yod and shin (the letters)

Remez performed through the letter-forms. The yod (numerical value ten) is read as the ‘ten utterances’ (asarah ma’amarot, m. Avot 5:1) by which the world was created and as the Torah that comprises all worlds; the shin, whose three upward strokes branch from a single base, is ‘the root of the tree’ — the letter-shape figuring the root-system from which the cosmic tree grows. Letter-mysticism (remez/sod), surfaced in apparatus, not the body.

the powers resemble a tree

Sod: ‘the powers of the Holy One, one upon another, resembling a tree’ is the Bahir’s most famous image and the earliest figure of the Tree of the sefirot in Kabbalistic literature. The word sefirot is not yet used; the body keeps the source’s ‘powers’ (kohot), and the sefirotic identification is surfaced here rather than substituted into the rendering, per the frame’s discretion. Scholem, Gershom 1987

the water is Wisdom and the souls of the righteous

The ‘water of the Holy One’ that multiplies the tree is identified first with Hokhmah (Wisdom, the second sefirah) and then with the souls of the righteous — a dense sod identification in which the irrigating Wisdom and the ascending souls are one flow. The souls ‘fly from the spring (ma’ayan) to the great channel (tzinor ha-gadol)’: the proto-shefa hydraulics of spring, channel, and tree, the same overflow figured in Bahir SS4-6 and SS17-20.

the Shekhinah dwells among them

Sod: the Shekhinah dwells among Israel only ‘when they are righteous and good,’ and dwells ‘in their deeds.’ The indwelling presence is here made to depend on human conduct — the theurgic loop by which the lower sustains the flow above, makes the tree fruitful, and ‘multiplies’ it.

A number-shift in the Hebrew (reconciliation finding)

The Hebrew shifts number where the souls ascend: they “fly” (porḥin, plural), but then “rises and cleaves” (oleh ve-davek, singular) and “flies” (poreaḥ, singular). The rendering above smooths the sequence to plural. The singular may be distributive (“each soul rises”) or may refer back to the water / Wisdom (singular) ascending to the channel. This is a live reading-decision, not an error; it is flagged here pending an editor’s call.

Manuscript variants

• Wikisource / Sefaria base text: מרבה כחות חאילן (read as כחות האילן, ‘the powers of the tree’) — Apparent orthographic/scribal variant (chet for he); reproduced verbatim and read as ha-ilan.

chokhmah

Selected sense: wisdom

Active senses: wisdom, the-supernal-point, abba

Rationale: The source names the ‘water of the Holy One’ that multiplies the tree’s powers as Hokhmah (חכמה) — read as the second sefirah, the irrigating principle of the divine structure. Rendered ‘Wisdom’ with the transliteration preserved.

Lexicon: lexicon/chokhmah

tzinor

Selected sense: channel

Active senses: channel, conduit, pipe

Rationale: ha-tzinor ha-gadol (הצנור הגדול), ‘the great channel’ — the conduit through which the souls of the righteous rise from the spring to the tree. The developed tzinorot vocabulary in proto-form; rendered ‘channel’.

Lexicon: lexicon/tzinor

shekhinah

Selected sense: divine-presence

Active senses: divine-presence, the-indwelling, malkhut, the-feminine-aspect

Rationale: Shekhinah (שכינה), the indwelling presence that ‘dwells among them’ when Israel is righteous; rendered ‘Divine Presence’ with the transliteration preserved, per the controlled glossary.

Lexicon: lexicon/shekhinah

No public-domain translations indexed for this chunk.