61. “The song of songs that is for Solomon.” Happy is the generation in whom there is the upper wisdom as the Creator wished to disclose in earth, and which was not disclosed to the high angels, namely the meaning of the wisdom of the upper, carved name. The holy names were not given to the angels; they were given to the sages in the earth. At that time the angels were praising and saying, “The Lord, our God, how Great is Your name in all the earth; You place Your majesty over the heaven.”
62. “How great is Your name in all the earth” are the carved meanings of the holy names that have appeared in the earth, and the praise of those holy names is on the heaven. All those camps of angels thank and praise this action—that what was revealed in the earth was not revealed to them.
63. In the verse, “The song of songs that is for Solomon,” it is the meanings of the upper, holy Merkava [chariot/structure], of the four carved names. This is the secret of secrets, the upper Merkava of the names ADNI, Tzevaot [Hosts], HaVaYaH, and EKYEH. They are Malchut, Yesod, ZA, and Bina, and they are four names carved from four lights, where each brightness is included in the other and desires to enter it and become included in one another.
The four names are implied in “The song of songs that is for Solomon”:
“Song” is ADNI, Malchut.
“Of Songs” is Tzevaot, Yesod.
“That Is” is HaVaYaH, ZA.
“For Solomon” is EKYEH, Bina.
64. These four lights are explained in certain names: one is called “dark and non-dark brightness” by whose looking it promptly lifts the darkness. When looking at it more, it glitters and blazes in the upper beauty and light. Its light disappears within it until another light strikes it, and it mines in that light and punctures it. At that time it is filled with that brightness and glitters in all directions.
There are two states in Malchut:
1. The two great lights, when the level of Malchut is as great as the level of ZA, when both receive from one source—Bina. ZA receives from the right line of Bina, Hesed, and Malchut receives from the left line of Bina, Hochma.
However, in that state Malchut is regarded as darkness because when she receives from the left of Bina without the right, and the Hochma of the left is without the Hesed from the right, and Hochma is not clothed with Hesed, she cannot illuminate. Therefore, she is darkness.
2. Afterward, she wanes and descends into a point under the Yesod. At that time Yesod, the middle line, diminishes her from receiving Hochma through the Masach of Hirik in the middle line, and then she is rebuilt by AVI and arrives at state two—receiving the light of Hesed from ZA, and she can no longer receive from Bina.
For this reason, she, too, contains light of Hochma from Bina in vessels of the first state. When she is established in the second state and already has Hesed from ZA, she clothes the Hochma that remained in her in the vessels of the first state, and she clothes in mercies. At that time, she illuminates in Hochma and in mercies in full.
“Dark and non-dark brightness” is the Malchut that is called ADNI. By its looking, it promptly lifts the darkness because in the beginning of the looking the vessels of the first state must be awakened in her, before the Hochma clothed in Hesed, and at that time she is darkness. For this reason, when beginning to look at her, it lifts from her the darkness in the Hochma in the first state.
“When looking at it more,” meaning when continuing to look at her and awakening the Hesed she received from ZA in the second state, at that time it is glittering and blazing in the upper beauty and light. The light is the light of Hesed, and the upper beauty is the illumination of Hochma, called “upper beauty.”
All this relates to when she has already arrived at the second state and there is a desire to awaken her with Hochma. Then, at the beginning of the looking, it becomes dark due to the appearance of the first state. But as the looking continues, everything is completed through the second state.
But while she is in the first state, there is no way to illuminate the darkness in her, which was done because the Hochma was devoid of Hassadim [mercies]. While she is still in the first state, the light is wrinkled and concealed inside the Malchut because at that time she is dark.
Finally, the light of Yesod strikes the Masach of Hirik in it and mines that light, meaning diminishes her from Hochma. By that, it mines her and makes her a receptacle fit for reception of the light of Hesed from ZA. It punctures her, meaning diminishes her until she can no longer receive Hochma from the left of Bina as before. At that time, she is filled with light and illuminates to all sides—to the left with Hochma, and to the right with Hassadim.
65. That brightness was carved with seventy-two sparks, which are seventy-two names engraved in seventy Sanhedrin and two witnesses. At that time that brightness is included in two names and is crowned by that name, ADNI.
The name AB is three lines in the three verses, “And journeyed,” “and came,” “and pitched.” This Hochma that appears in Malchut is imparted upon by these three lines. That brightness is engraved with seventy-two sparks, and the name AB divides into seventy Sanhedrin and two witnesses. At that time that brightness contains two names, EKYEH HaVaYaH, which are Bina and ZA. It is the origin of elicitation of Hochma, but there it is only included and not revealed. It crowns in the name, ADNI, for the Hochma is disclosed only in the name ADNI, in Malchut, and not in the two upper names.
66. At that time Malchut is the minister of all the worlds. All the armies and all the camps of the upper and lower say the praise of the verse, “The song of songs that is for Solomon,” praising him and citing praise, and praising above.
When that brightness is completed in the illumination of Yesod, Yod is a song. Malchut is a master, meaning a minister and a sovereign, and the Yod in the song is the wholeness, which was completed by everything, meaning by Yesod, which is Yod, and together she is a song. She is called “The Song of Ascents,” as she is a sovereign appointed over all the armies and camps, which are the degrees of below, over all there is in the three worlds BYA.
67. The second brightness is brightness that gathers to it all the upper, blocked eyes. It is brightness that glitters to the eyes and they cannot look at it. It is called “living,” and because it is alive it takes all the upper, blocked lights and throws sparkling lights below, to Malchut, bearing various fruits and offspring.
The second brightness is Yesod. It is the second after Malchut from below upward. It is known that Yesod is the middle line from Chazeh of ZA and below. The lights of Hochma are called “eyes,” and they are blocked in the left line before it unites with the right line through the middle line. The second brightness, Yesod, is brightness that gathers to it all the upper, blocked eyes, all the lights of Hochma, which are called “eyes,” and are blocked in the left line.
“Gathers to it” means that by uniting the left with the right, the Hochma opens up from her blocking and illuminates. It is known that the middle line cannot unite the left with the right before it diminishes the level of Hochma into VAK of Hochma, so it illuminates only from below upward.
The Yesod is brightness that glitters from below upward, to the eyes, and they cannot look at it, at that illumination of Hochma that it diminished, meaning she cannot look from above downward. But before it diminishes the Hochma, Yesod cannot illuminate in her even the VAK of Hochma. It is called “living” because it extends from ZA, the tree of life. That is, it is the middle line, which extends VAK of Hochma, called “life,” like ZA, who is the middle line above the Tabur. This is why it is called “living,” like ZA, who is called “life.”
And because it is the middle line, called “living,” it takes all the upper, blocked lights, all the illuminations of Hochma of the left, and clothes them in Hassadim of the right. It throws sparkling lights below, namely illuminations of Hochma clothed in the sparkling of Hassadim below, to Malchut, and bears various fruits. Those illuminations that it drops to Malchut turn within her into souls and spirits, which are called “fruits and offspring of Yesod.”
68. That living brightness is called “the one who lives forever,” since this is the inclusion of the upper and lower, for it includes the upper world, ZA, and the lower world, Malchut, as it is written, “For everything that is in the heaven and in the earth.” And because it elicits sparkling lights—Hochma clothed in Hassadim—and bears various fruits, namely souls, this brightness is called Tzevaot [hosts], the second of the four names, whose craving is always to praise in the first brightness, called “The song.”
When they are included as one, in one unification without separation and in complete passion, it is called “everything,” namely Malchut and Yesod, The Song of Songs, for Malchut is called “The Song” and Yesod is called “of Songs.”
69. Even by itself, which is the inclusion of everything—containing HGT NH—it is called “the inclusion of the many,” the inclusion of all the upper and lower lights. We call it “everything” because it is the inclusion of everything; it is life. It is written about it, “And the tree of life in the midst of the garden,” as it is the middle line, since all of life depends on it, on the middle line, since life and lights emit from it to every direction.
70. That song, the Malchut, is called a “well.” The upper life, the lights of Yesod, enter it, which is why it is written, “A well of living water.” It is also written, “A well which the ministers dug,” after those upper ministers, which are hidden lights that have gathered in the brightness of Yesod, which are HGT of ZA included in Yesod of ZA. They dug the well, which is Malchut, but they did not dig it themselves but through Yesod.
71. The third brightness is ZA, the middle line from the Chazeh and above. It includes three lights, HGT, since the middle line, Tifferet, called ZA, includes within it the two lines, HG, and it is three letters Yod-Hey-Vav. The patriarchs clung to that brightness since the middle line is Jacob, in whom HG, Abraham and Isaac, are included.
72. ZA is to-and-fro, and none can settle in his sparkling. It is written about ZA, “And the animals ran to-and-fro.” ZA inherits a lot, and an inheritance of hidden lights that are not revealed—the inheritance of upper AVI, Yod-Hey. The meaning of the holy name of three letters that depend on the animals, which are Vav, ZA, and which are Yod-Hey-Vav. The fourth letter, Hey, Malchut, collects and grips from the letters Yod-Hey-Vav. This is why ZA is called HaVaYaH, for so it was arranged in a complete sequence where the three letters Yod-Hey-Vav illuminate to the bottom Hey.
73. That brightness, ZA, is to-and-fro, the letter Vav of HaVaYaH. The Yod-Hey imply HB, and Vav-Hey imply ZA and Malchut. Vav—ZA—stands in the middle between above, Bina, and below, Malchut.
The letter Hey, Bina, is from the upper side, and the letter Hey, Malchut is from the lower side. The animals, which are Vav, HGT, are in the middle. This is why they go to-and-fro. They go to the first Hey, Bina, ascending to her with complete passion, to receive from her Hochma and Hassadim, and return to the bottom Hey, Malchut to give her what it collected and received from above, from Bina.
74. That brightness is as a wheel in the eye, which is concealed, and whose brightness comes and goes, since its passion is to rise up, and it promptly returns. This is the meaning of “that” in the verse, “The song of songs that is for Solomon.” “The song” is Malchut; “of songs” is Yesod; “that” is ZA, which stands here and there, in Bina and in Malchut.
This explains the verse, “And the animals ran to-and-fro,” in the four colors of the eye. The eye illuminates only in a manner concealed from Hochma, for then it rises up and receives three colors from Bina: white, red, and green, namely the three lines HGT, which are blocked from Hochma. This is regarded as “to” [from to-and-fro]. Afterward, the eye opens according to the order and returns to Malchut, which is the black in the eye, and where the Hochma is revealed.
75. The fourth brightness is EKYEH, Bina, a brightness that is concealed and not seen at all, since from that concealed brightness emerge the rest of the lights Hochma and Hassadim, which spread and become included in one another. But that brightness itself is unrevealed at all, but rather stands in the intelligence of the heart, as NHY of Tevuna [intelligence] clothe in ZA in Lev [Lamed-Bet (32 in Gematria), as well as “heart”] paths of wisdom [Hochma]. The heart, the paths of wisdom in ZA, knows and looks into it although it is completely invisible, meaning it receives from it and bestows upon Malchut.
76. The passion of the lower brightness, Malchut, comes out from all the lights that emerge from Bina, and Malchut’s craving is to praise a praise and look into all those lights, meaning disclose the illumination of Hochma, called “looking,” and mingle within them in order to rise and see the upper pleasantness, disclosing the illumination of Hochma that is covered in Bina and is called “pleasantness.”
King David said about it, “One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the pleasantness of the Lord, and to visit in His temple.” This is “for Solomon” in the verse, “The song of songs that is for Solomon, to the king that peace is all his,” which is Bina.
This explains the four names, ADNI, Tzevaot, HaVaYaH, EKYEH, in the four words [in Hebrew], “The song of songs that is for Solomon.” ADNI is Malchut, “The Song.” Tzevaot is Yesod, “of Songs.” HaVaYaH is ZA, “that,” and EKYEH is Bina, “for Solomon.”