Aligned sentence by sentence
· —
Part One · Chapter Five — The Caution Required Before Divine Inquiry
, :
When the chief of the philosophers set about inquiry and reasoning concerning exceedingly obscure matters, he said, by way of apology, words whose import is this:
, , .
that the reader of his books ought not to charge him, in what he investigates, with effrontery, nor with rashly plunging to speak of what he has no knowledge of; rather, he should credit him with the zeal and the diligence to discover and attain sound convictions, so far as is within human power.
: , , , .
And so we too say: a man ought not to plunge into this great and sublime matter at first impulse, without first training his soul in the sciences and forms of knowledge, refining his character with a true refining, and slaying his appetites and his imaginative cravings.
, , , , .
Then, once he has acquired true and certain premises, and a knowledge of them, and a knowledge of the rules of syllogism and inference, and a knowledge of the ways to guard against the mind's fallacies — only then may he advance to inquiry into this subject.
, , .
He should not decide by the first opinion that occurs to him, nor at the outset stretch out his thoughts and loose them toward apprehending the Deity; rather let him feel shame, and hold back, and halt, until he is led upward step by step.
, — , .
It is in this sense that it is said, 'and Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God' (Exod 3:6) — over and above what the plain sense indicates, his fear of gazing at the manifest light; not that God can be apprehended by the eyes, exalted be He high above every deficiency.
Aligned sentence by sentence
, . .
And He, may He be exalted, commended him — peace be upon him — for this, and poured upon him of His bounty and goodness such that it was at last said of him, 'and the form of the Lord does he behold' (Num 12:8). And the Sages, of blessed memory, said that this was a reward for his having first 'hidden his face from looking upon God.'
, , . , .
As for the nobles of the Children of Israel, they plunged ahead and stretched out their thoughts and apprehended — but with an apprehension that was not perfect. And therefore it said of them, 'and they saw the God of Israel, and under His feet…' (Exod 24:10), and it did not say merely 'and they saw the God of Israel.'
, . , , .
For the thrust of the passage is only to fault their vision, not to describe how they saw. So what was faulted in them was the manner of their apprehension, into which they had folded such corporeality as they did; this their plunging ahead before their perfection brought about, and they deserved annihilation.
, , , .
But he — peace be upon him — interceded for them, and they were granted respite until they were burned at Taberah, and Nadab and Abihu were burned in the Tent of Meeting, as the authentic tradition relates.
, ! , .
And if this was so in the case of those men, how much more so in our own case — we who are inferior, and those below us! One ought to aim and busy himself with completing the preliminaries, and with attaining the premises that purify apprehension of its defilement, which is error.
: .
Only then may he advance to behold the holy, divine Presence: 'and let the priests also, who come near to the Lord, sanctify themselves, lest the Lord break forth upon them' (Exod 19:22).
, : .
And Solomon enjoined great caution when a man aspires to reach this rank, saying by way of parable and warning: 'Guard your foot when you go to the house of God' (Eccl 4:17).
. , , , .
Let me return to completing what we set out to explain. I say that the nobles of the Children of Israel, along with the stumblings that beset their apprehension, also had their actions thrown into disorder thereby, and they inclined toward bodily things because of the flaw in their apprehension.
Aligned sentence by sentence
. , , .
And therefore it said, 'and they beheld God, and did eat and drink' (Exod 24:11). As for the rest of the passage — its saying, 'and under His feet was as it were a paved work of sapphire stone,' and so forth (Exod 24:10) — that will be explained in one of the chapters of this treatise.
, , , .
And the whole of our intent has been this: that every 'seeing' or 'beholding' or 'looking' that comes in this connection is intellectual apprehension, not seeing with the eye — since He, may He be exalted, is not an existent that sights can apprehend.
, — — .
But if one of the deficient should choose not to rise to this rank whose ascent we aspire to, and should take all these words that come in this connection to denote sensory apprehensions of created lights — whether angels or other beings — there is no harm in that.