The Zohar Reveals the Key to Understanding:
The Concealed Word is the Son
By
James Scott Trimm
Last night, while studying the Zohar, I found something very interesting in one of it’s opening passages. The passage in question is commenting upon the opening words of the Torah בראשית ברא אלוהים “In the beginning created Elohim…” The Zohar (1:3b) reads:
בראשית (Be-reshit), In the beginning. Rabbi Yudai said, “What is בראשית (Be-reshit)? With Wisdom.
There is a very early tradition that interprets (reshit) as wisdom. Targum Yerushalmi to Gen. 1:1 reads “With wisdom God created…” The Zohar continues:
This is the Wisdom on which the world stands– through which one enters hidden, high mysteries. Here were engraved six vast, supernal dimensions, from which everything emerges, from which issued six springs and streams, flowing into the immense ocean. This is ברא שית (bara shit), created six, created from here. Who created them? The unmentioned, the hidden unknown.
Here Rabbi Yudai is giving a sod level interpretation of בראשית as ברא שית. Or “in the beginning” as “created six”, referring to the six dimensions of space (three dimensions in six opposing directions). (There is much about these three/six dimensions in the Sefer Yetzirah). The Zohar continues:
Rabbi Hiyya and Rabbi Yose were walking on the way. As they reached the site of a certain field, Rabbi Hiyya said to Rabbi Yose, “What you have said– ברא שית (bara shit)– is certainly true, for there are six supernal days in the Torah, not more; the others are concealed. But the Secrets of Creation we have discovered this:
“The holy hidden one engraved an engraving in the innards of a recess, punctuation by a thrust point. He engraved that engraving, hiding it away, like one who locks up everything under a single key, which locks everything within a single palace. Although everything is hidden away within that palace, the essence of everything lies in that key, which closes and opens. Within that palace lie hidden treasures, one greater than the other. Within that palace stand gates built cryptically, fifty of them. Carved into four sides, they were forty-nine.
These forty nine “gates” represent the relationship between each of the seven sefirot as the interact with one another (7*7 = 49). In the Sidur for the counting of the omer for the 49 days between the Firstfruits offering and Shavaot, each day is marked by noting one of these 49 combinations each day. The Zohar continues:
One gate has no side. No one knows whether it is above or below, it is shut. In those gates is one lock and one precise place for inserting the key, marked only by the impress of the key, known only to the key. Concerning this mystery it is written: בראשית ברא אלהים (Be-reshit bara Elohim), In the beginning God created. בראשית (Be-reshit) is the key enclosing all. closing and opening. Six gates are contained in the key that closes and opens.
Up to this point, I have been quoting the Zohar in English from the Pritzker Edition. But there is much to learn from studying the Zohar in the original Aramaic. So as I continue, I will now quote the Aramaic, and provide my own literal translation of the Aramaic:
ושית תרעין כלילן ביה בההוא מפתחא דסגיר ופתח כד סגיר אינון תרעין וכליל לון בגויה כדין ודאי כתיב בראשית מלה גליא בכלל מלה סתימאה ובכל אתר ברא מלא סתימאה איהו סגיר ולא פתח
And six gates are contained in that key that closes and opens. When it closes those gates, enclosing them within itself, then indeed בראשית (Be-reshit) is a revealed Word combined with a concealed Word. The Son (ברא) is always concealed, closing, not opening.
Here I have translated ברא as “The Son”. Ancient Aramaic was written without vowels. One may vocalize ברא as “Creator” or “Create” or in Aramaic as “The Son”. In his book Studies in the Zohar p. 146-152, Jewish Israeli academic Yehudah Liebes argues that the meaning here is “The Son”. The Zohar several times refers to the Son of Yah and to a Divine Son (see my previous blog The Son of Yah in the Zohar) This is the same spelling of the Aramaic word for “Son” used in the Old Syriac and Peshitta. The seventeenth century Rabbi Shlomo Meir Ben Moshe, who came to the conclusion that Yeshua was the Messiah, saw in the word בראשית the phrase בר אשית I will appoint, set up, or place the Son. The Zohar continues:
אמר רבי יוסי ודאי הכי הוא ושמענא לבוצינא קדישא דאמר הכי דמלה סתימאה איהו ברא סגיר ולא פתח ובעוד דהוה סגיר במלה דברא עלמא לא הוי ולא אתקיים והוה חפי על כלא תה”ו שלטא האי תה”ו עלמא לא הוה ולא אתקיים
Rabbi Yose said, Certainly so. I have heard the Holy Lamp [i.e. Rabbi Shimon], say that the concealed Word is the Son, closing and not opening. As long as it was shut by the Word of the Son, the world could not be and not be established. Complete chaos would have prevailed covering all that was. And when chaos prevailed, there would not have been a world, and it would not have been established.
This statement in the Zohar definitely recalls the words of Yochanan as preserved in the Aramaic Old Syriac text of Yochanan 1:1-3
ברשית איתוהי הוא מלתא והו מלתא איתוהי הוא לות אלהא ואלהא איתוהי הוא הו מלתא הנא איתוהי הוא ברשית לות אלהא כלמדם בה הוא ובלעדוהי אף לא חדא הות הו דין מדם דהוא
In the beginning was the Word; and He, the Word, was with Elohim; and He, the Word, was Elohim. This [Word] was in the beginning with Elohim. Everything came to be by him, and apart from him not even one thing came to be.
Then in verse 14
ומלתא פגרא הות ואגנת בן וחנין שובחה איך שובחא דיחידא דמן אבא כד מלא טיבותא ושררא
And the Word became a body and it dwelt among us, and we say his glory as the glory as an only one from the Father full of grace and truth..
Then in verse 18
לאלהא מן מתום אנש לא חזיהי יחידא ברא דמן עובה דאבוהי הו אשתעי לן
Elohim, never has any man seen him; an only one, a Son from the bosom of his Father, he has declared him to us.
(See also my previous blog The Only Begotten Light)
The imagery of forty nine gates and a key that opens and shuts, reminds us of Revelation 1:13 where Yochanon sees a vision in which we read that Yochanon saw the Son in the midst of seven menorahs (Rev. 1:12f). Of course a menorah has seven branches, so this is a total of forty nine lights. In this vision Yochanan is told to write “he that has the keys of David, he that opens, and no man shuts, and shuts and no man opens.” (Rev. 3:7). (Citing Isaiah 22:22).
This key also recalls the key mentioned in our Zohar passage above. The commentators on the Zohar recognize this key as Understanding, which unlocks a lock which represents Wisdom. In the Zohar passage above, this is the Concealed Word which may be identified with “The Son”. And this recalls the words of Luke as preserved in the Aramaic of the Old Syriac text, where Yeshua says:
וי לכון ספרא דטשיתון אקלידא דאידעתא אנתון לא עלתון ולאילין דעלין כליתון
Oy to you scribes, who have concealed the keys of knowledge. You yourselves have not entered and they that are entering you have hindered. (Luke 11:52)
This key is the concealed Word, the Son, who is revealed to us in the Messiah, Yeshua.
