Aligned sentence by sentence
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Part One · Chapter Forty-Three — Kanaf: Wing, Extremity, and the Concealment of Angels
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Kanaf is an equivocal term, and most of its equivocality is by way of metaphorical extension. Its primary use is for the wing of a flying creature: 'every winged bird that flies in the heavens' (Deut 4:17).
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Then it was extended by metaphor to the hems and corners of garments: 'on the four corners of your garment' (Deut 22:12).
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Then it was extended by metaphor to the extreme edges of the inhabited world and its most distant reaches from our location: 'to take hold of the corners of the earth' (Job 38:13); 'from the wing of the earth we have heard songs' (Is 24:16).
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Ibn Janāḥ said that kanaf also comes in the sense of concealment, parallel to the Arabic, in which one says kanaftu al-shayʾ meaning 'I concealed the thing.' He said in his explanation of 'and your teacher shall no longer hide (yikkanef) from you' (Is 30:20): meaning, your guide shall not be concealed from you nor veiled. This is a good interpretation. From this, in my view, is 'and he shall not uncover his father's kanaf' (Deut 22:30) — meaning: he shall not uncover his father's covering. Likewise: 'and you shall spread your kanaf over your handmaid' (Ruth 3:9) — its interpretation in my view is: extend your covering over your handmaid.
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According to this sense, in my view, kanaf was extended by metaphor to the Creator, exalted be He, and likewise to the angels — since the angels are not corporeal in our view, as I shall explain. So His saying, 'who came to take shelter under His wings' (Ruth 2:12), its interpretation is: who came to dwell under His concealment. Likewise, every kanaf that comes with regard to angels means concealment. Only consider His saying: 'with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet' (Is 6:2) — the cause of the angel's existence is very hidden and concealed, and that is its 'face'; likewise, the things whose cause is the angel — which are its 'feet,' as I explained in the equivocal uses of regel — these are also hidden, because the actions of the intellects are hidden and their traces are discernible only after prolonged preparation, for two reasons: on their side and on our side — I mean the weakness of our apprehension and the difficulty of apprehending a Separate being from the standpoint of its reality. As for His saying, 'and with two he soared' — I shall explain in a separate chapter what meaning is intended by attributing the motion of flight to the angels.