Sefer ha-Bahir 55-56 -- the bet, the future house, and gold as judgment
Sefer ha-Bahir · The Book of Brilliance
ספר הבהיר · נה-נו
canonical late 12th c., Provence (ascribed to the 1st c. tanna) Hebrew Anonymous (attributed to Rabbi Nehunya ben ha-Kanah) tr. Hekhal Targum Project (machine-assisted draft; pending scholarly review)
Back to the bet, and the last word on “gold.” Proverbs 24:3 read in the future tense — “with wisdom a house will be built” — so the house is one the Holy One rebuilds in the time to come, and the Torah that opens with a bet preceded the world; a dispute between two thousand years and seven is left standing (§ 55). And the gold of §§ 51-54: “from it goes out judgment,” gold as Gevurah, with a warning against tipping the balance right or left (§ 56).
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.
ומה היא בי”ת דכתיב בסופה (משלי כ”ד ג) בחכמה יבנה בית, נבנה לא נאמר אלא יבנה, עתיד הקב”ה לבנותה ולקשטה אלפים באחד על אשר היתה, כדאמרינן מה הוה דתחילת התורה בבי”ת דכתיב (משלי ח’ ל’) ואהיה אצלו אמון ואהיה שעשועים יום יום תרי אלפין שנין, שהיא ראשית, תרי והכתוב אומר שבע דכתיב (ישעי’ ל’ כו) והיה אור הלבנה כאור החמה ואור החמה יהיה שבעתים, דאמרינן מה חמה לשבעה אף לבנה לשבעה, אנא אלפים אמרו:
And what is the bet? As it is written of it (Proverbs 24:3), ‘with wisdom a house is built (yibaneh).’ ‘Was built (nivneh)’ is not said, but ‘will be built (yibaneh)’: the Holy One will, in time to come, build it and adorn it two-thousandfold over what it was, as we have said. What is [the reason] that the beginning of the Torah is with a bet? As it is written (Proverbs 8:30), ‘and I was beside Him as a nursling (amon), and I was [His] delight day by day’ — two thousand years; for it is ‘the beginning (reshit),’ two [thousand]. And Scripture says seven, as it is written (Isaiah 30:26), ‘and the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold’ — for we say, as the sun is [multiplied] to seven, so the moon to seven. I said two thousand; they said [seven].
Provisional draft (pending scholarly review)
א”ל עד כאן חמשה מכאן ואילך מאי, א”ל אני אפרש תחלה זהב, מאי זהב, מלמד שממנו יוצא הדין, ואם תטה דבריך ימין ושמאל נזהר ממך:
He said to him: up to here [is] five; from here on, what? He said: I will first explain ‘gold (zahav).’ What is ‘gold’? It teaches that from it goes out judgment (din); and if you incline your words to the right or to the left, be warned of it.
Provisional draft (pending scholarly review)
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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.
Controlled terms noted in this passage: chokhmah (rendered as wisdom). For each, the apparatus carries the sense set and the reason for the rendering chosen.
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the bet, the future house, and the Torah’s precedence
Proverbs 24:3 (‘with wisdom a house is built’) is read in the future tense: not nivneh (‘was built’) but yibaneh (‘will be built’) — the Holy One will build and adorn the ‘house’ two-thousandfold in the time to come. And the Torah, which begins with a bet (Bereshit), preceded the world; Proverbs 8:30 (Wisdom ‘beside Him as amon, His delight day by day’) is taken for the two thousand years of the Torah’s precedence, since ‘reshit’ — the bet, whose value is two — marks the count. Sod: the ‘house’ built by Ḥokhmah is the world, or the Shekhinah below, destined to be rebuilt in the messianic future. A dispute is then registered — two thousand (years) against seven (the sevenfold light of Isaiah 30:26, the seven days) — and left standing; the numerology here is dense and its arithmetic not fully transparent.
gold as judgment (din)
Returning to the gold (zahav) of §§ 52-55: ‘from it goes out judgment (din).’ Gold is Gevurah, the severe grade, the wellspring of strict judgment; and the warning — ‘if you incline your words to the right or to the left, be warned’ — guards against tipping the balance of mercy (the right, Ḥesed) and judgment (the left, Gevurah). Cf. the silver and gold of § 52.
Editorial decisions
- the 2000 vs 7 numerology. Rendered the numbers literally and flagged the two-thousand-against-seven dispute as a dense crux in the apparatus; did not force a resolution of the arithmetic. (claude-opus-4-8[session-pipe], 2026-07-02)
chokhmah
Selected sense: wisdom
Active senses: wisdom, the-supernal-point
Rationale: Chokhmah appears in the § 55 prooftext, Proverbs 24:3 (‘with wisdom a house is built’), rendered plainly ‘wisdom.’ The pardes frame hears the sefirah Chokhmah as the grade by which the ‘house’ (the world, or the Shekhinah) is built; kept to the apparatus.
Lexicon: lexicon/chokhmah
No public-domain translations indexed for this chunk.