Stage 3 · Saadia Gaon (882–942)

Emunot v'Deot: II:4 · One in All Respects

כתאב אלאמאנאת ואלאעתקאדאת — The Book of Beliefs and Opinions

Emunot v'Deot in the original Judeo-Arabic, with a working English translation by Eliyahu Freedman (working draft). Hover a phrase to see its English light up; tap any word for a gloss.

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Aligned sentence by sentence

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...in explaining it in this book; and I will make clear the paths of figures, common usages, and the expansiveness of language,

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for I have already explained a great deal of that in the introduction to my Torah commentary — I will abbreviate it here without repeating it,

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and limit myself to clarifying what the language contains, as each difficulty arises.

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If one asks: what is the meaning of 'And now the Lord God has sent me and His spirit' (Is. 48:16)?

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We say: that holds if its meaning is 'with His spirit' — as 'Seek the Lord and His strength' (Ps. 105:4) is explained as 'Seek the Lord with His strength';

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and as 'The Lord will shine upon you and His glory will be seen over you' is explained by 'When the Lord builds Zion He will appear in His glory' (Ps. 102:17);

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and as 'The Lord and the weapons of His wrath' is explained by 'In wrath the earth trembles' (Hab. 3:12) — so its explanation here is: 'You chastised them with Your spirit, through Your prophets.'

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So whenever something like this comes up and we find for it a possible figure or interpretation, we are not obliged to do more than that.

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Section 4. Then I say: I found through rational inquiry, among the things indicating that He is Living, Omnipotent, and All-Knowing, what has been established for us — namely, that He created things;

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for it is built into the nature of our intellects that only the Omnipotent makes, and only the Living is omnipotent,

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and a well-crafted product can only come from one who knew how to produce it before producing it;

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and these three meanings our intellects found for our Maker intuitively, upon our finding Him to be One;

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for by what He made, it is established that He is Living, Omnipotent, and All-Knowing, as I have explained;

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and it is not possible for the intellect to arrive at one of these three meanings before the othersit arrives at all of them at once,

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because the intellect finds it impossible that what is not alive makes, that what is not omnipotent makes, and that a complete well-crafted act comes from one who did not know how the act would come to be,

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for one who does not know how the act comes to be cannot produce a well-crafted or perfectly-wrought act — and since

English is a working draft — alignment is sentence-by-sentence.