55) What is “you are a prince of God”? First, before the righteous exits from the world, a voice comes out each day over those righteous in the Garden of Eden: “Prepare a place for so and so who will come here.” Hence, they say that you are a prince of God above. Each day, count him within us, among our choice graves, our choice righteous, in the group of the select righteous. Include him in the calculation with us, and none of us will be subtracted from the count, for we are all happy about him and greet him.
56) When the soul encounters them and it is sentenced, it later encounters that angel appointed over them—the angel appointed over the graveyards, whose name is Dumah. Each day, he declares among them the righteous who are destined to come among them. Promptly, she encounters him in order to settle the body peacefully and safely, at rest and in joy. This is the meaning of the verse “And he said to Ephron.”
57) That angel is called Dumah. Why is his name Ephron? It is because he is appointed over the dwellers of the Afar [dust], and all the books of the righteous and groups of devout followers, who dwell in the dust, have been deposited in his hands, and he is destined to take them out according to the calculation.
58) At the end of correction, when the Creator commands to revive the dead, He will call the angel appointed over graveyards, and whose name is Dumah, and He will demand of him the number of all the dead, the righteous, and the devout followers, and those righteous proselytes, and those who were killed for His name. He will take them out according to the calculation, as he had taken them in according to the calculation, as it is written, “He that brings out their host by number,” none absent.
59) The souls of the wicked are given into the hands of that angel, whose name is Dumah, to put them in Hell and sentence there. Once they are given into his hands, they no longer return until they enter Hell. This was David’s fear; he was afraid having done that iniquity, when he said, “Were it not for the Lord’s help, my soul had almost dwelt with Dumah.”
The soul encounters him to let that body in with the rest of the bodies of the righteous in their calculation, as it is written, “And he spoke to Ephron.”
60) However, the angel tells him first, as it is written: “And Ephron dwelt among the sons of Het,” who feared dwelling in the dust. And he hurries and tells him to include that body in the calculation of the righteous, as it is written, “And Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the hearing of the Hittites, to all who came to the gate of his city, saying.”
What is “to all who came to the gate of his city”? These are the ones who were written in the calculation in the book. And so it was determined that by Dumah’s calculation, they enter the graveyards, and by Dumah’s calculation, he is destined to bring them out, and he is appointed over the dwellers of the dust.
61) “I have given you the field and the cave therein.” This is a treasure of much tranquility and rest. There is not one righteous among all those who engage in Torah who does not have two hundred worlds and yearning for the Torah, as it is written, “and two hundred to those who guard its fruit,” and two hundred for devoting themselves each day as though they were slain for sanctifying His name.
It is written, “And you will love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Anyone who devotes his soul in this verse inherits four hundred worlds for the next world, two hundred for the Torah, and two hundred for devoting himself each day to the sanctity of His name.