Kabbalah Library

60. In the meantime, a big fish came over to him, who is Rav Hamnuna Saba, and said, “Moses, firm is your dwelling place, and your nest is set in the rock.” Tania, which are the Tanaaim who help you in the exile to establish the Shechina, since the next of the fish, the Tanaaim, is in the rock, in Malchut. “Firm” is reversed in letters from Tania. “Firm” in reversed letters is Tanaaim. Beware of them since you are hard of speech, and a slow speaker, and one who wishes to attack the fish of the sea in the rock, who are the authors of the Mishna, the Tanaaim, must be strong, and with a sharp and polished tongue that pierces and reaches all the way to the great abyss that is there.

61. “For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.” This verse pierces and descends to the very bottom. Who would descend to the very bottom to find the time of the end? It is you, for it is written about you, “Your righteousness is as the mountains of God; your ordinances are a great depth.”

Several authors of the Mishna who wanted to go down to the depth of the law, Malchut, to find there the time of the end of redemption, descended there and did not come up. Although their tongue was, as it is written, “As a hammer shatters the rock,” their hammer was too weak to pierce the rock, to know the end. One whose piercing of the rock is without permission, a serpent will come to bite him, and there are others who pierce her until they reach the very bottom and do not come up from there.