Sefer ha-Bahir 153-154 -- the seventh, the heaven and the holy palace
Sefer ha-Bahir · The Book of Brilliance
ספר הבהיר · קנג-קנד
The seventh saying, named twice. As heaven (shamayim) it stands in the middle, bearing water and fire and making peace between them (§ 153); yet it “is nothing but the sixth,” for here is the holy palace (heikhal ha-kodesh) that bears all the grades and, counted as two, becomes the seventh — the boundless thought that has no end and no limit (§ 154).
A provisional scholarly draft, released openly for correction and not yet reviewed by a credentialed editor. The Hebrew is reproduced verbatim from the Hebrew Wikisource transcription; the standard modern English translation (Kaplan, 1979) is under copyright.
This edition sets the verbatim Hebrew beside a fresh English rendering and a critical apparatus: a running commentary on the passage, notes on the controlled vocabulary and the rendering chosen for each term, and cross-references to the lexicon and to related sections. It is a provisional scholarly draft, released openly for correction and not yet reviewed by a credentialed editor.