‘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)
