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Part One · Chapter Ten — Yarad and ʿAlah
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We have already stated that when we mention in this treatise one of these equivocal nouns, it is not our aim to mention every sense in which that noun is used — for this treatise is not on language — but rather to mention, of those senses, only what we need for our purpose, and no more.
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Among these are yarad and ʿalah. Yeridah and ʿaliyyah are nouns laid down in the Hebrew language for descent and ascent. When a body moves from one place to a place lower than it, one says 'it descended' (yarad); and when it moves from one place to a place higher than that place, one says 'it ascended' (ʿalah).
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Then these two nouns were borrowed for majesty and greatness: so when a person's standing sank, one says 'he descended,' and when his standing rose in majesty, one says 'he ascended.' Said the Exalted, 'the stranger in your midst shall mount up above you higher and higher, and you shall come down lower and lower' (Deut 28:43), and so forth.
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And it said, 'and the Lord your God will set you on high above all the nations of the earth' (Deut 28:1); and it said, 'and the Lord magnified Solomon exceedingly on high' (1 Chr 29:25).
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And you know how often they use, 'one raises in holiness and does not lower.'
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And in this manner too it is used for the debasing of one's regard: when a man directs his thought toward a very base matter, it is said that he 'descends'; and likewise, if he directs his thought toward a lofty, sublime matter, it is said he 'ascends.'
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And since we, the company of mankind, are at the lowest of the low in place and in the rank of existence relative to the encompassing sphere, while He, may He be exalted, is at the highest of heights — in the reality of existence, majesty, and greatness, not a loftiness of place — and since He, may He be exalted, willed what He willed, to convey a knowledge from Him and an emanation of revelation upon some of us: He expressed the descent of revelation upon the prophet, or the alighting of the Shekhinah upon a place, by 'descent.'
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And He expressed the lifting of that — the removal of the prophetic state from the person, or the withdrawal of the Shekhinah from the place — by 'ascent.' So every 'descent' and 'ascent' that you find attributed to the Creator, may He be exalted — what is meant by it is only this sense.
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And likewise, when a calamity descends upon a nation or a region by the eternal will — such that the prophetic books preface their account of that calamity by saying that God 'visited' the deeds of those people, and only afterward brought the punishment down upon them — He alludes to this sense too by 'descent,' since man is too lowly for his deeds to be visited and punished, were it not for the [divine] will.
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And this is made clear in the books of prophecy, where it is said, 'what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You take note of him?' (Ps 8:5), and so forth — alluding to this sense.
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Therefore He alluded to this by 'descent,' saying, 'come, let us go down and there confound their language' (Gen 11:7); 'and the Lord came down to see' (Gen 11:5); 'let me go down now and see' (Gen 18:21). And the whole meaning is the alighting of punishment upon the people below.
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As for the first sense — I mean the sense of revelation and of honoring — it is frequent: 'and I will come down and speak with you there' (Num 11:17); 'and the Lord descended upon Mount Sinai' (Exod 19:20); 'the Lord will come down in the sight of all the people' (Exod 19:11); 'and God went up from him' (Gen 35:13); 'and God went up from Abraham' (Gen 17:22).
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As for its saying, 'and Moses went up to God' (Exod 19:3), it is of the third sense, over and above his having also gone up 'to the top of the mountain' upon which the created light descended — not that God, may He be exalted, has a place He ascends to or descends from, exalted be He far above the fancies of the ignorant.