Aligned sentence by sentence
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Part One · Chapter Forty-Seven — Spatial Prepositions Applied to God
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We have mentioned several times that everything the multitude imagines to be a deficiency, or that cannot be conceived in relation to God, has not been borrowed by the books of prophecy for Him, exalted be He — even if its ruling is the same as the ruling of the things that were borrowed for Him; for those things by which He is described give rise to the impression of some perfection, or at least can be imagined as such.
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It is therefore necessary, on the basis of this account, that we explain why hearing, sight, and smell were borrowed for Him, exalted be He, but taste and touch were not — even though, with respect to His transcendence above the five senses, the ruling is one and the same, since all the senses are deficient as a mode of perception, even for one who perceives only by them, because they are passive, receptive, discontinuous, and susceptible to pain, like all other instruments. When we say that He, exalted be He, is 'seeing' — meaning He perceives visible things — and 'hearing' — meaning He perceives audible things — so likewise one might attribute to Him taste and touch and interpret them as meaning that He perceives flavors and tangible things, since the ruling of perceiving all of them is one; and if perception by one of the senses is denied of Him, then denial of perception by all of them — the five senses — is entailed; and if perception by one of them is affirmed of Him — meaning perception of what a given sense perceives — then it is entailed that He perceives all the objects of all five. Yet we find that our books say 'and the Lord saw,' 'and the Lord heard,' 'and the Lord smelled,' but do not say 'and the Lord tasted,' nor do they say 'and the Lord touched.' The reason for this is what has become settled in everyone's imagination: that God does not encounter bodies as body encounters body, for they in their guidance were told they would not see Him. These two senses — taste and touch — cannot perceive their objects until they make contact with them, whereas the sense of sight, hearing, and smell perceive their objects while the bodies bearing those qualities are at a distance from them, and that was passable in the imagination of the multitude. Furthermore, the purpose and intent of borrowing these senses for Him — to indicate His perception of our actions — is sufficiently served by hearing and sight, meaning by them that He perceives everything another does or says, as they said by way of deterrence and restraint in the context of moral instruction: 'Know what is above you — an eye that sees and an ear that hears' (Avot 2:1).
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You will know, upon careful investigation, that the ruling concerning all of them is one and the same — and that by the very same consideration by which the perception of touch and taste is negated of Him, by that very same consideration the perception of sight, hearing, and smell is also negated, since all of these are corporeal perceptions, passive states, and changeable conditions. Yet some of them appear deficient while others appear to be a perfection, just as the deficiency of imagination became apparent while the deficiency of rational thought and understanding did not. Therefore 'raʿyon' — which is imagination — was not borrowed for Him, but 'maḥshavah' and 'tevunah' — which are rational thought and understanding — were borrowed for Him, and it is said, 'that which the Lord planned' and 'by His understanding He stretched out the heavens' (Jer 10:12). So the matter proceeds with the internal perceptions as it proceeds with the external sensory perceptions — some are borrowed and some are not. All of this is 'the language of human beings': whatever they supposed to be a perfection is attributed to Him; whatever is patently deficient is not attributed to Him. Yet upon deep investigation, there is no real essential attribute belonging to Him beyond His essence, as will be demonstrated.