as a leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree. For my sword hath drunk its fill in heaven; behold, it shall come down upon Edom, and so on.19 Consider, you who are able to see, whether there is anything in these texts that is obscure or leads one to imagine that he describes a future state of the heavens, whether this description is anything but a parable signifying the end of their dynasty, the withdrawal of God’s protection from them, ill luck befalling them, and the shrinking-away of the position of their great dignitaries — all this being due to happen within a very short time and with very little effort. It is as if he said that individuals who were like the stars because of their fixed position, their high rank, and their remoteness from the change, would fall down within a very short time, as a leaf falleth off from the vine, and so on. This is too clear even to be mentioned in a Treatise like this. Nor then should it be expatiated upon. But necessity requires this $ for the common people and even some of those who are supposed to belong to the elite use this verse as a proof, without considering what comes before it and after it and without paying attention to the context in which it occurs; as if it contained information given to us in the Torah about the end of the heavens, just as there is given to us in it information about their coming to be.
Again when Isaiah began to give Israel the good tidings about the destruction of Sennacherib and of all the nations and the kings that were with him, as is well known, and the victory that would be won over them with the help of God and no one else, he said to them, speaking in parables: See how those heavens are rent, this earth worn out, and how those who live on it die away, while you are succored. It is as if he said that those who have extended over the whole earth and who were thought to be as firmly established as the heavens, speaking hyperbolically, would quickly perish and disappear like smoke, | while their visible monuments, which were as firmly established as the earth, would crumble like a worn-out garment. In the beginning of the passage he says: For the Lord hath comforted Zion; He hath comforted all her waste places, and so on. Attend unto Me, O My people, and so on. My righteousness is near, My salvation is gone forth, and so on. Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath,• for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner; But My salvation shall be for ever, and My righteousness shall not be abolished.20 With regard to the return of the king of Israel, his stability, and his 19. Isa. 34:3-5. 20. Isa. 51:3-6.
62 b ] The Guide of the Perplexed II • 29 34I permanence, he says that God will produce anew the heavens and the earth. For in his speech he frequently refers to the reign of a king as if it were a world existing especially for the king, I mean to say a heaven and an earth. Accordingly when he begins the consolations, saying: I, even I, am He that comforteth you,21 and what immediately follows — he goes on to say: And I have put My words in thy mouth, and have covered thee in the shadow of My hand, that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth, and say unto Zion: Thou art My people 22 With regard to the permanence of the possession by Israel of kingly rule and to the latter’s departure from the great and celebrated potentates, he says: For the mountains shall depart, and so on,25 With regard to the permanence of the King that is the Messiah and to Israels kingdom not being destroyed after that, he says: Thy sun shall no more go down, and so on.2* After that Isaiah goes on in his speech consistently using those figurative expressions, for they appear thus to him who understands the meaning of those speeches. Thus describing the state of Exile and its various particularities and thereupon the restoration of the kingdom and the disappearance of all those sorrows, he says, speaking in parables: I shall create another heaven and another earth; and those that are now will be forgotten and their traces effaced. Then he explains this in continuity, saying: When I have said “I shall create,” I meant thereby that I shall produce for you, instead of those sorrows and hardships, a state of constant joy and gladness so that the | former sorrows will not be remembered. Listen to the arrangement of the notions and the mutual connection of the verses indicating these notions: how in the first beginning of this passage, he says: I will make mention of the loving-kindnesses of the Lord and the praises of the Lord, and so on.25 Then he described, in the first place, the bounties that He, may He be exalted, bestows upon us, saying: And He bore them and carried them all the days of old, and so on,26 and what immediately follows. Then he describes our disobedience, saying: But they rebelled and grieved His holy spirit 21 and what immediately follows. Then he describes the enemy obtaining dominion over us, saying: Our adversaries have trodden down Thy sanctuary we were ever,26 and what immediately follows. Then he intercedes for us, saying: Be not wroth very sore, O Lord,22 and what immediately follows. Then he sets forth how we have deserved the great misfortunes that have befallen us, because of our 29. Isa. 64:8.
2 The Guide of the Perplexed 11-29 [ 65a having received a call to truth and having not responded; he says: I offered Myself to be sought of them that asked not for Me, and so on.30 Then he promises pardon and pity, saying: Thus saith the Lord, As when new wine is found in the cluster, and so on,51 and what immediately follows. Then he threatens with punishment those who have wronged us, saying: Behold, My servants shall eat, but ye shall be hungry, and so on.52 Then he follows this by stating that the beliefs of this religious community shall be the right ones, that it will be a blessing on the earth, and that it will forget all the various above-mentioned vicissitudes. This is the text of what he says: And He shall call His servants by another name; so that he who blesseth himself in the earth shall bless himself by the God of truth; and he that sweareth in the earth shall swear by the God of truth, because the former troubles are forgotten, and because they are hid from Mine eyes. For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create,- for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and so on.55 Accordingly the whole matter has become clear and manifest to you. For after saying, For, behold, I create | new heavens and a new earth, he immediately explains this by saying: For, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. After this preamble, he says: Just as those states of faith and of joy in that faith which I promised you to create, will always be permanently established — for the faith in God and the joy in that faith are states that cannot cease or ever be altered in all those who have attained Ihem — and therefore he says:5* Just as this state of faith and of joy in it, as to which I promised that it will extend over the earth, will be firmly established and permanent, so will your progeny and your name endure. That is his statement which follows: For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before Me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain.55 For it sometimes happens that the seed remains while the name does not. Thus you can find many peoples that are indubitably the seed of Persia or Greece, but are not known by a special name, being absorbed in another religious community.56 This, to my mind, is likewise an indication of the eternity of the Law because of which we have a special name.
Inasmuch as these figurative expressions occur often in Isaiah, I have 34. After an anacoluthon, Maimonides repeats most of the sentence.
35. Isa. 66:22. 36. Or: nation.
63 b ] The Guide of the Perplexed II -29 ^ j examined all of them. However, they also occur sometimes in the speech of others. Thus Jeremiah, when describing the destruction of Jerusalem caused by the sins of our forefathers, says: I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was waste and void, and so on.57 Ezekiel, describing the ruin of the kingdom of Egypt and the destruction of Pharaoh at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, says: And when I shall extinguish thee, I will cover the heaven, and make the stars thereof black; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give her light. All the bright lights of heaven will I make black over thee, and set darkness upon thy land, saith the Lord God.5a Joel, son of Pethuel, speaking | of the multitude of locusts that came in his days, says: Before them the earth quaketh, the heavens tremble; the sun and the moon are become black, and the stars withdraw their shining.59 Amos, describing the destruction of Samaria, says: That I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day; and I will turn your feasts, and so on.*0 Micah, referring to the ruin of Samaria, constantly uses the well-known rhetorical expressions: For, behold, the Lord cometh forth out of His place, and will come down, and tread upon the high places of the earth. And the mountains shall be molten, and so on.*1 Haggai, referring to the fall of the kingdom of the Persians and the Medes, says: And I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land -, and I will shake all nations.*2 When, during Joab’s expedition against Edom, [Scripture] begins to describe the weakness and lowly state of the religious community43 as it was before and their being vanquished and put to flight, and intercedes for their victory now, it says: Thou hast made the earth to shake, thou imst cleft it: heal the branches thereof; for it totter eth.** In order to signify that we should have no fear when the nations are destroyed and perish, inasmuch as we put our trust in His help, may He be exalted, and not in our fighting and our strength — being, as it says, a people saved by the Lord*5 — it says: Therefore we will not fear, though the earth do change, and though the mountains be moved into the heart of the seas. *6 In the description of the drowning of the Egyptians, the following occurs: The waters saw Thee; they were in pain; the depths also trembled. The voice of Thy thunder was in the whirlpool, and so on; the earth trembled and shook.*7 Was the Lord displeased with the rivers, and so on.*8 Smoke arose up in His nostrils, and so on.*9 Similarly in the Song of Deborah: The earth trembled, and so 344 The Guide of the Perplexed II • 29 [ 64a on.50 There occur many passages of this kind. Draw an analogy from what has been mentioned to what has not.
As for the passage in Joel: And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever | shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered; for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, and so on.5i According to me the most probable interpretation is that he describes the destruction of Sennacherib before Jerusalem. If, however, you do not wish to accept this, it may be held to be a description of the destruction of Gog before Jerusalem in the days of the King Messiah, though the only things mentioned in this passage are great slaughter, the burning of the fires, and the eclipse of the two luminaries. Perhaps you will say: How can the day of the destruction of Sennacherib be called the great and terrible day of the Lord according to our interpretation? Know therefore that every day in which a great victory or a great disaster comes to pass is called the great and terrible day of the Lord. Thus Joel said of the day when the locusts come upon them: For great is the day of the Lord and very terrible; and who can abide it?52 The notion toward which we are driving has already been made clear 5 namely, that the passing-away of this world, a change of the state in which it is, or a thing’s changing its nature and with that the permanence of this change, are not affirmed in any prophetic text or in any statement of the Sages either. For when the latter say, The world lasts six thousand years, and one thousand years it is a waste,55 they do not have in mind total extinc¬ tion of being. For his expression, and one thousand years it is a waste, indicates that time remains. Besides, it is the saying of an individual that corresponds to a certain manner of thinking. On the other hand, you constantly find as the opinion of all Sages and as a foundation on which every one among the Sages of the Mishnah and the Sages of the Talmud bases his proofs, his saying: There is nothing new under the sun,5* and the view that nothing new will be produced in any respect or from any cause whatever. Even he who takes new heavens and a new earth, to mean what people think it means, says: Even the heavens and the earth that will be created in the future are already created and subsist, for it is said: they subsist before me. It is not said: they will subsist, but: they subsist.55 And he quotes in proof his saying: 55. Genesis Rabbah, I. The text known to us differs considerably from Maimonides’ quotation.
65 a ] The Guide of the Perplexed II -29 There is nothing new under the sun. Do not | think that this is in contradiction to what I have explained. For it is possible that he means that the nature that will necessitate in time the states of existence that have been promised, is created since the six days of the Beginning. And this is true.
I have said that a thing does not change its nature in such a way that the change is permanent merely in order to be cautious with regard to the miracles. For although the rod was turned into a serpent, the water into blood, and the pure and noble hand became white56 without a natural cause that necessitated this, these and similar things were not permanent and did not become another nature. But as they, may their memory be blessed, say: The world goes its customary way.51 This is my opinion, and this is what ought to be believed. The Sages, may their memory be blessed, have made a very strange statement about miracles, the text of which you will find in Bereshith Rabbah and in Midrash Qoheleth. This notion consists in their holding the view that miracles too are something that is, in a certain respect, in nature. They say that when God created that which exists and stamped upon it the existing natures, He put it into these natures that all the miracles that occurred would be produced in them at the time when they occurred. According to this opinion, the sign of a prophet consists in God’s making known to him the time when he must make his proclamation, and thereupon a certain thing is effected according to what was put into its nature when first it received its particular impress. If this statement is as you will see it,58 it indicates the superiority of the man who made it and the fact that he found it extremely difficult to admit that a nature may change after the Work of the Beginning 59 or that another volition may supervene after that nature has been established in a definite way. For instance, he seems to consider that it was put into the nature of water to be continuous and always to flow from above downwards except at | the time of the drowning of the Egyptians; it was a particularity of that water to become divided. I have drawn your attention to the spirit of that passage and to the fact that all this serves to avoid havi ng to admit the coming-into- being of something new. It is said in the passage:60 Rabbi Jonathan said: The Holy One, blessed be He, has posed conditions to the sea: [to wit,] that it should divide before Israel. That is [the meaning of the words]: And the sea returned to its strength when the morning appeared.61 Rabbi Jeremiah, 58. Scil., when you look up this text.
59. The expression used by Maimonides has been translated elsewhere as “Account of the Beginning.”
16 3^6 The Guide of the Perplexed II • 29 [ 65^ son of Elazar, said: The Holy One, blessed be He, has posed conditions not only to the sea, but to all that has been created in the six days of the Beginning. That is [ the meaning of the words~\: I, even My hands have stretched out the heavens, and all their hosts have I commanded.62 I have commanded the sea to divide,■ the fire not to harm Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah; the lions not to harm Daniel,- and the fish to spit out Jonah. All the other miracles can be explained in an analogous manner.
The matter has now become clear to you and the doctrine epitomized. Namely, we agree with Aristotle with regard to one half of his opinion and we believe that what exists is eternal a parte post and will last forever with that nature which He, may He be exalted, has willed; that nothing in it will be changed in any respect unless it be in some particular of it miraculously — although He, may He be exalted, has the power to change the whole of it, or to annihilate it, or to annihilate any nature in it that He wills. However, that which exists has had a beginning, and at first nothing at all existed except God. His wisdom required that He should bring creation into existence at the time when He did do it, and that what He has brought into existence should not be annihilated nor any of its natures changed except in certain particulars that He willed to change; about some of these we know, whereas about others that will be changed in the future we do not know. This is our opinion and the basis of our Law. Aristotle, on the other hand, thinks that just as the world is eternal a parte post and will not pass away, it is also eternal a parte ante and has not been produced. Now we have already said and explained that this doctrine can be arranged in a coherent way only through a recourse to the law of necessity and that necessity contains | a presumptuous assertion with regard to the deity, as we have explained.
As the exposition has finally reached this point, we shall now put in a chapter that shall likewise give several indications as to texts concerned with the Account of the Beginning. For the first purpose of this Treatise is to explain what can be explained of the Account of the Beginning and of the Account of the Chariot. We shall put in this chapter after we have first set forth two preambles of general import. One of these is as follows: Not everything mentioned in the Torah concerning the Account of the Beginning is to be taken in its external sense as the vulgar imagine. For if the matter were such, the men of knowledge would not have been chary65 62. Isa. 45:12.
63. With the medieval Hebrew translators and with Munk, I read danna instead of zanna, which figures in the manuscripts.
66a ] The Guide of the Perplexed 11-29 7 of divulging knowledge with regard to it, and the Sages would not have expatiated on its being kept secret and on preventing the talk about it in the presence of the vulgar. For the external sense of these texts leads either to a grave corruption of the imagination and to giving vent to evil opinions with regard to the deity, or to an absolute denial of the action of the deity and to disbelief in the foundations of the Law. The correct thing to do is to refrain, if one lacks all knowledge of the sciences, from considering these texts merely with the imagination. One should not act like the wretched preachers and commentators who think that a knowledge of the interpreta¬ tion of words is science and in whose opinion wordiness and length of speech add to perfection. On the other hand it is obligatory to consider them with what is truly the intellect after one has acquired perfection in the demon¬ strative sciences and knowledge of the secrets of the prophets. However, as I have explained several times in our Commentary on the Mishnah,64 none of those who know something of it should divulge it. And they say explicitly: As from the beginning of the book up to here, the glory of God [ requires ] to conceal the thing.65 They say it at the end of what is said con¬ cerning the sixth day [of the Beginning]. Thus what we have said has become clear. However, inasmuch as the divine commandment necessarily obliges everyone who has obtained a certain | perfection to let it overflow toward others — as we shall make clear in the chapters on prophecy that follow — every man endowed with knowledge who has come to possess an understanding of something pertaining to these secrets, either through his own speculation or through being conducted toward this by a guide, must indubitably say something. It is, however, forbidden to be explicit about it. He must accordingly make the secret appear in flashes. Many such flashes, indications, and pointers occur in the sayings of some of the Sages, may their memory be blessed, but these sayings are mixed up with the sayings of others and with sayings of another kind. For this reason you will find that with regard to these mysteries, I alw-ays mention the single saying on which the matter is based, while I leave the rest to those whom it befits that this should be left to them.
The second preamble: As we have said, the prophets use in their speeches equivocal words and words that are not intended to mean what they indicate according to their first signification, the word being mentioned because of its derivation. For instance, the words maqqel shaqed [a rod of an almond treef6 are used because from this indication one may go on to 64. E.g., in the commentary on Hagigah, II, 1.
65. Genesis Rabbah, IX ab init. The allusion is to Prov. 25:2. 66. Jet. 1:11.
2^8 The Guide of the Perplexed 11-30 [ 66 b the words that follow: Shoqed 3 ani, and so on [/ watch oyer],67 as we shall explain in the chapters on prophecy.68 With regard to the same principle, in a reference to the Chariot there occurs the word hashmal,69 as they have explained, and also regel cegel [ the foot of a calf]70 and nehoshet qalal [ burnished brass].71 In a similar way, Zechariah says:72 And the mountains were mountains of nehoshet [brass].75 The same applies to other words.
After these two preambles I shall give the chapter that we have promised.
CHAPTER 30 Know that there is a difference between “the first” and “the principle.”