many like these that you employ in the inward of your matter.
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Then the Creator (exalted be He) covenanted with the gatekeepers, officers, agents, retainers, viziers, slaves, and acting-men to be led by you and halt at your command for a fixed term, except in particular matters that He has explained to them at the time of their binding-to-you — and this is the concept of compulsion and the place of predestination.
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Then He released to you the deployment of all of them in the welfares of your body, and in all that has been delegated to you to use in this world — in known aspects and particular matters, namely the totality of the rational laws, the heard laws, and the permitted.
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And He said to you: All that I have committed to you and delegated its deployment to you in this world — do not be deceived by it;
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for it does not add a thing to your essence, nor does it diminish it; no pleasure or pain reaches you from it.
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They are only things passing upon your body from inside or outside it; nothing of it is special to you.
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Its placement in you is the placement of the afterbirth from the newborn, the placement of the shell of the egg from the chick.
If you have discriminated from Me and understood My intent in you and My blessing upon you, and have chosen My obedience and ceased from My disobedience in
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the management of all I have committed to you — I command your being joined to the loftiest degree of My pure ones and My chosen ones; I bring you near to My mercy and clothe you with the light of My honor.
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If you have preferred My disobedience, I shall punish you with the most severe of punishments and the longest of torments.
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If you are ignorant of the aspects of deploying their matter in any of the things I have bound you to the upholding of in My obedience — on account of your preoccupation with your body and its tribulations by which I have tried you —
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I have singled you out by a wise, counseling vizier: if you consult him, he will guide you.
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If you grow heedless, he will awaken you. He is the intellect.
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Consult him in all your matters; he will command you to deploy all who are with you in the aspects of My obedience,
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so that your blameworthy traits return as praiseworthy — as the skilled physician does, who deploys the medicines whose ordinary action is harmful, for the benefit of bodies, like poisons and the like.
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If you are upon this school — in preferring your intellect and taking up his view — the scribe of the good deeds writes the whole of your permitted motions in the totality of your good deeds,
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and they will be an addition to them, and every one who acts for you will be an aid to My obedience.
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But if you contradict his view and incline to the view of the second vizier — opposed to him in all his states —
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and deploy all of them in what he points you to, your praiseworthy traits return as blameworthy, like the ignorant physician who kills with beneficial medicines on account of his ignorance of the aspects of taking them.
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And the scribe of the bad deeds writes the whole of your permitted motions in the totality of your bad deeds, and they will be an addition upon them.
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You will find your helpers, your agents, your slaves, and all you have to do with conforming to you and to your choice — so you will increase in envy and joy.
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But all this is justice from your Creator on account of your preferring His disobedience over His obedience — or His obedience over His disobedience — in your inward and your intent in the inner of your matter;
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for the outer and the inner of you are equal before Him. He
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He requites you according to what He sees of this — even if it is hidden from people. Do you not see that the judge rules according to what is validly established in his sight by witnesses or by his senses; and if what is in the inwards were validly established in his sight, he would rule by it? The Creator (exalted be He) whose knowledge of the whole of this is equal — it is incumbent that He rule by what He knows. That is as the Book said: “The hidden things belong to the Lord our God” (Deuteronomy 29:28).
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When God wishes to awaken you and chasten you, He commands one of those acting for you to turn his care from you, so that limb of your body grows ill, or two limbs, or all of it; he is sick and weakens for a known stretch of time. If you wake up and return to him, He commands him to turn his care back to you; your body is healed and returns to its first state — as the Book said: "Fools, because of the way of their transgression and because of their iniquities, are afflicted; their soul abhors all food, and they draw near to the gates of death; then they cry to the Lord in their distress, and He saves them from their afflictions; He sends out His word and heals them, and rescues them from their corruptions" (Psalms 107:17–20).
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When the term of your trial in this world has passed, the Creator (exalted be He) commands the whole of the agents, the acting-men, the gatekeepers, the household, and the slaves whom we have mentioned to depart from you. The bindings and intermediaries that are between you and your body unwind; you return to your first state. Your body remains with no motion and no sensation, and it also returns to its first state, as the Wise One said: "The dust shall return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it" (Ecclesiastes 12:7).
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The pages of your acts and your thoughts and your choice and what you preferred and busied yourself with in your this-world are presented before you; the requital falls accordingly from the Creator (exalted be He) toward you. He has emphatically confirmed this for you, and warned and again warned by the hand of His messengers, His prophets, and His truthful Book, as the Friend (peace be upon him) said: "Incline your ear and hear the words of the wise, and apply your heart to my knowledge; for it is pleasant if you keep them in your inward parts, that they may be ready together upon your lips. So that your trust may be in the Lord, I have made known to you this day, even you. Have I not written to you excellent things in counsels and knowledge, to make you know the certainty of the words of truth, that you might bring back words of truth to those who send you?" (Proverbs 22:17–21).
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"Incline your ear and hear the words of the wise, and apply your heart to my knowledge; for it is pleasant if you keep them in your inward parts, that they may be ready together upon your lips. So that your trust may be in the Lord, I have made known to you this day, even you. Have I not written to you excellent things in counsels and knowledge, to make you know the certainty of the words of truth, that you might bring back words of truth to those who send you?" (Proverbs 22:17–21).
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**The Tenth Chapter.**
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**The soul says:** I have understood your discourse and remembered the whole of what you have mentioned. Now I am pleading at the noble of your good qualities — that you make clear for me the proper deployments of the praiseworthy and blameworthy among my traits, which, if I deploy in their proper places, I shall be praised for, and thanked for my employing them in them.
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The intellect says: Your traits are many — but I shall mention what is at hand to me, in brief. **In your traits are two traits**: joy and sorrow — and they are contraries. The proper deployment of joy: when you are at home with an enduring, perpetual pleasure that is not muddied by spoiling and that no injury overtakes — let loose this trait.
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As for the place of the deployment of sorrow: when an enduring, perpetual distressing matter comes to you in which you have no contrivance for warding off and no aspect for parting with — let loose the trait of sorrow at that, and employ it.
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**Among your traits are two traits**: fear and hope. The place of fear is when your state leads to a state that disquiets you, whose outcome does not conform to you, and you have no power or capacity to repel it from yourself.
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The place of hope is in striving in the antecedents that bring about beneficence to you and the bestowing of blessings upon you, when no preventer prevents this and no cause interposes against it — such as conforming to what God (exalted be He) has commanded to be done, for its beautiful outcome.
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**Among your traits are two traits**: courage and cowardice. The place of the deployment of courage is in setting forth to kill the enemies of God,
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and patience to bear every labor and every trial in the satisfaction of God (exalted be He) and in the satisfaction of His friends, as He said: "For Your sake we are killed all the day; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter" (Psalms 44:23), and He said: "Let the righteous strike me — it is kindness; let him reprove me" (Psalms 141:5).
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As for the place of cowardice: in setting forth to kill the friends of God and the possessors of obedience to Him, and in holding back from confronting those who exhort you with what is your welfare, as He said: "Because your heart was soft, and you were humbled before the Lord" (2 Kings 22:19).
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**Among your traits are two traits**: shame and audacity. The place of shame: at the disobedience of the One who has bestowed blessing upon you, in His presence and before His face; at His reproach of you with His promise and His threat; and at the meeting of His messengers, as He said: "Son of man, declare to the children of Israel the matter of the House [of God], and they shall be ashamed of their iniquities" (Ezekiel 43:10), and He said: "My God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to You, my God" (Ezra 9:6).
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As for the place of the trait of audacity: at the meeting of the transgressor, the people of disobedience, and the masters of discourse among the opponents of the truth; and in commanding the recognized good and forbidding the rejected; at rebuking the disobedient, the chiding of the common people and the elite, as He said: "I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame" (Isaiah 50:7); and He said: "Like adamant, harder than flint, I have made your forehead" (Ezekiel 3:9); and He said: "And I shall speak of Your testimonies before kings, and shall not be ashamed" (Psalms 119:46).
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So too the two traits of contentment and anger. The place of anger: at lack of fairness, going outside the rule of justice, and the preferring of falsehood and its people over the possessors of truth.
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The place of contentment: at placing things in their proper places and ranking them in their proper ranks, and running upon the path of truth in them.
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So too the two traits of mercy and severity. The place of mercy: with the people of want, weakness, and sickness; with those who renounce the world; with the weak of discrimination concerning the aspects of his welfare; with the ignorant
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with the ignorant in the management of his soul; with the captive in the hand of his enemy; with the one deprived of an earlier blessing; with the one regretful of his disobedience to his Lord; with the one weeping over the offenses that have passed for him out of fear of God's punishment.
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As for the place of severity: in taking God's rights from the disobedient, and in vengeance upon the corrupters in the earth, as the Book says: "Your eye shall not pity him" (Deuteronomy 13:9), and He said: "You shall not have mercy and shall not cover him" (Deuteronomy 13:9).
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So too the two traits of pride and humility. The place of pride and disdain: when there come to you the people of ignorance of God and those turned away from Him — do not be humble or submissive to them in such a way that there appears from you confirmation of them and influence-by their corrupt schools; rather, let loose the trait of disdain and pride that indicates the contrary of their view and the paucity of contentment with them — as you know from the story of Mordecai and Haman.
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The place of the deployment of humility: at your meeting one of bounty, righteousness, and pure-belief in God, knowledgeable of His Book, acting by obedience to Him, or one who has on you a blessing and beneficence binding you to its requital — and how much more for the One whose blessing has been too majestic and too great for you to requite Him for it; and likewise at God's taking justice from you, as He said: "Then their uncircumcised heart will be humbled, and then they shall make amends for their iniquity" (Leviticus 26:41).
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So too the two traits of love and hatred. The place of love: let it be for the one who conforms to you in obedience to God, and in what gladdens you in the outcome of your matter.
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The place of hatred: for whoever opposes the satisfaction of God and contends with the people of truth, and leads you to what displeases your Lord against you, as He said: "Those who forsake the Law praise the wicked, but those who keep the Law contend with them" (Proverbs 28:4).
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So too the two traits of generosity and stinginess. The place of generosity: the placing of every thing in its place, and giving every possessor of excellence of knowledge and wealth according to what he is worthy of, as the Friend (peace be upon him) said: "Do not withhold good
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"Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in the power of your hand to do it" (Proverbs 3:27); and he said: "Your fountains shall be dispersed abroad" (Proverbs 5:16).
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As for the place of stinginess: with the people of severity, dullness, and ignorance of their own worth and the worth of the blessing upon them, as He said: "He who reproves a scoffer takes shame for himself, and he who reproves a wicked man — his blemish" (Proverbs 9:7), and our early ones (peace be upon them) said: "Whoever does good to one who does not recognize him is as if he cast a stone at Mercurius" (b. Hullin 133a).
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So too the two traits of indolence and zeal. The place of the deployment of indolence: in the brutish appetites whose pleasure passes from the human and there remains upon him in this world its disgrace and in the next world its punishment.
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As for the place of zeal: in the spiritual pleasures and the actions by which the satisfaction of God (exalted be He) is sought, as the Friend (peace be upon him) said: "I made haste, and did not delay to observe Your commandments" (Psalms 119:60).
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In what I have mentioned in this gate is sufficiency for whoever seeks guidance and asks for the truth for its own sake, and seeks knowledge for its essence.
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May God grant us and you success in what is His obedience, by His mercy.