Kabbalah Library

376. Rabbi Azariah and Rabbi Hizkiyah were making a pilgrimage [to Jerusalem] and the donkey driver was walking along with them, leading the donkeys behind them. Rabbi Azariah said to Rabbi Hizkiyah, “have you heard anything in the verse, ‘I went down to the walnut garden to see the fresh plants of the brook,’ that words of Torah are akin to a walnut?”

377. He said to him, “Like a walnut, which has a shell without, and a brain [Moach] within, words of Torah have in them action, learning, telling, secret, all one inside the other.”

378. At the time when King Solomon revealed The Song of Songs, the filth that that primordial serpent cast in Adam and eve stopped from the world. This is so because when generations came out to the world from Adam and eve, they came out from that filth, and through the revelation of The Song of Songs, the filth had stopped from them.

379. This is what I heard from my teachers, who heard from each other up to the mouth of Elijah, who said, “And the man knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, ‘I have obtained a male child the Lord.’” And the man is Adam HaRishon. This should be stated since when the serpent came upon Eve, he cast filth in her, and Cain came out from that side of the serpent. Like the serpent, whose way is to kill and put to death, so Cain immediately became a killer.

380. It is written, “Out of the serpent’s roots will come forth a viper, and its offspring, a flying Seraph.” The root of the serpent is the primordial serpent. The viper that came out is Cain, who came out from its root and its core. Its offspring is a flying Seraph means that he becomes a killer like that Seraph, for whose strike there is no cure. “Flying” means double, since there is a double translation of “fly,” for the serpent has already become doubled in its kind through Cain.

381. How did Cain come out of that filth of the serpent? It is written, “And the man knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain.” Thus, did Cain come out from Adam and not from the serpent? Of course Cain was from Adam, and not from that filth, but that serpent cast filth in Eve, and that filth that was swallowed in her was moving about her abdomen and had no body to be incorporated in, for that filthy spirit would come out to the world.

382. When Adam HaRishon came up on her, that filth mixed with his semen and made a body for that evil spirit, and the filth that was in her abdomen was incorporated in him, and he came out to the world in a red form, more than all the people who were in the world after him.

383. That semen that Adam cast in her to make a body was from that evil side, and that evil spirit of the serpent, the filth, grew strong in him, and was embodied in him and came out to the world. When Eve saw him, she said, “I have obtained a male child the Lord,” meaning with the Lord, for the spirit from the other side emerged along with the holiness.

384. When he brought his offering, he brought it from that evil side, as it is written, “And it came to pass after the end of days,” the evil side is called “the end of days,” and not from the side of holiness, which is called “the end of the right.”

385. Shet [Seth] was the foundation of the world, from whom the world was founded with righteous and Hassidim [people of Hesed] who later came out from him. Shet is the end of the alphabet, and from him, the letters returned to being according to their order, in straightness, first Shin, and then Tav, and not in reverse, Tav-Shin-Reish-Kof, where the Tav comes before the Shin.

386. Once all those righteous and Hassidim up to Noah, whose generation was already from the generation of the flood, who were all wiped out, once they were all wiped out and Noah and his sons emerged from the ark, it is written, “and from these the whole earth was dispersed.” At that time, the letters began to arrange in reversed order, Tav-Shin-Reish-Kof. Then it is written, “and from these the whole earth was dispersed,” indicating that all the people in the world walked in the filth of the serpent, since dispersion is the opposite of unification, for unification is holiness, and dispersion is from the Sitra Achra.

387. Although Abraham corrected what Adam sinned, as did Isaac and Jacob and all the righteous, still, the filth of the serpent did not stop from the world until Israel stood on Mount Sinai and the letters returned to being in straightness, in the order Aleph-Bet Gimel-Dalet.

However, not completely, since some of them were reversed, in the order Tav-Shin-Reish-Kof. There is one order from here, and one order from here. From the right, the letters were in a straight order, and from the left, they were in reversed order. When they sinned with the calf and returned in another body, which was not clean from the filth like the previous body, the letters, too, returned to being in a different way.

388. And so the world went in the matters of the alphabet until Solomon came and the letters were found standing in their existence. At that time, it is written, “Solomon’s wisdom was greater,” when the moon was full, and then The Song of Songs was revealed in the world.

389. At that time, Solomon said, “I went down to the walnut garden.” Like the walnut, where the Moach [brain/marrow] is found in it only in the end, inside all the shells, so is the world. First, all the shells came out and existed. And in the end, in the days of Solomon, the world stood at the marrow and the moon, Malchut, was full.