Aligned sentence by sentence
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Part One · Chapter Fifty-Four — Moses' Two Requests and the Thirteen Attributes
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Know that the master of the world, Moses our teacher, peace be upon him, made two requests — and the answer came for both of them. The first request was his asking Him, exalted be He, to make him know His essence and reality. The second request — which he made first — was to know Him through His attributes. He, exalted be He, answered both questions by promising to make him know all His attributes, which are His actions, and by informing him that His essence cannot be apprehended as it is — but He pointed him to a vantage of inquiry from which he could apprehend the utmost of what a human being can apprehend. And what he apprehended — peace be upon him — no one had apprehended before him nor after him.
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His request to know His attributes is his saying: 'Make me know, I pray, Your ways, that I may know You' etc. (Ex 33:13). Reflect on the remarkable things contained in this saying: 'make me know Your ways that I may know You' — this is evidence that God, exalted be He, is known through His attributes, for when one knows the ways one knows Him. And his saying 'that I may find favor in Your eyes' is evidence that one who knows God is the one who finds favor in His eyes — not merely one who fasts and prays. Rather everyone who knows Him is the one who is accepted and drawn near, and whoever is ignorant of Him is the one who is passed over and distanced; and in proportion to knowledge and ignorance will be the acceptance and rejection, the nearness and the distance. But we have digressed from the purpose of the chapter — let us return to it.
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When he requested knowledge of the attributes and intercession for the people, he was answered regarding the intercession; then he requested the apprehension of God's essence — and that is his saying 'Show me, I pray, Your glory' (Ex 33:18). He was answered regarding the first request — 'Make me know Your ways' — and it was said to him 'I will cause all My goodness to pass before you' (Ex 33:19); and regarding the answer to the second question it was said to him 'you cannot see My face' etc. (Ex 33:20). As for his saying 'all My goodness' — this is a reference to presenting all the existents to him, regarding which it was said 'and God saw all that He had made and behold it was very good' (Gen 1:31) — meaning that by presenting them to him, he would apprehend their natures and their interconnections with one another, and thereby know how His governance of them operates in its totality and in its detail. To this meaning He pointed in saying 'he is faithful in all My house' (Num 12:7) — meaning that he understood the existence of My entire world with a true and certain understanding, for false opinions are not stable. When he apprehended those actions, they were the attributes of God, exalted be He, through which He is known. The proof that what was promised to be apprehended are His actions, exalted be He, is that the thing by which the purely active attributes were made known is 'merciful and gracious, long-suffering' (Ex 34:6). It has thus been shown that the ways he requested to know and through which He informed him are the actions proceeding from Him, exalted be He. The Sages call them middot and say 'thirteen middot' — and this name is used in their usage for character traits: 'four middot among almsgivers, four middot among those who walk to the house of study' (Avot 5:13) — and this is widespread. But the meaning here is not that He possesses character traits, but rather that He performs actions resembling the actions that proceed from us out of character traits — I mean out of soul-dispositions — not that He, exalted be He, is possessed of soul-dispositions.
He limited himself to mentioning these thirteen attributes, even though he apprehended all His goodness — meaning all His actions — because these are the actions proceeding from Him, exalted be He, with respect to the creation of human beings and their governance. And this was the ultimate aim of his question, for the complete utterance was: 'that I may know You, that I may find favor in Your eyes — and see that this nation is Your people' (Ex 33:13) — I, who need to govern them with actions by which I may pattern my actions in governing them.
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It has thus been shown to you that 'the ways' and 'the attributes' are one — and they are the actions proceeding from Him, exalted be He, in the world.
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Every time one apprehends one of His actions, He, exalted be He, is described by the attribute from which that action proceeds, and is named by the name derived from that action. For example: when one apprehends the subtlety of His governance in the formation of the animal embryo and the creation of powers in it and in its parent after birth — powers that prevent it from destruction and ruin, protect it from harm, and benefit it in its necessary movements — and an action of this kind from us proceeds only after an affective state and tenderness, which is the meaning of mercy — then He, exalted be He, was called 'merciful,' as it is said 'as a father has mercy upon his sons' (Ps 103:13), and He said 'and I will carry them as a man carries his son' (Deut 1:31). It is not that He, exalted be He, is affected and moved to tenderness — rather, the action analogous to that which proceeds from a father toward his child out of tenderness, compassion, and pure affective response, proceeds from Him, exalted be He, toward His servants without any affective state and without change. And just as when we give something to one who has no claim on us we call that in our language ḥanīna — as it is said 'have mercy on them whom God has been gracious to' (Gen 33:11), 'for God has been gracious to me' (Gen 33:11) — and many examples like this — and He, exalted be He, brings into existence and governs one who has no claim on Him for his creation and governance, and was therefore called gracious. Similarly, we find among His actions proceeding in relation to human beings: great calamities that fall upon certain individuals and destroy them, or a general matter devastating to tribes or even to entire regions, obliterating offspring and the offspring's offspring and leaving neither tillers nor lineage — like eclipses, earthquakes, destructive lightning bolts, and the movement of one people against another to annihilate them by the sword and erase their traces. Many of these actions, if they were to proceed from one of us toward another, would only proceed out of intense rage, or great hatred, or desire for revenge — and so He was named on account of these actions 'jealous,' 'avenging,' 'holding a grudge,' and 'wrathful' (Ex 34:7; Nah 1:2) — meaning that actions analogous to those that proceed from us out of a soul-disposition, namely jealousy or vengeance or hatred or anger, proceed from Him, exalted be He, in accordance with the deservingness of those who are punished — not out of any affective state whatsoever, exalted be He above every deficiency. And so too all these actions — they are actions resembling the actions that proceed from human beings out of affective states and soul-dispositions, yet they proceed from Him, exalted be He, with no additional meaning beyond His essence whatsoever.
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The ruler of the city — if he is a prophet — must assimilate to these attributes; and these actions should proceed from him in a calculated manner and in accordance with what is deserved — not merely following the pull of passion. He must not give free rein to rage, nor allow affective states to dominate him, since every affective state is bad; rather he should avoid them as much as a human being can. He should at one time be merciful and gracious toward some people — not from mere tenderness and compassion but in accordance with what is obligatory — and at another time be relentless, avenging, and wrathful toward some people — in accordance with what they deserve — not out of mere anger; to the point that he may order someone burned without himself being agitated, enraged, or angry toward them — but in accordance with what he sees of their deservingness, taking heed of the great benefit to many people in the execution of this act.
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Consider the texts of the Torah — when it commanded concerning the seven nations their annihilation and said 'you shall save alive nothing that breathes' (Deut 20:16), it followed this immediately with the saying 'that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominations which they have done for their gods, and you sin against the Lord your God' (Deut 20:18). This says: do not suppose that this is cruelty or pursuit of revenge — rather it is an act that human reason requires: to remove everyone who deviates from the path of truth, and to clear away all the obstacles that impede the perfection that consists in apprehending Him, exalted be He.
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Notwithstanding all of this, it is necessary that actions of mercy, forgiveness, tenderness, and compassion proceed from the ruler of the city far more than acts of retribution — for these thirteen attributes are all attributes of mercy except one: 'visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children' — since the meaning of 'He will not clear' is that He does not uproot entirely, as derived from 'and you, the cleansed one, will dwell in the land.'
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Know that the saying 'visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children' applies specifically to the sin of idolatry, not to any other sin. The proof is His saying in the Ten Commandments 'upon the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me' — and none is called a 'hater' except the idolater: 'for every abomination of the Lord which He hated' (Deut 12:31). And the reason the limit is the fourth generation is that that is the furthest extent to which a human being can see from his own offspring; and when the inhabitants of a city who worship idolatry are killed, that elder who worships is killed along with the offspring of his offspring's offspring — which is the fourth generation. The description here is that among God's commands — which are certainly among His actions — is that He kills the offspring of idol worshippers even if they are young minors in the lifetime of their parents and grandparents. We find this consistent throughout the Torah in every passage — as He commanded concerning the subverted city: 'utterly destroy it and all that is in it' (Deut 13:16). All of this is to obliterate that trace which necessitates great corruption, as we have explained.
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We have digressed from the aim of the chapter, but we have shown why he limited himself here from among God's actions to these — and that they are needed in the governance of cities, since the ultimate human virtue is to assimilate to Him, exalted be He, as much as one is able — meaning that we should make our actions resemble His actions, as they explained in interpreting 'You shall be holy' (Lev 19:2): they said 'Just as He is gracious, you too be gracious; just as He is merciful, you too be merciful' (Sifre).
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The overall aim is that the attributes attributed to Him are attributes of His actions — not that He is possessed of quality.