佐哈尔·贝莱希特 37

1R. Simeon said: ‘The world is created and established on the basis of a covenant, as it is written, “If not for my covenant with the day and night, I had not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth” (Jer. 33, 25).This covenant is the Zaddik (righteous one), the foundation of the world, and therefore the world is established on the covenant of day and night together, as stated in our text, the “ordinances of heaven” being those which flow and issue forth from the celestial Eden.’

2R. Simeon discoursed here on the text: From the (place of) the voice of those who mediate between the water drawers, there they shall rehearse the kindnesses of the Lord, etc. (Judges 5, 11). ‘This voice’, he said, ‘is the voice of Jacob, which rests between those who draw waters from on high, and takes hold of both sides and unites them in itself.

3“There they shall rehearse the kindnesses of the Lord”: i.e. there is the place for faith to cleave fast; there the kindnesses of the Lord draw sustenance. The verse proceeds: “The kindnesses of him who is generous to Israel.” This is the “Righteous One of the world”, who is everlasting and holy, and who draws in to Himself the stream of the Whole and disperses the supernal waters into the great sea. “In Israel”: because Israel inherited this covenant, and God gave it to them for an everlasting inheritance.

4When Israel deserted it through performing the ceremony of circumcision without drawing back the flesh, there was applied to them the verse, “then the people of the Lord went down to the gates” (Ibid.): these are the gates of righteousness in which they sat without entering further. Of that time it is written, “and the children of Israel forsook the Lord” (Judges 2, 12), until Deborah came and restored the proper performance of the ceremony.

5Hence Deborah speaks of herself as a “mother in Israel”, to indicate that she brought down the supernal waters from above to establish both worlds through Israel, thus showing that the world rests only on this covenant.

6We see from all this how three issue from one and one is established on three; one enters between two, two give suck to one, and one feeds many sides, and so all are one. Hence it is written, “and there was evening and there was morning one day”, i.e. a day that embraces both evening and morning, thus indicating the covenant of day and night and rendering the whole a unity.’