Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Eternal Marriage and Zohar 1:196b

 

 

‘For the purpose of making them worthy of the world to come.’ R. Simeon then took for his text the verse: Enjoy life with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, etc. (Eccl. IX, 9). ‘This verse’, he said, ‘has been thus esoterically explained. “Enjoy life” is an allusion to the life of the world to come, for happy is the man who is privileged to gain that life in its fulness; “with the wife whom thou lovest” is a reference to the Community of Israel, of whom it is written: “Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love” (Jer. xxxi, 3). When so? At the time when the Right side takes hold of her, as is implied in the concluding words: “Therefore with affection (Hesed) have I drawn thee” (Bid.); “all the days of thy vanity”, inasmuch as she is bound up with life, with the world of the living, as opposed to this world, which is not the world of the living, since its denizens are “under the sun”, where the lights of that (upper) sun do not reach—those lights which have departed from the world since the day when the Temple was destroyed, as is hinted in the verse: “The Sun shall be darkened in his going forth” (Is. xiii, 10). “For that is thy portion in life”: this alludes to the association of the sun with the moon, as it behoves us to bring the moon, as it were, into the sun and the sun into the moon so that there should be no separation between them, this being the portion of man by which he may enter the world to come. Then the passage continues: “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy strength; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.” This verse strikes one at the first sight as surprising: is man indeed free to do “whatsoever his hand findeth to do”? But we must note the qualification in the phrase “do by thy strength”, i.e. through the instrumentality of the higher soul of man (neshamah), which forms his strength, so as to gain through her this world and the world to come. Alternatively, “by thy strength” alludes to the wife mentioned above, she being a source of strength both for this world and the world to come. It thus behoves man to possess himself of that power in this world so as to be fortified by it in the next world; inasmuch as once a man departs this world he can do not more, and it is useless for him to say, “Henceforward I am going to perform good acts,” for assuredly, “there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest”. If a man has not acquired merit in this world he will not acquire it any more in the other world, according to the dictum, “He who has not laid up provision for the journey from this world will have nothing to eat in the other world.” There are, moreover, certain good deeds the fruits of which a man enjoys in this world whilst the principal remains for his enjoyment in the world to come. Observe that Joseph gained this world and the world to come in virtue of his determination to join himself to a God-fearing wife, as expressed in the words: “How can I do this wickedness, and sin against God?” (Gen. xxxix, 9). For this he rose to be a ruler in all the money that was found in the land of Egypt” (Ibid. xlvii, 14), and this was in the order of things, since the ever-flowing celestial river gathers within itself all things and is the repository of all riches. Everything thus happened according to plan: assuredly Joseph was predestined to rule over the kingdom. –(Zohar 1:196b as quoted in Joshua M. Bennett, The Gospel of the Great Spirit [Morning Star Publishing Company Inc., 1990], 531-32)