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Maamar V: On Merits and Obligations.
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Section 1. The Fifth Maamar: On Good Deeds and Sins.
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Our Lord (mighty and exalted) has made known to us that when the servants' acts of obedience to Him are many, they are called merits (ḥasanāt), and when their acts of disobedience are many, they are called sins (sayyiʾāt);
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and that all deeds are preserved with Him, for all His servants, as He says: 'Great in counsel and mighty in work — Your eyes are open upon all the ways of the children of men, to give to each according to his ways and according to the fruit of his deeds' (Jer 32:19);
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and that these deeds leave their traces in souls, making them pure or defiled —
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as He says regarding transgressions: 'He shall bear his iniquity' (Lev 17:16), 'He shall bear his sin' (Lev 24:15), 'They shall bear their iniquity' (Lev 17:16), 'That soul shall bear its iniquity' (Lev 17:16).
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And although all this may be hidden from people and not apparent to them, it is clear to Him — blessed and exalted — as He says: 'I am the Lord who searches the heart and tests the mind, to give to each according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds' (Jer 17:10).
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He presented all these meanings to us through verses and proofs, and we accepted them.
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Once this was established for us, I proceeded to reflect on this subject in the manner I described earlier. I found in the world of things crafts so subtle that many people cannot distinguish the fine from the inferior;
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only the expert among them can tell the difference between the two.
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Such is the craft of assaying coins: the layman who examines them will confuse a genuine dinar with a counterfeit — only the assay-master can tell them apart.
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Another such craft is medicine: lay people feel the pulse and cannot tell from its expansion and contraction what quality predominates in the body — yet the skilled practitioner knows it.
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And then there is physiognomy: those who study the lines of faces and feet can distinguish one person from another by what is hidden from those who have not mastered that craft.
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Likewise with gems — rubies, pearls, and the like — only the expert can appraise them. In short, for every subtle craft, many of its flaws are hidden from the layman and apparent only to the specialist.
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Having found these crafts to be as I described, I became all the more convinced that the flaws of souls — namely sins and iniquities — though they may not appear to other people (for their senses cannot perceive them), do appear to their Maker, who created and fashioned them;
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for the soul is a refined intellectual substance, purer than the substance of stars and celestial spheres — and since we cannot perceive it by sense, how could we discern what leaves its mark in its substance and makes it turbid?
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Only its Creator — the Creator of the celestial sphere — can perceive it. That is why Scripture takes the stars and the heavens as its analogies in this matter, saying: 'Even the stars are not pure in His sight' (Job 25:5) and 'The heavens are not pure in His sight' (Job 15:15).
He also said that to the soul He is as the light of a lamp that searches all the storerooms and inner chambers, revealing everything that is
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concealed within it — as He said: 'The lamp of the Lord is the soul of man, searching all the chambers of the belly' (Prov 20:27).
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He also said that in relation to the soul He is like the fire that refines gold and silver in the crucible and purifies them — as He said: 'A crucible for silver, a furnace for gold, and the Lord is the tester of hearts' (Prov 17:3).
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I said: How wondrous this is — that a person eats two foods, one permitted and one forbidden, and finds they both nourish him; and engages in two sexual relations, one lawful and one forbidden, and finds they both give him pleasure; and so he counts them as one and the same.
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Yet the Examiner assays what the two acts leave in the spirit, as we have explained — and as He said: 'Every way of a man is straight in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirits' (Prov 21:2).
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I further understood that when good deeds accumulate for the soul, it becomes pure and luminous — as it is said: 'That he may be enlightened with the light of the living' (Job 33:30).
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And when sins accumulate for the soul, it becomes turbid and dark — as He said of such people: 'They shall never again see the light' (Ps 49:20).
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We also learned that He preserves these merits and sins for all His servants, they being in His keeping as though written down — like a ledger in our own usage —
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as He said of the righteous: 'Then those who feared the Lord spoke one to another, and the Lord attended and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who feared the Lord and esteemed His name' (Mal 3:16),
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and as He said of the wicked: 'Behold, it is written before Me — I will not keep silence, but will repay' (Isa 65:6).
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When I contemplated these analogies from the words of the Sage, I found them to be of the utmost precision and exactitude.
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For we, as a community of created beings, when we found in our capacity — which the All-Wise placed in us — the ability to produce the letters by which we speak and to assign to each letter a written sign so that we might preserve our accounts and the events we need to keep in memory —
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it would be all the more fitting that in His wisdom He preserves all our deeds — without a book or ledger of any kind;
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the comparison to a book is only because that notion is close to our understanding, as we have explained.
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We also learned that as long as we reside in the realm of action, He is preserving each person's deeds, and He has prepared the recompense for them for the second realm, which is the realm of retribution;
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and that realm He will bring into being when the total count of rational beings whom His wisdom decreed He would create is complete — at that point He will recompense everyone according to their deeds,
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as the first Sage said: 'I said in my heart: God will judge the righteous and the wicked' (Qoh 3:17); and he also said: 'For God will bring every deed into judgment, including everything hidden, whether good or evil' (Qoh 12:14).
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The sum of merits is stored up for the righteous like a treasure, as He said: 'How great is Your goodness that You have stored up for those who fear You' (Ps 31:20);
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and the sum of sins is sealed and stored up for the wicked — as He said: 'Is it not stored up with Me, sealed in My treasuries?' (Deut 32:34).
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Section 2. Having set forth this account, I wish now to describe the ranks of servants regarding the varieties of their merits and sins — as many as we have learned from Scripture and from rabbinic tradition —
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placing each one in its proper position as I have learned it, so that the many servants may be guided thereby.
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I say: the ranking of servants with regard to merits and sins comprises ten stations — the righteous (ṣāliḥ), the wicked (ṭāliḥ), the exclusively obedient (muṭīʿ), the exclusively disobedient (ʿāṣī), the perfect (kāmil), the deficient (muqaṣṣir), the sinner (mudhnib), the transgressor (fāsiq), the unbeliever (kāfir), and the penitent (tāʾib).
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He is called righteous (ṣāliḥ) whose deeds are mostly merits, and wicked (ṭāliḥ) whose deeds are mostly sins.
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This situation resembles natural phenomena: scholars call a thing hot when the heat in it exceeds the cold, and cold when the cold in it exceeds the heat;