Previous: Part 2, Chapter 1. Book contents. Next: Part 2, Chapter 3.
Chapter 2
Now from here comes the answer to the heretics, and the uncovering of the root of their error, who deny particular providence and the signs and wonders of the Torah. For they err in their false imagining, since they liken the work of Hashem (God), Maker of heaven and earth, to the work of a mortal and his schemes. For when a vessel has come forth from the smith, the vessel no longer needs the hands of the smith. For even though his hands are removed from it, and he goes off into the market, the vessel endures in its shape and its image, actually, just as it came out from the hands of the smith. So these fools imagine the making of heaven and earth. But their eyes are plastered over, so that they do not see the great difference between the work of a mortal and his schemes, which is something from something, only that he changes the form and the figure, from the figure of a piece of silver to the figure of a vessel, and the making of heaven and earth, which is something from nothing. And that is a great wonder, greater than the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, by way of a parable. For Hashem drove the sea by a strong east wind all the night, and the waters were split, and they stood like a heap and like a wall. And if Hashem had stopped the wind for a moment, the waters would have turned back and flowed downward in their way and their nature, and they would not have stood as a wall, without any doubt, even though this nature in the water was also created and renewed, something from nothing. For a wall of stones stands by itself, with no wind, only that the nature of water is not so. And all the more, and from a lighter matter to a heavier one, in the creation of something from nothing, which is above nature, and a wonder, and a further wonder, beyond the splitting of the Sea of Reeds: how much more and more, if the power of the Creator withdrew from the creature, God spare us, the creature would return to nothing and naught, actually. Rather, the power of the One who acts must be in the thing acted upon, always, to give it life and to keep it in being. And these are precisely the aspect of the letters of the speech from the ten utterances by which they were created. And of this it was said (Nehemiah 9:6): “And You give life to all of them.” Do not read “give life,” but “bring into being,” that is, something from nothing. “And You”: these are the aspect of the letters from alef to tav, and the hei is the five outlets of the mouth, the source of the letters. And even though He has no likeness of a body, Scripture has spoken in a full verse: “And Hashem spoke,” “And Hashem said.” And this is the aspect of the revelation of the 22 supernal letters to the prophets, and they clothe themselves in their intellect and their grasp, in the vision of prophecy, and also in their thought and their speech, as it is written (2 Samuel 23:2): “The spirit of Hashem has spoken in me, and His utterance is upon my tongue,” and as the Ari, of blessed memory, wrote [in the Gate of Prophecy].
And of this same sort is the clothing of the letters in the creatures, as it is written (Psalms 33:6): “The heavens came to be by the word of Hashem, and the whole of their host by the breath of His mouth.” Only, it is by many and mighty chainings downward, until they descend to bodily Asiyah (making). It is not so with the grasp of the prophets. It is in Atzilut (emanation), which clothes itself in the world of Beriah (creation).
Previous: Part 2, Chapter 1. Book contents. Next: Part 2, Chapter 3.
