the brooks, the channel, and the sea

The willows ‘mix (me’arvim) their actions’; and ‘willows of the brook (arvei nachal)’ are named for the ‘brook (nachal)’ in which they are fixed — ‘all the brooks go to the sea, and the sea is not full’ (Ecclesiastes 1:7), the sea being the citron (the Shekhinah / Malkhut that receives all). Each of the seven grades is a ‘brook (nachal)’: ‘from Mattanah Nahaliel’ read as ‘the brooks of God (nachalei El)’ (Numbers 21:19). All six go ‘by one way’ — the deciding channel (Habakkuk 3:5) — to that channel (tzinor), and from it to the sea. Sod: the six upper grades pour their flow through the single conduit (Yesod, the deciding way) into the last grade, the ‘sea’; the flow is ‘given (Mattanah)’ from the ‘brain (moach)’ — the supernal grades — and passes down the map of place-names.

the itinerary of the flow: from the brain to Lebanon

The place-names of Numbers 21:19-20 are read as the stages of the descending flow: ‘Mattanah (the gift)’ — the place given, the brain (moach); ‘Nahaliel’; ‘Bamoth,’ rendered ‘Ramata (the heights),’ the cantillation ‘segolta’ after the ‘zarka’; ‘the valley in the field of Moab,’ the top of Pisgah, looking down on ‘the wasteland (yeshimon),’ rendered ‘the heavens.’ ‘Moab’ is read ‘from the father (me-av)’ — Abraham, ‘because Abraham hearkened to My voice and kept My charge’ (Genesis 26:5). Of the channel it is said, ‘a well of living waters, and flowing streams from Lebanon’ (Song of Songs 4:15) — and ‘Lebanon is wisdom (chokhmah).’ And the willows, ‘that one who gave an inheritance (nachalah) to Israel,’ are ‘the two wheels of the chariot’ (Netzach and Hod, §§ 169-170, 177). Sod: the whole passage maps the sefirotic flow as a river-system from Chokhmah (Lebanon), the source, down through the channels to the sea (Malkhut), the human ‘brain’ and ‘heavens’ marking the supernal stages.

chokhmah

Selected sense: wisdom

Active senses: wisdom, the-supernal-point

Rationale: § 178: ‘and what is Lebanon? this is wisdom (chokhmah)’ — the ‘flowing streams from Lebanon’ (Song 4:15) are the flow from Chokhmah. Rendered ‘wisdom’; the frame hears Chokhmah, the supernal source of the streams.

Lexicon: lexicon/chokhmah

tzinor

Selected sense: channel

Active senses: channel, conduit, pipe

Rationale: § 178: ‘they all go to that channel (tzinor), and from that channel to the sea’ — the single conduit through which the six grades pour into the last (the sea / etrog). Rendered ‘channel’; the frame hears the tzinor, the conduit of the flow (cf. § 113).

Lexicon: lexicon/tzinor

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