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Sefer Yetzirah §§ 1-2 -- the thirty-two paths and the ten Sefirot (v2, full scaffolding)

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Sefer Yetzirah §§ 1-2 -- the thirty-two paths and the ten Sefirot (v2, full scaffolding)

Sefer Yetzirah

Hebrew · c. 2nd-9th c. CE · canonical

Anonymous; pseudepigraphically ascribed to the patriarch Abraham. Composed c. 2nd-9th century CE; the dating is contested, with Hayman 2004 favoring an earlier (late-antique) provenance.

בִּשְׁלֹשִׁים וּשְׁתַּיִם נְתִיבוֹת פְּלִיאוֹת חָכְמָה חָקַק יָהּ יְהוָה צְבָאוֹת אֱלֹהֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֱלֹהִים חַיִּים וּמֶלֶךְ עוֹלָם אֵל שַׁדַּי רַחוּם וְחַנּוּן רָם וְנִשָּׂא שׁוֹכֵן עַד וְקָדוֹשׁ שְׁמוֹ
By thirty-two wondrous paths of wisdom did Yah, YHVH of Hosts, God of Israel, the Living God and King of the universe, El Shaddai, merciful and gracious, high and exalted, dwelling-forever, and holy is His Name, engrave —
וּבָרָא אֶת עוֹלָמוֹ בִּשְׁלֹשָׁה סְפָרִים: בְּסֵפֶר וּסְפָר וְסִפּוּר׃
and He created His world by three books (sefarim): by writ (sefer), by number (sefar), and by telling (sippur).
עֶשֶׂר סְפִירוֹת בְּלִי מָה, וְעֶשְׂרִים וּשְׁתַּיִם אוֹתִיּוֹת יְסוֹד: שָׁלֹשׁ אִמּוֹת וְשֶׁבַע כְּפוּלוֹת וּשְׁתֵּים עֶשְׂרֵה פְּשׁוּטוֹת׃
Ten sefirot of nothingness (beli mah), and twenty-two foundational letters: three mothers, seven doubles, and twelve simples.

The number on each clause is how many readings touch it (the heat-map). Click it to focus the Sugya panel; hover a reading to light up its clause.

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About Sefer Yetzirah §§ 1-2 -- the thirty-two paths and the ten Sefirot (v2, full scaffolding)

Sefer Yetzirah (ספר יצירה, the "Book of Formation") is among the oldest surviving works of Jewish esoteric cosmology, variously dated from the second to the ninth century CE. Terse and oracular -- the whole text runs to barely 1,600 words -- it sets out a theory of creation built from two sets of elements: the ten sefirot belimah, the ineffable enumerations, and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Together these form the "thirty-two wondrous paths of wisdom" (netivot) through which, the text says, the divine engraved and created the world.

Woodcut title page of Portae Lucis showing a sage holding the Tree of the Sefirot
A kabbalist holds the Tree of the Sefirot on the title page of Portae Lucis (the Latin Gates of Light), Augsburg 1516 -- the first time the diagram reached print in the Christian West. · Leonhard Beck, 1516 (PD)

The opening verses translated here (1.1 and 1.2) lay out the book's governing scheme. Creation proceeds bi-sheloshah sefarim, "with three books," in a deliberate play on the shared root s-p-r: with sefer (text), sefar (number), and sippur (telling, or speech). The sefirot appear here before they take on the fully theosophical role they acquire in the later Kabbalah; they hover between bare countings of cosmic structure and an apophatic, belimah-bounded ontology. The Targum apparatus on this page preserves that tension rather than resolving it, which is why the same line can be rendered toward "enumerations" or toward "spheres" depending on the frame.

Pseudepigraphically ascribed to the patriarch Abraham, Sefer Yetzirah became foundational for the medieval mystics and drew a long line of commentary -- from Saadia Gaon and Dunash ibn Tamim in the tenth century to the Gerona circle and the early kabbalists. Its pairing of letter and number, sound and structure, is the conceptual seed of the later doctrine of the Tree of the Sefirot, pictured at right in its first printed European depiction.